the hellhole where hundreds of kidnapped alphas had been tortured and subjected to experimentation against their will wasn't the only reason Ransom had blown it sky-high. As far as he was concerned, its destruction was just a happy accident, a fortunate side-effect.
What he wanted was revenge—plain and simple. And the fire was a means to that end.
Not directly, of course. Turning an empty building to ash wouldn't hurt any of his tormentors—the ones who weren't already dead, at any rate. It wouldn't erase the suffering of the alpha brothers imprisoned with him, who even now were scattering across the countryside as fugitives. And it sure as shit wouldn't give Ransom back eight years of his life.
But it would bring the architect of all that evil flying back like a moth to a flame.
Because while Ransom knew the beta government would do everything they could to bury the news of a mass escape from a remote top-secret facility, they wouldn't be able to hide that towering spire of smoke.
Even if the locals somehow missed the initial explosion and the half-hour fusillade that followed as the blaze tore through every last grenade and bomb, the soot and ash drifting for hundreds of miles would definitely grab people's attention.
And if there was one thing Ransom's enemy hated, it was attention.
Like all puppet masters, Roger Fulmer liked to stay out of view while he pulled other people's strings. The bastard had run his shop of horrors for a decade without even a whisper of its true purpose making its way to the public.
The official work of the Central Infectious Disease Research Facility had nothing to do with its intimidating name. From what Ransom was able to pick up from bits of conversation over the years, any research on actual pathogens took place at a sister facility in the Mojave desert. The only thing the skeleton crew at this location ‘researched’ were alphas.
Of course, the Boundaryland Treaties between the beta government and the alpha population, in place since the last century, made such an undertaking highly illegal. Not that the current beta administration cared much about the law. Instead, they seemed to view the treaties as a kind of challenge. Not about to let any formal agreement impede their mission of eradicating the alphas, they simply took their work underground.
Literally.
Twelve stories under a Nebraska field, they'd constructed ‘The Basement,’ a place so highly classified that until today, only three people had ever been allowed to walk out of it alive.
There, in a secret laboratory, more than four hundred alphas had been sacrificed to Fulmer's twisted experiments—as well as nearly as many beta lives.
But that long reign of torture and death had ended this morning when Ransom and his brothers had escaped their cages and slaughtered their jailers. Ransom alone had stayed behind to ensure their victory was complete.
In a stroke of bad luck, Fulmer had left for Washington D.C. the day before. But Ransom knew a control freak like him would never trust his lackeys to contain the fallout. That was the kind of job Fulmer would see to himself.
And when he returned, Ransom would be here to greet him.
Until then, the alpha would have to be patient. After all, he'd waited years for this—a few more hours would make no difference.
For now, Ransom was content to watch more emergency vehicles arrive with their pointless blaring sirens and flashing red and blue lights. Just as futile was the queue of ambulances. If any remains were pulled from the ruins—unlikely given the raging fire—they’d be headed straight to the morgue.
Ransom amused himself by imagining walking over there and telling them exactly how the fire had come to be. He suspected he wouldn't get a word out before the sight of an alpha so far from the Boundarylands sent their narrow beta brains into a panic. Inevitably, they'd start shooting, and then Ransom would be forced to defend himself.
Despite how little respect Ransom had for betas, he had no interest in wiping out first responders. He had no quarrel with firefighters and paramedics and police, none of whom had ever harmed him. They were simply doing their jobs.
No, Ransom was waiting for the black helicopters, the dark sedans with heavily tinted windows.
He was waiting for Fulmer.
The monster would come, maybe in the next hour, maybe tomorrow. But he'd come.
Because true evil was single-minded, and its practitioners never stopped as long as they were breathing.
"Damn it."
Gretchen Conrad cursed out loud as she sped along Highway 92. She was