Chapter Text
The whir of the helicopter blades carried on long after your boots hit the tarmac. Sharp gusts of wind that have little to do with the bird behind you snap your coat around your hips and though your gaze wants to lift to the base looming on the mountainside above you, you train it on the three men waiting for you. Two stand at the edge of the landing pad in full uniform and armed with rifles while the third waits patiently behind them.
Neither of the two soldiers ask for your name as you draw near.
They don’t need it.
You know they’re already well-aware of who you are and what you’re doing at the top-secret base.
Again, you want to peer up at the building. Half built into the mountain, it’s all sharp angles, steel and concrete. There are no flags, no insignia. Only a door waits for you at the end of a small walkway connected to the landing pad.
You look past the three men and see black painted letters stacked on top of each other on the wall beside the door.
S
A
D
Otherwise known as the Supernatural Asset Division.
Something you weren’t aware even existed until two weeks ago.
By the time the whir of the helicopter fades, you step past the soldiers to the third man waiting for you. General Shepherd looks just as you expect him to. What little hair he has left is silver and clings to the sides of his head. His posture is rigid and carries a kind of authority that feels as if he was born with the title of General. He looks at you for only a split second before he takes a step back and nods with an unspoken invitation to follow him.
He says your name and holds out a hand for you to shake.“Your clearance came through an hour ago.”
“That was quick.”
“It’s desperation.”
You’re not that surprised to hear his admission. Years of working in emergency departments up to your eyeballs in stressful situations taught you how to face surprises without flinching. Instead, you adjust the medical bag on your shoulder and follow him to the main entrance of the base.
This time, as he swipes his badge and holds his hand to a black screen to scan his palm, you let your eyes lift to a small overhang that juts out of the mountain above you. No windows. No other points of egress aside from the heavy door before you.
With a hiss of inner mechanics, the locks snap open and the door swings open. A blast of air hits your face and the sterile scent that follows almost feels familiar but the sensation vanishes the moment you step inside.
The walls are lined with reinforced glass panels and etched with strange symbols that seem to glow a faint, dusty blue from within. You stare at one as you pass and narrow your eyes on the rune before you take a few more steps and another takes its place. With a frown flattening your lips and pinching your brows, you face forward and hold your tongue as you move toward another set of doors.
“It would be wise not to touch anything.” General Shepherd’s voice almost feels alien in the hallway and you nod. “And don’t ask questions you’re not prepared to hear the answer to.”
“I was told this division handles nonstandard assets, not magic, General Shepherd.”
Glancing at him out of the corner of your eye, you catch the corner of his mouth twitching. It isn’t a smile and you’re not sure which would be worse.
“Around here, they’re the same thing,” is the only response you get from him.
Before he can explain further, a buzzer sounds above the double doors ahead of you and just as you step up to them, they part down the middle. Within, another hallway appears but instead of the strange, glowing runes, armed personnel are stationed at regular intervals. There is no insignia on their uniforms either. Aside from their weapons, uniforms, and eyes that track your every movement, there’s nothing to even suggest they’re soldiers at all.
“Your briefing covered most of the basics,” Shepherd continues. He leads you through the corridor, past a few nondescript doors, and to the right. “Shifters. Augmented. Possessed. Psychic-adjacent anomalies.”
“Assets.”
“Correct.”
Another left takes you to a shorter hallway and an elevator waits for you at the end. As Shepherd places his palm in another scanner, you retrace the path you took in your mind. Something tells you that you’ll get lost in this place before you ever get used to it. With a low chime, the scanner approves his identity and the elevator doors slide open.
You turn and face the doors and just as they shut, Shepherd carries on. “You’re here because Captain John Price is down. And if we lose him, the entire 141 task force destabilizes.”
You’d read as much in the dossier sent to you two days ago. You nod and stare at your distorted reflections in the elevator doors. “I read that he was attacked.”
“By a Russian vamp. A rogue operative with enhanced venom.” He speaks as if he’s reading from a medical chart, his tone completely clinical. “The vamp was neutralized. Captain Price survived.”
“But barely,” you finish. The dossier had been somewhat difficult to read through. You’re so used to every medical detail clearly documented that trying to ascertain what a top-secret brief is alluding to proved challenging. Whoever typed it up was careful not to mention anything supernatural. Nothing about shifting, vampires, venom, or even specific injuries.
It was as vague as it could be and beyond frustrating.
“Barely,” Shepherd confirms. “His previous physician was killed during a containment breach six weeks ago. We’ve been rotating medics since. None have the kind of expertise we chose you for.”
“And now he’s quarantined.”
In your distorted reflections, you watch Shepherd nod once. “I’m glad to see you’ve read the file thoroughly.”
“I wouldn’t be a very good physician if I didn’t.”
“Good.” The elevator comes to a jarring stop, the cables and motor trembling as the doors open. “Because you’ll be making decisions that override his authority. Medically, you outrank him.”
Oh.
Well, that certainly wasn’t in the dossier.
You take a slow breath and glance up at General Shepherd before you step off the elevator. “Does he know that?”
He doesn’t immediately answer you. He simply looks down at you for a moment that is realistically only a split second but feels like hours. His eyes narrow and then relax and he takes a step forward to lead you out of the elevator.
“He’s aware.”
The corridor here is wide and dimly lit and at the very end, it's sealed with reinforced blast doors. A slight metallic scent hangs in the air that makes your nose wrinkle and a pair of glowing runes on the walls catch your gaze. These aren’t the soft blue like the ones up above. The symbols flicker like dying fluorescent lights and are the color of blood.
As you pass them, you can’t stop yourself from falling a step or two behind General Shepherd just to get a longer look. There’s nothing along the walls; no wires, no electrical lines. Nothing but glowing lines etched onto the steel walls.
When Shepherd speaks, he snaps your attention back to him and you catch up.
“Captain Price is a shifter. Apex-class. High control and high aggression under stress.”
“Is he dangerous right now?”
He pauses and somehow, the silence says more than an answer could. A knot tightens in your stomach and you look away from Shepherd to the doors ahead of you. Two bands of yellow paint stretch across the door and in red letters between them is the word CAUTION written over and over.
“He’s contained.”
That’s not exactly an answer and you can’t stop the frown on your face. General Shepherd seems to notice and before he presents his palm for another scanner, he clears his throat.
“If you’re having second thoughts—”
“I’m not.” You shrug and hope he can’t see through your forced nonchalance. “I just need to know if I should treat him like a patient…or a containment risk.”
Shepherd’s gaze lingers on you for far longer than you prefer. His eyes feel too sharp and you force yourself to stay steady beneath his scrutiny. When he decides that you meant what you said, he reaches over to the scanner and lets it confirm his identity.
Three scanners.
Two reinforced blast doors.
A maze and an elevator ride.
Your curiosity is piqued but so is your apprehension. Just what is behind the doors keeping the Supernatural Asset Division hidden away from the rest of the world? Though you’re merely seconds from finding out, you can’t shake the impatient twitch of your stomach or the sweat starting to collect beneath your arms.
Two weeks ago, you didn’t believe in anything supernatural. Sure, you’d heard countless stories of ghosts haunting the emergency department and listened with mild amusement as some of your colleagues discussed the existence of aliens, but you never gave any of it a second thought. It’s just not how your brain is wired.
Two weeks ago, if someone talked to you about wolf-shifters and vampire venom, you would have asked them to take a psychological evaluation to be committed.
And now…now you are seconds away from walking into a highly classified, top-of-the-top secret military division of supernatural beings. You almost want to laugh. The idea is utterly absurd.
But General Shepherd isn’t laughing. He isn’t even smiling.
“You can treat him as a patient and a risk at the moment.”
You nod, shaking yourself out of the momentary daze that stepping into an unprecedented event in one’s life can only cause, and focus yourself. With a breath, you adjust your bag once more. “Then I will need immediate access to his entire file. And I want to speak to him before any further sedation.”
The scanner beeps its confirmation of the General’s identity but a second verification step is needed. You blink as a small computer screen blinks to life and a keypad appears. Before he inputs whatever identification that is needed into the computer, Shepherd looks at you and seems to find something amusing that you’re not privy to.
“He’s not exactly cooperative.”
“I don’t need him to be cooperative, just conscious.”
“You don’t scare easily, do you?”
You force a tight smile. “I spent three years of my residency in a level I trauma center, General.”
“Good.” Shepherd reached over and quickly typed a ten-digit code into the keypad before stepping back and straightening his spine.
A buzzer sounds above the door and as the twelve inch thick doors part down the center, something deep within the next corridor roars. Even through the walls, it seems to shake the concrete and steel and you feel the tremble of it beneath your shoes.
You squeeze your hands tight at your sides until your nails push into your palms but you don’t look away.
As terrified as you are to face something so unknown, you’re far too curious to turn back now.
“Sounds like Captain Price is awake.”