Cillian blackwood did not believe in ghosts, but as he stepped out of the pressurized cabin of his black-liveried helicopter, he felt like one. The air of Oakhaven was too thick, too vital for a man whose lungs were being colonized by a web of malignant cells. He adjusted his silk scarf, hiding the surgical port in his neck, and looked toward the Blackwood Ridge with a look of starving hunger.
He had been here twenty years ago, as a younger man funded by the first billion he had made in synthetic pharmaceuticals. He had been Dr. Elias Vance's silent benefactor, the "Shadow" behind the Anatomy. When Elias had died and the Blackwood "specimen" had vanished into the deep timber, He had assumed the lineage had burned out.
He was wrong. His satellites fitted with thermal sensors tuned to the specific, hyper-metabolic heat signature of a shifting lycanthrope had picked up a flare of energy six months ago. A heartbeat that defied the laws of thermodynamics.
Reid Blackwood was alive.
Silas had spent millions to track that pulse. He didn't find Reid with bloodhounds; he found him with science. He had deployed microscopic airborne sensors "dust drones" across the ridge, sniffing the air for the unique pheromones and the iron-heavy scent of Blackwood blood. When Reid had stepped out of the cabin to save Clara from that first fallen tree, Silas had seen him through a thermal lens from three thousand feet up.
"You have grown, Reid," Cillian whispered, his voice a dry rasp. He tapped a glass vial on the tray.
The capture didn't begin in the woods; it began in a darkened boardroom months before Silas arrived in Oakhaven. Cillian Blackwood had sat across from Silas the only brother that was exactly like him, tossing a vial of preserved, blackened marrow onto the mahogany table."Reid is a creature of habit," Cillian had rasped, his eyes shadowed by a hood. "He hides in the damp and the dark, thinking his silence is a shield. I need him alive. I need his marrow 'untainted' by a killing blow. Can your team handle a ghost?"
"No Cillian we harvest them"
Silas didn't use brute force to capture Reid; he used The Anatomy of Shadows against him. He knew from Elias Vance's journals that the Blackwood biology reacted violently to specific ultrasonic frequencies and high-purity silver.
The night of the capture, the forest didn't scream; it hummed.
Silas had deployed a perimeter of Acoustic Disruptors around Reid's cabin. These devices emitted a sub-audible frequency that mimicked the onset of a lunar shift, forcing Reid's body into a state of "Pre-Transition" panic. Inside the cabin, Reid had collapsed, his bones beginning to grind against each other as his nervous system misfired, convinced the moon was at its peak.
As Reid stumbled out into the clearing, gasping for air and clutching his chest, Silas's "Containment Team" moved in with clinical precision. They didn't fire lead; they fired Silver-Filigree Harpoons.
Four pressurized canisters hissed at once. The harpoons didn't pierce Reid's heart they anchored into the earth around him, deploying a web of micro-thin silver wiring that draped over his shifting frame. The moment the silver touched his skin, a massive electrical charge was sent through the net.
Reid's scream was cut short as the silver acted as a lightning rod for his own bio-electricity. His nervous system overloaded. The "liminal" shift was frozen in its tracks half-fur, half-flesh leaving him paralyzed and trapped in a state of excruciating, static agony.
Reid was hoisted into the black caravan like a piece of heavy machinery, his amber eyes wide and fixed on the cabin where Clara was still sleeping, unaware that the man she loved had been turned into a "specimen" before he could even draw his breath to howl.
The air in the laboratory didn't just smell of chemicals; it smelled of ancient, musk-heavy fur and old blood. Reid struggled against the silver restraints, his eyes widening as a figure stepped out from the darkness behind the monitors. It wasn't Silas. Silas was merely the bankroll the man in the suit cowering in the corner.
The man standing over Reid was taller, his skin a patchwork of jagged scars and ritualistic tattoos that seemed to pulse with a life of their own.
"Did you really think I died in the Great Fire, little brother?"
The voice was a jagged rasp, vibrating with a power that made the wolf inside Reid howl in recognition. This was Cillian Blackwood, the elder brother who had vanished twenty years ago after nearly tearing Oakhaven apart in a fit of lunar rage.
"Cillian..." Reid choked out, the silver filigree on his skin burning white-hot.
"Look at you," Cillian sneered, pacing around the surgical table like a predator evaluating a kill. "Living in a shack. Playing house with a doctor's daughter. You've spent your life trying to suppress the gift. But the gift has a price, doesn't it?"
Cillian stopped and gripped the edge of the table. His fingernails were permanently elongated, yellowed and sharp. Unlike Reid, who fought to stay human, Cillian had stayed "under" too long. His human form was failing, his muscles twitching with the phantom energy of a shift that never fully ended.
"My body is burning out, Reid," Cillian whispered, leaning close enough for Reid to see the flecks of gold permanently stained into his irises. "I embraced the wolf, but the wolf is an addict. It's eating my marrow. I'm hollow. My bones are becoming brittle, cracking under the weight of my own strength."
He looked over at Silas, who was trembling while holding a specialized extraction canister.
"I hired Silas and his little 'Aethelgard' team to find you. I gave them the blood samples. I told them where to look. I needed a donor, Reid. A Blackwood whose marrow hasn't been corrupted by over-shifting. Someone 'pure.'"
Cillian picked up the bone-borer, his hand remarkably steady for a man whose body was dying.
"I don't want to be cured. I want to be restored. I'm going to take your marrow, Reid. I'm going to siphon the stability out of your bones and graft it into mine. You'll be left a human shell, and I... I will finally be the Apex."
Silas Thorne stepped forward, his voice shaky. "The procedure is delicate, Cillian. If the adrenaline spikes too high during the extraction"
"Then let it spike!" Cillian roared, the sound vibrating the glass vials on the shelves. He turned back to Reid, a cruel, familiar smile breaking across his scarred face.
As the drill whirred to life, Reid realized the true horror.
"I am going to keep you in a state of 'Locked Shift.' I'll use the frequency generators to hold your body at the exact second the bone begins to liquefy and reform. I will harvest that fluid while it's still 'liminal.' I will graft it into my own spine, inch by inch."
Cillian leaned closer, his breath smelling of expensive mints and decay.
"You won't die, Reid. A Blackwood is too stubborn for that. But you will be a hollowed-out well. I will drink from your vitality for the next hundred years while you remain pinned to this table, a living map of the anatomy I've spent my life trying to steal. You aren't a man tonight. You're a pharmacy."