Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 by C.M. Simpson (top ebook reader txt) 📕

“Because that’s not the guard I’ve got eyes on.”

“But he’s smoking, too.”

“Don’t look at me. I mean, I can see him through your implant, but that big bastard isn’t showing up on the scans.”

Well, that was news—and pretty shitty news at that.

I stared at the wolf in front of me, watching as he cocked his head and met my gaze. It took me a second to realize he wasn’t trying to rip my throat out for the offense of looking him in the eye. I remembered to breathe, and felt my eyes go wide and wary. He pushed off from the dumpster, and took a step back into the alley proper.

“Why don’t you come out where I can see you?” he said, making the request sound like the most reasonable thing in the world. “I’m sure you have a license to be abroad...”

I closed my mouth, swallowed to moisten my throat, and blinked.

“A license? Sure.”

“And you’ll be able to produce it,” he added, his tone coaxing.

“Oh. Yes.” I stood up, making a show of patting my pants pocket with one hand, while I tucked the hand holding the Glazer behind my back. “Somewhere here.”

“Good,” he said, “because we need to make sure you’re not from the ship that’s in orbit, right now.”

“There’s a ship in orbit?” I asked, trying to sound hopeful, like I’d been hoping for such a thing, and couldn’t believe it had finally happened.

I mean, the reports had shown the world was totally dominated by wolves, right? I had no idea what the situation was for humans here. I didn’t even know if there were humans here—outside of wolf slaves. The wolves did have slaves, didn’t they?

Tens made an uncertain sound in the implant, and I decided to end the suspense. I whipped the Glazer out from behind my back, and fired three shots in rapid succession. There was no point in relying on the first one landing.

The darts flew up in an arc, the first two embedding themselves in the wolf’s body armor at the stomach and chest. The third one found his throat and punched through flesh, delivering its payload into his bloodstream. I hoped it didn’t prove fatal, but didn’t have time to check. As oblivious as he had been to my presence, before, the security guard was all too aware of it, now.

He came round the side of the bin, drawing a snub-nosed stunner as he came, but I was firing as the first piece of him appeared, and succeeded in embedding a dart in his shoulder, the open collar at the top of his chest and his cheek.

“That,” Tens said, as the wolf hit the pavement, “might have been too much.”

“Oops.” Honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I rifled through the fallen guard’s pockets, pulling keys off a chain at his belt, his pass from a cord around his neck, the stunner from hand, and his wallet.

“What do you want that for?” Tens asked, but I didn’t answer.

I rolled the guard onto his back and took hold under his armpits, dragging him round the side of the dumpster and into the shadows where Tens and Mack had dropped me. Once he was tucked in behind it, I turned to where I’d left the other wolf lying on the pavement. He was still there, so I did the same for him as I’d done to the guard: keys, pass-card, weapons, wallet—and then I scanned his fingerprints, which reminded me I should scan the guards’ prints, too.

“Too slow. You need to pick it up,” Tens said, and I bolted for the door nearest where the guard had originated.

“This it?” I asked, and glanced up in time to see the camera. “Shit!”

“I’ve got it,” Tens told me. “Two ticks, aaand there.”

“There?”

“Yup. Looped the feed. That guard is gonna look like he’s been smoking forever.”

“Great.”

I went to work on the lock. It was easy, really. Just a matter of holding the guard’s card up to the scanner. Right up until the screen flashed a brief message—in lupar.

Crap.

“It says ‘Biometrics’, Tens supplied after a short pause—and I assumed he’d used the Shady’s translation function. “Nah. Mack told me.”

“Biometrics,” I muttered, wishing I knew when Mack had picked up lupar, as I plugged in the scan I’d taken of the guard’s fingerprints.

The scanner pinged, and the door unlocked. Now, all I hoped was that the guard worked one-up, and didn’t have a partner waiting on the other side. I caught a break, and slipped into the empty corridor beyond without meeting another soul.

It was an easy matter to lock the door behind me, and walk further into the building. I came to the janitor’s closet as hoped, and slipped inside. There wasn’t a terminal in this closet, and I was faintly disappointed, but it didn’t matter. I found the wireless network, and let Tens access my implant so he could work his magic, and pull me an accurate map—and that’s where we hit the first snag.

The building was nothing like we expected. The plans we’d pulled were precise, but they just weren’t precisely for the building I was standing in. Tens and I swore in unison. Me quietly, because I was in a closet in a building that was nothing it was supposed to be, and Tens more loudly, because he was sitting safely in the command center of a ship thousands of miles above me, safe and sound.

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the stench of chemicals all around me, and hooked into the nearest system. Closest I could tell there were three. The one I chose looked like it might be devoted to security, which, theoretically should give me access to the security feeds as well as a fairly accurate floor plan.

It was a good guess—but I got a bit more than I bargained for.

The system greeted me with a series of snarls, yips and whines, and I didn’t understand a word. I listened as the system repeated itself, and