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The moon glared upon the rocky valley with dim disinterest. Its pale light revealed five moving shadows drifting towards the structure in orchestrated patterns of motion.
Cruz was the first to the door, swiveling and pressing his back against the wall to one side while Strickland repeated the motion in the opposite direction on the other. Krieger approached, dropping to a crouch and fishing for the TOC-100 tactical camera. She repeated the same motions she'd gone through a little over four hours previously, feeding the steel, flexible cable through a crack underneath the door, switching the monitor to night vision, casting the large room on the other side in a faded green hue.
The camera panned at waist level and using the controls on the handle, she scanned the area inside, but just shook her head indicating she couldn't make out anything specific.
"Looks like typical office space," she whispered. "Cubicles. Desks. Doors to the right and the south."
"No movement?" Strickland asked from over her left shoulder.
"None that I can see, boss."
"Switch to thermals. Check for heat sources. Focus on body heat."
She nodded and adjusted some of the settings on the pistol grip handle, then twisted a dial, moving the camera around in a lazy arc on the other side of the door.
The screen remained an amorphous blob of green and blue, colors shifting into each other with no indication of heat inside, body or otherwise. Beyond the door, the world was a cool-colored void of movement and sound, a vastly silent womb of shifting blues. Slowly Krieger panned the camera, moving it gently, but determinedly left to right.
A bright red flash exploded to the left of the lens, an abrupt streak and sudden blast of noise.
"Holy fuck!" Krieger screamed, stumbling backwards, the camera whipping back under the door and recoiling in the air like a snake with its head chopped off.
The screen was dark.
"The fuck was that?" Hudson asked, looking over Krieger's right shoulder.
"I... I don't know," she replied, pulling back the steel coil. The end where the narrow bulb of a camera used to be was cut clean, strands of narrow steel and fiber optics splayed out like frayed string. "It looked like something was there for a second. Then nothing."
"What happened?" Strickland asked, looking at the screen which now sat dull and dead on the rear of the pistol grip device. "You tear off the camera when you jerked backwards?"
"I don't know," Krieger replied. "I've never seen that before."
"So what was it?" Strickland asked.
Krieger shook her head. "Not a clue."
Strickland couldn't help but think back to that rocky ledge outside the GenTech laboratory. Think back to that bizarre thing that had injured Bucky and had turned on him. But it had been standing upright. It was clearly a person.
Or something shaped like one, anyway.
"What's the plan?" Cruz asked, looking over at Strick from the other side of the front door.
"We still go in. Plan doesn't change."
"Long as the payout doesn't change, I'm on board," replied Cruz. He pressed his hand to the suppressed HK416 slung over his left shoulder and tapped his palm against it.
"Then you're up, Cruz," Strickland nodded and the breach expert returned the gesture. In a low crouch, he stepped forward, checking the seam of the door as he slid a short combat knife from a sheath on his boot. Each member held a blade there though they all hoped they'd never really have to use them.
Cruz pressed his ear to the doors and worked the blade between the seams, testing the latch.
"No power means no electronic locks, we'll have to see what secondary latching system they have in place." He worked his blade into the narrow slot between doors, checking resistance, then wrapped his hands around the metal handle of one of the doors.
"Damn," he muttered.
"What?" asked Strickland.
Cruz looked up at him. "Shit's unlocked, man." To punctuate the statement he tugged on the door and it started easing its way open. Strickland extended a hand, palm facing out.
"Hold," he said, then looked around the group. "Lock and load, get ready, we're going in fast and hot, got it?"
Everyone in the group nodded their heads in response.
Strickland wrapped his gloved hand around the grip of his 416 and held up a single finger on his left hand. Cruz nodded, lifting himself up on bent knees, raising his weapon, cradling it in two hands. Krieger took a step back away from the door, retrieved the camera system, then stowed it away in one of the pouches on her tac vest as Strickland held up a second finger and waved them forward, towards the door.
Cruz moved in, grasping the handle.
Strickland held up a third finger, keeping it still and straight.
Cruz pulled the door and held it.
Strickland jerked his hand forward, three fingers shooting towards the door in a rapid chopping motion. Everyone moved at once.
Cruz swept in, weapon raised, flinging the door open with Hudson and Lundquist just behind him. Strickland followed, swiveling and aiming his 416 towards the left, covering his side of the room. He could feel Krieger just behind, her steps moving in lock with his, barrel sweeping one way as his swept the other.
There was a lot of room to cover. It was a wide, open concept, carpeted office that might have belonged on the fiftieth floor in a Boston high rise if he hadn't just walked in from the mountains. Four narrow paths led the length of the room, splitting scattered cubicles into three even rows, desks and fabric walls straight and even.
Obstacles. Lots of them.
Strickland continued drifting left with Krieger just behind. His night vision goggles draped the room in semi-translucent mixtures of gray and green.
"Door on the left," he whispered in his mouthpiece as his barrel centered on a metal door with some faint writing visible in his viewfinder.
"Two on the right wall," replied Cruz. "Locker rooms, if my Czech can still be trusted."
"You speak Czech?" Hudson asked in the headset. "And here I took you for Mexican."
"That shit's racist, yo," Cruz replied.
"Noise discipline," barked Krieger.
"Sorry, mom," replied Hudson.
"Your mom looks like Kriegs?" replied Cruz. "Damn, man, I'd never have left home."
"You're lucky I can't bust your asses down to private in this outfit, assholes," Krieger replied in a hushed whisper, but she couldn't hide the twinge of humor in her voice.
"Lock it down," Strickland interrupted. "This could be—"
No "could" about it. Things just got real serious, real quick.
"Krieger, on me, now," Strickland barked. "Lundquist, you, too. Cruz and Hudson, hold your positions, but eyes fucking sharp, got it?"
"What did you find boss?" asked Hudson.
"Holy shit," Krieger replied softly, her voice just a whisper.
Lundquist came up on them, weaving through two cubicles, but halting sharply.
"Oh, fuck me."
"Yeah."
Three bodies were strewn about the floor, two with legs entangled, one apart from the others. One of them slumped back against the fabric wall of the cubicle behind him, the second was face down on the floor next to him, and the third had upended a swivel chair and crumpled over it with one arm dangling and a hand resting on wet carpet. The air was thick with the coppery smell of fresh blood and as Krieger stepped forward, her boot squelched.
Lundquist reached under his FN SCAR and activated the switch on the tactical light, cloaking the corpses in a bath of pale white.
"Mother of God," Krieger whispered, drawing back and pressing the back of her hand to her mouth.
The deaths were relatively fresh. Probably a few hours old, and whoever the three men were, they hadn't died easily.
Closest to Strickland, the man slumped against the cubicle was sitting there with his hands clasped around his stomach in desperation. A thick clump of wet gristle flowed over the curve of his dark hands. Dark blood had oozed from a gaping wound in his stomach, run down over his button-down shirt and white coat, and soaked into the carpet. Four deep, crimson gouges tore the lab coat from his neck diagonally across his chest.
Lundquist bent low and pressed fingers to the man's throat, but confirmed what was already obvious. His head shook as he moved towards the second man. This man, also in a lab coat, was face down, covering a widely spread discoloration on the light carpet. The right side of the coat was stuck to his body with a deep red adhesive holding cloth mixed with torn flesh and dried blood.
"What the fuck did this?" Krieger asked.
Lundquist lifted his fingers from the second man's neck, shaking his head again, then turned towards the man crumpled on the tipped over chair with his left arm dangling. As Lundquist approached, he saw the man's right arm, but his brain couldn't rationalize the location of it compared to the body. It seemed too far away.
As he came upon the corpse, he saw the reason why. Ragged hunks of muscle and a jagged thrust of pale white bone were visible at the man's shoulder where his arm had once been. The bone hadn't so much been broken as shredded, leaving a rough cut as if a zucchini cut with dull scissors. Twisted at the neck, the body's head tilted over the ridge of the chair, barely attached by the spine and thin strands of neck muscle. His throat sat open and torn, loose flaps still wet with blood and gore. There wasn't even a place left to check for a pulse.
"Dead. All three of them," Lundquist said.
"Say what?" asked Hudson, still holding firm on his side of the room. "We got bodies in here?"
"Affirmative," Strickland replied. "Three lab workers by the looks of it."
"Who killed them?" asked Cruz.
"I'm more wondering what killed them," Krieger interjected.
Neither Cruz nor Hudson replied. It was a rare moment when those two were left speechless.
Up above them, the lights flickered for a brief moment, a dull electric hum snapping in the ceiling.
Strickland looked up. "We got power?"
As if to reply, the florescent bulbs popped and cut out, leaving them in darkness once again.
"I think the generator is trying to kick on," Cruz said.
There was another hum and another flicker of white light, shining down upon the cubicle farm.
"Okay, I officially don't like this shit," Hudson said.
"Where's your sense of adventure?" Cruz asked.
"Fuck adventure," Hudson replied. "You remember watching those shitty horror movies when you were a kid? There was always those dumb fucks who you knew were going to die, and you screamed at the fucking screen, telling them to get the hell out of that house ... it feels like we are those dumb fucks."
"This isn't a shitty horror movie," Krieger replied in his ear.
"Not yet it's not," Hudson replied. "Let's get the fuck out before it turns into one!"
"We've got a job to do, and we're going to do it," Krieger replied. "Right, Strick?"
Strickland jerked his head around towards her as if her comment had woken him. He had been captivated by the injuries the men had suffered and in his head he could picture the creature he'd seen in the Romanian mountains descending upon some hapless scientists, hissing at them before tearing them to shreds.
He could see it in his head. In full, graphic detail, as if it had been a memory he'd actually experienced.
"Strick?" Krieger repeated.
He couldn't reply. His mouth moved underneath the black balaclava, but the words wouldn't form. How c fould he bring himself to order Blaine Hudson to stick with it, especially when he wasn't sure he could do it himself. They had no idea. None of them.
"I guess it depends," Krieger replied, no longer waiting for Strickland's input. "You willing to split up your twenty g's with the rest of us?"
"That shit's cold, man," Hudson replied.
"Krieger," Strickland said in a low voice, twisting his mouthpiece off with a touch of his finger. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."
She drew back. "What? You spooked, Strick?"
He considered these words for a moment and decided whether or not he was spooked didn't matter. His reputation didn't mean anything, and it never would, if he got his whole team slaughtered without warning them.
"Not spooked. There are things I haven't told you about my last operation with GenTech. Things that defy explanation."
"Who are you, Fox fucking Mulder?" Krieger asked.
"All I'm saying is whatever is in here, whatever did this to these lab rats ... we don't want to be too cocky. I've seen something that could do this to people. I saw what it did to Earle Park."
She cocked her head sideways, and he could almost make out her furrowed brow beneath the thin fabric of the face mask.
"Park caught buckshot in the ass," she replied. "Nothing strange or supernatural about that."
"The thing that shot him ... it shouldn't have been walking on two legs, Mora, but somehow ..."
She shook her head, brushing away his words. "Just stop it, Strick. Enough with the horror movie bullshit. We're being paid and being paid well to check out this facility. This twenty grand is going to put me in a good place for a long time. Same with these other guys. Don't take that away from us because your last op went sideways and messed with your head."
Strickland clenched his teeth. Maybe she was right. Maybe the stress of that last op in Romania had played tricks with his eyes. Maybe he was making mountains out of molehills. It wouldn't be the first time. That last op in Romania had given him nightmares for a month afterward, first time that had ever happened in his career. Sometimes he wondered if his mind was mixing up his nightmares with reality and leaving him grasping for something somewhere in between.
"We're doing this, Strick. You with us or not?"
Before he could even formulate a verbal response, his head was bobbing up and down. Whatever his misgivings, he sure as hell wasn't going to abandon his team.
"Yeah, I'm with you. Let's do this." Krieger nodded as Strickland flicked his headset mic back on. "Hudson, Cruz, converge on us. Quiet and careful."
"I've got your twenty," Cruz replied.
Moments later they came up on the cubicle, Hudson drawing up as he neared.
"Holy fuck."
"The hell happened to those poor sons of bitches?" Cruz asked.
"That's what we're here to find out," Strickland replied. "Lundquist, you're with me, we're going to clear the mechanical room," he gestured over his shoulder towards the door on the left side of the wide room. "Hudson, you clear the men's locker room, Krieger, you grab the women's."
Nods answered all around.
"Those locker rooms lead to a larger fitness center beyond," Strickland continued. "You remember the schematics?"
"Like the back of my hand," Krieger replied.
"Yep," Hudson confirmed.
"Cruz, you clear the rest of the cube farm," Strickland said, looking towards the breach expert. Like all the others, Cruz bobbed his head in affirmative.
The group began to disperse, pulling away from the cluster and moving towards their destination.
"Yo," Strickland barked. Everyone halted, turning back towards him. "Nobody be a fucking hero," he whispered, directing an extended index finger to each other member of the group in succession. "Play this carefully, okay. We don't know what's in here, but we're operating under the assumption that its hostile. Shoot on sight, no fucking hesitation. Got me?"
"Got it, boss," replied Hudson, his face hardening underneath the clinging cotton face mask.
"Move out. Let's get this done and get the fuck home."
He tried to sound confident, but deep inside something was gnawing at him ... something telling him they weren't all going to get the fuck home.
#
Embedded florescent lights snapped on, bracing the narrow corridor in pale light for a brief moment before flickering rapidly, then cutting out. At the end of the corridor the door swung open cautiously as an extended suppressed gun barrel pressed on the material to push it forward.
As the door reached the halfway point in its swing, the lights flickered again, briefly revealing the gunmetal gray of the bathroom stalls lining the right side, the green tinted linoleum of the stained floor, and the pale mustard lockers extending up the far left wall. It was one quick blink of revelation, then darkness.
Hudson took each cautious step with his legs bent, muscles tensed, and LaRue OCR facing out into the hall leading to the men's locker room. To his right, the gray, metallic bathroom stalls stood stoically unrevealing. Through the pale haze of night vision he approached the first stall.
"Fucking horror movie bullshit," he whispered as the lights above him flickered wildly once more, blotting out the picture in his viewfinder. A tiny red dot from his laser sight darted along the smooth surface of the stall door as he approached. The Magpul short stock of the OCR pressed tightly to his shoulder as he moved forward. The silenced barrel touched the metal and swung the door open.
Stall number one was empty.
Hudson took a quick step back, letting the door swing closed with a low whack, then shuffle-stepped to the left, approaching the next. There were five stalls total with each one rammed right up tight to the next.
He tried to picture how this might look in full light, but he couldn't. In the dull sheen of his NVR system and under the flickering florescent lights, it all looked like a drab black and white film of a movie set and not an actual place that people used everyday.
Keeping his weapon tight to the crook of his arm, he reached out with his left hand and pushed the door of the second stall open.
White light splashed over his goggles and he winced jerking his head away.
The florescent light above dimmed and blinked out again, then resumed its light throb.
"Fucking lights. Make up your mind." He looked into the second stall and confirmed that it was also empty.
Three to go.
Hudson's heart hammered in his chest, like a frantic prisoner trying to escape by ramming its shoulder against the door again and again. Beyond the low electric hum of the dying lights above, he could hear nothing, and his vision was useless as well underneath the rapid thrash of dying lights.
His gloved hand pressed to the third stall, he pushed the door open, lifting his barrel to point in.
Nothing.
He let the door bang closed as he shuffled left, then repeated the motion, finding once again, nothing in the stall besides the toilet. The bathroom was clean he thought, especially for a place that now appeared to be some kind of crime scene.
One stall left. He squared his shoulders and tightened his grip on the LaRue. Lights flickered above him, the rapid snapping, sending strobe lights of distortion throughout his night vision goggles. As he looked at the final gun metal bathroom stall the worn and carved metal door stared back at him, a lone dent punched in the center of it. In his mind, Hudson could hear shuffling behind there. He could almost see the shifting form of masked gunmen behind the narrow metal door, sneering and waiting to attack.
For a brief moment, he lifted his weapon, finger tensing on the trigger. His LaRue fired 7.62mm rounds, that could punch right through this door like a hot knife through butter. Anyone waiting behind there would be thoroughly disposed of before they even had a chance to fire back when the door swung open.
Noise discipline. He closed his eyes and listened, but could hear no sound. No boot squeaking on porcelain, no cloth shifting as bodies moved. Not even the low and even intake of breath.
His heart froze as he reached for the handle, the fist of muscle clenching and holding, even as the lights above halted their buzzing snap and drenched the bathroom in darkness. Within the night vision goggles, things went black for a brief moment, then melted into the gray/green blur of sight.
"Stop being a pussy," Hudson grumbled to himself as he drew up his shoulders and reached out, latching his fingers around the curled metal edge of the door. Without further hesitation he swung it violently open, slamming it metal-on-metal against the frame of the stall and lifted his weapon high and tight to his shoulder with his finger curling around the trigger, weapon pointing into the stall ... the empty stall.
As if chuckling at his nervousness, the lights above him shuddered in staccato flickering, buzzed lightly, then blinked out again.
Hudson pursed his lips and blew out a long, labored breath, his eyes closing and heart slowing to a steady rhythm. The stalls were clear. So far, so good.
With narrowed eyes, he turned, glancing towards the extension of the men's room, which widened beyond a trio of sinks, with at least two dozen narrow lockers bolted to the left and far walls, side-by-side.
"Fuck me," he whispered to himself at the thought of checking each one of those lockers to make sure they were unoccupied. The idea of pumping gunfire into the whole row of them was sounding more and more appealing by the minute.
His eyes scanned the lockers, then moved to the far wall where a sign pressed into the tile surface. Above him the lights blinked, and he saw that the sign read 'Fitness Center' with an arrow pointing to his right towards a set of doors.
Hudson wondered how many employees worked here. There had been maybe twenty or thirty cubicles with no immediate sign of any offices, though that door at the far end of the main office space had been locked. Two dozen lockers and a full blown fitness center for an R and D station with maybe fifty employees at the most? That seemed to be stretching it.
But this was GenTech, one of the largest corporations on the planet, and who knew what benefits they promised their army of employees.
"Not a bad gig if you can get it," Hudson whispered, but even as he finished the thought, he remembered the three shredded corpses, torn and bleeding on the carpet. "Okay ... maybe it's not all good."
When he was nervous, Hudson had a tendency to talk to himself, though he always kept his voice to a low whisper. It helped him settle his nerves though it always made his squad mates a little squirrelly. This group seemed to accept him for what he was though.
His feet squeaked on the tile floor as he stepped past the sinks towards the lockers. A canvas shoulder strap pulled tight over his right shoulder, his weapon pointing down towards the floor as he approached the first row of lockers. His boot slipped on the slick, wet floor, and he looked down, trying to isolate the source of the slipperiness. Standing water scattered throughout the light, smooth surface of the bathroom floor, like water left running, though the dipped central portion of the floor held a drain and even in the low light of the generator, he could see water traveling into the slotted, circular drain cover.
Gray lockers flashed under the flickering light as Hudson took three more steps forward, the silence interrupted by the low squeak of boots on tile. He shifted his weight as he walked, not wanting to make too much noise, but there was no getting around it.
––––––––
He flipped his night vision goggles up to the top of his helmet and latched them there. He winced as he gave up his night vision. As the lights had continued their endless flickering causing the goggles to shift between blindness and brightness, a dull ache had crept into his head. The relative peace of the locker room convinced him to abandon them, at least for now. He was far better able to focus without them at this point, anyway.
He squeezed his left eye closed, then pressed his right eye to the scope of his weapon, training the cross hairs on the first locker he approached. The mini scout light bolted underneath his weapon shone a pale, white light on the lockers. He looked at the lockers, attempting to gauge their size, making some mental calculations as to whether or not a human body could even fit inside.
He crept forward with his shoulder tensed, his weapon raised, and his barrel directed towards the row of closed lockers. He took another cautious step as lights continued to flash. The generator was now in a constant state of strain. He thought he could actually hear the grinding motor of the gas-powered generator deeper within the facility, trying to provide the necessary power, but never quite making it.
As he took another step, a quiet bang echoed in the room. A muffled clatter of metal seemed to resonate from each corner of the room, not clearly coming from any single direction.
Hudson halted, his heart slamming.
A second bang was followed by two more. They were low pitched and caused by something heavy. Hudson could have sworn there was a vibration of impact in the floor in time with the metallic crashing.
It couldn't have come from this room. Hudson lowered his weapon and craned his neck to glance through the dimly lit locker room. His eyes landed on the doors leading to the fitness center and hung there. A louder metal slam and clatter echoed from behind the doors, followed by a low rolling series of thuds.
Instantly, the LaRue snapped back into firing position. He shifted his direction towards the doors. His pace quickened as he stepped with knees bent and boots slapping into shallow puddles on the floor.
His eyes narrowed at the door as he progressed forward step by step under the flickering florescent lights above. There were actually two saloon style doors that met in the middle. As he stepped closer, he pulled his knee tight to his chest and thrust it out, slamming the heel of his combat boot into the seam between the two doors. As they flew open, he pushed himself through the space, swiveled as he stepped, and arced the elongated barrel of his suppressor across the wide span of the open room.
It was a vast, square fitness room, carpeted in a pattern-less gray, threadbare covering with paths worn from one piece of equipment to the next. Along the back wall, a short row of treadmills stood side-by-side like marching soldiers, with nautilus machines along the right-hand wall.
On a small, padded area close to the doors Hudson had burst through were several racks of dumbbells, in various sizes and weights. One of the racks had toppled over and several dumbbells lay scattered along the floor. One twenty pound weight was still rolling towards the carpet. Hudson shifted his gaze towards the second set of double doors, that were swinging back and forth.
His finger twitched on the trigger, and sweat slicked his brow as he moved to the left.
A thick blotch of body heat filled the cross hairs in the middle of the scope and his finger twitched, beginning to clamp around the curved trigger system on his LaRue.
"Hudson, it's me!"
His finger sprang from the trigger and he lifted his head, squinting into the dim light underneath the uncertain lights above.
"Kriegs?"
Mora Krieger stepped forward, lowering her weapon. "Yeah, it's me."
"You knocked these weights over? How much did you have to drink at the bar earlier, you fucking clutz?"
His muscles relaxed and his weapon lowered, crossing his chest and hanging as his fingers spread apart and he stood upright.
"I didn't do this. I heard the same thing you did."
A silence blanketed the entire room. Even the insistent hum of florescent lights seemed to ebb as the two operatives tried to calculate what this meant.
Hudson's eyes met Krieger's, sliding to narrow slits, trying to focus through the darkness. With one desperate, uneven charge, the lights above sparked on.
His eyes widened, stretching the fabric of the balaclava. For that one, brief, flash of light second, he'd seen it. It was the swiftest moment, the scant vision of revelation, of motion, of focused, bestial rage.
Mora saw his face and her own eyes parted to mirror his.
"What did you see?" she asked, her arms going rigid. Her entire body locking into a firm flesh and bone statue. "Hudson what the fuck did you see?"
"Don't move," he whispered. "Just stay still."
Goose flesh sprinted down Mora Krieger's arms, prickling her flesh under the fabric of her commando sweater. Her heart lurched as if it would start racing, but then seized and halted, frozen in her chest.
"Just stay still," Hudson repeated.
Mora felt the impact, a rushing slam at her right shoulder, shoving her helplessly aside as the mammoth, dark form surged forward in a blinding rush of fur and howl. Hudson had just started to scream when the shape enveloped him and knocked him to the floor.
What came next was something she was not prepared for.