White Steel Serenity

Chapter Five: Alpha Wolf

ONE HOUR AGO - TORY

Tory leaves the compound, stepping out into clear air. Cooper's there to meet her, leaping up to lick her face. Tory laughs - she's not so alone. But she is.

"We have to find them, Coop." Tory murmurs into his ruff, hiding her face there. He whines, unused to seeing her weakness. Her voice grows hard. "And when we do..."

She's lost a lot of time. When she tracks Ben to the spot he was when he -

His scent is faint, but more incriminating she can see tire tracks where something big and heavy sped away fast. She finds the same at the end of both Hi and Shelton's trails.

There's no way to pick out one exhaust trail from others, not even for her nose. She's at a dead end, she wants to scream with frustration, because where does she go from here?

Then blinding pain explodes behind her eyes and from the back of her head, and Tory doesn't worry about a lot after that.

FOUR HOURS AGO

Agent Smith wakes up with a jackhammer going away in his head, and the knowledge that he has pissed off a very powerful girl. So he calls in the backup.

"They've escaped," he says. "Check for the sergeant - he's probably dead if he didn't report this. Find them. They have trackers."

"Trackers dead."

"No sign of the sergeant."

"No sign of the targets."

NOW - TORY

"How hard did you hit her?"

"Don't worry, I get the feeling she's got a hard head."

"She shouldn't be out for this long - you probably caused brain damage."

"No more than wasn't already there."

"I think she's coming around!"

Tory's hands shoot up at the same time, fastening around two separate necks. Then her eyes open, cold and hard, as she gets a look at her attackers.

"...Sergeant Smith?" she says, confused, wondering if maybe she really does have brain damage. Then, "Desmond? What's going on?"

"We're here to rescue you." Desmond says. "Serg's my contact inside the center."

"What... how?" Tory asks.

"I kept track of you after I was pulled off the case. When you suddenly vanished six months ago, I was worried. So I tracked you to the center, where I found Serg, who was by then getting really uncomfortable with his new job. He helped me get you guys out. He also orchestrated your dog's escape - they were going to put Cooper down. By the way, can you get him to calm down? We've had to drive in circles to keep him from clawing and barking at the van and drawing attention."

They stopped and Desmond drew the van's door aside a little. Cooper jumped in through the crack, and took up guard over Tory. She told him they were friends, but he only calmed a little at that.

"Wait, you've been watching?" Tory says, thinking. "Then maybe you saw who - who killed my - " she struggles to get the words out, because saying it will be like accepting it. And she just can't believe they're gone yet.

"Killed?" Desmond says. "Tory, your friends are right here."

SEVEN HOURS AGO - BEN

He's so focused on the scent trail that the van roaring up behind him almost doesn't register. Not until it screeches to a stop beside him, the door already sliding open, does he realize that it means something.

Things happen very fast.

The heavy end of a rifle comes at his head - Ben ducks instinctive, hunching his shoulders and raising his arms, and the rifle hits his shoulder at just the right spot to make it numb and weak. Ben is still in the motion of turning, still trying to see his attackers. He can feel the danger of them on the back of his neck, in all the hairs standing up, in the uncontrollable shudders. He glimpses -

van two men that are almost familiar dark inside two rifles threat Hi is in there

Ben knows this as well and as certainly as he knows that the earth is round; he has never seen it himself, but he knows it is so.

This distracts him for half a fatal second, and the second rifle strikes the side of his head hard enough to knock him out.

ONE MONTH AGO - DESMOND

Desmond doesn't keep a file on his computer for Victoria Brennan and her friends. Computers can be hacked. He doesn't even keep any of the documents he gets tracing them through the system. If they're paper he memorizes and burns them. If they're electronic he makes it so they almost never even existed.

The CIA is not to be played with. He doesn't know how far their reach extends, and so he assumes that they can know everything but what is kept in his head. So that's where it stays.

He's never been a very good hacker, but he knows some. These he pays off to get into the top-secret files, and when they offer him the secrets of the most powerful people in America he turns them down. He wants to keep this game small-scale. He's just concerned for the kids who dropped off the world.

He finds them in the basement of a place that doesn't exist. They don't seem as bad as he'd feared, but the note that Tory, strong Tory, gave up worries him. He wonders what happened to her. He wonders what's happening to them.

Their program is called Project Phoenix. Below that, Desmond finds out what's happening there.

When he closes the file, the first thing he knows is that Victoria Brennan isn't really human. The second thing is that he has to get them out.

NOW - TORY

Tory doesn't speak, doesn't even move, for a few long seconds. Then she says, "What." flatly, as though she hadn't heard that.

Desmond turns his shoulders towards the back of the van and tilts his head.

Tory, still not speaking, not willing to believe or even hope just yet, climbs over the seat. Until she sees them...

And there they are. The back isn't really big enough for all four of them, they're all tangled up and Tory's crouched over them. She can feel Desmond and the sergeant watching as she feels their pulses in their necks, hears them breathing.

"We're keeping them knocked out until we got you. Figured they might be some trouble." Desmond says.

Tory still doesn't speak. She's holding Shelton and Hi's hands, still kneeling there. Tears make shining tracks down her face.

"I thought they were dead," Tory chokes out finally, smiling and crying. "I was ready to..." she laughs.

Cooper howls.

NOW

"Sweep the town. I don't think she's gone far yet." Agent Smith orders.

"Sir," he gets a minute later. "We've found a suspicious van in town."

"Suspicious how?" Smith asks, irritated. He wonders if maybe it has 'suspicious' printed on the side. That would be helpful.

"Blacked windows, not moving, parked on the wrong side of the road. Bigger than most commercial vehicles. And there's howling inside."

"Search it! I'm on my way."

NOW - TORY

She takes up the howl from Cooper, and it brings a sort of relief. There aren't words for what she's feeling, but it can leave her like this, in the pack-song. She has found her brothers. Her life begins again.

The van rocks as the door is torn open.

Tory takes it in as her eyes flash gold. They are surrounded by soldiers in black. One exit is blocked by a man with a semi-auto and an order to get out of the car. The other exit, the back of the van, is covered by more soldiers.

Tory closes her eyes and sends up a prayer. Her hands close on the inside release of the back doors. She pulls the release, quietly, ignoring the man's shouting. She pushes the doors open and steps out into bright sunlight.

She disappears.

Agent Smith arrives in time to see Tory Brennan, Subject 1, throw open the doors of a dark van and begin to step down. Halfway through the movement her entire body blurs, speeds up, and his eyes lose track of her. Like a skipping video, she's suddenly at the first man, her foot is already buried in his ribs, she's at the second man and her fist is smashing into the side of his head.

They can't move that fast. Agent Smith thinks numbly, unable to do anything but watch. They've never been that fast.

Tory finishes with the last soldier. In less than thirty seconds she's taken out four fully trained men. Agent Smith is still just standing there, but he becomes aware of the gun in his hand and he starts thinking again.

Like she can hear it, Tory turns to him. He raises it - it seems so slow in his mind, but she doesn't move. He fires.

She's fast. She's not faster than bullets, Smith thinks.

She sees Agent Smith with the gun, but she can't do anything about it. She's standing in front of her pack, the open doors of the van. If she moves, one of them gets hit. She can't let that happen. She knows what happens when they die now, and she'd rather be dead than be that monster.

So she stands, ready to take the bullet.

Something huge and heavy slams into her from the side, knocking her out of the way. Tory flies - however strong she is, she's still light. She lands on her hands and feet from reflex, facing the van.

Desmond's lying there, not moving.

Cooper comes from out of nowhere, landing on Smith's back, teeth already fastened in his neck. The man doesn't even get a chance to scream. Tory doesn't see this; she's already at Ratheson's side, turning him over...

She's had anatomy lessons. She knows where the heart is.

"Desmond, talk to me." Tory says, making his head face her. His eyes blink open.

"Tory," he says.

"Stop being such a wimp," Tory orders him, smiling. It pushes out the tears forming in her eyes. "You're going to be fine. It hasn't hit anything important."

Desmond cracks a smile at that. "Such a bad liar, Tory," he says. "I can't feel my heart beating."

"You're going to be fine." Tory says again, because that will make it true.

"Hey, Tory, you wanna know how I knew you'd be the death of me?" Desmond asks. He doesn't wait for Tory to respond. "You brought me funeral flowers. I always knew. This isn't your fault."

"It kind of is, though,"

"Stop being morbid. What do you think it's going to be like, when I die? Where will I go?"

Tory doesn't waste his last moments on another lie. "It's going to be beautiful." she says, and he closes his eyes. "There'll be forests for miles and miles. The hunting is easy and the chase lasts forever. You never get tired. Your pack is always there around you. You're never alone."

"Sounds perfect," Desmond breathes.

He dies.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Sergeant Smith - they never do get his real name - takes them back into the van. The rest of the pack wakes up. Tory doesn't tell them about Desmond Ratheson, the man who died for her. Smith says there's an escape route that's all set up. They're fleeing into Canada, and their tracks will be covered.

Quietly, the Virals disappear.

But there are some things they left behind.

KIT

It's been seven months since Tory's last phone call - sometimes he thinks it's because she knows he let the police trace her call, but other times he thinks she's not one to hold a grudge so long.

He hasn't been bothered about her disappearance in a while. The police have stopped visiting every other night. He no longer gets emails from Agent Ratheson. It's almost like he never had a daughter. She drifted into his life, quiet, struck with the death of her mother, and not long after drifted back out. Soon she'll be gone for longer than she was here.

Kit should be getting over it. He's not.

He has dreams where Tory just stares at him, like that long drive in the car on the way to a new place. She never speaks, no matter how much he begs. Just looks at him with those cold golden eyes, and sometimes she grins suddenly, delighted, and her teeth are sharp.

Kit doesn't know what to make of those dreams, but a part of them feels real.

RANVAN

Agent Ranvan stands up, shedding the blue gloves from her hands. Agent Smith was killed by a crushing force to the back of the neck, severing the brain stem. She looks around at the street, the police-tape cordoning everything off. There are no onlookers - she won't stand for it.

By the curb, black tire burns in the road where the van pulled away at high speed. Blood pooled at the back, all from one man. Not enough to be fatal, but it spoke of a fatal wound. Agent Smith thinks someone's dead, and the body's been taken.

The injured soldiers are healing up. The Doctor Smith has suffered a severe panic attack but is recovering. She still can't look people in the eye, and the psychiatrist thinks she probably never will. Sergeant Smith is a hunted man, but his name is struck from the world and he knows how to disappear. Professor Smith... knows a little too much to be allowed to leave the project.

Project Phoenix goes on.

FIVE DAYS AGO

Agent Smith makes a soft noise as a thought comes, a mental note that is now alerting itself to him. Doctor Smith turns around, hand on the door. "Yes?" she asks.

"You said subjects five and seven were dead. What about six?"

Doctor Smith makes a disgusted face. "He's still hanging on, but there's nothing human left in him. He's gone insane. We're keeping him alive and sedated, to see how it progresses."

"I'll want to know how that goes, too," the agent says.