Kane Gilmour - Ragnarok

The door had no handle. It was just a smooth metal slab. Rook reached past the women to the upper-right edge of the door, where he knew a small crevice existed in the frame of stone around the metal door. He remembered the worn-smooth feel of the stone on his fingers. He exerted the right amount of leverage and the metal door began to creak open. Queen stepped up and braced her arm against the wall to help Rook with the door. In her other hand, she held an M9 pistol-the only weapon any of them now had.

They stepped through into a small laboratory. It clearly had not been used in some time, but the room was still well organized, with the exception of a few bullet holes in things from Rook’s recent battle with Edmund Kiss, the scientist that had experimented upon himself until he was practically a feral, yeti-like creature. But Kiss was dead. Nothing Rook had seen in his previous visits to the lab-first hunting for the creature that turned out to be Kiss, and later battling the creature he had become to the death-hinted at mind control or anything else that could be connected to the townspeople of Fenris Kystby going glazed and attacking him and Peder at the farm that morning.

There were two doors in the room. Rook knew one was a closet. He nodded to the other door. Queen went to the door and opened it quickly with the M9 leading. Inside was a larger room with offices and two doors sporting bright orange, biohazard symbols.

“Kiss kept the wolves for his experiments down here before he started injecting himself with the stuff.” Rook opened one of the biohazard doors. The room was filled with built-in metal cages that rose to the ceiling, but each was now empty, their doors ajar. “Huh. Nobody home. Fossen must have taken the wolves out of here.”

“Fossen was the man that helped you find this lab and stop Kiss?” Queen asked, stepping back into the main room and making for the other biohazard door. Asya stood to the side, saying nothing.

“That’s right. Don’t bother with that one. Empty room.” Rook walked to the other door leading out of the large office space. Queen opened the biohazard door she was near, despite Rook’s explanation and peeked inside. The room was as Rook had said, completely empty. She moved with Asya, following Rook through the last door.

The new room had a single source of natural light-a small window set in a wall close to the ceiling. Most of the window had dirt packed against it, and the portion above that was nearly covered by snow. The small corner of the window that still allowed light to flow into the room was no larger than a coin.

Under the window was a set of double doors that Rook knew from a previous visit were also covered over with dirt. The entirety of the lab had been buried when it was abandoned.

Or had it?

Rook looked quickly around the room. “What the hell?”

“What is it?” Asya asked.

“Kiss is missing. This was his den. The floor was littered with animal bones. His corpse should still be here. It was only a few days ago.”

“The other man…Fossen. He probably cleaned up when he left with the wolves you said were in the cages,” Queen guessed.

“But there’s more than that, Queen. There was a sofa here that Kiss was using as a bed.”

“So?”

“So if those doors,” Rook pointed at the double doors beneath the window, “are covered with earth, and there are no other ways in or out besides the tunnel we came in, how the hell did someone move a full-sized sofa out of here?”

Chicago, IL

“Run!”

Deep Blue and King sprinted down Michigan Ave. toward the National Guard barrier that had been set up at the intersection with Chicago Ave., fifty feet south of the edge of the lightning-hurling monstrosity that chewed further into the buildings to either side of the wide retail strip.

Large slabs of concrete and steel debris rained down from the upper reaches of the buildings on either side of the men as lightning discharges slammed the structures repeatedly. King and Deep Blue reached the Guardsmen, who allowed them behind the barrier. A short barrel-chested man wearing Captain’s bars and a nametape that said WEST, approached them.

“Who’s in charge, Captain?” Deep Blue asked.

“I am. Who the hell are you guys?” West seemed shocked more than angry.

“We’re Delta. You should have received a call from General Keasling-”

“Yeah, King and Blue, right?”

“Close enough.” Although it wasn’t strictly true anymore-Chess Team had been a Delta assault team at one time, but now they and the entire Endgame organization were so far off the books that few people knew they existed. Deep Blue and General Keasling had decided for the duration of the current threat that Keasling would notify any military presence on the ground that a Delta operations team was inbound, allowing Chess Team the freedom to act. In a situation less chaotic, they might not have been able to get away with such theater and keep it a secret from the rest of the US Military, but with energy domes popping up globally and vicious creatures darting out of the globes, no one would recall one small two-man Delta team once the dust settled. “Get your men ready to fire everything they have at the dome. A lot of targets are going to be coming out of it. And they are coming fast.” Deep Blue, done talking, turned to face the dome up the street.

“Seriously?” West’s face was appalled.

“Damn serious, Captain. You saw me parachute in through the dome and out again? I just saw them. They’re coming. Fast. Be ready to shoot.” King turned to the barrier and aimed his MP5.

The Captain passed orders to the Guardsmen-most of whom took up defensive positions around the wooden sawhorse barrier, and a few took to ordering the civilian bystanders further from the upcoming fight.

Then the lightning stopped all at once, as if the globe, which had been trying to solidify itself, finally achieved a kind of stasis. The wind died down, too, and everything was eerily silent. Time ticked by. No one spoke. But the lull was short-lived.

Eight white streaks blitzed out of the brilliant wall of the dome, racing in all directions. The Guards opened fire haphazardly, and the wall of noise from fifty M-16 rifles firing was deafening after the momentary quiet. King returned fire with the others, but the creatures were just too damn fast. He watched in horror as two of the streaks tore into the line, decimating men on either side of him. Their blood spattered him in the breeze kicked up in the wake of the fast-moving creatures. The other racing creatures had gone in a variety of directions-some behind the Hyatt, and others toward the lake. King suspected the creatures had no specific targets in mind, but instead just ran in a variety of directions and ripped into anything they encountered.

He saw Deep Blue rolling on the ground and picking up a fallen soldier’s M-16 rifle and leveling it at a creature that was returning. He fired a confident three-round burst, each round punching through the monster’s rounded forehead, widening the wound, shattering what looked like a clear skull and shredding the spongy white brain beneath.

King had seen a lot of people shot in the head, but had never witnessed the bullet’s progress after it entered the target. The explosive effect on the creature’s brain was…horrible, but in this case, a thing of beauty.

As the life went out of the creature, it crashed through the group and over Deep Blue’s head before slamming into the wooden sawhorse, sending a spray of wooden splinters and larger pieces of wood into the street beyond the small group.

“How the fuck-” King began.

Deep Blue tapped the faceplate of his helmet. “Targeting software.” He fired another sustained burst of rifle fire in a direction none of the other Guardsmen were targeting. Once again, a racing creature moved from a blur to white bulk sliding on the pavement and kicking up dust into the blowing wind. “King. The Humvee.”