I am Iron Man

by Colin Cook

  mentioned earlier Axel headed to Parliament Hill to give his report, while Sydow just disappears off the map entirely," Moira added in between them.

  Chellick's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped at hearing this.

  "You can't be serious!" he stated in shock, clearly not expecting to be left on yet another cliffhanger.

  "I'm not making this up Chellick! There just isn't enough data left to tell us the whole story; from what I can read here it says that Sydow lands in Ottawa, a while later he

  leaves the city with a small detachment of soldiers headed for some unnamed rural region of the Ontario countryside, and then he's never mentioned in the file again!

  Either he decided to retire from the military or just went plain AWOL we'll never know, the file is either too corrupted or the information simply isn't there!" Moira protested

  while tapping a finger on her terminal-screen, indicating the last corrupted paragraph mentioning Sydow.

  "Perhaps he wasn't ready for the responsibilities of being a captain, and saw a chance to get out when he returned to his homeland. Either way something had to have

  happened to him for that Board of Inquiry to agree to pass the mantle of command on to Axel," Bailey commented to them both.

  Chellick nodded slowly, looking at the partial pages of Axel's file for a moment before turning back to him and Moira.

  "Why don't we find out about the man…or woman…themself? See what kind of person they were?" he posed to both of them.

  "I was gonna say the same thing. Think you can bring up Captain Sydow's file, so we can at least get a picture of what their background was like?" Bailey nodded to

  Chellick before posing the Turian's proposal to Moira. Regarding them both with a smug smile Moira laced her hands together and stretched her arms out ahead of her,

  bending her hands backwards until each of the joints in her fingers gave a loud pop.

  "Boys, I hope you're ready to buy me another beer," she stated before typing away once again into her keyboard.

  At this very moment kilometers away from C-Sec Academy, two blue-armoured Turian agents walked down a dark dingy corridor in the deep underbelly of the Market

  District, one that was partially lit up in certain sections by low powered red security lights. Both of them were carrying activated standard-issue assault rifles in their hands

  which were loosely shining short cones of light across their path from glowing flashlights fixed to their ends.

  "What the hell are we doin' down here Criax?" the Turian on the left complained to his partner on the right, scanning his light across the grimy dust covered walls and

  pitch-black ceiling that reached far up overtop of them.

  Many exposed lines of thick hanging electrical cable and large air-ducts ran down the length of the corridor's ceiling, most of them crisscrossing wildly around each other

  within the dark shadows cast by the eerie red lights spaced far out along the walls.

  "We're down here Torrvk because there's a threat still lurking around somewhere in this District, and we need to find it before it hurts somebody," the Turian known as

  Criax responded back to his partner.

  "Yeah, a threat that even Sgt. Vakarian and an army of C-Sec's finest were barely able to contain. I saw some of the damage those things did back in the Market Corridor,

  and I'm telling you right now that sending down a handful of rookie cops barely a year on the beat to try and capture it is stupid! The Executor might as well be throwing

  our lives away, you know since all the better-trained and better-equipped agents better suited for this job just had to be rotated to the Embassies to ensure those highand-mighty

  politicians get round the clock protection after that terrorist scare back at the Tower!" the agent known as Torrvk ranted loudly as he raised his rifle with one

  hand, using the other to make sharp declarative hand gestures.

  "This is part of the job…" Criax said simply with a small shrug, all the while glancing at the dark shadowy areas they walked past, shining his rifle light into any large side

  passages or open machine rooms that branched off from the main corridor.

  "Going down abandoned maintenance tunnels, undermanned and inexperienced, after a homicidal alien organism that has acid for blood?! What's next, we send new

  recruits one at a time into the Keeper Tunnels after mutant Krogan freaks armed with only second-hand pistols?! I'm tellin' you man they don't care about us, to the brass

  we're just cannon fodder. I didn't sign up to be treated like bait on a hook. We should be doin' something about it, you know Unionizin' or somethin'!" Torrvk continued

  ranting, repeatedly stabbing his talon down toward the dirty metal floor to better emphasize his point.

  Criax frowned without turning to look at his partner, having noticed that Torrvk's voice was beginning to get thicker with that weird accent he had developed several

  months ago when he had taken his C-Sec vacation days to travel around the colony worlds in Human Alliance space. After he'd returned to work, one of the Human

  agents in the Academy had told Criax that Torrvk now sounded a lot like a 1950's New Yorker, whatever that meant.

  "You know if you talk loud enough you might be able to draw that thing out of hiding and bring it straight to us, then we could either capture it or die a horrible and

  gruesome death. But either way our job would be finished and we wouldn't need to go walking down the deep dark tunnels anymore, and then you wouldn't have

  anything to complain about! So good job partner, keep up the good work!" Criax explained deliberately casual before throwing Torrvk a quick thumbs up and continuing on

  down the long corridor, leaving the other rookie to freeze in place and nervously sweep his flashlight around himself, pointing it at all of the dark places a cunning

  Xenomorph could lie in wait to spring an ambush.

  Suddenly a distant metallic clang echoed up to them from the end of the corridor the two had just come from, making Torrvk spin around with a yell and bring the butt of

  his rifle up to his shoulder, ready to blast away anything that tried to creep up on him!

  But nothing did, and the only thing he was treated to in the deafening silence was the sound of Criax's full-blown laughter coming from behind him.

  "Fuck you! That's not funny Criax!" Torrvk began trying to say over his partner's laughing, never taking his eyes away from the corridor's deserted far end as he quickly

  jogged semi-backwards in order to catch up.

  "Well I thought it was hilarious," Criax said over his shoulder with one last chuckle as the other Turian came stumbling back up to his side. This only got a scowl from

  Torrvk as he hefted his weapon. Criax shook his head and sighed sympathetically.

  "You're too jumpy man, you gotta cool down and have a calmer mind. Remember what Lieutenant Bailey always says, 'A calm mind can save your life in any situation, all

  you gotta do is use it right'," he said, making his voice sound older and more gravely in a bad imitation of Bailey's. This succeeded in getting Torrvk to smirk involuntarily

  after finding the little display funny.

  "I guess…" he muttered in agreement. Criax smiled and he gave his partner a clap on the shoulder.

  "That's the spirit! Keep that up and we'll do fine down here."

  Both of them continued down the nightmarish corridor for a minute or so until Criax brought them to a stop and deactivated his assault rifle, folding it into its compact

  form and attaching it to the magnetic clips on his armoured back. Lifting his left arm, he activated his omni-tool and typed a command code into its communication

  systems.

  "Search Leader to Search Teams, its time for our routine checkup guys, sound off your findings one at a time," Criax ordered into the tool's microphone, using his other

  hand to press against his hidden earpiece with his index ta
lon.

  "You wanna do that here? Out in the open like this?" Torrvk asked incredulously while panning the barrel of his rifle all around them, their immediate area being bathed in

  the bright orange glow of the omni-tool, which succeeded in making the surrounding corridor and beyond disappear into an inky pitch-black.

  "You got a better place to do it? Just relax, it'll only take a second," Criax reassured him as the reports from the other C-Sec teams started coming in.

  "This is Search Team 2, we've still found no traces of the creature," came a Turian voice through the omni-tool. Soon this was followed by another.

  "Search Team 3 reports no contacts." And another.

  "Team 4, no sightings yet."

  On and on this continued for a few seconds, the list of teams going from 2 up to 5, each of them reporting no findings.

  Criax let out a tired sigh and gave a nod of defeat.

  "Alright keep at it then, watch your backs and call me the moment any of you find something." With that he shut down the tool and drew his assault rifle, waiting for a

  moment as his and Torrvk's eyes adjusted to the darkness again before they both continued on their journey down the corridor.

  For a few more minutes they moved in silence, passing the periodic red lights and quickly looking over each room or passageway they went by.

  "So whatta we gonna do when we find this thing?" Torrvk whispered out of the corner of his mouth while still glancing around at the nearby walls. The pair walked past a

  large archway built into the wall on their left side before Criax answered.

  "We're going to keep out of sight and hold a position within shooting distance, then signal the others to rally…" he began explaining step by step, projecting a calm image

  of leadership even though he barely had any more experience in this sort of thing than Torrvk.

  But before he could continue with their plan of attack, he suddenly felt his partner's hand sharply grab him by the shoulder, making him jerk to an abrupt stop.

  "Shit!" Torrvk blurted out, his eyes wide with fright and his head rigidly turned over to their left. Criax frowned in alarm, allowing Torrvk to use the vice grip he had his

  shoulder in to pull him back a few steps.

  "What? What's wrong…" Criax began asking with concern, looking at Torrvk before snapping his head toward the direction the other was looking in, searching for whatever

  had struck the other Turian frozen with fear.

  Right away he found what he was looking for.

  Beyond the large archway they had been passing was an even larger octagonal area that acted as a junction for several dark passageways, a sort of convoluted Fork in

  the Road except connecting to more than just two diverting paths. The red security lights that usually lit the area were smashed to pieces or hanging off the walls from

  frayed electrical cables, making them cast what was left of their luminescence with very low glows or flash on and off sporadically. The walls themselves were covered in

  some kind of thick slimy substance, much of it having hardened and turned a jet-black colour. This hardened slime material covered nearly half of the junction on its right

  side and succeeded in adding a frightening new architecture to the junction's surroundings.

  It was a truly alien contrast, with the unchanged walls still being a flat uniform metal lit up in red, while the ones covered by the black resin like material had pronounced

  erratic swirling patterns and curves violently reaching out over the areas it had taken control of. Giant deformed circles and ovals were placed intermittently within these

  swirls' arcs, with a fresh layer of slime covering their surfaces and shining off the nearby red of the security lights.

  This new architecture looked like a hideous cross between the inside of an ant-hill and that of a wasp nest.

  Debris from destroyed lights, cameras, and control conduits were littered all over the junction's floor, along with very large randomly discarded containers that had been

  dragged to this location from down several of the passageways the junction connected to.

  From the ones that had either been thrown onto their sides and had their lids wrenched off, or were simply ripped apart completely, Criax could see the partial remains of

  preserved food packages and meat containers that had been savagely rummaged through. The thing that had done this had obviously been stocking up fiercely on

  whatever food it could find in the maintenance tunnels' storerooms.

  "Right there!" Torrvk hissed to Criax under his breath, pointing his talon toward a specific part of the alien structure. At first he didn't see what Torrvk was indicating,

  unable to distinguish anything within the odd shapes and crisscrossing strings of slime that made up the alien wall.

  But after squinting his eyes, he saw something move.

  "Oh…" Criax stated suddenly, his eyes now widening as he understood what he was looking at.

  In the deep red of the junction's lighting, the Xenomorph had remained perfectly camouflaged within the blackness of it's redesigned walls. But after seeing it's near

  emaciated chest move several times due to its lungs inhaling and then exhaling, Criax had easily been able to trace the outline for the rest of its body and discern it from

  the deformed nooks that surrounded it.

  "That's it! That's the thing…" Torrvk began saying loudly, his archaic Brooklyner sounding voice becoming ragged as his fear caused his adrenaline to spike.

  "Shut up and get down!" Criax hissed at him as he clamped a hand over his partner's mouth and threw them both into a dive behind one of the mangled storage

  containers.

  For a tense moment both of them held their breath and remained prone on their stomachs, waiting to see if the Xenomorph had taken notice of them.

  But oddly enough nothing happened, the constant sound of the creature's shallow animalistic breathing remained the same, showing no signs of it having heard or felt

  their intrusion into its lair.

  "Well…so far so good," Criax muttered with a quick smile after letting out a quiet sigh.

  "Easy for you to say! Hurry up and call the others so we can bag that thing before it sees and eats us!" Torrvk retorted sharply, gripping his rifle with one hand while

  quickly shutting off its flashlight with his other.

  "They didn't eat anybody back in the Corridor, and they don't have eyes, at least from what the camera recordings showed," Criax countered, using the palm of his hand

  to cover the top of his own flashlight rather then shut it off.

  "Look around us, this thing's been tearin' through meat and protein packs like it hasn't eaten in years! And how do you know they don't have eyes? The shots we got

  from the Corridor's security cams would make Earth's ancient footage of Bigfoot look High Definition," Torrvk added, throwing out a sweeping gesture to indicate all of the

  decimated food packages and torn shreds of preserved meat cutlets strewn around the container they were hiding behind.

  In response to this however Criax split a daring Turian grin and pulled his rifle up to his shoulder.

  "Why don't we find out for sure?" he stated before getting into a low crouch on his haunches.

  "What…" Torrvk tried saying in astonishment, but Criax was already adjusting a setting into the side of his gun.

  "Weapons at the ready," he ordered, right before jumping up to a stand, swinging the rifle to his shoulder and pointing the beam of his still active flashlight straight at the

  Xenomorph's face!

  Torrvk gave a yelp as he awkwardly lunged up beside him, also training his rifle on the Alien, albeit with somewhat shaky hands.

  The Xeno seemed to be staring directly at them, its head bowed slightly and its sharp gleaming teeth loosely bared. Most of the creature was covered in some kind of

  black leathery webbing similar to what made
up the strange walls surrounding it. The bottom half of its torso, legs, tail, and the back of its long curved head were

  completely enveloped in this webbing, keeping it firmly attached to the wall a few meters above the Turians. Its arms were closely crossed over its chest in a manner

  reminiscent of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, with both of its clawed hands clenched tightly into fists.

  As the beam from Criax's flashlight reflected off the Xenomorph's slime covered body he began noticing the many injuries it'd sustained to its chest and limbs during the

  Corridor Battle before it had managed to escape.

  One injury that stood out in particular were two nasty gashes on the right side of the creature's head that went down its entire length.

  Another tense moment passed where the two agents held their ground with their talons squeezed firmly against their triggers.

  But amazingly the creature still didn't do anything!

  It appeared to be looking at them dead in the eye, and yet it made no move to acknowledge their presence, gave no enraged hiss in response to the blinding light being

  shined on it. It didn't even flinch after hearing Torrvk's startled yelp. It was as if the Alien were completely ignoring them.

  After noticing this strange reaction for himself Criax's arms slackened and he lowered his weapon slightly.

  "Now this is damn peculiar," he remarked with a suspicious frown.

  "Have you completely lost it?! That thing could'a jumped over here and torn us to shreds!" Torrvk demanded angrily, lowering his own weapon while they both went back

  down on one knee behind the storage container, keeping their eyes fixed on the oddly unresponsive Xenomorph. Criax shook his head in turn, still holding his frown of

  suspicion as he continued to stare up at the creature hanging before them.

  "I don't think it could have done anything. It looks like it's put itself into some kind of…hibernation."

  "Oh, so now you're an expert? If it's hibernatin' it's probably trying to heal itself…or its changin' into somethin'," Torrvk shot back.

  That last comment caught Criax off guard, making him glance at his partner out of the corner of his eye.

  'Changing into something? Where did that come from?' he thought to himself.