A single click came back over the radio, indicating that Iosif had received Lucas’s message and approved of the decision. Lucas backtracked through the facility, seeing Iosif’s dim light several rooms away as he passed into the main entryway again. To one side sat a door with a stairway symbol on it that Lucas carefully pushed open, keeping his shotgun level in front of him the entire time. The stairwell was in good condition, though it had a significant amount of debris piled in it from the upper floor. From what Lucas could see, the upper floor had caved in some time ago, making it impossible to proceed upstairs.
Without hesitation Lucas moved down the stairs, switching from corner to corner with precision, exactly as he had trained for countless hours. He didn’t like moving into unknown territory alone, but unless he and Iosif wanted to be in the city for the full three days allotted to them, they would need to start speeding up their investigation.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Lucas stopped and switched off his light, allowing his eyes to acclimate to the darkness below. After a good thirty seconds of staring into the dark, Lucas switched on the flashlight on his shotgun, illuminating the stairwell with a thin beam of blood red light. The red light would help preserve Lucas’s night vision and give him some measure of stealth that a normal flashlight beam would be unable to provide. After taking a deep breath, Lucas pushed through the door of the stairwell, stepping into the basement hallway beyond.
The layout of the lower level of the building was more spacious than the main floor had been. Fewer rooms with more square footage made it easier to navigate, especially since the rooms were all laid out around one central hall that led directly from the stairwell to the back of the building. Lucas swept from room to room in a precision manner, working to clear them as fast as possible. When he had reached the halfway point in the hallway, his radio sparked to life and Iosif’s voice came through.
“I finished my sweep upstairs. There’s nothing here. I’m heading down to your position.”
Lucas tapped the microphone button once in acknowledgement of Iosif’s message and slowed down his sweep, waiting for his partner to arrive. When they were together, Lucas stuck to the right side of the hall while Iosif covered the left, the two of them working in tandem to go through the rooms on opposite sides of the hallway.
Each of the rooms so far was devoid of movement and life, though they were far from empty. More furniture and equipment filled the large chambers, speaking volumes about the people and activities that had once taken place here. The building appeared to be a type of medical or research facility, with abundant surgical chambers and research laboratory facilities. Most of the glassware and equipment had long ago been torn apart by vandals, but enough bits and pieces remained to paint a stark picture of what the building must have been like before the disaster.
Lucas and Iosif approached the end of the corridor where it branched off to the right, each of them scanning the area with their weapons and tactical lights. Out of nowhere a noise from around the corner of the hall caught their attention. They both dropped to their knees and pressed their bodies against the walls, checking into nearby rooms and down the hallway for the source of the disturbance.
Around a corner in the hall, the noise came again, louder this time and it was accompanied by the distinct sound of movement. Lucas and Iosif both stood and glanced at each other. Iosif jerked his head forward to prompt Lucas to take the point position. The noise grew louder as Lucas glanced around the corner, catching sight of a black shape that vanished in the darkness of the hall. He jerked his body around the corner, bringing his weapon to bear in the direction that the shape had disappeared as Iosif brought up the rear. After a few more seconds of activity, the noise abruptly vanished, causing the soldiers to move even slower down the corridor.
Several minutes passed as the pair checked every room in the short side hallway, coming up empty at the end of it. Iosif glanced into one of the rooms near where the movement had vanished, spying a hole that led up through the ceiling onto the main floor. He slowly circled the hole, keeping his rifle trained on it while Lucas watched.
“You think whatever it was went through there?” Lucas whispered to Iosif, unsure of what to do next.
Iosif looked at the hole for several more seconds then turned and headed back through the door. “Who knows? It got away, though, whatever it was. It left more evidence that it was here, though.”
Lucas turned to follow Iosif when a glint on the floor caught his eye. Another pile of the strange substance lay quivering on the floor, moving back and forth ever so slightly in time with the vibration from Iosif’s footsteps. Lucas gulped nervously and followed Iosif back out into the hall, up the stairs and out to the front of the building.
“It can’t have gotten far. Sweep left, I’ll go right.” Iosif gave the order tersely to Lucas, his voice coming through Lucas’s earpiece strained and nervous. The pressure of the tight quarters and strange environment of the city and its abandoned buildings was starting to get to Iosif, who longed for an enemy he could fight openly instead of chasing around in the darkness. Lucas swerved to the left of the building, following it around to the back. They both paused at the back of the building, searching the area with their scopes for any signs of life.
“There! On the thermal, I see something!” A hundred yards down the road a distinct heat impression on the pavement was fading rapidly, turning from a pale yellow to a light blue before Lucas’s eyes. He looked over the scope to verify the position, then began to head forward with Iosif providing cover from the rear. Moments later, the pair reached the location of the heat source, which had already vanished. There was no other evidence that anything had been at the location, but with more real proof of another entity in the area with them, Iosif and Lucas both grew instantly more alert and on guard.
“How big was the signature?” Iosif’s voice was a mere whisper over the radio, not wanting to give away their position to anyone who might be listening nearby.
Lucas swiped his finger in an oval shape on the ground, outlining a rough estimate for how big the heat signature had shown up on the scope. It was about twice the length of Lucas’s hand and located right in the middle of the road leading north through the city. No other heat signatures were nearby, but Iosif was still concerned for their safety. He signaled Lucas to move to the opposite side of the roadway again and then took up position on the western edge, moving forward through the bushes with lightning precision.
Speed was a necessity at this point, with the soldiers growing closer to finding the source of the noises, sounds, foreign objects and the heat signature they had found. Safety was never compromised, despite the rapidity of their movement, and the pair soon found themselves lying in a field, sweeping the area ahead with the scopes in hopes of spotting any movement.
Virtually buried in grass that extended almost over his entire body, Lucas was incredibly thankful for the masks that he and Iosif wore, and he tried not to think about the radioactive particles that he was picking up just by lying down in the grass for a few minutes. A stand of trees and thick brush was ahead, and Lucas’s radiation meter was beginning to go wild, signaling that pockets of intense radiation were near.
Iosif confirmed this on his radiation detector, then he brought up a map on his GPS unit, checking the area they were in for any known radiation hotspots. After looking at the map for several seconds he frowned and spoke over the radio.
“Lucas, give me an estimated range to the hotspot ahead of us.”
Lucas held his radiation meter above his head, sweeping it from left to right in front of him. “I’d guess maybe twenty-five to thirty meters.”