Kane Gilmour - Ragnarok

As they ran up the metal steps, Deep Blue shouted to the others between breaths. He was in great shape, but even an Olympic athlete would be panting after the day he’d had. “We need to destroy the metal support arms around the portal.”

“ That was not a good idea the first time,” Rook shouted back.

“Ale says it would have helped if all the struts were down-not just two!”

“There’s six of the things left,” Rook said. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve only got one grenade left.” Rook held up a found FN-SCAR with an attached grenade launcher.

“I’ve got two,” Bishop yelled from the lead, as he reached the catwalk with Queen and set her down gently. She grabbed the railing for support and then began hopping toward where Knight lay.

“You look like shit little man,” she told him as he fired on dire wolves getting too high up the stairs.

“You have no idea. We’ll talk,” he said calmly, picking his next target and firing.

“I have two M67s,” Beck added, once she reached the catwalk.

“You kids and your toys,” Deep Blue said. “Let the old man show you how to blow something up.” He opened a buttoned pocket on his left thigh and removed a gray brick of C4. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a handful of detonators. “We’ve got about a minute left. Whose got a good arm?”

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0500 Hrs

King followed the woman around the energy portal, away from the side of the globe where dire wolves continued to run and climb out. On the far wall from the hangar door was a normal set of double doors with a symbol of a black jagged lightning bolt on a yellow triangle, universal for “electrical hazard.” The door was locked and it opened outward, so King couldn’t easily kick the door in.

He stepped back from the door and fired a burst of 9 mm bullets at the upper and lower hinges on the right side. The door simply fell outward and onto the floor. The woman rushed in first, followed by King, who skidded to a halt.

There wasn’t a turbine, or a generator, but there were banks and banks of electrical switches and fuses, circuit breakers, switchboards, electricity meters, transformers and fire alarm control panels. This was a power distribution room-not the power generating station.

“I’m not an electrician,” King said, “but I think this will do.”

He pulled a small brick of tan-colored C4 explosive from Velcro straps on the outside of an armored thigh, and then a tiny detonating blasting cap from his belt, which he inserted into the brick. He tossed the brick to the far end of the small room.

“Ten seconds and counting,” he said before pushing the Russian toward the door, though he was more concerned with the second countdown running in his head, the one that was at twenty seconds.

King ran for the door, and then grabbed the woman by the arm and tugged her to the side of the wall by the broken door. They ran three more steps when the C4 detonated. The explosion ripped out the room’s other door and hurled it into the portal. A good ten feet of the brick wall on either side of the double doorway spat brick and mortar. A second larger explosion ripped through the main chamber. The concussion shook the walls and another huge portion of the ceiling over the giant room collapsed, taking catwalks with it.

Deep Blue reached the southwest corner of the catwalk and threw his large, brownie-sized block of C4. Anna Beck, who played college softball, threw three more blocks, aiming for the concrete bases of struts, though anywhere near them would do the trick. Bishop handled the remaining two, lobbing them far across the large room.

The timers were set for twenty seconds and set to go off as one. If someone dropped one, or didn’t throw it in time, they were dead. But this knowledge motivated them and the C4 bricks all landed around the room with seconds to spare.

Several things happened at once-the electrical room on the ground floor exploded, billowing fire and smoke that obscured the view of the portal.

The six bricks of C4 in the main chamber detonated all at once, pulverizing the concrete holding the struts on the floor and killing the remaining dire wolves.

The rest of the ceiling over the eastern part of the portal fell, taking parts of the northern catwalk just after Bishop leapt away.

The portal bulged and distorted as it ate the falling wreckage. The eastern catwalk broke loose on the northeastern end, and began to fall down.

Rook, closer to the upper end of the now slanting metal slide, grabbed the railing. Queen was back by the stairwell-the most structurally sound part of the room at the moment. Beck was with her. Knight slid down the angled catwalk, scrabbling with his fingertips to get a hold in the metal grill.

With a groan of bending metal, the catwalk tipped and fell, jolting to a stop a few feet later as one of the giant curved struts fell back against the wall, and the catwalk above, pinning the whole structure to the wall.

Then all the light and sound vanished.

They were plunged into darkness.

The portal was closed.

Somewhere

Eirek Fossen spun around as an unfamiliar whine tore through the air, standing his hair on end. He had walked with dire wolves and plotted with a God, but none of them frightened him like this sound.

It portended doom.

His doom.

When he saw the sound’s source, he braced himself against the massive bone wall, growing week in the knees.

“Lord Fenrir,” he said, his voice oozing fear.

A giant plane, in the shape of a crescent, crashed through the portal, pushing Fenrir up and over. The giant toppled backward as though in slow motion. It roared in frustration and something else. Pain? Fossen didn’t think it was possible, but then saw his Lord’s lower jaw dangling loosely.

“No,” he whispered. “No…”

The ground shook as Fenrir and the plane stumbled back from the portal and crashed to the ground, pulverizing hundreds of dire wolves and scattering more.

Fossen took a step toward the portal. But what could he do? The plane was obviously a move of desperation. Things were not going well for their enemies on the other side. Fenrir might be injured, but it wouldn’t stop. As soon as it freed itself from the plane, it would return to the other side. And it would heal.

Something hard jabbed Fossen’s back. He spun, not realizing he’d been walking backward, away from the portal.

He found a cage, a fifteen-foot cube, built of bones-human and dire wolf-held together by some kind of solidified secretion. He stepped back from the cage, eyes widening at the sight of the human bodies that filled the cage. The corpses were hacked into pieces-arms, legs, heads, torsos-all packed inside, floor to ceiling. The body parts glistened and he realized that they, too, had been covered in some kind of secretion.

Preserved, he thought, stepping back from the cage, but bumping into a second.

He leapt away from the second cage and spun around, finding himself surrounded by a field of the structures. Fear rose in his chest, but he squelched it. He knew Lord Fenrir killed and ate human beings, among other things. But she did not, would not, eat Fossen.

Gunshots rolled across the plains bringing his attention back to the portal. Lord Fenrir lay on Her back still, but was beginning to stir. Two figures ran over her body, heading back toward the portal. Fossen squinted his eyes. He couldn’t see the mens’ faces, but the shape and gait of one of them was familiar.

Stanislav.

He shouted the name, “Stanislav!”

But a moment later, the two men disappeared through the portal.