Disguise

Sawdust

Flora's POV

"You mean to say that he's been carrying out these experiments for two years?!" Grey nearly roared and startled the poor girl. Isla frantically looked at me, hoping that I would bring some sense of calm into the room and I shot him a warning glare. Grudgingly, he sat back into his chair, but at the edge of his seat, waiting to swallow whatever she had to tell us next. His hands clenched the sides and I already knew that the wood was cracking under his grip.

Isla looked at him warily before she turned and focused her attention back onto her thumbs. "So one day, I was left in charge of several cultures all alone. It was generally two of us working around the clock, another healer. He was from a european pack himself and he wanted to take the night off because he had found his mate and he needed to speak to her pack Alpha to let her leave her pack and join his." Her eyes crinkled slightly when she thought of this other scientist on the job with her. They must have been fast friends.

Cole leaned forward, "Do you happen to remember his name? And what pack he belonged to?"

She shook her head in dismay, "No, sorry. We were both instructed not to do this from Deta and the woman. I was Deta's representative in the process and the man was her's." I sighed, so many mysterious people in this story! Were we ever going to catch a break? Cole nodded without dropping any hints, while Grey just clutched his chair harder. I looked at his tightly wrapped hands warily.

"And this woman you keep mentioning, she never told you her name either, right?" Isla just nodded.

"Didn't you think of all this as too suspicious? Why all the secrecy?" I asked her in concern. These were major red flags! She nodded vigorously, "I did! I thought that it was all too much! They didn't tell us anything about where the blood cultures were coming from, but we could obviously judge that it wasn't a human's. We had the weekends to ourselves. Each culture took five days to prepare and analyse so we'd work from Monday to Friday and take the weekends off to roam around. They'd give us enough money and everything." She paused for a breath, "So eventually I asked Alpha Deta why it was such a high priority and hushed. He told me that they were making something special...on the King's orders." I heard collective gasps from Cole and Grey but she didn't stop now.

"They said that it was all approved and even got the official seal on some of the documents, so then I believed him. He seemed so sincere too." She said simply.

"So what happened? The day you were alone in the lab?" I asked, feeling the tension build. I could feel their fury just by sitting next to them, it was only a miracle that they were sitting as calmly as they were.

Isla hesitated as she got back to her original story before this tangent. I nodded at her to go on, trying my best to seem both stern but also reassuring. "I was with the cultures and it was almost time to test them, but there was an accident and ..... I set the lab on fire." She cringed as she said the words, but continued without a break, her eyes getting slightly misty. "I was obviously fired. They told me to pack my bags and go home. Apparently they'd stocked the rest of the cultures to be tested .. and those were destroyed too. She was furious with me, and Deta but mostly with me. I remember hearing them argue when I was packing up my stuff in the lab. She said she'd been administering a low 'test'-" She made air quotations - " dose and now they wouldn't have any supply. Everything would need to be started again. All their hard work just down the drain. I felt really guilty, I wanted to fix this or at least apologize to the King or something like that but I didn't. I packed my bags and left."

"Do you remember where the office is located? Or anything about it?" Cole asked her in an almost demanding tone and she shook her head. "I do, but there is no point, it's not there anymore. There is no trace of anything there anymore. I know because I sent someone to check on it myself just a few days ago. That's when all the mess started."