Earl controlled his seething rage long enough to ask, “What’ve you locked in here with us?”

“Let’s see…Locked in there with you: Ick-mip guests of a non-militant persuasion, approximately one hundred and forty. Staff, one hundred and twenty-two. Monster Hunters, two hundred and fifteen from fourteen different companies. One crew of sheetrockers, some union electricians, and we’re trying to get a handle on gambling addicts that were dumb enough to be there at four A.M., but I’m estimating that around fifty, and an unknown number of co-eds and party girls who crashed Grimm Berlin’s celebration, and last but not least, one extremely dangerous science experiment.”

“Capabilities?”

“Unknown.”

“Weaknesses?”

“Unknown.”

“What do you know?”

Stricken’s smile was totally devoid of human warmth. “Most of the records pertaining to this particular experiment have been destroyed or buried deep, even by my admittedly high standards for secrecy. However, it has been brought to my attention that some of the original Decision Week scientists are still alive and may have firsthand knowledge. We are contacting them now.”

The Unicorn man was a seething bundle of lies, but that part sounded plausible. “There’s a reason you locked this place down so quick when you found out it had followed us here. There’s something else. How do you know this thing is so dangerous?”

“My first responders retrieved some physical evidence from the containment unit.”

Earl looked to me and I nodded.

Stricken’s laptop was rigged to watch the entire room. We should have known. “Pitt…I’m not surprised. So that was you in Dugway with Agent Franks.”

Denying it would only waste valuable time. “There were some tags missing from the old machine.”

Stricken chuckled. “Interesting. I was wondering who that second man in the photos was. It was hard to tell with those chemical suits on. It figures. I’ll have to have a few words with old Frankie about the necessity of maintaining security protocols.”

“You do that.” If we were lucky Franks would lose his temper and beat Stricken to death, hopefully before he got to me for inadvertently ratting him out.

“My team did recover some items. One of the others had a project identification number. Setting internal matters aside for now, and getting back to your original question, we were able to track the identifiers back to one of the most exciting and secretive weapons projects in history. I’m assuming you already knew that, though. Of course you do, because Agent Franks couldn’t keep his big fat stupid mouth shut. Interesting fact, did you know that they ranked all of the World-War-II-era experimental weapons systems on a scale from one to ten, with one being the least, and ten being the most potentially destructive and disruptive to society?” Stricken waited.

“Werewolves were a two,” Earl whispered.