Lucas' POV
The harbor air clung thick with salt and diesel rot, the kind of humidity that made lungs feel like wet paper bags. I adjusted the delivery crew cap - too small, its plastic brim digging into my brow - and watched the girl mimic my motions. Her uniform sleeves hung loose, hiding arms that shouldn't have been strong enough to snap a man's spine.
"Steady," she murmured as the cargo ship groaned against the dock. Her voice was wind through dead leaves, a sound that made my hollow chest ache.
My chest, once filled with the rhythmic pulse of life, now lies hollow and empty. What once was organic and vibrant has transformed into a void, where the girl's voice sweeps through like a gust of winter wind through a desolate graveyard.
Leaning against the mast, I thought to myself-
Leah's voice had been honey and wildfire. The girl's voice was neither.
The gate ahead yawned like a rusted jaw, its chain-links strangled by ivy. A single red bulb flickered above the intercom, arrhythmic as a failing heart.
Click. Static hissed. "Why the delay?"
I leaned into the intercom, letting desperation fray the edges of my words. "Open up. We're just here to drop the crates."
There was some hissing sound coming from the intercom. Then, that voice asked, "Where's Jason?"
"Who? I don't know no Jason." My fingers grazed the gun grip beneath my waistband. "We're just temps. Dispatch said some guys messed up the delivery and sent us here. Listen, bro, we want no trouble..."
"Code number."
As I was about to pull out the gun, the girl's hand clamped my wrist, cold as a mortician's touch.
The man in the voice freaked out, "Keep both of your hands visible, or I'll turn on the killing bots."
"Please," she cut in, her voice fracturing like glass. "We know nothing about the code number. The dispatch didn't brief us. My husband just wanted to reach his phone to call the dispatch and verify it. But if you don't feel comfortable for us doing it here, we'll leave with the crates, call the dispatch, and come back later."
The red bulb above the intercom flickered again, as if the man on the other end was thinking.
"Please, Sir. Our kids... they're home alone. Please let us leave."
Silence. I counted the red light's spasms. Eleven. Twelve.
Metal shrieked. The gate crept open.
"Drop the crates and leave immediately," that voice faded in the air.
-
Crates thudded onto the dock, each impact reverberating through the cavity where my heart used to beat. The girl lifted steel containers like they were shoeboxes, her movements fluid where mine clanged.
Apparently, the enhancement project gave us claws, not grace. I thought to myself.
"You're staring," she said, not turning.
"Admiring your work ethic."
"Are you going to kill me after I finish uploading?" She hoisted a crate marked BIOLOGICAL HAZARD.
My laugh was a dry cough. "You'll know when it's time."
She became silent.
I could detect her fear in the air, so I had to come up with something to lighten her mood.
"That children talk. It's a nice touch," I said. "Hypothetically, if we got married, how many children would we have?"
She threw a crate on the ground.
"You're sick. Do you know that?" She stared at me with a dark look on her face.
I obviously touched something untouchable in her. She had never been this grumpy with me.
She told me that there was a child in her dream. Was that because she was pregnant with a child before? If so, where is the child right now?
The last crate landed with a hollow clang. She leapt onto the ship, boots scraping rust. "Come on, let's move."
I didn't.
The gate slammed shut.
A man emerged from the lab's shadows, gun glinting like a serpent's eye.
"You aren't going anywhere today," he said, pressing the barrel to my jugular.
I recognized that he was Gean. Leo's lifetime partner and tumor.
I raised my hands slowly. "You're going to regret this."
"Regret?" His breath reeked of nicotine and fear. "These bullets are soaked in condensed wolfsbane that'll..."
"So, let me get this straight." I jeered. "You're holding a gun to my neck and describing its power to me?"
Crack.
The girl's elbow collided with his head.
Gean crumpled, his gun skittering into darkness of the water.
"You don't have to save my ass all the time," I muttered while grabbing Gean's arm.
She kicked Gean onto his back. "You're welcome."
Boots pounded concrete. Leo, my brother-in-law and another deadbeat Lycan Prince, charged from the lab, eyes wild.
He roared in Lycan voice, "Let him go, you filth..."
I had to release Gean because of the terror of his Lycan breath, but the girl didn't.
Leo's eyes fixated on the girl.
"What the fuck have you brought in here, Farrow?!"
"Another lab rat of yours. You don't recognize her?" I shrugged.
Leo quickly sized up the girl and said, "Are you fucking with me, Farrow?! Whatever she is has nothing to do with me! Don't you dare to pin her on me!"
I frowned. If the girl isn't Leo's lab creation, that means only one thing -
She's a Lycan.
Before I could react, Leo shifted mid-lunge - fur erupting, bones snap-snap-snapping - until a monstrous black wolf loomed over the girl. The woman ducked his swipes, her dodges too precise, too Lycan.
But why won't she shift? Is that because I will recognize her once she shifts?
"Turn!" Leo roared, pinning her beneath a paw the size of a dinner plate. "Fight me properly!"
She locked eyes with me. Begging. Why is she always begging for other people's mercy when she's perfectly capable of handling it herself? What a pathetic creature. It's time to end her misery.
I lit a cigarette.
"Lucas!" She howled in despair as Leo's wolf was about to give her a final lethal stroke.
The moment she called my name, I was sent back to the day I killed the Old Lycan King.
Leah was calling my name in the same voice. She asked me to run away.
My chest started throbbing with excruciating pain again.
I was furious.
All of a sudden, I heard the Moon Goddess' voice in my head.
"That's enough, Lucas. You're so pathetic. You've been overly tolerant with this girl, and now she's mistaking your restraint for kindness. How dare she mimic Leah's voice in an attempt to manipulate you for help? What a pitiful being! It's time to put an end to her suffering, and you need to do it now!"
Feeling enchanted, I flicked the cigarette into the boat's oil tank.
"Yes, my loyal subject, my favorite child. Set it on fire!" the Goddess' voice was filled with vicious excitement. "Let her burn in hell."