Chapter 227 Grab the Ledgers
The drawer slid open on silent, oiled tracks. Inside rested a single, black leather-bound ledger. The cover was entirely blank, devoid of the meticulous numbering Damon used for his other experiments.
Fennigan lifted the heavy book. He flipped open the thick parchment cover, his silver eyes scanning the first page.
The Alpha went completely, terrifyingly still. The pale, fluorescent light reflected off his soot-stained face as a cold, horrified understanding washed over him.
"It's not a pup," Fennigan whispered into the freezing air. "And it's not one of the silver-haired replicas."
Jax slowly stood up from the sea of scattered files, his chest heaving. "Then whose is it?"
"His," Fennigan answered, turning the leather-bound book around so Jax could see the intricate, hand-drawn anatomical sketch of a wolf on the page. Above the sketch, written in Damon's unmistakable handwriting, were the words: Subject Prime - Autologous Replication.
"He tried to clone himself," Fennigan explained, his voice hollow and numb as he read Damon's manic notes. "He wanted to create a superior, purely Alpha vessel that he could transfer his own consciousness into once he finally unlocked the elemental magic. But the biology rejected the silver compound. The clone's genetics mutated. It caused massive, rampant gigantism in the internal organs before the body eventually shut down."
Fennigan looked up from the ledger, staring in absolute disgust at the massive, beating muscle suspended in the jar.
"That is Damon's heart," Fennigan said, the sickening reality echoing in the Vault. "A genetically identical, mutated copy of his own heart. He kept it alive with the silver compound, pumping the experimental magic through its veins, trying to figure out why his own flesh rejected the power."
Miller whimpered from the doorway, pressing his hands over his ears as if trying to block out the rhythmic, squelching thump of the dead Alpha's beating heart.
Fennigan stared at the mutated, beating heart of his father. The sheer, unnatural abomination of it turned his stomach, a visceral reminder of the monster whose blood ran in his own veins.
He didn't hesitate.
Fennigan drew his heavy sidearm from his shoulder holster, leveled it squarely at the center of the reinforced glass, and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening inside the enclosed titanium Vault. The massive glass jar violently exploded outward. A tidal wave of pale preservative fluid and thick, bright silver goo washed across the stainless-steel table, splattering heavily against the rock floor. The unnaturally large heart hit the cold stone with a wet, heavy slap. It gave one final, pathetic shudder, and then went completely, permanently still.
From the doorway, Miller let out a high-pitched, terrified whimper, pressing himself as flat against the titanium doorframe as physically possible.
"I didn't know," Miller babbled frantically, tears streaming down his pale face. "I swear to the Goddess, Alpha! I didn't know the extent he had gone to! I never saw any of this, I just ran the wires—"
"Shut up already," Fennigan roared, his Alpha patience completely disintegrating as the echo of the gunshot faded into the subterranean damp.
Miller flinched violently, holding his shaking hands up in front of his face like a shield. "Alpha, please! You gave your word! You gave me your word you wouldn't kill me!"
Fennigan's jaw locked. His glowing silver eyes burned with lethal restraint. The rat was right. An Alpha's vow was absolute, bound by the ancient laws of their kind. To break it was to dishonor his own wolf.
But a Beta had no such restrictions.
The heavy, metallic clack of a slide racking back cut sharply through Miller's pathetic sobs.
Before Miller could utter another single syllable, Jax raised his own sidearm and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The tech expert’s eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before he crumpled to the cold rock floor, instantly dead before his body even fully registered the shot.
Jax slowly lowered his gun. His massive chest heaved, his silver eyes completely devoid of mercy as he stared down at the traitor's bleeding body.
"But I never gave mine," Jax stated flatly, his voice a smooth, lethal drawl.
Fennigan didn't blink. He didn't offer a single word of reprimand to his brother. The Alpha simply holstered his weapon, turned his back on the corpse, and stepped over the puddle of silver goo.
"Grab the ledgers," Fennigan ordered.
For the next two grueling hours, the brothers worked in heavy, exhausted silence. The sheer volume of Damon's madness was staggering, but they couldn't afford to leave a single page behind.
Jax and Fennigan hauled armfuls of thick leather journals, genetic blueprints, and heavy steel lockboxes out of the Vault, stacking them meticulously in the damp dirt of the raw tunnel outside the titanium door. They completely stripped the filing cabinets bare. Every single invoice, every twisted medical note, and every piece of paper linking Damon to Vane, the High Council, and the butchery of innocent pups was secured.
Finally, Jax dropped the last stack of manila folders onto the pile in the hallway. He wiped his soot-stained, sweat-slicked brow with the back of his forearm and turned to look back inside the Vault.
The nightmare cathedral was finally empty of its secrets, but the physical horrors remained.
The petri dishes holding Elana and Ginny's tissues still sat on the bloody table. The pulsing elemental bone remained clamped in the iron vice, crackling with blue electricity. Miller's body lay near the door, and the dead, mutated clone heart rotted on the floor amidst the pooling silver goo.
"We have everything we need to hang the Council," Jax rasped, his voice raw from the physical and emotional exhaustion of the night. "Now we just have to figure out how to wipe this room off the face of the earth."
Fennigan crossed his massive arms, his boots resting on the threshold of the titanium door. "Standard explosives won't do it. Miller said Vane designed the wards himself. Magical barriers will just absorb the blast, and this titanium core is built to withstand a literal cave-in."