Other times they asked him to direct the Skulls at imaginary foes. Get them to attack the wall or even just a big bag of flour or grain. All he had to do was call on his own anger, and the Skulls would practically do his bidding. Controlling them wasn’t like pulling puppet strings, but more like shooting off a rocket and letting it explode against whatever he roughly aimed it at.
He wondered if he was getting better at it.
Or if it was his body adapting, making it easier.
His claws were long as daggers. His shoulder blades ripped out from his back like he was growing wings. Every rib had grown out from his chest, wrapping around his body, heavy as the ceramic plates he wore into missions.
Even his toes had grown out into talons, ripping through what had remained of his boots. The bones in his joints pushed out from his skin in fin or spike shapes.
He and his team no longer looked remotely human.
If he would have seen himself on the street, he would fire without question.
He was no longer a SEAL.
He was a Hybrid.
A monster, just like Tate had said.
When they had first been imprisoned, there was a marked difference between the SEALs and the Moroccans. The civilians had been scavenging for food and survival beyond the port, while the SEALs at least had had the benefit of reliable food and water before their capture. Their choices might not have been as good as before the war, but O’Neil was used to living on MREs and whatever he could scrounge up where he happened to be deployed.
So he and his team knew how to cope with rough conditions. They stayed physically fit. Looked almost no different than before the outbreak.
But now, after having spent God only knew how long in the Russians’ prison, O’Neil could hardly tell the difference between his men and the Moroccans.
All shared the same monstrous features. All smelled like a pile of corpses left to rot in the middle of a hot, humid Virginia summer.
Van’s story about the Vietnam War vet continuously replayed in O’Neil’s mind. He wondered if he should accept the fact that they would be left here forever. Wondered if that would actually make him feel more at peace with what he had become.
He tried to forget about the outside world. Tried to focus solely on the struggle of ignoring his pain.
Hell, maybe he would take up meditating. He almost laughed to himself at the dark humor.
Like some kind of transcendental experience would transport him from his horrific reality.
O’Neil spent his time trying to tell Loeb and Tate they would make it out. That Tate should still cling to hope. But more and more, the Chicago-born operator said they were just going to die anyway. That their bodies would be dumped into the port with all the other failed specimens they had seen when they first entered the Tangier port.
Loeb turned into a husk of himself, mumbling about his daughters and his wife. About how he wished he could have seen them just one more time. That he wanted to tell them he loved them.
“You will,” O’Neil said, his voice raspier than ever. “I promise.”
Loeb looked straight at him, eyes narrowed. He held up his claws. “Even if I did see them again, they would run from me in terror.”
O’Neil could not find the words to reassure Loeb. The guy was right. Anything O’Neil said otherwise would be a lie.
The outbreak had trained everyone to run as soon as they saw a creature that looked like they did. And good God, what if they were infectious?
What if Loeb could condemn his daughters to the same fate just by hugging them?
O’Neil shook at the thought.
Maybe Van was right.
Hope was a drug people took to fool themselves into thinking things got better.
Instead, he let despair take him. Let the knowledge that his career as a SEAL was over, even if he did escape. His future outside this cage was as bleak as his current situation. So what did it matter?
Then he saw four Russians soldiers go to the cage with Reynolds, Stuart, and Henderson. They pushed aside the other Hybrids and dragged out one of the guys on Charlie.
The SEAL was mumbling. Sounded like he was saying, “Food. Food. Food.”
And as the Russians walked away, yanking the operator behind them, O’Neil knew he had one reason left to live.
All he needed was to stay alive long enough to ensure every last one of these bastards died for what they had done to his brothers.
-30-
The low bleat of alarms sounded outside the labs. O’Neil heard voices calling somewhere in the lab facility. Doors slamming shut. Boots slapping against pavement.
He could feel it, too.
The Skulls.
Like a tide washing over his body, the undertow threatened to carry him away. He felt himself slipping and losing control. The agitation from the beasts outside welled up in him.
He wasn’t the only one.
Reynolds was pressed up against the wall of his cage. Eyes wide, lips pulled back in a tight snarl. A few of the Moroccan were rocking back and forth, swaying to the beat of music only they could hear.
Or more accurately, feel at the back of their mind.
Almost all of the thirty-something prisoners seemed to be struggling to deal with the strange sensation.
“What’s going on?” Tate asked, eyes half-closed. He stood at the front of the cell beside O’Neil.
Loeb shook his head. “Nothing. A bunch of Skulls are pissed. What else is new?”
“It feels different this time,” Tate said.
“There are just more Skulls,” O’Neil said. “That’s all.”
He was ready to settle back against the cage bars, to continue his infernal struggle of fighting against the pain and the burning sensation of the bones moving and growing beneath his flesh.
Then from somewhere in the facility he heard a pop. Sounded like a window being pried open.
Footsteps next.
Not like the loud, deliberate footsteps of the Russians.
But more like someone treading softly over the floor. Almost as if they didn’t want to be heard.
O’Neil hadn’t fully realized quite how his senses had evolved as a Hybrid. But he thought he could even smell these people. They weren’t as musky as the Russians. There was another scent to them. Almost oily, metallic. Like the scent that got in your hair from spending too long in the engine room of a ship.
Then he saw five shapes down the corridor, past the prison cells. They carried rifles, moving as if they were infiltrating the place.
“Tate, Loeb,” O’Neil whispered, gesturing toward the sight.
“What the fu…” Tate let his words trail off. Then turned to Loeb. “I told you, man.”
Hassan came to the cage beside them. “Are we saved?”
“We don’t know who they are,” Loeb said. “Might just kill us when they see us. I would if I was someone else.”
One of the Moroccans started to stand, pressing his face against the bars. He asked Hassan a question in Arabic and when Hassan replied, the Moroccan stuck his claws out the cage. Started to shout.
O’Neil pushed past Hassan and clamped the guy’s mouth shut. “We don’t know if they’re friends or enemies yet. Cool it.”
The man nodded, and Hassan confirmed that the guy did in fact know enough English to understand what O’Neil had said.
Two of the figures—one appeared to be a tall, muscular man with dark skin and the other an athletic-looking, paler-skinned woman—stopped just near the entrance of the prison as if to set up defensive positions. The other three men walked toward the prison, their rifles sweeping the cells. One of the men, the taller of the two, had crisp blue eyes, tanned skin that made him look like he’d spent a life at sea, and a square, set jaw. Another man with dark skin had a build that made him look like a champion lightweight boxer. The third had a ruddy complexion and deep brown eyes. And, O’Neil thought, a prosthetic hand judging by the mechanical black fingers he saw holding up the rifle.