Page 146 of Glitched Fates & Stolen Mates

“Can you find Kit?”

My hands slowed on the keyboard. Part of me wondered what we might see—what state Kit might be in. The not knowing had been torture, but seeing him hurt or worse…

“I can certainly try, but it might take a while.”

I cycled through internal camera feeds, checking the holding cells first. The sight made me queasy. Dozens of people—mostly men, a few women—sitting or lying unnaturally still on narrow bunks. Some stared at walls with blank expressions. But no Kit.

Then I found it—a small medical room with white walls. Kit sat in a chair wearing a pale blue medical gown, someone in scrubs taking blood from his arm.

Rory made a strangled noise. “Why is he wearing that?”

My throat closed up. “I think that means…”

“We need to go. Now.” Rory started pulling the poncho away, snow immediately hitting the laptop screen.

“Hold on, let me finalise our route.” My fingers raced across the keys, downloading the facility schematics and setting the camera loops to activate in ten minutes. Just enough time to get close.

We packed up in record time, the laptop disappearing back into my rucksack. The storm had intensified while we’d been working—the snow fell in thick sheets now, reducing visibility to almost nothing.

But we had a path.

I led this time, checking my tablet every few steps to ensure we stayed on track between the camera zones. The route took us up a steep incline, switchbacking through dense pine trees that provided some shelter from the wind.

My lungs burned in the thin mountain air. Each step became a monumental effort as we climbed higher, my legs shaking with exhaustion. The bitter cold sank its teeth into us, bone deep.

At least I was too numb to properly worry about the next part of our plan. Or lack thereof.

“There,” Rory panted, pointing ahead through the swirling snow. “Something’s there.”

I squinted through the white haze. Where the satellite images had shown nothing but empty mountainside, we found something very different. The facility wasn’t built on the mountain—it was built into it. Embedded so deeply that from above, it would appear to be natural rock and snow.

We stumbled towards what looked like a service entrance—heavy metal shutters set directly into the mountain face, nearly invisible unless you knew exactly where to look.

Rory stared at the impenetrable barrier. “What now?”

I tried to think, but my brain felt sluggish from the cold and exhaustion. The metal shutters had no visible access panel.

“Can you use your laptop to open that door?”

I pulled out my tablet with numb fingers, relief flooding through me as the screen lit up. “I can use this now,” I said, my breath forming clouds in the frigid air. “Basically, I created a secret tunnel back to their system that my tablet can use. A reverse shell.”

Rory bounced up and down. “Enough gibberish. Open it up!”

“Hold on.” I hunched over the tablet, checking the camera feeds again. “There will be soldiers about. And wolf super soldiers. We need to get everyone away from this part so we can sneak in.”

The facility sprawled across my screen—a maze of corridors and rooms carved deep into the mountain. Multiple entry points dotted the perimeter, but most were heavily guarded.

“The facility is huge,” I explained, zooming out to show Rory the full scope. “It stretches across this entire mountain. There are multiple entry points. We need to be smart about this.”

My fingers moved across the tablet screen, accessing the systems I’d compromised earlier. The holding cells from my previous reconnaissance appeared on screen—rows of unnaturally still prisoners.

Perfect.

I located the motion sensors in that corridor and triggered them manually, making it appear like someone was moving around the cells. Then I killed several cameras in the same area, feeds cutting to static and black screens.

Radio chatter immediately burst from my tablet’s speakers: “Motion in Cell Block C, cameras are down.”

“An escape attempt?” another voice crackled through.