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The world was a symphony of red.
There was no thought, no memory, no Jack Russell. There was only hunger, and rage, and the blinding, silver-white energy that fed both. The beast was a raw nerve, exposed to the universe, and every photon of that amplified moonlight was a lash of pure agony and ecstasy.
It surged forward on a tide of muscle and instinct. The ground, a neatly manicured lawn, tore under its claws. The air, thick with the ozone-stink of the machine, was ripped by a roar that was the antithesis of human speech.
A figure stood in its path. A small, two-legged thing holding a sharp, metallic stick. The thing shouted a word. A name. It was a sound that meant nothing. The beast swatted the stick away, the metal shrieking as it bent. A backhanded blow sent the small thing flying into a cluster of bushes. It was an obstacle removed, not a threat eliminated. The primary threat, the source of the painful/pleasurable light, was the white building. The thing that had caused the light was standing at its entrance.
The beast charged.
It was a trajectory of pure, destructive physics. A bench was splintered. A decorative marble planter was reduced to gravel. The thing at the entrance, the one in the white coat, did not run. It watched, its face a mask of cold fascination, and raised the glowing device in its hand again.
Another wave of energy hit.
This one was different. It wasn't a blanket of power; it was a scalpel. A high-frequency pulse that drilled directly into the beast's skull. The roar turned into a yelp of confused pain. The charge faltered. The beast stumbled, shaking its massive head, trying to dislodge the invisible needle in its brain. The raw, chaotic rage was being forced into a channel, focused not on mindless destruction, but on a single, implanted command.
The beast's glowing eyes, swimming with pain and confusion, swiveled away from Dr. Thorne and back towards the bushes where the small, two-legged thing was now struggling to its feet.
Elsa Bloodstone spat out a mouthful of dirt and leaves, her ribs screaming in protest. She saw the Werewolf—no, not the Werewolf, not Jack—the beast turn towards her. Its earlier charge had been mindless, a force of nature she could predict and evade. Now, its movement was different. Its head was cocked, its gaze focused with a terrifying, singular purpose. On her.
"Ah, a more suitable test," Thorne's voice echoed from the steps. "Subject demonstrates high susceptibility to command frequency. Aggression is being successfully redirected."
"Jack, fight it!" Elsa yelled, scrambling for her rune-etched rifle. She knew he couldn't hear her. The man was gone. But some part of her, some stubborn, hopeful part, had to try.
The beast lunged. It wasn't a blind charge this time. It was a pounce, calculated and horrifyingly fast, claws extended to eviscerate.
Elsa was faster. She dove sideways, the claws ripping through the air where her neck had been. She rolled, came up firing. Non-lethal rounds, high-impact concussive force. They slammed into the beast's chest with dull thumps. It staggered, snarling, more annoyed than injured. The armor-like fur and superhuman durability shrugged off the blows.
It was on her again in an instant. There was no finesse, no strategy in its attacks—just overwhelming, relentless power driven by a forced directive. She parried a claw swipe with the stock of her rifle, the impact numbing her entire arm. She was a master hunter, but she was built to hunt monsters, not wrestle them.
Backed against a tree, she had a split second to make a choice. Lethal force, or die.
Her finger hesitated on the selector switch. "Don't you dare, Jack," she muttered, a desperate plea. "Don't make me do this."
The beast reared back for a final, killing blow.
And froze.
A tremor ran through its massive frame. The arm poised to strike began to shake. A low, guttural sound, different from the mindless roars, rumbled in its chest. It was a sound of conflict.
Deep within the red haze, a spark had flared.
It wasn't a memory. It was a sensation. The scent of old paper and dust. The weight of a promise made to a dying woman. The sound of a name, shouted in a voice that was familiar, that was… ally.
The command was a fire in its skull. But the spark was a shield.
The beast's head thrashed side to side, a violent internal war written in every straining muscle. Its glowing eyes flickered, the feral yellow dimming for a microsecond, revealing a flash of tortured, human brown.
"His will is remarkable!" Thorne's voice was full of clinical awe from his safe vantage point. "The subject is actively resisting the imperative! The cognitive dissonance is causing physical distress!"
With a final, shuddering convulsion, the beast turned away from Elsa. The implanted command to DESTROY had been overwritten by a deeper, more fundamental imperative: PROTECT. It didn't understand why. It only knew that harming this small, two-legged thing was wrong.
Its rage, denied its primary target, needed a new outlet. Its head, now clear of the conflicting signals, swiveled back to the source of its pain. To the man in the white coat with the glowing device.
Dr. Thorne's expression of fascination finally cracked, replaced by a flicker of alarm. He frantically mashed the button on his remote.
The scalpel-like pain lanced into the beast's brain again.
This time, the beast didn't falter. This time, the pain was just fuel. It embraced the agony, let it burn away the last vestiges of confusion. The spark of Jack Russell had shown it the way. The command was the problem. The man giving the command was the enemy.
It threw back its head and howled—a sound that was no longer one of mindless rage, but of pure, focused vengeance. It was a sound that stripped away every pretense of civilization from the hills of Griffith Park. It was the sound of the ancient predator, challenged.
Then, it charged. Not at Elsa, but straight up the steps toward Dr. Aris Thorne.
This charge was different from the first. It wasn't a blind rampage. It was a missile. A thing of singular, deadly purpose.
Thorne's eyes widened. He turned to run, to flee back into the dark maw of the Observatory.
He was too slow.
A massive, clawed hand closed around the leg of his expensive suit trousers just as he crossed the threshold. There was a sickening tear of fabric and a cry of terror as he was dragged backward, out of the building and into the night, the glowing remote skittering from his grasp across the marble steps.
The beast stood over him, its hot, rank breath washing over Thorne's face. Saliva, thick and acidic, dripped from its jowls onto his lab coat, sizzling as it burned through the fabric. The glowing yellow eyes held no humanity, no mercy. Only the cold, final judgment of the wild.
It was no longer a subject. It was the consequence.
The world had narrowed to a single point of terror: the dripping fangs inches from his face. Dr. Aris Thorne's clinical curiosity had evaporated, replaced by the primal, bowel-loosening fear of prey. He scrambled backward, his hands slipping on the smooth marble, a high-pitched whimper escaping his lips.
"St-subject! Stand down!" he stammered, the authority of command utterly gone from his voice. "I am your controller!"
The beast's only response was a low, continuous growl that vibrated deep in its chest, a sound that promised dismemberment. It advanced, a step for every frantic shuffle Thorne made, herding him away from the safety of the Observatory doors.
"Jack! No!"
Elsa's voice cut through the night, sharp and commanding. She was on her feet, her rifle aimed, but her finger was off the trigger. She saw the beast poised for the kill, but she also saw the man who was still trapped inside it. Killing Thorne wouldn't bring Jack back; it would only bury him deeper under a layer of bloodguilt.
The beast's head twitched at the sound of her voice, a flicker of that internal war returning. The growl stuttered.
It was the opening Thorne needed. His hand, scrabbling blindly behind him, found what he was searching for: the fallen remote. His fingers closed around it, and a desperate, manic light returned to his eyes. He didn't press the command button. Instead, his thumb slammed down on a different control.
A high-pitched whine, barely audible to human ears, erupted from the device. But to the beast's hyper-acute senses, it was a shrieking siren directly inside its skull.
It recoiled with a pained yelp, clawing at its own head. The distraction was complete.
Thorne didn't waste the opportunity. He scrambled to his feet and bolted, not back into the Observatory, but around the side of the building, disappearing into the deeper shadows of the colonnade.
The beast, enraged and in pain, made to follow.
"That's enough!" Elsa shouted.
This time, she didn't hesitate. She fired. Not a concussive round, but a specialized cartridge that burst at the Werewolf's feet, releasing a thick, expanding cloud of powdered silver.
It was not a lethal dose—not even close. But it was pure, concentrated agony for a supernatural creature. The beast howled as the microscopic particles touched its fur and seeped into its nostrils, the mystical poison burning like a million tiny needles. It was the ultimate deterrent, a pain so exquisite it could break through even the most feral rage.
The beast staggered back, swiping at its muzzle, its focus entirely broken. The red haze of its fury was diluted by the overwhelming, instinctual need to escape the silver.
It turned and fled, a massive, dark shape crashing through the ornamental shrubbery and vanishing into the wilder stretches of the park, its pained whines echoing faintly in the sudden quiet.
Elsa lowered her rifle, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The immediate threat was over. But the aftermath was a disaster.
Thorne was gone. The source of the lunar energy was still active inside the Observatory. And Jack was out there, somewhere, wounded, feral, and lost to the night.
She keyed the comms unit on her wrist. "Morbius. Are you monitoring?"
A dry, staticky voice responded. "The energy spike was… significant. I take it Mr. Russell's evening took a turn for the worse."
"That's one way to put it," Elsa said, striding toward the Observatory entrance, her rifle at the ready. "Thorne got away. Jack's gone feral and on the run. I'm proceeding inside to find the source. I need you to find Jack. Track him. Contain him if you can. But do not hurt him."
There was a pause on the other end. "A tall order, even for a friend. The full moon is in two days. His instincts will be at their peak. He will not be… receptive."
"I know," Elsa said, her voice grim as she stepped over the threshold into the pulsating, silver-lit darkness of the Observatory. "But he's our best weapon against whatever this is. We need him. And right now, he needs us to pull him back from the edge before he does something we all regret."
---
Miles away, in a sterile, hidden command center, Dr. Aris Thorne slumped into a chair, his hands still shaking. He pulled off his torn and acid-burned lab coat, his mind already racing past the fear, back to the data.
He called up the footage from his body cam, watching the Werewolf's resistance, its flicker of human consciousness, its final, terrifying focus.
He wasn't disappointed. He was exhilarated.
He opened a secure line. The screen resolved into the silhouette of a man sitting in a dark office.
"The field test was a success," Thorne said, his voice steadying with professional pride. "The Lunar Resonator performs beyond projections. It can indeed trigger and amplify primal transformation. More importantly, we confirmed the subject's susceptibility to targeted command frequencies."
The silhouette didn't move. "And the subject itself?"
"Remarkable," Thorne breathed, a fanatical gleam in his eye. "His will is a fascinating variable. He resisted a direct imperative. But that just means we need a stronger signal. A more powerful catalyst."
He pulled up a new schematic on his screen. It showed a device similar to the one in the Observatory, but an order of magnitude larger.
"The Los Angeles test was merely phase one. The data we've collected is invaluable. It confirms that Jack Russell's lycanthropic gene is the key. It's the Rosetta Stone for understanding controlled transformation."
He leaned forward, his reflection glaring back from the dark screen.
"We don't just need to study him, sir. We need to acquire him. With the primary subject in our custody, phase two can begin. We won't just be creating mindless ferals. We will be building an army of obedient super-soldiers. And Jack Russell will be their template."
He smiled, the last of his fear gone, replaced by the cold certainty of a man who saw living beings as components in a grand design.
"The Alpha," he said, "must be captured."
To Be Continue...