𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 ➢ ꜱᴄᴏᴛᴛ ᴍᴄᴄᴀʟʟ

Ch. 15 - AMPLIFICATION

Liam, Malia, Kira asked all at the same time making their eyes widen slightly. "Okay, admittedly, a lot could go wrong." Stiles said and Liam raised his eyebrows at him, "Everything could go wrong!" He said.

"Guys, if we don't do this, we lose Lydia. She's going to die in there tonight... And she might take a lot of innocent people with her." Scott said.

🌒

"Okay, my dad's got the lab working on the shoe prints, but, uh, we're all kind of mystified about how giant clawed werewolf feet turned back into a pair of sneakers." Stiles said as him and Scott walked down the stairs of the library. "Argent said it wouldn't be like anything we've ever seen before."

"Did he say it was going to defy the laws of physics?" Stiles asked sarcastically when Scott suddenly stopped making Stiles stop as well. They followed his trail of sight to see Theo and Toni leaning against a bookshelf, reading a couple books.

"What are you two doing here?" Scott asked coldly and Toni looked over at them and closed the book, "We still need to graduate." She said as she and Theo took a step forward. "No. No, what you need is to be beaten. Severely. With a lead pipe wrapped in barbed wire-" Stiles said until Theo interrupted him.

"Okay, I admit, mistakes were made." Theo said making Stiles squint at him, "Murders. Some murders were made." He said and Theo rolled his eyes. "You know how the Soviets helped us win World War II? They knew how to make it through a Russian winter." Theo said making them look at him weird, "That it? Okay. Thank you, Theo. Very informative." Stiles said sarcastically.

"If you're planning to break Lydia out of Eichen House, you still need to get past the mountain ash. We can make it through. You can't, Scott." Toni said making Scott squint at them.

"What do you really want?" Scott asked making Theo look over at him, "We know you saw the fresco. Two seriously pissed off creatures, the Hellhound and the Beast, fighting over a pile of dead bodies? We don't want to be one of the bodies. It's that simple." Theo said and they just glared at him, "We can get you to Lydia. Or, we can see who gets to her first." Theo said before he and Toni walked off.

"There's no way he knows what Valack's doing. Why's he so interested in her?" Stiles asked and Scott sighed and shrugged, "He probably thinks what we're all thinking- that Lydia's got something bigger to do with this. Maybe she's one of the people who can actually save us or maybe she knows something."

🌒

"She took out the whole school?" Scott asked as they all stood around the McCall house, "She took out the whole grid." Malia said making their eyes widen. "Look, I failed every single practice try. This isn't going to work." Kira said and Liam sighed.

"How far can we get without the brownout?" Liam asked, "The front door." Stiles said. "We're going." Scott said making Kira look at him incredulously, "Scott, we went through boxes of light bulbs." Kira said and Scott just shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. You can do this!" Scott said optimistically making Kira sigh, 'The key card won't work unless there's a reboot, and there's no reboot without a brownout." Kira said. "I know you can do this." Scott said then looked around at Liam, Stiles and Malia, whose facial expressions are each varying states of skepticism.

"Anyone here think she can't?" Scott asked and Stiles and Liam instantly shook their heads, "Not me." Liam said. "I'm the one who put you in the plan." Stiles said and they all looked over at Malia. "What?" She asked and Stiles raised his eyebrows, "I believe in you, too, Kira." Stiles whispered making Malia look at him crazy. "I'm the one who's going to be locked in an electrical room with her!" Malia said and they all gave her a look making her sigh and turn to Kira, "Y-you can do it..." She said.

Kira looked at all of them before sighing, "You guys are all crazy. We're gonna die."

🌘

"Delivery to the morgue." Parrish says after he pulled up to the tail booth of Eichen House. The guard frowned and looked down at his clipboard, "I don't see you on the list." He said.

"You heard about the animal attacks, right? The hospital ran out of refrigerated drawers, and Eichen's got the only other up-to-code morgue in the county." Parrish said and the guard sighed, "Let's have a look." He said making Parrish eyes widen for a moment.

"I don't think you want to do that- the stench back there almost made me pass out while driving." He said and the guard gives Parrish a hard look before impatiently repeating his earlier request, "Open the back of the van, please." He said. Parrish sighs and puts the cruiser in park before getting out and walking around to the trunk, opening the door to reveal at least a half-dozen full body bags on the floor of the trunk.

"I'll need to log the names off the toe tags."

"There's significant decomp. They were found in the county tunnels way past rigor." Parrish said and the guard once again looks at Parrish suspiciously and repeats his demand, "Open them up, please." He said.

Parrish sighs and reaches toward one of the body bags, gingerly pulling the zipper and opening it to reveal a badly decomposing body. Which apparently smells as badly as Parrish described, because the guard gags and steps back covering his nose. Parrish goes to open the next one, only for him to stop him and wave him off, still trying to prevent himself from vomiting from the smell.

"No. No. Go. Just go." He says and Parrish smiled as he zipped the bag back up and shut the doors.

A few minutes later all the body bags were sitting in the morgue when four of them started to open. Scott took a deep breath and cringed as he sat up, watching  Liam and Stiles sit up as well. "Never again." Stiles said Scott nods at him in agreement before pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking at the timer he has set on it, which reads 7:45:15 PM. He looks up at Liam and Stiles with a serious expression, "Fifteen minutes starting now." He said and they all nodded.

Scott and Liam each quietly extricate themselves from their body bags without issue, while Stiles, who sat up on the table in order to make it easier on himself, flails too hard in his attempt to get out that he falls off of the table and onto the floor.

🌒

Toni sat on a stool in the Dread Doctors' operating theater, watching Hayden pace back and forth while Deucalion was still hooked up to the IV drip of wolfsbane. "Do I make you nervous?" Deucalion asked making them look at him, "Shouldn't you already know the answer to that?" Hayden asked.

"Well, I thought it would be more polite to ask. But, yes, a girl your age shouldn't have a resting heart rate of 110 beats per minute and no one should smell of annoyance as strong as Toni does. How about one of you unshackle me from this... thing, and we'll all be a little more at ease?" He asked making Toni cock an eyebrow.

"How stupid do you think we are?" Toni asked and Deucalion sighed, "Since I highly doubt you want me to answer that question honestly, let me propose an alternative- you set me free, and I'll tell you a secret about those talons sitting in that jar over there." Deucalion said making them glance over at the jar of talons in the table next to Toni.

"I may be blind, but my other senses paint a very detailed picture. I know the talons were created by the Dread Doctors." Deucalion said and Toni raised her eyebrows, "So, what?" She asked. "So, Theo believes he can fit them onto his own claws like a couple of press-on nails? Use them to siphon the power from the Beast?" Deucalion asked before chuckling, "Good luck with that." He said making Hayden furrow her brows.

"What do you mean?" She asked as her and Toni glanced at each other, "The Dread Doctors would have designed those talons with a specific frequency... for a specific person. As a genetic chimera yourselves, I would've thought the two of you would understand how often the body rejects an organ. Especially from an outside donor." Deucalion.

Toni filtered her head slightly as she picked up the jar, staring at the talons in amusement. "If Theo puts them on, then..." She trailed off slightly and Deucalion smirked, "Yes, Toni- they'll kill him."