The Aberrants Box Set (Books 1-5)

by Sarah J. Stone

  She almost didn’t want to look at her reflection, dreading what she might see. But this was no time to be overly timid. She needed to get going before dawn. So, she forced herself to make eye contact with her reflection.

  Even though she knew he would be there, she was still surprised to see Creed staring back at her. Sure enough, her depiction of him was downright uncanny. If she didn’t know better, she would think she was looking at some sort of very strange video.

  After a nod, she was finally ready to put on the warden’s clothes and bring this thing to an end.

  Once she had thought that killing Creed would be the end of all of her problems, but she wasn’t so naïve now. She knew the psychopaths and serial killers in his employ would still try to continue his legacy, if only to obtain power themselves. She had to eliminate all of them, and erase any sort of stronghold that could be used by anyone else who survived in the future.

  Buttoning the last fastener on her shirt, she took another deep breath, spritzed some cologne, then stepped back out into the living room. She looked over the hot mess that had become of the once immaculate room, then nodded to herself again.

  It was time to go.

  She walked back out into the hotel-esque lobby, then down the hall they had walked before. Had that only been a couple of hours earlier? It seemed like almost another lifetime ago. One where she hadn’t sliced the throat open of one of her kind.

  She shook her head. She didn’t have time to pine over what had to be done. It was over now. She needed to move forward and make sure that things got done.

  Nevertheless, her mind still refused to focus. She thought of Bradley, of course. Would he be proud of her? Would they ever meet again? She certainly hoped so. If there was anyone who understand the ordeal that she had gone through, it would be him.

  Thinking of him gave her some sense of peace and her heart settled. She could do this. Just three spots, three little mini-tasks of sabotage, and she could finally rest.

  Finally, she had reached the two sets of doors that led to the rest of the administrative building. The same guards who had been there before were still there, making her wonder if they were on twenty-four-hour rotation, or if even less time had passed than she had thought.

  Thankfully, her side of the door didn’t require a keycard to open. She simple pressed a button, and they swung outward with a slight squeak.

  “Oh, didn’t expect to see you out here,” one of the guards said, a gross smirk on his face. “Don’t tell me you let that cold fish kick you out?”

  Jaelle had no idea Creed would ever allow any of his men to talk to him that way. Huh, maybe he had made some friends? How appropriate that his closest companions were among murderers and sociopaths.

  “Sure, that’s exactly what happened,” she responded in what she hoped was his cadence and tone. The group chuckled at that, so she continued, “She’s out cold right now, and I thought I’d do a final walk-through before tomorrow.”

  “I know what you’re up to,” another accused, sending chills down Jaelle’s spine. It took everything in her not to jolt, and instead she just tilted her head quizzically. “Trying to get the blood pumping with a little walk so you can go for a round two.”

  They chuckled again, and relief flooded her. “You mean ,round three,” she corrected.

  “Ayooo, we got a real man’s man here!”

  There was good-natured laughter all around and Jaelle moved past them as if it were completely normal. “I’ll see you all when I get back. Try not to fall asleep.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just go get your fresh air, fearless leader.”

  Jaelle kept moving, turning back to face the front door. She was in somewhat disbelief that it had been that easy. She had never imagined that Creed would be on such familiar terms with his underlings. It certainly was a far cry from the other prison. She guessed that he considered those prisoners as far below him, while these more dangerous, intellectual ones were more his equals.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach the door to the outside. Night had long since fallen, and the air was both cool and crisp. Jaelle stopped for a moment, breathing in the clean air as deeply as she could.

  She hadn’t realized how much the bleach had burned her nostrils, as they finally started to heal in the slightly damp air. However, she couldn’t give herself long, and she quickly started walking again.

  Jaelle beelined for the ammunition building. Just like before, there were two guards on the outside. If they were surprised to see her, and by that she meant Creed, out and about so late, they certainly didn’t act like it. She guessed that the deceased Aberrant had probably done random checks all the time. Either that or they didn’t think it strange for him to be restless the night before.

  A brief nod is all she needed and then they were letting her in. She strode in, letting them close the door behind her as if everything was normal. They had no idea just how un-normal their night was about to get.

  She walked away from the door quickly, keeping Creed’s form. She didn’t want to drop it until the absolute last moment, lest someone walk in on her at the last minute. She was looking for a specific case, located somewhere toward the back of the room.

  The one that held the grenades.

  She had never been fond of munitions in general, so she found it rather ironic now that she was going to have to rely on them to save the day.

  It took a bit of rooting, her eye sight still recovering from the complete blindness she had suffered during her previous incarceration, but she found the box a few moments later. Her hands were shaking as she reached in and pulled twenty of the explosives from the case.

  Thankfully, they weren’t pinned grenades, otherwise she would have no idea what to do. Instead, they were the ones where you squeezed the handle, then after releasing had five seconds to throw it the hell away.

  Too bad she wasn’t going to be throwing them. No, that boom wouldn’t be remotely big enough for her needs.

  She strode to the chest that she remembered most of the bullets being in. Quickly double-checking that she was correct, she hauled the grenades over and set them down carefully. All that was left now was some rope, or fishing line.

  Strangely enough, that took the most time out of any of the tasks. She rooted through several shelves, boxes, and crates until she finally found some thin wire that was almost like string. That would do.

  The next part was going to require the most delicacy. Carefully, she set each of the grenades against the weapon case—except for one, that was for later—then slowly wrapped the wire around the whole thing, depressing each of the handles.

  Once all of them were relatively secure, she tied a simple slip knot at the end, before pulling out a long line of slack, her vision growing blurry as she did. She realized that she was holding onto Creed’s form for far too long.

  Sure, she could spend a day or two in an animal’s body if she was at rest, but being another Aberrant was another matter entirely. Her face was hot, and her breath was coming in short pants, making that swimming feeling that much worse.

  But it only took her another minute or so to get all the line she needed, and then it was finally time to let Creed go for good.

  She stood, and released a long, long breath. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite long enough, but she didn’t have time for another. Allowing herself one last look over her shoulder to make sure no one was coming in, she released Creed’s body.

  It was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and she collapsed forward with a gasp. Her lungs inflated like she had been held underwater, filling her with renewed energy.

  It took a minute for her heart to return to normal, and when it did, she was already slipping into another form.

  Her nose grew long and twitchy, while soft brown fur spread over her rapidly shrinking body. Her hands grew tiny white claws and within a few more second, she had fully taken on the shape of a cute little mouse.

  She grabbed the end of the wire in her mouth,
using her hands to roll the one grenade she did have and scurried toward the drain she had seen in the corner of the room on her first visit. She scurried out, pulling on the wire as far as she could.

  She had almost reached the outside, a circle of starlight just visible a few feet ahead, when the wire went taught. It seemed that it was time to see whether her plan would work, or if her knot abilities had fallen off since college.

  Giving her mousy head a jerk, she felt a bit of resistance, and then the string went slack. It seem as though her knot had indeed come undone, which meant she had five seconds to run for her life.

  Four now, actually.

  She bolted toward the end of the pipe, erupting out into the long grass. She kept losing her grenade, causing her to waste precious nanoseconds getting it back on track. But she couldn’t leave it behind. It was integral to making sure everything ended.

  Three.

  She knew it was dangerous to walk around in animal form considering the prison seemed hyper-vigilant about not allowing any sort of critters inside, but it wasn’t safe to be a human yet.

  Two.

  She was almost to the wall at the edge of the facility, her tiny rodent heart beating as hard as it could. She was definitely going to have one wicked adrenaline high after all of this was said and done.

  One.

  The noise was deafening, far greater than she had ever thought possible. Even with all the distance she had put between her and the building, she was still flung forward—although thankfully she wasn’t slammed into the wall.

  She skidded to a stop, and looked back at the inferno she had caused.

  Inferno just somehow didn’t seem like a big enough word for it. The blaze was higher than she imagined a building that size could produce, and more mini-explosions were sounding off with every passing second. Then came the bullets, firing off in the heat of the explosion like a chorus of lethal pops.

  Cries filled the night, along with sounds of alarms. Even with her tiny form, she could see dozens of men running toward the ammunition storehouse. It wouldn’t be long now before they tried to find Creed to inform him of what was happening, and eventually they would come the absolute mess she had left in the warden’s quarters. One thing would lead to another, and someone, somehow would open that refrigerator door and boom the jig was up.

  She righted herself, only then realizing that she had lost her grenade sometime when she had been thrown. No! She had to find it. And fast.

  Speed was the key, so she let go of her mouse form and quickly slid back into her human one. Her Shifter eyes almost instantly picked up the glint of firelight of the polished side of her grenade and she dove forward, clutching it to herself.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, she transitioned into a quicker form, one that would get her where she needed to go before everything went to shit, but also with a mouth big enough to carry the grenade. But also, they couldn’t be so big as to attract much notice.

  She settled on the form of a cat, specifically, a pretty orange tabby she had once run across as a teenager. Her body rippled, shifting into the form she needed, and then she was running again.

  The place was in chaos, utter and complete chaos. Thankfully no one seemed to be looking anywhere remotely close to her direction as she skirted the edge of the complex.

  She made it to the opposite side of the blaze before cutting across the lawn and through the darkness. It took her just minutes, but it seemed to last for an eternity before she finally reached the communication building.

  It was then that she realized she had miscalculated. She had planned to attack a guard and steal their card in order to get it, but the men who had been stationed there had long since abandoned their posts to help with the inferno. There was no way to get in.

  She could use her grenade… but she had different plans for that. Special plans.

  It looked like she was going to have to break it down.

  Setting her grenade to the side, she backed up and let go of her cat body. She could feel that her own form was being pushed to the limit, taking on Creed’s form had done plenty of damage on its own, but adding shifting through multiple forms and being thrown by an explosion had pushed her much harder than she had in ages. It was different than her brawl with him during the car chase. It was different from anything she’d ever done.

  But she forced herself through another metamorphosis, pushing herself to the absolute max. Her body expanded slowly, turning grey in a careful wave instead of the normal explosion outward. It took several seconds, but eventually she was able to take on the form of a somewhat thin elephant.

  But it was enough. She took a single step back, then barreled forward with all her might, aiming her momentum at the door.

  They collided with a boom, which she hoped no one noticed over the insanity of the explosion. Her grip on her form slipped right after she collided, and when she tumbled in, she was an exhausted human again.

  She lay there a moment, gasping for air. She was grateful that she was alone, and realized that she very easily could have not been. She was lucky.

  She couldn’t count on that luck to last forever, however, so she forced herself to sit up. Her grenade! Where had it gone?

  Her night was turning into repeated phrases and thoughts, but she pressed on. Spotting the explosive in the grass, she gripped it, then walked right back in.

  While she certainly wasn’t an expert, the controls of the thing were basic enough so that she could figure them out with only a bit of fiddling. Or, at least she hoped that was the case. She assumed green meant go, and ‘out’ meant sending a message while ‘in’ meant receiving a message, and that she would have to press the button at the bottom of the mic for it to work.

  It seemed all the stations were already set for Creed’s grand announcement for the tomorrow that would never come. Too bad they were about to hear an entirely different message.

  “To all Shifters, this is Jaelle. I am an Aberrant. I am at the Upstate prison that our Clan Leaders don’t want you to know about.

  “Another Aberrant named Creed has been using this place as a base of operations, and while I have dispatched him and blown up his weapon supply, there are still plenty of criminals here who now have free roam and automatic weapons.

  “I am sending this out so that Clan Leaders know to send what little is left of our fractured military to come secure this place. Lives will be lost, but I guarantee you that you do not want to let this lie.” She hesitated a moment, her voice faltering as she debated whether to say something else. But she supposed that she had come this far, she might as well say her piece.

  “Please, know that Creed’s actions are not indicative of my people as a whole. This is coming to you from another Aberrant, one who has tried her hardest to save all of you, and all of us. I am not a monster. We are not monsters. We have a genetic propensity toward certain treatable mental illnesses, but that’s it. I risked my life to send you this, please don’t let it be in vain.” Again, she was going to end it there, but she thought of one more thing she might say.

  “And Bradley, if you’re out there, know that I absolutely love you, and I hope you can forgive me for going on this suicide mission. I’m still going to try to make it to you, but if I don’t, know that I never forgot you.”

  There. That seemed like enough. She stopped pressing the button and went back to the door.

  Against all odds, she had done it. She had killed Creed, blown up his weapon storage and informed the Clan Leaders of what he had done and the stronghold that had been formed. Now, all she had to do was get out.

  Oh, and blow the communication tower to high hell.

  She gripped her grenade, squeezing the handle to activate it. Giving the room one last look over, she tossed it in and took to the sky.

  Her wings furled out, feathers growing in waves. She knew that it was dangerous, considering how many gun-happy criminals there were around, but she hoped that the still blazing weapons building was occupying their time.<
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  She made it level with one of the towers when the communication room went. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as the explosion that had previously rocked the facility, but it was enough. She wouldn’t have to worry about them receiving messages or sending any out. With any luck, they wouldn’t even know that she had notified their leaders.

  Of course, there was also the chance that they would flee as soon as they realized their precious leader was dead. She hoped not. She wanted all them to stay locked up where they couldn’t hurt anyone.

  After what seemed like forever, she made it over the wall and into the forest. Her mind almost refused to comprehend it, but it figured it out as she lowered herself to the ground.

  She needed to get farther. She was too close, but her body had hit rock bottom. There was no energy left in her, and she felt drawn out like a limp, overcooked noodle.

  Breathless, she rolled onto her back and looked up at the night sky. It had seemed impossible, but she had done it. Despite all the odds, despite everything that had been stacked against her, she had done it.

  Creed was dead. His army was relatively weaponless, and now they were stranded with no way to communicate with the outside world. Even if they found her and killed her now, her work was done.

  She let her eyes close, and drifted off into the well-earned respite of unconsciousness.

  Chapter Eleven: Heartfelt Reunion

  The first thing she was aware of was that she was moving. How strange, she had been sure she was on the forest floor previously. She should have been feeling the dampness or morning dew, and the soft give of grass below her, but instead she felt a persistent vibration, almost to the point of being a rumble, and warmth coursing through her.

  She couldn’t wake up, however, and stayed hovering at the line between consciousness and slumber. At least she was getting real, true rest, much deeper than anything she had been able to get at either of her prison stints. She didn’t dream, but it was a welcome break. So, she just floated.

  Jaelle couldn’t say how long she hovered in her own unconsciousness. Time took on that slippery aspect again, wiggling this way and that out of her perception. But she didn’t chase it. She just enjoyed her vacation from reality.