Page 1 of Omega Hunted

Omega Hunted

Chapter One

SOREN

The noise dragged me out of sleep so violently that for a heartbeat I couldn’t work out where I was. My hand flew to my belly before I was properly awake, searching for the reassuring weight of my daughter, and Asha answered with a slow push into my palm.

Red light.

A shrill burst from the siren echoed through the building, followed by the deep mechanical voice that normally announced anything from shutdown to medical appointments. This time the words dissolved into static before I could make anything out, and then there was just the light and my door gaping open.

I blinked at the flashing emergency lamps sweeping scarlet across my ceiling, trying to understand what had happened. The building was usually so quiet, so controlled, every hour of every day running with the precision of a prison. The SED patrols changed every twelve hours. Boots echoed along the corridor. Radios crackled. Keys rattled against belts. Center 14 called the men in their black Shifter Enforcement Directorate uniforms welfare officers, but nobody locked behind those doors believed that. The lights had never flashed. The alarms had never sounded. Every morning, the SED walked these corridors, checking doors, scanning wristbands, counting omegas as though we were livestock. Today there was nobody.

My door had never been open.

Red light.

I climbed out of bed before my mind had caught up, my hips protesting as Asha shifted inside me. The pregnancy had become an awkward balancing act over the past few weeks. Everything ached. My lower back burned whenever I stood too quickly, and my feet had swollen enough that my sneakers barely fit anymore.

But the door was open.

There wasn’t a guard looming to force me to a physical or make sure I swallowed the right drugs.

I could leave.

I have to get out of here.

I stumbled to the door, and the corridor beyond my room was empty, sirens screaming, their relentless wail filling the omega wing. Smoke drifted along the ceiling, carrying the acrid smell of burning plastic where the electronic lock beside my room had melted into a blackened lump. The tiny green light that had taunted me for every failed escape attempt for months had finally gone dark.

Next to mine, Yannick’s door stood open, the room stripped bare after they’d taken him to the birthing suite a few days ago, so I hurried to the room opposite, Franco’s, but the handle refused to move beneath my grip. “Franco!”

“Help!” Franco’s frightened voice called through the door. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, pulling harder even though I already knew it was useless. “My door was open. Hold on; I’ll get you out.”

The lock didn’t even click. I hit the control panel with the heel of my hand, searching desperately for some kind of release, but the tiny red light glowed back at me without changing. Goddess, no.

“I’ll be back!” I yelled over the siren, then ran to the next room.

Locked.

The one after that.

Locked.

Every door to each omega cell refused to open. Somewhere behind me an omega had started crying so hard his words dissolved into sobs, while another pounded frantically on the metal, shouting for someone to let him out before whatever was happening reached us.

“Please!”

“I’m trying,” I yelled back, already moving again. I slammed my shoulder into another door hard enough to send pain shooting down my arm, but the lock held firm. I tried another and then another, hauling at the handles until my breath came in ragged gasps and my hips burned beneath the weight of my pregnancy. Asha shifted inside me, and I rested my trembling hand over my belly for the briefest moment before trying the final door at the end of the corridor.

It didn’t open either.

My cat was no longer the distant, exhausted presence he’d become over the past few months. He was awake, every instinct flooding through me with a desperate urgency that made my pulse race.

Run.

“I can’t.”