"But Katya!" Nicholas was walking behind her, keeping a hand at the small of her back as she clung to the railing along the wall. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"The fact that he showed up? Or the fact that I'm worried about him?"

"All of it! I mean…come on. He leads you on. He drops bits and pieces of information. He's cuddly then he breaks you nose… Has it occurred to you that you are being used?"

"Yup." She paused for a moment to catch her breath, and then went back to putting one foot in front of the other.

"So why?" Nicholas's eyes were wide with straight up concern.

"Because the longer I hang around that damned feral the more I learn about my own origins!"

Nick hadn't an answer for that. He stayed with her down to the end of the hall and back, and then put her to bed. She was hurting more than she let on. He knew it, too, and dug a heated blanket out of the cart in the hall.

"Here. This won't help the pain in the long run, but you might be able to sleep."

Katya thanked him with her eyes and drifted out.

Nick sat backwards on the hospital chair and waited until she was under. Then he got up, strolled out, and locked the door to her room behind him. Stryker said they were going to need her in a few hours. The old man wasn't holding up to questioning too well at all, from what he understood. Someone had sighted a massive feral up top, but he wasn't worried about that. He had other things needing attending.

Out of the hospital wing, down three floors, and into a different set of scrubs. A pair of gloves. Metal doors swung open.

"You monster!" Pavlov Arkadievich roared, lunging to the end of his chains like a rabid wolf-hound, the tendons on his neck corded out, straining, angry, and….-well imagine that, thought Nick. He's biding his time.

"Yup!" Nick smiled cheerfully and stepped into Arkadievich's space. Pavlov bit down on his neck HARD, but he still managed to tranq the long-ass sunuvabitch and strap him to the gurney.

Pavlov was out cold when the alarms went off. Nick swore floridly. He had an unresponsive subject and a damn feral that everybody else was supposed to be keeping an eye on was LOOSE. Fuck.

The phone beeped and he picked it up off the hanger. "What?"

"You've guessed?"

"Yes."

"He's in the north wing. Uncontained."

"Of course. What the hell do you want me to do? I've got two subjects, BOTH of whom he's interested and there's not much at my disposal that can stop him!"

"Keep your cool, Mr. Cook. I'll keep you apprised of the situation." Ayumi hung up the phone and took a breath, straightening her shirt. This was going to be a very very long day.

0oooooo0000000ooooo0000

Stryker was unable to speak, but he could write like motherfucker and that was annoying. The old man's knuckles were white, clenching the pen between his first and second finger. Ayumi's patience wore very thin that evening. Eight men died within the first four hours after Creed's escape, and then he made the lower reaches of the complex and her hopes in hell of locating that particular piece of gum on her shoe became less and less likely. She knew from experience how hard he was to handle. Last time they'd had to pin him down at the bottom of a forty-foot deep reservoir tank. Creed had killed her brother that night. It had been her pleasure to seal him in that barrel.

Pavlov and Katya were their trump cards. If they could convince him that Katya was in danger; if they could convince him that Pavlov was betraying him. Or better, if they could pull his damn brother in out of the woods and announce his presence, they might be able to do something. But right now, there was a prehistoric cat loose in their basement and it was killing everything it came across.

Between that and the fact that her boss was literally speechless, Ayumi didn't have it to well.

That being said: she had a job to do.

Stryker's rasp brought her out of her reverie as he angrily shoved the pad of paper into her hand. The first thing that jumped off of the page were the words KILL HIM.