“She took both canisters,” he said as he approached Djin and Ule. “We’ve got to get them back.”

Ule had been listening to something new that was just beginning to tickle at the fringes of her hearing range. She stopped focusing on it as soon as Zanzibarr spoke. Canisters?

“One contains a solution that helps the process of splicing work in adults. The other,” he sighed. “Contains a poison that can be aerosolized which targets the spliced gene marker in Skin-Changers and… Well, let’s just say if they use it, we’re screwed.”

Ule’s jaw dropped. “Why would you make something like that?”

“Curiosity, my darling.”

“Well, this time curiosity might actually kill the damn cat!”

“Ule,” Djin said firmly, still looking sick. “It means you need to get them back.”

“Excuse me?” She raised her brows. “What do you mean, you?”

“He means you can fly, and the rest of us can’t. If she’s going where I think she’s going, then we need to get to her as fast as possible, even if all you can do is delay her for some time,” Zanzibarr’s words had barely left his mouth before Ule recognized the buzzing sound.

“There’s a chopper coming,”

“Predictable,” Zanzibarr sighed and rubbed his face, appearing much calmer than Ule thought he should. “She certainly is a resourceful woman.”

Ule shook her head, her wings rustling and she tucked them in tight to her back, “We’ve got to stop her!”

Without waiting for confirmation from either man, Ule split down the hall, shoving through one of the branching hallways until she collided with an outer door, snapping her extra limbs open and throwing herself into the air with a heaving stroke of her wings. The chopper was nearly to the edge of the clearing, the static of its radio broadcasting their location, no doubt. Ule gritted her teeth and found her target crossing the clearing towards the flat spot near the pond. Fleur was awash in the pale light of the moon, which peeked through the rain clouds.

Maneuvering herself, Ule spun, dropping like a rock and shooting low over the grass, lifting only a second before colliding with the lion-hybrid. It felt as painless as hitting a brick wall. Fleur had had only a moment to react but used it to brace herself, allowing Ule to wrap around her, wings and all like she would a solid tree. She practically bounced off Fleur and caught herself, throwing her wings out for balance and crouching low. Her chest ached and her head spun.

“Give them to me,”

“Not a chance,” Fleur glared, hand pressing to the pouch at her side and her eyes seemed to be watching something over Ule’s shoulder. “I think I might just need them more than you.”

“Like hell!” Ule rattled her great black feather appendages and readied to launch herself again before the helicopter arrived.

“Fleur,” Djin caught Ule’s shoulder, pushing her back behind him, he’d arrived alone, and he faced his Naparnik with a sorrow in his voice and a hunch in his shoulders. “You can’t really want to do this. What did they promise you?”

“Promise me?” Wicked laughter roared from her lips. “They didn’t promise me anything. I’m doing this for me.”

“You’re betraying your friends, your family,” Djin was barely whispering.

Something in Fleur snapped then and she snarled, hand shoving into the pouch at her side. The muscles throughout her body tensed and she covered the few feet between them in a blink, raking her sharp claws straight across Djin’s abdomen. Ule froze, still protected behind him, close enough to hear the skin and muscle tear as the lion skin-changer hissed. “This isn’t my family.”

Then the chopper was over them, yanking at her hair, her clothes, her wings, and Ule jumped around Djin, bellowing as she grabbed for the pouch, catching her talons on the strap and slicing through. Fleur grabbed her hair and pulled viciously, throwing her out of reach where she landed on her wing with a loud cracking. Ule whimpered and blinked away tears, watching Fleur toss the useless satchel away, sliding her arm through the rungs of a rope ladder and lift away from the ground. The deafening sound departed, leaving the clearing all to silent.

Ule couldn’t fly, she knew her wing was broken, but she knew it would mend and all that left her to do was crawl over to Djin where he’d slumped on the grass, curled in the fetal position and seething through clenched teeth.

“Djin?” She let her useless wings flop behind her as she fluttered her hands over his body, unsure what to do. “Djin?”

A heartbeat passed and she stared at the corner of the wound visible from how he lay. There was a slight purple tint and it mixed with the red of his blood. It was the same color as the liquid in the vial. In the poison vial.

“No, no, no—come on, you’ve gotta be okay,” Ule’s voice cracked and she remained there bent over him, feeling the sinew and bone slowly collecting and mending her wing.

“She’s gone.”

Ule blinked, raising her eyes, wiping the snot from her nose. Mere minutes had gone by since the sound of the chopper was lost to the crickets and the noises of the compound, but Zanzibarr was there, too late. In her mind, she thought if he’d been there instead of her, this wouldn’t have happened. He’d have killed Fleur and taken back the canisters and protected Djin. Then again, she knew she was just blaming herself and she nodded.

“Then why are you still here?” The undertone was harsh, but Zanzibarr knelt beside Djin and began appraising the situation. “Get going.”

Get Going? My wing… Stretching both of them out she could tell that while the right might be slightly weaker, it was healed. “He’ll live, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zanzibarr said, “Stop wasting time.”

The cut of his voice made her hiccup, but she did as he ordered. Her form continued changing. Growing and growing, black as the night and as large are a freight train. She flew with a speed that rivaled a jet and vision that scored the world mile on mile. It took her little effort to determine the trajectory of the plane and she followed it, straight South, the trees of their surrounding forest blurring into a green smudge beneath her.

It was all she could do to push her mind to a calm and collect her wits. She had street sense. Before the peace and ease of Valkyrie, there’d been something close to hell. She couldn’t go numb to this, but focusing on her task made everything else background noise.

Fleur. I’m coming.

The destination was around a hundred miles away, South, then East, and then straight South once again. Bright floodlights illuminated a stone facility, not much different in layout to their own home, but it was surrounding by three layers of fencing and a few dark dots—guard dogs—loped along the perimeter. Ule circled it at a wide breadth, assessing the security. There were cameras, but they moved in a pattern, and there were guards, but none focused solely on overhead.

Retracting her change, Ule waited for the blindspot as her “in-between” self and then landed swiftly near a small door. She allowed herself to become fully human before trying the handle. It opened silently. It registered as strange, but she pushed ahead, slinking around corners and dodging any voices. It was relatively quiet, being the middle of the night, but it was fully operational.

Once voice was on her mind and she found it after muddling through the puddle of sounds. Fleur spoke in a low voice to two other people, a man, and a woman. They were two rights and three doors away. Her own heart was making it hard to hear them, but she swallowed the lump in her throat. Even if I just destroy it, it’ll be okay.

Getting the poison away from them was her first priority. Taking care of Fleur would be the second. Crouched in a shadowy corner, away from the camera’s she’d located, Ule waited and listened for her chance. It came, but only after more than a half-hour had passed and both of her legs from the knees down had gone prickly and numb. She cursed as she stood, sticking to the corners and keeping her eyes on the cameras as they pivoted slowly, side to side.

The door was labeled LB78 and she entered it unchallenged, as they was no keypad and the lock was easy to pick. Inside the room was dim with a few pale blue lights and a computer screen shoved into the corner. There, sitting side-by-side on a small revolving stand, were the two canisters.

Ule held her breath, reaching out for them, feeling a heaviness in her lungs. The room was growing hotter and she pulled her hand back to her side, too late to throw herself out of the way as it fell over her, crushing her to the stone floor. Her skin sang as the net crackled with electricity and the live-wires branded triangles into her flesh. The smell was ungodly, but it was nothing compared to the pain and the rage that flooded Ule as she barely managed to turn her head, the net touching her cheek as she did so. Fleur stood over her, brown eyes emotionless, when she spoke, Ule couldn’t hear her through the blood rushing in her ears and the constant noise of the electricity. She grappled with consciousness, but it eluded her, and she went with it, to a blissful place, devoid of everything but darkness.

The reprieve didn’t last long and the second wave of pain was far, far worse. In her panic, her form had changed out of instinct and she was drawn from the land of the silence by a horrible sawing. Screams scratched her throat raw, but they did nothing to lessen the pain. Ule couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear. There was nothing that made it through the sharp, dragging agony. They saw through them. One at a time, a few inches from where they protruded oddly from between her shoulder blades.

Her screams lessened to wails as one was freed from her nerve endings and dropped to whimpers as her back became too light. She was laid flat on the ground, freshly healed pink skin pressed against the cold stone. Though, there was no feeling except the aching in her back. The small containment room around her didn’t exist. It was nothing. There was only pain. That’s how it stayed for how long? Ule didn’t know, nor did she care for much of it. It didn’t register in her head when the door opened or when it closed. People coming and going. A pint or two of blood taken, a chunk of oil-black hair which regrew in an hour, an eye exam where they braced her head themselves and watched her pupils contract and expand.

Where the pain had once been unimaginable, it was becoming endurable, even tolerable. But they were still gone, cut from her back like she was a punished Nephilim. The loss was heavy, even if it had torn the weight right from her. Now when the ones in lab coats entered, she listened. And against she waited. Until she felt the prickling in her back as her wings tried to heal. She didn’t know it that was possible, but it meant that her body was strong enough to begin the process, and it meant she was done laying face-down on the cold ground being poked and prodded.

Swiftly, she jumped into a squat, swinging her foot out and around, knocking their feet out from under them and she grabbed the metal cane they had been poking and prodding her with during the most recent examination. One got out a surprised yelp before she smacked him in the back of the head, not waiting for him to drop before whirling and rapping the woman hard in the stomach where she bent with a wheeze. Ule gave her a sharp hit to the back of her head too and twirled the cane once, grabbing the woman ID card, tossing the cane and excusing herself from the room.

Everything was loud at first, her senses a bit out-kilter but she could hear as well as before, seeking out the location of the poison. Her body should have been sluggish, but instead, it seemed charged with energy—no thanks to the net—propelling her down the halls. The scientists had mentioned where they were actually located, and that’s where she went. The cameras didn’t matter, Ule ignored them, charging through the wide walk-space

Down the stairs and across what looked like an operating room, she slapped the ID on the scanner and drove her shoulder into the heavy metal door. It opened with a gust of air, which was only noticeable due to how stale the air inside the room was. It was dry and cool and the room was most certainly empty.