It started as a hum.
Not loud. Not even deliberate.
Just a faint, rhythmic thrum that echoed through the metal walls like distant thunder—soft enough to dismiss, too steady to ignore.
I sat upright.
My back peeled off the wall where I'd been half-dozing. Across from me, Kol was already looking up, his expression sharp.
"You hear that?" he said.
I nodded once.
Everyone else was quiet. Too quiet. A silence that felt like breath held before a scream.
Then the van jolted.
Not from the road.
From the crate.
No.
I was on my feet in an instant, crossing the floor to the internal monitor. The pressure readings were spiking—only slightly, but enough to make the warning bar flash red. Something inside the third crate was moving.
It's waking up, Nyx said. It knows we're close.
The crate let out a sound then—one that vibrated the entire floor panel. Not a knock. Not a scrape.
A pulse.
Like something inside it had a heartbeat made of violence.
Kol moved to the front, already shouting. "Get us off the main route. Now!"
But it was too late.
The first round of gunfire hit the driver's side.
The windshield spiderwebbed. The van swerved.
I grabbed onto the wall and braced as the van jerked violently off the road and into the shallow ditch. Something scraped the undercarriage hard enough to shake the ceiling lights loose.
Outside, shadows were moving. Boots in the mud. Shouts muffled by the metal walls.
"Ambush!" Kol barked. "Weapons—now!"
The crate shifted again.
No one dared open the back.
No one even looked at it.
Because we all knew.
Whatever was in that crate wasn't just waking up.
It was responding.
Gunfire rattled off the van like hail. Kol grabbed the rifle under the passenger seat and shoved open the side door just enough to return fire.
Two of the crew were already out—flanking, ducking into the underbrush. They weren't panicked.
They were trained.
Which meant the ambushers knew who we were.
And came anyway.
They want the crate, Nyx said. Not the drugs. Not us.
I moved to the back, yanking open the emergency panel to access our heavier gear. The radio crackled.
"Multiple targets, rear ridge. Scoped."
"Suppressive fire," Kol snapped. "Get that truck running or we're dead."
One of the crates slid half an inch.
Not the third one.
One of the regular ones.
The impact had loosened a latch.
I slammed it shut and reinforced it with a bungee, hands shaking.
From the other side of the cargo hold, the prototype crate thumped.
No other word for it.
Just a deep, echoing thump, like a single step taken in a long hallway.
Then another.
And another.
My stomach turned.
"It's trying to stand up," I whispered.
It knows, Nyx agreed. It can smell the blood outside. It wants out.
I spun to Kol. "We can't let them hit the back. If they breach that crate—"
"We're not going to make it that easy," he snapped. "Hold the line."
He didn't ask why the crate was making noise.
Didn't need to.
We all knew.
Smoke from an incendiary grenade clouded the windows. Gunfire surged again—closer this time. Too close.
One of our crew screamed.
I didn't know who.
Didn't have time to find out.
The prototype crate shifted again, louder now. The seams of the lid creaked.
I could feel the pressure through the floor. Through the air.
Like the crate was breathing.
Like it was watching us.
Like it was waiting for the door to open.
Nyx's voice rang louder than before.
If that thing wakes up, you need to decide: protect it, or kill it.
And I didn't know which answer would save more lives.
I just knew I was running out of time to choose.