It was bigger than a man, mostly nude — shreds of clothing left around its groin suggesting it had been smaller and had grown, ripping the clothing. Human clothing — had it originally been human-sized?
Its huge head, growing neckless from its hunched, muscle-rippling shoulders, turned just enough so that Pinky could make out small tusks in a wide, snarling, bestial mouth. It seemed eyeless, apparently perceiving from membranes at the front of its head. The whole creature was the color and texture of skin with a second-degree burn. Difficult to see its feet clearly in this cloudy image — but that foot, lifted to take a step. Was that…a hoof?
The enhanced figure in the image was most definitely inhuman — and looked like it was designed by nature to be a living kill-machine.
Staring over Pinky’s shoulder at the screen, Mac whistled softly to himself.
“Hey, guys,” Pinky said, staring at the image. “It ain’t a disgruntled employee.” Pinky hit a few more keys, distantly aware that his fingers were trembling. “Uploading the image to you now, Sarge…”
In his own end of the facility, Sarge projected the uploaded image onto the floor. He stared. “What in the…”
Reaper and Goat heard the thing thumping around a corner. They sprinted, fingers wrapping triggers, around the turn…and found themselves in yet another dead end. Who’d designed this warren of corridors, Reaper wondered, the people who designed mazes for rats?
The thing they’d been chasing was gone. Where the hell did it go to? The only door here had a big chained padlock on it. The thing was too big to just vanish…
“…Reaper,” Goat said.
Reaper looked at him — Goat was looking down at a big manhole grate in the floor, half-open. “Sarge,” Reapter reported, into the comm. “It’s in the sewer…” They knelt, Reaper pointed his gunlight into the gap. The facility’s sewage system and wastewater outflow looked alike. He saw a dead rhesus monkey floating by on a stygian stream.
He heard Sarge requesting data from Pinky. “Talk to me, Pinky.”
“An outflow tunnel,” Pinky said. “It connects that section of the sewer to the main facility’s system.”
An inhuman growl resounded from somewhere down in the sewer.
Goat then looked at Reaper, slightly wide-eyed, pointing his weapon at the manhole grate. “So…you wanna go first?” he said, shrugging nervously, cracking a hint of a smile.
Reaper couldn’t really tell whether or not Goat was kidding.
“All units, all units” Reaper said into the comm, “request assistance at the southeast corridor, med lab!”
Sarge’s voice boomed over the comm in response. “Copy that, Reaper. Stay put until we get there! All units — converge on Reaper’s position. Southeast corridor, med lab. Move!”
Seven
THE RRTS SQUADRON was dropping into the sewer.
“And I thought ‘in the shit’ was a figure of speech,” Portman groused.
“Get in the goddamn hole, Portman,” Sarge growled.
Weapon slung over his shoulder, Portman descended the metal ladder to step into the thigh-high sewage runoff. Most of it was just water, but spotlit in the shaft of light from above, Portman could see human wastes swirling by, including bits of toilet paper, and small dead animals from the labs. Animals — or parts of them. A string of entrails twined around Portman’s leg as he bent over to fit into the tunnel, but he made himself slosh forward to join the others, choking with the smell as he went. His gagging echoed in the tunnel along with drippings, footfalls, and creaking sounds from unknown sources.
Probably annoyed by Portman’s griping, Sarge gestured for him to take point. Still gagging, pointing his gunlight down the low, echoing tunnel, Portman splashed onward.
“Hey, Portman,” the Kid said, his voice quavering, “when you were young y’ever picture yourself doing this?”
“No,” Portman said immediately, “I pictured myself getting laid.”
Goat came just behind him, murmuring verses from the Bible : “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil…walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”
“That’s real comforting, Goat,” Portman grumbled. “I mean that’s not freaking me out at all!” Goat glared at Portman — and as if the look was a biblical curse, as Portman said, “Why don’t you shut the —” he vanished midstep, plummeting out of sight into the water.
“Portman!” Goat burst out.
Their gunlights shone in a convergence of beams on the water where he’d been. Bubbles and offal floated by. Nothing else visible.
“Portman!” Reaper yelled, easing up to the spot.
No response.
Reaper bent, almost kneeling in the tunnel, wrinkling his nose as his face got all too close to the malodorous stream. “I got his hand. Damn he’s heavy. He’s too deep.” He reached into the sewage, found a hand flailing up under the water.
Reaper grabbed Portman’s hand and pulled, grunting. But Portman was stuck. Desperation communicated through his tightening grip. Reaper leaned back, using his weight — something popped loose down below, and he dragged Portman thrashing up into sight.
“Dammit!” Portman gasped. “Shit!”
“Congratulations, Portman, that’s your first bath in months,” Reaper said.
As Portman swore and muttered, trying to wipe himself off, Reaper felt around for the hole with his toe. Found it, around a big wheel-shaped valve of some kind. Not a passage. The thing they were chasing couldn’t have gone down that way — but the valve recess was deep enough for Portman to stumble into.
“Up ahead,” Sarge said, pointing with his gunlight.
The beam laid an oval of light over a pale object, reminiscent of a human torso, floating along the tunnel toward them. Sarge fished it out — it was a lacerated and bloody lab coat with a name on it.
DR. STEVE WILLITS was stitched in cursive over the breast pocket.
“We got Willits’s lab coat,” Sarge said, into his headset. “John, Kid — on point.” He looked at Portman’s disgusted face, and added, “Watch your step.”
They moved on around a curve in the tunnel — everyone stepping carefully around the hole Portman had fallen into — and found it split off into several directions. Sarge gave his orders, punctuating each by pointing at the tunnel he was sending them into. “Goat, straight. We’ll go left.” Meaning him, Destroyer, and Portman. “John, Kid, on the right. Destroyer, you’re on point.”
As Reaper passed the Kid, to move into point just ahead of him in the right-hand tunnel, he noticed the Kid was wearing his night-vision goggles in the dark tunnel. And the Kid noticed Reaper wasn’t.
“How come you don’t wear night-vision?” the Kid asked.
“Don’t like NVGs,” Reaper replied, sweeping the tunnel ahead with his gunlight. “They limit your peripheral vision.”
“Yeah, plus you can’t see shit to either side,” the Kid said.
Reaper was trying to decide if the Kid was joking when a loud splash came from behind. The Kid spun around, splashing Reaper with the sudden motion, autopistols taut in his hands — but it was a noise of the others moving in the adjacent tunnels.
The Kid was panting with fear. He turned back to face the darkness of the tunnel ahead, bubbling over with nerves. Jabbering.
“Portman told me some stuff about you,” the Kid chattered. “Said you lost your parents when you were a kid, right? Small. I lost my parents, too.”