“But what about this shit they put in our skull?” O’Neil asked.
Hassan pulled on his knotted beard, his eyes darting between Loeb and Tate. “I am not sure I understand what the other prisoners tell me about this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… it is hard to say.”
“Tell me.”
Hassan explained that the prisoners had very little understanding, but they said they could feel the Skulls outside the laboratory. That they could sense them.
“Like some kind of fucking psychic bullshit?” O’Neil asked, finding it even harder to believe.
“Not psychic,” Hassan said. “They say it is a chemical reaction. Like a smell or, how do you say—”
“Pheromones,” Loeb said. “You know how some guys think female pheromones can make a man go nuts over her? Well, that’s what this shit is supposed to do for us. Only the Skulls are the dumb, horny dudes in this case.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” O’Neil said.
“I know what you mean,” Tate said. “It’s crazy, man. But we were talking to Reynolds. He said he heard some rumors about the Russians pursuing research projects like this in the past. ‘Course he thought it was bullshit before. I would have, too.”
“There’s just no way.” O’Neil pressed his palm against his forehead. He didn’t feel any difference in his mind. And he was supposed to believe the Russians had some way to control the minds of Skulls?
Fucking unbelievable.
“The way these Moroccans who’ve been here a while explain it is that it’s not really mind control,” Loeb said. “It’s more like a subtle influence. Like, you know when you’re at a concert, the crowd is going wild, and you want to go wild, too? Kind of like that. Very subtle.”
“This is nuts,” O’Neil said.
“Exactly what I’m saying, man,” Tate said. “But think about it. Remember in Lithuania how the Skulls never attacked until after we ambushed the convoy? And then when they did come after us, it was with those Hybrid soldiers?”
Loeb tapped his boot on the cracked concrete floor. “This base, too. They don’t care about the Skulls, because so long as they have these Hybrids around, they can keep the Skulls calm and contained. Then when they want them to go wild, like when they went after us, they can influence them to do that, too.”
“Way we heard it, it’s not like they have remote controls for the Skulls,” Tate said. “It’s more like a rough feeling. Like you can control their mood.”
“We know it sounds crazy,” Loeb said. “But how else do you explain everything we experienced?”
O’Neil wanted to come up with another explanation.
He couldn’t.
A distant memory started return. Mostly in a haze. But he recalled being strapped up to a pole. How he had been told to focus, to calm an aggressive Skull.
“That dream I had… it wasn’t a dream,” he said. “I was in a room with a Skull. They told me to focus. To calm the beast—or it would kill me.”
“Yes, yes,” Hassan said. “Some of the other prisoners mention a similar experience. They do this test, too.”
“God.” O’Neil let his chin drop to his chest.
Hassan spoke in a lower voice. “If you concentrate, if you let yourself fall into meditation like you are in prayer, you can feel it.”
“Feel what?” O’Neil asked.
“All the other Skulls in this base,” Hassan said.
O’Neil did as Hassan suggested. Bowed his head. Closed his eyes. Fell into his own thoughts.
Just like he had when he had been in the room with the Skull.
And this time, when he cleared his thoughts, he could feel it. Just like Hassan said.
An immense pressure, like the ocean was pressing down on him from every side. He could feel discontent and hunger, single-minded rage. He could almost hear the growls and snaps.
The beasts were everywhere.
So many of them. The pheromones or whatever biochemical shit they were leeching soaked into him, and if he didn’t focus, if he didn’t will himself to remain calm, then he could feel their rage trying to worm through him.
Trying to turn him into a monster like they were.
“My God,” he whispered, opening his eyes. “How is this possible? What are we?”
Tate wrung his hands together. “We’re monsters.”
-29-
Days and nights passed in the cages. O’Neil tried to keep track of time, but the Russians had since boarded up the windows or plastered them with black plastic curtains to keep out the light. More prisoners were added to the cells. More Moroccan civilians damned to end up as the ill-fated subjects of the twisted Russian researchers.
Besides those Moroccan prisoners and SEALs, pain was O’Neil’s constant companion.
His joints burned with an unholy fire first. Then the bones in his fingers pierced the end of his fingertips, slowly turning into Skull-like claws. He felt his shoulder blades tearing from his skin. Blood constantly wept from the wounds. Agony exploded every time a new bone pushed its way out of his graying flesh.
Across his temple, he felt the knobs beneath his skin. Budding horns. His hair started to fall out in stringy clumps.
Every day, he thought about tracing his claw over his neck. Letting himself bleed out on the cage floor.
The only thing worse than the pain he endured was the agony of watching his brothers succumbing to the same horrific mutations induced by the experimental agent.
There was no escape from the torture his own body was inflicting on him except for those few moments when he passed out from sheer exhaustion and frustration.
The Moroccan prisoners fared no better.
Hassan spent most hours praying on the floor, bent over, his vertebrae jutting up from his spine, his claws tremoring with each bow to a god that would not save them. Others rolled over the floor, groaning and sobbing.
“I miss them,” Loeb said one day. A blood-filled tear rolled down the yellowed cheekbones piercing his shredded flesh. “My girls. My girls. I miss them.”
Tate paced in a corner of the cell, his nostrils flaring, his jaw tensing as he muttered to himself.
Some of the prisoners shook and twitched. Others switched between French and Arabic and English like their mind was being controlled by someone just flipping through the channels.
“Eat. Eat. Eat,” one said.
Others stood at cell bars, staring out, slashing at every Russian that passed by. Their minds seemed to be as lost as the Skulls, but they didn’t attack any of their fellow experimental Hybrids. They only seemed interested in untainted flesh and blood.
And sometimes, when O’Neil let his guard down, when he gave into the chemical signals drifting off those rabid Hybrids, he could feel their hunger. He wanted to escape, too, and tear his teeth into the neck of one of the men strolling through the lab. The thought of fresh blood trickling across his tongue made his stomach rumble until he could get ahold of himself.
The Russians poured buckets of rotting meat or canned goods or even uncooked rice into the cages. The prisoners wolfed down the food, no matter how putrid. Because when hunger struck, O’Neil found it might as well have been a runaway train derailing. He could hardly control himself.
After one such meal, Tate looked up at him, red juice dribbling down his bony chin. “We’re going to get out, man. We’re going to get out.”
He looked almost sad as he said it.
Loeb scoffed.
O’Neil thought again about Van’s insistence to prepare for the worst, expect the worst, and then accept it when things turned out better than planned.
“We will,” O’Neil said, unable to give in to Van’s advice. “We’ll escape, and we will burn this place to the ground. Just like we tried before. Only this time, we won’t fail.”