Before long, the three wolves were attacking each other. Gradually, the boys got up from the ground, staggering, but they couldn't stand up for long because the black wolf attacked with such violence that it scratched them irreversibly. The young man fainted, and that situation aroused an adrenaline rush that made the others try to run away. Kurt was the first wolf to run ahead and stare into the amazed faces of the boys, Jack did the same from across the room, staring at Brian. It was a split second before all the bodies fell lifeless to the floor. Filled with blood, the three wolves faced each other and intended to start a new confrontation, but the black wolf didn't seem interested; he seemed to be aware enough to do whatever he did and hurt everyone he had hurt. This was the first time Jack and Kurt had hurt a human, not only hurt but killed, and more than once, although they didn't know it, they had no conscience.

The door suddenly opened, and a female figure was seen in the doorway, holding a cloth to her mouth. The horror she had seen made her legs tremble, and she fell to the floor, amazed and completely traumatized, letting the covering of her mouth fall off, revealing herself to be none other than Cassie. She was extremely amazed to see all the familiar faces on the floor, bleeding and lifeless. She could see a black silhouette walk through the door and past her, walking normally on its four legs, entirely ignoring her presence. Then she didn't notice the two gray wolves until they were already running down the hallway to who knows where. After two firemen got her out, all she could say was “wolves,” and she kept saying it outside, where two ambulances were already in place, as well as the fire truck and police car. Everyone was in shock at everything that was going on, but nothing shocked them more than the stretchers returning with bodies covered in black cloaks. They still knew nothing about what had happened, nor who the young men were, but they knew they were members of the party. The police ordered everyone to stay out of that particular area, not because of the fire, but because of what had happened. It would be a very long night for New Shadow and Lightning, and certainly an unforgettable one.

For the first time since they had started transforming together, Kurt woke up earlier than Jack. It was a reasonably more enclosed place than usual, which meant that it wasn't any of the woods they had been through before, in fact, it wasn't even a forest. It was strange to wake up naked without getting his clothes or finding them by his side, it had been a while since the last time. In a way, Kurt considered himself quite dependent on Jack at times. As soon as his vision was no longer blurred, his level of confusion increased; the sunlight illuminated his face, blinding him. Finally, he sat up and stopped to analyze that Jack was a few feet away, still unconscious, naked, and more full of blood than usual, he looked down at himself and noticed the same characteristics. Searching his memory, he didn't know what had occurred, all he could remember was smoke in a room, going in, and seeing Brian hitting Jack, fallen. It was the first time he couldn't remember anything about the wolf form. Nothing made sense, he didn't know where the car was, he didn't know where he was, and he didn't recognize the place completely. Finally, he got up from the ground, half dizzy and staggering, and went over to Jack. He shook him for a few seconds until he gave the slightest sign of life. “Hey Jack,” he called, shaking his friend, “Wake up Jack,” he repeated. Jack then opened his eyes, probably blurred, but slowly he understood what he was seeing. “Where are we?” he asked. Jack, confused, looked around.

“We're in the building. My God, we're actually in the building. This is a decommissioned elevator here,” he said. “Why are we here? What happened, Kurt? Was it one of my blackouts?” he asked, even more, confused than his partner.

“Jack, the last thing I remember is walking into the room and seeing you slumped over, transforming in front of Brian. The room was filled with weird smoke, after that, I don't remember anything else,” Kurt said seriously. At that moment Jack began to worry, Kurt's episodes of erasing were ridiculously smaller than his, the two of them having erased at the same moment and remembering absolutely nothing.

There wasn't much they could do, they needed to fix that. They knew that the disabled elevator was closest to Kurt's apartment, so they sneaked out of where they were and ran to it. It took a few minutes before they were safe. They showered as quickly as they ran. They both had a somewhat similar physical build, so Jack could wear the same clothes as his friend. “How nice to have something on your body. Really great,” Jack sighed, positively “I can't take it anymore,” he said. Finally, Kurt turned on the TV, it was only seconds before they saw the picture of the building on the news. They ran to the back elevator and out the side of the building, where they found many familiar faces from the company and the party. Many were still in white and crying. They still didn't know what had happened. There were many cars, ambulances, police, and firemen in front. Some curious faces were also there. “Kurt, what happened here?” asked Jack, startled by the scene. They got as close as they could and listened to what the students were talking about, but were surprised by Josh, the annoying supervisor.

“I never imagined something like this could happen here, horrible, so horrible I can barely talk about it,” he blurted out. Jack asked what had happened. “They didn't say much, they just said they were really hurt, a lot, no one could see much, thank goodness,” he recounted. Kurt asked what he was talking about. “The twelve of Lightning. Brian and his whole gang were killed,” he finished, walking away, leaving the boys completely upset about the situation.

“What did we do?” asked Jack, rhetorically.

“We didn't do anything, Jack,” Kurt said firmly. “Let's go see Cassie. She's over there,” and made his way toward her, still standing in the same position as before.

“Cassie, are you okay?”, Jack questioned, noticing the state the woman was in. Pale and frightened, something he had never seen before.

“Wolves,” she said, not making eye contact, still shaken by everything.

“What?” asked Jack, startled, wide-eyed.

“I saw wolves. I saw gray wolves,” she said, static. Now both boys were amazed, they looked at each other for a second and decided to get out of there. “And a black wolf…,” she finished, piquing the boys' interest. “He left the room first, then the others left. I remember everything I saw, I can't get that slaughter out of my mind,” she said. There was nothing more to find out about it; twelve boys were dead, and they were the killers.

“It must be the same wolf from that day,” Jack commented, already walking away.

“Was there anyone else there besides you guys?” his friend asked. Jack said there was only him and the twelve of them. “It's someone from the outside, I vaguely remember seeing him enter the room before he changed. If twelve are dead, this guy showed up later and changed first. We're killers.”

“We still don't know what happened, it doesn't make sense, we never had any incentive for it, very strange our wolves acted that way. Look, I just want to go home and not think about anything else, okay? I think I've had enough for today, I just need some time,” Jack ordered. There was no question about it, he was right, about everything.

DAYS BEFORE

“Feeling anything yet, Kurt?” asked Jack, behind the wheel, heading for the usual spot. Kurt said he was still fine, but already feeling some things. “If we don't gas up the car now, we'll have no way back. Do you think you can drive in time for us not to move?”. It was clear in Jack's voice that he was not comfortable, he was already going through some stages of the change. Kurt nodded and Jack turned toward a nearby gas station. Once they arrived, they switched places, Kurt took the wheel and Jack took care of the fueling, quick enough to just get in the car and lie down on the seat, while Kurt sped up to get back on track.

It was the longest 10 minutes of that week when Kurt finally parked the car in the usual spot and helped Jack down. As usual, they separated, changed, and met.

Everything happened as it always did, except for the fact that that night they smelled the odor of a wolf, not from the car, not from them. It was from another wolf, but the smell was not as strong. Fearful of what they would find, they followed their instinct and avoided approaching, but to no avail, in a moment the wolf appeared in front of them. They couldn't tell if it was just a wolf or if it was human like them.

The wolf did nothing, it didn't follow them or attack them, it just walked by watching them and followed wherever it was following. The boys couldn't risk anything that could reveal what they were, but each time they changed, they felt the fear of not being rational anymore and just acting like a wolf. Jack would black out for a few minutes and not seem to think, so it was something real. In their minds, it was only a matter of time before it was reality, and now that they were dealing with random transformations, they assumed that maybe it was closer than they would like. It was time to pursue the idea of finding out where it all came from, who they were, why they were, and if they could stop it, or at least control it. Someone had to have answers.

The next morning, Jack woke up staggering more than usual, as well as his vision was extremely blurred; he could swear he heard a voice say “you did it,” but it soon passed. Walking to the car, the trunk was open, literally open, rolled up. They never left the car vulnerable, least of all like that. There had been exactly six sets of clothes when they left, and at that moment they only had five. Someone had stolen a pair of clothes. Immediately the image of the black wolf came to mind, it was the only explanation for it, and surely it was a human too. Without wasting any time, he picked up one of the sets and ran to Kurt, waking him up. “We need to get out of here. Come on!” he exclaimed, pulling a half-awake Kurt up. “I'll explain everything to you in the car, but right now, we have to go.”

As they walked back down the avenue, Jack told about how he woke up disoriented and how he thought he heard something, he also told about the car, worried. “Whoever that wolf is, he knows I am one. It's my car, I'm sure he recognized it,” he drove worriedly.

“Calm down, Jack. We don't know anything right yet, and if he happens to have seen something, he can't say anything, it's the same secret we have,” Kurt tried to comfort him.

“Kurt, if they know it's me, they know it's you too. Everyone sees us together all the time,” Jack explained. Kurt stopped and thought for a moment, it made sense, he was as much in the crosshairs as Jack was.

PRESENT

That night, Jack could do nothing but stay locked in his room, trying to distract himself and thinking about the possibility that he was a murderer. No one could know about his involvement in the case, or about Kurt. He didn't have to deal with it, they were wolves after all. Werewolves didn't exist and all of humanity knew that, there was no way to find out anything. Unless one day he was captured as a wolf and magically woke up as a human, his life would end there. He tried not to rush. He got into his notebook and looked at some news already published by the company about what had happened. On the home page, a wall had been created, but it was anonymous. The whole company began to share their grief, lamenting the death of the boys.

Logged into his account, Jack tried to leave the most sincere comment he could, even though he hated them, but the guilt was too consuming for him to do anything about it. A few minutes later, he saw that Kurt had left a short text as well. Finally, after the exhaustion, he needed to relax and take a shower more calmly.

While he was in the shower he realized that the smell was in the air, the strong smell of wolf was there, and his breath gasped for a few seconds. Seconds were enough to terrify him. As the water ran down his body, Jack tried to calm himself down, he didn't even know why he needed to do this, but he knew he did. He counted to ten, slowly. “You're all right,” he repeated to himself. “You're all right,” he repeated. “You're okay,” and he kept going, until the fifth time he growled. Quickly, Jack stepped out of the shower, dried himself off, and paused for a moment. His breathing was still irregular. He tried to count to ten again, but he had barely reached five and the growling sound happened again.

His fear grew as he walked to the bed, trying to breathe, attempting to calm himself, but he could not. In a few seconds, he returned to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face to improve the situation, but it had no effect. The smell of wolf began to fill the air more and more, and his breathing became even heavier. When he returned to his room, he was surprised by the ringing of his smartphone. It was Kurt, calling. Without a second thought, he answered the phone.

“Jack, something's going on, isn't it? I'm feeling a weird tingling,” Kurt asked, his breathing heavy as well. Jack said he couldn't breathe properly, his voice indicating the truthfulness of the information. “Try to calm down, try to think of something. I'm feeling something peculiar too, I've locked myself in the room,” Kurt told over the call. Jack, still struggling, told his partner that his teeth and claws had already grown in and that his body was twitching too fast. “What? No, Jack, you can't, not in the morning, please don't change, just try, I don't know, maybe, damn, I don't know, man,” his concern was clear, as was his gasping for breath. Jack set out to answer one more time, but couldn't.

Jack screamed and dropped the device and Kurt tried to contact, but Jack was already writhing on the floor, struggling against his new skin, unable to do anything. Kurt could hear everything, every scream, every growl, but it was still Kurt. For a moment, all sounds ceased. “Jack?” asked the voice on the other end of the line. All he heard back were growls, and he knew Jack was no longer there, the wolf was. He ended the call.

Jack spent the early morning hours as a wolf, trying not to break anything in the apartment or make any noise that would disturb the neighbors. He possessed a little conscience at that moment. He thought that Kurt had transformed too, but was surprised hours later.

First Kurt knocked on Jack's door, but there was no answer, so he decided to open it since he had a copy of the key. There was nothing strange in the environment, everything seemed normal. He didn't hear any strange sounds. He went a little further inside and found his smartphone turned off, which justified the missed calls. Suddenly, he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, someone vomited. He walked over and opened the door to find Jack sitting on the floor, human and almost naked, vomiting into the toilet bowl. “You're all right, thank God,” Kurt relieved himself. “I was anxious”. Jack said that he had turned back into a human a few minutes ago. Because he was more conscious than normal, he could feel the backlash of the change and claimed it hurt less, but it was unbearable just the same. Kurt helped him up from the floor. Kurt then told him that he had felt strong indications of transformation, but that he had not changed, while Jack told his version of the shower. “I'm sorry, man. I'm truly sorry,” Kurt said, slapping his friend lightly on the back.

Last year, Kurt barely knew who Jack was, and Jack barely knew who Kurt was. They were in the industry together but were limited only to work. All Kurt knew about Jack was that his family had a good reputation and that he suffered from some things he didn't like to talk about. He had no interest in him and no other people. He liked to be alone. Jack also liked to be alone, but whether he liked that or not, no one knew. At the time, the company was already prominent and the two of them were already part of the team.