Bengal's Heart

Breed Progressive Training Facility, Germany

It was a scene out of a nightmare. Something so horrific, so bloody as to defy the imagination and leave Cassa gasping in shock.

“We have to find the release,” she screamed in horror as her husband stood beside her, the camera on his shoulder trained into the viewing area of the rumored death pit.

It was more than a pit of death. It was a place of such torturous agony and evil that Cassa fought to accept the ramifications of it.

A dozen breeds, nude, their stripes gleaming against their flesh moved in rapid precision to escape the long, lethally sharp blades that played a horrendous game of hide and seek with the creatures fighting to avoid them.

Blood sprayed against the steel walls, pooled on the floor beneath the bodies of those who had the misfortune of having not moved quickly enough. And still the others fought to survive, and to protect.

A savage roar of rage tore through the intercom as the tallest, the most powerful of the Bengal breeds confined and doomed to die, echoed along the intercom. He fought to shove the others aside, to save them, to find some way to stop the mechanical thrust and parry that sliced into vulnerable flesh.

“Douglas, help me,” she screamed, sobbing as her husband stood silent and still, the camera recording the brutality of the Genetics Councils and their so called progressive training.

How had this happened? She flipped the switch, slammed her hands onto the release plungers, and still, the blades sliced and diced their way through yet more of the breeds in their path.

The roars of fury build in crescendo, the raw animal rage sending shards of terror racing down her spine as she grabbed her husband's arm and jerked him toward her.

She saw it then. Frozen, immobile with shock, she saw the morbid pleasure in his gaze and the satisfaction in his face.

Like a key finally releasing the lock on months of suspicion, Cassa blinked at the truths that finally slammed inside her head. The group of men and women who had come to this small country to find this particular lab and rescue the breeds here, had suffered through too many unfortunate accidents and false trails. For days now, the commander, Jonas Wyatt, had treated the group as a whole with icy suspicion. Because of one man.

“You.” She felt herself shaking apart. Felt something breaking inside her at the realization that she too had played a part in the deception that was now killing the very men and women they had been sent to save. “What have you done?” She screamed the accusation at him, watching the smirk that curved at his lips as his pale blue eyes glittered with fanatical anticipation.