‘Daniels…’ Amanda started to warn the other contractor, but it was too late. Daniels had moved to Coyle and knelt down in the trench next to him.
Amanda shifted into the position where Daniels had been standing, trying to control herself. She had the feeling that there was something else in there with them. She felt a mounting terror that there was something just out of view, avoiding the light.
‘S’okay mate, we’re going to get you out of here. You’ll be fine.’
‘There’s nothing there…’ Coyle managed, his voice sounding wet, like he was trying to talk through a mouthful of liquid. Coyle started to shake uncontrollably. Daniels tried to hold him. The American contractor was vomiting up frothy blood, then he lay still.
‘Cross, report!’ Asher demanded over the tac radio. ‘Get the rest of your men back to the main cave right now!’
‘Doctor, shut the fuck up!’ Amanda demanded. She could hear boots running through the tunnel towards them.
Daniels was staring down at Coyle. The blood on his hands looked black in the light of the flashlights. Coyle’s abdomen was little more than a red ruin.
‘Boss,’ Hank said quietly. He was just about able to keep the tremor out of his voice. ‘I think there’s something in here with us.’
Amanda felt her blood run cold. It felt like she followed the beam of Hank’s flashlight in slow motion. It was aimed just past Daniels, who was shaking like a leaf. Amanda saw nothing for a moment. Just the rock and the glowing neon figures of the alien symbols imbedded in it. The symbols didn’t look right. It was as if they were refracting off or through something. Amanda froze.
Daniels was frantically trying to get something he was holding in his hand to work. The emergency flare sputtered into life. It almost blinded Amanda and Hank with its phosphorescent, flickering glare. There was something wrong with the light from the flare. Just behind where Daniels was knelt over Coyle the flickering light was not behaving as it should. The misbehaving light moved. Daniels started screaming. He was lifted up into the air. There was more movement in the light and Daniel started spraying blood all over the cave.
‘Don’t you do it!’ Amanda was screaming. Amanda threw herself to the side as Daniels was flung at her.
Hank started firing. The staccato hammering of the Mk 60 medium machine gun in the enclosed space was deafening. The muzzle flash from the MMG created a strobing effect in the near darkness.
Amanda started firing as well, the recoil of the automatic shotgun hammering into her shoulder. In the confusion of flares, glowing alien symbols and muzzle flashes she had no idea what she was shooting at but she wanted a wall of fire between her and that thing.
Alan was suddenly next to her, his Grendel assault rifle at the ready. He was searching through the tech scope for a target but finding nothing. There was a popping noise as Okobe fired the underslung grenade launcher attached to his Grendel. The flare grenade exploded deep in the other tunnel that exited B site.
Amanda’s shotgun ran dry. Hank had already stopped firing. The air was thick with choking cordite smoke now. Their ears were ringing. Both the flares bathed them in flickering light. Okobe was reloading his grenade launcher. At the back of her mind some old training instinct was telling her that she should reload the shotgun. She ejected the magazine, stowed it and slid another home. She was just numbly going through the motions.
‘Boss?’ Alan asked. Amanda ignored him. She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Amanda?’ Her head shot round to look at him.
‘It’s got a cloak,’ she said. Alan looked confused for a moment. ‘A cloaking device. We can’t fucking see it.’
They had returned to the main site. Amanda was still shaking. She was almost spilling the coffee over herself. She didn’t want to watch the footage but she was forcing herself to. The shitty holo-projector was building the three-dimensional image from 2D footage, the final result was grainy and incomplete, but it showed them what they needed to see.
The dig workers had fled the moment the Ceph-tech had come to life. There was about fifty seconds of footage of the empty cave and then Coyle, Schmidt and Mikey had entered the cave cautiously, weapons at the ready. The beams of the flashlights on their weapons had caused the camera to flare. Despite his caution Mikey hadn’t even been aware of what had happened to him. It looked like some old horror film about demonic possession. Mikey’s head was yanked back. Then his throat had seemed to open of its own accord. Amanda paused the image and looked closely enough to see grainy imprints on Mikey’s face where the killer’s invisible fingers had gripped the head.
The camera flared again from the muzzle flashes from the Grendels, then an apparently invisible force picked up Schmidt and flung him into the camera.
That was the end of the footage. There was silence.
‘Did it know about the cameras?’ Alan finally asked.
‘I think we have to assume so,’ Amanda said.
‘How?’ Okobe asked.
‘What if it’s got our comms?’ Amanda asked.
There was silence. People looked around the diminished circle. Safiya had joined the surviving members of the security detail now. Asher was, after all, in sight of the entire team.
‘Would it even understand us?’ Alan asked.
‘They’re clearly intelligent,’ Amanda pointed out.
The few remaining workers in the sites outside the main cavern had refused to continue work. Amanda couldn’t blame them, either. The remaining security detail had escorted them back to the main cavern. Asher had spent some time screaming at them to get the workers back to work and how much they had failed. Nobody had shot him.
‘I’ve seen a cloak before,’ Hank told them. Eight eyes turned to look at him. ‘In New York we’d been trying to get the refugees out. We were working with elements of 4th Marine Recon. One of their guys, a fella by the name of Alcatraz, apparently got hisself some kind of experimental armour. It had a cloak but he was on our side. That marine was hell on wheels in a fight. Best weapon we had against those things.’ Alan and Amanda shared knowing glances. ‘What?’ Hank asked.
‘Tinman,’ Alan said. Okobe looked up at him. It got Safiya’s attention as well.
‘What’s Tinman?’ Hank asked.
‘Someone in some kind of experimental armour killed a fuck load of CELL contractors and Spec Ops guys. You heard of Dominic Lockhart?’
‘The guy who used to run the military side of CELL? The guy who fucked up the New York operation?’ Hank asked.
‘The guy who got blamed for fucking up the New York operation,’ Alan said. Amanda held her peace. She had her own opinion on Dominic Lockhart. ‘Well, this Tinman was supposed to be the one who killed him during an attack on a CELL complex. We’re right in the middle of an alien invasion and this Tinman turns on the very people who’re trying to do something about it.’
‘Look, Alan, I don’t want to get up in your face about this or anything, but CELL did things in New York…’
‘That the liberal media…’ Alan began.
‘Enough,’ Amanda said. ‘Hank, what’s your point?’
‘Whatever this Alcatraz or Tinman was about, he was about fighting Ceph. Asher said they’re reactive. They evolve from generation to generation in response to their environment. If they’d seen this cloak in action in New York then maybe their next generation will all pack a cloak.’
‘Some of the Ceph had cloaks in New York,’ Amanda said quietly. The others looked at her in horror.
‘There’s something else,’ Safiya said. ‘I overheard Asher speaking with one of the technicians. We were in site E. Asher had some kind of weird device that he hooked up to the Ceph tech fused into the rock itself. It was weird. The thing looked like their technology.’ Amanda thought back to how she had realised the Ceph tech imbedded in the rock had looked strange after the murders. ‘Asher said that it was all dead. That it had been infected by some variant of the Tunguska strain.’