Only me and the dying Lycan left in the freezer room.
His breathing was getting weaker, the wound on his chest still seeping blood. If I didn't do something soon, it wouldn't be long before he became just another corpse in Restricted Zone C-12.
I should have walked away.
A Numbered worker, saving a Lycan? That wasn't courage. That was stupidity.
But the way he'd looked at me just now...
That shock, that disbelief -- it wasn't the way you looked at a stranger.
What had he been trying to say? "You are" -- what?
Three years. Three years since I'd woken up with nothing but a blank where my memories should have been.
And this man in front of me might know something.
I made my decision.
"You'd better be worth the risk."
I drew my thin blade across my own wrist.
Bright red beads of blood welled up, startlingly vivid in the dim freezer room.
I brought my wrist to his cracked lips and let the blood fall, drop by drop.
The first drop.
His body trembled faintly.
The second drop.
A low, guttural whimper rose from his throat -- like a dying beast catching the scent of life.
The third drop.
His eyes snapped open.
In those purple pupils burned a feverish light -- no longer the weakness and haze from before, but a hunger bordering on madness.
The next second --
He seized my wrist.
The grip was terrifyingly strong, nothing a dying man should have been capable of.
"Wait --"
Before I could finish, he'd already pulled my wrist to his mouth. His tongue swept across the wound.
A tingling numbness spread from my wrist through my entire body.
I sucked in a sharp breath and tried to pull free, but I couldn't move.
Not because of his strength.
Because of those eyes.
Purple, slit-pupiled, boring straight into me, blazing with something I couldn't name. Not hunger. Not gratitude. Something more like...
Like someone who'd found a treasure they thought was lost forever.
"Your blood..." His voice was raw and low, threaded with a tremor. "This taste..."
He didn't finish. He just closed his eyes and drank greedily from my wrist.
I felt my consciousness starting to blur.
"The way you're going at it -- are you a Lycan or a vampire?" I tried to yank my hand back. "Keep drinking and I'll be the one who's dead."
He released me instantly, as if scalded.
A flash of panic crossed those purple eyes before they hardened again.
"...Sorry."
His voice was still hoarse, but far more lucid than before. He tried to push himself upright but collapsed back down.
"Don't move." I tore a strip from my work uniform and wrapped it haphazardly around my wrist. "You're badly hurt."
"I know." He closed his eyes, panting. "Your blood... suppressed the toxins for now, but the wounds..."
He didn't finish. A violent coughing fit seized him.
Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
Damn it.
A few mouthfuls of blood weren't going to be enough. Between the toxic gas in his system and the unhealed injuries, his regeneration had completely shut down.
I looked around the room. My gaze landed on the cryo-storage case on the workbench. Inside sat the blue tubes we'd just finished refining, giving off a faint azure glow.
Those were Grimm's shipment. One tube short, and I was dead.
But if I didn't save him, he'd die right now.
And he might know the truth about what lay beyond these walls.
"Roll the dice."
I rushed over, popped the case open, and grabbed one of the ice-cold blue tubes.
"Listen," I said, crouching back down beside him and pulling up his shirt. "This stuff can save your life or end it. It's up to your constitution now."
I didn't hesitate. I injected the high-purity blue gel straight into his body.
The effect was instantaneous.
The moment that blue energy entered him, his body convulsed violently. A visible blue luminescence traced along his veins, spreading through his entire body. Beneath his deathly pale skin, veins bulged to the surface, and his wounds began closing at a staggering rate.
"HRAAAGH --!"
A deep, bestial roar erupted from the depths of his throat.
In that instant, I felt a wave of pressure crash over me.
Ten times stronger than before.
He wasn't an ordinary Lycan.
He was an Alpha.
And an extraordinarily powerful one at that.
A moment later, he shot upright and stared at his own hands in disbelief -- where gashes deep enough to show bone had been, only faint pink marks remained.
"What..." He looked at the empty blue tube in shock, then at me. "What is this?"
"A blue tube." I stepped back, keeping my distance. "Refined from Cyon life essence."
"Impossible." He shook his head. "This level of purity... the chief refiner in Titan City couldn't achieve this."
Titan City?
What was that place?
"Who are you?" He turned sharply, his gaze locking onto my face. "This kind of technique -- where did you --"
His words died mid-sentence.
Those purple eyes fixed on my face, his pupils contracting to pinpoints.
I reached instinctively for my face.
No.
At some point, the grimy bandage covering my right eye had come loose, hanging half off my face.
And beneath it --
A blue eye, clear as starlight.
"...So that's it."
His voice dropped to almost nothing, as if he were speaking to himself.
"No wonder your blood could wake me... no wonder..."
He rose slowly to his feet and walked toward me.
With every step, the Alpha pressure intensified.
My back hit the freezing wall. Nowhere left to go.
"Who are you?" I forced myself to stay on my feet. "Do you know me?"
He stopped in front of me and looked down.
In those purple eyes swirled more emotions than I could read.
"You... don't remember?"
His voice was barely a whisper, laced with an almost imperceptible tremor.
"Remember what?"
He didn't answer.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Three sharp knocks on the door.
Gus's signal.
Someone was coming.
His eyes turned razor-sharp in an instant, his ears twitching slightly.
"Guards. Three of them."
He tore a pendant from his neck -- a fang strung on a silver chain, gleaming faintly in the dark.
"Take this."
He forced the pendant into my palm and closed my fingers tight around it.
His hand was burning hot, like a live coal.
"One blue tube for one promise." He leaned close to my ear, his breath searing. "I will come for you. Stay alive until then."
"You --"
Before I could say anything, he'd already let go of my hand.
A blur of motion, and he vanished like a phantom into the lethal blue-violet haze beyond the freezer room.
With the blue tube's energy coursing through him, the toxic gas was no longer a threat.
Footsteps drawing closer.
I shoved the fang pendant deep into my inner pocket and rewrapped the bandage over my right eye.
"What was that noise in there?" A guard's voice carried through the door. "Sounded like some kind of animal."
"Pressure valve blew!" I yelled back. "These damn Cyons -- can't even stay quiet when they're dead!"
The guard swore under his breath and walked away.
I slumped against the freezing wall, gasping for air.
The cut on my wrist still throbbed dully, and the blood loss had left me dizzy. But what made my stomach drop was the cryo-storage case on the workbench.
I walked over and lifted the lid.
The pale blue glow washed over my face, cold as bone.
Ninety-nine.
Only ninety-nine left.
I stared at the empty slot, and my head filled with a single high-pitched ring.
Grimm wanted a hundred. One short, and he'd throw me into Moloch.
And now there were only two days until delivery.
"Damn it..."
I crouched down and buried my head in my hands.
This was it. Completely, irreversibly screwed.
Even if I processed every last Cyon corpse I had, I couldn't make up that one-tube deficit.
Unless...
My eyes drifted to the rejects -- the waste product, insufficient purity, too pale in color. If I could find some way to boost the purity...
No. Impossible. I didn't have that kind of skill.
The freezer room door swung open and Gus poked his head in.
He'd been standing watch the whole time. When the guards showed up, he must have been scared half to death.
"They gone?" he asked, cautious as a mouse.
"Gone."
Gus let out a long breath, deflating like a punctured balloon, and sank to the floor.
"God... I thought we were dead for sure..." He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and only then did he notice the state of me. "Iris, what happened to your wrist?!"
I looked down at the cloth-wrapped wrist and said nothing.
Gus's gaze traveled from the bloodstain on my wrist to the empty blue tube on the floor.
The color drained from his face.
"No... you didn't..." He scrambled on all fours to the workbench and threw open the storage case lid.
The pale blue glow played across his ashen face.
"Ninety-nine... only ninety-nine..." His voice shook as he wheeled on me. "Iris, you used a blue tube on that Lycan?!"
"What else was I supposed to do?" I leaned against the wall, exhausted. "Let him die in here so Grimm could find the body and toss us both into Moloch?"
"But -- but --" Gus paced in frantic circles. "Grimm wants a hundred! One short and he'll kill us!"
"I know."
"Then what do we do? Two days! How can we possibly --"
"I'll figure something out."
My voice came out calmer than I expected.
Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe it was having been through too much already. Either way, I felt strangely, unnaturally still.
I looked down at my wrist.
The thin blade's cut had already started to scab over.
And the fang pendant against my chest still held the warmth of his palm.
"I will come for you. Stay alive until then."
I didn't know who he was.
Didn't know why he recognized me.
Didn't know what this "Titan City" was.
But one thing I knew with absolute certainty.
Before he came back, I could not die.
No matter what it cost.
Day 1,306.
I owed Grimm one blue tube, and I'd received a Lycan's promise.
And in two days, the reckoning would come.