21

You step forward, positioning yourself between Sonoma and the warden. "Sonoma, you don't have to do this! He's helpless!"

"You smell like you want a fight. Get out of my way, boy," Sonoma growls. "I'm not in the mood for this shit. You saw what he did to me—he has to pay!"

"I can't let you do that," you growl, splaying your claws. "He's too valuable to us. We can use him for the bio-scanner on the door and as a hostage!"

"All we need is his eye, just like Maker said. You have one second to get out of my way."

You strike first, dashing in and ducking Sonoma's wild retaliation as you push her away from the warden, reaching a long lupine leg behind hers to knock her back to the ground. She quickly realizes what you're trying to do, however, and uses your own momentum against you, scooping up your leg and throwing you back where you land in a heap between a cluster of former prisoners. I'm too slow, you think to yourself. I'll need more training before I'm able to take on the likes of her in a fair fight.

The packleader advances slowly, dragging her claws against each other with a ragged, almost metallic rasp. Washburn glares up at her with baleful eyes, hateful to the last. Done wasting time, Sonoma lashes out like a whip-crack, raking the warden's left side and leaving five weeping gashes. Even now the prisoner doesn't cry out—what he does do instead astonishes everyone.

Washburn rolls backward into a kneeling position a heartbeat after the claws pierce his side, his bonds now cut along with his flesh. His right hand leaps down to his unwounded hip and comes back up with his revolver. He cocks and fires in the time it takes you to blink in surprise, crying out in exaltation as Sonoma's left eye blossoms with a flower of crimson and dark, viscous fluids. She howls piercingly, staggering back, one hand clutching at a cavernous ruin that even a werewolf would never be able to fully heal.

"You bastard!" she cries, falling to the floor in an uncoordinated heap before coming up to her knees, plastered with concrete dust. "I'll fucking kill—"

A second sharp report echoes through the abandoned construction site and you lift your eyes from Sonoma to see Maker standing over the kneeling warden, a small handgun held extended in her right hand. Washburn falls forward into a pool of his own blood, and for a shocked moment all you can think of is how small the hole in the back of his skull is.

It all happened in a matter of seconds, and you unfreeze at the same moment everyone else does.

I rush over to Sonoma to help her. She has to be okay—we need her!

I accost Maker: why didn't she search the warden for weapons?

I accost Maker: how could she execute Washburn from behind like that? Sonoma deserved her revenge!

I accost Maker: how could she execute Washburn from behind like that? That was cold-blooded murder!

Next

Maker titters with wry amusement as she scans your face. "Oh," she pauses, "you were being serious? He just shot Sonoma in the eye. Any of us could have been next. That wasn't murder, it was self-defense."

Sonoma roars with fury when she realizes Washburn is dead, and her face contorts into a ghastly horror. Her body has attempted to heal the damage, but her eye is gone, leaving only a shadowed hole plastered with patches of skin over visible fragments of skull. "He was mine to kill! Mine!" She lunges and claws at Maker, rage clouding her judgment.

Maker dodges Sonoma's lumbering attack with ease, stepping to the side disdainfully. "Would you rather I had simply left him to finish you off while you were on the ground? That was sloppy work, Sonoma. I thought better of you than that."

"Ki-kill you," the wounded packleader lashes out again, but this time Maker ducks the claw and sweeps a leg out, knocking Sonoma to the floor. Several wolves gasp. Few werewolves in wolf form could knock Sonoma over, even in her current condition, much less a wolf in human form. You make a mental note to avoid getting on Maker's bad side.

"Get your act together," Maker says, turning her back on the fallen wolf without a second thought. She points at you. "You. Dig the warden's eye out with your claws. Be careful not to pierce the eye itself."

You blink. "What?"

"I mean," Bly says hesitantly, "couldn't we just lift him up to the scanner?"

"We don't know for sure if there are more barriers ahead," Maker says dismissively. "We need to take the eye. Besides—there's a certain poetic justice to it, don't you think?"

"You do it then," Bly says, clearly sick and tired of Maker's attitude.

Maker spreads her human fingers. "With these?"

"Change then," Bly says. "Why are you in human form anyway?"

"I'm on a very specific cocktail of enhancement drugs right now. If I were to give rein to my beast, you'd all be in danger. I can take care of myself."

We're wasting time. I claw out the warden's eye.

I can't do it. I ask Bly to take the eye.

I refuse, and suggest Bly refuse too.

Next

"Uggh." Maker rolls her eyes. "Children. I'm working with bloody children." She kneels down next to the warden and riffles through his pockets, eventually turning up a swiss army knife. "Better than nothing," she mutters as she gets to work removing the fragile jelly-like eyeball out of its socket. Eye in hand, Maker strolls casually past Sonoma as she groans on the floor, clutching the hole where her own eye had been before Washburn shot it out. When she reaches the scanner, Maker fiddles with the eye, making sure the iris is pointed forward. The scanner issues a sharp beep and something heavy clunks within the wall. Soon after, the door slides open with a hiss of air.

"I can't believe that worked," Inferi says as she and Havok help Sonoma to her feet.

"Biometrics aren't as secure as people believe they are," Maker says as the caravan of wolves starts marching through the door into the passage beyond. "Imagine you had a password for your computer that could never be changed, and you wrote it on a note stuck to your forehead. Seems rather foolish, yes? At our current levels of manufacturing, the scanner can't tell if the iris is attached to a live body or not. Once removed, an eye can work for almost a day before degeneration renders it useless."

Bly gives you a look and mouths the words, "What the fuck?"

Onward to Freedom