CHAPTER 30

Defence Medical did not have exterior guards. Probably because that would be alarming to the general public and the building was in the middle of a professional development area. They did, however, have exterior cameras, and my heart was pounding in my ears so loud I couldn't hear Caroline's voice through the button on the communicator that attached behind my ear.

We crept along the eastern side of the building, toward the personnel door there. No less that three cameras were pointed our direction and I kept looking at them, waiting for some sign that we had been spotted.

Nothing happened, though, and we reached the door without any interruption. Darius pulled out the disrupter and latched it onto the door. It let out a soft hum, far too quiet to be heard by human ears and the door's internal locking mechanism clicked. He reached up and turned the handle, the door swung open revealing a darkened hallway with only running lights along the floor in operation. He grabbed the disrupter before closing the door behind us.

We stood for a moment, taking stock of our situation. My wolf and I had been keeping tabs on the guards, they seemed to be on regular sweeps and the two on this level were on the other side of the building at the moment, so we had time.

"You see those little protrusions just below the regular lights?" Aiden told Darius, pointing, though it could barely be seen in the dark. "Those will be the heat and motion detectors. You'll want to employ that disrupter before we get in range which is probably about twenty to twenty five feet to be careful. They will overlap too. I'm assuming the disrupter knocked out the one next to the door or we'd already be in hot water."

Darius walked to the wall and placed the disrupter against it.

I watched the cameras.

*Explain it to me again,* my wolf demanded. She was talking about the devices we'd been given that would trick the cameras into thinking we weren't there. It was a small band, worn around the forehead and it projected an electric field that cameras could not see, rendering us technically invisible.

*It has something to do with the type of electric field it's projecting. The camera sees the field and we are behind the field so it can't see us.* Or something like that. It was hard explaining something you didn't really understand to someone.

*Out of curiosity, why are you interested?* I wanted to know. She didn't usually show much interest in human technology except to trust me when I told her that something worked.

"Let's move," Darius whispered and it was almost like he was inside my head the sound was so clear. "Raven, your turn to shine."

I lead the way deeper into the building, stopping every twenty feet so Darius could disrupt the sensors, stretching out our senses looking for the odd scent that came from computers. A kind of sweet, acrid scent that came from one component of the machine or another. Of course the scent was everywhere in the building, but I was looking for a concentration of it.

My wolf had been thinking.

*Because I can feel it*, she said at last, *and I think I might be able to replicate it.*

That surprised me.

*What? How?*

I turned left down a hallway to avoid the path the guards were taking. They were human, so shouldn't be able to sense or hear us, but I didn't want to take any chances.

*When we surged I noticed I began sensing something in the air around us, but I couldn't tell what it was because I'd never sensed it before. Not at a tangible level. But I've been putting together that it is more powerful around your human devices...the electric field, I think.*

That was...amazing. And a little frightening, actually.

*So we can tell when there's an electric field nearby?*

*Yes. For this we have to be close, within arms length, so I wouldn't think that would be too useful since humans have all sorts of devices all the time.*

*And the replication?*

*Well...remember when your...what is it called, that you communicate to your lover on?*

*My phone?*

*Yes, that. Remember when that device died and you were upset because it had been fully charged?*

Yup. I did remember that. Fucking inconvenient, that was.

There, I picked up a hint of the scent I was looking for, toward the north end of the building and down a level. Now we just had to get there with a random route that wouldn't give us away, avoid the guards, avoid any other alarms and hack into the secure network of an advanced military building. Easy.

*I think that was me,* my wolf continued, *I could feel the field and I pushed it away*.

*You pushed it away*?

*Yes*.

*How?*

*I just thought about moving that energy from our space. It's a little loud now that I can sense it and I was grouchy.*

I snorted. Grouchy was a kind word for my wolf when she got in a mood. She had no tolerance and less patience. It was why I needed to live alone, so she could decompress once in a while. I led the team in a circle and then back toward the elevators, like I predicted a set of stairs sat nearby.

*Okay, what does this have to do with the cloaking device?*

*If I can move the electric field out, why couldn't I move it into the same patterns this device has?*

Holy shit...that was the question of the day, wasn't it?

*We'll ask to keep the headband*. I told her. *And practice, when it's not so vital.*

My wolf agreed, her excitement perked. She liked learning new things.

We took the stairs toward the basement. The security measures here increased, which I took to mean we were getting closer. The door to the basement held a slot for a key-card and a finger print scanner. The disrupter took care of that, but we hadn't banked on the manual sensor along the floor. The door pushed open and doing so pushed a switch along with it. I could hear the winding of gears and a straining spring before a loud gong-like noise vibrated the walls.

Well shit.