-Dante Gray-

Another day in Hell...

I couldn't stop my body from flinching when the sharp sound of a massive, metallic door echoed in the hallway as another cell was closed somewhere close by. I looked away when they dragged one of my neighbors past my bars. She was whimpering quietly, begging for them to leave her alone, unable to stand up on her feet. She was once a proud vampire, a fierce fighter, a killer.

"No...!" Her strengthless cry was muffled by another closed door, and silence fell in the hallway.

This place changed us all, turning everyone into broken, empty shells of what we used to be.

And they called us monsters.

I slept as much as I could, sitting in the darkest corner of my cell, snapping awake from the tiniest sounds. Part of me wished for death so I wouldn't need to walk down that hallway behind bars ever again – even a werewolf such as me had learned to fear the door at the end of it. The other part of me, however...

"Rise and shine, mutt!"

I jerked awake at the sound of a loud bang. I looked up to see a set of dark, mean eyes smiling down at me. Killian. My handler.

I would not die without sinking my claws into his heart first.

He was leaning against the bars, chewing on bubblegum. His obnoxious smile made my blood boil, and I couldn't wait to rip his smug face off. He was taking his sweet time before moving to the door, and when he finally did so, he kept his eyes on me, making sure I saw him reaching for his taser.

"Are we playing nice today?" he asked, opening the lock on my door. I didn't reply to him, so he grabbed the thick chain – my leash – from the hook just outside my cell and stepped in. "Get up."

It didn't matter if I obeyed him or not. Everything in this place meant pain. My entire body was screaming for me to stop moving when I got up from the cold floor. It wasn't easy with my hands already tied behind my back, but I did it. Another man showed up behind Killian, and together they stepped towards me, their tasers ready, neither of them caring that I was staying perfectly still. I was so exhausted I didn't even think about fighting back, not even when Killian jammed his taser between my ribs, forcing me back down on my knees for the fun of it.

"Who's a good boy?" he chuckled, securing the leash on the iron collar I was wearing. He yanked on the chain hard,  making me get back on my feet. This sadistic bastard... "Let's go for a walk!"

I was so incredibly weak, but I could still walk somehow. I stepped out of my cell to the hallway where everything was made of sturdy iron. My stomach turned upside down at the sight of the door at the end of the holding area, but I followed Killian, passing by a dozen other cells. The monsters behind bars kept their heads down, hoping this wasn't the day when their handlers came to pick them up.

For the hundredth time, I tried to think of a way to escape, even though the security was tight and I wasn't able to fight my way out, but I was still not going to give up. One day, someone would make a mistake. They had to. I had to get out! I couldn't just die down here, wherever we were...

"Since we're having our six-month anniversary next week, I was thinking of giving you something special," Kilian spoke with that ugly smile of his. "Like a shower!"

He glanced shortly at me, wrinkling his nose at my dirty appearance. The clothes I was wearing were barely keeping it together, and I hadn't even seen a shower in weeks. But that was the least of my worries.

We stopped in front of the door. It was big and heavy, and I doubted I could get through it with my bare hands even if I were in full health. Only the handlers had keycards for the electronic lock that kept us all in captivity, and they were well equipped against us supernaturals. But they were only humans... They were too confident in their body armor. Someone was bound to make a mistake sooner or later. If I acted docile enough, maybe one of them would fall into a false sense of security.

The door opened slowly, revealing a small room behind it – the security area. The bright lights hurt my eyes, forcing me to look down. Killian yanked the chain again, so I continued walking. I was stopped in the middle of the room to wait for clearance. The guy monitoring the room was sitting behind a bulletproof glass wall, staring at his screen, while I was being scanned for dangerous objects. Where they thought I could get one was beyond me. They sure took their job seriously, which was bad for me.

After the guy behind his monitors nodded to go ahead, another door opened in front of us. I started feeling sick when the familiar scents and noises filled my senses.

The laboratory.

It was a large hall with no windows and only three doors. One of them was leading to our holding area, the second to the faculty area. And the last one led to freedom. I knew this because I had paid attention to every little word these so-called scientists said. I had never seen what lay behind the last door, but I knew it wasn't a walk in the park to get out of this place. For one, we were deep underground, and there was only one lift and one staircase out of here. Two, every door from here to freedom was locked, so I'd need a keycard to open them.

The laboratory was pretty much a maze with cubicles and different testing areas. The chemicals were burning my nose, but I could still smell a hint of blood all around us. I knew there was a meat factory sitting right on top of us, hiding the fact that these people were conducting secret experiments on us supernaturals in hopes of enhancing the human race.

"This way, Mr. Taylor!"

I turned my head a little to see a chubby, thirty-year-old man waving his hand at us. He was wearing a white lab coat over his green shirt and blue jeans, looking as innocent and naive as a freshly hired doctor, but in reality, this man was just as ruthless as the rest of them.

"Take off his shirt and set him up on the table," the man, Bernard, told Killian when we reached his cubicle that was filled with all kinds of medical equipment and files.

"It," Killian corrected, but Bernard only rolled his eyes. 

I tried to ignore the pain as I was pushed onto the cold table and tied down by my ankles and wrists.

"Did you feed it?" Bernard asked, grabbing a video camera from his side table.

"Of course not," Killian scoffed – he had only a little respect towards everyone by default, but for some reason, he couldn't stand the younger scientists at all. The only person he treated with respect was the owner of this whole place.

"Good. I don't want vomit all over my stuff..." Bernard muttered, setting up the camera on a tripod, aiming it at me. "Let us begin, shall we?"

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself somewhere else when Bernard hit the record button.

"This is doctor Bernard Branagh, today is... the twenty-seventh of May, twenty-eighteen. I'm accompanied by a handler, Killian Taylor. Our test subject is one-two-seven, a twenty-seven-year-old werewolf male..."

I looked up and saw Killian leaning against the wall close by, looking bored out of his mind. I turned my head away and saw the camera. I felt so sick... It was only partly because I knew what Bernard would do to me. This whole situation, this... humiliation and torture and the fact that these people saw us as something even lower than animals were making me sick. Our lives didn't matter at all.

"I'm starting today's experiments with testing his healing abilities. The incision I made yesterday with a steel knife has now fully healed, but the scar is still clearly visible. I'm making the new incision," I could feel a sharp knife piercing through the skin on my left shoulder, "right on top of the last one."

Bernard moved the camera to point at the wound he just made before he set up a timer on the next table. The seconds started running while Bernard moved around the table.

"I'm removing the bandages on his right shoulder," Bernard spoke to the camera, speaking with a monotone voice, thoroughly explaining what he was doing. "The incision I made two days ago with a silver knife hasn't fully healed yet. I'll continue monitoring the process without making a new incision..."

Then he went to take an empty syringe from the side table and filled it up with my blood. I was left alone for a moment, while he put the sample into his machines, and started the program.

"It has now been ten minutes, and the incision hasn't started healing yet. The test subject's healing abilities are growing weaker each time a new incision is made in the same area. The results are even worse when the incision is made with a silver object. There isn't any other material that causes the same reaction, but it is highly recommended that we find a way around this silver allergy."

In other words, they wanted to find a way to make humans heal as fast as we did without turning them into werewolves.

"Moving on – the blood sample is now... Huh?"

I turned to look at the scientist when he leaned closer to his monitors. It was complete gibberish what I saw on his computer.

"What is it?" Killian asked the same question I had in mind.

"There's an anomaly in his sample," Bernard muttered. "This can't be right..."

There was a long phase of aggressive typing going on, and after a while, Bernard reran the tests.

"This can't be right," he repeated after the second run gave the same results. He stared at the monitor for a moment, but then he turned to look at Killian with an angry expression on his face. "It's probably because of all that dirt on his body! I've told you countless times to keep him clean!"

"Stop calling it 'him'!" Killian snapped back. "It's not a person! It's filth!"

"Filth or not, your incompetence has ruined my experiments! I can't get precise results if he's filled with all kinds of germs!"

"It! And how can you be so sure it's my fault, huh?! You've been pumping it full of chemicals for months now! Or maybe your machine is broken!"

Bernard gritted his teeth together, keeping his mouth shut. He then turned to look at the monitor again. "This hasn't happened before with any other test subject. I've been using the same drugs on all of them, and this anomaly hasn't appeared even once."

"Then your damn equipment is broken," Killian spat at him. "Don't you dare blame this on me!"

Bernard took a couple of deep breaths, staring at me for a moment. "Take him away. I'll clean up everything and call you back later so I can run new tests. I'll borrow the equipment from someone else, and if the anomaly still exists..." he trailed off, looking excited all of a sudden. "This might be a good thing. I haven't seen an anomaly like that before..."

Killian rolled his eyes before he ordered his companion back to us so that they could untie me.

"And clean him up! He smells like a sewer," Bernard yelled after us.

"Fine," Killian muttered as he dragged me towards the holding area.

An anomaly... I felt something terrible in my stomach when I thought about what I just heard. I'd been drugged with so many different things that I feared it wasn't just a mistake. And I knew, whatever it was, it was bad news for me.

When we got back into the holding area, Killian pushed me straight into the small shower. I struggled to stay up on my feet, and I would've fallen if he hadn't yanked on my chain. I got my balance back and turned to face him. He grabbed his taser, showed it to me as a warning, and released my hands.

"Take off your clothes, mutt," he then spat at me, backing off to grab a hose from the wall.

I felt so goddamn disgusted when I turned around and started taking my pants off. I didn't even have the luxury of having underwear... Before I could toss the pants aside, I was hit with massive pressure, and I had to hold onto the wall to stay up on my feet, while Killian hosed me down with cold water. My skin was already sore from all the wounds and cuts and missing patches, and the harsh water felt like it was tearing through my flesh.

When he was done tormenting me, he tied my hands again and dragged me into my cell without giving me new clothes. I was freezing and in pain, and the thought of this anomaly was making me scared. It was moments like these when I almost felt like dying was the best option after all.

"I guess you got your anniversary gift early," Killian said as he closed the door. "You know what? If Bernard can't use you for his experiments anymore, maybe Dr. Gray will let me keep you as my guard dog!"

I gritted my teeth together when he laughed. Just like that, I forgot to feel sorry for myself. Instead, my hatred towards this sorry excuse of a man started burning up, erasing my fears as it grew stronger. I knew he was trying to make me angry in hopes of getting to use his taser on me, so I stayed still, trying to contain my rage.

When his plan failed, Killian let out a disappointed sigh, and left, yelling at someone to bring me clean clothes. Soon one of the guards tossed them at my feet, and I gladly pulled them on, before sitting down on my narrow bed.

I wasn't left alone for too long. I heard the heavy door opening, but I didn't pay attention to it. Not until someone stopped by my door. I took my time looking up, getting ready to face Killian again, but it wasn't him. I almost stopped breathing at the sight of the familiar blue eyes – eyes that I hadn't seen in months.

"Lena..." I breathed out her name.

She smiled at me, pushing her hands into the pockets of her white coat. "Bernard told me that there was a mishap today while he was running his tests on you."

I bit my teeth together and turned away from her. She looked just like I remembered... blonde hair in a ponytail, wearing a loose shirt and a long skirt...

"Don't be like that, Dante," she said with a soft voice.

I refused to even look at her. Why was she here? Because of the anomaly in my blood?

"Fine," she breathed out slowly. "I guess you're still not talking to me... Well... I'm not saying it's a bad thing..."

Something about the tone in her voice made my anger leak over. I was up on my feet in the blink of an eye and marched to the bars, but she didn't even flinch, which made me angrier.

"It's your fault! You tricked me! You lured me down here! You're the monster here, not me!" I yelled at her face.

"Me?" she chuckled, stepping even closer to me. "You're the one who turns into a beast, Dante. You are not human, no matter what you keep telling yourself."

"How could you do this to me?" I asked, almost breaking down now after seeing her so cold. "How could you build a place like this?"

She started laughing. "You stole three years of my life, Dante, and I want them back. With interest. I'm curious to see what this anomaly in you is all about. Maybe you are the key to immortality, after all."

"Fuck you, Lena..." I whispered. "I loved you."

"I loved you too," she smiled. "Before you turned into a monster," she added with a cold voice.

"It wasn't my fault I got bitten," I said, knowing she wouldn't listen to reason.

"Not mine either, but here we are. Our marriage was ruined the day you turned into a beast, and there's nothing that can change that," she spoke, starting to walk back towards the door. "You should be happy that you can still do something for me. As my test subject."