Chapter 101 – Generating Solutions

  “This shit is wild,” said Rodriguez beside him. “There hasn’t been a real casualty since I got stationed here. I thought the guys I replaced were making it up.”

  “Lucky me,” Cole muttered. Rodriguez went to the right of the door and nodded to Cole. Cole opened it, and the staff sergeant ducked through and to the left. Cole followed, swinging his own muzzle to the opposite side.

  “Clear left.”

  “Clear right.”

  Cole held his angle as the rest of the squad came through.

  “Last man,” someone muttered.

  “Alright, Rodriguez. This is your house, where are the generators?”

  “Straight down that corridor ahead of you,” said Rodriguez. “Hook left, it’ll open up to the HVAC area. Tayes, Nguyen, stay here and hold this ladderwell.”

  “Sure, Sarge,” said one of Rodriguez’s soldiers.

  Cole started heading down the passageway, holding just short of the corner until he felt a tap on his shoulder, at which point he started to rotate around, wary of threats. As Rodriguez had promised, the tight corridor opened up into a wide, dark space filled with the droning hum of air pumping through ductwork. Flickering motes of light suffused the air, and beyond the white noise of the HVAC equipment and sump pumps, something else stirred.

  “Be ready,” said Cole. “Whatever happened started happening down here first. Might be worse than up top.”

  A thin layer of water covered the floor, slowly running towards a drainage grate. Cole sloshed through it, clearing behind each massive air unit. Near one corner, a tear like the ones in the lab gushed black water, spurting a stream of nasty-smelling fluid. Questing tentacles protruded, running hooked appendages across the aluminum housing of the equipment. Some sort of black web stayed behind in its passing. Luckily, the wound in reality seemed to be too narrow for anything to actually come through. For now.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Asked Rodriguez. “I thought those things couldn’t exist here.”

  “They must have brought their own Lewis field with them,” said Cole. “My enhancements are active, too. Stay clear of that thing.”

  A flash of movement caught Cole’s eye on the opposite side of the room. Ripples from disturbed water sloshed out from behind the furthest air pump. Cole held up a hand and gestured to the unit. Just barely beneath the drone of the equipment, Cole could hear… chewing. The grinding of teeth on bone.

  “Hostile, right side,” Cole whispered. “Possible friendly, too.”

  Rodriguez held up two-fingers and pointed to the right. Two soldiers split off to circle around from the other angle. Cole took a breath and swung around the unit, squeezing the pressure switch for his lamp.

  Three reptilian creatures flinched at the sudden brightness. They looked half-melted, as though parts of them had turned to sludge, leaving them with uneven limbs and warped mouths. They backed away from a partially eaten form on the floor. Cole fired at the first as Rodriguez opened up on the second. The third fled in the opposite direction, only to find the rifles of the other soldiers waiting. The bladed rounds tore off huge chunks of the monsters, but the largest of the three vaulted up to the top of the HVAC unit and then pounced down toward the squad leader, webbed claws and mouth spread wide.

  Rodriguez threw himself down to the ground, and the reptilian grabbed only air to shove in its disgusting malformed mouth. It hit the deck amid the rest of the squad, darting through, between and around legs in an effort to escape. One soldier went down, and as soon as the reptile was clear of the squad, three more rifles opened up. But the creature was too nimble, and most shots hit only concrete or HVAC equipment. The reptile found a gap to the substructure and squeezed down beneath a set of pipes.

  Cole pulled Rodriguez back to his feet, where the soldier retched out fetid water.

  Behind, one of the soldiers was on the ground, clutching their leg. The medic moved up, pulling out shears to get a look at a wound. Cole moved to assist, shining light down. The reptile had left three ragged tears in the meat of the soldier’s calf.

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  This would be a great time to have Roxy, thought Cole as the medic wrapped a sterilizing bandage around the wound. “Can you stand?” He asked.

  “Ain’t nothin’, sir,” the soldier said as two of his squad mates pulled him up, but the soldier was clearly favoring the leg, practically hopping on one foot.

  Rodriguez shook his head. “Head back to the stairs. Rest of you, let’s go. There’s gonna be more of those things. Generator room is up ahead.”

  Cole traded his half-spent mag for a fresh one and kept moving. Against the far wall, a double steel door had the words Trace Lab Generator – Authorized Access Only stenciled on and a wire window showing glowing motes drifting beyond.

  Rodriguez moved up and shined his weapon light through the window. “Looks like the water is a little higher on that side. It’ll be a real bitch to get this door open.”

  “No other choice,” said Cole. And probably no sweat if Besson were here. The big dog handler was strong as an ox, even without his Lewis Field enhancements. Strength was one of Cole’s worst enhancement metrics, but bathed in LF energy, he was still the strongest soldier here by a wide margin.

  The badge-reader was still lit, so Cole held his prox card up, and the door unlocked. Kickers apparently had facility-wide access. It took all his strength to push open the door against the flow. How could just an inch or two of water weigh so much? Dirty water gushed out as he set his shoulders and wedged the gap open wide enough to get people through.

  A pair of tentacles quested through the opening, one of them brushing around Cole’s leg. He grit his teeth as the tentacle tightened, pulling him off his feet and through the door where another of the amorphous mouthed blobs waited.

  “The door!” Someone shouted.

  Behind him, a heavy thud hit the door as the other soldiers slammed into it, trying to keep it open long enough to get themselves through.

  “Fuck this is heavy! Help me!”

  “Shoot that fucker!” Shouted Rodriguez. A rifle opened up behind Cole.

  The creature pulling him was much larger than the one on the ground floor and eyed him with clear hunger. More appendages emerged from its body and formed thick plates, intercepting the gunfire. Cole angled his rifle between his knees and fired into it, shooting it directly through the glassy alien eye and the soft interior of its gaping mouth. The creature shrieked and contorted, pulling back and away. But it gushed blood, and the pseudo-limbs holding up its shields went slack—as did the tentacle around Cole’s leg. The rest of the squad shredded it. But its death rattle was answered by several others creatures echoing in the massive space. A tear in reality stretched open several meters away, and more of the things plopped out amidst a spray of water.

  “Contact right!” Shouted one of the soldiers.

  Rodriguez helped Cole up to his feet as the squad angled their fire.

  “Control room!” Cole shouted over the gunfire.

  Rodriguez pointed—thankfully in the opposite direction of the tear where a set of switchback steel stairs led to a second level catwalk and an enclosed structure. The squad began to withdraw towards the stairs, burning through ammo to staunch the tide of black, oily monsters. Something loomed up in the darkness. Cole heard a whistle past his ear, and a soldier behind him went down. Sharp barbs stuck from the woman’s neck, and the site of the puncture swelled like a water balloon.

  One of the other squad mates reached down, swearing under his breath.

  “Stop!” shouted Cole.

  It was too late. The soldier yanked out the barbs, taking an alarming amount of the downed woman’s throat with them as though the flesh had been softened like clay. She gave a final gurgle and went limp.

  “Fuck!” shouted Rodriguez, firing at the shadow. His lamp illuminated a long, snake-like body and a nightmarish head like some deep-sea creature mixed with a horned beetle. Cole saw its neck muscles tense up as it opened its mouth to reveal dozens more barbs waiting within, but the sudden bright weapon light in its eyes made it flinch, and the barbs whistled past to strike the bulkhead behind, burying themselves straight in the concrete.

  “Up to the control room!” said Cole.

  The remaining soldiers pounded up the stairs and hammered on the door to the control room, shouting for the operators within. Cole stayed on ground level, swapped his magazine, and burned a charge of his ability. The floor or the room flooded with red, including the tears connecting Earth to some sort of watery nightmare realm. But having enemies marked also engaged his kinetic redirection ability. The effectiveness of his bullets went crazy. Each round that pierced the soft flesh of an enemy spiked to a nearby target, and dozens of monsters fell to his bladed bullets. The cold wash of a level-up swept over him, and he kept firing throughout. But it still wasn’t enough.

  “Cole!” shouted Rodriguez.

  Cole looked up. The squad leader was leaning out the door to the control room with a middle-aged guy in glasses and a shirt stained with brackish water. In his hands, his bolt locked back on an empty magazine, and Cole didn’t bother with a swap. He leapt up, easily vaulting over the catwalk railing and landing with only a slight crater in the metal.

  “Holy shit!” said Rodriguez, stumbling back. Cole pushed him through the door and pulled it shut behind him. He took a minute to look around the control room. A half-dozen engineers stood in various states of panic, and the remaining soldiers weren’t much better. The one who had pulled the barbs from his squad-mate was vomiting in the corner, and another had shoved himself against the far wall with his head between his knees.

  Cole looked between Rodriguez and the engineers.

  Well, they’d made it to the generator room. Now it was time to figure out step 2.

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