Page 105 of Shared Omega

Just a few more yards, and we’ll be at the central communication hub. We may not make it out of here alive, but at least we’ll be able to transmit Lily’s message. Just a few more yards…

The fine hairs on the back of my neck are prickling. Something is up. This has been way too easy.

Beside me, Dog pauses. He can sense it too. His nostrils flare as he catches a scent.

Something is wrong.

A split second later, I catch a whiff of it too—the pungent stench of cigar smoke.

“Run!” Dog growls under his breath.

But before we have a chance to react, a hidden door emerges from the ceiling and floor and crashes shut like a pair of metal jaws, blocking off the entire corridor ahead of us.

All four of us spin around to retreat the other way, but immediately, an identical door clamps shut on the other side as well, trapping us inside this section of corridor.

Kane bellows with rage, and flings himself into the door, pounding it with his fists and ramming it with his shoulder.

It doesn’t budge.

Truk and Dog, meanwhile, take a more methodical approach, searching along the walls and the edges of the doors for a panel, a crevice, anything that might allow us to escape, but of course, there is nothing.

We’re fucked.

After another minute of calamitous roaring and battering of the door to no avail, Kane drops back on the floor defeated, huffing and growling with exhaustion.

“You all done there, wild man?”

There is a small barred window set into the door, and a voice like crushed gravel drifts through on a wave of curling cigar smoke.

“Sloane,” the voice calls through the grate. “I expressly ordered you not to fuck your mission up. Do you remember that?”

Colonel Fulgore. That bastard.

“But what did you go and do?” The Colonel continues. “Just as expected, you fucked everything up beyond all comprehension. Not only did you fail to get your hands on the target, but you got yourself captured too. And now look at you, turned traitor against your own kind. I knew we never should have sent a woman to do a man’s job.”

“Fuck you,” I hiss.

The Alphas growl like caged beasts.

Fulgore chuckles and puffs another plume of smoke through the grate.

“Well, at least you brought some nice Alpha specimens back with you. Dr. Frostgrave will be happy about that. Maybe we’ll be able to salvage something of worth from this whole shitshow.” Then to somebody else outside, he says. “Give ‘em the gas.”

Pale tendrils of vapor begin pouring out of several small grates positioned around the ceiling. Once more, Kane flings himself at the heavy, steel doors with renewed furor, but again it has no effect.

Fulgore laughs again.

“Your persistence is admirable, Alpha. No surrender. We can work with that.”

Kane’s exertion is making him breathe heavily, drawing more and more of the gas into his lungs.

“Kane,” I call out, “Stop, it’s—“

But it’s already too late. The chamber is filling up with the fumes. Already, I can feel myself growing light headed. I start to collapse. Truk catches me and eases me to the floor one moment before his own legs give out. He hits the ground behind me with a heavy thump, followed by two more thumps that are Dog and Kane going down.

“Sweet dreams.” The colonel’s voice now sounds like it’s a million miles away. “Catch you animals on the flip side.”

I take one last helpless gulp of air, and the noxious gases fill my lungs completely. The heavy, sleepy feeling overcomes me, and as I drop off into unconsciousness, there is only one thought that occupies my mind.