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Once he packed his weapons away, Elijah hurried down the hill, and his companions followed. He didn't see any cameras, so it wasn't likely that anyone inside the facility saw what just happened, but he knew that the surface guards checked in every hour with the security inside the lab, so he had to act fast.

"Should we grab a gun?" Jake asked as he stopped beside two of the bodies.

"No. Hurry the fuck up," Elijah snarled in response as he snatched a key card off one of the dead guards.

"W-what if more of them come?" Zoe asked worriedly.

Elijah pulled the radio station door open and ushered them both inside. He then glanced at the clock on the wall. "It's ten past two; these guys check in every hour on the dot, so we've got fifty minutes," he mumbled as he searched around for the entrance to the hidden facility.

"So what do we do now? Is there like a secret hatch or button or something?" the pardus asked as he stroked his paw over a keyboard—

"Don't touch anything," Elijah snapped.

Jake pulled his paw away and gawped at the demon.

Elijah recalled the moment he escaped from the lab that imprisoned him. He remembered climbing what felt like miles of stairs because the elevator was in flames.

"What about in here?" Zoe asked as she pointed to a bathroom door.

Jake scoffed. "You think there's a whole ass lab entrance in—"

Elijah stormed over there and yanked the door open. He stepped inside the cramped stall and looked around, and it didn't take him long to find the grooves in the wall. He tapped his knuckles, and the wall responded with a metallic hum.

This was it.

He searched frantically for the switch which would open it, and it wasn't very well hidden. Why would the toilet have a chain to flush it as well as a handle? The demon grabbed the chain and pulled on it, and when the metal door hidden badly inside the wall shifted and opened, he turned his head to look at Zoe and Jake.

"Stay close. Don't touch anything, don't say a word, and do exactly what I say. Understood?"

Although she looked horrified, Zoe nodded.

"Got it," Jake replied.

He wouldn't waste another moment. Elijah stepped through the doorway and emerged onto a metal landing, and when he peered over the edge, he couldn't see the floor waiting at the bottom of the mountain of stairs. But when he glanced to his left, he set his eyes on the doors of an elevator.

Elijah used the key card he took from the dead guard to open the doors, and then he, Zoe, and Jake got in. He used the card again to close the doors, and then he pulled the lever beside him.

The elevator started heading down.

Elijah's heart began racing as both angst and determination filled him. The scraping metal and the smell of pharmaceuticals were making him nauseous; the smells he'd breathed in all his life brought nothing but anger and dismay, but he had to ignore it. Haru could be waiting below, or the answer to finding him could be. Whichever it was, he was going to find it, and nothing was going to get in his way.

Nothing.

But the deeper into the ground he got, the stronger the smells became, and the weaker the vendite's effects grew. His senses were returning, and he could hear the beeping monitors, the voices of confused and terrified kids, and the alarm that blared when it was time for the supervisors' favourite subjects to fight.

"W-what's that sound?" Zoe whispered, panicking.

"Do they know we're—"

"Shut up," Elijah snapped, cutting Jake off. If the staff were too busy watching demons and lycans tear each other apart, then he could slip in and find what he needed with much more ease. But he still had to be careful.

"Should one of us stay here once we get down there and keep watch?" Zoe whispered.

Elijah rolled his eyes hard. "I said be quiet," he growled.

The girl did as she was told.

He huffed quietly and clenched his fists, shoving aside all the distracting feelings that came with the memories this place was inflicting. He focused on his anger, his hatred for these people, and his adamance to find Haru.

And when the elevator stopped, and its doors opened, Elijah scowled determinedly. "Let's go."

They left the stairwell and emerged in a blindingly white hallway. Just like the place Elijah had grown up in, there were doors on both walls, lined symmetrically with each other; marks left by the rubber wheels of hospital beds stained the floors, and the smell of blood and sulphur clung to the cold, still air.

Elijah wouldn't let his memories hinder him, though. He led the way forward, hugging the wall to avoid the camera at the end of the hall, and once he turned into the first corridor, he located the door to the security office—and it wasn't hard; it was in the exact same place as the office had been in the lab he escaped from.

When he reached the door, he carefully peeked through the small glass window. There was only one guy inside; he was wearing headphones, smoking a cigarette, and drinking his coffee. He wasn't even looking at the screens.

"Well?" Jake whispered.

"Shh," Zoe snapped quietly.

"Wait here," Elijah muttered.

The demon gripped the door handle and ever so slowly pulled the door open. He slinked inside and prowled towards the unaware security guard, and when he reached him, he grabbed the man's head and snapped his neck before he had a chance to react. He then moved over to the filing cabinet and pulled it open.

Zoe and Jake stumbled into the room, and as Elijah glared at them, the leopard used his back leg to close the door.

"Sorry," Zoe whispered, but when she saw the dead security guard, she went pale. "Couldn't you have just knocked him out?"

"No," Elijah snarled and started looking through the files, searching for anything that might tell him who was in this lab. Once he found the subject folder, he took it out and hastily flipped through it.

But then Zoe gasped in horror and said, "Oh, my God."

Elijah glanced at her and saw her looking through reports on one of the computers. He wanted to tell her to stop before she started asking questions, but when she scrolled past photographs of what they'd turned some of the kids in this place into, he tensed and froze up. All the anguished expressions, cuts and scars, and man-made monsters made him feel sick, and it forced him to look away.

"What the fuck?" Jake exclaimed. "This is what they did to you?"

"Jake, leave him alone," Zoe urged sadly.

"This is fucked up, man."

"Stop," she insisted.

Elijah scowled as he stared at the papers in front of him. He tried to concentrate on looking through the list of names, but his racing heart was aching, and his hands were trembling. The familiar scents and sounds were getting to him. That faint buzzing from the walls, the whirring of the camera down the hall. And the thick folder in his hands filled to the brim with the names of poor, helpless kids who knew nothing other than pain and despair. Kids who were torn from their families. Kids who never came back from the operating rooms looking the same as they did when they went in.

His scowl thickened as he dug his claws into the folder.

"Is there a printer?" Zoe muttered to herself as she looked around. "If I can print some of this off, I'll have all the evidence I need."

"Doesn't look like it," Jake said.

"If only I had my phone—"

"Why not just email it to yourself?" the pardus suggested.

Elijah scowled irritably and snapped out of his anxious trance. "Because the moment she opens those files on her laptop, Lyca Corp. will be able to use it to find us," he snapped, glancing back at them.

"Just do that demon memory thing," Jake said. "You guys have like photographic memory or something, right?"

"I'm not as good at that as my dads," she mumbled despondently.

Elijah kept flipping through the book, but Haru's name wasn't among the hundreds inside. He checked the transfer logs, too, but Haru had never been there. With a frustrated growl, he slammed the book shut and tossed it back into the cabinet.

"What?" Jake questioned.

"Is Haru not here?" Zoe asked.

He huffed angrily, but then he saw the staff folder, so he grabbed it and started looking through it. Most of the nurses, security guards, and doctors weren't familiar, but when he saw Doctor Shaw's name, his anger intensified, and all of his angst melted away like wax in a fire.

His rescue mission had just become another hunt.

"We should probably get out of here before—"

"I'm not leaving yet," Elijah said, cutting Jake off.

Zoe frowned nervously. "Why?"

"There's someone here I need to kill." He moved past them and headed for the door.

"W-wait, what?" Zoe exclaimed, panicking.

"Are you crazy?" Jake questioned.

Elijah snarled irritably as he reached the door; he didn't want to argue, and he didn't want to waste any time. He pulled the door open—

Zoe grabbed his arm. "Are you not even gonna think this through?" she asked, panicking. "This is a fully functioning facility, Elijah. We don't know how many guards or detainers are down here, and we don't know how deep inside this guy you're looking for even is! Haru isn't here, right? So we should just get the hell out of here before they notice their guys up in that radio station are dead."

The demon yanked his arm free and stepped into the hall—

But Zoe grabbed the back of his coat and pulled him back into the room. "Listen to me!" she insisted.

"If you touch me one more time, I'll fucking—"

"She's right, man!" Jake insisted. "If this place was up in flames and the guards were distracted by Nosferatu like when you escaped, then it'd be a different story, but we're on our own here, and it'd be a suicide mission."

Elijah scowled at him and then shifted his hostile gaze to Zoe.

The girl frowned apologetically. "I-I'm sorry. I thought he should know."

He snarled and shoved the girl back. "Don't get in my way." He stormed out of the room—

"Wait!" Zoe insisted.

Elijah growled and turned to face her, teeth bared—

Before he could yell, she said, "W-what if we like...what if we...open all the doors? Free all the subjects?"

Jake frowned strangely. "Uh...you mean let a bunch of monsters—"

Elijah snarled angrily at him.

With a nervous gawp, Jake went silent.

"All of the subjects are demons and lycans, right? A-and there's over a hundred of them. That'll give us the cover we need to find this guy, right? And we'll be giving them all a chance to escape, too. Because I don't know about you, but I don't feel very good about leaving them all here to suffer...after seeing all that stuff on the computer."

Elijah's furious scowl turned into a conflicted one.

"A-and I know it's still risky, but...less of a suicide mission and more of a...well, I don't know. We have better odds, and so does everyone else locked up down here," the girl said.

She had a point. Freeing all the trapped kids would cause absolute hell, and every single doctor and security guard would be distracted trying to deal with them; meanwhile, Elijah could use the cover of the destruction to find Doctor Shaw and kill him. And after that...he'd do what he could to help as many kids out as he could.

"All right," he agreed and shoved past Jake to get back into the office.

"Do you know how to unlock all the doors?" Zoe asked as she followed him in.

It couldn't be too hard, right? He reached the computer and started looking through it, but he honestly had no idea what he was looking for. He eyed each button on the console, but not one had a label or any indication as to what it did, and the longer he stared without answers, the more frustrated he felt.

"I can probably...try a few things," Jake suggested.

"What would you know?" Elijah muttered, glaring at him.

"He's good with computers," Zoe said.

"It was one of the reasons all the kids picked on me at school," Jake muttered.

Elijah didn't need to hear another life story. "Whatever. Get on with it."

Jake morphed out of his leopard form and made his way over to the console. He glanced at it and then started typing on the keyboard, and he brought up a screen full of code which Elijah had no idea how to read. But Jake seemed to know what it all meant; the kid typed rapidly, glancing from the screen to the console and back again, and when he was done, he adorned a nervous expression and looked up at Elijah.

"Uh...so...do you want me to do it now?" the pardus asked him.

Elijah took his eyes off him and looked at each of the security camera screens. He saw kids fighting on one, and more screaming and crying in their rooms on others. Both his anger and dismay increased the longer he stared, and his desire to kill these people and free the demons and lycans grew to an almost overwhelming point.

He turned his head and looked at Jake. "Do it."

⊳⊱ ♕ ⊰⊲

✧ Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter! ✧

♛ What was your favourite part? ♛

✟ What do you think will happen when they open all the doors? ✟

✙ Will Elijah find Doctor Shaw? ✙

❖ Got any questions? ❖

◈ Let me know! ◈