Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
The badge they gave me said Ivy Gray.
I clipped it to my collar and kept my hand from shaking. The laminate was still warm from the printer. Fake ID, real enough social security number—bought off a dead girl in Idaho who'd been twenty-two when she drowned. Same age as me. Close enough build. Nobody asks twice if the numbers check out.
The woman at the front desk didn't look up. "Third floor. Lab C. Leon Ash will meet you there at nine."
I nodded and walked to the elevator before she could change her mind.
Moonclaim Bio wasn't the kind of place you'd expect on the waterfront. The building was all black glass and steel, tucked between shipping warehouses that smelled like rust and diesel. I'd picked it because it was small. Under fifty employees. Gene-tech startup. No hunters in the database I'd scraped off the dark web. Just one name that made my stomach drop when I saw it.
Leon Ash.
Son of the wolf king. The one who died ten years ago in the massacre my father supposedly led.
I'd almost walked away. But I was out of money and out of options. The hunters were still looking for me. I'd been running since I was twelve, and I was tired. If I could stay low for six months, maybe a year, I'd have enough saved to disappear for good. Somewhere cold. Somewhere they didn't believe in wolves.
The elevator doors opened on three. The hallway was empty. White tile, fluorescent lights, the kind of silence that made you hear your own heartbeat. Lab C was at the end. The door was propped open with a cardboard box.
I stepped inside.
The lab was bigger than I'd expected. Rows of steel tables, centrifuges humming on the counters, a wall of freezers throwing off cold air. Everything smelled like ethanol and something else. Something I hadn't smelled in ten years.
Wolf.
I froze.
"You're early."
The voice came from the back of the room. Low. Controlled. I turned and saw him standing by the fume hood, pulling off a pair of gloves.
Leon Ash didn't look like a wolf king's son. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in a week. Mid-thirties, maybe. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of face that belonged on a CEO profile but with shadows under his eyes that didn't. He wore a black button-down with the sleeves rolled up. No wedding ring. No expression.
He looked at me the way you'd look at a piece of equipment that might or might not break.
"Ivy Gray?" he said.
I nodded. My throat was dry. The wolf smell was stronger now. Old blood and fur and something chemical underneath. It wasn't coming from him—not exactly. It was baked into the air. Into the walls.
"You worked in a university lab before this." He said it like a statement, not a question. "Molecular bio. Two years."
"Three," I lied. I'd never set foot in a university. Everything I knew about lab work came from YouTube and a forged transcript.
He picked up a tablet from the counter and scrolled through something. "Your supervisor gave you a reference. Says you're competent. Quiet. Don't ask questions."
I didn't say anything. Quiet was good. Quiet kept you alive.
He looked up. His eyes were gray. Flat. "I don't need competent. I need someone who can follow instructions and not talk about what they see here. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Good." He set the tablet down. "You'll be handling sample prep, sterilization, and data entry. I'll walk you through the protocols. You don't touch anything without asking first. You don't take anything out of this room. You don't tell anyone what we're working on. Not your friends. Not your family. No one."
I nodded again. I didn't have friends. I didn't have family.
He crossed the room toward me. I made myself stand still. He was tall—at least six-three—and he moved like someone who knew how to hurt people and had decided not to. Yet.
He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could see the scar along his jawline. Close enough that I could smell the wolf on him now, under the antiseptic and the coffee.
His eyes dropped to the badge on my collar.
"Ivy Gray," he said quietly.
My heart kicked. Did he know? Did he smell the hunter blood under the fake name? I'd scrubbed myself with lye soap and worn someone else's jacket. I'd cut my hair. I'd done everything I could to kill the scent.
His fingers brushed the edge of the badge. Not touching me. Just the plastic.
"Don't make me regret this," he said.
Then he stepped back and gestured toward the row of freezers. "Sample inventory's in the system. I need you to cross-check the physical stock against the database. Everything in freezer three. Start there."
I exhaled and moved toward the freezer. My hands were steadier now. Work was easy. Work was a script. I could do this.
I spent the next three hours counting vials and scanning barcodes. Leon didn't talk much. He worked at the bench near the window, pipetting something into a series of glass plates. Every so often I'd glance up and catch him staring at the samples like they'd personally offended him.
Around noon he told me to take lunch. I didn't have lunch. I went to the bathroom and ate a protein bar I'd stolen from a gas station two days ago.
When I came back, he was gone.
The lab was empty. The lights were still on. His tablet was still on the counter. But the air felt different. Heavier.
I walked toward the bench. The glass plates were still there, labeled in his handwriting. Serum batch 47. Test group: self.
Self.
I looked at the fume hood. There was a steel case on the shelf inside, half-open. I shouldn't have looked. I knew I shouldn't.
I looked anyway.
Inside the case: syringes. A vial of something clear. And a leather strap with tooth marks in it.
I heard the door open behind me.
I spun around. Leon was standing in the doorway, holding a keycard. His expression hadn't changed, but something in his posture had. Tighter. Coiled.
"I didn't touch anything," I said quickly.
He didn't answer. He walked past me to the fume hood and closed the case. Locked it. Slid it into a drawer.
Then he turned and looked at me.
"There's a second lab," he said. "Downstairs. Basement level. You won't need to go down there. But if I ever ask you to, you don't hesitate. Understand?"
I nodded.
He studied me for a long moment. Then he pulled the keycard from his pocket and held it out.
"You'll need this," he said. "Basement access. Just in case."
I took the card. It was heavier than it looked. Black plastic. No logo. Just a magnetic strip and a number: B-07.
"Go home," Leon said. "Be back tomorrow at eight."
I left.
I didn't go home. I didn't have a home. I had a room above a laundromat six blocks away that I paid for in cash. I sat on the mattress and stared at the keycard until the sun went down.
At midnight, I went back.
I told myself I wouldn't use the card. I just wanted to see the building at night. Make sure I could get out if I needed to. That was all.
But when I swiped into the lobby, my feet took me to the stairwell. Down one flight. Then another.
The basement door was steel. No window. The card reader blinked red.
I held up the keycard.
It blinked green.
The lock clicked open.
I pushed the door.
The smell hit me first. Blood and wolf and something sharper. Ozone. Burned meat.
I stepped inside.
The basement wasn't a lab. It was a cage.
Steel walls. Reinforced glass. Scratches gouged into the floor. And in the center of the room, a surgical table with restraints still hanging open.
I should have run.
But I saw the wall.
Photographs. Dozens of them. Pinned up like evidence. Faces I didn't recognize. Dates written in red marker. And in the center, one photograph larger than the rest.
A man in hunter's black. Gray hair. Scarred hands.
My father.
Underneath, someone had written: Start here.
I heard the door open behind me.
I turned.
Leon stood in the doorway. He wasn't surprised. He'd known I'd come.
His eyes weren't gray anymore. They were gold.
"Hello, Ivy," he said softly. "Or should I call you by your real name?"
I ran.
I made it three steps before he moved. Faster than anything human. His hand caught my wrist and yanked me back. I hit the wall hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.
He pinned me there. One hand on my wrist. The other flat against the steel beside my head.
"I could smell you the second you walked in this morning," he said. His voice was still calm. Still controlled. But his eyes were burning. "Hunter blood. Gray clan. I thought maybe you were stupid. Or suicidal. Now I think you're something worse."
I tried to pull free. He didn't move.
"You're bait," he said. "They sent you here to finish what your father started."
"No," I choked out. "I didn't—I'm not—"
"Then why are you here?"
I looked at the photograph on the wall. My father's face. The red letters underneath.
"Because he didn't do it," I said. "And I'm going to prove it."
Leon stared at me. For a long moment, neither of us moved.
Then he let go.
I sagged against the wall, gasping.
He stepped back. His eyes were still gold, but the fire in them had banked. He looked at me like I was a problem he hadn't figured out how to solve yet.
"You've got one minute to convince me not to kill you," he said.
I pulled the chain out from under my shirt. The USB drive hung from it, small and silver. The one my father had left me the night he died.
"He recorded a confession," I said. "The real one. Not the story the hunters told. I don't know what's on it yet. But he said it would prove he didn't lead the massacre."
Leon's eyes locked on the drive.
"And you came here," he said slowly, "to the son of the man your father allegedly killed, to hide while you figure it out."
"I didn't know who you were until after I applied," I said. "By then it was too late."
"You could have run."
"I'm tired of running."
Silence.
Then Leon reached out and took the USB drive. Not the chain. Just the drive. His fingers brushed my collarbone.
"If you're lying," he said quietly, "I'll know. And I'll make it slow."
He turned and walked to the desk in the corner. Plugged the drive into a laptop.
The screen lit up.
A video file. One file. Recorded ten years ago. The timestamp matched the night of the massacre.
Leon clicked play.
My father's face filled the screen. Older than I remembered. Blood on his collar. His voice was hoarse.
"If you're watching this, I'm dead," he said. "And they're coming for you next, Ivy. Don't trust the clan. Don't trust the council. The man who killed the wolves wasn't me. It was—"
The video cut to black.
Leon stared at the screen.
Then he looked at me.
"Corrupted file," he said. His voice was flat again. Empty.
"No," I said. "It can't be. That's the only copy. He told me—"
"It's corrupted," Leon said. "Or edited. Or you're playing me."
"I'm not—"
He pulled the drive out and tossed it back to me. I caught it.
"Get out," he said.
I didn't move.
"Get out," he said again, quieter. "Before I change my mind."
I ran.
I made it back to my room and locked the door and sat on the floor with my back against it until the sun came up.
The USB drive was still warm in my hand.
At eight o'clock, I went back to the lab.
Leon was already there. He looked up when I walked in. His eyes were gray again.
"Freezer three," he said. "Finish the inventory."
I crossed the room and got to work.
Neither of us said anything.
But when I glanced at the fume hood, the steel case was gone.
And on my bench, someone had left a new keycard.
B-07.
And a Post-it note underneath.
Full moon's in three days. Stay out of the basement.
I looked up.
Leon was watching me.
He didn't smile. He just turned back to his work.
And I knew—whatever my father had started ten years ago, I'd just walked into the middle of it.
And the man who wanted him dead was the only person who might help me finish it.