Buried Things

WILLOW

One glance, and the air vanished from my lungs.

Shawna had been shoved into the fridge like unwanted leftovers. Her skin was the wrong color, her lips were dry and cracked, and her eyes—fuck—her eyes were ~open~.

I dropped to my knees. ~That’s two now~, was all I could think~. ~

Two people were dead because they’d tried to help me. Two women I’d barely known, who hadn’t hesitated to extend kindness when they didn’t have to.

My palms pressed into the cold floor. My body trembled with something between sorrow and fury.

Connor was beside me in an instant, his arms slipping around my shoulders and pulling me close. His lips found the back of my neck, warm despite the chill in the room. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

~In. Out.~ I forced myself to breathe before wiping my face with the sleeve of the hoodie. “Okay,” I said to no one. “Okay.” I blinked fast, trying to clear my vision, when something to my right caught my eye.

At the base of the kitchen island, one of the floor tiles looked off, misaligned. I pulled away from Connor’s arms and crawled toward it on hands and knees.

“Willow?” he asked.

“There’s something here.” I reached for the tile, my fingernails scraping along the grout line until I found leverage to lift it.

It moved a hair.

I wedged my fingers underneath, and with a grunt, I popped up the tile. My heart skipped a beat when a shallow hole was revealed. It was cut clean into the floor—someone had put it there. Barely wider than a brick, the cavity was lined with black felt.

My pulse thundered, this time with hope. My hand dipped inside before I could second-guess it, and my fingers curled around something smooth and cold. I pulled it free.

It was the hard drive.

CONNOR

I spent the next morning overseeing the evacuation with Travis and Carl.

We walked the southern trail where the vulnerable—mothers with pups and elder wolves—were being ushered toward the bunkers in small, scattered groups. Every shuffling step was a solemn reminder that we were preparing for war.

Once I got back to the pack house, I found Josh moving with caffeine’s restless buzz.

“Drive’s cracked,” he said, holding it up like a trophy. “Security team’s assembled in your office. I looped in Doc Ross too. Trust me, we’ll want him there.”

That gave me pause. “Why the hell do we need the doc in a security briefing?”

Josh’s gaze shifted to the drive, seemingly fascinated by it. “You’ll see.”

I didn’t like how he was milking the suspense, clearly enjoying having information I didn’t. But the man was brilliant, so I silently followed him to my office. When I stepped in, the room was humming.

Carl, Ben, Travis, and Josh were there; Lisa remained with the vulnerable. Ross stood near the back, his arms crossed and face unreadable. Willow sat in the corner, half folded into a chair as if she were trying to disappear into it. She didn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

After closing the door behind me, I nodded in greeting and remained standing. My alpha energy filled the room, heavier than usual. Maybe because none of us knew what to expect from that palm-sized sliver of metal and plastic in Josh’s hand.

“All right,” I said, glancing at Josh, “let’s have it.”

He plugged the drive into the laptop and turned the screen toward us. A spreadsheet bloomed open. “I’ll start here,” he began. “With the purchase records, supply orders, a few internal balance sheets, and corporate expense files. All under the name BioBridge.

“I did some digging”—he tapped the screen—“and traced the money. BioBridge is funded by BT Holdings, that shell company.” He shot me a glance. “Remember? The one that popped up from that number plate in Seattle?”

My jaw nearly dropped. Sudden relief washed over me that I hadn’t been losing my mind and imagining Willow look-alikes. Maybe they were her family after all.

Josh opened diagrams and flowcharts, strings of names and offshore accounts. “BT Holdings funds a few subsidiaries in addition to BioBridge. There’s a weapons manufacturer called IronBridge. Something called GoldBridge, which seems to channel all the funding.

“A private military firm named FireBridge. And then we have GhostBridge, which sells the services of black-ops mercenaries.” Josh smirked and tweaked an eyebrow. “Guess which ones make the most money?”

“Guns and mercs,” Carl muttered.

“Exactly.” Josh leaned back. “And the GhostBridge logo matches the one on those humans.”

“Shit,” I muttered. “What do their numbers look like? They sent twelve in that first strike. How many more do they have?”

“That’s, at least, some good news.” He pulled up a document. “Based on their outgoings, they employ around sixty full-time soldiers, with a quarter being the black-ops guys. They may have some in reserve, but we’ll never know that.”

Pleased murmurs filled the room, but I cut them short. “Sure, they have fewer men than us, but don’t forget, they have superior weaponry.” I looked everyone in the eye. “They weren’t informed last time, but they will be next time. Don’t get cocky.”

“There’s more,” Josh continued. “BioBridge doesn’t bring in any money. It only spends. Big time. According to their purchase orders, it looks to be a medical and pharmaceutical company. But the numbers… It goes far beyond that.

“They’ve bought everything you’d find in a fully stocked hospital, laboratory, and pharmaceutical producer—medical and lab equipment, biohazard gear, and nearly every chemical compound known to man.”

“So what the hell is the point of BioBridge if it doesn’t make money?” I asked.

Doctor Ross cleared his throat and stepped forward. “They weren’t trying to turn a profit. This was about research and experimentation. Based on their orders, they were conducting advanced testing. Experimental surgeries. Genetic manipulation.”

He shifted on his feet, glancing at Willow before continuing, “Also, we found they’d ordered enough wolfsbane to euthanize a small pack. They seem to be running controlled exposures, also to chemicals no one would ever survive.”

The doctor paused to flick his gaze to Willow once more. “They’re the ones who held her, I have no doubts about it.”

Willow flinched, the whole room caught it, but she kept quiet.

Ross went on to describe the nature of the compounds and their likely purpose—tools of control meant to suppress transformation—but my fury quickly blotted out his words.

A human company that not only knew werewolves existed but could suppress our transformations? But why? Why did it want to control the shift at all? Wouldn’t they want to just wipe us all out?

The weight of the still-unanswered questions settled in my chest. I glanced at Willow. She was staring at the floor, her nails digging into the fabric of her jeans.

“As you’ll see here”—Ross stepped closer to the laptop, bringing my attention back to him—“they documented everything, all their experiments. Going back nearly four decades. It looks like they had two projects in this time.”

Josh brought up an Excel spreadsheet with the title of Project Futura 1–10. Running along the bottom of the screen were ten individual sheets, named from IRWW 1 to IRWW 10. “There are about forty such files, ten subjects on each one,” he said.

“We believe these record the experimentations done on the wolves,” Doctor Ross interjected. “You see here their designation, the test number, whether it failed or succeeded, and what the result was.” As he spoke, he pointed at a row in the middle of the screen.

It read: ~IRWW 1, Test 55, Failure, Soft tissue regeneration~.

“It seems they were trying to suppress our rapid healing, but it didn’t work, at least not yet.” Ross shot a glance at Josh, who scrolled down. “See? Here?” He pointed at another row, this one with “~Success~” after the test number. “Seems they finally figured it out.”

The room went silent for a beat, and Josh opened a different spreadsheet. “So, this is the second one, called Project Chimera, but we can’t quite figure out what they were doing here.”

Where the other files tracked ten individuals each, this one only tracked four. And the information in the cells made no sense, either.

One read: ~IRWW 121, Test subject 22, Failure, NVE.~

Another one read: ~IRWW 121, Test subject 97, Failure, VE, Deceased, GW1.~

“I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” Ben said, voicing what I was thinking. “If ‘~IRWW 121~’ is a person, then what does ‘~Test subject 97~’ mean? Doesn’t subject mean person? So is this one person or two? And which one died?”

“We’re still working on it,” Doctor Ross said. “But this is the interesting part.” He ran his finger along the bottom of the screen. “All of the test subjects for these three—IRWW 121, 192, and 257—fail, with all the ‘~VE~’ ones dying.

“The same goes for the fourth one, until here.”

Josh clicked on the fourth sheet, labeled IRWW 361, and scrolled to the bottom, where Ross pointed.

It read: ~IRWW 361, Test subject 48, Success.~

“See? Finally, they get their first ‘~Success~.’” Excitement colored his tone as he dragged his finger down the column. “Then there are six successes in a row.” Doctor Ross stood straight, and I asked him what he thought that meant. “Well, I’m not—”

His words cut out; something else caught his attention. I followed his gaze to Willow, who was white as a sheet, her eyes wide and staring at the screen.

“Willow? What’s wrong?” I asked, turning toward her.

“That’s me.” She pointed at the laptop. “IRWW 361 is me. I remember seeing it on my medical charts.” Her focus snapped to Doctor Ross. “What did they do to me? What does this mean?” She waved her hand at the spreadsheet.

“Again, Willow,” Ross began, clearing his throat, “we can’t be sure yet. Except about one thing.” He looked at Josh, frowned, and gave him a nod. Josh brought back up the first document and scrolled to the bottom. “We only know how it ends.”

Josh ran through sheet after sheet, scrolling to the bottoms of each record. Every time, Doctor Ross pointed at the final row, at the words “~Success, Deceased~.” Josh brought up Willow’s experimental log, and Ross pointed at the last cell.

~IRWW 361, Test 271, Success, Unilateral renal failure, No regeneration, Nephrectomy.~

“As you can see, the ending is the same for everyone,” Doctor Ross said before facing Willow, “except you.”

Willow made a small, strangled noise before blinking and shaking her head. “Doctor, are you saying I’m the sole survivor?”