Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4)

by S. A. Lusher

  Tristan was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, he could hear a small smile in her voice. “Well...why not?”

  “I don't know. You just seemed above me. I mean, I get the feeling that you looked at me like some big, dumb jock or something.”

  “Who's to say that I don't still look at you that way?”

  “You did agree to let me inside you.”

  “And? Sometimes I can sleep with idiots.” Her voice held no malice, only a small, slight coyness that seemed vaguely alien to her.

  “I guess so, but it doesn't really hold up.”

  “You're not all that dumb,” she said. “I don't know. You were pretty spot on at first, but there's just something about you. I mean, I'm pretty turned off by big, dumb meatheads. But you're not that. I think you try to act like you are. I'm not saying you’re some secret genius or something, but it's not all smarts. I mean, obviously you're a great mercenary. But I think there's more there. I don't think you're nearly as cynical or basic as you put on.”

  “Well...” Trent began. “Maybe,” he said after a long moment.

  “Ha. I knew it. What secret are you hiding? Do you love romance vids? Do you long to raise a puppy ranch and you're just too scared to do it because it isn't 'manly' enough?”

  Trent laughed. “No, nothing like that. I just...I don't know. It's hard to put into words. I guess, I just feel like there's more I could be doing. I feel like all my life I've just been watching out for myself, well, and for Drake.”

  “Well, the fact that you're looking out for even one other person is a step up the ladder for most people. Especially most mercenaries,” Tristan replied, vaguely encouraging.

  “Yeah, and that's pathetic. I guess I just feel guilty. There's a whole galaxy of problems out there and I'm just adding to them most of the time, playing in corporate bullshit or mercenary squad fights that's tantamount to tribal warfare...but I don't know just what it is that I want to do. Nothing has really come to mind, I've mostly given up on the notion.”

  “How does Drake feel about this?”

  “He doesn’t, not really. I mean, he sympathizes, but I think he gets a lot more life satisfaction out of this lifestyle than I do.” Trent shrugged, feeling a little helpless.

  Something let out a low moan that caused the hairs on the back of Trent's neck to go rigid. Neither of them spoke the rest of the way there.

  * * * * *

  It was still dark by the time they reached the hatch that would bring them up into Research Two. More concerning, they didn't hear much in the way of gunfire or conflict. Which meant that someone had likely gained the upper hand. Which wasn't good either way. Trent went first, climbing up the ladder they'd found.

  He activated the hatch at the top and peered up and out. He couldn't see anything, but his light only provided so much. He didn't hear anything, anyway. Trent climbed up and out, then offered a hand to Tristan. As soon as he'd pulled her out and began to straighten back up, lights suddenly flared into existence, blinding him.

  “Don't move!” a mechanically augmented voice snapped.

  “Freeze!” another said a second later.

  Trent kept his gun to his shoulder and automatically put his back to Tristan's.

  “Drop your weapons!” a third, or maybe one of the first two, voice demanded.

  Trent sized up the situation. There were easily a dozen Dark Ops troops in there with them, all strategically positioned around the room. The light was coming from several different sources. They hadn't fixed the power yet, he realized, but had instead opted to wheel in mobile work-lights. He was just considering what to do when, abruptly, one of the lights snapped off. Followed immediately by another, and a third.

  The men began to look around nervously as something new seemed to enter the room, some invisible wave of dark energy that sent jagged bolts of terror shooting through Trent's nervous system. He had no idea where it might have gone, (well, he had one, he just didn't like it,), if the rest of the lights hadn't gone out all at once.

  And then someone started screaming.

  Several flashlights pointed in the direction of the screams. Focus became divided between the two survivors and this new event. Trent found his own eyes inexorably drawn to this as well. He blinked several times, as though his eyes were trying to compensate for the impossible sight before them. One of the men seemed to be surrounded by a living, seething patch of raw darkness. It was curling around him and, Trent saw with horror, lifting him up. He was screaming, his voice reaching a high, keening wail.

  And then blood sprayed against the inside of his faceplate.

  Tendrils of pure obsidian shot out, punching through the chests of two of the nearest men, who also began to lift.

  Trent took advantage of whatever the fuck was happening. He fired a three-round burst, bursting the faceplate of one of the Dark Ops troops.

  “Go!” he snapped.

  He and Tristan bolted for the nearest exit. There were a few half-hearted potshots in their direction, but they made it through without anyone giving chase.

  “What the fucking hell was that?” Tristan asked after they'd put some distance between themselves and the room they'd emerged in.

  “I don't know,” Trent replied, listening to the gunshots and the screaming. “Another one of the experiments I imagine. Some kind of living fucking darkness....shit, I hope we don't have to fight that thing. Come on, we aren't too far away.”

  They pressed on, deeper into the bloody heart of the building.

  Chapter 14

  –The Blood & The Death–

  “Bad news,” Tristan said. She'd been scouting the next room while Trent was watching her back. They weren't entirely convinced the strange cloud of darkness wouldn't come after them. “You'd better come in here and look at this.”

  Trent slipped in through the open door. They were back in a Cyr building, with awkward Cyr architecture. Curving rooms, too-white paneling, much bigger than necessary. But what was waiting for them in the next room was more interesting and eye-catching. The thing that Trent had come to think of as the Flayer was back. Its handiwork was visible everywhere. Blood painted the walls, and the bodies...

  Nearly a dozen and a half of them, all dumped on the floor in random positions, tossed aside like old, broken dolls. All of them perfectly without an inch of skin left on them. They could have been base personnel or Dark Ops.

  He supposed it didn't matter now. At least not to them.

  “Well,” Trent said. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

  He still had a good idea of the map in his head. They had to pass through this room, then down a long corridor, take a left and the door to the room they wanted would be somewhere in that corridor. He and Tristan began making slow but steady progress through the alien slaughterhouse. As they pressed on, Trent began to hear the low, heavy thud of what he imagined was a titanic heart, hooked up to machinery, pumping black blood.

  “Do you hear that?” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” Tristan murmured.

  “What is that?”

  “I think it's The Presence,” Tristan said after a long moment's contemplation.

  Trent blinked in surprise. He honestly didn't know how he hadn't pieced that together for himself. It made perfect sense. But was it an actual heart? The sound of a base coming to life with dark, awful energy? Or something manufactured? A sound to make the place seem that much creepier? Trent wasn't sure which was worse.

  They reached the far side of the room and passed through the door there. Trent went through first this time. They decided it would be best to switch off. So it was he who first caught sight of the terror that was waiting for them in the corridor beyond. For a second, Trent froze, his mind unable to comprehend, yet again, what he was seeing. That seemed to be happening a lot just lately. He couldn't do anything but stand there and stare.

  “Is it clear?” Tristan asked from behind him.

  He kept staring. This thing...it must have been the Flayer.
There seemed to be some kind of dark central mass, though it didn't appear to be made of flesh. At least not any kind that he had seen before. It stood on four bent blades, where its legs should have been. A dozen, maybe as many as two dozen, silvery blades extended from the central mass of its 'body'. It was in the process of working on a corpse.

  Trent watched in horror.

  It held the corpse aloft by its feet. The body was naked. It ran several of its blades together in a sharpening motion, then set to work. The work was well and truly horrible, and yet there was an awful eloquence to it. The blades moved with smooth, controlled precision. Once it began, the dance of the Flayer didn't cease. Skin began to come off the body in smooth strips. As it did, it never touched the floor.

  Instead, other blades fed the strips into the central mass.

  This continued for perhaps thirty seconds, half a dozen blades sailing smoothly over the twists, the turns, the contours of the corpse, never nicking muscle, never cutting into bone. Just like that, it was done, and the body was skinless.

  The meat was dropped to the ground with a wet splat.

  “What was that?” Tristan hissed, still watching his back.

  “I...oh shit!” Trent shouted.

  It had taken notice of them.

  It was coming for them.

  Trent backed into Tristan as he scrambled to get out of the hallway. He tried to get the door shut, but there was no time. The Flayer followed them into the room they had come to.

  “Jesus fuck!” Tristan cried, staring at it.

  They opened fire. Trent was horrified to see that most of the bullets easily ricocheted off the blades, rebounding into the walls, floor and ceiling. A few of them hit home, cutting into the central mass and spraying dark blood. A high-pitched shriek was issued and the thing began to come for them. Trent spied an opening in the central mass, something like a mouth, and a plan was tossed together in his head.

  He began enacting it before he could think better of it.

  While shouting for Tristan to run, he tore a grenade free from its bandolier and raced towards the Flayer. Priming the grenade, he reared his hand back. As he came within arm's length of the unknowable creature, Trent punched the grenade directly into the opening. He instantly began trying to get away.

  One of the blades touched him.

  He felt it slice through his armor like it wasn't even there, then felt the tip of it cut into his chest. He screamed but kept going. When the explosion went off, Trent had his back to the monstrosity and had managed to make it a handful of feet away. The eruption picked him up and threw him across the room, kicking him in his injuries.

  He cried out as he landed, then rolled a few times and came to a stop. Moving slower than he wanted to, he managed to get on his hands and knees and looked up. A small laugh escaped him as he saw the result of his plan.

  Without his suit, he'd have easily been killed.

  “Holy shit,” he groaned.

  There were blades everywhere. They stuck out of the ground, the walls, the floor. Bits of black gore and flesh were sprayed liberally in with the mess. Trent hauled himself slowly to his feet, spying Tristan coming for him.

  “That was brave. And stupid,” she said. She glanced down at his chest. “You're bleeding.”

  “Yeah. But it was effective,” he replied, unclipping his medical kit.

  Tristan waited while he shoved a tube of anti-coagulant and anti-bacterial paste into the cut. He grunted as the initial pain bit into him, then relaxed as the localized painkillers took effect. Snapping the kit closed, Trent clipped it to his belt, then pulled out a suit repair kit and sealed up the incision the Flayer had opened.

  “Glad that thing is dead,” he said as he tossed the used up kit aside.

  They began walking towards the door again. “Yeah, now let's just hope that that was the only one,” Tristan replied.

  “Now there's a nasty thought,” Trent murmured.

  They moved through the door once more, this time finding nothing waiting for them. The pair hurried down the passageway, made the turn and kept going. A few moments later, they found the room in question. It was small, almost regular-sized, which Trent though odd. Everything he'd seen about the Cyr so far seemed to be writ large.

  There was a single pedestal of metal residing within, in the exact center. When they approached it, a light-pad with buttons of curious symbols and runes popped into existence. Trent watched the door while Tristan approached it.

  “I'm in place,” she said over her radio.

  “We just got here, too. I'll walk you through the procedure. Are you ready?” Trevor replied over the link.

  “Ready,” Tristan said.

  Trent listened to the man describe a series of symbols and tuned the conversation out. He felt tension singing through his body. They were getting closer to getting off this hellhole of a world. All they had to do was go push the button and then haul ass. He heard a sound behind him, a soft tone that seemed to speak of completion.

  “Did it work?” he heard Tristan ask.

  “Yes. It worked! Okay, that's one thing out of the way. But we've got a new problem. We need to meet up and discuss it-” His voice abruptly cut off.

  “Trevor?” Tristan asked. “What's the problem? Trevor?”

  Nothing. Dead silence.

  “Fuck these goddamn radios!” Trent snapped suddenly.

  “Come on, let's get back down underground and see if we can link back up,” Tristan replied.

  They headed out of the room.

  * * * * *

  Trent and Tristan managed to get back to the hatch they'd originally taken up without running into much besides a handful of Harvesters and Spitters. Trent was personally reluctant to return to the room they'd been ambushed in, but it seemed that Dark Ops had their hands full once more. The room was empty, save for corpses and spent shell casings.

  Trent was just deciding that the area was safe when one of the doorways opened to admit an old horror, come back to haunt them once more. The Carnivore, with its massive jaw and long limbs, stalked into the room.

  There was no time to react.

  It leaped across the room, grabbed Tristan by her shoulders and bit down before Trent could even raise his weapon. Her head disappeared into its monstrous maw. There was a sharp snap and the creature took a step back. Trent stared in unmitigated horror as he saw Tristan's body take a few awkward, lumbering steps, blood spraying out of the stump of a neck like a fountain gone crazy, and then crashed to the ground.

  Trent flipped it to full auto and emptied the magazine into the broad body of the Carnivore, which let out a roar, flecks of flesh and blood flying from its massive jaw. He didn't even take time to reload. The hatch they'd originally come through was still open. He turned and ran for it, dropping down the hole.

  Grunting from the impact that drove rods of pain up his legs, he hit the ground running. The Carnivore roared behind him, the sound so loud it seemed to rattle his bones. Trent kept running, thinking of nothing more than escape.

  * * * * *

  He found an empty storage bay and threw himself inside, locking the door behind him. The first thing he did was reload his weapon. Then he let his rifle hang by its sling and put his back to the nearest wall. There was blood on his visor, he realized. Reaching up, he began trying to wipe it away, but only succeeded in smearing it, making it worse. With a sigh, and hands that weren't quite steady, he found a cleaning rag that came standard with all pressure suits and slowly, methodically began cleaning away the blood.

  She was gone.

  Just like that.

  Trent made himself calm down. He'd seen this before, dozens of times at least. A friend or fellow merc would die. Gone in the blink of an eye. That was just part of the job. You played dice with your life whenever you grabbed the gun and went to work for a paycheck. Trent took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Already, he was calmer. Doing this kind of shit for twenty years did help build up an inoculation ag
ainst panic. Even in a situation where inhuman monsters roamed the corridors and ate your friends. Trent decided to try the radio.

  “This is Trent, anyone out there? Anyone at all?”

  Nothing. Silence. Dead air. He tried for another few moments, then gave up. For whatever reason, the radio was gone again. All he could hope to do was get back to the rendezvous point and pray that someone else was there.

  Trent gathered up his courage and stepped back out into the corridor. He'd made it a couple meters before a loud roar tore through the area, chilling him. He hesitated. The Carnivore was still out there. Lethal and deadly, more so than most things in this frozen hellscape. It would be hounding him now. He didn't know how he knew this, only that it was true. Trent looked down at his rifle. He wanted something else, something more powerful.

  When he saw a terminal, Trent hurried over to it and booted it up, finding a map of the underground region. He studied it for a long moment, then smiled as he saw something. Apparently, the people that ran this place were more than a little paranoid. And with good reason, considering how it had all turned out.

  There was a heavy weapons armory in the underground region, not far from his current position. Trent memorized the route and then set off towards it, hoping to beat the Carnivore there. The pervasive sense of being stalked in the crimson glow of emergency lighting had come back, stronger than ever before.

  He'd made it perhaps twenty meters before he heard a loud huffing sound. Something reeked of carrion and decay, making him regret opening his suit vents, but he needed to conserve oxygen, just in case. Trent swallowed nervously and pressed on. He made a turn and broke into a light jog, moving down the next passageway. Just a few more twists and turns, then he'd at least be at the armory. Of course, there was absolutely no way to know if that armory had been cleared out and picked clean by the others.

  Or if there might be a Dark Ops reception waiting for him. He considered Dark Ops as he hurried on. They seemed pretty odd, given the nature of the Galactic Alliance. He knew about Spec Ops, which ran extremely risky operations, usually hostage rescue or demolition, shit like that. And he knew that there must be some level above that, some shadowy agency that ran the truly dark shit, like assassinations and biological warfare, something that the companies didn't have control over or knowledge of.