“Stay tight… watch your back… who the fuck does she think she is?” Randall huffed aggressively to himself as he turned the corner of another deserted hallway in the Center.  He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and squinted at the empty Beta walkways for any signs of life.  The hallways were darkened after the windows had been electronically shielded in bulletproof steel thanks to Alice’s tampering, though dim lighting from the emergency bulbs above guided his sauntering march.

            He hadn’t stumbled on any loose Betas yet, but he hadn’t exactly been putting his fullest effort into searching for strays after Sonja’s belittling instructions.

            “Watch your own back, BITCH.  That’s what I should’ve said!” he declared victoriously to himself in the silence, thrusting his arms above his head.  “What, does she think I’m some kind of amateur?”

            Shattering this eerie serenity with volume and explosive motion, a tightly coiled fist the size of a truck barreled through the wall ten feet above Randall’s head in a raining eruption of brick, mortar, and steel, all shredded as easily as paper under the artillery-like power of the hand and its attached Omega limb.

            The greased-up gunrunner, gripping his firearm in a fist that had smashed through enumerable faces, screamed bloody murder as the titanic hand unfurled, palm aimed squarely for him with mighty fingers clenching around his back fast enough that it was only by the miracle of the awkward angle from which he was snatched that his bones weren’t crunched to powder.

            “Gotcha,” growled a catastrophically enraged Jenna Reynolds as she withdrew her hand from the hole she had punched in the third floor of the Norman & Joan Tyler Convention Center with runty Alpha in tow.  Brandishing her squirming capture before her face, a sneer curling into her upper lip, the twenty-one-year-old couldn’t help but let a triumphant glow flare in her irises.  “You talk way too loud, you know that?  I barely had to put an ear to the wall.”

            “My leg! My… m-” he screeched as the hot fist tightened around him.  He hadn’t ever known a sensation quite like this, as though his entire body was being compressed and folded into itself by a trash compactor.  He felt and heard a rib snap, and his whimpering cries turned into a pain-wracked yelp.

            “Jenna.  We need him in one piece to hear what’s happening in there,” Claire Lindon said as she loomed over her shorter friend’s shoulder, trembling with just as much anger.  “That’s enough for now.”

            “I know.  I’m just giving him a little encouragement before we start talking.”

            “Mom will want to be the one to talk with him.  Come on, ease up now,” Claire encouraged, conflicted over the idea of relenting on the pain of Jenna’s prisoner, but nonetheless far too focused by the entire situation to let her feelings redirect her.  Still gripping the petite Omega’s arm, she extended a hand with her palm up.  “Jenna.  Give him to me.”

            “Fine,” the Omega groused, acknowledging the wisdom in her friend’s words amidst her own boiling fury, and her wrist shook violently as she uncurled her tightly bound fingers above Claire’s waiting hand.  “Don’t let him feel too at home.”

            “Oh, believe me,” Claire replied, brow furrowed as she held the weeping little Alpha close enough that her warm breath could wash over him.  “I won’t.”

            Having arrived minutes before, Aegis had already set up a point of communications outside the Center, down in the hills distanced from the raised thoroughfares used for Alpha traffic, though even at this elevation, most of the Omegas’ heads rose above the rooftop.

            Tricia Reynolds and her team, armed to the teeth and raring for answers, had already breached the building through the partially constructed north entrance.  Ten Enforcers and another three dozen Alphas were still scouring the exterior of the building for alternate ways in while David and Rebecca settled in behind Abby as they reviewed Tricia’s tactical plan with a backup strike team.

            Melody remained at the back of the group, continually sending out distress signals on her tablet to Kayla, who it was already well-understood couldn’t possibly receive them if she hadn’t already; still, a grim hope was clung to.

            “I could use some good news right about now, Dawn,” Abby said as she peered over her frizzy-haired tech support’s laptop.  “I really didn’t want to have to send in Tricia and the others.  We could go tearing those barriers down ourselves, but I don’t want to do anything that might spook whoever’s in there, not until we’ve had a chance to talk, or at least get a headcount.  What have you got?”

            “I’m sorry, Chief, I’m still not seeing anything,” she said.  The Omega peered down at her vest, containing twelve metallically-reinforced pockets with strap-in seats, each one housing an Alpha on her team with their own devices.

            “What about you?  Brandon, I thought you said you almost had something?” Dawn spoke into one of the openings in the fabric, parting the cover with her fingertips to see its comparatively tiny occupant better.

            “I did.  I’m sorry, I lost it.  Whoever’s in there is putting up a real fight,” the man sighed resentfully from the Omega’s pocket.

            “Just keep trying,” Abby asserted to him and others as she turned her attention toward the building, only to see her daughter striding quickly toward her.

            “Mom.  Jenna found you a present,” the younger Lindon said with a smile as she opened her palm to reveal Randall’s quivering form in the soft center.

            Pointing two fingers into the silent void, Tricia Reynolds peered through her visor as she led her team of eleven across the threshold of the construction site.  With her rifle squeezed to her hip in preparation to enter the open, Tricia and her unit pressed their backs against the broad side of the cargo truck Roger and Gail had left parked in the foyer, the spacious trailer emptied of whatever contents it had previously held.

            Her eyes darted furtively under the truck, immediately spying the crumpled body of the security guard Gail had stabbed, and silently alerted her team to it.  She then examined points on the ceiling, searching the high arches and pillars that acted as the only support system for the roof several stories above.  At last, drawing a scanner from her belt, she carefully set about emitting a pulse from the device to scan for potential threats: explosive, organic, or otherwise.  Seeing nothing, she looked over her shoulder and nodded to the team in preparation to move again.

            No sooner had Tricia and the three immediately behind her come out into the open when a piercing whistle and a rush of wind flashed not ten feet above their heads.  One of the three primary pillars centered between the double-door entrances, still draped with plastic to prevent construction damage, had been struck cleanly in the center by the projectile fired from the hallway ahead.

            An instant later, the brunt of the explosion from the launched grenade at a point above their heads nearly staggered the team off their feet.  Righting herself, though, Tricia was back with the iron sighting of her rifle over her eye before the last block of pillar stone from the black smoke had finished tumbling to the ground in a dust-billowing crash.

            “I wouldn’t be too fast on that trigger, honey,” Halle bellowed to Tricia from across the ovular entrance hall, a lead box the size of a fishing tackle wedged under her arm.  Roger, fuming grenade launcher gripped in his fist, was lowering his weapon back to his side while holding his own box under the opposite arm.  The pair were standing out in the clear without any form of cover to defend them across the fifty-foot distance that separated them from Tricia’s team.

            “You’re going to have to put the weapon and the boxes down on the ground and take three big steps back,” Tricia said contritely, ignoring the suggestion if only for protocol.  “You have five seconds before my team and I are forced to end this the ugly way.”

            “See, I could, but I think you’d find that me putting this box down for any reason would end pretty poorly for me and about… oh, I’d say about thirty, maybe forty little kiddies?” Halle declared as she peered down into her box with one eye closed, chewing her lip as though in contemplation.

            “You have an extra ten seconds, then, to explain what you’re trying to say.”

            “Was I talking too fast for you to keep up?  My apologies,” Halle answered with a cheerful grin and a toss of her black ponytail to the other shoulder.  Her free hand hovering over the opening on top of the box, she took another glance inside, speaking directly to the Betas.  “If I still have a gun pointed at me in the next minute, something fun is going to happen to all of these things.  Isn’t it?”

            A flurry of tiny desperate pleas for help and indeterminate screams were suddenly ejected from both the boxes under Halle and Roger’s arms, which it was now apparent contained quite a few Betas.

            Tricia shuddered, but kept her fist tightly clenched around the barrel of her poised weapon.

            “You will set that box gently down on the ground, and back away, like I said.  Launcher, too,” the Aegis operative said, her voice becoming gravelly from barely quelled vengeance.  “Now.”

            “I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Halle sighed contentedly.

            “Don’t play games with us.  There’s no way out of here.  Not for you two, and not for anyone else you have back there,”

            “All right, fair enough, you got us,” Halle shrugged.  “Though I feel it’s only fair to let you know that each of these boxes is lined with a number of particularly sharp objects.  If you make it so that I am forced to drop the box… too quickly, I doubt many of my little friends here will make it out without becoming delicious Beta kebobs.”

            “Halle, we have a problem,” Alice’s voice suddenly piped quietly into her boss’s ear.  “They grabbed the new guy.  Right through a wall.  They have him now.”

            “Noted,” Halle whispered back in a bitter reverie, at last resolving to get things moving faster.  There was no more time for games.  She exhaled heavily.

            “This is your last chance,” Tricia grunted, nearly mad with rage now

            “No, you disgusting excuse for an Alpha,” Halle snarled with renewed volume, dropping her sweeter cover as her hand descended like a striking viper into the box.  She was clearly through with any pretense of an act.  “It’s yours.”

            The hearts of every SWAT team member ceased beating for a fraction in time as they witnessed Halle’s fist emerge from the trap, three adult Betas poking from between her fingers as they beat their tiny fists against their gloved cage and cried for aid.

            Without another instant’s hesitation, Halle roared as she crushed the helpless Betas into her fist with a grisly crunch that silenced their collective begging in a tiny spritz of crimson.  Opening her fingers again, she threw the mangled bodies to the ground several feet in front of her like discarded trash, where their limp corpses landed with a sickening whispered plop in the morbid silence that had instantaneously befallen the team.

            Tricia’s finger quivered over the trigger, fighting her muscles to squeeze.  She couldn’t remember a time in her life where she was more desperate to plant a bullet between someone’s eyes.  Her vision was practically on the verge of blurring, so focused had she become.

            And then the screams started up again, as Halle had handily murdered the three well within view of the box’s other passengers.

            “You and your super squad of mutants are sadly mistaken if you think anyone but us is in control here,” Halle spat to the stunned SWAT team.  Her blood-dampened hand dug back into the box, drawing three more Betas out.  This time, she had snatched up teens.  “Now back the fuck out of the building NOW, or you are going to have a lot bigger mess to clean up.”

            “Fall back,” Tricia declared blithely to her team.

            “Trish?” one of her team responded, voice quivering traumatically.

            “You heard me.  Fall back now,” she ordered, her gaze flashing on the spot the three unfortunate teachers had landed.  There wasn’t an extra second given to deliberation as Tricia began backing away, still with her gun primed and aimed at Halle’s face from afar.  Her team begrudgingly followed suit.

            “We’ll be in touch soon!” Halle crooned brightly across the hallway as the team disappeared back out the entrance to the wing, then turned to her smirking cohort.  The pair were left in silence again except for the muffled cries of the Betas below mourning the three teachers.

            “That went well,” Roger chuckled.

            “Are you kidding?  Just look at this,” Halle groaned with a disgusted grimace as she shook the final few drops of blood off her glove.  “I wish she’d moved sooner.  Now I’ll have to get new gloves when this is all over, too.”