Demitria Lunetta - In the End

I pull out my gun. I may have to play Dr. Reynolds’s game, but I’m not going to lose without a fight.

“How many Floraes are down here?” I ask Kay over the wail of the alarm.

“I don’t know exactly!” she screams back. “Ten . . . twelve . . .”

“Twenty-seven!” shouts Rice, and I can’t help but give him a look of pure horror.

I turn to the door. “Will it hold?” I shout.

“Yes, it’s Florae-proof!” he yells. “They can’t get through .”

His last two shouted words echo through sudden silence.

The alarm has turned off, and with it, the lights.

For a moment there is complete darkness, and then the backup lights flood the room with a soft glow, the yellow-green light turning our skin the color of a Florae. In the quiet I can just make out a scratching at the door. With an agonizing pop the door opens a few inches, and a green claw reaches through, scraping the wall with its knifelike fingernails.

Rice looks from the Florae’s claw to me. “The doors are electric,” he whispers, his quiet voice shaky. “They won’t lock while the power is off.”

I drop into my firing stance. “Stay behind me,” I tell Rice. He has no weapon and no training. He’ll be useless against the Floraes.

Kay throws herself against the door, trying to ram it closed, but it’s pointless: She’s knocked back across the room as the creature blasts the door open wide.

It stands there just inside the doorway, snarling, yellow teeth gnashing—and listening. Kay stays motionless in the heap she fell into. I can feel Rice’s breath hot on the back of my neck. Another silent moment, and the creature might withdraw. But then Rice exhales behind me, releasing a tiny rattle of fear deep in his throat as he does so.

The small noise is enough to catch the creature’s attention. It rolls its milky eyes in my direction and then bolts forward, mouth wide in anticipation, its blue-black tongue tasting the air.

I drop it with one shot, and the next one that muscles through the door after it. There are more, clawing one another as they fight their way in. Somehow three of them break through at once and all of them speed at me. I manage to take down the first two, but I hit the third in the neck instead of the head and then it’s upon me, knocking me to the side and twisting down to finish me—and then it simply falls to the floor, lifeless. I look up at Kay, who nods once and trains her gun on the empty door.

“Did you get them all?” Rice’s terrified whisper comes from the back of the room.

I shake my head as I get to my feet. There are only five dead. The other twenty-two are still on the prowl.

Rice recovers and moves to my side, stunned but recovering. “When the electricity goes out,” he whispers, “the backup generator is supposed to power all Level One areas.”

“But this is a Level One area, right?”

He nods. “Reynolds must have diverted the power supply to specifically put us in harm’s way.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have to go get Baby,” I say, turning toward the door. “If the power is out in her area, she’ll be in danger. She doesn’t remember how to be quiet anymore. They’ve made her a sitting duck.”

Rice grabs my arm. “Dr. Reynolds knows that’s where you’ll go. And even if you make it, he won’t just let you walk out of here with her.”

That’s all true, but he and Kay can tell I’m still going.

“It’ll be easier for me to go on my own,” I tell them, giving them an out. “I’ll be able to avoid the Floraes.”

Rice shakes his head. “No one knows these labs better than me. I can guide you.” I grimace under my synth-suit hood. Rice is still shaking slightly. He may use Floraes in his experiments, but he isn’t used to being hunted by Them, isn’t used to the fear they create, a fear I’ve learned to push down over the years. But he’s still trying, dealing with his fear remarkably well.

“Hell, we’ve come this far,” Kay says from the door. “And besides, I’m a Guardian,” she adds. “This is my idea of a good time, sunshine.”

“Okay. I’ll take lead. Rice in the middle. Kay will cover our backs. Let’s go.”

We start working our way down the hall, Rice making so much noise, I’m expecting a Florae to run at us at any moment. I’m so on edge I almost shoot a researcher cowering in the shadows. Rice puts his arm around her shoulders and coaxes her to stand, then guides her with us down the hall. He seems better, now that he’s helping someone else.

“I thought it was just a drill,” the researcher says, her voice echoing off the walls. “I didn’t want to leave my work for a false alarm.”

Rice shushes her and we continue our slow progress. When we reach a hall lined with open doors, I halt. Any one of those rooms could contain a Florae, waiting to pounce. The researcher is still sniveling, and although Rice is trying to help, he makes just as much noise trying to quiet her.

Frustration wells up inside me and along with it, guilt. I place my mouth close to Rice’s ear and whisper, “Look for a safe place.” I motion over my shoulder at the researcher. There’s no choice: I need to find a place to stash her so I can go get Baby.

Rice nods and scans the hall, pointing out a door at the far end that remains closed. A film of light leaks out beneath it. That room, whatever it is, has electricity. Maybe it has its own generator. If the door locks, the researcher will be safe there.

I move ahead to check out the open rooms one by one before allowing the group to move forward. It’s slow going, and in each lab there are too many places a creature can hide.

We are almost to the locked door when the researcher screams. There’s a Florae hurtling toward her from the end of the hall. I must have missed it in one of the rooms. Kay grabs her and tries to pull her along, dragging her down the hall. With her free arm, she shoots the Florae, missing its head by inches. She pushes the researcher toward me and returns to dispatch the Florae.

The researcher breaks free and is halfway down the hall when another Florae appears before her at its far end. It reaches her before I can get a shot off, and it latches on to her shoulder, biting her neck. Kay separates the Florae’s head from its shoulders in a single move and then is down the hall to the new Florae, focused on feasting on the researcher, and expertly shoots it. Green-black blood splatters all over the wall and the creature collapses. Kay puts a shot in the head of the now-still researcher before she can change into a monster.

Rice and I sprint down the hall. When we reach the only locked door in the corridor, Rice swipes his card and enters his code. The door beeps twice. “I can’t get it open,” Rice tells me as he desperately tries again.

“What’s the holdup?” Kay asks.

“I don’t know. This door shouldn’t even be locked.”

“We have to move on,” Kay says, already halfway down the hall. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, another Florae appears in front of us. Kay tries to draw down on it, but the Florae is too close and is on her before she can aim. It bowls into her and knocks her down as it rolls over her. I can’t fire on the Florae twisting next to Kay without risking taking her down too. Kay snaps to her feet with a knife in hand before the Florae’s next charge. She sidesteps it and stabs it hard through the neck, pushing the knife into the creature’s brain. It drops at her feet, a mess of green and black.

Just then the door Rice struggled to unlock finally opens. Ken stands in the doorway, looks at the carnage in the hall, then back at us. “What the . . . You mean that evacuation order was real? You’d better get in here.”