Carefully Hunter bent close to the ground, studying, but all the footsteps led away from the door. His jaw hardened.
Yeah, those who had fled the facility had obliterated whatever he might have discovered. Rising, he moved inside, turning back and raising a hand to indicate that no one should follow. Then he entered the shrouded darkness alone.
The scent of blood was everywhere, permeating the atmosphere, seeming to replace the air. Hunter bent, staring into the gloom. He sniffed, releasing a bit of the animal instinct within him. His eyes narrowed into the distant dark, but he sensed nothing. Only a cold scent of rusty copper hovered in the dead blackness.
Red lights flickered in the distance, and the scent of smoke was stronger there. And for a long time Hunter stood, staring at nothing, at everything, feeling the atmosphere, letting it speak to him.
Then he tried to imagine what he himself would have done if he were attacking, killing, slaughtering — something not completely alien from the wild animal side he had been born with and had cultivated through the years, yet kept in check.
Though he never fully released the animal within, he never forgot it was there, so much stronger in him than in most. And sometimes, in a long track, with the wind in his face and the cold and the wild surrounding him as he was running free, he felt it rise up, more alive than he was himself. But it was the part of him that he would never let go.
His enormous success in business, his wealth, his skills were a valued part of his life, but they were not his heart. No, the heart of his life would always be here, and free, where he was hunting and hunted… at home.
Scowling, he turned his mind to the task.
He saw a wide corridor — the most obvious line of attack — and bent, searching the floor. Removing a flashlight from his side pack, he shone it over dry bloody footsteps, all heading toward the door. Then he moved farther into the corridor, trying not to step on anything, always searching. He was twenty feet inside when he found the first blood-dry print of the beast. It was moving hard to the left, as if with purpose.
It took only a moment for Hunter to read the pressure release marks that indicated its speed and lack of hesitation, and he followed it slowly. With the obscuring redness of the floor, it was difficult work, but he followed it deeper into the facility. Despite the frigid air, hot sweat beaded his forehead and chest, and he moved as silently as if he were close to a kill. He knew the beast had fled, but he could not help the instinctive fear that made him breathe deeper, oxygenating as if for a fight.
It was a jagged thin tendril of black that attracted his attention, high and to the right, and Hunter paused. He stared up and angled the flashlight, not rushing anything. And what he saw took a moment, his brow hardening degree by degree in concentration. He straightened. Then, carefully, he walked forward and stared at four long claw marks.
They were torn through steel in a movement of rage and nothing less — claw marks that had shorn metal like paper, as if it had not exhausted enough of its enormous energy by now, slaying the dozens that lay behind it. No, it was compelled to strike at anything living or dead — a vicious engine of unquenchable savagery.
Gently, Hunter lifted the flashlight higher and shone it into the smooth cuts. He saw that the steel was split by something far harder than itself, an edge that had torn through it with incredible velocity. All the cuts were the same, smooth in and out.
Except for one.
Hunter's eyes narrowed as he studied the ragged, stunted end of the gash, and he moved closer, shining the light into the crack.
And saw it.
It was obscure at first, but as he tilted the light just so, he knew what it was. He removed his pocket knife and gently pried it from the steel. Then he stared down at what he held, carefully raising it before his face to study the long curving sharpness. The edge was serrated, like a steak knife. Glancing over his shoulder, ensuring he was alone, he placed it in his pocket.
Step by step he found a silent path deeper into the facility until he arrived at what appeared to be a laboratory. He gazed about the dimly illuminated chamber and saw that it was demolished like the rest. Then a yawning steel door, framed by light within, drew his attention. Walking slowly, amazed at the dented steel doors and smashed machinery, he approached it and stared inside.
It took a moment, staring silently at the interior, for him to identify what was wrong. And then it was there, so obvious that he felt ashamed for missing it: The room was a storage vault with refrigerated sections neatly lining a wall. But the strangeness was that this room, and this room alone, hadn't been damaged by the creature's attack.
None of the glass doors had been shattered. None of the heavy doors had been torn from their hinges. The stainless-steel autopsy-like table in the center of the room was undamaged. So Hunter bent, staring at the floor, shining the flashlight at an angle.
Why did it destroy every other room and not this one?
He saw no bloodied tracks on the gray tile, no indication that it had even entered. But that wasn't right. This thing had purposefully moved through this entire facility releasing a rage that couldn't be quenched.
Something was wrong here.
Stepping carefully to the side to avoid marring near-invisible tracks, Hunter examined everything. He searched along the walls for scratches, smears, anything. And all the while, concentrated to the task, he kept alert to the slightest whisper of sound behind him. For, though his mind was engaged in pinpoint concentration, his reflexive survival mode prevented anything from approaching him without his knowledge.
It was a while before he found a thin line on the floor, a ghostly tendril of white powder as thin as a razor. And Hunter spent a long time examining it, studying it, reconstructing how it came to be. And then he knew. Nodding, he stood and opened a refrigerated door and examined the serums within. Despite the carnage, the unit was still functional.
He searched randomly, and then began to sense what had happened here. Then, after checking the manifest of inventoried fluids, he felt more certain, and left the door open as he exited.
Already he knew things were not as they seemed. But it would be dangerous to mention anything until he was certain of who, and why. He left with the same measure of alertness he had when he entered — a habit he had perfected from years of surviving in environments that were safe one day, lethal the next.
The undamaged chamber was not all that he would have to hold secret for a time. He knew it would also be unwise to tell them he'd found a broken claw.
Finding nothing more on the grounds, Hunter exited the facility and approached the colonel. He knew now that nothing else would be gained by a concentrated search. Only trampled tracks and blood remained of the holocaust that had consumed the building.
"You people can finish whatever they're doing in the building," Hunter said as he turned his head to the support team.
They were standing silently, and at his glance they stared back, implacable. There was a moment of testing, measuring. But one member of the team gave Hunter particular attention.
A large soldier, with a barrel chest and stout, muscular arms — he could have a heavyweight boxer — concentrated on Hunter the longest. His face beneath short white hair was viciously scarred on one side by fire, and a white eye gazed at Hunter from the ravaged section like a lifeless marble. His other eye was calculating, cold, and it glinted with an unconcealed wildness.