Chapter 7: Escape Route
The silence after Buck’s roar felt heavier, more charged. The Colonel watched the data streams on his tablet, the spikes in vitals, the tremor sensors in the slab registering even through the restraints. He chewed the inside of his cheek, a habit he reserved for pivotal moments.
“Prep the bird,” he said, not looking up at his second-in-command. “We’re relocating to Site Bravo. Bring Dr. Vance, Petrović, and the core analytics team. Everyone else stays. Maintain the feed.”
“And the ancillary subjects, sir? In Holding Cell Three.”
The Colonel slid the tablet into his briefcase, the click of the latch unnaturally loud in the command center. He considered the question as he would a chess move. He saw no further utility in them as leverage; the beast’s concern was already established, and their presence was becoming a distracting variable. But simply leaving them locked up was… wasteful. An untested variable.
“Unlock their door on your way to the helipad,” he said, pulling on his leather gloves. “Remotely. Don’t announce it. Let’s see what initiative they have.”
“Sir?”
“A final contingency test. If they’re clever enough to find him, and he’s motivated enough by their presence… the resulting data could be invaluable. If they’re caught, it changes nothing. We’ll be airborne.”
Five minutes later, the Colonel’s helicopter lifted into a steel-gray sky. As it banked away from the complex, a silent electronic signal tripped the magnetic lock on a heavy door deep in the sublevels.
Inside the bare concrete room, Finn was pacing a trench in the floor. “I swear to god, if the next meal is that beige sludge again, I’m staging a hunger strike. My skin is begging for a serum.”
Jesse sat against the wall, knees up, silently tracing patterns in the dust on the floor. Tommy was doing push-ups, the steady rhythm the only thing keeping the panic at bay. The sudden, resonant clunk of the door’s mechanism disengaging made all three freeze.
Tommy rose to his feet, slowly. Finn stopped mid-stride. Jesse peered over his knees.
The door was now slightly ajar, a sliver of harsh fluorescent light cutting across their floor.
“That’s new,” Tommy whispered.
“Is it a trick?” Jesse asked, his voice low. “Are they coming in?”
They waited. No bootsteps, no voices. Just the distant, ever-present hum of the facility.
Finn crept to the door, pressed his eye to the crack. “Hallway’s empty. I don’t see anyone.”
“Could be a test,” Jesse said, but he was already getting up, a desperate hope flickering in his eyes.
“Test or not, it’s our only ‘get out of jail free’ card in, like, days,” Finn hissed. “I’m not waiting around to see if they brought better shampoo. I’m going.”
He pushed the door. It swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. The corridor stretched in both directions, deserted.
That was all the convincing Tommy and Jesse needed. They slipped out, moving as one unit. They had no plan, no map, only a shared, magnetic pull toward where they knew Buck must be. The memory of his roar, that animalistic sound of rage and pain they’d heard muffled through vents and walls, was their compass.
They moved like ghosts, sticking to shadows, flinching at every distant echo. They passed empty labs with screens still glowing, bypassed a break room where two bored-looking soldiers scrolled on phones. Jesse’s librarian mind catalogued turns, counted doors. Tommy’s bartender instincts read the sounds of the place, listening for the shift change, the pattern of patrols. Finn just moved with a fierce, silent determination, his usual flamboyance replaced by a sharp, feral focus.
Then they found the central chamber. It was unmistakable. The vast, cavernous space, the catwalks, the cold, recycled air. And in the center, under the blinding lights, was the slab. And on it…
“Holy shit,” Tommy breathed.
Buck was a mountain of flesh and hair and restraint. He seemed even bigger than they remembered, dwarfing the machinery around him. He had his head turned away, eyes shut, his massive chest rising and falling in a slow, defeated rhythm.
Finn didn’t hesitate. He broke from the shadow of the doorway and ran, his sneakers slapping softly on the concrete. “Buck! Buck, you colossal bastard, look at you!”
Buck’s eyes flew open. He turned his head, and the transformation on his face was instantaneous. The grim lines of pain and resignation shattered, replaced by a disbelieving joy so raw it made Jesse’s throat tighten. A grin split his bearded face.
“Guys? Finn? Tommy, Jesse—you’re here. You’re okay?” His voice boomed, but it was soft, layered with worry. “Are you eating? They feeding you? Are you warm? Did they hurt you?”
“We’re fine, Buck, we’re fine,” Tommy said, reaching the slab first. He had to crane his neck to look up at Buck’s face. “Little bored. Miss your cooking. More importantly, what the hell have they been doing to you?”
Buck’s smile faltered. “Tests. Lots of tests. Needles. Drills. They…” He shook his head, the chains clinking. “They’re starving me. Calling me ‘beast’. Saying I could stand to lose weight.” He tried to say it lightly, but the hurt seeped through.
“They what?” Finn’s voice scaled up. He was circling the slab now, his eyes taking in the thick manacles, the embedded needles, the tray that smelled of stale, cold slop. “Okay, no. We are getting you out of this medieval crap right now. Jesse, you’re the smart one. Find the ‘off’ switch.”
Jesse was already moving, his hands running along the base of the metal pedestal. “There’s got to be a control panel, a release mechanism…”
Tommy, meanwhile, stepped close to Buck’s restrained feet. They were each the size of Tommy’s torso. He placed a hand gently on the arch of Buck’s right foot, his thumb rubbing a soothing circle over the coarse hair. “We’re here, big guy. We’ve got you.”
The physical contact, after days of nothing but cold metal and latex gloves, was an electric shock of solace. Buck let out a shuddering sigh, some of the terrifying tension leaching from his frame.
Finn had circled to the head of the slab. He was looking up, past Buck’s barrel chest, his gaze traveling down the vast landscape of Buck’s body, over the pronounced swell of his belly, and lower, to the pronounced, massive bulge straining against the thin material of the medical gown. Finn blinked, then a slow, impressed smile curved under his mustache. He let out a low, appreciative whistle.
“You know, I always thought you were packing serious heat, Buckaroo,” Finn said, his voice a mix of awe and pure, unadulterated Finn. “But this? This is a whole new tier of cathedral. God damn.”
Buck huffed a laugh, a genuine one, color rising on his cheeks. “Finn, not now—”
“I’m just appreciating the architecture! It’s—”
Clang. A heavy door slammed open on the far side of the chamber. A squad of six soldiers, rifles raised, poured in.
“Freeze! Step away from the subject!”
The moment shattered.
“Don’t hurt them!” Buck roared, straining forward. “Leave them alone!”
It was chaos. Tommy spun, putting himself between the soldiers and Jesse, who was frantically prying at a metal panel. Two soldiers descended on Tommy. He was strong, but they were trained. A tackle took his legs out. He hit the ground with a grunt, and a knee slammed onto the back of his neck, grinding his face into the concrete. He gasped, choking.
Jesse cried out as his arms were wrenched behind his back, a soldier twisting them up high and painful. He went limp, sweat beading on his forehead.
Finn didn’t freeze. He saw Tommy go down, saw Jesse captured, and something in him snapped. “Get the fuck off them!” he screamed, and launched himself at the nearest soldier, nails aiming for eyes.
The soldier reacted with brutal efficiency. He didn’t use his rifle. He reversed it in a blur of motion and drove the solid polymer stock straight into the center of Finn’s face.
The crack was sickening, a wet, crunchy sound that echoed. Finn dropped like a sack, blood immediately erupting from his nose, cascading over his lips and mustache, splattering the concrete. He made a small, gurgling noise, stunned, his hands flying to his face.
Buck saw it all. He saw Tommy’s body jerking under the knee, saw Jesse’s agonized grimace, saw Finn lying in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood, his blonde hair already staining crimson.
A sound tore from Buck’s throat that was not human. It was a roar from the bedrock of the world, a vibration of pure, apocalyptic fury. The air in the chamber seemed to thicken, to pulse. The soldiers flinched, momentarily stunned by the sheer volume of it.
Buck saw red. Not a metaphor. A literal, pulsing haze of crimson fury descended over his vision. The gnawing hunger, the humiliation, the drilling, the Colonel’s smug voice, and now this—his boys, his heart, being broken on the floor in front of him.
With a scream of shearing metal, he pulled. His biceps, thick as tree trunks, bunched. The dark alloy chains, anchored into the slab itself, groaned. A fine crack appeared in the dense material of the table where his left wrist was bound. He threw his weight against the chest restraint, the broad straps creaking, the bolts holding them screaming in protest.
High above, banking over the distant treeline, the Colonel watched on a grainy monitor fed from the chamber. He leaned forward, his reflection ghostly on the helicopter’s window, a faint, eager smile touching his lips. The biometric feeds were spiking off the charts. The tremor sensors were reporting structural stress.
“There it is,” he murmured, his breath fogging the glass. “Now. Show me what you really are.”