Silas scooped against the gelatinous mass, feeling the hard Ping-Pong-ball-size eggs. It oozed toward the edge of the duct, flattening out under its own weight into something like a lumpy puddle.
From high above came the sound of tortured metal, and the first rod snapped under the force of the gladiator. Steel jarred. A chunk of concrete broke free and crashed to the floor in an explosion of sound and dust. Vidonia coughed in the billowing cloud and moved closer to Silas, pulling the light from his grip where it pointed uselessly at the floor.
The slime puddle slid toward the lip of the duct, then over it, parting like water in Silas’s outstretched hand. It hit the floor in twin glops. There were now two gelatinous masses to contend with. Vidonia shone the light through the sticky crumple of straw, parting the loose heap with her other hand.
Silas stooped and tried to disengage the slime from the stalks of straw but soon found the task impossible. A slick coat of viscous sludge spread everywhere, making the straw gleam in the close attention of the flashlight. Small black eggs appeared in the mess, and Silas plucked one from its sheath of slime and tried to crush it between his forefinger and thumb. It was solid as a marble. He dug a hole in the straw with the brush of his hand and set the egg firmly on the hard concrete floor. He raised his leg and stomped with all his force. Pain lanced through his ankle, but when he lifted his foot the egg was still intact, completely unaffected. Perhaps egg was not the right word for what these things were. They were more like hard, round seeds.
And what pestilence will sprout from them?
He’d need something stronger, he decided. Something with the force of a nutcracker, to do them damage. Silas glanced up and saw the gladiator caught halfway in the act of being born, wriggling through the narrow gap in the grating. Its inhuman cries added to the unreality.
Silas looked down at the glossy, unbreakable spheres, then at Vidonia. They were out of time. “Pick them up,” he said. “We have to pick them all up.”
He crouched and frantically began gathering the small black objects. When there were too many for him to hold in one hand, he cradled them in the front of his shirt.
Vidonia dropped her face nearly to the straw as she plucked the eggs, one by one, from their clutching pools of slime.
Silas heard noise and glanced over his shoulder.
“Run,” he told her.
She didn’t hesitate.
Another sound jerked his eyes upward. It was coming.
The wings were through the hole now, the legs sliding inside even as the gray lights wheeled toward him.
Silas launched into a sprint, holding the eggs against his bloodied T-shirt with both hands. The gladiator howled, and the leather slap of wings told him the birth was complete. He didn’t dare look behind him. Instead, he concentrated on the rise and fall of his legs, the placement of his feet in the wide mass of straw. If he tripped on a buried obstacle, he would die. It was that simple.
Ahead of him, Vidonia burst through the open gate, grabbing at the door as she spun to look at him. Her eyes widened suddenly, and he knew it would be close. He knew what her eyes saw. Hot breath kissed the back of his neck as he leaped toward the closing gate.
He hit the ground wrong, skidding on his side, as Vidonia slammed the door home. The gladiator crashed loudly against the bars in the next second. Silas tried to sit up. His breath wouldn’t come. Eggs spun away on the hard concrete in little elliptical orbits. Vidonia was flat on her back, suddenly behind him somehow. He finally managed to suck air into his body, and a hot stab of pain lanced his right side. He took another breath, and his mind cleared a little. Vidonia moaned. He turned his head toward her, and in that moment felt his foot caught in a vise. An impossibly long black arm lay snaked between the bars and across the floor to his foot. The arm pulled, and Silas thought he was a dead man. Then the shoe popped loose and he rolled away, kicking wildly as the huge, black hand clutched at his legs.
The gladiator’s eyes were gray spotlights of rage that bore into him from beside vertical iron. The creature didn’t speak now. It didn’t have to. Silas scooted away on his butt, flailing at the eggs, driving them back from the bars with his hands and arms and legs. Vidonia’s eyes were open, but he could see she was only just now rising up inside them. A red welt ran the length of her forehead. She’d been standing at the bars when the creature slammed into them.
She looked at him as if surprised he was alive. “Do we have them all?”
Silas glanced at the scatter of black orbs, some still rolling. “I think so.” He caught them in the corral of his arms, and they clacked with the sound of billiard balls as they came together. The flashlight was against the wall, spilling illumination across the floor and sketching long shadows behind each egg, making them easy to see even in the dim light.
The gladiator hissed and receded from the bars, becoming shadow again. Wings whispered in the darkness. A puff of air hit Silas’s face. Above, in the distant slash of sky, the stars were blotted out for a moment as the gladiator climbed back into the womb of night.
“It’s gone?” Vidonia said.
“No. It’s not that easy.”
“That was easy?”
Silas stood and began to stuff the eggs into his pockets. He counted them as he did so, and there were eleven. He silently hoped that they hadn’t lost one, and started down the hall in the direction from which they’d originally come. Vidonia was close behind him. He clicked the light off and found the halls less distracting in the near dark. There was no contrast of shadows, no sweep of a sharp, bright flashlight beam. A suggestion of light filtered through the open doorways of the labs.
They turned left, taking the hall deeper into the building. They slowed at an intersection.
“Which way?” Vidonia asked.
Silas hesitated. “That way,” he said, pointing to the left, and then they were running again. Twenty meters down the hall, he swung them right.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Vidonia asked, as they slowed past a series of doorways.
Silas wasn’t sure one bit. “It all looks the same in the dark.” He stopped. “I think this is it.”
He pushed the half-open door and stepped into the lab. Starlight filtered through the broad windows, throwing the room into twilight. He could see the vague outlines of lab benches against the far wall. Silas motioned for Vidonia to stay where she was, but she followed him closely as he entered deeper into the room. Glass crunched underfoot as he neared the windows. They were in the right place. He paused, listening. Outside, the moonlit oaks swayed in the breeze. The only sound was the rustle of leaves. He took a few steps closer to the window, and their car was visible over the top of the sill. It was conspicuous as hell parked against the wall like that, and his eyes scanned the black sky, looking for movement.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said.
“What do you want to do?”
He was silent, weighing their options for a moment before admitting, “What choice do we have?”
His foot brushed the lug wrench, and he bent to pick it up. It felt ridiculous in his hand. What good would a lug wrench be if that thing got hold of him? Every nerve was tingling as he moved toward the narrow gap in the frame of windows. He angled his head alongside broken glass and looked down the side of the building. Small stone outcroppings at the far side of the windows kept him from seeing very far. It was going to come down to a matter of faith. That thing was either out there or it wasn’t. He took a deep breath and extended his head through the window, quickly glancing left and right. Nothing. Still no movement. Still no sound other than the rustling of the trees.