Dr. Rogers announced, “I think we’ve got it.”
Max peered out into the blackness. “Yeah, here it comes. Great work, Doctor.”
“Be careful crossing; there are no railings.”
LT heard the bridge slide into place, accompanied by a whirring noise that sounded like an electric motor beginning to spin. Over a period of several seconds the corridor brightened from black to the poor lighting typical of this level of the ship, the glow tinged a light green. Dr. Rogers and Max stepped onto the bridge. Situated roughly fifty feet off the floor, the bridge spanned an enormous room that stretched off into the fading greenish light given off by the several machines that had whirred to life moments before. Each of the conical machines stood twenty feet high and reminded LT of a beehive soaked in tritium.
Red commented, “Killer spot for a lightsaber duel.”
“Read my mind,” LT whispered.
“Nordic shamanism.”
The man is unflappable. Every team member had been forged in the Stoic warrior tradition, yet under the circumstances, most were beginning to crack in some fashion. Red and Irish seemed to be the only others who had retained their bearings: Diaz appeared to be a nervous wreck. Sugar might be having hallucinations and didn’t seem himself since first encountering the creature. Max was apparently hunting slash instead of the creatures. He couldn’t imagine how long Gable had been holding that intel about Max’s escapades into Russia, but a sane man would have known this wasn’t the time to bring it up. LT hated even thinking about it, yet he had no choice; he needed to know whom he could rely upon in the event Max died...or became otherwise incapacitated.
Had it reached that point already?
LT wondered about the bridge. Had Dr. Rogers retracted it herself the last time she’d come through, or had someone else? The latter meant there was a good chance that survivors might be in the area. Perhaps there were no creatures on the far side of the bridge if survivors had retracted it to keep them out.
The hallway on the far side of the bridge, previously pitch black, brightened as Max and Dr. Rogers entered. Max issued no order, so once Sugar bounded across, LT halted the column and asked if they should retract the bridge.
Just as LT dreaded, Max asked, “What do you think, Doctor?”
“The bridge controls weren’t difficult to decipher, though there are several steps that need to be followed. Nothing I can’t do again.”
“Good enough,” Max replied. “Let’s pull it.”
“And if she dies, how do we extend it again?” Red asked.
“I’ll—we’ll see to it that Dr. Rogers doesn’t die.”
Dr. Rogers offered, “I can write down instructions just in case.”
“That might be best,” LT commented.
“Won’t do us much good if we’ve got one of those beasts on our tail,” Red said. “They’re not likely to take a timeout while we read the instructions. Why don’t we just leave it extended?”
Max paused in thought. “Good point, Red.”
“Yes and no.” LT felt the weight of their lives settle like a mantle across his shoulders. “Leaving it down provides a hasty escape route, but it also allows the creatures to follow us.”
“They’re back there,” Sugar rumbled. “I know I saw one. We need to retract this bridge.”
Dr. Rogers shook her head. “There are creatures on this side already.”
LT finally asked, “Did you retract the bridge last time you were through here?”
“What difference does it make?” Max said.
“Plenty. If she didn’t do it, then another survivor did. Or the creatures know how to do it.”
“Or maybe the creatures don’t have to use the bridge,” Max suggested. “I don’t think a fifty-foot chasm is enough to stop one of them.”
“True enough,” LT was forced to concede. “Might as well leave it extended in that case.”
“Thanks for seeing things my way,” Max said.
LT fought the urge to shout: You said retract it! “You should still write down the instructions, Doctor, just in case someone retracts it behind us.”
Max glowered briefly at LT before saying, “Very well. If you please, Doctor.”
“Certainly,” Dr. Rogers said. “And for the record, I left the bridge extended when I passed through here.”
The others took a break while Dr. Rogers scribbled the instructions on a notepad. Sugar had once again taken the prone position behind his machine gun; he stared intently at the tunnel across the bridge, which had gone black after they’d passed through. “Man, I’m tellin’ you,” he muttered, dropping his NVGs to get a better look.
Diaz joined him in the visual search.
Sugar pointed. “Something back there.”
“I don’t see anything.” Diaz replied. “Wait...it’s right fucking there!”
“Let me in there, Diaz,” Max said. LT hadn’t heard him approach. Max donned his NVGs as he crouched next to Sugar and stared across into the black passageway.
After a minute or so Sugar said, “Right there, Chief. Limit of vision, you see that?”
LT wore his own NVGs but saw nothing.
“I don’t think so, Sugar,” Max replied. “Looks like shadows, just a play of light.”
“Ain’t no light in that tunnel.”
“Yeah, but there’s plenty from those machines down there, light that just happens to glow green. It’s screwing with your goggles is all.”
“I know what I saw.”
Diaz agreed, “Yeah, that was totally one of them.”
Max answered Sugar. “I’m not saying you don’t. But I am saying it’s not there now.”
“I concur,” LT said. “There’s nothing down there right now.”
Max got to his feet. “Just stay vigilant. Nobody here doubts you.”
Dr. Rogers gave her notes, meticulously written in a graceful hand, to Max. The group formed up and carried on, Rogers again setting the pace too fast. Her zeal caught up with them sooner rather than later. Weak and constantly wheezing, Dr. Kumar could go no further on his own. Though uninjured, Harlow and Quinones were terrified and exhausted and had to be urged along by various team members.
As for Kumar, Max said, “You’ll have to carry him, Diaz.” His tone remained nonchalant as though he were ordering the man to hump an extra rifle.
Diaz gaped through the crowd at Max. He stuttered briefly as he searched for the proper invectives to hurl at Max. LT began to cut off Diaz’s response, but Dr. Rogers beat him to it.
“We should rest for a while, Mr. Ahlgren.”
Max pretended to think about it. “Yes, yes, I suppose so. But not for long, and we can’t do it here. We need a larger space, easily defensible, where we can all open fire simultaneously on a creature.”
“I know a place nearby, a couple hundred yards from here at most.”
“Very well. Lead the way, Doctor.”
Kumar remained incapacitated. Max and the doctor stepped off. Does he really think Diaz is going to be able to carry Kumar the rest of the way?
“Sugar, grab the doctor,” LT ordered.
Sugar cocked his head and gave him a quizzical look. “I’m on rear.”
“Irish will take the rear. You take the doctor.”
“On it.”
LT started moving once the team was repositioned. Max, Rogers, and Red were already a short distance ahead. At least Gable had stopped to wait for them.
“LT?” Gable asked.
“What is it now?” LT responded, not in the mood for redneck wisdom.
“Something’s gonna give and damn soon.”
LT ruminated upon the several possible meanings of Gable’s statement. Was it a mere prediction of things to come—an easy prediction at that—or was Gable planning to do the giving? LT didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. He said nothing, dropped his head and continued to march.
* * *
“Wide spot in the road,” Dr. Rogers announced as she and Max entered the ro
om. “I hope this meets your requirements as defensible, Mr. Ahlgren.”
Dim light flooded the room at their presence. Max evaluated the space with a critical tactician’s eye. Roughly fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long, the room had three entrances—the one they were standing in, another on the opposite wall thirty feet away, and the last about twenty feet down the left wall. A sunken floor, three feet deep, ran the length of the right wall before a solid bank of glowing orange hologram monitors, with six built in chairs denoting separate workstations. The ceiling featured two ventilation panels; the floor consisted of solid construction with no gratings.
Dr. Rogers added, “The far exit opens onto a similar drawbridge if that makes things easier.”
“Definitely. This will do nicely. Doctor.” He turned and addressed the team: “Sugar, Diaz, watch the rear. Two exits to secure. Red, we’ve got the left; LT and Gable take the far exit. Let’s move.”
The room lived up to its appearance as an innocuous workspace, at least for the moment. The left hallway lit up, stretching straight on into murky dimness as Red and Max stepped in.
“Clear!” Max shouted.
“Clear!” LT responded from the other exit. “Retracted drawbridge over here.”
The group assembled in the middle of the room. Red cracked some glow sticks to enhance the dim lighting, which the survivors seemed to appreciate. Sugar had a moaning Dr. Kumar draped over his massive shoulders. I guess ordering Diaz to carry him was a little unreasonable.
Max issued his orders: “Gable, Irish, rig Claymore mines with a laser trip about thirty feet down those hallways.” He indicated the hall they’d entered from and the exit on the left wall. “Two-hour rest period, two men on watch the entire time. I’ll take the second hour. Any volunteers for the first watch?”
“Might as well be me,” Diaz said. “I have to re-dress his wounds anyway.”
“I’ll take this side,” Irish added.
“Good enough. Make it happen.”
Sugar lay Dr. Kumar down in the trough by the workstations, and Diaz turned to cutting off his dressings. The Claymore traps were set up in minutes. They were about as secure as they were going to get.
Irish produced a roll of toilet paper from his pack and pointed toward the far hallway. “If anyone needs to go this spot is as good as any.”
Max never ceased to marvel at the professional warrior’s ability to fall asleep as though on command, in even the most uncomfortable of environments. Red and Gable slumped back in the chairs before the monitors and were asleep in seconds. Sugar sprawled out on the floor next to his machine gun. Harlow and Quinones huddled together against the wall a few feet away. The ever-pensive LT sat against the wall vaping and staring into space, eating an occasional cracker from an MRE pouch. Max couldn’t see Diaz down in the sunken area of the floor, but he could hear Kumar’s grunts of agony as Diaz cleaned and dressed his wounds.
Max and Dr. Rogers sat close to each other in the corner nearest the drawbridge. He remembered well the sequence of events that had brought him here, though the time seemed to have passed in a blur, as though he’d been running on autopilot. Well, she has been making most of the decisions. She’s the only one who knows where we’re going. He had invested his trust in her, something he didn’t do easily, and it was paying dividends.
Maybe you’re ignoring the team just a little. The thought came unbidden, and Max dismissed it immediately. His men hailed from the world’s finest fighting forces—they didn’t need to be babysat constantly. I need to keep up with her, watch her every move. We won’t get out of this otherwise.
And goddamn it, she’s easy to follow.
Max liked to categorize people he interacted with, to determine what effect they could have on him or a mission. He considered Dr. Rogers, and she seemed different. She didn’t appear to fit neatly into any one category. He decided that she must be a workaholic like he was, consumed by their respective occupations.
He watched her fiddling with some sort of tablet from the ship, its glowing orange screen illuminating features he found mesmerizing: her jaw, strong but not jutting; the flawless proportions of her nose and cheekbones; and her body, lush and sculpted, strong but curvaceous. There was something else about her, a strength and determination he sensed. He felt drawn to her. He wanted to speak to her, but for the moment he contented himself with drinking in her presence as he grew drowsy.
Her hair turned blonde; her eyes became deep-blue pools ringed in dark purple. Russian epithets gushed forth from bruised and swollen lips. She was bound hand and foot to a spindly wooden chair.
“Spare me. I know you speak English,”
She spat a glob of blood in his direction and then shouted more gibberish.
“Hook her up, LT.”
LT moved in to attach the electrodes. She growled, leaned forward, and attempted to bite his face, her bloody teeth nearly latching on. LT jerked back from her. “Bitch!” He drew his Glock and smashed her across the face, the gun barrel opening up a jagged laceration on her cheek. The blow dazed her; she reeled in the chair, head lolling and eyelids fluttering.
LT rushed forward and seized her head so Max could affix the electrodes to her temples. With that task completed, Max threw a glass of water into her face. She grew somewhat coherent again and stopped screaming. She glared up at Max and awaited a fate that might have been avoided.
Your call, bitch.
“Now, I need to know where the Spetsnaz team took the Americans. Tell me, and we’ll detain you until the fighting’s done, after which you’ll be released. Do you understand?”
“You bastard-faced son of bitch! I say nothing, never!”
“We’ll see.” Max flicked a switch and powered on the transformer. “Last chance.” He grabbed the current control knob on the console.
“American slime! Fuck your mother in the eyes!”
Max cranked the knob clockwise to a thousand volts, the highest possible setting.
Her body flashed a brilliant light blue for an instant, accompanied by a single pop as loud as a pistol shot. She convulsed instantly as though suffering a seizure; her blue eyes ready to burst forth from their bruised sockets. The wet patch on her shirt sparked from the electric current and caught fire. Her blonde hair crinkled and vaporized, the stench of it summoning bile to rise in Max’s throat. She screamed as though speaking in tongues.
“Shut it off!” LT shouted. “She’s no good to us dead.”
Max turned the knob back to zero. The woman peered all about the room, eyelids and cheeks twitching, her bald scalp singed a sunburned red.
“Tell us,” Max coaxed, “and it can end now.”
She spat nonsense at him for several seconds before saying, “Never. Never!”
Max cranked the dial yet again to full blast. The interrogation continued for several more rounds.
“This is taking too long!” LT shouted.
Max glanced at his watch. Minutes meant miles now, and miles meant lives for the hostages. “Grab me the bolt cutters.”
LT gave him a wide-eyed glance but dutifully retrieved them.
Max went back to work on the woman. Perhaps this will jog your memory. He removed her shoes. She remained defiantly silent. He placed her pinky toe in the teeth of the bolt cutter and snapped down hard. The women let out a piercing scream as the cutter cleanly lopped off her toe. After a single spurt of blood shot from the wound, a metered red ooze pumped from her foot in time with her heartbeat.
“Well?” Max snarled.
Tears welled in her eyes. “Please, no!”
He moved on to the next toe and snapped the handles together again as her screams filled the room.
Max jolted awake, breathing heavily and reaching for his pistol. He saw the bank of hologram monitors and his sleeping team and then remembered where he was. He released his grip on the pistol. He felt Dr. Rogers gaze upon him. Looking over at her, he could see the look of concern and almost pain painted on her face. “Shit.” He dropped h
is head. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I remember things I’d rather forget if I could.”
She nodded. “I suppose that’s inevitable in your line of work. All the killing, the torture.”
Max snapped his head up and glared at her. “How did you know I dreamed of torture?”
“I didn’t know. I just assumed you might have been forced to use such tactics in the past.”
Max paused a moment before nodding. “Yes.”
Didn’t save Collins though. The blonde Russian woman had eventually talked. They always did. However, she’d succeeded in buying her associates much-needed time. Unable to intercept the Spetsnaz in transport, the hostages were taken back to their headquarters. Max and the team stormed the heavily fortified building and rescued Banner’s CIA advisors, but at a price. His medic Collins died laying down covering fire so the rest of the team could escape. Their Georgia debacle in a nutshell.
It should have been me who got planted over there.
And then there was Mexico. Gable’s right—
A feminine scream cut the stifling air.
“Shit!” Max shouted. “Who the fuck—?”
“Harlow!” Dr. Rogers replied. “She went down the hall to relieve herself.”
Max snatched up his rifle, scrambled to his feet along with the rest of the team and ran to the hallway entrance.
He thought he knew what to expect this time.
The beast proved him wrong.
Max raised his rifle and immediately started shooting; but his shots went wide, most of the rounds errant. He couldn’t concentrate on his aim, shocked by the nightmarish scene unfolding before him in the dimness.
The creature morphed with astonishing speed from a puddle of the black substance into a large, amoeba-like form. Its snake-like skin swirled with darkening hues as its body contracted and expanded as it took. Max didn’t know if it had oozed from a duct or slithered down the hall under the Claymore trap, but at the moment it didn’t matter. There was still a chance to save Harlow.
Harlow screamed and struggled. On all fours, she backpedaled from the monstrosity, but her pants were still down around her ankles, inhibiting her movement. The creature continued to morph before Max’s eyes. Its extended pseudopods twisted into something akin to a tangle of snakes, their heads circular maws filled with rows of gleaming black teeth appeared, puckering and yawning in metronomic rhythm. A large slit-like mouth formed in the center mass of the creature, as its tentacles reached for Ms. Harlow.
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