They sure as hell didn’t look like the Russians.
One of the Hybrid Delta team operators stuck a hand out from between his bars. “Help… us. Help, please.”
The man’s voice was more grating than many of the other Hybrids. His claws curled into his palms as he reached out for the new arrivals. The bony plates covering his arms were lined with oozing pus and blood, his shoulder blades jutting out like wings that had been cut off at the stump.
His body had reacted poorly to the agent, worse than O’Neil’s. He felt terrible for the guy. But he worried how these two men would react.
If they would gun down every prisoner they saw because they thought the Hybrids were nothing but monsters. Or if they hadn’t come to rescue anyone from this base but burn the whole place down. Experimental subjects included.
“What the hell happened to you?” the taller, sandy blond guy asked with a clear American accent.
“They… they did this to us,” Stuart responded from his cell where he stood beside Reynolds.
The big man waiting at the entrance of the prison spoke. “They look like Skulls, but they don’t act like Skulls. That’s… interesting.”
O’Neil didn’t want to be interesting. He wanted to be free. He wanted them to see him as a damn person beneath these bones. A growl escaped his cracked lips before he could stop it.
Fortunately, Reynolds spoke on behalf of the prisoners. “Interesting? They made us like the Skulls but kept our brains.” His voice rattled like there was a bone caught in his throat. He held his hands out in front of him, staring at the plates and claws. “I can still feel it moving. Pushing out of my bones, through my muscles.”
“Good God,” the man with blue eyes said. His face was painted in shock for a second before he regained his composure. O’Neil thought the guy should’ve been absolutely shell-shocked to hear a Skull talk, but perhaps they had run into Hybrids before. “We’ll fix this.”
Reynolds laughed. “Fix this? Look at us, brother. Do we look like we can be fixed? The only thing you can do to fix me is put a gun to my temple and pull the goddamned trigger.”
“Shit,” the man with the prosthetic said. He shook his head slowly, muttering in Spanish. “Dios tenga piedad de esta gente.”
The blue-eyed man lowered his rifle slightly. Never quite pulled his finger away from the trigger guard, though. The expression on his face told O’Neil he didn’t want to say whatever he was thinking.
But he did anyway. “Is it safe to let you out?”
O’Neil wondered if the man would believe them. If anything Reynolds or any other Hybrid could say would convince these people that the prisoners needed to be let out. That they weren’t going to kill these would-be rescuers.
At least, not all of the Hybrids would.
Reynolds spoke again. “Me and my boys, you can trust. Some of the others in those cages…” He nodded toward a cell with mostly Moroccans. The Hybrids inside paced around aimlessly, snarling and cursing to themselves, their eyes darting between the five people who had just showed up. “They were the first test subjects. I don’t think the experiments worked so well on them.”
The female soldier walked toward the cell that Reynolds had nodded at. One of the Hybrids stuck his claws out, growling and snapping, trying to reach at her.
“Eat… eat…. eat…” the man said.
Another beside him muttered in Arabic, then threw his body against the bars. The bars rattled as he did it again and again. A third Hybrid snarled and growled, teeth snapping together, saliva spraying from between its cracked lips. It threw itself against the bars until blood wept from what had once been its nose, fractures forming in its bony mask.
“Why would they do this?” the guy that looked like a boxer asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” the one with the prosthetic arm asked. “It’s like the Titan project, only worse.” O’Neil had no idea what they were talking about. But he could read between the lines. This wasn’t the first time the Russians had been experimenting with Skulls and Hybrids and other biological agents. “These are the real super-soldiers, bro. This is what they wanted.”
The blue-eyed man turned back to Reynolds. “We’ll get you out of here. We’ve got a ship, medical supplies. Talented doctors. We can get you back to the States.” He swept his gaze over the other prisoners. Some of the Moroccans that understood English were nodding along. Others were listening to their cell mates translate. “We can get you all out of here.”
Hassan stumbled toward the cell wall, tears trickling out of his eyes, washing down his bony face. “I do not want to live like this.” He lifted his hands. They no longer looked like the calloused brown hands O’Neil remembered before he’d been experimented on. They were almost entirely bone now. “The pain is too much. My body is on fire.”
Another Moroccan rocked back and forth, his teeth clenched together, blood vessels bulging in his neck as he ground his teeth. “All I want is to die.”
“Let us out,” another Moroccan said from Reynolds’s cell. “Let us attack the dogs who did this.” His cracked lips curled back revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “I would have as many die at my hands as I could before they killed me. It is what they deserve.”
Another man stood from a cell near the back of the prison. “Let Allah judge their souls, and let me send them to Him.”
Reynolds opened his mouth as if he were about to talk again. But then he doubled over like he was about to retch over the floor, a clawed hand clamping on his abdomen. He looked up, fighting the evident agony roiling through his body. An agony O’Neil knew only too well.
“You cannot imagine what it feels like to have these bones piercing your insides,” Reynolds said, his jaw clenched. “Every movement hurts. Like needles in my lungs and stomach.” His gaze pointed toward the last Moroccan to speak. “He is right, though. These bastards deserve to die. And I would be happy to make that happen.”
The other soldiers—or whatever they were—seemed to be looking at the blue-eyed man. He was evidently their leader.
“I don’t know,” the guy said.
Reynolds’s claws ground together as he made a fist, his nostrils flaring, eyes seeming to bulge from his skull. “Please. It would be a mercy to die in a hail of bullets. And an even greater mercy to die after having taken them down with us.”
“Fucking right,” Tate muttered.
O’Neil nodded. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to be free from that cage and slice his claws into the soft bellies of every Russian wandering around this God-forsaken base.
The blue-eyed man appeared to consider their request. His fingers tightened around his rifle. O’Neil feared that meant the man was more interested in putting them out of their misery than letting them loose. Letting them do what they wanted more than anything else in what was left of their miserable lives.
Finally, the blue-eyed man spoke. “Fine. But you have to understand, we came here for a purpose. We need to stop the shipments they’re trying to send out of here.”
Reynolds’s eyes narrowed, his chest expanding and deflating more rapidly. Like he was preparing to tear down the cell doors himself if this guy didn’t.
“Understood,” Reynolds said. “What are these shipments?”
“We suspect it’s a new version of the Oni Agent—the biological weapon that caused this mess in the first place. They’ve altered it. Made it airborne.”