Havoc

by Jeff Sampson

  The door slammed back open, catching the two robot orbs with it and smashing them against the wall. Tracie burst out of the stairwell, then stood parallel to the door and clenched her fists.

  She leaped into the air, kicking the door with both legs at once, crushing the robots with the force of her strength and the heavy steel door. She fell on her back, skirt askew, and the sounds of hissing wires and falling metal filled the air. Spencer and I both stopped running, gaping at her as she got back to her feet.

  For a moment, no one said a thing.

  “That was awesome!” Dalton bellowed. He whooped a laugh and ran forward, putting both hands on my shoulders and jumping up in pure glee. “Oh man, did you see that? We killed those bastards! They shot at us and we took ’em down like they were nothing!”

  I couldn’t help but grin, even as I pulled myself away from bouncy Dalton’s grip. I stepped forward and grabbed Tracie’s arm.

  “Tracie, what possessed you to do that?” I asked. “I mean, it was sick and all, but…”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I shouldn’t have done that, right? The correct response would have been to stay low and out of sight. But I … saw it differently, I think. I just knew that if I did the irrational, I could confuse the machinery and trap it. Does that make sense?” She put her hand on her head. “Does any of this make sense?”

  “I think it’s starting to,” I said.

  “Hey, Em Dub, we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Spencer said, interrupting me and Tracie. “Obviously there’s an automated security system. We need to get on these computers and find what we need.”

  “No,” I said. “We’re going down below. These labs can’t be all there is. There’s something down there.”

  “Then let’s go!” Dalton said, running through the open door. “Maybe more of those robots are down there!”

  Tracie crossed her arms, looking at the two robots Dalton and I had taken down. “Poor things,” she said with a tsk. “They were just doing as they were programmed to do. They can’t help it if they’re murderous robots.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Tracie. I wasn’t exactly sure yet what her shtick was as Nighttime, but something about the words resonated in the back of my brain. Daytime seemed to understand. Maybe even Wolftime.

  I didn’t want to think about it. I deeply disliked the idea of being programmed to act a certain way.

  I waved Tracie and Spencer along. “Let’s go. One last place to scope out.”

  The trip down the stairwell to the story below was completely uneventful. As was breaking the lock. Whoever had designed this place hadn’t counted on it being infiltrated by teenagers with superstrength, apparently.

  I didn’t know what, exactly, to expect as I opened that last door. A storage bay, maybe? Some sort of robot ninja training center? A thousand more tubes filled with deformed children trapped in lime Jell-O?

  What I got was pure, total blackness. A complete absence of light, save for what dim glow from the stairwell’s fluorescents shone past us into the room. It was cool down here, and even without the map and without light I got the sense that beyond lay one massive, open room.

  I patted the walls on either side of the door, but aside from a keypad panel, there was nothing, no sort of light switch. With a shrug to the others, I took a few steps in, my shadow disappearing into the darkness before me.

  After three steps, I heard a click, then the whirring sounds of several machines powering up. Electric buzzes sounded high above me, and then row after row of achingly bright fluorescent lights turned on, revealing at last the strange cavernous room that had one single entrance.

  It was almost like being on the set of the Enterprise. The new one, not old-school or Next Gen. We’re talking full Apple-store style, J. J. Abrams–directed, solar-flare-at-the-lens Enterprise deck here.

  There were four large computer bays in the shape of a quarter circle in each corner of the room. The whirring sounds were the computer monitors and systems powering on. Above each bay, large flat-screen monitors half the size of a movie screen hung from the ceiling. They blinked on, revealing the BioZenith company logo.

  But that wasn’t what immediately caught our attention. No, that would have been the round platform that took up the majority of the center of the room. Specifically, what was on top of it: Several fifteen-foot, gleaming silver rings that rotated slowly, like some sort of 3D representation of the solar system’s orbit or something. They oscillated around one another, outlining an empty, spherical area. I didn’t know why, but somehow I could just feel that the rings were in fact circling something. What that something was, I had no clue.

  Between the bays and near the rings were various extraneous machinery, yellow-and-black-striped platforms that could lift someone up to the ceiling, a crane or two. But really, nothing compared to the spectacle of those rings, moving almost like liquid mercury, hovering of their own accord.

  “I feel like I’m in the future,” Spencer said, awe filling his voice. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “How about the computers?” I asked. “I think out of any in this building, these are bound to have at least something.”

  Cracking his knuckles, Spencer was already heading to the closest bay. “Don’t have to ask me twice.” He sat in one of the swiveling chairs and immediately began tapping at the screen, scrolling through menus and cycling through subroutines, or whatever. He took his password-cracking thumb drive out of his pocket, found a port, and plugged it in.

  “Is it just me, or is there something very strange about those rings?” Tracie mused beside me. She had become considerably calmer ever since we’d started our trek through the facility. And here she was, finally getting involved, asking questions. About time.

  “It’s not just you,” I said. “There’s something there. I can feel it.”

  “Hey, Em Dub, I need your thumb drive.” Not looking up from his screen, Spencer lifted one hand and waved me over.

  I trotted over to him, pulling the lanyard over my head. I handed it to him, then looked up, back at those strange rings. My eyes settled on Dalton next. He was in front of the bay where Spencer sat, pacing back and forth, muttering to himself. One hand was balled into a fist that continually punched his thigh. The other kept scratching at his stubbly red hair.

  “You doing all right over there, Sparky?” I shouted. Dalton nodded, much too rapidly. “Man, I just wish they’d come already. Those guards or robots. I can’t deal with this waiting anymore.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be done soon,” Spencer called. He flicked at various icons as though he’d been using the proprietary BioZenith software his entire life. “Their processors are major fast, I can barely keep up with all the info they want to give me. Okay, here, I think that’s all of it.” He pulled my thumb drive out and handed it back to me. I looped it back over my neck.

  “You finished?” I asked him. “See anything interesting?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “I think I found something Dr. Elliott created, or accessed, anyway. The files have been scrubbed clean of any identifying name, but all the rest list who worked on them. And the program was last successfully accessed on September seventh.” He shot me a look. “The night we started to change.”

  Tracie wandered over to us and rested her chin on the top of the bay. Dalton still kept pacing, still kept smacking himself.

  “September seventh was the Tuesday before last, right?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “That was the night I first got sick. I remember because the next morning was when we found out Emily Cooke died.”

  “How many times do we have to tell you that you aren’t sick?” Dalton said. “Come on! You just killed two robots! Enjoy it!”

  Tracie let out a huff, but didn’t say anything more.

  “Hey, I got it,” Spencer said, grinning widely up at me as though looking for approval. It was all I could do to not pat his head like a puppy.

  “What did you get?” I
asked instead, leaning over him.

  He pointed at the screen. “Something called ‘Havoc.’ He accessed it that day and started some sort of timer, then put in some encryptions so no one would see what he’d done.”

  My face tightened. “After which he grabbed a gun and killed Emily Cooke.”

  One of my pack, werewolf me seethed.

  “Looks like it.”

  Tracie leaned farther over the bay, her eyes darting over the timer’s scrolling numbers. She chewed her lip but didn’t say anything.

  Spencer went back to the monitor and began tapping. “Maybe this is one last access code to hack through,” he said. “If I can figure out…” His voice petered out, brow furrowing. A few more taps and the constantly rotating numbers stopped.

  00:00:00 flashed in bright green numbers like a digital clock.

  Something clicked inside me, and I gasped. In the chair, Spencer doubled over, clutching his stomach. Tracie backed away from the bay, shaking her head back and forth, her fear coming back all at once.

  And Dalton reared back his head and howled into the rafters, then laughed and laughed, wouldn’t stop laughing.

  My vision snapped gray, and I was hybrid Emily again. Only I wasn’t three distinct girls anymore, I was one massively confused one. I wheeled around, clutching for anything to grab on to. This wasn’t like any of the previous transformations. Those had grown increasingly smooth. Now, somehow this was coming too soon. I felt it deep inside that this was not supposed to happen, and I started to hyperventilate.

  As the world swirled around me, I looked back at those endlessly orbiting rings floating above the massive platform. Only with the gray wolf vision, the space between the rings was no longer empty. The air was torn, ripped to shreds at the edges, and through the gap I could see tall, black skyscrapers, or towers, or castles—something—crumbling to pieces. I could see creatures with wings, or planes, or both zipping through the sky, leaving behind a trail of dark clouds. I saw shadowy figures run past, not noticing the hole next to them, just running in droves, carrying long sticks or bats or guns, I couldn’t tell.

  A shudder ran through me, and I closed my eyes, gasping. I was transforming into the werewolf. I wasn’t ready. My body wasn’t ready, hadn’t had enough time to transition between Daytime and Nighttime and Wolftime. I tried to focus, because we were deep in the bowels of some terrifying and strange laboratory filled with preserved monstrosities and machines that couldn’t exist and holes in the wind.

  “Take off anything that won’t stretch with you,” I gasped. “We can’t leave behind our clothes! Take them off and force the wolf to carry—argh!”

  I fell to the floor, my fingers fumbling for my belt. I couldn’t see what anyone else was doing, could just hear their agony. Finally I got my pants free, my underwear, not caring that anyone could see. I shoved them down to my ankles, realized my shoes were still on. I kicked them off, tore at my socks.

  My spine cracked, sending a shudder up to my shoulders. Pins prickled all over my body as the wolf fur began to sprout, bursting up from my skin. I could feel my jaw crunching, elongating.

  I focused on my clothes—my shirt would stretch, the thumb drive on the lanyard would hang on. I knotted my shoelaces together even as my fingers started to stretch, even as my nails blackened and dug free of my cuticles.

  Another shudder ran through me and I doubled over, feeling as though I was going to vomit. My insides were shifting, squishing inside my gut, my chest cavity, and oh God I could hear it! It hadn’t been like this last time, not even the first time I remembered changing. I wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.

  “It’s the program,” I heard Spencer shout, his voice deepening, his words starting to slur. “The computer. He activated it, that’s why we changed. I must have—uuuggggrrrrl.” His words disappeared as his vocal cords stiffened in places, loosened in others. I knew because it was happening to me too. Desperately I balled my pants and underwear together, then strung the tied-together shoes around my neck.

  My spine continued to tug, crunching as it formed a tail at the base of my back. The numbing effect of the change hadn’t spread there and I howled, feeling as though someone was tearing a piece of my flesh off with their bare hands.

  And then, it was done. I lay there, a wolf-girl in a stretched-out turtleneck, with shoes around my neck and jeans clutched in my claws. I’m sure I looked fairly ridiculous, but I didn’t care. Shivers of pain quaked through my body, aftershocks of an earthquake I hadn’t really felt. I have no idea how long I was incapacitated. I just knew my limbs weren’t working yet.

  A roar echoed through the vast room.

  I looked up. Dalton was there in front of me. In front of the computer bay. He had shed all his clothes and sniffed at the monitor that Spencer had been working on. Like me, Spencer lay on the ground, clothes clenched in his half-human, half-wolf hands, shoes tied around his neck.

  I tilted my head back and saw Tracie on all fours, shivering like a dog left out in the cold. The headband was still on her head. Her purple dress hung in tatters from her shoulders. Her shoes, now scraps. Deep in the back of my head, daytime me observed that Tracie now looked like someone’s teacup Chihuahua all dressed up like a little princess, and if I’d had the capacity to find things funny at that moment, I’d have laughed until I was hoarse.

  Dalton let loose another roar. Of the four of us, he appeared to be the only one fully recovered. I looked back at him just in time to see him leap onto the computer bay he’d been sniffing at. He punched down with one clawed fist, tearing into the machinery. He stomped with his powerful leg, smashing the monitor that had the countdown timer. Glass flew through the air. There were sparks, and the stench of burning plastic that was deeply unpleasant to my wolf nose.

  And a loud, screeching alarm blared throughout the room.

  Still standing atop the destroyed computer bay, he spread his arms, arched his back, and howled along with the horrible din of the alarm. I could sense it in the echoes of his booming voice: This was what werewolf Dalton wanted. Not answers. Not research.

  Alarms meant robots. Or guards.

  Something to fight.

  He leaped down from the computer bay. Several of the swivel chairs fell as he passed. He bounded past all of us to the door leading to the upper level.

  I jumped to my feet, growling at Spencer and Tracie until they did the same. I gestured with my snout toward the door. Follow. They understood.

  Still clutching my human self’s clothes, I ran around the computer bay and found Dalton’s jeans, shirt, jacket, and shoes. I scooped them all up, even as the werewolf side of me protested, then I turned to follow Spencer and Tracie.

  The alarms were going to draw attention. Lots of it.

  And the daytime version of myself was there, for just a moment, speaking to wolf me: I need to keep Dalton from doing something he would regret for the rest of his life.

  19

  YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH

  I lumbered up the stairwell into the laboratory. All my wolf instincts told me to drop the bundle of cloth in my arms and run on all fours. It would be faster, and I needed to be fast.

  Daytime and Nighttime both asserted themselves. Do not let them go, they told wolf me. Do not leave more evidence of who you are than you already have.

  I whined deep in my throat. But I listened.

  Dodging broken glass and jagged robot parts, I bounded toward the door to the walkway. Tracie and Spencer were already there, Tracie still looking like something out of a nightmarish Berenstain Bears book in her prim dress.

  Managing to catch up to them, I let out a sharp bark. Keep moving. They knew what it meant, darted into the walkway. And stopped when we found Dalton.

  He stood in the center of the walkway, looking through the plate-glass window at the parking lot. It was no longer empty. A gray van had pulled through the front gate, and two men, dressed like the guards from the night before, jumped out. They both had rifles. They were fo
llowed by two brown-and-black dogs, all narrow and sleek with pointed jaws and sharp ears. Dobermans.

  Growling, Dalton rammed his shoulder into the window. It cracked. He rammed again and again, the crack growing wider and wider.

  I barked again at Spencer and Tracie. Don’t stop. Go to the roof. Escape from here. I’ll get Dalton.

  A lot of sentiments for one bark to convey. But somehow we knew even without words what our wolf selves meant. It was some combination of inflection, of scents I naturally emitted, of the flick of my ears, the narrowing of my eyes.

  They obeyed, running past Dalton, Tracie on all fours and Spencer on two. They disappeared into the first building we’d come into.

  I ran up to Dalton as he rammed one more time into the window. It was now a crystalline web, a windshield after a high-speed crash. I growled and nipped at his side. He growled louder, lunged at me, snapped at my snout.

  One more barrel into the window. And it shattered. Shards of glass rained to the asphalt below. The noise alerted the guards, and the two dogs started barking wildly. The driver of the van, another guard, leaped out of the vehicle and ran to join his companions.

  Before I could do anything, Dalton leaped through the open window. He landed with a heavy thud against the asphalt. His eyes were on the guards.

  “What is that?” the driver of the van shouted. “What the hell is that?”

  The other two didn’t react, though they made no move forward, just watched wide-eyed as Dalton took one step toward them, then another. He stepped into the glare of the van’s headlights, and he was fully illuminated to the three men. His ears were flat against his skull. His teeth were bared.

  Dalton looked between the three men one by one. Then, as in the lower level of the labs, he arched his back and howled up into the sky. The sound echoed throughout the night.

  The driver of the van turned and ran.

  The howl had been defiant. Murderous. Werewolf Dalton lusted for blood and he needed it, would defy his alpha to obtain it.

  I had to stop him.