Jett led their group of infiltrators into a narrow side passage to avoid running headlong into any groups of reinforcing wolfkin guards. They heard the hammer of heavy paws and the snarling of orders as the enforcers frantically summoned more bodies to contain the attempted jailbreak. She took a couple of precious seconds to orient herself, closing her eyes and running through the directions she'd memorised on the way to the holding area.

"This way," she hissed, shunting the thoughts of the prisoners out of her mind. Rapid, Karno, Bronco, and Gallant slipped into a single file to follow her lead, none of them questioning. She darted off down the left passage, looping them away from both the ongoing brawl and the likely routes for wolfkin reinforcement.

The underground warren was nothing Jett couldn't navigate. She kept them running on a roughly parallel route to the one they'd taken on their way in, making her way back towards the security door they'd seen. With the mayhem they'd left in their wake, a lot of enforcer guard posts were empty now, their forces converging on the hundreds of citykin trying to escape. Jett didn't feel optimistic about their chances. A lot of them were going to die.

But it was a cost that would have to be paid to get the evidence they needed.

"What's our plan, Jett?" Bronco asked. "Getting out of there's one thing, but how do we go deeper?"

"There's a testing lab for those blood samples," she replied, not breaking stride. "Not far from the security door. We're going to persuade one of our friends to part with their scent key."

"I can be real persuasive," Rapid giggled deviously, easing his axe free from its hiding place within his coat lining.

She shot him a warning glance. "Control yourself, you little savage."

"Aw, careful, bright-eyes, you'll hurt my feelings."

With a snort of irritation, she turned away again; paused at a junction in the corridor, and then turned right, slowing her pace and padding along more carefully now as they drew closer to their destination.

Twice they had to duck back as enforcers hurtled past at junctions in the corridor, moving in twos and threes, orders flying back and forth so quickly that Jett could barely process them. A handful of heart-jolting close calls later, they made their way through the narrow side passages and reached the analysis station she'd marked on their way in. There were only a few scientists within, their attention fully occupied by the rows of blood samples they'd extracted from the latest batch of dubiously willing subjects.

"Alright, fast and quiet," she murmured, holding her longclaw loosely in one paw. "Bronco, cover the howl-net, so nobody's barking for help."

"No problem."

"We can't be leaving them to squeal once we're gone," Rapid hissed.

Karno nodded. "He's right. We can't leave them alive to identify us or raise the alarm. They're up to their hackles in this, anyway. I won't lose any sleep over it."

"I didn't come here to be a murderer," Gallant interjected uneasily. "Couldn't we just knock them out?"

"You're not going to murder anyone." Jett's grip on the longclaw tightened. "We'll deal with it. They're right—it's too risky otherwise."

It didn't seem too long ago when the idea of killing in cold blood had been alien to her, but now Jett didn't feel a shred of remorse. The predator in her wrestled beneath the surface as the faces of her family and of Tyr burned in her bones. Somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind, a part of her mourned that lost innocence, but the licking embers of the Savage Fire within her could stand for a little bloodshed to put this right.

After a swift check to ensure there were no guards nearby, Jett crouched low and scuttled towards the door of the analysis lab. A low-security area, it required no scent key, with researchers coming and going at regular intervals to deliver fresh blood samples and take away those that were no longer useful. She pressed a paw to the door gently and glanced back at her companions. Seeing they were ready, she mouthed a single word.

Go.

Moving like a wraith, she pushed the door as softly as she could and slithered through the opening. Only a faint rasp of hinges resulted, and their soft steps were swallowed up by the whirring hum of the lab machinery and the clacking of heavy keys. By the time the scientists realised what was happening, it was far too late.

Rapid reached the first, the albino's bloodlust driving him forward. His axe rose and fell in a savage arc before the blade smashed through the top of the first scientist's skull. The scrawny wolfkin didn't make so much as a whimper, killed instantly by the blow.

A foxkin scientist twisted around at the sound of metal crunching through bone, only for Jett to slam her longclaw up to its hilt in his windpipe, rage for her fellow kin driving her whole body behind the blade. His eyes went wide as blood fountained from the mortal wound before he let out a choking gurgle and went limp.

The scientist closest to the howl-net leapt from her chair, but Bronco was already in position, catching the wolfkin with a thunderous blow to the snout that flipped her head over heels with a short yelp of pain. She hit the ground and did not get up.

The last of them—a felkin—was in Karno's clutches before he could get more than two paces, and an echoing snap rang through the room as the wolfkin broke the scientist's neck with a jerk of his arms. The body slumped. Silence descended. Jett exhaled a shuddering breath and wiped a spatter of hot blood from her cheek.

She glanced around. The whole exchange had been over in a matter of seconds. Now they had to make it count. No time to stop and think. No time to worry about petty moralities. Kill or be killed.

Dropping to her haunches, she tugged the scent key free from the pocket of the dead foxkin, then straightened up and bounded across the room to a storage cupboard filled with test tubes, antiseptic wipes, coats, and other supplies.

"Everybody grab a lab coat," Jett instructed, grabbing one from the cupboard and tossing it to Rapid. "Especially you. Cover up those damned tattoos."

***

The security door thumped shut behind them.

Jett shuddered with relief and turned to examine the corridor beyond, returning the scent key to the pocket of her purloined lab coat. Dark, umber walls of armoured ceramic encased them in a curved tunnel ten feet high and twice that across. The passage glinted with polish under the white lighting braziers studded at regular intervals along the ceiling, and she could see geometric white writing printed on either side.

"Shiny new, eh?" Rapid muttered.

"Build to withstand a lot more than us," Karno replied, thumping the wall with one paw. A muffled bong died in the hallway around them. "This place is quake-hardened."

Jett nodded. "Probably worried about any residual chemicals." She started walking, beckoning them along. "C'mon, we need to get our bearings; find a console with a floor plan of this place."

She'd taken two steps before a chilling cocktail of screams reverberated down the passage with sinister gentleness. Jett froze, ears twitching and tail curling with discomfort. The sound had rattled from a connecting passage to their right. She felt her hackles rising.

"My parents," Gallant said, her voice tight with anxiety. "They weren't in the holding area. Maybe...they might be in one of the labs down here—"

"Hate to sink yer dreamy little ship, antlers, but I don't think the wolves keep their failures around long," Rapid muttered.

"You don't know that."

Karno put a paw on the deerkin's shoulder. "Gallant, I'm sorry, but he's probably right. It was, what? Weeks ago your district was cleared out?"

"Well...yes, but—"

"You heard them. People aren't down in that pit for more than a few days. You really think anybody survives much beyond that in this place?"

Jett looked back in time to see the tears welling in the young deerkin's eyes. Pity swelled in her alongside a fresh, boiling cauldron of rage. The wolfkin had left a highway of broken lives in the wake of their crusade.

"If there's time, we'll look for your folks, Gallant," Jett said, shooting Rapid and Karno pointed looks. "But we have to get what we came for. We have to get the evidence of what the wolfkin are doing here and bring it to the Conclave. If we don't get the word out, none of this will mean anything."

Gallant's face twisted momentarily with indecision before she nodded. "Alright, alright. Let's just...let's just do this. Where do we go?" Another dull echo of screams rolled down the corridor and washed over them.

Jett suppressed a shudder and jerked a claw over her shoulder. "We follow the noise."

***

The screams came at seemingly random intervals, each hellish chorus jangling her nerves. Her muscles stayed constantly tense as she moved, her fur prickling at every bend in the passage as she fought the urge the scurry away into the shadows and hide.

They passed a handful of wolfkin guard patrols as they went, some talking gutturally into howl-wire sets with their fellows in the upper levels. It seemed the attempted prison break was still ongoing. Right now, the guards had their paws full hunting those trying to escape; they didn't spare a second glance for kin in lab coats working their way deeper into the facility. So far, at least, they did not suspect a bigger plan at play.

It would only be a matter of time, though; Jett knew that much. They'd concealed the dead scientists to the best of their ability, but the wolfkin would find the bodies sooner or later. Then the enforcers would start hunting for the perpetrators.

They turned through the armoured passages, closing in on the epicentre of the screaming, the volume increasing with each turn. She could discern no words in the tangle of voices, just unintelligible howls of anguish that blended horribly together. Her fur prickled at the thought of the innocent kin who may well have been marched through these very halls. It was difficult the imagine the horror that must've overwhelmed them as the reality of the wolfkin lie took hold.

Jett turned left through a broad, reinforced archway and got a taste of that horror for herself.

The passage was broad enough for five kin to march abreast. On the left, metal doors had been embedded in the hardened ceramic walls, while down the right-hand side, a series of large, oblong windows glowered out into a sprawling cavern of a room. Jett's eyes widened as she padded over and looked.

It was some kind of repurposed work bay, a rectangle nearly fifty yards long and half that across. The walls were infested with tech that didn't belong; gleaming rigs and spools of shining wire spilling into the space and connected to rows of open-topped cylinders. Each one sat at a slight angle, not unlike the beds in Wildhearth's medicary centres, but these had an altogether more sinister purpose.

Citykin were strapped into the cylinders, and even from this distance, Jett could see the glint of needles as attending scientists went about their work. A couple of wolfkin guards strode warily through the nightmare as strange concoctions were introduced to the bloodstreams of the unfortunate captives. Anguished howls rattled the glass. She watched as one cylinder was uncoupled from its mounts and wheeled away through a pair of gaping double doors, its occupant reduced to a sagging, shuddering heap of fur.

"Peace and Fire..." Rapid hissed through gritted teeth.

Jett stepped back sharply, fighting down the urge to vomit. Given the sheer volume of kin coming through this place, she knew this testing area would be one of many. This could not go on any longer. She looked back to the doors lining the opposite wall.

Printed in fresh white ink over one door was a designation: SUB-HOLDING STATION 4-A – DESIGNATED NEGATIVE GRAFT RESPONSE. The others had variations denoting their purpose in this sickening machine, but Jett could only take guesses at what it all meant. But they needed a computer—this seemed as likely a place as any.

"In there," Jett hissed quietly, nodding to the holding station. "C'mon."

Shuddering, she slunk backwards away from the window and slid her stolen scent key into the lock of the adjoining lab. Canines bared, she stepped inside with her companions filtering in behind her.

The door slid shut, and she cast her gaze over the room. Sparse and white-walled in contrast to the walls of the corridor outside, it was a rectangle maybe fifteen meters across, sporting a quartet of large computing rigs near the door arranged in an inward-facing square with their cooling stacks idling with a gentle hum. At the other end of the room, four large cylinders of smoky glass stood, with metal lids fixed to the top and bottom and a forest of wires plunging into a large computing rig to the left of the line. Three of the cylinders were empty.

The fourth was occupied.

A deerkin in a lab coat stood in front of it, an older male with stunted antlers who whirled around in surprise at their entrance.

"Who are you?" he blurted. "Did Moirag send you down here? I told her the subject is not ready to be moved yet. Why don't those cavaliers listen..." His voice trailed off when no one responded. His large eyes flickered from figure to figure as he examined them. "I...err..."

Jett was already moving as he made a dash for the howl-wire. The deerkin managed two steps before she caught him by the scruff of the neck and slammed him into the wall. He opened his mouth to cry out; she had her knife to his throat before he could make a sound.

"Bronco, Rapid," Jett said softly, pressing the longclaw hard against the scientist's neck. "Watch the door."

"I'm on it." Bronco took up his position beside the door with Rapid opposite him, the foxkin's axe free and glinting in the light.

"Gallant, check that rig. See what's going on in those tanks."

Gallant stepped past with Karno in tow, sparing her fellow deerkin a black glare before she sat down, leaning forward to examine the readouts on the anvil-like monitor. A moment of silence sizzled in the air, filled only by the whirr of the lab machines.

"It's monitoring vitals," she said. "There's a diagnostic programme running, linked up to control what's going in and out of all those tubes."

"And what's it telling you?"

"Err...I'm not sure."

"Then take a guess."

"Hang on!" Gallant shot her a fiery look before returning her attention to the screen, gingerly typing in instructions to the machine. "Fangs..."

"What?"

"There's a bearkin in there."

Jett shot her a dubious look. "In the tank?"

"No, in the ceiling. Of course, in the tank!"

Biting back a snarled retort, Jett whipped her head back to the smoky glass. Even close up, the shape within was little more than a shapeless mass, certainly large enough to be a bearkin, but she couldn't make out any kind of defining features. Some kind of viscous smoke-like substance shrouded the captive from view, swirling thickly beyond the glass like a living thing.

"Jett, this...this is weird." She looked up, worry etched on her features. "The console is monitoring changes in the bearkin's DNA."

"What's it showing?"

"According to this, there's more than just bearkin in that tank. They've combined DNA from another source."

Jett tensed. "What's the other source?"

"Wolfkin." Her companion shook her head slowly. "I guess this proves that Project Excision never went away."

"They're what...grafting wolfkin DNA to bearkin?" Karno blurted from across the room, disbelief in his voice. "That's insane."

"What is this?" Jett growled, snapping her head back to the scientist, her knife pressing against his neckfur with enough force to draw a trickle of blood. It took all of her self-control not to press any harder. "What are you cooking up in this place?"

"I-it's a genetic graft of sorts," he babbled. "Blending the traits of the wolfkin into other subjects."

"Which traits." The knife pressed deeper.

His eyes bulged with terror. "Pack mentality."

For a moment, Jett just stared at him. Then suddenly, the horrible realisation slammed home when she realised what this facility was designed to do. The other kin with their glassy, vacant stares that had tailed her to her hideout—they'd been put through this same procedure, making them compliant to the wishes of the wolfkin.

"You mongrel scum." Her grip tensed, and she just barely stopped herself from tearing the blade across the scientist's throat. "So this does what, make these kin genetically...subservient?"

"I suppose that's accurate." The deerkin blinked nervously. "We isolated the genetic sequencing that creates the pack hierarchy. Those who are given the treatment will be naturally inclined to follow the commands of the alphas."

"The wolves," Rapid grated, casting a vicious glance at Karno. "Your people got a lot to answer for, friend."

"Fangs," Karno swore. "So that's the plan for control. Splice this gene into the population."

"I mean...will that really work?" Bronco asked, his face twisted in confusion. "They can't bring every single person in Wildhearth to this place."

"They don't need to," Gallant replied. Her voice trembled slightly as the enormity of what they'd found hit her. "They can forcibly add this genetic component to a relatively small percentage and then put the subjects back into the general population. With the gene being carried in a proportion of every kin, they can breed it into the city bit by bit. Eventually, it would spread far enough that the wolfkin could effectively exert control on anyone—anything. Once the process was underway, they could just wipe this place off the map, and no one would ever know."

"But it would take years!"

"Decades, at least." Jett glared at the smoky cylinder with hate in her heart. "Hera's playing the long game."