The Plague Forge [ARC] (40 page)

Bits of material the size of pebbles began to fall from above, shaken loose from the columns and walls. Somehow this frightened him more than anything that had yet happened. The Builders weren’t sloppy architects. It would take something mammoth indeed to shake their walls to the point of crumbling.

Skyler ran—lurching, awkward steps on unsteady feet—toward Ana. She seemed impossibly far away. A silhouette before the glowing orb of a flashlight that wavered in all directions as she struggled to stay on her feet.

A horrible rending sound built from above, and with it the very ceiling seemed to fall as large quantities of dark material crashed to the floor. Skyler threw an arm over his head, weaved to place himself at the base of a column. He glanced up, casting his light into the torrent of discharge that now fell.

The tops of the columns were twisting like trees in a gale. They slid across the surface of the ceiling, reforming and rearranging though for what purpose he couldn’t imagine. He stood frozen, staring in wonder and disbelief as the gigantic pillars, solid as marble a moment ago, thrashed like worms. Their midsections were moving now.

And then Skyler felt his breath catch in his throat as the base next to him slid away. He stumbled, caught himself. Somewhere Ana screamed, and Skyler was running.

He raced through the room, all caution abandoned. All around him the huge columns shifted along the floor as if they weren’t attached at all, like the aura towers did when pushed. Only, he somehow knew they were still perfectly, inexorably stuck to the floor. For a split second he watched one move, saw it drift along the floor and saw, yes, the material that had sluiced down from above seem to absorb itself into the space left behind, repairing instantly whatever damage the moving column left behind.

His lack of attention cost him. A column lurched suddenly in his direction and slammed into him. The surface, hard as stone, clipped his knees and sent him tumbling. The pain of the impact brought tears to his eyes. He gritted his teeth and rolled, came up hobbling to get out of the way as the column barreled onward to whatever destination it sought.

Everything stopped.

The room went silent save for Skyler’s own breathing, and Ana’s frightened sobs from somewhere ahead.

A glow began to build above, like the sun coming out from behind a violent storm. With it came a new sound, a terrible roar that built from nothing to a crushing volume in seconds. The entire ceiling glowed, as if partially translucent.

And then the columns began to fill from the top down with that same yellow-white energy as something poured, or thrust, into them. In the span of half a second every column became a glowing rod, pulsing heat and light. The room became so luminous that Skyler had to throw an arm across his face and squint against the glow. It was no use, though. The light came from everywhere.

Ana was suddenly pressed against him, her arms thrown around him. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we should get out of here, now. I don’t care what it takes, we have to get back to the Magpie and leave.”

She met his gaze and nodded with absolute determination.

Skyler took a step and winced at the fresh blast of pain from his knees. He doubled over and tried to rub the sting away. Then Ana slipped an arm around his waist and urged him on, taking much of his weight.

They were near the center of the room when she froze in place.

Skyler glanced up, swallowing his aches. Twenty meters away, standing at the mouth of the hallway that led from the room, was a subhuman coated in black.

It stood well over two meters tall. Half a head higher than even Samantha, Skyler guessed, and despite its diseased state the being was corded with muscle beneath the black coating. Its eyes blazed yellow, like twin stars, and it stepped forward.

The glow in the room began to abate at the same time, slowly dimming back to near total darkness.

Without thinking, Skyler pushed Ana behind him. He raised his rifle, trying to remember how many rounds were left in the magazine. Four, maybe five? Not enough, not nearly.

Ana knelt beside him and hefted her own pistol. Together they unleashed the last of their ammunition. Their guns sang, spitting plumes of fire as the bullets found their target.

The rounds rattled against the armored subhuman and ricocheted away, bouncing harmlessly on the rapidly dimming floor. If the creature had felt any pain, it didn’t show it. It simply weathered the barrage and then stepped forward again, now just ten meters away.

“Ideas?” Skyler asked out the corner of his mouth.

“Split up. Maybe one of us can get out.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“Who says you’re the one who would make it?”

He grunted. “Ana …”

She reached out and took his hand, her eyes never leaving the approaching enemy.

He didn’t want to tell her that he was simply too tired to run. He wouldn’t get ten steps before this augmented mass of muscle and primal instinct fell upon him.

“Plan?” Ana asked out the corner of her mouth.

Her little spark of humor in the face of the approaching monster melted Skyler’s fear away. “You go low, I go high,” he said to her. “Keep its legs tangled up if you can. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“On three.”

He counted down. Ana let go of his hand. At three they lurched forward in almost perfect unison. Skyler caught the briefest hint of surprise and confusion in the subhuman’s body language as it became mentally tangled with the decision of whom to defend against.

Skyler leapt as Ana dove. The creature reacted with astonishing reflexes, kicking out even as it lifted its hands to grip Skyler. One viselike hand tucked in under Skyler’s armpit, the other latched over his face, fingers digging into his temples and cheeks so tightly Skyler thought his head might pop like a tomato.

And then he was sailing through the air, tossed away like a harmless toy. He heard Ana grunt from the kick she’d received in the instant before he hit the warm floor. Skyler landed like a confused fish tossed on the deck of a ship. His chin cracked against the rock-hard material as he landed, splitting skin.

Ana grunted again, a wet sound this time as the creature kicked her once more. Skyler rolled in time to see it bend over her, lifting her by the neck. Her face contorted as the two powerful black hands wrapped around her throat. She kicked and clawed in a hopeless effort to free herself.

Skyler’s vision swam. He tried to push himself up, even to one elbow, but his limbs felt sluggish and thick. He shouted, or tried to. All that came out was a mouthful of blood that splattered across the floor in front of him.

The entire room lurched, like an elevator beginning its climb. He thought it was just his shaken body at first but then he saw the creature stagger, if only for a moment. Ana sprang to life in that instant. She brought both legs up, knees to her chest, feet to the subhuman’s chest, and kicked outward with everything she had.

The subhuman lost its grip on her neck and fell backward. Ana dropped like a stone, her back slamming into the now-dim floor. She cried out and rolled to one side, sucking in a lungful of precious air.

Skyler tried again to stand. The room swayed like a ship cresting a massive wave. The creature, on its feet already—
fuck it’s fast!
—stumbled with the motion as well. Skyler spat the blood in his mouth aside and said, “Over here, bastard.”

The subhuman whirled. Its eyes flared yellow again, and it strode forward, Ana temporarily forgotten.
Good,
Skyler thought. That was something at least.

In two powerful steps the armored creature stood before him. Skyler tried to lift his hands into a boxer’s defense, but his battered, exhausted limbs hardly moved. He only had time to close his eyes as the sub backhanded him, knocking him a meter to the right and sending him sprawling in a useless tangle of limbs. Skyler felt no pain this time. His mind had somehow removed itself from further agony.

Again he tried to stand, the effort producing only a slight lift of his head from the floor that brought stars to his vision. Once again the room swayed.
That’s not helping, goddammit
. He lifted his head enough to steal a glance at his attacker. The sub had almost faded into the darkness that had swallowed the room once more. It looked like a shadow made real.

“Well, well. What’s all this then?”

The voice came from somewhere off to Skyler’s left. He thought it a figment of his clouded mind, but there was a familiarity to it. He flopped his head to the side and looked.

Standing just inside the room’s entrance was a naked Russell Blackfield.

I’ve lost my mind,
Skyler thought.

The creature heard it, too, though, for it turned to face the newcomer with as much surprise as Skyler felt.

“Blackfield,” Skyler said thickly. “Get out of here. There are weapons below—”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Russell barked, anger palpable. “It’s my turn to be the fucking hero, all right, mate?”

Skyler tried to say more, tried to tell him heroics might be more possible if he was dressed and armed to the teeth. The man’s nudity suddenly registered.
He’s exposed, he’s been outside, and yet he’s here. Immune?
The odds said no, and Skyler felt a cold flutter of hope that his theory was true, that this plague forge had been shut down. Either that, or Russell was indeed infected. Perhaps the building provided an aura and held him in stasis, or maybe the towers outside yet remained.

Skyler strained his eyes looking for signs of the rash on Russell’s neck, but the light was poor, the angle all wrong.

The subhuman shifted, momentarily caught between three opponents. But it only needed a glance at Skyler and then Ana to decide Russell was the only one it had to worry about.

“That’s right, mate,” Blackfield said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Skyler pushed to get to his elbows and felt a searing stab of pain from his chin. Warm blood trickled down onto his shirt. His arms faltered, and he flopped back onto the floor again. He rolled to his side in time to see Ana staggering to a stand. “No,” he croaked. “Ana, no.”

The creature took a heavy step toward Russell just as the building swayed again. It paused until the motion abated, then it continued its march toward the newcomer. Blackfield somehow held his ground as the hulking armored thing closed the distance, and whether the man was insane or brave Skyler had to respect his tenacity.

Ana found her feet and began a lurching, anguished jog toward the subhuman’s back. This, Skyler thought, deserved respect as well, but he wasn’t about to let her die just to buy Russell Blackfield another few seconds of life. Ignoring the white-hot lance of pain in his chin, Skyler thrust himself to his feet and surged on a path that would intercept the girl.

The creature must have seen something in Blackfield’s eyes. It stopped, turned. Its eyes flared like camera flashes when it saw Ana bearing down, and it fully spun to face her.

Russell took the opening. In two quick steps he leapt onto the subhuman’s back.

In that instant Skyler saw it. Just a flash, but he knew a clutched grenade when he saw one and he watched in horror as Russell’s arms flew around the creature’s neck. And despite everything going on—Russell’s battle cry, Ana’s gasp of surprise, his own boots thudding on the floor as he sped toward her—Skyler heard the pin drop. The slightest tink-tink-tink as it bounced on the floor.

Ana pulled up, unsure what to do, and Skyler hit her in the midsection. He wrapped his arms around her and thrust his legs with all the energy he could muster and more. She screamed in surprise, an accusation of betrayal in her cry that stung Skyler more than any of his injuries.

Even before they hit the ground Skyler glanced back.

The subhuman, large as it was, toppled under Russell’s sudden weight. Its hands were too busy trying to pull Russell’s aside to break its fall and it hit the ground face-first with a single, sharp crack.

The creature bucked upward immediately, somehow getting its elbows underneath itself and pushing. But Blackfield had no intention of trying to strangle the thing. He released his grip at the same moment and used the creature’s own thrust to bounce back onto his knees.

On the floor in front of the creature’s face lay the hand grenade.

Skyler turned away, and fought Ana, who writhed to free herself from his weight. He threw his arms over her head. “Stay down!”

The grenade went off.

Blackfield felt the pulse of raw heat, the concussive wave pound every bit of his skin. Every instinct in his head wanted to shut his eyes in that moment, but he refused. He wanted to see the fucking thing die and he was not disappointed.

The creature’s head and shoulders blew apart as the explosion ripped through it. For a single glorious fraction of a second Russell saw the blood and guts and gore of the human within. The soft, sweet center inside the hard candy shell. He’d have laughed at his thought but a fist the size of a city bus punched him and sent him sailing backward.

For another fraction of a second, this one decidedly less glorious, he felt the astonishing pain of a thousand wounds delivered simultaneously as chunks of the alien’s armor, shrapnel from the grenade, and bits of human flesh slammed into him.

And then, nothing. Not death, just …

Clarity.

In the flash of the explosion he saw the ceiling high above amid the tangle of the strange floor-to-ceiling tubes that filled the room. There, in the center of the ceiling, was a hexagonal section wholly different from the rest of the place. Symbols were engraved into the sections around it, and they glowed briefly in the flash of light, each reflecting back a different color. Then it slipped back into shadow. He felt a strange gladness at having seen it. Whatever it was, he’d fucking seen it. A little reward, finally.

Russell had a dim awareness of his body crashing into the floor. He bounced once and then slid to a stop, still staring upward. One of his legs splayed out at a crazy angle, and he saw a jagged edge of bone sticking upward from the middle of his thigh.