Page 245 of Secret Shifters Next Door

It looked that way. The feed was black and white, and started from a pretty far distance, but the toy factory was easily visible. The drone swooped in until it hovered just above the building. There was a big sky light on the roof that let light in. The telephoto lens on the drone zoomed in. It felt like we wereright there. Even though the glass was cloudy, we could make something out.

Blayne walked up to the screen and pointed. “What the hell is that? Beds?”

The video ended before we could get a better visual. The next video file was in color. From the look of it, Chris had somehow managed to infiltrate the building himself. The video was shaky, and I could hear his hushed breathing through the speakers. He was huddled behind what looked like a huge number of gas canisters and cardboard boxes. He focused the camera through a gap, and we finally got a good look at what the drone had shown.

“What the fuck?” Steff breathed.

Gurneys lined the back wall, and over a dozen people were strapped to the beds. Some were unconscious, others actively struggled against the leather straps that held them down, and the rest were motionless. Several people who looked like they were dressed as doctors moved between the patients.

A man in glasses stepped up to one of the beds and looked at a younger man who was holding an audio recorder.

“This is Doctor Carter Brenden. This is attempt four-thirty-six. Subject A is a twenty-four-year-old wolf shifter, taken from a compound in New Hampshire. Subject B is a thirty-nine-year-old female human, captured at a homeless camp outside Las Vegas. We will begin.”

The man pulled a hypodermic needle from his coat and plunged the needle into the arm of the young wolf shifter. The shifter didn’t move, instead he stared at the blood being pulled from his arm in horror and fear. After the needle was filled, the doctor walked over to the bed with the female patient. She was trying to sink back into her bed as though that could protect her.

“What the fuck are they doing?” I whispered. They’d captured shifters as well as humans? I thought they were trying to protect humans from shifters. This made no sense at all.

The doctor stood above the woman, the needle hovering over her arm. He glanced back at his assistant. “Time is three-seventeen a.m. Blood insertion begins now. Approximately ten milliliters.”

Without another word, he shoved the needle into a vein in her arm and slammed the plunger home. All the blood vanished from the needle into the woman. The doctor stepped back and crossed his arms, watching. The woman groaned and tugged at her bonds for several seconds before her back suddenly arched. Her stomach and hips rose toward the ceiling so high it looked like her back was going to break. My eyes went wide as I watched the horror show before me.

Her hips slammed back down onto the bed, and her whole body seemed to convulse. The scream that erupted from her lips was one of agony and pain I couldn’t even imagine. The scream cut off, and she started to have some kind of seizure, her entire body vibrating in pain. Whitish-yellow foam started to erupt from between her lips. After what felt like forever, she finally, blessedly, went still. The sound of a heart monitor flatlining could be heard. I felt sick watching what was happening.

“Son of a bitch,” Doctor Brenden hissed. “Time of death…three-twenty a.m.”

The assistant clicked off the recorder and approached Brenden. “Should we try spinal fluid or semen instead? Blood is obviously not going to work.”

Brenden spun on the assistant. “You think when I tell you to think. Understand? But…we haven’t tried sexual contact yet. It’s known that humans and shifters have sexual intercourse, but maybe if there was a co-mingling of blood during the sex act?” Brenden shrugged. “Get that scheduled. We’ll need a supply of Sildenafil for the men. I doubt many will be able to get erect given the current living conditions. We’ll shoot for starting the trial next week.”

We sat in horror, listening to the casual way the two men were discussing forced sexual relations as part of some kind of experiment. The video ended again, and another drone shot took its place. This time the drone zoomed past the factory into the forests beyond. It was incredibly high, probably so Chris could be sure they didn’t hear the hum of the rotor blades.

A mile or so from the factory, an opening in the trees became visible. The camera zoomed in again, and we could see a ring of fencing around the clearing topped with razor wire. Five feet within that ring was a ten-foot-tall wooden privacy fence. No one who accidentally stumbled upon the location would be able to see what was going on within. Inside the ring, we could see at least two dozen hunters standing ready at one end of the circle. On the opposite side were several men and women, all being held back by ropes.

I could see where this was going before the action even started. As though the ropes were cut by some remote-controlled device, the shifters rushed the hunters. Strangely only a few of them shifted. After a skirmish of a few minutes, all the shifters were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. One hunter had been killed, his head taken almost completely off by the swing of a bear shifter’s paw.

I scrolled through multiple other videos and pictures––each one as horrifying as the last. This must have been how the soldiers felt when they first found the concentration camps in World War Two. The second to last video was again from inside the facility.

Chris was one brave son of a bitch.

A massive feral wolf shifter was chained to the wall. He was snarling and snapping. The same doctor from before approached, and with the help of two others, they held the shifter’s muzzle down and extracted blood out of him. We watched as he tried the same experiment as before on a humanwho looked to be in his forties. The same thing happened––convulsions, seizure, foaming at the mouth, then death.

From the far side of the room, a new voice came on the video. “So…another failure?”

Brenden nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so, sir.”

“So there’s no way to give my team the strength and speed of a shifter. That’s what we’re saying?” We watched as Antonio walked into the frame.

Brenden gestured toward the shifter, who was still struggling against his bonds. “We don’t know that for sure. As I told you, we still have some copulation experiments we need to go through. One of the other techs even mentioned trying to get the humans to eat parts of the shifters. Kill and butcher, then feed?—”

“Fine, fine, keep trying. If my best soldiers can’t take down a four-man pack, there’s no hope of going against the bigger clans later on.”

“We are running low on human subjects, sir. What would you like to do on that front?”

Antonio waved a hand. “I told you the other day. Human chaff can always be found. Send more men out to the homeless camps, nursing homes, orphanages.”

“Orphanages? Sir, I don’t know that children will provide any different?—”

“Do your fucking job!” Antonio bellowed. “Or you’ll find yourself without one.” He stepped forward and shoved a finger into the doctor’s chest. “And if you don’t work for me anymore, you become a loose end. You know what I do with loose ends, don’t you, doctor?”

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