“Yes. Should have already happened. I’d be surprised if they didn’t take care of business and get back to Alliance with the newly rescued in tow before we even got home,” Frenzy said.
“I wonder if they struck the Falwell Pride. If that’s where the Variant were?” Jack said.
Frenzy pulled out his phone and typed in the coordinates the males had given Lethal over the telephone.
“What are you doing?” Rance asked.
“Tracking the coordinates they gave Lethal when we had him on the phone.”
“You can do that?” Jack asked.
“I could do that. Let’s see if I still can,” Frenzy answered. “Hmpf, northwest corner of Missouri. On the Nebraska border.”
“That’s where you guys found that facility, and where they held Brinnley,” Jack said.
“It is. And if you look at the map, it’s not that far from Idaho where Jared was,” Rance said.
“And the Falwell Pride’s lands are in Oregon, which isn’t too far from there either,” Jack said. He thought about it for a few minutes. “I wonder if they found any Lion shifters with them.”
“Let me see if I get a reply,” Frenzy said. He typed out a text, then hit send and sat there, holding his phone in both hands while he looked at it like an expectant child.
“Hey, me again. Did you find the facility? Was it home base for another Lion Pride?”
A few minutes later his phone pinged. Frenzy grinned at Jack and Rance, then pulled up the message.
“No medical facility. A warehouse, cages, sixteen more Variant, a few rewards. No shifter Pride,
but we suspect that some of the males might have originally been shifters. Might still be. Testing
is being done. Debriefing… you know the drill. The rewards are all shifters. All males and rewards
are here and safe.
Why the hell is your phone identifying you as Sin now? Same number, but now it says ‘Sin’.”
“Y’all aren’t going to believe this…” Frenzy said, then read the message out loud. “That’s from Lethal.”
“They’re turning shifters into Variant males now?” Jack said.
“It would explain why they’re being trained differently than we were,” Frenzy said. “Especially if they’re rushing it and not doing proper training.”
“Were they that different in procedure?” Jack asked.
“They fucking threw down their weapons and gave in. No way in hell a Variant male would do such a thing. No way to tell for the moment, though, because we smell like you do, and you smell like us because of the predator DNA we were spliced with. It’s going to take time to try to figure it out, and honestly, I’m not on the inside any more. I’m kind of surprised that Lethal answered me, to tell you the truth.”
Jack nodded. “So what do we know?”
“That they didn’t raid any other Pride. And none of us were with them, so we can’t be connected to the raid on the place they found the Variant males and rewards. We know that Variant males and Lions attacked the Gamieyon Pride. I saw the tracks of both with my own eyes. We don’t know who it was for sure, but I’m pretty sure nobody would be surprised to find out it was the Falwells. Steve in particular said he recognized some of them. Grail told him it was the Falwells, and others, when he sent him off to get Gwen out safely.”
“And that, along with the fact that I’m now giving sanctuary to the surviving members of the Gamieyon Pride gives me the right to question what the hell is going on and why the Council hasn’t made an official statement about the Gamieyon Pride.”
“Maybe they’re pretending it didn’t happen.”
“They’re going to be admitting real soon that it did. I do believe I’ll be making a call to the Council a little later today. Let’s see what they have to say about every damn thing we just discussed, with the exception of the fact that we know more thanwe should. We won’t be throwing the Variant under the bus,” Jack said.
“The Council… is that anything like our Board?” Frenzy asked.
“The North American Panthera Council of Justice. And yes, they’re supposed to be a lot like your board, but have steadily become unreliable. There is no more justice. But I’ll go through the motions anyway just to make sure my complaints are heard.”
