Torn

Chapter 28✓

Carter

Viktor called me "the key" to his research, but I don't understand what that means. My dad said he had learned something that he shouldn't have while he was working at the lab one afternoon, and that the information would put us all in danger. It was the whole reason we had fled from Spiritwood in the first place. Now it seems that it has all caught up to me with my return to town.

"The key to what? Stop skirting around it, and just tell me the truth." I demand.

Viktor chuckles. "Alright, darling. You already know that your father and I were partners. To the outside world, the lab appeared as a research facility focusing on protecting and preserving the local wolf population, but inside these walls, your father and I were experimenting on wolf DNA strands and the diverse ways it could me manipulated when combined with other elements and other DNA strands. The goal was to successfully create and replicate a trainable weapon. We were to make the world's most deadly, trained wolf to send off to battle in the war. Our troops would be sent home, and the beasts would dominate the battlefield. Your dad and I were supposed to be heroes."

Tyler wraps his arm around Chantal, and they turn and walk out of the room without saying a word. I don't miss the longing look Chantal threw over her shoulder to her supposed mates father and my nose scrunches at the level of fuckery that is going on.

I'm now alone with Viktor, who is busy pacing the room in front of me. The zip ties are pinching and cutting into my skin as I carefully twist my wrists even more. Truthfully, I don't think Tyler put the ties on as tight as he should have and thank the Goddess for that. If I could keep twisting without Viktor taking notice, I may be able to get one of my hands free.

"We continued our experiments for a few years with little success. Until one day the wolf we captured was a little bit... more... than just wolf. Our scouts tranquillized and brought in a large, brown wolf and brought him down to our holding cells. You would understand our shock when we came down to remove him from the cells to find a naked man standing in the cell instead." He chuckles and shakes his head.

"Our testing information blossomed. We had almost replicated the DNA sequence in the man-wolf-hybrid completely. The next phase of our project started with capturing people from the town of Spiritwood in the night to find out what would happen when our hybrid DNA was combined with their natural DNA. We lost a lot of subjects as you can see." He lifts his hand to gesture towards the wall of crossed-off faces and my stomach heaves.

My mind went back to all the missing person fliers tapped across shut down store windows. My eyes burn as the tears start to build. My father had done that. My father had caused unfathomable pain for so many innocent families. I don't want to hear anymore. I shake my head but nothing I do is going to block out Viktor's words.

"During the first phase of our testing, we injected the serum directly into our subject's bloodstream and within minutes they began to have grand mal seizures that we couldn't control. We lost them all." Viktor walks up to the wall of faces and seems to be lost in thought as he stares at all the people he and my dad killed in their lust for information.

"After that, we changed our approach and started phase two. We began injecting the serum in a diluted solution, using intravenous. That decision was almost worse than the original when our subjects began to bleed out through their eyes, nose, and ears. Again, we couldn't stop it and we lost them." Viktor turns and looks back at me, his face bleak.

"It was your father who came up with the idea to take a step back and look at the genetic structure of the hybrid we had captured. We sent out about a dozen scouts to try and capture more hybrids to continue our research. After a few months, we were finally able to capture two more. A male and female. We realized that if we combined the synthetic DNA structure we developed, with the saliva of the hybrid, we were successfully able to duplicate the effect and we created our first synthetic hybrid between man and wolf. I guess it's true what they say about the third time being the charm."