H
In the corridor above, Jefferson spoke one word to Dave.
“Run.”
Vope’s face rippled, as if his mask was about to fall away. In the space of time it had taken for Jefferson to speak the word, Vope’s right arm had become a mottled, scaly yellow thing striped with black and brown. The hand was no longer a hand but a yellow spike covered with smaller black spikes, each one barbed and writhing.
Vope took two strides toward them and the deadly appendage shot forward as Jefferson and Dave retreated. Jefferson saw the arm lengthening and the spike coming at his chest with ferocious power. He realized he was going to be hit, even if he turned to run it was going to get him in the back…
…and then the door of 2A opened between them and intercepted the Gorgon’s arm, the spike smashing through the door in a shower of wood splinters. There was a shout of terror from the Secret Service agent who was coming out, as the alien weapon had narrowly missed cleaving through his own chest. He had an instant to fully recognize the threat, turn his rifle upon the creature and get off three shots to the area where a human heart would be before the left arm with its black reptilian head and metallic fangs seized his skull and crushed it. Within the room, Hannah saw the young man’s brains explode from his head and she dove like an Olympian into the bathroom, where she locked the door and pulled the shower curtain down over herself in the tub.
Between Dave, Jefferson, and Vope the other doors opened and two agents, alerted by the gunshots, came out with their rifles ready. “Shoot it!” Dave shouted. One man seemed transfixed at the sight of a creature whose arms snaked along the corridor, but the other got off two bullets that blew pieces out of Vope’s forehead. What appeared to be human blood streamed down the alien’s face. The shots had exposed something pulsating and malignant-looking within the wounds, like the misshapen knuckles of a leprous hand being clenched and unclenched.
The seething spike-arm had been withdrawn, and now it lunged forward again at the man who’d shot holes in Vope’s head, but this human was more canny and quicker than the wretched ones Jefferson had seen slaughtered in Fort Collins. The man dodged aside and the spike crashed once more through the door at his back. The other agent had regained his senses and started firing with his own rifle at a distance of only a few feet. A bullet struck Vope’s lower jaw and tore it away, a slug pierced his throat, and another ripped a chunk from his left cheek. The snake-head flailed out even as the spike-hand was retracted, but from where they stood further along the corridor behind the safety of the two rifles, Dave and Jefferson saw that Vope’s actions were out of control. The snakehead’s metallic fangs bit the Celotex ceiling tiles and the spike-hand did not fully retract but lay on the beige carpeting like a defeated python.
As the first Secret Service agent began firing again, aiming once more at Vope’s head and piercing it with bullet after bullet, the Gorgon’s ruined face rippled and contorted, one eye shot out and the nose a hole through which the hideous alien tissue pulsated.
Vope turned and fled for the stairway, dragging the spike-hand on the floor. The two agents pursued at a fast walk, side by side, both firing at the figure that staggered and retreated before them.
From below came the echo of an ear-piercing shriek that caused both agents to stop in their tracks, stunned even by the reverberation. Dave and Jefferson felt a knife-jab of pain at their eardrums and a feeling of flame burning along the spine. Dave was speechless, but he knew that whatever was going on down there, it was bad. Vope disappeared into the stairwell, and the two agents cautiously followed.
There came the sound of a crash of metal from the garage level and again the floor trembled. Jefferson yelled, “I’m going up!” He ran for another stairwell at the far end of the corridor, thinking to get as much space as he could between himself and what was attacking the level below.
Dave let him go. His concern was the condition of his friends. The echo of that shriek came rolling up the stairwell and along the corridor once more. This time the pain was so strong at eardrums and spine—like a flame scorching his nerves—he fell against the wall and clasped his hands to his ears. He made his way into the nearest room, seeking any of his companions and also shelter for himself.
H
In the garage, the burning monster’s scream was shrill and strong enough to shred a brain and destroy all will to resist. Ethan’s human senses were overcome, his pain equally as severe as any of the men who lay nearly unconscious around him. He felt the floor shake as the creature came toward them, its claws extended to rend whatever flesh they seized upon.
The beast’s shriek stopped, but the memory of it still inflamed Ethan’s brain and body. The soldiers and other men were completely helpless. Ethan struggled to his knees with a massive effort, his vision clouded by a red mist. Though its chest area was burning away and liquified meat spattered onto the concrete, the monster was almost upon them. He thought it would tear the humans apart and this body too, regardless of how much the Gorgons wanted him alive.
The peacekeeper thrust both hands forward in what might have been a final attempt to blast the creature to pieces.
Through the jangled and jittery pain, he realized something was behind him.
He turned his head to see what he thought he recognized as Jack Vope staggering toward him, but a Vope whose human face was nearly destroyed and covered with counterfeit blood. The Gorgon’s arms were misshapen lengths of mottled tissue that hung from the sleeves of his blood-wet t-shirt and dragged on the floor. They were changing from an approximation of human flesh and human hands to a bristle of spikes and a distorted reptilian head and then back again.
Ethan tore his focus away from that grotesque sight. From the aiming points of both palms he sent white missiles of energy at the head of the monster that loomed over him. Behind his teeth was locked an all-too-human scream.
The beast’s head burst into flame and then swelled and exploded, pieces flying through the rank and smoky air. Its hind legs crumpled and the headless body crashed down upon one of the SUVs and the jeep, smashing both vehicles to junk.
One of Vope’s elongated arms had a human hand at the end of it with six fingers and two thumbs, while the other still bore the snake’s head. The hand flopped about like a dying fish as the Gorgon’s damaged braincore tried to command it to grip hold of Ethan’s neck.
From the opposite wall of the battered garage, Ethan saw the emergence of four ghostly figures. The seven-foot-tall, spindly Cypher soldiers took solid form within a heartbeat, and the one who had come through first fired his blaster with no hesitation. Twin fireballs flew over Ethan and hit Vope squarely in the midsection. Ethan looked back to see the Gorgon falling, on fire with an eye-searing red flame and torn nearly in half, but just before the body hit the floor it began to shimmer and fade out, and when it did hit the floor it was almost transparent. Then there was just the dark aura left, the faintest impression of a body imprinted upon the air, and that too faded away and was gone.
The Queen saved him, Ethan thought, his mind dazed and seemingly every fiber of this body on fire. She took him back where they could make him whole again.
Now he had to turn his disjointed focus upon the four Cypher soldiers striding across the bloody concrete toward him. He knew they were there as Vope had been, to take him to a chamber where their dissection blades would destroy this body in their quest to find out what he was and how he could be used.