Loeb and Tate looked at each other, not saying a word. For a moment, all O’Neil heard were the murmurs and groans from the other prisoners.
“We got a lot to catch you up on, man,” Tate said, then let out a sigh. “Reynolds, Stuart, and Henderson are in the other cage.”
He used his thumb to indicate the cell beyond the wall of Moroccan prisoners crammed in with Bravo.
“What about Delta? Charlie?” O’Neil asked.
“Most of the guys are in the other cage, too,” Tate said.
“Most?”
Loeb bowed his head. “Not everyone was taken alive.”
“Three Delta guys made it,” Tate said. “Four Charlie.”
O’Neil pinched his eyes close, massaging his forehead. “And the Rangers?”
“We’re not exactly sure,” Loeb said.
“Sounds like you have some idea.”
“I came to first,” Tate said. “When I did, I heard a bunch of commotion. Skulls screeching, vehicle engines. Gunfire. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but you can imagine.”
O’Neil wanted to believe that the Rangers were fine. That command knew what had happened to the SEALs, and Smith would be arranging a rescue operation for his lost troop.
But he remembered what Van had said about being an optimist. About that vet who had claimed it was pessimism that had gotten him through his imprisonment in Hanoi. If he played by Van’s book, then he had to relegate himself to the fact they might not ever get out of this place. That he was stuck here at the whim of these mad Russians.
“What do we do now?” O’Neil asked.
“We were talking to Reynolds through the cages,” Loeb said. “We’re still holding out some hope that the Rangers survived, but there’s not a hell of a lot else we can do right now.”
Loeb slid down to sit next to O’Neil. “I think it’s just a wait and pray kind of thing.”
O’Neil nodded, another realization hitting him. “Shit, Loeb. I’m sorry I didn’t press harder to get that sat phone for you.”
Loeb shot him a bemused look, before his expression turned sorrowful again. “Oh, God, it’s not your fault. My girls know I love them. That’s enough for me.”
By the look in Loeb’s eye, O’Neil could see that wasn’t true. The man regretted not talking to them before coming to Tangier.
“We’ll see them soon,” O’Neil said.
He cursed inwardly. Didn’t want to give false hope. But being an absolute pessimist was a lot harder than the guy in Van’s story made it seem. Even in this darkest hour, there was some inner voice in the back of O’Neil’s mind clinging to hope. To the torturous idea that they would get out and somehow return to the UK.
“Loeb, man, you gonna tell him or you want me to?” Tate asked.
Loeb just gave Tate an almost dismissive wave.
“Fine, man.” Tate let out a long breath. “They… they’re—”
“They’re experimenting on us,” Loeb finished for him. “Injected us with some biological agent and implanted shit in the back of our head.”
“You’re fucking with me,” O’Neil said.
Loeb gestured toward O’Neil’s arm. “I’m not. How the hell do you think your bones healed so quickly?”
“I…” O’Neil had no answer.
“Hey, Hassan, tell O’Neil what you told us.”
Hassan was talking to another Moroccan in a low voice. He turned and joined the SEALs. Another scream wailed out through the facility, and O’Neil craned his neck. He couldn’t quite see what was going on, but he saw silhouettes against the plastic curtains of the OR.
“They turn us into these hybrids,” Hassan said.
“You don’t mean those half-human things that tracked us down in Tangier,” O’Neil said.
“That is exactly what I mean,” Hassan said. “I talk with other prisoners who are here for a longer time. The Russians inject us, then implant this thing in our head.”
Hassan turned and lifted the hair over the back of his neck to reveal a crooked, stitched-up wound at the base of his skull.
“No,” O’Neil said. “No, no, no. That can’t be right.”
He probed at the back of his own head. His fingers bumped into rough stitches and puckered skin.
Then he held out his hands. His nails were yellow and rough, starting to grow out longer. His wrist bones protruded more, and his elbows seemed sharper, the skin tight over the bone.
He looked around at the faces surrounding him in the cage. The gauntness, the cheekbones. It all made sense now. Logically, he knew Hassan was telling him the truth. That they were slowly devolving into these beasts… but… God, he didn’t want to be one of these monsters.
And Tate and Loeb… this was a fate worse than death.
To watch his men transform before his eyes into twisted experiments…
“We have to stop it,” O’Neil said.
“If there is a way to stop these changes, we do not know it,” Hassan said. Then he closed his eyes, pressing his hands to his face. Tears streamed out from his pinched eyelids. “I thought it was a horrendous crime when I found out these people kill my wife and child. Now, I realize it is a blessing that they will not be turned into a djinn like I will be.”
“Nah, man, we won’t be djinn,” Tate said. He tapped the side of his forehead. “If we were going to turn into those djinn—the Skulls—we would have lost our mind already. We’re turning into those hybrids.”
“It is no better,” Hassan said.
“It makes all the difference,” Tate said. “We’ll still have our minds. They can’t stop us from thinking. They can’t control our thoughts.”
“I am not so sure,” Hassan said.
“What the hell do you mean?” O’Neil asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the changes to his body. The more he let his mind wander, the more he thought he could actually feel the bones moving under his skin, pushing up through his muscles.
If the Russians were going to do something to his brain, too, he was going to rip out that device or whatever they implanted in the back of his skull with his fingers.
Hell, he was probably going to grow claws soon enough. That would make tearing it out even easier.
“I learn many things from the prisoners that were here before us,” Hassan said. “I can tell you everything I know about the beasts we call Hybrids.”
O’Neil looked around the cages. Saw that there were twenty-some prisoners total, SEALs and Moroccans, in the four cramped cells. Some looked nearly human; others covered in bony spikes and fins and horns.
“Tell me everything,” O’Neil said to Hassan.
The Moroccan nodded. He started with stories about the oldest prisoners in the cages. Ones whose minds had seemed barely better than the Skulls. Those were the ones that had attacked when the SEALs had tried to rescue the Moroccans from these cells. Apparently, the Russians were trying to develop an agent that could bestow someone with all the physical attributes of a Skull while leaving the mind intact.
Not everyone had responded to the agent the same way initially. The Russians had apparently even tried it on their own people first. The Hybrids that O’Neil had seen in the field were the handful that had survived the procedures.
Then the Russians had turned to experimenting on locals to improve their biological agent. All those who had sought refuge at the port or came to the Russians for help were instead turned into experimental subjects.
At first, very few survived the procedures. Many lost their mind in the same way the Oni Agent overrode a person’s normal consciousness.
Slowly, the Russians honed the agent on their prisoners.
The agent worked similarly to the Oni Agent. It induced almost uncontrolled bone growth. But one thing the Russians hadn’t yet solved was the immense amount of pain that came with the changes. When it really took hold, when the bones started growing too fast for the skin to keep up with, the agony would come, too.