Chapter 60: A World Forever Altered

Chapter 60: A World Forever Altered
The quiet, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the screams of the wounded in the distance, was oppressive. Storm aftermath quiet, a heavy veil of silence over waterlogged terror. Jake gazed at the other men's faces, all bearing the same weariness and distrust. They had emerged victorious, but at some unimaginable terror.
Mia's bloody hand extended to him, her face stern. "She's dead, Jake. But—it doesn't feel right to me."

"I know," he growled. "Too quick. Too neat."

Zane, his mask in place over his eyes, his face hollow, was among them, his eye scanning out across the devastation. "Fountain's data drive. More valuable than the Seraph formula. It sold out a network, an associates' web that went a grand, grand way deeper than this town."

Rico, his tone drawn out and furious, spoke to them. "She was not constructing an empire here. She was constructing something else, something malignant."

Reality had been moving forward to enclose them like an inescapable cloud. Lisa's death was just the last act; it was only a single chapter in an infinitely more evil grander novel. They had lopped off one of the hydra's heads, and there would be others to replace it.

"We need to find them," Jake pressed relentlessly, his voice heavy with purpose. "We need to cut their operations in half, before they can release Seraph into the world."

"But how?" Mia taunted, a hint of incredulity entering her tone. "We've lost too much. We're broken, battered."

"We'll rebuild," Jake vowed, his eyes afire with hot resolve. "We'll go out and locate our fighters, those who've experienced the depths of Lisa's power and we'll demonstrate. We'll employ what Fountain provided us. We'll take our revenge."

The war had been and was won, but the war had not been fought. The fire of the revolution, though doused, remained smoldering. It would blaze again from the embers, more fanatical and powerful than ever. It would chase the shadows, expose the conspiracy, and break the yoke of slavery that would weigh upon the world. It would be terrible at the expense, but they would sanctify the martyrs by making their sacrifice a triumph.

And finally, the dying breath of the tempest—message on shattered tablet, penned by hand. Fountain's final word.

He winced in shock at opening it. The screen came on in a distorted video. Fountain's weary but determined face snarled at him.

"If you're reading this… then I didn't make it," Fountain's voice dripping with venom, violence. "Lisa wasn't creating an army, not quite. She wasn't beta testing werewolves. She had a failsafe—a means of making sure even if she did end up dead, the world would be left to burn with her."

Jake had icewater running through his veins. He could hear the others gathering behind him, panting to catch their breath in their rush.

"The drug," Fountain went on. "She dispensed it. Not just to her enforcers, not just to her prisoners. She dispensed it out there beyond her walls. It's loose now, infecting werewolves who don't even realize that it owns them. She poisoned the world—to make sure that if she lost, nobody would be the victor."

Jake swore under his breath. He glared at Zane, whose scowl concealed the seething anger. Lisa had always managed to get away with everything. Even death itself was not able to prevent her from cheating them out.

"There's more," Fountain wasn't breathing nearly as well, but his will was stronger and he continued. "Lisa wasn't no queen holding her crown. She was a pawn. Some one in the dark. Some one bigger, some one bad. And if you want to bury this once and for all… you gotta find them."

The phone dropped, the air heavy with weight. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

Tom's was a tight fist. "Impossible. We did depose her, and now—now she is still in power?"

Mia's was a spastic gasp, her head spinning around. "No. She died. That is a victory. But we have to figure out what she did leave behind. And why she was leaving it."

Jake's hands were clenched the machine went white. The war wasn't war yet. It was beginning.
Rico swore. "If the drug's still out on the streets. then how do we shut it off? How do we even begin to clean up?"

"We start at the beginning," Zane stated, his own eyes blazing with determination. "Fountain had the edge. Lisa was not the missing piece. That eliminates someone else from consideration, someone darker."
The windy gust tugged at his tattered coat, its sharp smell of ash lingering in the air and its promise of looming storms. Jake's own gaze, hardened by grief and fueled by a personal fire, searched the devastated land. "They think they've won," he growled low and ominous, his words like a warning bell. "They haven't. We'll show them what true war is." War in their world had only just begun.