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Elijah Walker had been working with the paranormal division of the FBI for only two months before he was relocated to Briarcliff. He hadn’t expected to be using the training he’d received from Quantico for security detail, but he was determined to make the best of it. For almost a year he’d studied all he could about werewolves, vampires, selkies, and banshees. He’d perfected his skills as a sharpshooter and had practiced enough hand to hand combat to be considered the top of his class. Despite his qualifications, he and the other Agents had been overlooked in favor of the Huntsmen who had been partnering with the Feds to corral the paranormals in Briarcliff.
At least, that had been the case before the Huntsmen had all been executed.
According to Agent Benson, the Huntsmen had different goals than the FBI. They’d wanted to kill supernaturals, while the government wanted to capture them. That they could use the deaths of the group for the benefit of the government had just been a bonus.
Their search for supernaturals had started in Briarcliff, but it wouldn’t end here.
There was so much untapped power in the world and if they hoped to harness it all, then they needed to start off with some sort of advantage. The Weres would give them that.
Working as a glorified security guard may have been an insult to his training, but now that the Huntsmen were gone, Elijah could finally see the benefits. No longer was he reduced to watching security footage all day or patrolling the perimeter of the base. Now he was inside, in the holding cells below ground where all the action was. He would finally be allowed to meet his first Werewolf, and the excitement sent his heart racing.
Each cell was nothing more than a cage made of glass. Granted, the glass was strong enough to stand against tornados and bullets, but it was still glass. That was why, in addition to the cells themselves, the entire floor was equipped with a little device that the Huntsmen had been developing for when they’d wanted to keep their captives alive.
The device emitted a high pitched noise that only the Weres could hear. Depending on the key in which the frequency was set, the noise could drive the Weres to do almost anything. Elijah’s new job consisted of finding out which key generated what response. So for the last twenty-four hours he’d been experimenting with various members of Gabriel Evans’s captured pack.
He’d learned the following:
A—Unconsciousness.
A Sharp—A forced shift
B—Uncontrollable violence
B Flat—Fear
C—Hunger
C Sharp—Death
The results had been fascinating and he hadn’t even gone through all the keys yet. He wanted to see how the Weres would behave if he combined notes. He wondered if he could make them eat one another if he combined D minor with B. However, after the last note had killed off a Were who could have easily been mistaken someone’s grandmother, Agents Liam and Benson had told Elijah to take a break.
He was excited to begin again tomorrow. If he could perfect the use of the Huntsmen’s device, then they would no longer have to worry about how they would get the Weres they captured to cooperate with their demands.
Apparently Weres were big on sound. It was how they communicated with one another, and in the case of the Alphas, how they gave their Will, or power, physical manifestation. Elijah had heard stories in which a group of Alphas could howl for a star and bring it crashing down from the heavens. According to legend, they could sing the sun to sleep, the dead to rise, the oceans to walk like giants, and storms to rage across the lands. He wasn’t sure how much of the stories he actually believed, but figured that there must at least be a smidgen of truth to them. Especially considering the amount of funding the division had received in order to capture the Alphas of Briarcliff. Obviously the stories must not have been completely true if his superiors really believed that bulletproof glass was going to hold the infamous Gabriel Evans.
But Elijah supposed that’s where the device came in.
When the facility was locked down at night, it was set to play random notes if any of the Weres stepped from their cells. An agent had to enter his credentials in the pen pads outside of the cell he wished to enter in order to bypass this measure.
In short, nothing was getting out of this place without approval from the higher ups.
Getting in however, was another matter entirely.
It was around 10:00 p.m. when Elijah heard the first alarms go off.
At first he thought it was just another drill. They had them every now and again. It was supposed to prepare them in case the Weres decided to lay siege to the facility. None of the Agents had taken it very seriously though. According to the recon Agent Liam had done, the wolves of Briarcliff did most of their fighting in on Wall Street. They certainly weren’t the masters of the wood that urban legend had made them out to be. In fact, Elijah was pretty sure that as a former boy scout, he possessed more knowledge of how to survive in the outdoors than your average Were.
So while the sound of the alarms weren’t much of a surprise, learning that they were actually under attack certainly was. Unlike some of his fellow agents, he didn’t panic. Instead, he pulled out his standard issue side arm, and looked out across the rows of cells. He wanted the wolves to come. Craved it even. It was one thing to train to fight the supernatural. He wanted to put all that he had learned into practice.
And what better way than to put down the sniveling mutts coming to save their friends?
Chuckling, Elijah Walker turned to make his way up to the first floor, checking to make sure that there was already a silver bullet ready and waiting in the chamber of his gun as he went.