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“Low-level Severed don’t normally slip under the radar,” Caelan says thoughtfully. One of his hands is clenched around the arm of his chair so tightly his knuckles are white. When he notices my gaze, he releases the wood and self-consciously flexes his outstretched fingers.
Yeah, something’s up with him. Has been since his recon last night. I’ve been thinking it’s because he and Dax got into it, but….
That doesn’t feel right.
I’m totally cool with poking around someone else’s issues. If we can all just ignore my literal bomb for another thirty years, I really won’t mind.
“No, they don’t,” Dax agrees. “Which is why it makes no sense.”
He pushes up from his seat and starts to pace.
“Scans didn’t register movement or heat signatures. Deadwalkers always give off a signature. They’re not ghosts. Low-levels aren’t much more than reanimated meat sacks corrupted by black magic, but they’re still alive.”
“Do you think there was some kind of interference?” Gav asks.
“Had to be. I’m running back through footage, but so far it hasn’t picked up anything.”
Dax stops, fists planted on his hips. “There’s been one other time this happened, and it was recently.”
His gaze flicks warily toward Caelan. He scrapes a hand through his messy black hair and sighs. “It was when I was doing preliminary recon on Varenthrall’s Estate. At first, there was jack shit around the whole place. No heat signatures inside or out, but my drones were clearly clocking live bodies. I assumed it was some kind of glitch.”
Caelan leans forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “You didn’t tell me that.”
Dax shrugs. “I didn’t think I needed to. That’s the entire reason I run preliminary checks. So the fuck ups happen before the mission.”
“You told me the wards were causing minor glitches in the scans,” Caelan scowls. “Not that you couldn’t even read the damn things.”
There’s a moment of thick tension as my packmates stare each other down. Finally, Dax looks away.
“Give me a second to show you what I mean before you lose your shit,” he replies, crossing to one of the wall monitors. He flicks it on and presses a button on his laptop. An aerial view of a huge Gothic mansion surrounded by acres of land covered in thick, dark forest flickers onto the screen.
What the hell is that place, and why’s it so… secluded?
“This is the Varenthrall estate. Five hours before Caelan went in last night,” Dax answers my unasked question.
“What am I looking at specifically?” Gav squints at the footage.
“A fuck ton of nothing,” Dax mutters. “This is one of my drones running a search for heat-sigs. There are acres of forest, and a heat-sig check should be lit up like the fucking Fourth of July. Normally, I’d have to go in and recalibrate so it wasn’t picking up smaller bodies. You should see little orange and red blips. Rodents, squirrels, raccoons, and even birds nesting in the canopy would show up. But look at it.”
The screen is completely blank. Just a dead sheet of blue and nothing else.
“There’s nothing there,” I murmur.
“Exactly.” He switches screens. This one shows the same aerial view, but the colors are inverted.
“This scan checks for Bio Signatures. Heartbeats, blood, designation scent markers. Once again, nothing’s showing up.”
Another flip of the screen, then another, and another.
“Sound frequency, Electric Interference, Structural Mapping. All reading like the fucking apocalypse happened and no one told us.”
No one speaks. Caelan’s still, but Silas is cringing like he knows where this is headed. Gav finally speaks, voice low, tight, and pissed.
“You gave the go-ahead to send Caelan in. Why?”
Now it’s my turn to wince, but it’s totally in sympathy. I can’t remember the last time someone questioned Dax’s decisions.
He flinches—not hard, but it’s enough for me to notice.
