The Wolf Among Sheep

The control room of Midnight's Grand Hotel was dark, the light of a number of monitors casting strange shadows on their highly polished floor.

A man sat at the center, his sharp fingers tapping out a rhythm on the leather armrest of his chair. His was a sharp face, eyes dark and deep-set, a hole that swallowed light. He was not just looking at the screens—he was scrutinizing them.

On one of the feeds, Hudson towered over a fresh corpse, a bloodied meat cleaver held in his hand. The corpse on the floor writhed—a spasm of death. The bloodied floor was slick with red, shreds of flesh scattered around like butcher shop leftovers.

The man sitting in the chair smiled.

"Interesting"

At his back, the restless lieutenant tightened his earpiece. He flitted a wide-eyed gaze back and forth from the screen to his superior officer, between looking stunned and being repulsed.

"Sir, this fellow—he's not a corporate brat. Look at him." He pointed to the screen, where Hudson had just wrestled a hijacker's rifle from his hands and smashed another man's head in with it. "He's fighting like a soldier. This is not normal."

The man in the chair—Lazarus—leaned forward, his black-gloved hands steepling under his chin.

"No, it isn't."

The lieutenant paused before continuing to talk.

"Should we eliminate him?"

Lazarus took slow breaths, the noise more akin to laughter than annoyance.

"No."

"No?"

Lazarus at last turned, his eyes fixing the lieutenant as a knife to the throat.

"Do you know what distinguishes prey from predator?" he inquired, his tone silky smooth but as weighty as iron.

The lieutenant swallowed. "Sir?"

Lazarus gestured towards the screen.

"Prey runs when danger comes. But when backed into a corner… some of them evolve." He went back to the tape, watching Hudson stripping ammo from a corpse, gasping for air, adrenaline racing through his veins like fire.

"And when prey becomes a killer?" Lazarus smiled. "It no longer remains prey."

There was silence between them until Lazarus reached and flipped a switch on his comm unit.

"Send our men after him." He spoke calmly but with a weighty tone of an executioner's edict. "Let them wound him. Bleed him. Break him."

The lieutenant stopped.

"And what if he doesn't agree?"

Lazarus' smile increased.

"Then we'll see how much of a monster he's willing to be."