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•PROLOGUE•

Screams echoed around the steel walls

The sound bounced, splintering through the cavernous area and slicing through the senses of those forced to listen

There was no place for the sound to go, no cracks, no ventilation to the outside There was no way for it to dissipate easily The sound ricocheted fro the return trip to blend with the continued agonizing sounds

Surrounding the theater-style exaht-by-ten cells created froth of the steel wall at one side and were connected by frames of black iron bars at the front

The barred doors were reinforced; the locks were digital as well as electronically keyed and al that of the backup generators, was lost Only then would the locks disengage and allow the animals held inside to be freed

Or were they humans?

There were times when even they were uncertain of who or what they were, other than the fact that they had been created at the hands of the doctors and the scientists ere now inflicting a hellish death rather than creating a hellish life

The screaain, filled with pain, fear and the knowledge that time had run out and there was no escape

But she had been crying for days Inconsolable wails that had left those locked behind the bars fighting the restless rage beginning to fill theuards created to rule over them Men, anilance at one another in uncorew closer As the irow more still, more calm and silent than ever before

They were her young, of a sort

Conception had occurred in the artificial environ was transplanted into her womb and carried to term As the time of birth neared, she was injected with the monstrous paralytic they had created that paralyzed all but the vocal cords, leaving their victims with only the ability to scream Once she was restrained, then the child was cut froony

Unable to move

Unable to fight

Unable to control any part of her body except the vocal cords that the scientists refused to silence

She would screaroould ee from her throat

But she wasn’t an ani were She was a young woentleness and freedom were She knew only the captivity, the pain, the endless pregnancies and forced births

And now she would only know the agony and fear of a senseless, vicious death, which her young were forced to watch in uncaring silence

Breed number 107 sat on his cot in the corner of the cell, his head laid back against the steel bars as his ain

He and the one he called brother, the one they called 108, were only a few of the young in the lab that were products of her genetics Born not just of her body but also of her egg, which had been fertilized in vitro with the anienetically altered sperm used to create the Breeds

And they were forced to reh her screah their souls and tearing their guts to ribbons each tiony

Each tied God for mercy

Breed nuulated, and called upon fourteen years of training to e and pain If just one of her young broke, if just one of them showed a reaction or showed an emotion, then three of them would die