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She stared back at him, staying silent. His lips quirked as he nodded with a subtle gesture of approval.
“They were right. Mercury was more cunning, swifter, stronger, more dangerous than other Breeds within their lab. His training was highly advanced, but as he grew older, he began showing signs of a phenomenon they called feral fever; other scientists named it feral displacement. It was something that normally only infected the young, those at toddler stages. It only affected adult Breeds who were closer to the animal they were enhanced with.”
“The call of the wild,” she whispered. “That’s what Leo calls it. He says all Breeds have it to a degree.”
Jonas inclined his head slowly as he grimaced.
“He was barely twenty when he learned the young female of the pride, the one the scientists were watching closely when he came in contact with her, had been killed. She was only fifteen and sent on a mission she should have never been a part of. When he was told, the Coyotes, two of them, the scientists that worked with her, weren’t exactly sympathetic. Mercury had just come in from a mission of his own; the feral displacement was already running high within him. He killed them all, with his bare hands, before he could be restrained by the other trainers and guards.”
“Sweet heaven,” she whispered. She hadn’t known the details of that event. “With his bare hands?”
“We have the videos of the event. At one point, Mercury slammed his hand into one Coyote’s chest and ripped his heart from his body. He took two bullets that should have been fatal wounds, but he kept going. He tore a scientist’s head from his shoulders, the trainer . . .” He paused and shook his head. “Bare-handed, Ria, he disemboweled a trainer. Once they managed to restrain him and begin running tests, they found a hormone that attached itself to the adrenaline pumping through his body. One they still have no name for, no idea from where it’s produced. But they found a way to recess it. A drug therapy that kept him calm, kept him controllable.”
Ria was horrified. She hadn’t known this. She stared back at Jonas, sick to her stomach, imagining the horror of being controlled.
“What did it do to him?”
Jonas steepled his fingers as he frowned thoughtfully. “I asked him that once. He said he felt as though he were walking in two worlds. An automaton. With it, he lost all the exceptional senses he had tested so highly in. But he was merciless when it came to killing. Cunning. He had no compassion and that was what they had wanted all along. When he was rescued, he was slowly taken off the drug therapy, and his adjustment was remarkable. I consider him one of my strongest enforcers. But still, his senses are barely better than a non-Breed’s. Sense of smell, hearing, scent and taste barely register when he’s tested.”
Ria felt her chest tighten. “And now?”
Jonas shrugged. “He doesn’t talk about it much. But the last tests Ely ran showed an advanced state of the feral displacement. She wants to restart the drug therapy.”
She stared at him in shock. The doctor the entire Breed community held in such regard would suggest something so horrifying?
“Why?” she gasped in outrage. “Why would she want to do that if he can control it?”
“Because she believes, based on the video from that camera”—he nodded to the camera—“that Mercury was within minutes of sexually assaulting you. You didn’t see his expression before he moved to you. His features seemed to shift, became more animalistic, and his eyes . . .” He frowned.
“Blue,” she said softly. “Blue sparks.”
He nodded. “The woman he was bred from was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Swede reputed to be from a family that once bred berserkers. Vikings.”
Ria rose to her feet, rubbing her hand over the back of her neck as she closed the file she was working on and moved around Jonas to the file table.
“I have a favor to ask you, Ria,” he said then, his voice quiet as she stopped at the table and stared down at the files. “I want you to come to the labs with me. I want you to have the blood, hormone and saliva samples taken.”
She stared at the wall, remembering Callan’s order to do just that, as well as the promise Mercury had extracted. He didn’t trust the doctor now for some reason.
“Did Ely find the mating hormone in his tests?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“No. She didn’t.”
It was no more than she had expected.
“Then there’s no need for me to submit to a woman who would so unfairly accuse and betray someone who went willingly to have those tests done.” She turned back to Jonas slowly. “She tricked him, didn’t she, Jonas? She deliberately antagonized him to get what she wanted.”
He stared back at her, his silver eyes solemn and, for the first time since she had met him, without the cynical mockery they usually contained.
“You’re very perceptive,” he acknowledged. “Yes, she deliberately antagonized him to prove what she suspected.”
“Why?”
With that question, he shook his head. “I’m not certain why,” he finally said. “There were traces of the displacement found when the tests were mixed with the results from the blood, saliva and hormone samples of yours that Vanderale sent us before your arrival. We knew you would be in close-quarter contact with Mercury, Lawe and Rule. We run the mating tests as a precaution. The hormone showed up in those tests where they didn’t show up in the tests done on his samples alone or with other women.”
“And you’re telling me this why?” she asked him. “Is it somehow my fault?”
“It’s not your fault, Ria, merely an anomaly.” He shook his head. “One that concerns me.”
