Chapter 13 The Command Within
Kai’s POV
The simulation room was chaos.
Zara had let her wolf take control of her. I don't know what triggered that but she couldn't be stopped. She was killing people all over. Students screamed as the room turned into a flickering mess of lights and collapsing codes. Zara had passed out and had returned to her normal human form with her body jerking off like she had been struck by an invisible lightning.
I couldn't think straight, I just ran towards her.
"Stop this game now!" I screamed, but it seemed like no one was listening.
The students were scattered in different places in the room. Blood kept flowing on the group. Everywhere was either red or filled with fear. The smell fear of was so pungent in the room.
Red lights flooded every console. The system was locked.
Then something in me broke or should I say awakened.
My voice came out low, steady, dangerous.
“Stop.”
For a second, nothing. Then silence fell like a wave. Every student froze mid-motion, eyes unfocused, faces blank. The projection screens faded to gray static.
And then… I heard it. Not with my ears, but in my mind, a sudden ripple that connected every consciousness in the room.
"Forget everything that happened here."
I hadn’t spoken. I had thought it.
And they obeyed.
Each student turned calmly and walked out. No panic. No questions. Just blind obedience. Even the AI’s hum softened into stillness.
"A few people should clean up this mess!"
"If you're asked any questions."
"Just say that the first class went wrong."
My heartbeat thundered.
What did I just do?
Mind link? Hypnosis? No… something older. Deeper.
A few people had started cleaning up and packing the dead bodies into a bag to send to the mortuary. My blood went chill.
Zara was still on the floor, unconscious but breathing. The blue pulse of simulation light traced faint patterns under her skin, some sort of circuits of something that wasn’t human.
“Mira!” I called through our mind link.
"Get in here!”
She burst in, pale but composed.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, crouching beside Zara.
“She just… dropped.”
“Let’s get her cleaned up,” Mira said briskly.
I lifted Zara carefully.
“Take her to her room,” I told Mira.
“I’ll wait outside.”
Outside, I leaned against the wall, hands shaking. My reflection in the glass panel stared back, and for a brief second, my eyes gleamed gold, metallic and alien, before dimming again. I blinked hard. This wasn't the first time this was happening.
The door opened. Mira appeared.
"What really happened?" She asked.
"One time, the students were fighting against the ghost dummies." I paused.
"The next thing... One of the girls started taunting her and she just lost it."
"Her wolves came out and she devoured everything in her way."
Mira looked at me with a strange look in her eyes.
“She’s stable. You can come in.” She finally said as she opened the door for me to pass through.
Zara sat up in bed, wrapped in a blanket.
Her eyes were tired but aware.
“Hey,” she murmured.
“Hey yourself,” I said softly.
“You scared everyone.”
“Guess I’m good at that,” she whispered, voice faintly teasing.
We stayed silent. I brushed a damp strand of hair from her cheek. She didn’t pull away. Her pulse felt human again. Real.
“Stay,” she said.
So I did.
She shifted, resting her head on my shoulder as I played with strands of her hair, twisting them absently between my fingers. Her breathing slowed; mine followed. For a moment, everything was simple, we were just two broken people pretending the world outside didn’t exist.
Then Mira’s knock shattered it. She stepped in, her tablet glowing.
“Dr. Voss called again,” she said.
“She wanted another update.”
Zara looked up. “What did you tell her?”
“The truth,” Mira replied.
“That nothing new is happening.”
“Good,” I said.
“Keep it that way.”
She hesitated.
“Uhm.. sorry... she's tracking Zara’s vitals."
" They’re fluctuating beyond normal parameters.”
I met Mira’s gaze.
“Tell her she’s fine. Nothing more.”
Mira nodded, fingers dancing across her tablet.
"I need your help guys with something very important." She said.
I got up from the bed to keep space between myself and Zara.
"What's that?" Zara asked in a light voice.
"I need the full details of what happened in that class today." She said.
"And why should we tell you that?" I threw her way.
"Something's not adding up in my research." She responded ruffling her hair.
She began playing with codes on her system. Blue holographic prints started appearing on her side of the wall. She scanned through the codes displayed there, putting certain codes on the same folder. I suppose that they were quite similar that's why she was doing what she's doing.
"Kai... Zara... Rex.. " she paused.
"Torres... Aliens..." She continued muttering under her breath.
Rex... Torres. Those names sounded familiar.
"Genes... Variant forms. Wired signals...
"Then what are we?"
She paused as she took a step back.
Looking at all her arrangements. Zara was now out of the bed walking towards Mira's wall.
"What's happening Mira?" Zara asked.
"What happened in that class?" She asked firmly not responding to Zara's question.
Zara flinched at the authority in her tone.
"We were just fighting against the ghost dummies." Zara said
"Then I got jealous of a few girls that were ogling Kai." She whispered as blush crept on to her face.
That made me smile. I did know she was jealous though.
Mira cleared her throat at the emotional tension that was going on there.
"Then something just took over me. I fueled the jealousy rage when one of the girls kept taunting me. And I just let my wolf fall out of control."
"That's all I can remember." She said as her mind drifted afar.
"How come no one remembers what happened?" Mira now asked me, her eyes staring deep into my soul.
"I wiped the event of today from everyone's memory." I responded casually, like it had become a routine.
That was odd.
"You've added a bit Zara. You're taking on the powers of the people you killed." Mira said coldly.
"And you're wiping skills can't work on me because I'm not your usual wolf." She threw my way.
She started walking out of the door as her phone beeped once again.
Then she paused at the door.
“Kai,” she said quietly, “you’ve been in the archives, right?”
I frowned. “Once. Why?”
She raised her screen. A fragment of text glowed faintly in green code.
“Then maybe you can tell me what this means."
She zoomed in.
HARVEST COMMAND: ACTIVE.
The words echoed in my head like a loaded gun.
And for the first time, I couldn’t tell whose side Mira Chen was really on.