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Curtis had never been in a cave or a mine. He had never been underground other than in a basement to get a can of tomato sauce or a roll of toilet paper. If there was one thing that he knew for sure about this mine in particular, it was that he did not like it and he wasn't even in it yet.

Three teams had been assembled. Each one had five armed Templars and a single Lycan with the exception of the lead team which had Emery, Curtis and Hadrian along with three Templars and a Lycan. They all waited anxiously at the mouth of the cave that was marked by a pair of rails that went forward at a slight decline into the side of a small hill and then continued deep underground where only dim lanterns provided insufficient light to see very far.

Nearby on the other side of a chain link fence, a pair of air pumps hummed healthily, sending fresh air down into the tunnels while flushing out stall air and any poisonous gasses that would seep out of the ground deep beneath the earth.

The group of Lycans and Templars gathered near the mouth of the mine. A gust of wind was being sucked down into it as if trying to pull them in.

"Can't smell a damn thing with the breeze," one of the Lycans who was in his human form, muttered with scowl. He crossed his arms over his wide chest.

"But they'll smell us coming," Another remarked, sharing the unease. Several other shifted uncomfortably on their feet. The sentiment was universal.

A rule for fighting werewolves was to never give it the upper hand. Always use every advantage. Overkill was necessary and absolute domination a must. If given the slightest leeway, a wolf wolf would turn a small opening into a sweeping victory with ease. Now the group was being told to go into a dark mine where there could be any number of the bipedal wolves. Suicide crossed more than one mind.

Even Emery was uneasy. He gripped the pommel of his still sheathed sword in his right hand. "Regardless, we have our orders and we will carry them out. Or are you all cowards?" He raised an eyebrow to show that it was a challenge and not an insult.

A few of the Templars gave toothy grins. "Of course not. We've never turned down a fight. Won't stop now."

Emery nodded his approval and then turned to Curtis and Hadrian.

Hadrian had his own armor now. It was made for a Lycan much bigger than the dog, so even with adjustments, it sat a bit loose on him. Large Kevlar encased steel strips protected the dog's chest neck, back, stomach and legs. The strips were overlaid on top of one another into a weave that could flex and bend, but without sacrificing defense. Also, a helmet that stretched down to cover the top of his muzzle, protected his head.

Curtis wore a light scout suit since the man hadn't been conditioned to wear the nearly two hundred pounds of armor that a Knight's Templar would normal carry around at all times. It relied solely on thick kevlar that was segmented. The idea was that it would provide defense against the environment and that everyone else would do their jobs enough that he wouldn't need to confront a bipedal Lycan. He was also equipped with a short stocked carbine for close quarters. Again the idea was that he wouldn't need it.

"I want you two to stay in the middle," Emery told them. "A lot can go wrong and you'll be safest there."

Curtis set his hands on his hips. "Explain to us again why we need to come along?" He gestured to everyone else in the group. "They're professionals. We were just police officers a few days ago."

Emery frowned, but not at the Curtis. He frowned because the man was right. They shouldn't have been brought along. They should have been sent back to the Vatican as soon as the first chance arose, but he had orders.

"People up top want to see Hadrian in the field," He explained simply as possible. There was a lot of other politics as well. Some not very innocent. Some of the cardinals didn't like the idea of a 'civilian' version of the super dog around and were quietly anticipating a death report. Others simply couldn't care enough to argue one way or another.

"And me?" Curtis gestured to himself.

"Extra baggage that comes along with Hadrian," Emery said bluntly. He continued before Curtis could start arguing. "You had every opportunity to stay back in American, but you two made yourselves inseparable.

"Oh." Curtis felt a bit of red come to his wind nipped ears. He supposed that it was very much his own doing.

"Like I said," Emery said. "Stay in the middle and you should be fine." He glanced over at Hadrian, who watched with piercing eyes. "You keep him safe."

Hadrian nodded. 'You make sure nothing gets past you.' The message appeared on Curtis' tablet that was stepped to his belt and the man read the message.

"Don't worry."

Emery made sure that everyone else was set and good to go before he gathered them around for one last brief.

"All the prints lead in there," Emery pointed into the mine. "There could be more in there since the population of the town isn't certain and an accurate count of their dead hasn't been agreed upon. That leaves it up to us to make sure that there aren't any more."

Emery pulled a map that he had found in the mine's supervisor's office, out of his satchel and unrolled it. It showed a detailed layout of the mine's tunnels. They were hectic and random at first with dozens of small branches, but became more orderly with only three main tunnels further in.

The group converged on the map.

Emery went on. "The first part of the tunnel dates back to the Cold War when the place was dug by political prisoners, but after that ended, it was modernized and dug by employees of the state." He traced the three main tunnels with his fingers. "One team per tunnel all the way down." His finger stopped at the end of the most recent diggings.

"Simple enough," A Templar bearing a broadsword in one hand and a sawed off shotgun in another, commented.

"When is it ever so simple," A female Templar challenged. "I bet that there's another hundred down there just waiting for us.

"Is that a bet?"

"First rounds?"

"I'll take that bet,". A human Lycan spoke up unexpectedly. "I can't smell down there, but I'd bet there's at least a hundred more. Means more fighting and I need more of that. I could also use a drink."

"Can you even get drunk?" The female asked. "Thought you guys had super livers or something." She gave a quick, but knowing glance to Emery.

Emery didn't meet her eyes. The fact that he was a Lycan was hidden from the packs. It wasn't a secret that was meant to be kept long, but now was not the time. Hadrian's armor had been made passed off as clever on-the-spot engineering since the armor had been originally made to be worn during transformation as well, bending and reorganizing to work for both man and beast.

Emery quickly got the group refocused once the bets had been placed and tallied.

"The mines eventually come back up again, with all three tunnels merging and surfacing some three miles from here." He jabbed the edges of the map. "Another team is already there. If anyone tries to get out, we'll know."

With the brief over, the teams once again checked their equipment and the Lycans changed forms, shedding their meager clothes until there were three massive wolves.

Emery nodded, more to the fact that they were meshing well with the pack members. Having been incorporated with Lycan Templars since the very beginning, the humans were already acquainted with the normally disturbing transformation process. Curtis and Hadrian were not.

'You heard the bones cracking, right?' Hadrian asked Curtis.

Curtis nodded. "And the sinew along with everything else." He felt himself feeling sick.

"You'll get used to it," Emery told them. "Make it through today and you'll have plenty of opportunity."

Shortly afterwards, once it was confirmed that the team on the other side of the mine was ready, they entered the mine. Each man had a head lamp as well as a led light on the barrels of their weapons. The Lycans preferred not to have a flashlight attached to themselves while Hadrian had one mounted on his shoulder. They turned on the lights once it became clear that the mine's lights had been cut only a hundred meters in.

"Stay frosty," Emery said, tightening the grip on his rifle, but ready to draw his sword as well if need be. "This first part has a lot of corners and small connecting pathways. We'll need to split up to effectively cover them all."

The groups splintered into smaller subgroups of either one Lycan with two Templar or three Templar with no Lycan. Emery kept Curtis and Hadrian with him while the rest of his group made a sub team. He took their safety as his personal responsibility.

Each team kept comms with each other, feeding information back to Emery as they all went deeper into the mines. If a team on the edge couldn't reach Emery, they checked in with the closest group who then relayed the message to their acting Commander.

"Keep it tight," Emery waved to Curtis, motioning for him to stay close.

Curtis kept a tight grip on his weapon and hurried his steps, but setting his feet down lightly. Every noise echoed for what seemed like an eternity.

"How much farther before we begin to link up again?" Curtis asked. As much as he trusted Hadrian to protect him and trusted Emery enough to know that he wouldn't be abandoned, it was still a lot nicer when the groups were whole.

"We've got a ways," Emery replied monotone, focused ahead as if a monster was going to jump out of the black at any moment. "Just keep close and we'll all make it out."

Curtis didn't reply, instead he looked back at Hadrian. Having Hadrian at his back was the only thing keeping his nerves in check as had been the case in the past.

There had been a hostage situation once in an office complex. A disgruntled employee who had been recently laid off went in, killed the manager and took a dozen people hostage. He threatened to kill the rest.

Curtis and Hadrian had been called in immediately with the hope of infiltrating the building with heavy SWAT backup and neutralizing the man who would be distracted by negotiators.

On paper it was simple with procedure on how to react to a very fluid situation, however the world wasn't some script that always went by the books.

Without warning, before Hadrian or Curtis had even suited up, the man had killed another. He was going to kill one every half an hour which meant that the two had that much time to take him down and everyone was expecting nothing short of absolute perfection, not even excellence would be tolerated.

With most of their gear not even on, Curtis and Hadrian were let in through a back entrance by the custodial who had made contact with the outside via a cell phone and had been waiting for them.

The only had twenty minutes left at that point and there were twenty flights of stairs to go.

The entire time the two of them were rushing up the stairs, all Curtis could think about was that he was too slow, he would be responsible for another innocent death. However, every time he saw Hadrian behind him with his hard look of focus and determination, he felt more confident. No matter what, Hadrian was there with him and would back him up. It was a single truth in Curtis' life.

They did make it up the stairs and to the shooter. They took him completely by surprise and he was unable to even fire his weapon once before Curtis planted three .45 caliber rounders into him.

Some questioned his use of lethal force since it was unsure if the shooter had raised his weapon at all at him, but ultimately, Curtis was praised for his response to an extremely dangerous and precarious situation.

Curtis in turn put all the credit he could to Hadrian. If Hadrian hadn't been there, who knew if the human would have been able to make it all the way up, never slowing down and being the shooter down in time.

Even now as the three slowly crept through the dark and windy tunnels of this Siberian mine where the air was heavy and sometimes barely breathable, all Curtis had to do was look back and remember that Hadrian was always going to be right there for him.

Hadrian looked back at his handler and secret lover and gave a panting smile. The feeling was mutual.

"Stp sttttpp stop Stop," the radio crackled to life, causing everyone to jump a bit.

Several other voices came to the line, expressing concern.

"What is it?" Emery said loud and clear to cut all the overlapping chatter off. "Report."

"It's Weihoff, he thinks he saw something."

"I know I saw something," Weihoff could be heard in the background.

"What did you see?" Emery asked, having stopped moving forward, but kept his light and eyes forward.

There was a ruffle on the other end as Weihoff took the radio. "I'm not sure, but I saw movement going down one of the maintenance tunnels." Some more noise. "Seeee uhh nine. Tunnel C-Nine."

Emery recalled the map from memory. C-9 was a short tunnel that led to a gear and maintenance locker where supplies could be stored away from the dusty mining environment.

"Permission to investigate?" Weihoff asked with a bit of excitement.

"Hold fast for now," Emery told them in a stern commanding voice. "Are there any teams nearby?"

"This is Belamine, my team is ready to assist," The female who made bets earlier replied. "I can be there in five minutes."

"Very well," Emery said and began to walk forward again. Curtis and Hadrian followed closely. "Be safe and have your weapons at the ready. Also keep constant radio contact."

"Yes, sir," Both Belamine and Weihoff replied in unison.

They did keep in contact the entire way down and everyone was waiting for news of first contact, however there was nothing but abandoned supplies at the end of the tunnel. It was covered in a fine layer of dust with no signs that anyone else had been down there.

"Must have been the darkness playing tricks on Weihoff's eyes," Belamine said over the radio. "I'm taking my team and returning to our original route."

"Copy that," Emery clipped the radio back to his chest. His heart had been pounding the entire time and he took slow and steady breaths to calm himself down.

Curtis on the other hand had fallen back a little to walk alongside Hadrian where the two comforted each other with their presence. Safety in numbers, tightly packed numbers.

"We're almost there," Emery said to Curtis' relief. "Just a few minutes more before we all link up again." He allows himself a moment to relax to roll his stiff neck, but immediately went on the alert again as soon as the ache in his muscles went away.

He did his best to keep his thoughts clear and on task, but he couldn't keep them from occasionally lingering back to Under-Marshall Riven. Seeing her again had dug up old memories, both good and bad.

She had once been sweet and gentle, hardly an efficiently killing machine that he knew her to be. She enjoyed movies and had an unhealthy addiction to unbuttered, but lightly salted popcorn.

She used to spend hours digging the kernels out of her gums. Now she was something else. She had been hard, only exposing herself to him during the reunion long enough to let him know that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

He understood why she wanted nothing more to do with him. It had been his fault. All because he had been ashamed of what he was and tried to live what most of the world called a normal life. He made assumptions and held back information where there should have been clarity. It hurt them both dearly in the end. Her the most.

Emery sighed and pushed away the thoughts.

Not now. He told himself and gave a quick glance back at the two behind him.

Curtis was side by side with Hadrian, close enough that his pant leg brushed against the large canine. He looked better than before.

Emery had half a mind to tell Curtis to stay in the center, but didn't. Nothing was behind them since the teams had done a good job of making sure of that and separating the two, even by just a few meters wouldn't help at all.

"My team has reach the converging point, awaiting rendezvous," A Templar called in.

"E-T-A one minutes," another replied.

Soon each team called in as well to which Emery crossed off each team from a mental checklist. He stopped in his tracks after there had been silence on the line for several moments.

"Weihoff, check in," he ordered.

Nothing.

"I might be out of range. Belamine, can you make contact?" Emery took the radio off of his chest.

"No, sir," She replied, a hint of worry on her voice. "I just tried to ping him. I'm getting a signal but no reply."

"Fuck," Emery said out loud and then went back to the radio. "I want everyone to converge at the point. Now!" He picked up the pace, but making sure that he didn't accidentally abandon Curtis and Hadrian.

"Wasn't there supposed to be another team here already," The voice of the second team that checked in came on the radio.

"Yeah," someone confirmed, the sound of rucksacks rustling their quickened pace could be heard in the background. "I think it was Bourgest."

"Well no one is here," the voice replied. "Nothing."

"Maybe his team is at the wrong point."

A moment later a call was put out for Bourgest to check to see if he was at the correct location, but there was no reply.

"Fuck! His team had a Lycan." Belamine cursed.

"We need to regroup," Emery called out. "Cover your flanks and move. We're not alone in here."