Fur, Cloak and Dagger (Team Greywolf 4)

Bolton laughed. “Long enough.”

Evasive. Fine, I’ll figure it out on my own. “Either way, it’s quite impressive. Who knew I’d find a lab like this in the middle of the ocean?” Did he carry out werewolf experiments here? Was this the level four biosafety lab that created biological weapons? Certainly not a place he’d share with visiting scientists. Odd, could his lab be related to the more than a dozen biotech scientists who’d gone missing over the last five years?

He opened another door labeled Animal Lab. “Here we keep other chimera possibilities.” Emma entered and stared at cages of animals from dogs to primates and even birds of prey.

“Come, let me introduce you to some special men.”

“The men you want Boris to join?”

“Yes. Our super soldiers.”

“Are you serious? Have you really injected these men with some sort of retrovirus?”

“I have, and trust me, they are the next evolutionary step.”

They walked down a long hallway toward a glass elevator and entered. “Third floor,” he said.

The voice activated elevator proceeded and she glanced at the view of the lab and outer atrium. Paradise or Frankenstein’s nightmare? A race of Frankenwolves?

The doors opened. “Here we are.”

This area wasn’t set up like the biotech lab on the first floor. It reminded her more of a law office. In the far back was a lounge area. Two bulky men in black uniforms sat having drinks.

“Ed, Lee, this is Dr. Jane Walker.”

They nodded. “Ma’am.”

The men were brawny with the easy-going confidence of Special Forces. Almost like lycans. “Hey.”

“Ed and Lee are super soldiers.”

A hint about their new nature? She smiled. “I don’t doubt it.”

“These men took the SERV chimera drug.”

“You mean HERV?” She referred to the rare human endogenous retrovirus he found in a few of the wolves’ genome.

They sat in a booth, close to the bar where his men sat. “Actually, my partner named the bioengineered drug, Stallo’s Endogenous Retrovirus.”

Coldness chilled her core. No one but lycans knew about the werewolf’s ancestor, a powerful wizard and the first partial werewolf, Stallo. She kept her poker face. “Is Stallo one of your scientists?”

“No. Apparently, the retrovirus was part of his human genome, millennia ago.”

“I don’t understand. How do you even know of such a man?” There wasn’t a doubt. His partner was either a werewolf or a human such as Svetlana, mate of the criminal werewolf.

“We don’t know how it happened, but this so called wizard took something. Perhaps some radioactive isotope and transformed himself into a werewolf.”

Knowing the answer, she turned and did a double take at the two men who sat nursing their drinks. “So these men are now…genetically modified to their very DNA?”

“Yes. They are, for all intents and purposes, werewolves.”

“You are joking, right?”

“No. I am not,” said Bolton.

“That’s impossible.” Lycan society had kept their kind a secret for so long, what would they do now? This would start a war.

“On the contrary, what we discovered is a breakthrough