Toxic | Part One

Ayla's POV

The panic in her eyes as she realizes her fate is haunting.

“Please,” she begs in a loud cry, “D-on’t do th-is.”

Her high-pitched screams are cracking under the weight of her throat collapsing. Amber eyes dart around the room in an attempt to identify her surroundings, but her sight is blinded by the array of UV lamps hovering just above her face. Her once blonde locks are dark now, drenched in sweat and matted from rubbing her head against the metal bed. She attempts to thrash out of the steel straps held around her wrists and ankles, but they’re laced with silver, which will fry off her skin long before her inhuman strength can break through. She howls every time she tries to tug a limb free.

“Please,” she bites out through her sobs, tugging against her left cuff.

I force myself to watch her eyes as they cloud over, a futile attempt to reach out to her mate. Unfortunately for her, she has already been injected with a dose of silver, just enough of it to break the mate bond without killing her. It takes her exactly three tries before she realizes this harsh truth.

She whispers a name in a voice laced with pure anguish. “Drew.”

Her mate.

I take a glance behind me.

Professor Alan stands tall, hands clasped behind his back as he raises his nose in affirmation of what he is seeing. His eyes glitter through the round lenses with pride, a ghost of a smile on his thin lips at the sight of the female wolf in front of us. Three men, dressed in suite and ties, stand behind him. They stare on with looks of caution and curiosity and I don’t care enough to memorize their names or faces. Each has a pen in their hands, aimed steady at their clipboards while their eyes remain solely on the woman in front of me.

Professor Alan first turns the attention to me, his voice all too cheerful as I’m introduced to the crowd.

“This is one of our finest, and deadliest, Toxin. She was raised here in the labs.” He doesn’t dare to explain my kidnapping, skipping over the crucial details of my unfortunate arrival. “Her hands are toxic.”

The men are scribbling on their paper, one looks over to me and dares a question. “How?”

The professor is quick to answer for me. “We believe it to be some form of mutation in her skin cells after we injected her with Plutonium, but our efforts to find the truth are futile. Her cells attack anything it comes in contact with.”

My hands bring death.

I squeeze my hands tightly, but I don’t feel flesh. I feel the uncomfortable cloth restricting around my hands.

“That’s why she wears gloves,” another man contributes. He appears to be proud of this conclusion.

“Exactly. These gloves took years to make, a marvelous design insured to keep her from killing what she touches,” he rolls his wrist. “All of our Elite have them, for safety reasons of course.”

The three men collectively suck in their breaths. One dares to speak up. “There’s more like her?”

“Oh yes,” the professor shrugs, grinning. “We have four others, we call them the Elites: fire, electricity, wind, and regeneration.”

The men look at him in complete awe.

Professor Alan claps once and speaks in a deep baritone as he turns the attention to the sobbing girl. “Enough about them. Let me introduce Mary-Anne Shilo.”

At her name being spoken, the female begins to scream through the tears.

Please be quiet.

“Let me go,” she screams, fear replaced by a momentary anger. “You sick fucks!”

“She is twenty four, five foot eight,” he continues on, unbothered by her screams. “150 pounds.”

He paces to her feet, chained to the metal slab below her. His eyes squint as he looks at her in pure hatred, despite the fact the innocent girl just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can hear the scratching of pen on paper when Mary stops to take gasps of air.

“Mated to Drew Lyn, a late omega of the Lincoln pack turned rogue,” His pride leaks from his tongue. “We came for just him, but found this bitch chasing a human through the woods.”

“I wasn’t,” she sobbed out, a strand of incoherent words following after.

The professor gives a nod directed at me, a silent signal to begin with what he plans for this female. My heart burns as I slide off my first glove, and I’m tempted to make a sudden dash towards him instead. But, the boy who holds the gift of regeneration in his hands was fiercely loyal to this man.

Go figure.

The wolf looks horrified as she watches me pull the gloves off. At my wrist, the beige skin of my arms begin to fade into an inky black. The already dark color deepened the closer it reached my fingertips. Professor Alan once hypothesized that my charred hands were a result of the toxicity they carried, but all efforts of studying them failed.

I hear someone in our audience gasp.

Professor Alan turns to them and smiles, then turns back to me and gives me the hand motion to hurry. I close my eyes, take a shaky breath, and move a step closer to the wolf girl. Her eyes are wide and her head shakes, begging to be spared. I watch her attempt to fight off the silver restraints again, and again they only burn and eat at her skin. My fingertips are crackling in anticipation.

I’m so sorry.

As I’m lifting my hands towards her leg closest to me, her screams return, and she’s attempting to kick at me despite the tight restraints.Be still, please.Her screams turn quickly from terror to pain, increasing an octave the moment my cold hands wrap around her ankle. Alan continues to brag about my toxic hands while Mary thrashes. The skin around my hands begins to sizzle as the ink of death spreads into her body. Her chains rattle and bang. Death crawls up her body, almost like it’s alive. The ink wiggles and slithers around her until she's drenched by it. Her cries quickly turn violent, hips thrusting, claws extending and scraping the metal beneath her fingertips. The ink of death has consumed her, vibrating as it seeps it’s way into her skin, leaving her with the same char that covers my own hands.

She screams for her mate, but he cannot hear her.

The toxin reaches her heart within seconds, the girl’s eyes peel back and her body stiffens as it enters a catatonic state. Her flesh begins to emit a crisp burning scent, a result of the toxins that are quickly frying her insides. She seizes, suddenly, and no longer controls her movements. The room is echoed by the sizzling flesh that smacks onto the metal slab below her. Foam builds up at the mouth and eyes, and her fingers and toes quickly take on a deep hue of purple. I close my eyes, briefly, and beg for a forgiveness I didn’t deserve.

“That’s it,” a man in my audience questions. “She’s dead?”

Nope.

She seizes again, more violently than before, and her cracking bones come with the release of her inner screams.

“Toxin?”

I answer Alan’s unsaid question, even though I know he knows what’s happening. “Her wolf is trying to force a shift, a final attempt to save the human vessel.”

Vessel, because Alan always says the wolves are a parasite to the human.

Her wolf gets as far as to shift only her hands before they cramp open and are left with bones ripping through the flesh. Her body can’t keep up and will bring on the most painful part of this entire ideal. I can see her wolf in those amber orbs panic and try to retreat, but its too late. The toxin grabs onto the shift and continues to use it.

Crack.

Three ribs thrust through her chest plate.

Rip.

Chunks of flesh tear from the bone and fall off her leg.

Silence.

Her body finally goes limp, the fight is over, and she is permanently left in the partial shift. Her last minutes on earth were both excruciating and terrifying, and I can only hope she was now at peace.

She was an unfortunate pawn.

“Beautiful,” a man whispered. “The Council will love this!”

Professor Alan took on an appearance of pride. “They wanted discrete weapons of mass destruction and that’s exactly what I’ve got.”

Mass destruction?

“Very good, Professor,” another compliments, scribbling down on his paper as he speaks. “We will gladly accept your appearance in phase two. Please prepare to be able to provide explanations of all five’s skills and how you will distribute them accordingly.”

What’s going on?

I never thought his smile could get any more sinister. “Of course, thank you.”

Another man speaks, but I can barely tell who is speaking anymore. “Please prepare your team for their assignments.” He pulls out a Manila envelope from his coat and hands it to Alan. “Their ability to complete these tasks will aide in our final determination of your involvement within the Council as we move through the phases.”

I stand back and observe the three men, carbon copies of each other, stand in a straight line. Alan approaches each and shakes their hand one at a time. He bows his head to each of them, but they do not reciprocate the same motion. Despite his clear ability to create deadly puppets, the men still believe themselves to be of greater importance.

Just who, exactly, are these men?

“We will see you soon, Professor.”

All three exit together.

“Good work, Ayla,” Alan praises, tossing my gloves at me. “What would you like to eat?”

The Professor is smart in choosing his restrictions, basic life conveniences and brutal beatings are given based on our obedience.

Picking your own meal was a privilege.

I didn’t even need time to think. “Enchiladas.” I chose it every time.

He smiles and, for a moment, I’m tricked into thinking it was the same warm smile he used to give me as a kid. His arms wraps around my back from shoulder to shoulder, but the tight squeeze against my arm reminds me this isn’t the same man from my childhood. This is the man who kidnapped that child from her home and then beat her into obedience.

I avoid his sharp gaze as he leads me away.