Chapter Three: The Gene Trap Beneath White Lights
The laboratory smelled wrong the moment I stepped inside.
Too clean. Too sharp. Like something had been scrubbed until it forgot how to breathe.
I scanned my keycard and the glass doors slid open with a polite chime that made my skin crawl. White lights hummed above me, reflecting off steel tables and sealed containers labeled with my handwriting—my research, my blood, my work. Except something was off. The samples were rearranged. My folders had been moved by centimeters, just enough to feel intentional.
Someone had been here.
“Iris!” Olivia’s voice floated toward me, syrupy and false. She stood by my workstation, tablet in hand, smiling like she hadn’t just stabbed me in the back yesterday. “You’re early. I thought you’d need more time after… everything.”
I didn’t answer. I walked past her and pulled up my data.
My breath stopped.
The gene sequences—my controls—were corrupted. Subtle changes buried deep inside the code. A suppression marker woven into my samples like a parasite.
“You altered my work,” I said flatly.
Olivia blinked. “What? Of course not. Maybe you’re just tired. You’ve been under stress—”
I picked up one of the vials, my fingers shaking. The pendant under my shirt burned faintly, a warning pulse. “You added an inhibitor.”
Her smile slipped for half a second. Long enough.
Before she could speak, slow footsteps echoed behind us.
“Iris,” Noah said warmly. Too warmly. “I heard there was a discrepancy. Why don’t we redo the experiment? For verification.”
Noah—BioFrontier’s golden mind. Nobel rumors. Grants stacked like trophies. And eyes that looked at me the way men look at locked doors they intend to break.
I forced a nod. “Fine.”
They prepped me like a specimen.
Needles. Sensors. Restraints disguised as ergonomic safety measures. I lay back on the cold table, heart pounding, every instinct screaming.
The injection burned.
Then the world shattered.
Pain tore through my veins like liquid fire laced with ice. My vision blurred, lights streaking into white knives. I bit down on a scream as my muscles locked, my spine arching against the restraints.
“What did you do?” I gasped.
Noah’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses. “Relax. It’s only a suppressant. I want to see how your… condition reacts.”
Condition.
I felt it then—the poison clawing at something deep inside me, pressing down, trying to smother it.
But the wolf did not suffocate.
It woke up.
My bones screamed. My senses exploded. Sound sharpened until I could hear Olivia’s panicked breathing, Noah’s accelerating heartbeat, the electrical buzz of the lights overhead. My nails elongated, tearing through latex gloves. Pressure built behind my ears—
—and then they pushed through.
Gasps echoed around me as gray fur brushed my temples. My teeth ached, sharpening. My vision snapped into focus, colors bleeding brighter, crueler.
“Noah,” Olivia whispered. “She—she’s changing—”
The restraints snapped like cheap wire.
I lunged off the table, claws slicing through steel as if it were paper. Noah stumbled back, shock finally cracking his composure.
“Incredible,” he breathed. “A partial transformation—”
I slammed him into a console.
“Don’t,” I snarled, my voice not entirely human. “Touch. Me.”
Alarms blared.
Olivia screamed.
Footsteps thundered closer—heavy, unrestrained, feral.
Derek crashed through the lab doors, eyes wild, a grin splitting his face. “There you are.”
The wolf in me recognized him instantly.
Hunter.
Before I could move, the walls shook.
Glass exploded inward as a massive gray blur tore through the lab—fur, fangs, fury.
Eli.
He hit Derek like a freight train, jaws snapping inches from his throat. The impact sent both of them crashing through the emergency exit and into the stairwell beyond.
“Run!” Eli’s voice echoed in my head, raw and urgent.
I didn’t hesitate.
The underground parking garage was chaos—sirens, screeching tires, shadows darting between concrete pillars. I barely had time to register the fight before it erupted in front of me.
Derek shifted mid-air, bones cracking as fur swallowed him whole. Eli met him head-on, two wolves colliding with a sound like thunder. Teeth tore into flesh. Blood splattered across oil-stained concrete.
I stood frozen, heart pounding, watching the impossible become real.
This was war.
Eli slammed Derek into a pillar, roaring. Derek laughed even as Eli’s jaws closed around his shoulder.
I realized then—this world had been waiting for me to bleed.
And I was done being the experiment.
As I fled into the night, wolf ears pressed flat against my head, one truth burned brighter than fear:
They tried to cage my blood.
Now they would learn what it cost.