Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 42

Dr. Achak rubbed his tired eyes as he finally lay down to sleep. The sun had risen hours ago, but he had been busy with the blasted wolf. Its metabolism was so fast that they had to keep giving it drugs to keep it out while he raced against its regeneration to cut off its junk.

Normally he wouldn’t have a problem with his speed, but he was tired, and this werewolf seemed to have an exceptional capacity for healing. If the procedure took, and the thing didn’t regrow its missing parts, hopefully it would calm down so they could easily test its blood and harvest from it regularly. They definitely needed to study its blood.

He felt like his eyes had only been closed for a few moments, when a hurried knock came at his door. With a groan, he sat up and listened as the person quickly knocked again.

“I’m coming,” he growled, standing up and jerking the door open. It was a good thing it was made of metal. If it had been weaker, he may have ripped it off its hinges.

“There’s a problem!” said his ȧssistant. He looked flustered and scared, as he wrung his hands over and over.

Dr. Achak frowned. He had seen his ȧssistant weather many storms without a blink of an eye, what could have him so frightened?

“Of course there’s a problem or you wouldn’t have woken me up. What is the problem?” His overly sweet words seemed to make his ȧssistant realize the stupidity of his words, but he shook his head and continued. This must indeed be very serious.

“The elders are sending a team to facility four. There’s been no contact from them for three days, and they believe something has happened.”

“So? Why is that imp…” He stopped his words as his brain kicked in, telling him why. He pushed past his ȧssistant and hurried to his computer. Facility four was where they processed and shuffled the humans captured in the wild. They had the most contact with the outside as any other facility.

“They were supposed to give daily updates on their progress, but when there was no response, the elders tried to contact them, only, no one would respond. Do you think the humans are behind this? I thought we had wiped out the last of their labs?” His ȧssistant continued to talk while he followed him, despite the fact that Dr. Achak was obviously not listening.

He woke his computer up with a swipe of the mouse and clicked on the blinking icon that signaled an unread message. His ȧssistant all but danced in the doorway, not daring to try and read over his shoulder. The message might have classified information in it that he wasn’t allowed to read.

After reading the message twice, he swiftly typed a response and waited for a moment. There was a beep as a new message popped up, and he read it carefully. Sitting back, he rubbed his face as he tried to think.

“How is the werewolf doing?” he finally asked his ȧssistant.

“It has regenerated the removed tissue, and seems to be overly agitated at being isolated. We had to move it to a secondary containment module to keep it from breaking free.”

“Has the test results come back on why it is so different from the other two?”

“No, sir. We don’t know why yet.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Prepare to have it moved. Release all the rest of the test subjects and prepare to relocate. This facility is no longer secure.”

“But, sir! We have over thirty wolves and fifteen different monsters. That would completely wipe out the local human population!”

Dr. Achak looked at his ȧssistant, and the words in his mouth dried up at the look in his eyes.

“Yes, sir, right away.” He hurried away, finally giving him a moment of peace. Sometimes he forgot how young his ȧssistant was. The poor boy still occasionally worried about the filth. He hadn’t lived long enough to understand just how quickly they could bounce back, especially now.

Glancing at the message on his screen, he read it once more.

“All of the members of facility four have been eliminated. They were found to have mutated into unknown entities. It is believed a new virus has been released from an unknown location. All remaining scientists are to report to lab facility one. The utmost care must be met to ensure that all existing sources of nutrition be brought to facility one for safekeeping until project breeding is implemented.”

Taking a bag of blood out of a small refrigerator under his desk, he carefully filled his mug to the brim and drank the awful stuff. When the bag was empty, after several mugs, he tossed it into the trash can next to his desk and took his mug to the sink that was conveniently placed in his office. He rinsed it out, then turned to look around.

He hadn’t been here but fifteen years, so there wasn’t a lot of personal touches yet. It normally took him a good fifty years before he made a place homey enough, he didn’t want to leave it. Yet, there was an odd feeling in his gut about this move. He knew that some of the elders believed as he did, that a return to the old ways was best. If they were going to get there, he needed to return to his old lab, not run and hide.

There were only seven facilities left in the world, six now that four was gone. If everyone returned to one place, even though it was the most heavily fortified, he couldn’t stomach the idea of how vulnerable they would be. He knew all the other facilities would release the monsters and Slavers into the wild that they would not take with them to facility one. If the human population suffered a little, it wouldn’t last. The filth would return.

Stretching his neck muscles, more as a habit then for being sore, he moved to the door. It was time to let his ȧssistants know that they had two options. They could try to hide with the elders while they attempted to repopulate the humans forcefully, or they could come with him to his old lab, near the coast, to continue his research on the virus’.