6 Chapter 5

At sunrise, 391 woke. She looked along the long line of beds pressed against the walls of the barrack. Nineteen of her sisters shared the space with her. Most were awake but, like herself, all remained in their beds knowing better than to rise before the lights came on.

The three who were sick slept restlessly. The scent of their illness was sharp and held the ghost of the medicines the doctors had used on them.

The room greyed as the rising sunlight came through the high narrow window on one wall, shedding the shadows of the bedheads across the floor like the bars on cages.

The lights overhead came on, and the automatic lock on the door to the barrack released. The women rose and made their beds, before queuing at the other end of the barrack to use the bathroom, wash, and change clothing.

They waited by their beds until the last woman was done and then walked in two lines out the double doors at the opposite end, into a hallway filling with other women in grey tracksuit pants and white t-shirts.

549 was next to 391 and did not look well.

The hallway led into a mess hall, and the women queued again waiting for the tables to clear. A human guard stood just inside the door where the trays were kept and scanned each woman as she paused to collect a tray.

The queue did the ring of the bain-maries, where humans in hairnets, gloves and masks slapped containers onto their trays – a bowl of oatmeal with protein powder mixed through, a bowl of preserved fruit, a slice of cold cooked bread, a piece of red meat, and a bottle of water.

The silence was broken only by the few human voices from behind the bain-maries, and the scrape of utensils against the paper. 391 and her sisters knew better than to speak but 391 kept a watch over 549 and slipped her bowl of fruit to her.

They queued again as they left the mess hall, stacking the used trays, bowls, and utensils on a table as they passed. One barrack of sisters stayed to do the dishes from the meal, another went down the hall to where stairs led to the laundry room. 391 s barrack followed the yellow line painted on the concrete floor towards the laboratories.

There were ten beds and 391 watched her sisters undress and get onto the beds whilst the doctors, hidden behind bio-suits, facemasks and gloves took blood and performed ultrasounds. The doctors did not speak to her sisters unless it was to order them to move, the Lycan females were just walking resources to the doctors 391 thought watching as they examined 549.

"This one is running a temperature," the doctor said to another. 391 met 549 s frightened eyes and nodded reassuringly although she knew there was nothing that the pack could do to protect her if the doctors decided to terminate the experiment. Her helplessness was a sour taste in her mouth, an uneasiness in her mid-chest. "Designation 549."

"What is she on?"

"The new batch of fertilization medication, experiment XI3."

"What others are on that?"

"From Barracks A, 823 and 231."

"Let s see if all three have had a bad reaction and bring in the subjects from the other barracks. We might have to pull XI3 until we find out what is causing the reaction."

"Hmm. We could sterilize these ones, sell them off as playthings. Money is getting tight, and the heat is on. There is more money in making bodies to f-k than soldiers to die, as it is."

"We only have one hundred and ninety-five fertile females," the other doctor was dubious. "If we sell this batch, it will be another five years until the young ones mature enough to harvest from."

"The way Thornton Experimental has been blacklisted by the planetary government, in five years we will be cooling our heels in prison alongside Adriana if we don t find a quick payday and get the f-k out."

"You think?" The two doctors regarded the female on the medical bed before them. "Is there a market for them?"

"Young, attractive, exotic females trained not to fight back? There s always a market for that."

At midday the Lycan females queued again and returned to the mess hall to eat their meal. Strips of almost raw meat, uncooked vegetables, fresh fruit slices, and more water.

After the meal the women were led out to the runs for exercise. As she ran around the concrete square that made up the exercise yard, 391 could see in the distance the other buildings which housed other sisters.

Two hundred paces, two hundred and ten, two hundred, two hundred and ten, their running pace was set by the slowest in their group as they sought to cover and compensate for her illness. Watching the same four women in front of her, their steps almost entirely synced to the point that 391 imagined that they shared the same heartbeat, the same breath.

The sunlight was warm against her skin, catching in the darkness of her hair, and tender blades of green spiked through the cracks of the pavement. One cluster of green tangled in the chain mesh of the exercise yard, and a fragile white flower tracked the sun with its golden face.

The white t-shirt that 391 wore attracted flies, and the slow pace gave them the opportunity to cluster and annoy. She shrugged her shoulders to dislodge them and blew out sharply through her nose as they rose around her in order to prevent them from being inhaled.

"Speed it up you lazy b-tches," the guard yelled at them, striking his baton against the chain mesh fence. "F-king useless f-king dogs," he said to his companion, who chuckled and spat onto the pavement.

She could scale the fence, she thought, faster than it would take them to draw their guns, but if their bullets were well enough placed to pass through the diamonds between the metal links, she did not possess the speed to out-run a bullet, nor the exo-skeleton to withstand its bite.

Beside which, her sisters who were too ill from the medicines the doctors gave them would not be able to keep up, and they were pack. A b-tch did not leave a pack sister behind.

And so, she ran the laps of the exercise yard at a pace slower than she would have liked to have run and did not climb the fence that posed such a frail barrier between her and freedom. And she laid still later that night when the night guard let himself into the barracks and selected her cot, whilst he stripped her trousers off her legs and forced his c-ck into her, blowing breath scented with onions and coffee over her face as he grunted and groaned until he came into the plastic sheath that they all wore when they raped.

As he laughed and squeezed her tender breasts, she felt her claws tear the bedding, and she imagined, for one short, glorious moment, that it was his flesh.