Chapter 138
Lirael
"Victor Blackwood... he built this place..." She coughed wetly, the sound making me flinch. "But Sebastian... months ago he came here. Saw us. His face..." Another cough. "He looked horrified. Started screaming at Victor to release us immediately."
I went absolutely still. "What?"
"They fought. Badly. Sebastian demanded our freedom, threatened to expose everything. Victor said without moon dew, Sebastian would die like his brother. Sebastian said..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He said he'd rather die than benefit from this." Her eyes met mine desperately, pleading. "He tried to save us. But Victor stripped his access. He couldn't come back..."
The words hit like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs. I thought of Sebastian's face when I'd accused him, the genuine confusion and then dawning horror. His insistence he hadn't known, that he would never condone this.
"Holy shit," I breathed. "He was telling the truth."
"But there's more," she continued weakly. "Black Reef Island... Genesis Foundation... they have hundreds more of our people. This is just Victor's private operation. The real horror is there..."
A piercing alarm suddenly shattered the air, so loud I clapped my hands over my ears. Red lights strobed violently. "INTRUDER DETECTED. SUB-LEVEL SEVEN. LOCKDOWN INITIATED."
"Fuck!" I spun around, searching desperately for an exit. Blast doors descended from the ceiling with hydraulic hisses, sealing every corridor. "No, no, no—"
When I turned back toward the elevator, Sebastian stood at the corridor's end.
Black overcoat, hands in pockets, amber eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't read. Emergency lights painted his face in blood-red illumination, making him look like something from a nightmare.
"You..." My voice came out strangled, accusatory. "You weren't unconscious. You were never fucking unconscious."
Sebastian walked toward me slowly, each footstep echoing. "I built immunity to that sedative months ago. The moment you kissed me, I knew exactly what you were doing."
I backed away, hands clenching into fists. "Then this was all a trap—you let me come here just to—"
"To show you the truth." He stopped three paces away, raising both hands in surrender. "Look around, Lirael. Do you see any guards? Anyone here to drag you away?"
I glanced around wildly and realized he was right. The corridor was empty except for us and the imprisoned elves.
"I cleared the entire level. Sent everyone away." His voice carried exhaustion I'd never heard before. "I needed you to see this with your own eyes, to understand that I had no fucking part in it."
He stepped closer and I saw raw pain in his expression. "I swear to you on the Blackwood name, on my Alpha honor, on the blood contract between us—I didn't know this existed until three months ago."
"But you benefited from it!" I shouted, voice breaking. "You have moon dew in your system right now! I can smell it on you!"
"From you," he said softly. "Only from what you willingly gave me. That night on the cliff, when you healed my wounds. I've never taken it from anyone else, never used what they harvested here."
He pulled out a gold medallion, the Patriarch's Seal. "Months ago, my father brought me here thinking I'd be pleased. Thinking I'd be grateful that he'd found a 'solution' to my entropy problem." His voice turned harsh with self-loathing. "He showed me all these elves suffering to produce the substance that would keep me sane."
"I was horrified. I ordered him to release them immediately, to shut down the entire fucking operation. He refused. Said I was being weak, that I'd end up dead like my brother because I wouldn't do what was necessary to survive."
"We fought. I threatened to expose everything to the Triad Council, to the human authorities, to anyone who would listen. So he stripped my access to this level, had the biometric locks changed." Sebastian's hands clenched. "I've been trying to find a way back in ever since."
He held up the medallion. "This is the Patriarch's Seal. I invoked the Emergency Succession Protocol, declared my father temporarily unfit to lead due to gross misconduct. It's a nuclear option—I'll lose the support of half the family, make enemies of everyone who profits from this nightmare. But as of one hour ago, every access code in this building answers to me."
I stared at him, wanting desperately to believe but terrified of being wrong. "Why should I trust you? You've lied to me, manipulated me, held me fucking prisoner—"
"I know." His voice cracked. "I know I've done terrible things to you. Unforgivable things. But Lirael, I swear on everything I hold sacred—I am not my father. I would never, never condone this."
"My father has been funding the Genesis Foundation for years," Sebastian said, voice tight with barely controlled rage. "Providing them with resources, political protection, even helping them acquire... specimens. This facility is just his private stockpile. The real operation, the true fucking horror, is on Black Reef Island."
The screen displayed satellite imagery of the island, heat signatures showing massive underground complexes. Hundreds of life signs, clustered in what could only be holding cells.
"Oh gods," I whispered, knees threatening to give out. "There are so many..."
"I know." Sebastian's amber eyes met mine, blazing with determination. "And we're going to save them. Every single one of them."
---
He led me to the control room, a space dominated by screens showing real-time data on every imprisoned elf. I felt sick looking at the clinical notation beside each face, the way they'd been reduced to numbers and efficiency ratings.
Specimens 001-047: Active Subjects
Extraction Efficiency: 87%
Projected Survival Duration: 4-18 months
"Jesus Christ," I breathed, pressing my fist against my mouth. "They're treating them like livestock."
Sebastian's jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth grind. "Worse than livestock. At least animals get humane treatment laws."
He pulled up the facility's operational protocols, fingers moving with controlled violence across the keyboard. "We can't just open the doors and let them go. Most of them are too weak to walk, let alone survive outside. We need a proper extraction plan."
He outlined his strategy rapidly, and I could see the military precision in how his mind worked. "First, I'm mobilizing the Onyx Guard medical teams under the guise of an 'emergency training exercise.' They'll stabilize the elves, get them strong enough to transport."
"Second, we transfer them to the Medical Center on Sub-Level Four. It's equipped for long-term care, and I can seal it off from my father's loyalists."
"Third," he pulled up shipping manifests, "I've chartered three cargo vessels registered to shell companies. In two weeks, we'll move them to a sanctuary in the Canadian wilderness—there's an established elven community there that's agreed to take them in."