The Tide:

Devil to Pay

(The Tide Series Volume 8)

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Anthony J Melchiorri

September, 2018

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

-Prologue-

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

-11-

-12-

-13-

-14-

-15-

-16-

-17-

-18-

-19-

-20-

-21-

-22-

-23-

-24-

-25-

-26-

-27-

-28-

-29-

-30-

-31-

-32-

-33-

-34-

-35-

-36-

-37-

-38-

-Epilogue-

Also by Anthony J Melchiorri

About the Author

Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

The Tide Series

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The Tide (Book 1)

Breakwater (Book 2)

Salvage (Book 3)

Deadrise (Book 4)

Iron Wind (Book 5)

Dead Ashore (Book 6)

Ghost Fleet (Book 7)

Devil to Pay (Book 8)

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The Eternal Frontier

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Eternal Frontier (Book 1)

Edge of War (Book 2)

Shattered Dawn (Book 3)

Rebel World (Book 4)

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Black Market DNA

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Enhancement (Book 1)

Malignant (Book 2)

Variant (Book 3)

Fatal Injection

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Other Books

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The God Organ

The Human Forged

Darkness Evolved

The Tide: Devil to Pay

Copyright © 2018 by Anthony J. Melchiorri. All rights reserved.

First Edition: September 2018

http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com

Cover Design: Eloise Knapp Design

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

-Prologue-

Tallinn, Estonia

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A howl cut through the icy night air. Other voices echoed the first, rising in an eerie chorus. Their haunting cries reverberated off the stone walls of Tallinn’s Old Town. The red roofs of the medieval walls and towers encircling the Old Town were slowly being devoured by the falling snow. Snowflakes spiraled around Jaan Kask, clinging to his eyelashes as he ran. His boots smashed through the delicate layer of snow, connecting with the cobblestone road below.

Already the blood splashed across his face and arms had cooled, turning into a cracking, macabre coat. A ghoulish moon hid partway behind the clouds, looking down at him and seeming to laugh. The stars, too, winked as though mocking his cowardly flight through the city. Dark shadows enveloped apartments and hotels. They stretched from windows like fingers yearning to catch him, to pull him in and consume him. A freezing wind cut through his blood-soaked clothing. The air abraded his flesh, and the cracks of prolonged exposure fractured through his nearly frozen skin. He would not last long out here in the cold.

He would die alone in the silent city.

He would die alone... if he was lucky.

The rattle of bone made him glance back over his shoulder. He saw nothing but looming darkness, but Jaan knew they were out there. He looked up at the windows, desperate to see if there was life out there besides the creatures. Maybe the flicker of a candle. A swish of curtains from someone else who had bunkered down to survive the apocalyptic new world.

Please, Jaan thought. Take pity on me.

He didn’t dare utter the words aloud lest the creatures hear his pitiful cries.

A hideously misshapen shadow stretched across the street behind him, exiting an alley.

Jaan ducked down a smaller road, winding between tall buildings, not daring to look back to see if the creature had spotted him. His breath whooshed in and out in heavy strokes. He passed the gaping maw of an old bakery and the ruined storefront of a souvenir shop. Then he hurdled over the broken heat lamps on the patio of a once-elegant restaurant.

The clatter of claws down the stone street rose to a crescendo.

Jaan guessed at least six or seven of the creatures followed him now. The bastards had seemed so lethargic since the deep cold of Estonian winter crashed over the city, but the prospect of fresh meat seemed to have roused them.

Jaan had been starving for weeks. And even now, his muscles cried at him to stop. The adrenaline rush had waned, and all that fueled him was a desperate yearning to live. But the pain of icy air scraping his lungs was beginning to take its toll. He could not outrun them forever.

Maybe he could hide. He searched the shops along the road, looking for one with an open door or broken window.

A howl behind him exploded through the night air. He spun on his heels to see the silhouette of something crouched in the night. Moonlight reflected off a pair of malevolent red eyes. Jaan ran.

Cold seeped into his limbs. Prickling needles spread from his fingers and toes and up and down his legs and arms. He charged down another road that abutted the ancient walls lining the Old Town.

Long icicles dripped from the tiled roofs and walkways above. He ran under their cover, searching for his salvation. There, nearly twenty meters from his position, he saw one of the spiraling museum staircases that took visitors to the top of the wall.

There was refuge there. Caged doors and hiding spots, darkness and shadows. An escape from the cutting winds.

Behind him, ice shattered against the cobblestone road. The clatter of talons joined the crashing. More howls tore through the night, churned by bloodlust. Jaan’s heart thrashed against his ribcage.

He had to make it to that museum.

If he could just—

One of the creatures exploded from his left. Everything swirled in a kaleidoscopic blur of gnashing teeth and shattered ice. The monster reached toward Jaan, its bloodshot eyes wide. Wisps of dark hair swirled behind the crown of spikes jutting from its skull. Long fractures had cracked the plates of armor lining its shoulders, and overgrown vertebrae protruded from its back as if it were the fossil of some dinosaur brought back to life.

Claws slashed at Jaan, and he ducked. Shards of broken icicles sprayed across his face as the creature struck the space where he’d been. A new surge of adrenaline numbed the pain, and Jaan’s vision narrowed. He saw the ice, the creature, the museum. The stairs were only a few meters from him now.

He could still make it.

He started to run, but the creature growled and slashed at him again. Claws snagged the back of Jaan’s sweater and pulled him into the snow. The beast roared. Saliva sprayed from its mouth and splattered across Jaan’s face. The monster’s neck bent forward, and the beast dove in for a bite. Jaan barely dodged the gnashing teeth. He pushed himself up to his feet. The cold shivered up his now-exposed back.

He prayed those claws had not broken his skin. Otherwise he knew his fate would be shared with the creature trying to consume him now.

The beast recovered from its miss and squared up to Jaan again. The voices of its incoming comrades grew louder, closer.

The creature let out a growl that sounded more like a death rattle escaping its rotting lungs. Its breath came out in fetid puffs through its slit nostrils. The monster’s thin tongue lashed its pointed teeth. With a shriek, it jumped at Jaan again.

No normal human could compete with the monster’s aggression and strength—but these creatures seemed to lack much in the way of intelligence. Over and over, the monster would come at him in the same basic attack, and he could dodge it again and again.

One, he could dodge. But the more time he wasted with this bastard, the sooner others would join the battle. He needed to be rid of this one and run. But he had no weapons. He had left the crowbar and axe back at the apartment when his family...

He could not think about that right now.

He looked around in desperation, searching for something to defend himself. And then Jaan saw his weapon. Thousands of them, in fact.

Jaan grabbed one of the thicker icicles that had broken off the overhang. Almost immediately, it froze to his bare skin. It didn’t matter. He wielded the icicle like a sword, and the monster lunged at him again. This time Jaan held his ground. He aimed the icicle between the monster’s open teeth, and the creature did the rest of the work for him. The icicle slid through the roof of its mouth. Blood trickled over the ice. The creature fell forward, nothing but deadweight now. Jaan let the icicle tear from his hands and ran into the museum.

Once inside, he searched the first floor. Next to a descriptive placard, there was the partially preserved ancient wooden door. Though partially rotted by time, it was thick and studded with iron. He pushed the door across the icy floor and toppled it over the museum’s entrance, then lunged up the spiraling staircase to the next floor. There he slid a metal grate over the entrance and reinforced the barricade with medieval weapons from the displays.

He continued up the next flight of stairs. The howls of the creatures echoed through the building. But he didn’t hear the clang of their claws on iron. They hadn’t made it to the stairs... yet. If he had to, he was prepared to run from the museum and along the adjoining walls. Many of the Old Town’s towers had been converted to museums like this or coffee shops and art galleries to tempt the city’s tourists. Now they might offer him shelter, just as the ancient fortifications had against invaders in the distant past.

Through one of the narrow windows, Jaan peered out, barely able to glimpse at the road below. The monsters were still running, straight past where his footprints in the snow ended. Once again, he had prevailed. They were as mindless as animals. They seemed to hunt by sight and smell. Usually it wasn’t too difficult to fool them. Tonight, he’d just been unlucky.

He slumped against the wall. There was no heat, and the bare stone let the cold seep into his flesh. He thought about burning the paintings or wooden artifacts from the displays, but he had no matches and no flint. And of course, a flickering fire might be enough to draw the monsters back to his location.

He couldn’t risk it.

Jaan curled up in a ball. His teeth chattered now that the warmth of his physical exertion had passed and all the adrenaline had drained from his vessels. Exhaustion tugged at his consciousness. He wanted so desperately to fall into sleep and not wake up. Maybe death was better than survival, but he was too much of a coward to speed it along himself.

The memories of the past few hours blurred together. He could almost pretend they were a nightmare. He would wake up in his apartment with his wife, daughter, and son once more. If they were careful and smart, they could survive until help arrived. Someone, somewhere had to be fighting these monsters. The tide would turn. They just needed to survive until the darkness was swept away.

But the darkness stayed, and they had clung to their lives of rationing and scavenging until tonight. One of the creatures must have heard them coughing, or maybe it just smelled them through their door. It didn’t matter. The bastard clawed at the front door and would not go away. Jaan had comforted his children, trying desperately to quiet their whimpers, but it had been too late. Eventually the door had given way.

He still felt the blood spraying across his face. Blood from the monsters as he tried to beat them with a tire iron. Blood from his family as they were eviscerated. Then the beasts had turned on him, and somewhere as he struggled to fight them off, he’d lost his tire iron.

With a soft sigh, he fell back against the stone wall. Maybe he should throw himself off this tower and end it for good. With his family gone, there was no reason for Jaan to keep fighting for survival.

He should’ve let the monsters take him. At least his corpse would have remained beside the broken, bloody bodies of his family.

His stomach lurched, and he fell to all fours. The contents of his belly surged up through his throat, burning. They splashed over the floor, letting out their stench. Steam rose off the mess until it froze.

Jaan leaned back and wiped his mouth. Tears dripped down his nose, turning to miniature icicles of their own. His lips trembled.

A soft staccato clicking caught Jaan’s ears. He stifled his sobs and held his breath. The sound drifted on the wind, impossible to pin down. He peered out of the thin window closest to him. Was one of the creatures clambering around the tower?

Did he even care if it was?

Then movement brought his gaze to the onion domes of the Russian-style Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The bulbous black domes were topped with golden crosses that seemed to glow in the moonlight. And atop one of those crosses was the silhouette of a monster.

Its head swiveled slowly as if searching the landscape around it like a sailor in a crow’s nest. There was something uncanny about the way the creature shimmied back down the cross, not unlike a gymnast. This was not the rushed, frantic movement of a creature driven by instinct and hunger.

Jaan lowered himself to the floor, shrinking into the corner of the room.

Then he heard something.

That soft tapping again.

It reminded him of the monsters, but what sound didn’t now? His heartbeat raced in anticipation, and his fingers curled into fists. He pressed himself tighter into the corner. He’d barricaded the staircase from the ground, and he had heard no crashing from down there. Nothing to indicate the beasts had come in.

Still...

He crawled to the other side of the room and took one of the swords from an empty suit of armor. Hefting the weapon, he tried its weight, hoping it would turn out to be a real weapon and not some flimsy prop.

The tapping sounded again. He whirled about the room. The windows were too small for the creatures; they couldn’t squeeze through them. Not even a normal human without all those bony plates and spikes could manage it.

Now the tapping was coming from above. Jaan was only on the third floor. There were two more floors above him. The wooden doors between his floor and the next were closed.

The tapping grew louder. Definitely like claws against stone, only these weren’t frantic and loud. They were cautious, careful. Like someone sneaking in the dark.

Jaan clutched the sword, his muscles trembling, as he crept toward the staircase leading to the next floor. Whatever was up there, he was ready to kill.

Then a thought hit him. If the footsteps up there were so intentionally quiet, could it be another person, another survivor in the wilderness Tallinn had become?

Hope sent a shimmer of warmth through him, and he lowered his weapon momentarily. The door started to swing open. Monsters didn’t do that. Humans did.

“Hello?” he offered. “Is someone there?”

Then the door slammed back against the wall. A skeletal face peered down at him with a demonic grin. Its eyes flashed hungrily, but they were not bloodshot like the beasts Jaan had seen before. They appeared cold, calculating. Intelligent.

The creature jumped the rest of the way into the room, and Jaan dropped the sword, backing against the wall. As the thing approached, he saw that it had a rifle strapped across its back, and it walked with a confident gait.

Like a man, not a beast.

“Who are you?” Jaan tried in Estonian, the words mangled by his cold lips. The monster didn’t respond, so he tried again in English.

At last, the creature seemed to understand. “I am taking you from this place,” he replied in English accented with Russian.

Jaan could scarcely believe what the half-human thing was saying. “To safety?” he asked hopefully. The last time the Russians had promised to take people from Estonia, they sent them to Siberia to die.

“Your footprints made it very easy to follow you,” the half human said, approaching slowly and avoiding an answer. “You should not be so foolish. People may follow you when you do not hide your tracks.”

Something twisted in Jaan’s gut. He didn’t like where this was going.

“I... I didn’t think the monsters could talk. I didn’t think they could follow me, either.”

“They cannot,” the half human said. “I can.”

Before Jaan could say anything else, it lunged at him and slammed his head against the stone wall.

***

Pain throbbed at the back of Jaan’s skull. He blinked, struggling to open his eyes. When he did, white light poured into his pupils, and he shielded them with his hand. He took in a deep breath. It no longer hurt to breathe the frigid air. Instead, he felt warmth for the first time since his ordeal began.

Memories slowly dripped back into his mind. Why had that half-human monster knocked him out, only to take him to warm shelter somewhere? He pushed himself up from the concrete floor he was lying on and gazed around. A metal sink stuck off the wall to his right. Next to it was a metal cylinder with a hole in the top.

A toilet, he realized.

Yellowed newspaper clippings decorated the walls. Many were pictures of scantily clad women in seductive poses—some celebrities, some simply pinups. Their hairstyles made him think he’d been transported back to the nineties.

Then Jaan saw that only three of the walls were covered in paper. His confusion gave way to understanding when he saw the metal bars that made up the fourth wall. He was in some kind of prison. He tried the door, but as he expected, it was locked.

Renewed worry flooded through him. The half human had taken him from the cold and locked him up here.

But what crime had he committed?

Then he remembered the half human’s Russian accent. Estonia had only been independent from the Soviet Union for a couple of decades. Could it be the Russians had reinvaded the country, taking back what they had lost? Were they somehow responsible for the monsters that had overrun his city and slaughtered his family?

But that explanation still didn’t answer why they had rescued Jaan only to throw him in prison.

“Anybody out there?” he tried in Russian and in English.

He heard groans from another cell. Other voices joined in with strange, gurgling cries. A few howls exploded, deafening in the cramped prison passages.

Those sounds were all too familiar. Shivers pressed themselves down his spine.

No, no, no.

He pushed himself into the far corner of the room, hiding behind the meager toilet. The smells of sewage and rotten meat swirled all around him, drawing pangs of nausea up through his body again. The chorus of voices grew louder as the monsters trapped in this place urged one another on in a contest to see which one could be the most terrifying.

Then the sound of Russian voices burst from one end of the hallway. They roared at the monsters in a combination of words and animalistic growls. The sounds of Tasers ended a few of the screeching howls.

The Russians approached Jaan’s cage.

There was one real person in a white coat. He held a tablet computer. Next to the human were two half-human monsters. One of those creatures pointed at Jaan.

“This is the new one,” the half human said in Russian, licking his cracked lips. “I brought him in less than an hour ago.”

“Why am I here?” Jaan asked. He wanted to believe there were people out there trying to deliver survivors like him from this nightmare, but in his heart, he didn’t believe it. If they truly meant to help him, they wouldn’t have locked him up.

The white-coat frowned but did not address Jaan directly. “Male. Middle-aged. Appears in good enough health. No scratches, no bites. This is a fine specimen.” He drew a metal cylinder from his pocket. “Try this one on him.”

One of the half humans palmed the cylinder that the white-coat had offered. The other one entered the cage, grabbed Jaan, and held him against the wall.

The white-coat hurried away as if he didn’t want to watch what happened next.

“What are you doing?” Jaan tried to struggle from the half human’s grip.

The half man grinned at Jaan. “The less you fight, the easier this is for us.”

“Please,” Jaan said. “I will do anything. Just let me go. Please.”

“Anything?” the other half human asked. “That is good.”

He held the cylinder up to Jaan’s face and clicked a button. Jaan coughed on the mist that sprayed into his eyes and nostrils. For a moment, all he felt was confusion. But then a dark feeling spread through his body like the tendrils of a cold fog rolling over Tallinn. Something was terribly wrong, and Jaan found himself wishing that he had jumped from the tower after all.

-1-

Ikaria, Greece

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Ikaria rose from the obsidian water in the graceful but rugged way so many of the Greek islands did. The compact landscape breached the surface as if the isle were an ancient sea creature coming up for air after a millennium in the darkest depths of the Icarian Sea. Soft white clouds rolled over the island, low enough to obscure the mountain peaks. Dominic Holland rested a knee against the gunwale of the Zodiac as the craft cut through choppy waters. Briny spray licked Dom’s face. Already the night air had dropped into comfortable coolness. Nothing quite so frigid as the Atlantic waters they’d left behind, but enough to make the prospect of swimming in the sea an uninviting affair.

Dom lifted his night-vision binoculars to his face. They were approaching the island from the southwest. A vacant lighthouse jutted from a gray cliff, its light long since extinguished by the spread of the Oni Agent.

Patches of dried bushes and a few lone trees stood scattered along the rocky terrain, but nothing else appeared to move. Dom would not allow himself a sigh of relief. The war against the Forces of Global Liberation, run by Pyotr Spitkovsky and his bioterrorist rogue state, had taught him never to trust silence or stillness.

“No contacts spotted,” Dom said, turning to the Hunters in the sea craft with him.

“Yet,” Miguel Ruiz said from his spot near the Zodiac’s outboard motor. The hatch on his prosthetic arm was open, and he adjusted something before snapping it shut. “There’s no way the FGL isn’t out there somewhere.”

“I don’t like it when it’s quiet,” Jenna Reed said. “That means they’re up to something. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a hell of a lot more comforting to see a swarm of Skulls. At least we know where the bastards are when they’re out in the open.”

Glenn Walsh let out a harrumph of agreement, crossing his big arms over his thick chest. “Last thing we need is an FGL ambush.”

“There won’t be an ambush if we play this right,” Dom said. “The FGL won’t know we’re here until it’s too late.”

“I would prefer we are not too quiet,” Andris Jansons said with a devilish grin. The former French Foreign Legionnaire and proud Latvian tapped his tac vest. The myriad of pockets held Andris’s favorite weaponized combustibles, from plastic explosives to thermite. “I would very much like to have some fun.”

“And you’ll get your chance,” Dom said, “but patience is key.”

The Zodiac twisted slightly southward as they raced past the lighthouse, hugging the shadows of the cliffs. Meredith Webb pulled back on the tiller to straighten their pursuit and throttled the Zodiac’s motor.

“I, for one, can’t wait to see the FGL kicked off this goddamn island,” she said. Her eyes met Dom’s. “You know, I always dreamed about visiting Santorini. Maybe it’s cliché, but I’d love to be sipping a glass of red wine in my personal hot tub as the sun sets over the caldera.”

Jenna laughed. “I think that’s a hint, Captain. Better treat your girl to a nice vacation after this is all over.”

“Oh, the list gets longer every day.” Dom counted off on his fingers. “Cruise ships, beaches and margaritas, hot tubs and wine—”

“With a sunset in Santorini,” Meredith said forcefully.

“With a sunset in Santorini,” Dom agreed.

Meredith smiled, apparently satisfied. “Point is, while we’re still on the job, I don’t want these FGL assholes enjoying the Greek vacation we deserve.”

“Hear, hear,” Miguel said.

There was only one Hunter who hadn’t joined the banter. His nose pointed up in the air, and his eyes narrowed. On those sleepless nights when Dom’s mind wandered as he walked through the Huntress’s passageways, running into this particular individual brought his reverie to an abrupt halt. Brendon O’Neil was a Hunter like no other on the team. He looked more like their mortal enemy than an ally, and it had taken weeks for Dom—and, he guessed, the rest of the crew—to see O’Neil as one of the good guys.

A mess of bony spikes protruded across O’Neil’s head, and his fingers ended in long claws that tapped his rifle. Underneath the black fatigues were bone plates that covered O’Neil’s sinewy form.

His nostrils flared, and he closed his eyes, deep in concentration.

O’Neil was an experiment, a test subject who had been forced to endure an agonizing and horrific procedure as a captive of the FGL. He had been turned into this half human, half monster—a Hybrid—thanks to the same perverse scientists that had brought the Oni Agent into this world. His anatomy had been adapted from the Skulls that now roamed this world—humans turned abominations by the Oni Agent—but his mind, unlike theirs, had remained intact.

“Sense anything?” Dom asked.

Hybrids like O’Neil also had the power to influence ordinary Skulls through a complex series of biochemical factors excreted through the pores in their armor plates. These adaptions also lent them the ability to read those same factors in the air excreted by other Hybrids, Skulls, and similar Oni Agent-produced creations.

O’Neil lowered his head. “Nothing yet. But we’re upwind of the island. Might be something out there I can’t sense yet.”

“Understood.” Dom shifted back toward the bow of their craft as it skirted over the rolling waters. A cold spray whipped across his face as the boat thrashed into a swell. He didn’t bother to wipe it away, enjoying the water droplets’ icy touch. It meant he was alive. There was no telling what would come next for the Hunters, but for this moment, they might as well enjoy themselves. Here, at least, the Skulls couldn’t reach them, and they couldn’t stop the FGL.

It was tempting to stay at sea forever. He could simply sail away with the Hunters and his family. They could live on the Huntress, scavenging the devastated coastal communities for food or fuel. But though that scenario had sparked in his thoughts, he never once let it take flame. Dom hadn’t been raised to flee in the face of a challenge. And the Oni Agent was the most significant challenge humanity had ever faced. He would be damned if he and his group of covert operatives abandoned their mission now.

After he and his crew had successfully stopped Mokri, an admiral from the Iranian Navy who had aligned himself with Spitkovsky, from launching a nuclear attack on the German pharmaceutical plant producing the cure for the Oni Agent, Dom and his crew had sifted through the data left behind on Mokri’s ships. Unfortunately, a mutiny led by a band of rebellious Hybrids had meant most of the good intel was destroyed.

But there was enough remaining for Dom to figure out where Mokri had been before his run-in with the Hunters. The admiral had somehow stolen a Visby-class corvette, the very same type of craft the Hunters called home. Dom had always wondered how Mokri had come into possession of the custom Swedish covert ship. Now he knew most of the story, and it had given them a lead to follow.

Apparently, Mokri and his band of Hybrids and Iranian special ops had snuck up on the covert ship via a much smaller custom stealth vessel of their own. The FGL had refitted a luxury yacht small enough to appear inconspicuous yet fast enough to intercept almost any naval vessel. With the date and location of the time Mokri took over the Karlstad recorded in the logs, the Hunters had been able to locate the abandoned superyacht beached off the coast of Normandy. Scouring the vessel revealed it had come from Ikaria, Greece.

With such tenuous evidence, General Kinsey had ordered Dom and the Hunters to find out what Mokri had been doing on Ikaria besides building yachts. Surveillance flyovers had yielded nothing so far, but Dom was determined to make sure that the FGL wasn’t using the Greek island for something worse.

The memories of the FGL unloading a barrel of airborne Oni Agent over his ship still burned in his memory. The Huntress had been spared a shipborne outbreak, thanks to their stock of the Oni Agent cure his medical team—not to mention Dom’s eldest daughter, Kara—had developed. The Phoenix Compound had saved their lives. But the rest of the world wasn’t so well equipped, and if Ikaria had any intel that would draw them closer to the FGL or the next phase of their plans, Dom wanted to know.

“Just throwing it out there, but Ikaria is named after Icarus, right?” Miguel asked.

“That’s right,” Glenn said, his voice coming out as a low rumble.

“There’s probably some kind of symbolism there,” Jenna said. “I just hope it’s not us flying too close to the sun.”

“Hey,” Miguel said, “at least we aren’t dumb enough to paste some wax and feathers to our backs and call it good.”

“Technically, Icarus didn’t build the wings,” Glenn said. “His father, Daedalus, did. Daedalus flew just fine and never drowned.”

“Then let’s be Daedalus today,” Jenna said.

“I mean, damn, that myth fits the FGL perfectly though,” Miguel said. “They’re riding high on their precious Oni Agent, and that’s going to be their downfall. We already got one guy who knows how to use their own weapons against them.” He used a thumb to indicate O’Neil. “Right, bro?”

“I’ll gladly see them all dead,” O’Neil replied.

“Biological weapons, Skulls, Hybrids,” Andris said. “It was not Daedalus’s invention that brought Icarus down. It was Icarus’s ego. And the sun, of course. A great big ball of fire in the sky.” Andris pressed his palms together then slowly spread them apart. “Boooom.”

“Thanks for the lesson,” Dom said with a wry chuckle. He eyed the village situated on the hillside they passed. A series of houses and domed churches bloomed from the side of the hill as naturally as if they had grown there. “We can’t let our egos get in our way. It’s about time to roll out. Hope for the best, expect the worst.”

Again, Dom brought his binos to his eyes. He surveyed the village with all its whitewashed houses and terraces. There were no Skulls lurking anywhere, as far as he could see. Nothing moved except for frayed curtains and deteriorating clothes hanging from lines between the buildings. He moved his gaze over the pier.

“Holy shit,” he said.

The docks were deserted. A few broken, half-sunk boats stuck up from the water like the skeletons of beached whales. A fishing village like this would normally host a score of boats, but Dom guessed that most had been taken out to sea as civilians searched for refuge after the island was overrun by Skulls or the FGL. But it wasn’t the sight of the almost-empty docks that had shocked him.

A single fast-attack craft was docked there. Two missile tubes stood atop the three-person cockpit, and torpedo tubes hung off the small vessel’s side. Along its hull was emblazoned the green, white, and red flag of Iran.

Definitely not a fishing boat.

“Looks like the FGL was here,” Meredith said.

“And might still be,” Dom added.

Meredith killed the engine, and the Zodiac coasted the rest of the way to shore. The vessel dug into the sandy beach, and Dom signaled the crew to disembark. They dragged the Zodiac under the veranda of one of the whitewashed buildings lining the shore. While the other Hunters formed a perimeter around the building, Dom studied the town.

The only intel Kinsey’s flyovers had yielded was that near the top of the mountain, there had been a major shift in one of the rock faces. A casual observer might dismiss the cavity formed in the side of the mountain as the result of a rockslide. But Dom wasn’t taking any chances. Not where the FGL was involved.

“Time to start climbing,” Dom whispered. “Miguel, you’re on point. Glenn, rearguard.”

“Aye, Chief,” Miguel said, starting up a set of stairs leading to an alley above them.

O’Neil followed, swiveling to his right to cover Miguel’s advance. He strode up the stairs after the Hunter. Then at the top, he froze. He craned his neck upward again. The winds shifted around them, stalling for a moment, and O’Neil nearly staggered backward.

“Are they here?” Dom asked.

Before O’Neil could answer, an ethereal howl broke over the island.

***

Frankfurt, Germany

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Dr. Lauren Winters stood before a long conference table in the sterile office of Mueller Pharmaceuticals. Navid Ghasemi, the former graduate student pressed into scientific service with the Hunters, sat next to her. The rest of the seats were filled with Mueller Pharmaceutical managers and scientists. The man leading the pharmaceutical operations, Felix Becker, watched Lauren with the same expression of encouragement he always wore, but Emma Fischer, managing production scientist, had her thin arms crossed over her chest, a look befitting a gargoyle on her face.

The thrum of helicopter blades beat the air outside, but if Lauren pretended she couldn’t hear them, she could almost believe she was at a normal R&D meeting at any ordinary Big Pharma corporation.

But the research report she was delivering demolished any notion that this was at all normal. She touched a button on the pointer she held in her right hand. The slide on the LED screen flipped to the next set of graphs.

God, it was strange to be so casually delivering a scientific presentation in a time when the rest of the world had gone to hell. Here, she had access to state-of-the-art technology—not to mention electricity and running water. She supposed there was a joke in there somewhere about German engineering, but her work distracted her too much to find it.

She used the pointer to indicate a bar graph. The bars rose sharply toward the right-hand side.

“This shows the increased cellular uptake of the Phoenix Compound with Dr. Ghasemi’s latest microparticle delivery system,” Lauren said.

Fischer leaned forward in her seat, pointing at the graphs. “This is a cell culture experiment, no?”

“That’s correct.”

“So it disregards the challenges of Phoenix Compound delivery past the blood-brain barrier.”

“No, not quite,” Lauren said. She opened her mouth to begin the explanation then stopped. She looked at Navid. The younger scientist needed a chance to prove himself, and this was his area of expertise. “Dr. Ghasemi, you want to take this?”

Navid’s face turned a slightly paler brown than usual, and Lauren noted a pearl of sweat sneaking down his scalp. “Uh, certainly, I can answer that.” He pushed his chair back, bumped a knee against the table, and then stood at the front of the room. He straightened the suit jacket Becker had let him borrow.

“This experiment was actually designed to simulate the blood-brain barrier,” Navid said. “We cultivated a series of cells that form the semipermeable blood barrier within a set of microfluidic chambers. That provided a pretty close biochemical simile to the blood-brain barrier, and even with those challenges, the new synthetic polymer-based microparticles nearly doubled the delivered dosage of Phoenix Compound to our Oni Agent-infected neurons.” He took a breath. “With the increased perfusion of the microparticle-encapsulated Compound, we can reduce dosages by over seventy-five percent while still achieving nearly one hundred percent effective cure rates.”

A grin split Becker’s face, and Lauren couldn’t help but mirror the man. Fischer’s gargoyle expression faltered, a sign Lauren knew meant the woman approved. But several of the suits at the opposite end of the table stared at Navid with furrowed brows. Had they not been satisfied with his answer? She thought her protégé had done a fine job. Navid’s microparticle solution was the best performing strategy Lauren had seen, even among the other scientists at Mueller.

Thomas Schuster, the CEO of the company, tugged on his gray beard and spoke with a heavy German accent. “I know that we are a pharmaceutical company, and many of us have scientific backgrounds. But the reality is that we spend all our time on business operations, and our knowledge of molecular biology is what you might call rusty. So, young Dr. Ghasemi, can you translate what you said into a language even my slow old brain can understand?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Navid said. “Basically, we showed that this delivery system works really well in a cell experiment, and now we can use half the Phoenix Compound to treat twice the patients.”

“Now you are speaking my language!” Schuster paused to laugh at his own joke. “Well, not quite, but you know what I mean, young man. Efficiency, effectiveness—that is what I like to hear.”

“Exactly,” Lauren said, taking over the presentation. “We’ll be able to save four-times the number of people than we projected, assuming the transportation logistics are in place.”

“You let me worry about that,” Schuster said.

Lauren beamed at Navid with a swell of pride. She wondered if this was what a proud professor felt like when one of her graduate students completed a project with fantastic results. She had to admit she liked it.

“I won’t bore you with too many more details about the quality-control tests,” Lauren said, “but rest assured every batch since the scare has turned out great. We’re moving ahead at a great pace.”

The “scare” was what they euphemistically called the night when everyone was ordered to evacuate the property. FGL had obtained nuclear-tipped missiles, and the Hunters had barely diverted the weapons in time to save the production plant and research facility.

“If the reports that the threat of an airborne Oni Agent being imminent are true,” Fischer said, “then a more effective Phoenix Compound is very good news indeed.” Then she sighed, putting on that stony face again. “However, even exceeding our initial projections by the rate you described, we still fall pitifully short. Nearly eighty percent of the estimated surviving human race will be left unvaccinated by the year’s end. I’m afraid we need a much more significant increase in dosing efficiency.”

Now Lauren scowled. She and Navid had improved the Phoenix Compound and studied the biochemicals Hybrids used to control Skulls, helping Mueller develop a new gas they called Pacifist Fog that put Skulls into a stupor. Now they were working with Becker to develop a novel bioweapon to target and eradicate the Skulls. They’d spent every waking hour in the laboratory. And when that hadn’t proved enough, they’d sacrificed their sleeping hours, too. Now Fischer wanted even more miracles.

“We’re doing what we can,” Lauren said. “But it’s nearly impossible to test further-reduced dosages.”

“Have you not already used the Phoenix Compound on your crewmates and others back in America?” Fischer asked. “Do you not have an understanding of the dosages?”

“That’s true, but we erred on the side of caution and administered doses far above minimum levels to prevent the Oni Agent from taking hold,” Lauren said. “We have to run clinical trials on humans to figure out what the actual minimum dosage is, and that requires more time.”

“Time is something that we do not have,” Fischer countered. “You will have to make do with your cell experiments. We will continue to use those data points to project performance. There will be no clinical trials.”

A fire burned in Lauren’s chest, but she bit back her outrage. “Without clinical trials, not only can we not predict the actual appropriate dosage, but we won’t be able to anticipate the potential side effects when delivered to a larger population size. We’ve never used the Phoenix Compound like this before.”

Becker waved Fischer off then spoke in a measured tone. “Dr. Winters, I understand your concern. But now, every day is a clinical trial. Every experimental dose we deliver to our armed forces, refugees suffering from the Oni Agent”—he placed a hand over his chest—“to ourselves... these are all useful data points. Unfortunately, we do not have time for robust clinical trials. The agencies and institutions that oversaw such trials are gone. Now we are doing, as you say, a trial by fire. This is how it must be.”

Even Schuster’s kind face fell at Becker’s statement. Lauren saw there would be no arguing with the Germans. They wanted results, and they wanted them yesterday.

Lauren took a deep breath. “Fine. We will see what we can do.”

Becker tapped his temple. “It is not that ‘we will see what we can do.’ We must certainly do this. Because if the human race is to survive, we have no other choice.”

-2-

All the world turned crimson. Nothing could compete with the red pangs of ravenous anger and aggression engineered into his very core. How he saw the world had drastically changed since Morocco. It stretched the limits of his control, but he would not give in.

The hot tang of rotting flesh drifted on the air, stinging his nostrils even if the other Hunters couldn’t smell it yet. A compulsive yearning to dig his claws into soft flesh and tear the glistening organs from their delicate, bony cages exploded through him. From somewhere on the island, he sensed the presence of the Oni Agent-riddled monsters that he was now more closely related to than the humans on his team. He could nearly smell their rancid breath and feel their anger tremble through him, as if they were speaking and his skeleton was their megaphone. His fingers trembled slightly, the only outward sign of these inner changes he would allow.

Brendon O’Neil took in another deep breath. He closed his eyes, pretending for the moment that he was only concentrating on the biochemical factors drifting on the wind, not that he was struggling to control the rabid beast that lived within him.

“They’re all around us,” he managed through gritted teeth. “Skulls everywhere. I can’t tell if they know we’re here, but they’re not happy about something.”

“Damn it,” Dom said. “Keep your eyes out for contacts. Priority is to avoid engagements—with the Skulls or FGL—for as long as possible.”

They continued up the winding stone stairs through the Greek village. Divots in the steps had been worn down by centuries of use. O’Neil kept his rifle tightly pressed to his shoulder, his index finger straight against his trigger guard. As the mournful wails of Skulls drifted around them, a nearly deafening call urged him to drop his weapon and join in the hunt.

But even if he did, the Skulls would recognize he was not like them. Unless he was actively trying to influence them, they could tell he did not belong to their numbers. They would try to shred him into scarlet confetti—just as he desperately wanted to do to them.

Dom held a hand up as they neared an alley. O’Neil froze. Near his feet were the picked-over remains of a donkey, now nothing but dried flesh and chewed bones. Nearby, the wind blew a shredded market basket against a stone wall. O’Neil listened for the telltale scratch of Skull claws on stone, but all he could hear was that basket bouncing against the wall, the breathing of Meredith and Andris near him, and the distant cries of the Skulls.

When Dom lowered his fist, they proceeded forward. This time they passed a three-story hotel with wide terraces overlooking the open front doors. One of the terraces sagged in the middle; its support posts were splintered like broken bones. A charred human body hung halfway off the balcony, skin flaking away with each caress of the sea-born breeze.

“This would not be my pick for a vacation spot,” Jenna muttered in a low voice.

The Hunters flitted from building to building in near silence as they approached the edge of the village. There, a dirt road lay between patches of dried grass. They all seemed to glide effortlessly over the rough, stone-strewn path, making no more noise than the gently rustling leaves.

Moving quietly was not such a simple task for O’Neil. His SEAL training meant he had the knowledge and skills. But moving without clunking his bony plates together or tapping his claws against his rifle was nearly impossible. He had vowed he wouldn’t let his abnormalities endanger his new teammates, though, and did his best to control even the smallest movements. He dashed over the road toward where Dom, Miguel, and Meredith were already positioned. Glenn and Jenna soon joined them. Only one more street to clear before they would be out of the village.

Something flickered to O’Neil’s left. He brought up his rifle and glassed the street. He saw a shredded shirt tossed about in the wind. Maybe that had been all it was.

But maybe not.

“Think I saw something,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.

“Where?” Dom asked.

O’Neil indicated the white-washed stone homes and restaurants down the cobblestone street. “Thought I saw a shadow pass over there.”

“Do you sense anything?”

O’Neil sniffed the air. “Still the same raw hatred that’s always there. Not any weaker, not any stronger.”

“Anybody hear anything?” Dom asked, searching around the darkness with his rifle.

“Nothing but those goddamn howls,” Miguel said. “Those assholes need to shut the hell up.”

“Worst concert I have ever been to,” Meredith said. “And I once made the mistake of seeing Nickelback live.”

O’Neil squinted into the darkness, his world still tinted by the red anger pouring through him, thanks to the Skulls.

Come on, he thought. Show yourself.

The Skulls didn’t usually make stealth attacks, but Dom had once told him about a Skull they’d seen back in Quantico. The beast had apparently learned that approaching a seagull quietly was more likely to score it fresh meat than running in screeching. Fortunately, the Hunters hadn’t run into too many Skulls showing signs of adaptive intelligence like that.

Then again, O’Neil figured luck was never exactly on their side.

“I think they’re out there,” he said. A sudden chill slithered down his spiky spine, as if he were a gladiator surrounded by hundreds of bloodthirsty spectators. “Yeah, they’re out there. All around us.”

“How close?” Glenn said. “Think they’ve seen us?”

“I don’t know,” O’Neil said. “But I swear to fucking God, they’re out there.”

Dom waited a few beats as the Hunters scoped their surroundings. Nothing attacked, but the howling still refused to die down.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Dom said. “Best thing we can do is take advantage of the dark.” He waved the Hunters forward.

Something resonated deep within O’Neil’s bones as he moved forward. He felt as if he was pushing through a pool of syrup. His body protested with every step toward the edge of town, as if that was exactly the wrong direction to be traveling.

Then the wind died, and so, too, did the howling. But the strange hold on O’Neil’s body never weakened.

A distinct gurgling sounded from one of the vacant storefronts to their right. From the darkness stumbled a creature with skinny limbs and a bloated belly. Half of its lower jaw had been dissolved away, and long rivulets of black liquid snaked over its chest, following the grooves that had been burned into the plates. Its claws hung limp by its sides, not nearly as sharp as a normal Skull’s. But they didn’t have to be. This monster’s most dangerous weapon wasn’t those talons.

“Drooler!” Miguel yelled, jumping away from the monster.

O’Neil sighted up the creature’s head and squeezed his trigger. The round slammed into the Drooler’s skull, blowing flesh and bone away in a mist of red. But the acid that boiled in the Drooler’s stomach had already been about to spray. A geyser of black ichor exploded from the nearly headless beast as its torso fell to the ground. The acid sprayed the stone walls and streets—along with Jenna and Glenn.

The duo dove away as droplets splashed across their fatigues. Thanks to the science team’s polymeric coatings, the fabric would protect Jenna and Glenn from the worst of the spray.

A new chorus of furious cries from the Skulls boiled through the streets. No longer were their voices distant, echoing from the mountaintops. One of the monsters leapt from a dark balcony. Its claws slammed against the road as it readied to pounce. Glenn hadn’t even had a chance to get back on his feet. The beefy Marine wouldn’t be able to dodge in time.

The beast reared back as it opened a mouth full of pointed teeth in a shriek that pummeled O’Neil’s eardrums. The noise swam through his bloodstream, turning the world around him even redder. He fought the strange sensations flowing through him and aimed at the monster. The reticle of his scope traced past the scything claws and overgrown ribcage, finding the center of mass between spikes that sprouted from every joint.

Another squeeze of the trigger, and armor-piercing rounds punched through the Skull’s chest. It wasn’t enough to take the monster down, but the barrage of bullets would hold the beast off for a few seconds.

Glenn recovered, pushing himself to his feet. “Thanks, brother!”

His words were quickly overwhelmed by the brash voices around them and the bark of gunfire. Skulls descended from rooftops, where they’d been hidden out of the Hunters’ sight lines, and raced out of houses. They wore rags, and bits of hair clung to their graying scalps. Horns pushed up around their brows, and their organic armor clacked as they sprinted.

Meredith and Dom fired side by side on a trio of Skulls lunging straight down the road. Miguel knocked one backward that had gotten too close, finishing it off with a three-round burst to its face. Glenn and Jenna leveled a squad of Skulls pouring out of a boutique hotel. Another pack of the monsters trampled the bodies, crunching the bones under their feet.

O’Neil covered Andris as they secured another corner of the block. His lungs heaved against his own overgrown ribs. The way they pressed against his insides made him feel as though he were nearly suffocating, but he wouldn’t let something as trifling as a little physical discomfort prevent him from keeping up with the other Hunters as they fought back the attack.

When the beasts got too close to shoot, the Hunters parried the attacks of the monsters with measured blows. To O’Neil, it seemed as if they were jiujitsu veterans, black belts every one of them, and the Skulls were nothing but day-one white belts. Between them, they had several lifetimes of experience fighting the skeletal monsters. The Skulls fell in waves. The Hunters knew exactly where to slash out with a knife or land a blow with the stocks of their rifles to send a Skull flat on its back.

Without the same level of experience, O’Neil didn’t have the means to protect himself against the monsters as well as the others. A trio of Skulls ran at him.

“Watch out!” Andris said, sending the first two skidding on their crooked spines with gunfire.

O’Neil tried to adjust his aim, but he didn’t bring his rifle around in time. The Skull slammed into his chest. Its claws slashed across his shoulders and arms as he shielded his face. They scraped against O’Neil’s own organic armor plates, sending shockwaves through his bones as if he’d hit a home run with an aluminum bat. The anger of the Skulls still poured through him, burning ever hotter as the relentless monster attacked him.

Now O’Neil let the anger loose. His vision tunneled, and his muscles pulled on his bones, strength drawing up from deep within his torso. The Skull flew backward as O’Neil rocketed up. A hollow clunk shook the night when the Skull’s temple slammed against a wall. O’Neil jumped the stunned beast, leading with his shoulder. He drove the Skull’s face into the wall until a sickening crunch signaled victory. Warm blood rushed over him from the monster’s broken head, and when O’Neil backed away, the creature slumped lifelessly to the ground.

His chest heaved. The tang of smoke and blood stoked the fires of his surging adrenaline. He looked at his next target: a Skull with a pair of shredded trousers and the build of a linebacker. The monster was closing in on Glenn. The Hunter didn’t even see it as he wrestled with two other Skulls.

O’Neil charged the linebacker. He was an inch over six feet and had weighed nearly two-ten before the FGL had turned him into a Hybrid. But the Skull was bigger. O’Neil might as well have been playing chicken with a rhino.

That wouldn’t stop him. The linebacker turned its attention from Glenn and snarled as it saw O’Neil. The monster raced to meet him head-on. Just as O’Neil could smell the creature’s rotten-egg breath, he dropped to the ground and slid across the cobblestone street, kicking up pebbles. He held out one clawed hand and wrapped it around the linebacker’s ankle. The sudden drag tripped the massive Skull, and it smashed forward, nearly cratering the road. O’Neil jumped on the beast’s back and sank his claws into the soft flesh between the linebacker’s shoulder plates and its neck. Hot blood sprayed against his face as he dug and dug and dug. The creature writhed beneath him, but already a shimmering pool of blood soaked the road.

The Skull grew weaker with every slash, until at last it let out a final death spasm and grew still.

Curses and the clang of metal against bone still rang out. The Hunters hadn’t retreated. They clung to their ground, and the flood of ambushing Skulls seemed to slow. Their bodies lay sprawled across the intersecting roads. Some hung out of broken windows; others slumped against walls. Many were missing body parts. All seemed covered in congealing blood.

Yet still the rage seethed through O’Neil. He desperately wanted to sink his claws into another Skull and tear its insides out. The mere thought of it made the rage stronger, hotter.

Part of him thought that the more they killed, the more this urge to commit hideous acts of violence would fade.

But it hadn’t.

It had only grown stronger.

“Something isn’t right,” O’Neil muttered.

“What’s that, bro?” Miguel asked, choking down gulps of air next to him. He raised his rifle to sight up another Skull arriving late to the fray.

“I’ve got—there’s this feeling,” O’Neil said, unsure how to explain it. “Like there are more Skulls around us. But we killed these bastards.”

He closed his mouth for a moment, tracing his fangs with his tongue as he thought.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit!

The Skulls had ambushed them. Almost as if they had planned it. But Skulls planning something like this? Not fucking likely.

Someone else had done the planning for them. Someone else had steered the Skulls into position before letting them loose.

And that someone else was pissed their attack hadn’t worked.

“We got Hybrids,” O’Neil said, lifting his chin into the air. “We’re surrounded.”

-3-

Houston, Texas

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Midshipman Rachel Kaufman had never been to Texas. Her idea of the state consisted mostly of cowboys, tumbleweeds, and guns. Lots of guns. But her mission through the ghost city that had been Houston dispelled a few of those stereotypes. They’d passed a number of restaurants that made her wish the city wasn’t run by Skulls. She’d seen Vietnamese places like Pho D’Lite Main and Les Givral’s Banh Mis. Tigi’s Ethiopian sat next to Royal Masala, which was a few blocks past Agora Coffeehouse. There was even an Italian place with a broken signboard still advertising all-you-can-eat gnocchi on Tuesdays.

While most of the windows had been shuttered or broken, she could still imagine the food they must have served. Her stomach rumbled.

“What I wouldn’t give to go on a food tour of Houston,” she said.

“Really?” Midshipman Rory Booker looked back at her.

They stood together in the lobby of Houston Methodist Hospital. A six-inch layer of brown water covered the floor. The overwhelming smell of mildew and rot lurked everywhere. Splotches of black mold climbed the couches and chairs near the central reception desk. A bouquet of deflated balloons hung from a paperweight at the desk, floating in the murky water. A stretcher was abandoned near the doors. On it lay the picked-over remains of what used to be a human. Now it looked like a bunch of chewed-up dog toys.

Not much sunlight penetrated the deeper recesses of the lobby. The wide windows that had once shed light into the space were now covered in a thick blanket of dirt.

They had come here in daylight once they’d confirmed the streets were mostly cleared. They’d had enough cover between stalled cars and overgrown landscaping to make it from their LZ to the hospital without having to deal with too many Skulls. The best thing about Houston being flooded was that Skulls were clumsy as shit and made a lot of noise in the water. Plus, they didn’t seem to like swimming all that much. They looked like hydrophobic cats trying to walk through a puddle, unsure what to do with their feet as they awkwardly hobbled around.

“How in the hell are you thinking about food in a place like this?” Terrence Connor asked as he scoped the darkened atrium. He stepped gingerly past a tangle of floating IV bags. His prosthetic legs gleamed in the meager rays of light.

Terrence was a Hunter. He should have been on the Huntress, and he let Rachel and Rory know that every chance he got. But when the FGL had attacked his ship, Terrence had nearly died in an explosion. His legs had been shredded beyond salvaging. They’d brought him Stateside because Lauren and her team didn’t have the capability to treat Terrence or fit him with prosthetics in the med bay.

Once Terrence had gone through enough rehab (and after frequently complaining that he had nothing to do but sit around Fort Detrick all day), Colonel Jacob Shepherd had given Terrence a new assignment. Shepherd had been assembling teams for high-risk missions throughout the country. These teams were composed of individuals who had had field experience dealing with Skulls and could handle the sensitive nature of the assignments Shepherd doled out.

Rachel and Rory had gladly jumped at the chance to support Shepherd, and that was how she had found herself teamed up with the former Hunter and Rory, her close friend and fellow midshipman, in a water-drenched hospital deep in Houston. The trio comprised Team Jaguar and specialized in retrieving high-value targets—or HVTs.

“Seriously, Rachel,” Rory continued. “You’re always thinking about food, aren’t you?”

“Can’t help it,” Rachel said. “After the slop we eat between running errands like this... seeing all those restaurants gets me going.”

“You like rotten meat and floodwater?” Terrence asked. “Because I have a feeling that’s all they’re serving now.”

“A girl can dream, can’t she?” Rachel asked.

“Not when we’re on the job,” Terrence said. He brought his rifle up again as they prowled through the lobby and into a hallway. They flicked on their tactical lights. “We’re in nightmare territory now. Time to focus.”

They plunged further into the darkness near the elevators. A cloud of flies buzzed around the silver doors. They drifted on the unmistakable stench of death. But there were no bloated bodies floating in the water or carcasses left to rot here.

“Those flies...” Rory said.

The stench grew stronger every step they took toward the elevators.

Terrence scrunched his nose. “Shit. I heard about this kind of thing. Power goes out. People get stuck in the elevator.”

“Damn,” Rachel said. They pushed past the elevators, leaving them closed. She wondered whether it was worse to die a slow agonizing death or to have your guts ripped out by a Skull.

A door past the elevators was marked with an emergency exit sign. This was supposed to lead to the stairwell that would take them all the way up to the research floor. There, they hoped not only to recover as many digital patient records and data on the Oni Agent epidemic as they could but also to find Dr. Ronald Bennet. The man had holed up in this tower with his team, working to understand the Oni Agent during its initial spread. As the situation around them deteriorated, the team made their refuge in the hospital. They had been in contact with various government organizations and emergency response teams until their power and communications finally went down.

Colonel Shepherd hadn’t heard anything from the Houston team for several months, but they still held out hope he was alive—or at least that he’d assembled some useful data for them.

“I hope we actually find Bennet,” Rachel said. Too many of their missions had ended with their high-value target already dead.

“I have a feeling this time is going to be different,” Terrence said.

He stepped up to the door near the elevator. With his sleeve, he wiped away some of the grime and pressed his ear to the metal surface.

Rachel watched, holding her breath. She expected to hear a Skull thrash from the inside. Or maybe a Goliath would charge through it, throwing the door and Terrence back in a messy heap. Her finger stayed close to her trigger guard, and she nudged the barrel of her rifle up slightly, ready to swing it up if her fears came true.

But Terrence merely shook his head. “Don’t hear anything. Time to go up. You two ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel and Rory responded in unison.

Rachel positioned herself behind Terrence, and Rory pressed himself against the wall near the door. Terrence lowered his rifle and gripped the handle. He counted down, mouthing the numbers silently and signaling them on his fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

Terrence pulled back hard on the door handle, and Rachel brought her rifle up, ready for any Skulls that dared lunge out of the shadows.

But the door didn’t budge. A metallic sound shook out of the doorframe.

“What in the hell...?” Terrence drew the handle back again. It twisted as though it was unlocked, but something was holding it shut from the other side. With his boot against the wall, he threw his body into it. Metal groaned but did not give.

Shaking his head, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s not opening.”

“Son of a bitch,” Rachel said, swatting at the cloud of flies circling them. “Well, we aren’t using the elevators to get up there.”

Terrence rotated his wrist and tapped on the screen of his smartwatch. “We’ve got more stairs near the service elevator and another set in the south wing of the hospital.” He pinched his fingers together on the screen, zooming in on the blueprints of the hospital. “I don’t have a damn clue which is going to be easier for us. But my gut says to take the ones near the service elevator. Idea being that fewer people would have used those stairs since they’re harder to reach.”

Rachel nodded. She hoped that meant far fewer Skulls, too.

“Either of you two got better ideas?” Terrence asked. He looked at Rory first. Then his eyes lingered on Rachel’s face.

“Seriously, midshipman? You don’t have any shit for me now?”

Rachel shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Well, that’s a first,” he said. “Rachel, you take point. Rory, after me.” He pointed to a room on his watch. “Past that lab is the corridor to the service elevator. Understood?”

Rachel led them back into the waterlogged lobby. Chunks of splintered wood floated lazily before them. Mold spiderwebbed the walls. A thought fleeted through her mind that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be breathing this stuff.

If she was going to die in Houston, at least she should have gotten to enjoy a bowl of hot pho first.

They made it to the lab without incident. Rachel paused near the entrance. The door was already open, and she noted the sign marked Phlebotomy Lab. She looked back at Terrence with a raised brow. This did not look like the type of door that was supposed to be open. Not with a bunch of blood samples and processing equipment. At some point, someone had forced their way inside.

The lab shouldn’t be any more dangerous than any other part of the hospital, but for some reason, it made Rachel nervous. Maybe it was because this place was supposed to be filled with blood. Who knew what kind of diseases were in all those rotten blood samples?

She nearly shivered at the thought, and then Terrence finally waved them through.

As slowly as she could, Rachel advanced, trying desperately not to splash her boots in the water. Her toes squished against the inside of her socks. An overwhelming odor of rotten meat hung in the air.

Probably from all those goddamned samples, Rachel thought as the beam from her tactical light flashed over a half-open industrial refrigerator. She brought the beam around, and it reflected off gleaming heaps of equipment strewn about the tables. A pile of lab coats that must’ve once been white now grew a thick layer of fungus in the muddy water.

Rory and Terrence filled in the space behind her. Their beams joined hers. Shards of broken glass from a pile of busted beakers shone like diamonds protruding from dirt. A handful of smaller plastic and glass tubes lay in disarray on another table.

Rachel couldn’t tell whether someone had left a mess behind when the world turned to shit—or if these things had been more recently disturbed.

A crash of broken glass caused her to swivel to her right. Her beam followed her aim. A rat bounded across the lab table, squeaking when she caught it in her light. It shimmied into a chewed-up hole in a cabinet and disappeared.

But then another glass broke. The trio searched the darkness, their meager lights doing little to push back the shadows. Rachel’s heart caught in her throat. The water rippled where her light hit it. Something else was in here with them.

And then she saw it. All spikes and talons, shoulder blades tearing through the remnants of a hospital gown and scaly lips peeled back to reveal a set of half-broken fangs. A long tangle of brown hair draped over its face, parted just enough to reveal that a chunk of its jaw and throat were missing, and the skin off half one arm was completely gone, nothing but jagged spurs of bone and pulsating muscle remained. This Skull had once been a person who, by the looks of it, had survived with barely enough life left to become a Skull herself.

One of the Skull’s legs twisted inward, and it stumbled, saliva drooling from its open mouth. The beast couldn’t shriek or scream because of the damage to its vocal cords.

But the four Skulls following it could.

***

Kara Holland desperately wanted to adjust the comm link in her ear. She still hadn’t found a comfortable way to wear it. Either the thing felt as though it were about to fall out, or else she had to jam it in so tightly that it hurt.

Ah, well, she’d figure it out eventually. It was the same device all the Hunters wore in the field, so it couldn’t be that bad. And besides, it was the only way she could hear Chief Engineer Alden Jorgenson over the cacophony of the Huntress’s engine room. The diesel generators thrummed loudly enough to hurt her eardrums, but the ear muffs she wore prevented hearing damage. Unfortunately, they also prevented her from adjusting the comm link, so she’d just have to live with it.

The rumble of the fuel pumps and cylinder heads resonated against the bulkhead. The flywheel whirred, driving the shaft in a blur. So many huge components moved in a perfect symphony around her, each transferring overwhelming amounts of power to keep the ship going.

She turned away from the engine shaft and made her way back to the fuel pumps. Alden had given her a notebook to start recording their daily maintenance routines. He had left her to check their logbooks and examine the equipment for any potential maintenance concerns, like a loose valve or a gasket that looked ready to blow. Last time she walked through the engine room with Alden, he had pointed out issues so rapidly that Kara had hardly been able to keep up. He was like an eagle swooping down on a hapless rabbit. She had accused him of examining the engine room before they’d gone down there, but he’d assured her he hadn’t cheated. He simply had eyes trained by decades of experience. Someday, he’d promised, she would notice things the same way.

But not today. She probed one of the fuel pumps, trying to see past the gleaming metal. Was the pressure gauge here supposed to wiggle like that? Was it normal for specks of gritty oil to come away when she brushed her finger along its side?

Damn, she had a lot to learn.

Sweat dripped down the back of her neck as she made the rounds in the room, taking almost two hours to complete a painstaking lap. Even then, doubts lingered. Maybe Alden had planted something that she should’ve caught—something that would be absolutely catastrophic—and he’d left it there to test her.

Standing at the entrance to the engine room, she took a final look around with narrowed eyes. She hadn’t reported anything unusual in her notebook. None of the normal engine-room components looked out of place or damaged. Of course, there was still the patchwork scrap-metal bulkhead across the ceiling and one side of the room, thanks to the FGL’s attack on the Huntress. That always looked out of place, but it would be there until they could stop at a harbor to properly repair it.

She sighed. Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe there really wasn’t anything to find.

But something nagged at the back of her mind, telling her she’d missed a crucial clue. Her eyes traced the checklist once more, going over each item. No, no, she’d checked everything on that list. Three times, in fact.

Her gaze traveled over the engine room. Then she got it.

She laughed at herself as she strode back down beside the fuel pumps near the shaft. A grease-covered rag lay over the railing there. She picked it up and marched out of the room, slipping it into the back pocket of her coveralls.

Kara found Alden in the control room, his head buried in one of the displays. She slipped off her noise-protection earmuffs and took out her comm link, massaging her ear in relief.

“So?” he asked, without looking up.

“Nothing wrong with anything on the list.” Kara held out the checkboard.

Alden turned to look at her then, his face set in the neutral, blank look he so often wore. He walked over to her with a slight limp, still recovering from the injuries he’d suffered during the FGL attack. He took the checkboard then scanned it. His finger traced every line item.

When he finished, he tossed the clipboard onto a table. It clunked against the keyboard.

“You believe nothing is wrong, then?” Alden asked.

“Nothing to note on the checklist,” Kara said. She took the rag from her back pocket and held it out. “Because I didn’t see a checkbox for ‘neglected rag dangling precariously over the engine shaft.’”

A grin broke out over Alden’s face. “Very good.” He took the old rag from her and used it to wipe some of the grease from his blackened fingernails. “What’s today’s lesson?”

“Not everything’s going to be spelled out for me. Got to think outside the box.”

“Yes, exactly,” Alden said. “I like my engine room nice and neat. Now, a loose rag like that might not pose any serious threat on its own. But say we’re working on a fuel pump and I lose it in there. Going to at least cause a serious mess. What’s worse is if I leave out little screws or bolts with no homes. Imagine we accidentally knock something like that where it shouldn’t be.”

“Going to cause a serious mess,” Kara said, parroting the phrase that she’d noticed was a favorite of Alden’s.

“That’s right. Very, very serious mess. And finding the source of that mess is going to be a mess, and fixing that mess is going to be a mess. I do not like messes.” Alden placed his comm link into his ear and secured the noise-protection ear muffs around them. “Let’s get back in there. We have work to do.”

Kara put her comm link and ear muffs back into place. They went back into the hatch, and Kara prepared to jump back into the bowels of the engine room. But before she did, Meredith’s voice crackled in her ear.

“You got one behind you!”

O’Neil’s raspy reply followed. “Drooler on the right. Those Hybrids are getting closer.”

Kara froze on the steps down into the engine room. Ice filled her veins. She had accidentally switched channels on her comm link, and now she was dialed into the public combat comms channel.

Alden had paused. He was mouthing words at her, but she couldn’t hear him. She chinned the mic like he’d taught her and switched the channels until his voice sparked over it.

“—hear me?”

“Uh, yes, yeah I can hear you,” Kara said. Images of her father and Meredith in the midst of battle swam through her head. How many Skulls were out there? And Hybrids? She’d seen them fight with Skulls before; she’d even watched some of their skirmishes from video feeds. But no matter how many times the Hunters came back alive, she dreaded the inevitable day that changed. “I, uh, was on the wrong channel.”

“Public combat,” Alden said, clearly reading her expression. “Not an easy mistake to make on a day like today.”

Alden showed her some adjustments he was making on one of the diesel generators’ vibration-isolation platforms. He explained that this was crucial to the Huntress’s stealth capabilities and rattled off the relevant scientific principles behind the noise-reduction technology. She was sure he said something about the ranges at which other ships could detect theirs if they repaired this right. But most of his words went right through the comm link without sticking.

“Kara?” Alden asked. “You got a look on your face like your mind is still somewhere else.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I was... distracted.”

She hated admitting it. But she wouldn’t lie to him, either.

“I can tell,” Alden said. There was a moment of concern in his expression, but it quickly returned to stone. “You’re worried about the others, but they are taking care of themselves out there. Their job is important.” He indicated the vibration-isolation platform. “And so is ours. There is always something to be distracted by. In this engine room, I demand perfection. It is not because I am a perfectionist. It is because good enough isn’t good enough. This engine keeps our ship alive. Our stealth capabilities keep us away from our enemy’s prying eyes.”

He stepped away from the diesel generator and stood tall in front of Kara. “No matter what is going on out there, people’s lives depend on our work here.”

Kara nodded once and dragged her attention back to Alden’s lesson. But a tiny piece of her mind—and a big piece of her heart—was still with the Hunters in the field.

-4-

Death and the scent of gunfire hung in the air. Clouds of smoke fogged the battlefield, and shapes flitted through the gray. The Hybrids were closing in, and judging by the clatter of bone plates and claws against stone, so were more Skulls. Meredith’s chest heaved. She wiped the sticky blood of a Skull off her cheek. Acid still bubbled from the decapitated Drooler near Dom. Beside him, Miguel and O’Neil had already formed up into Alpha squad.

Andris, Jenna, and Glenn took up positions near Meredith. She pressed herself low behind a white car splattered with blood and grime, all four of its tires punctured and flat.

“We can hold them off,” Meredith said. “You get to the target, and we’ll meet you there.”

Dom hesitated for a split second, and Meredith knew it was because he wanted to keep her safe. Back when they’d been running ops together in the CIA—back when they’d merely been friends and partners—he wouldn’t have paused. But now things were different. It was harder to make the tough calls.

“Be careful,” he said at last. “If it gets too hot, call us, and we’ll be back.”

“Do not worry about us, Captain,” Andris said. “We are very capable.”

Dom nodded, giving Meredith one last look before they retreated into the town, following the shadows to head north and toward their target in the mountains. And just as Dom worried for her, she prayed he would be fine with only Miguel and O’Neil at his back. A three-man team was certainly the best way to sneak onto the FGL base undetected. But O’Neil worried her. He was... unreliable. Even if he didn’t pass out from trying to control other Skulls, the three of them against a horde of monsters led by the Hybrids in unfamiliar territory did not inspire confidence in Meredith.

“Let’s kick these bastards’ asses fast,” she said to Bravo.

Glenn harrumphed in agreement, cradling his rifle against his thick chest.

“I would like nothing better,” Andris said.

Meredith listened as the sounds of bone clattering against bone echoed against the stone walls of the village buildings. “We need to provide a distraction. If we can draw them off without a long firefight, all the better. We just need to give Alpha time.”

“I am happy to make fireworks,” Andris said. “That is always distracting.”

“Go for it. We’ve got maybe a minute or two before they’re here. Set up a couple tripwires, and let’s move.”

Andris set to work as the others watched his back. Clouds rolled back over the moon and stars, casting the village in ghoulish darkness. A howl erupted from somewhere down the street, and Meredith lifted her rifle, aiming at the center mass of a Skull nearly two hundred meters from their position.

“Hurry, Andris,” she said. “We’ve got company.”

Behind the ambling Skull, another group of the monsters advanced with stumbling steps. Two of them sported legs bent and broken, bones growing like roots around their knees.

“Contacts at our nine o’clock,” Jenna said. “On the roof.”

“Skulls?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Meredith twisted her aim up. Sure enough, the monstrosities atop the roof stood like humans. One of them carried a rifle and swung its barrel around over the road. They appeared to be searching for a sign of the Hunters. Meredith vowed not to give it to them.

“We move now,” she whispered into the comm link then signaled Jenna to take point.

They worked their way up the road toward a hotel overlooking the village. The broken windows would give them a wide view over the village and the shore. Once the Hybrids and their horde started looking for the Hunters, this would serve as a perfect outpost to monitor their movement and ensure they didn’t follow Alpha’s trail.

“Jenna, secure the courtyard,” Meredith said. “Glenn, watch her back. Andris, cover the road.”

So far, so good, Meredith thought as she took her first step onto the dusty pathway leading into the hotel’s small lobby. A few patio chairs and tables lay on their sides. Jenna was already posted in the lobby with Glenn surveying the dark space. There, vases lay broken next to dead plants, and the few paintings on the walls had been marred by claw marks and splatters of blood. A skeletal leg stretched from the tiny reception desk.

“Clear,” Glenn said.

Meredith rushed by a pool filled with what looked like scummy pond water and mud. She dove into the darkness of the hotel lobby with Andris arriving a second after her.

“Let’s take a top-floor room,” Meredith said. “Andris, ready for sniping. The moment the Hybrids look like they’re on our trail or Dom’s, they are your priority. Cut off the head of this snake. The rest of us will hold off the horde.”

They ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. A single penthouse suite provided sweeping views of Ikaria. It must have been lovely once, but Meredith’s stomach turned over when they entered the room. The odor of decaying flesh slammed into her. She swiveled her aim around, searching for a Skull lumbering out of the darkness, but her heart settled slightly when she saw the source of the stench.

A pair of bodies lay against one wall, a single shotgun still locked in the arms of one. Their flesh had dissolved and blackened, making them nearly unrecognizable. But Meredith could guess at the desperate, sad story that had unfolded here as this couple struggled to cling to survival in a world falling apart around them. In the end, they had given up. She supposed they had seen no light at the end of their tunnel when everyone and everything they had known had turned to darkness.

She didn’t condemn their choice. The alternative—becoming a Skull or at least becoming food for one—was a fate no one deserved. But giving up was not an option for her.

They filtered past the lush king-sized bed and an overturned sofa toward the wide veranda. Filth covered the once-inviting jacuzzi, the water long since evaporated. Long benches piled with mildewed cushions provided the Hunters with cover.

“Positions, now,” Meredith said. They spread out over the veranda, shouldering their rifles and surveying the village below.

Skulls now swarmed the streets, searching the storefronts and homes like hounds on a blood trail. The Hybrids crept around the village’s roofs, monitoring and herding the Skulls.

“Alpha, sitrep?” Meredith tried over the comms.

“No contacts,” Dom whispered. “We’re within a kilometer of the target site. No evidence we’ve been spotted.”

“Good.” Meredith watched a few of the Skulls approach the intersection where they’d set up the tripwires. A Drooler staggered no more than a dozen feet away from the first explosive charge. “So far, we haven’t been spotted... but they’re about to find out we moved.”

Hybrids bounded over the roofs toward the spot where the Hunters had been. Now she could see that Bravo team had been lucky to escape the tightening noose. The Hybrids seemed to be confident that the Hunters hadn’t escaped their perimeter, and the way they had their rifles drawn, they were itching for a battle.

“Here we go,” Jenna said with a grin.

The Drooler dragged itself into the intersection. Hybrids swarmed around it, sniffing the air, searching for prey. A few more Hybrids closed in on the roofs, looking for a target.

Then the scene erupted in a splash of violent orange fire. Several of the Hybrids were tossed off the roofs, their limbs bending at unnatural angles. Blood geysered from Skulls caught by shrapnel from the blast, and other beasts disappeared entirely as the fire and smoke swallowed them. A few moments later, a second explosive went off, throwing stone and rock from the road into a pack of Skulls. Another Hybrid disappeared in the blast.

A few of the surviving Hybrids dropped to all fours, searching the roads for the Hunters. Meredith couldn’t help her grim satisfaction. These bastards were looking in all the wrong places. And as the Hybrids searched for them and the fires spread to the nearby houses, an unseen gas tank or propane canister went up in a column of flame.

“Andris, now,” Meredith said.

The glow of the burning village silhouetted Andris as he lined up a shot. One of the Hybrids crumpled. Meredith held her hand up, telling the others to hold their fire for now as Andris went to work. Once they all opened up, their position would definitely be compromised.

In their confusion, the Hybrids had lost control of the Skulls. The beasts screamed and ran in disarray. Another Hybrid’s head exploded in a red mist, and its body rolled off a roof. The Skulls trampled it, mashing the half human into a pulpy mess.

“Good lord,” Glenn said.

As Andris knocked out Hybrid after Hybrid, it appeared they’d truly roused the hornet’s nest. At least a hundred Skulls raced about the streets. A score of Hybrids jumped from roof to roof—seeing the fall of their comrades had inspired them to find better cover. Some of them fired blindly at spots around Ikaria, and gunshots rang against the mountainside.

“Bravo, do you need assistance?” Dom asked.

“Negative, Alpha,” Meredith replied. “We are in control.”

Andris’s rifle continued to rattle off shot after shot. Now the screams of distant Skulls riled up by the sounds of violence shook down the mountainside.

“There are even more out there?” Jenna asked. She pressed her rifle to her shoulder, her finger resting against the trigger guard.

Meredith could see she was getting anxious. The longer they left the Skulls alone, the stronger the horde would grow. But if they started firing too soon, the Hybrids would spot them. At least with Andris’s sporadic sniping, they stood a better chance of remaining unseen longer.

Another Hybrid went down, toppling over the side of a balcony. When Andris knocked another Hybrid off its perch, the remaining ten or so took to the streets. They disappeared into buildings along the road, and thirty seconds went by without giving Andris a viable target.

“Should I start taking out the Skulls?” Andris asked.

“No,” Meredith said.

That would be a waste of ammunition, and as the Hybrids watched the pattern of Skulls fall, they’d be even better suited to identify where their enemy’s sniper fire was coming from.

Another thirty seconds passed.

“Can’t see any of them,” Andris said. “I do not know if they’re moving between the buildings or remaining still. No way to tell.”

Suddenly, nearly half the swarm of Skulls went still. They stood in the streets, saliva dripping from their fangs, swaying slightly. Then they took off at a sprint, following the path Alpha had taken up the mountainside.

A bolt of adrenaline shot through Meredith. Shit, shit, shit. She had to stop them.

“Open fire,” Meredith said.

At once, Glenn’s and Jenna’s rifles thundered, and Meredith joined them, sending a fusillade of gunfire into the Skulls’ flanks. The beasts stumbled and fell under the onslaught of armor-piercing rounds. They never tried to deviate from the path, however, their minds thoroughly controlled by the Hybrids’ directions.

“Alpha, you’ve got Skulls headed your direction,” Meredith said. “We’re trying to cut them off.”

A few of the Skulls disappeared out of their line of sight. Meredith’s heartbeat pulsed in her ears as she counted others escaping the massacre. Every Skull they let go was another that would slam into Alpha.

Gunfire exploded from the village below. Rounds sparked against the stonework around the balcony, chips of broken stone bursting around them. Muzzle fire flashed like concentrated lightning from the windows.

The Hybrids had spotted them now.

“Priority Hybrids!” Meredith yelled.

As much as she wanted to prevent more Skulls from overrunning Alpha, the Hybrids posed the greatest danger. Raw intellect won against animalistic fury any day. She sent a burst of fire into one of the windows where she’d spotted a shooter. A few seconds passed, and gunfire exploded back in response from another window in the same house.

While some of the Skulls still traveled north into the mountains, others split off toward the hotel.

“Glenn,” Meredith said, “hold those bastards off.”

Dirt and rock burst up around the Skulls racing down the road. The Hunters were quickly losing their advantage. More rounds flew at them from other houses and smaller buildings; the Hybrids spread around the village quickly. One of them careened from a house, sprinting up the mountainside to flank the hotel.

“Andris!” Meredith yelled as it ran out of range.

“Got it,” Andris said, swiveling to aim at the Hybrid.

Andris’s rifle cracked, and a moment later the Hybrid face-planted in the rock and brush. Momentum carried it a meter farther until gravity tugged it back down the mountainside, a blanket of loose gravel bouncing around it.

“Can’t hold these Skulls back much longer!” Glenn said.

Chaos reigned across the village. Skulls flooded the roads to the hotel. Soon they would reach the walls and begin scaling them. The Hybrids, too, would have the advantage of the flow of bodies to hide their advance. Once they surrounded the hotel, there would be nowhere for Bravo to escape. Either they held out here, or they retreated now.

“Grenades out!” Meredith said.

The others loaded and fired the FN40 grenade launchers mounted under their SCAR-Hs’ barrels. The hearty whoomph of the launchers preceded a series of blasts that scattered Skull body parts. Before their enemy could recover, another round of grenades slowed the advance of the Skulls.

They might have a chance at holding their position.

But then something hurtled toward the rooftop terrace.

“Grenade!” Glenn yelled. He threw himself in front of Jenna, shielding her from the blast.

There wasn’t enough time to react. Meredith could only watch in horror. But when the grenade went off, only tendrils of smoke snaked out of it, slowly at first then accelerating until the veranda was choked in gray fog.

“Oh, shit,” Jenna said. “Smoke grenade. They’re going—”

Her words were interrupted by the clatter of claws outside the penthouse suite. Something heavy slammed into the door, and the wood frame split.

A terrible inhuman scream sounded from the smoke behind Bravo team.

Skulls had already climbed up the other side of the building, and Bravo was surrounded. Meredith immediately swiveled to fire on them. They appeared like spiked shadows in the smoke. Two went down, but the others scattered, charging for the Hunters. One met Glenn with flashing claws, and the big Hunter struck back, using his rifle to batter the beast. Andris dropped his own rifle on its sling and whipped out a knife, stabbing the blade deep into a Skull’s open, chomping maw. Jenna turned on her heels. Her shots rattled off in three staccato bursts, taking down two of the monsters as more trickled over the roof.

The door to the penthouse exploded open, releasing another wave of Skulls.

Where had these bastards come from? There hadn’t been nearly this number making for the hotel.

Then realization set in. Meredith had assumed the Skulls had been running up the mountain after Dom and Alpha. She hadn’t counted on them turning back to launch a surprise attack.

As the Skulls barreled into the hotel room and launched themselves off the roof, the gunfire from the Hybrids intensified, cracking against the suite’s walls. Then three of the Hybrids appeared on the roof, wielding rifles, barely visible as the smoke swirled around them.

“Andris,” Meredith called out, straining to be heard over the chaos. “Time for some more fireworks.”

-5-

The echoes of gunfire and grenade blasts carried over the mountainside. Dom winced at the sounds of battle. Meredith had insisted Alpha continue, and she hadn’t called for backup. But maybe he should push back Alpha’s incursion into the suspected FGL base. Maybe he should launch a counterattack against the Skull and Hybrids.

Maybe he should turn back and rescue the woman he loved.

But no. He had to trust Meredith. She wouldn’t stretch Bravo past their limits, and she knew when to call for help.

Still, every distant flash of gunfire tugged at his concentration. He had to continue up the mountainside with O’Neil and Miguel, but it felt as if his boots had turned to lead. They passed rows of neglected olive trees and solitary cottages scattered around the dusty mountainside. With only half a kilometer to go until they reached the suspected FGL base, he had yet to see anything unusual. If it weren’t for the defense the Hybrids had organized in the village below, he would’ve already been convinced Ikaria was a bust.

His boots crunched over the rocks and dried grass as they reached the cusp of the crater on the side of the mountain. O’Neil and Miguel surveyed the landscape.

“No contacts,” Miguel said.

“They’re all still below us,” O’Neil said. “Nothing up here.”

Yet, Dom thought.

A cubical structure no more than fifteen feet high and wide protruded from the middle of the crater. The massive doors gave it the appearance of being an entrance into a much larger facility, and the structure’s bare concrete walls made it look as though it had been constructed hastily.

“That’s it,” Dom said. “Miguel, get us in.”

Miguel rushed down the slope toward the door. Once there, he unlatched a panel on his prosthetic arm and pulled out a set of tools. “Whoa, the electronic security lock is busted.” He indicated a keypad that had been pried off the wall. “Somebody already broke in here.”

Dom joined Miguel, with O’Neil standing off to the side to guard them both.

“Who would have broken in here?” Dom asked. “And why wouldn’t we have known about it?”

Of course neither O’Neil or Miguel had answers for him. Kinsey wouldn’t have sent him in here blind if another team had already tried to infiltrate the base. Or would he? Truthfully, he couldn’t trust the old general, and their working relationship hung on the tenuous fact that Kinsey was their best and virtually only connection to American military leadership.

But there was the entire rest of the world to consider. Maybe a fringe military group from Syria or Turkey had come to the Greek isle. Hell, there might’ve been an operation out of Asia or Africa that had been attempted here.

Whoever had barged into this place before the Hunters had failed. Otherwise the Hybrids wouldn’t still be protecting it.

The lock clicked. “We’re in,” Miguel said.

Dom gestured for him to open the metal door. The door swung in gently as Miguel prevented it from slamming against the concrete wall inside. A short concrete tunnel appeared before them. Buzzing lights cast an eerie glow from the ceiling. Flies buzzed everywhere. Dirt and trash lined the passage. All three doorways at the end of the short tunnel lay torn open.

Dom tugged the entry door closed behind them then shoved a rock into the locking mechanism in case they needed a fast exit. Their bootsteps left imprints in the dirt as they crept toward the end of the tunnel. Like so many dens of Skull activity, the place reeked like a house whose owners hoarded stray animals and rotten meat.

Miguel glanced back at Dom as if to ask which door they would take first. They had no intel on the facility, no way of knowing where the doors led. The best way to ensure a successful mission was to do a methodical sweep.

Another boom sounded in the distance. The facility shivered, and dust drifted from the ceiling.

Yes, they had to be methodical—but they also had to hurry.

Dom signaled at the door on their left. Miguel slipped in first, followed by O’Neil. They entered a wide room lined with tables and chairs. On one end was a series of bunks and an impromptu mess hall with gas burners and a stainless steel sink, all covered in a layer of filth. Moldy piles of fruit and bits of animal bones protruded from the refuse covering the cooking appliances and counter. Huge ventilation shafts opened over the space, but they must have been closed, trapping the fetid, stagnant air inside.

But the rotten food wasn’t the source of the stench that turned Dom’s stomach.

Hanging from the rafters were nearly a dozen bodies. Their skin had been flayed, and a few had been eviscerated, bloated organs gleaming in the stark fluorescent light. White maggots squirmed in the slimy flesh, and dried blood covered the floor beneath each of the bodies.

“Fuck,” Miguel said.

Even O’Neil seemed ready to retch.

Dom swallowed hard to push down the nausea threatening to sabotage his composure. His mind told him to look away, but he studied the bodies instead. “These haven’t been down here for more than two, three weeks.”

O’Neil looked at him, uncertainty in his eyes. “You sure?”

“Judging by the flesh decay and the maggots,” Dom said, “that’s about right.”

“But why?” Miguel surveyed the room and then pointed to the bunks. “Look at those nasty-ass beds, Chief.”

“I’m looking,” Dom said. “What is it?”

“Dust and filth covers everything down here... but not those beds. Sheets and shit are filthy, but they aren’t covered in dust. They’ve been used. Recently.”

O’Neil’s eyes darted from the beds to the bodies. “What the fu...?”

His words trailed off. Dom didn’t blame him. Something didn’t add up down here. Had the Hybrids dragged a bunch of survivors into the FGL base and flayed them alive? The mere thought made his muscles tremble. He wanted desperately to be back down there with Meredith and Bravo. Putting bullets into those Hybrids’ heads wouldn’t be enough.

“Chief,” Miguel said, “think these guys were Iranians like Mokri?”

Dom glanced at where Miguel was pointing. At one corner of the room, a heap of bloodied fatigues lay in a pile. Several of them sported patches in the distinctive green, white, and red of the Iranian flag. Miguel prodded them with his gun barrel. Roaches fled the pile of clothes when he disturbed their nest. Sure enough, several of the fatigues had Iranian flags emblazoned on their shoulders.

“Thought they were buddies with Spitkovsky,” O’Neil muttered.

“They don’t look like friends anymore,” Dom said. His thoughts turned to the mutiny they’d witnessed under Admiral Mokri. The Russian Hybrids had rebelled against the Iranian admiral and tried to take over a massive nuclear-weapon-capable frigate. “Seems like Mokri wasn’t the only one struggling to keep the Hybrids in line.”

They searched the rest of the room but found only more rotting food and a few animal carcasses, blood still wet and coagulating on the floor.

“The Hybrids are filthy fuckers,” Miguel said. “This shit wouldn’t fly on the Huntress.”

Dom signaled them back to the passage. Flies circled his head as they prepared to enter the next door. He couldn’t shake the image of those bodies hanging from the rafters. They had been his enemy, no doubt. But he found it hard to comprehend the Hybrids’ cruelty.

Then again, the FGL had launched the Oni Agent on billions of people. There was no limit to the cruelty of men like Spitkovsky and those who followed him.

Just as Dom signaled for Miguel to lead the investigation into the next room, he heard a faint sound. He held up a clenched fist, and Miguel instantly froze.

O’Neil glanced at Dom, lifting his rifle closer to his spiked shoulder. With a finger, Dom indicated his ear and then pointed up. He could’ve sworn that there was some kind of scratching overhead. Maybe the Hybrids had returned. But as they listened, there was no other noise.

Dom signaled for them to keep their eyes open for contacts, and they crept into the next massive underground room. Lights hung from the ceiling like glowing spiders. Computer monitors shone around the room, and a series of tables sat next to all manner of machining equipment from lathes to welding torches. The place reminded Dom of some cavernous version of the workshop aboard the Huntress.

He strode toward one of the central computers. The machine was on, and he plugged in one of the secure-access uplinks Chao Li and Samantha Hamlin, the Huntress’s tech specialists, had designed for missions just like this.

“Huntress, I’ve got uplinks in one,” Dom said. “Advise.”

“Signal is weak,” Chao said.

Dom had expected that. They were in an underground concrete bunker, after all. “Data transfer still workable?”

“Slow but workable,” Chao responded. “Honestly, at this rate, it might be faster for you to manually transfer data to hard storage and bring it back with you. We’ll do what we can from our end, but better safe than sorry unless you guys want to sit there for a few hours.”

“That’s a hard negative,” Dom said.

He started exploring the files on the computer. One of the first items of interest were plans dedicated to the construction of a stealth vessel. It seemed to be the same one Mokri had used to pirate the Karlstad. At least they were on the right trail. He transferred all the files to the data drive on the uplink. These were good; they confirmed Dom’s suspicions that this was indeed the FGL base responsible for sending Mokri on his way.

But these weren’t the forward-looking plans or intel he needed to see what the FGL was going to do next.

“Captain, I’m sensing Hybrids.” O’Neil narrowed his eyes. “Can’t tell if it’s drifting up here from the battlefield or if it’s closer.”

Dom nodded. Gunfire still burst in the distance, along with the occasional shriek of a Skull. But he heard nothing to indicate the Hybrids had returned.

“Let me know if something changes,” Dom said, turning back to the computer.

He started dumping more files into the uplink. Then he stumbled on another set of manufacturing instructions. These looked like drum-shaped objects with some kind of dual-chambered inner container. The prototype images were familiar, and he racked his mind, thinking of where he had seen them. As the files began downloading to the uplink’s drive, it hit him.

“Huntress, I think I just found the plans to the airborne Oni Agent delivery system. Looks just like the barrel they tried to drop on the Huntress outside Morocco.”

“Copy, Captain,” Chao replied.

He continued delving through the computer drives and intranet folders, hoping he’d siphon out something else useful. Anything that would tell them what the FGL was planning to do—or at least where the Hunters could go next to find out.

“Captain,” O’Neil said in a rasping whisper. “Something’s changed.”

Dom spun, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He raised his rifle and stared out the open door of the workshop, waiting for a Hybrid to charge.

But nothing barreled past the door.

Instead, it came from above.

***

O’Neil spun at the sound of metal crashing against concrete. A Hybrid fell from one of the ventilation shafts in a flurry of slashing claws and scraping bone. He threw himself at Dom before any of them could get a shot off.

The Hybrid yelled something in Russian and raked the air with his claws. Dom ducked under the blows and swept a leg out to trip the Hybrid. Instead, the Hybrid stomped on Dom’s ankle, holding him in place, and rolled to the ground, carrying Dom with him in a submission chokehold. Dom countered, pushing out of his grip and sending his boots into the Hybrid’s chest, all while blood wept from the fresh scratches on his neck. When he kicked the Hybrid back a few feet, he let loose a spray of gunfire.

Fragments of bone and flesh flew from the exit wounds as the Hybrid stuttered backward and fell against one of the lathes. Another four Hybrids dropped down through the wide shaft. They hit the concrete floor in a clatter of talons and bony plates. They spread out, charging Miguel, O’Neil, and Dom.

O’Neil fired at the Hybrid running to meet him, but the Russian ducked. Bullets slammed into computer monitors and ricocheted off the concrete walls, leaving black marks and pits where they hit. The half man, half monster jumped over a table, claws outstretched. O’Neil’s world went red once again. Hot anger seethed through O’Neil, and he had no time to determine whether it was his own or the Hybrids’. He didn’t care. The raw adrenaline and fury flowing through him now would serve a single purpose: to kill the bastards that had ambushed them.

Dropping his rifle to his side, O’Neil braced to grapple the Hybrid.

He grabbed the Hybrid’s outstretched wrists and used the bastard’s own momentum against him, flinging the Russian against the wall. The Hybrid’s head smacked against the concrete. Three of its horns broke off, and its skull cracked.

Lurching forward, the Hybrid recovered clumsily and threw itself at O’Neil again. This time, O’Neil ran to meet it. He reached out with his own claws, grasping for the soft flesh under the other Hybrid’s bony mask. Hot blood ran over his hands, and the Hybrid flailed against O’Neil like a fish caught on a hook. O’Neil dug his claws deeper. He shoved his opponent against the wall then slashed at the Hybrid’s abdomen. Claws scraped against bone until he found another soft spot between the armor plates.

The Hybrid let out a howl of agony, blood bubbling in his mouth. His eyes rolled back, and O’Neil dropped him.

“Asshole,” O’Neil muttered, slinging his rifle back up to his shoulder.

Miguel was battering the Hybrid attacking him, slicing out with the knife hidden in his prosthetic. Dom parried attack after attack from the fourth Hybrid. Another lay at his feet, dead.

More Hybrids jumped down through the shaft. These appeared more cautious. They dove behind the rows of workbenches, knocking over a few to use as cover. They began firing on the Hunters even as two of their comrades were in close combat with Miguel and Dom. Bullets rang out in the small space, cracking through computer monitors and smashing into concrete. Splinters flew from one of the spikes along O’Neil’s shoulder.

That was too damn close, he thought. He ducked, firing back.

Dom used his own attacker as a meat shield to absorb the gunfire from the new Hybrids. He discarded the corpse and caught the Hybrid still engaged with Miguel in the base of the neck with his knife. Then Dom tossed over another workbench, using it to protect himself and Miguel from the attackers.

Another trio of Hybrids dropped in.

O’Neil saw they would quickly be overwhelmed by the onslaught of gunfire. With the Russians entrenched in their positions, the Hunters didn’t have any easy, clean shots.

Something else tugged at the back of O’Neil’s mind. The tendrils of animalistic desperation snagged his mind, tangling his rational thoughts in a storm of hunger. He wanted to rush out of his position and dip his claws into flesh again. In his head, the call to battle rang as loud as any Skull’s shriek. He fought the urge to throw himself into the open as a bullet sponge.

That’s not your idea, he told himself. Block the bastards out.

Then another sound grabbed his attention. A slight hissing whispered between the gunfire and curses. He searched for the source and saw one of the acetylene welding canisters had been punctured, pouring the colorless gas into the room.

“Captain,” O’Neil said.

He gestured toward the gas canister. There was no telling how much time they had before an errant spark sent the place erupting into flames.

Dom pointed to the exit. They dove under the sheets of gunfire and raced out of the room. Mere seconds after, they were followed by the growling boom of an explosion. Tongues of flame rolled from the room. The blast sent chunks of burning plastic and pieces of the workshop out with it. The heat sweltered over O’Neil as the concussive force shoved him backward into the passage, and his head knocked into a concrete wall.

The Hybrids’ grip on his psyche loosened as screams of agony erupted from the fiery workshop.

The entrance at the other end of the passage kicked inward, followed by a volley of rounds slamming into the concrete. The Hybrids outside the bunker concentrated gunfire through the door. Trying to escape that way would be an immediate death trap.

“Shit,” Dom said then gestured to the third room they hadn’t yet explored.

Beyond the door was a huge space filled with ventilation ducts and catwalks surrounding huge drumlike vessels and more manufacturing equipment. Stacks of devices lay in the corner, just like the design plans Dom had pulled up on the computer before.

The Oni Agent would be airborne... and most of the world’s survivors wouldn’t have access to the cure.

The sounds of Hybrids rushing down the passage chased them into the warehouse. Steel barrels lined the catwalks, giving Alpha something sturdier than benches to use as cover.

“Up there!” Dom said.

He and Miguel took a ladder up to the catwalk. O’Neil bounded up the side of one of the larger steel vats, sinking his claws into the latticework of pipes, and swung himself up to join them. They lay in wait as the first wave of Hybrids rushed into the space. Before the Hybrids could so much as get a shot off, Dom signaled O’Neil and Miguel to open fire.

The first rank of Hybrids went down in a wave. Those that had escaped rushed to find shooting positions. Their rounds clanged off a steel drum O’Neil hid behind. He used their height advantage to sight down one of the Hybrids crouched next to a short conveyor belt. A squeeze of the trigger sent rounds smashing against the belt and across the Hybrid’s torso. One round cut into the Hybrid’s neck, and the Russian fell back, clutching at his throat as blood streamed between his clawed fingers.

The last few Hybrids were no match for the Hunters’ superior position and patience. They went down in bony heaps. Each one that died sent a wave of relief through O’Neil as their grasp on his mind weakened. Soon he would be free of their attempts to influence him.

Even as the last Hybrid fell, something strong flared in his mind, and he ground his teeth together to prevent himself from screaming out like an enraged beast. The feeling passed, but O’Neil could tell something wasn’t right. The cacophony of howls and scraping claws echoing through the passage outside the manufacturing chamber affirmed his fears.

“Shit,” Miguel said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

O’Neil knew he was right. In their death, the Hybrids must’ve called the nearby Skulls to this place. And now the monsters flooded the entry into the facility. The first few Skulls charged into the room, saliva roping from their fangs as they searched the room for fresh prey. Their search ended with rounds lancing through their skeletal plates, but dozens more soon replaced them.

They were trapped—and an entire army of bloodthirsty Skulls was headed their way.

-6-

Lauren bent over the microscope, gazing through the eyepiece at the world contained in the sample. Several spindly neurons stretched over the plastic dish. She had labeled them with fluorescent markers, so when she flipped the microscope’s filter, they glowed green. Another flip revealed the microparticles—even smaller than the cells—flowing past the neurons with their scarlet fluorescent tags. They looked like taillights whooshing by on a highway at midnight.

Leaning back from the microscope, she turned another dial that transferred the image to a computer screen. She rotated the fine focus to make the image appear sharper, then she overlaid both channels from the fluorescent filters in a single picture that showed the Phoenix Compound-containing microparticles and the neurons.

“Looking great,” Navid said. “And we’re one step closer to getting out of this sauna.”

The small space had quickly grown warm with both of them working side by side. Unfortunately, a dark room was a necessity for good fluorescent imaging on a scope like this, and the only room available had been this one, which was practically a closet.

Lauren sighed. She wanted to rub her eyes, but taking off her nitrile gloves and safety goggles here wasn’t exactly up to code.

“Another experiment done.” She gestured to the microfluidic device on the microscope’s stage. “And time to start another as the computer does its thing.”

Navid groaned as he stood then stretched his arms. In the blue glow of the computer screen, the bags under his eyes looked especially heavy. There was a bleariness to his gaze that she knew wasn’t just an artifact of the poor lighting.

“You want to get some coffee?” she asked.

A slight smile crossed his face. “God, do I ever.” His smile faded. “I’m not being facetious when I say I think I need an IV drip of caffeine, though. I really don’t think one cup is enough to help me at this point.”

“I understand the feeling.”

Lauren opened the door to reveal the bright lights of the main section of the R&D lab. She blinked, and Navid shielded his eyes as they exited.

“Christ, was it always this bright, or do they turn it up when we’re in there?” he asked.

They walked past the rows of lab tables where other scientists toiled next to buzzing DNA-reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction devices, thermoanalysis equipment, chromatography machines, and chemical fume hoods full of glassware with all manners of liquid chemicals. She felt a twinge of guilt at leaving all the other researchers, even momentarily.

This place housed tens of millions of dollars of the top-of-the-line scientific equipment. It was a veritable heaven for any serious scientist.

So why did it so often feel like hell to Lauren?

Before she and Navid reached the door, it opened. A familiar face with an almost comical grin appeared.

“Just the two doctors I was hoping to see.” Felix Becker strode toward them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Navid pointed to the door. “We were just about to grab a coffee. Mind if we—”

“We can have one in my office,” Becker said.

Uh-oh, Lauren thought. Whenever Becker wanted to have an office chat, it meant they were going to talk about something serious. Usually, someone came out of that conversation unhappy. More often than not, it was them.

Navid must have been thinking the same thing. He gave Lauren an exasperated look behind Becker’s back. They trudged along in relative silence. Becker attempted to fill the quiet with bouts of small talk. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to chat about during the apocalypse. No questions about families—that was usually a depressing topic. Weekends didn’t exist anymore, so no one asked how those were. Hobbies? Did trying to survive in a Skull-filled world count?

At last, Becker welcomed them into his minimalist office and beckoned for them to sit across from him at the sleek metal-and-glass desk. Icy air swirled around them, a welcome contrast to the stuffy closet. He had told them before he preferred the cold because it helped keep him awake. Like everyone else, he stood at the precipice of exhaustion as they struggled to meet a demand for the Phoenix Compound that appeared insatiable.

While Lauren and Navid took their seats, he went to another corner of his office. He retrieved a French press full of coffee and placed it on his desk. Steam rose from its spout, and the aroma alone made Lauren feel more alert. Becker grabbed three cups and poured coffee for each of them.

“Help yourself if you should need more,” he said.

“You were ready for us,” Lauren said, noting the pre-brewed coffee.

Becker took a long sip of the coffee. “Burns the tongue just enough to wake me up.” Then he set the cup down and rubbed his palms together. “Now, let us talk.”

Navid leaned back in his chair as if bracing for an incoming tornado. “Is this about the manufacturing meeting?”

Becker drummed his fingers along his desk. “That is what it should be about, but no.”

“You do realize there isn’t a hell of a lot we can do to improve the delivery system for the Phoenix Compound,” Lauren said. “Everything we’ve tried so far is only incremental. It’s not going to quadruple the effectiveness. This is a production problem, not a basic science problem anymore.”

Now Becker waved his hand. “I agree. Fischer wanted me to drill you two on new ideas and bring another R&D team into the fold, but I told her I would not do that.”

A cool feeling of relief spread through Lauren. She couldn’t handle much more, if she was being honest. After so many sleep-deprived hours trying to eke out such minor improvements to the Phoenix Compound’s effectiveness, her brain felt as if every last decent idea had been wrung out of it.

But Becker wasn’t one to turn down research work for his team. “What are you up to?” she asked.

Becker laughed. “Ah, you see right through me.” He folded his hands in his lap. “We haven’t discussed our side project in quite some time. Fischer has been so focused on the production of the Phoenix Compound, she has left it to me.”

“The biological weapon to counter the Skulls,” Navid said. A furrow creased his brow. “You might not have been thinking about it, but we have.”

“Exactly what I wanted to hear,” Becker said. “Tell me, what do you have in mind?”

Navid and Lauren had been working in their spare time between manufacturing projects to brainstorm potential weapons. That spare time amounted to breaks between experiments or while data was being obtained and analyzed by one of the machines in their lab.

“We do have something in the works,” Lauren said.

“Oh?” Becker took another sip of coffee.

Navid took over at a gesture from Lauren. “We are going to adapt the original chelating agent that Dr. Winters and her team developed at the beginning of the outbreak,” he said, his words suddenly excited and energetic. Maybe he didn’t need coffee so long as he got to talk science. “Basically, this agent chelates the calcium in the bony growths from the Oni Agent, effectively dissolving them.”

“And it will also weaken, if not destroy, the bones of healthy people, will it not?” Becker asked.

Navid nodded. “That’s right. That’s why the Hunters had to use the chelating agent sparingly. Even when they were careful with it, there were a few side effects that were almost deadly.”

Lauren thought of how Glenn had experienced drastically weakened bones. They had been nearly as brittle as an osteoporotic old lady’s. He’d been fortunate she caught it and prevented something drastic from happening. Unfortunately, Kara hadn’t been so lucky. When she’d been given a dose to stop the spread of the nanobacteria within the Oni Agent, she’d nearly died of internal bleeding.

Those were exactly the type of side effects they wanted to enhance now.

“We want Skulls to experience those side effects at catastrophic levels.” Lauren counted off on her fingers. “We’ll degrade their bones to the point they’ll shatter and fall apart like dried mud. They’ll suffer massive internal hemorrhaging that will drastically weaken them, if not kill them outright. We’re also talking liver failure and increased chances of heart failure.”

“This is all very brutal,” Becker said. “I like it. But we discussed using a weapon like this over a wide area.”

“You mean we’ll be using it indiscriminately wherever there are Skulls,” Lauren said. All her career she had fought biological weapons. She had never designed any, and this project made her wonder if she was doing the right thing. If maybe her time would be better spent taking care of patients again and focusing solely on the Phoenix Compound. This was the part she definitely didn’t like. “We need to use this weapon even if normal humans are around.”

“Yes,” Becker said. “How will we compensate for that?”

“That’s the hard part,” Navid said. Now he didn’t look so energetic. Lauren didn’t blame him. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, thanks to Dr. Winter’s previous work, but this part is untested. We’re planning on using a biomolecule—an antibody—that attaches to a specific target protein. A protein is a—”

“I am aware of what a protein is,” Becker said.

“Of course, sorry,” Navid said. “We’re going to attach this protein to a type of microparticle.” He tapped the side of his coffee cup. “It’s something my old PhD advisor had us working on. The microparticle is porous. Like a sponge. Inside all the holes in that sponge, we put the chelating agent. It’s pretty much locked into the pores because it’s so big compared to those holes. But the microparticles are designed so that when the antibody finds its target, the particles expand, stretching the holes and releasing the chelating agent.”

“Basically, we’ve got a biomolecular drone that will only release its payload when it finds its target,” Lauren said.

“And that target is?” Becker asked.

“Thankfully, I had the full workup on the nanobacteria from my time on the Huntress,” Lauren said. “We’ve identified a protein on the cell wall of the nanobacteria that is unique to the Oni Agent. The antibody-microparticle complex will only activate in the presence of the Oni Agent and, as a result, only affect people that are infected with the Agent.”

“I see a flaw in your plan,” Becker said. “We’ve already discussed the Phoenix Compound shortage. Most of the world is currently unvaccinated against the Oni Agent. That means we may have people that get infected with the Oni Agent but could be cured with treatment. They aren’t fully Skulls yet, but the Oni Agent is still present in their bloodstream. Will these people be affected by your proposed weapon?”

“They could be,” Lauren said. “But the chelating agent is only deadly in high doses. Remember, we used it to slow an Oni Agent infection before we had the Phoenix Compound. If someone is only recently infected, they shouldn’t have enough nanobacteria in them to activate a fatal dose of the antibody-microparticle complex.”

“We obviously need to run a lot of tests on this before we can be certain about anything. But from our initial cell work, it looks promising,” Navid said.

Becker’s coffee cup froze before it touched his lips. “Cell work?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “We’ve already started a few laboratory experiments, and they have shown favorable results, both at targeting infected tissues and at avoiding harming noninfected tissues.”

“Excellent,” Becker said.

She didn’t feel excellent about it. In fact, the more she thought about the unintended side effects of releasing a weapon like this, the stronger her guts twisted into a painful knot. She wished there was a way she could walk away from all of this.

But if she did, someone else would just develop another weapon. At least if she were on the case, she and Navid could design it right. They could make sure it didn’t result in mass murder.

Unintended mass murder, she corrected herself.

“Do you have a name for this weapon?” Becker asked.

Lauren shook her head. “Marketing isn’t my department.”

Becker glanced up at the ceiling as if in thought. Then he smiled almost devilishly. “In Exodus, Moses warned the Pharaoh about the plagues his people would suffer if he did not free the Israelites. The last plague, the tenth, was the death of all the firstborns. Only those that painted lamb’s blood above their doors, the Israelites, were spared. So, too, we shall spare those still innocent. Only the Skulls will be struck down. We will call this weapon the Tenth Plague. Its name will be a reminder both of our ambitions and the danger with which we play.”

-7-

Smoke grenades continued to pour out their gray fog over the hotel’s roof. Skulls stalked through the murk alongside the Hybrids advancing on Meredith, Jenna, and Glenn. The trio crouched behind the trashed jacuzzi. The smoke scratched at Meredith’s eyes, and sweat plastered her shirt against her back. She maintained her aim on the Hybrids but didn’t want to blow their cover.

That was Andris’s job.

Andris slid back behind the Jacuzzi with them and gave Meredith a thumbs-up. “All set.”

“Then let’s move,” Meredith said. She gestured over the side of the hotel.

Below them were the balconies of the lower hotel rooms. A few Skulls had already started scaling up the side of the hotel, digging their claws into the stone. One of the beasts climbed directly under Meredith. It looked up at her, nostrils flaring and bloodshot eyes widening. Bleeding, cracked lips parted to reveal a set of broken teeth and a brown, wriggling tongue.

The beast was about to howl. Meredith wouldn’t let it. She dropped down onto the Skull. The Skull slashed at her for a second before they landed on the balcony directly under it. Her boot smashed into the Skull’s face, and she rolled off it, slamming against the handrail.

She pushed up to a crouch as the devastated Skull twitched and bled out next to her. The other Hunters fell from their handholds, meeting Skulls halfway down and landing in their own balconies. Andris jabbed a knife through the eye of one, and Glenn smashed another’s head into the stone. The Skull Jenna had taken down started to stand even though one of its legs had been broken at the ankle. Jenna kicked the monster in the side of its head. It fell and crushed one of the white plastic chairs on the balcony.

Seeming half-dazed, the Skull lurched up and swung out lazily at Jenna. She kicked it again, connecting with its chest. The blow sent the Skull teetering over the balcony. It cartwheeled toward the ground, claws flailing all the way until its neck snapped against another balcony.

“Keep going!” Meredith called over the comms.

More Skulls climbed up the hotel. Above them, terse Russian curses rang out into the night. Now was about the time Meredith expected the Hybrids to discover their prey had eluded them.

Her boots smashed into the next balcony. A shudder jolted up her legs.

Goddamn, she was killing her knees. Nearby, Jenna gracefully took her fall and rolled, springing up like a gymnast.

I’m getting way too old for this shit, Meredith thought, trying to ignore the pain in her joints.

Old or not, the Skulls didn’t care. One scaling the wall near her turned its head, noticing her as she lowered herself to the last balcony. It lunged.

Meredith dropped. The Skull sailed over her head, and she fell, her hands pinwheeling. She hadn’t been ready for the descent this time. Her hip hit the handrail of the balcony below. Fiery pain shot up her side. For a brief moment, she grasped at the rail, but gravity and pain were stronger. She fell the rest of the way to the dusty, stone-covered pathway in the courtyard. Her ankle twisted when she hit the ground.

Agony seared her leg, and she fought to keep herself from yelling out. Skulls growled all around the courtyard. The nearest beast stalked toward her, pushing through the smoke. It wore the remnants of a lifejacket, large thorns of bone tearing through the foam. In another situation, Meredith might have thought the sight comical. But her goddamn ankle burned with a ferocity that made her think she would never find anything funny again.

A bum ankle and a courtyard full of ravenous monsters were not a good combination. She reached toward her thigh and then pulled out her knife, limping forward toward the advancing Skull. Claws sliced through the air. They left contrails through the smoke. She ducked under those deadly organic weapons and struck back with a heaving blow under the Skull’s chin.

The monster struggled against the blade, and Meredith lifted her hurt ankle, kicking the Skull backward. While the beast crashed to the ground, blood spraying from a torn artery, Meredith’s world flashed white with pain.

Another Skull came at her. She flicked the blood off her knife as the beast lumbered forward. This time she twisted out of the way when it pounced, and she caught the back of the creature’s head with a hard elbow. The Skull sprawled forward, its claws digging gouges into the ground. She avoided the spikes jutting from its spine and put a knee into its back, holding it down. Then, with both hands, she slammed her knife hard into the back of the creature’s neck, severing its spinal cord.

More Skulls lurched toward her, trickling from the open gate or over the courtyard’s wall. The knife in her hand felt as flimsy as cardboard, and she stuffed it back into its sheath. Her rifle kicked back into her shoulder when she fired at the wave of Skulls, sending another spike of agony through her ankle. Standing seemed to make it worse, so she knelt, refusing to back down from the monsters.

Three successive smacks of boots against stone sounded behind her.

“Shit, you okay?” Jenna asked Meredith between shots.

“Doesn’t matter,” Meredith said through gritted teeth. “We need to get the hell out of here!”

Andris offered his shoulder to Meredith. As much as she wanted to keep fighting off the Skulls—as much as she didn’t want to take his help—she had no choice. She let her rifle fall against her side, hanging by its sling, and wrapped an arm around Andris’s shoulder. Jenna took point, and Glenn rearguard.

They punched a hole through the crowd of Skulls, smoke still thick enough in the air to provide them cover.

But not enough cover.

Russian voices yelled from atop the hotel’s roof. Bullets slammed into the ground as the Hunters ran for the gate.

“Are we clear?” Meredith asked Andris.

Skulls sprinted through the streets. The smoke here was thinner, and the monsters that the Hybrids had called in now easily spotted the Hunters. A half dozen of them started at a sprint from near a burned-out restaurant. Jenna and Glenn sent a wave of lead into their ranks, and the creatures’ bodies tumbled over each other.

Andris looked back at the hotel. “We may be far enough, but I am not sure.”

They pressed themselves against the wall of an apartment building, advancing out of sight of the hotel. Bullets still peppered the streets. It wouldn’t take long for the Hybrids to abandon their perch and start leaping around the rooftops to ambush the Hunters again.

“Do it,” Meredith said.

Andris let go of his rifle and pulled out a cylindrical remote detonator. Fifty, sixty, maybe more Skulls began pouring down from the north, heading toward the Hunters. They screamed and screeched, their voices echoing against the mountainside. Pale moonlight washed over the abominations. Some were still stained with the dried blood of their prey. Huge plates of bone grew from several, making them appear like grotesque wrecking balls. Others were skinny and shriveled as Droolers, no doubt from several weeks or months of starvation.

All shared an unnatural hatred that practically radiated from their bony bodies. Like demons spawned in the darkest bowels of hell, they rushed toward the Hunters, desperate to separate the humans’ souls from their bodies.

Andris depressed the detonator.

A second passed. Glenn and Jenna fired on the Skulls to the south. A few of the monsters climbed back out of the courtyard, and the horde was now squarely in front of the hotel.

Then a violent blast of light exploded from the hotel. The street was illuminated as if the sun were erupting from the Earth. The sound and concussive blast came next, barreling into the street with all the unbridled power of a Titan pummeling concrete. Skulls were lifted off their feet, thrown into the houses and restaurants near them. Blood and bone smeared the walls. A cloud of brown dust rolled over them, and stone ripped from the hotel came with it, pounding the street and village buildings.

The wash of heat and sound barreled over Meredith, knocking her and Andris over. Jenna and Glenn fell flat against the road, Jenna’s hair whipping out from beneath her helmet. The Skulls that had been coming from the south no longer shrieked, and those coming in from the north had been tossed about just as the Hunters had.

A loud rumble followed a moment after the fire settled. That rumble crescendoed into a violent roar as the hotel came down.

Meredith pushed herself up, ears ringing, and Andris followed, immediately offering her his shoulder again. Her ankle still burned, and she accepted his help without hesitation this time. While her rifle hung by her side, she pulled out her handgun. Jenna and Glenn stood, and they weaved down the street, firing at the Skulls before the monsters recovered.

A Drooler lurched out of an alley. Meredith raised her pistol and fired at its head, taking satisfaction as it fell back backward, its potbelly sticking up from its starved body.

Not today, you freak, she thought.

They pushed on, away from the destruction of the village. Fire flickered behind them and cast a yellow-and-orange glow over the nearby windows. Black smoke plumed into the night to drown the stars and moon. Those Skulls that hadn’t been disoriented by the blast came at the Hunters, but their numbers were few. Coming one at a time, no longer under the control of the Hybrids that Meredith hoped had perished in the collapsing hotel, the Skulls weren’t as much of a threat as before.

“The distraction seems to have worked,” Andris said with a wry grin, soot covering his face.

“Sometimes a big boom is better than a little stealth,” Meredith agreed.

-8-

Dom fired at a Skull climbing a ladder to the catwalk. Fresh red holes punctuated its ribcage, and it tumbled away. Another jumped up the rungs, eager to take the other’s place. The bark of gunfire resonated in the wide manufacturing room, ringing off the metal barrels and workbenches. Miguel and O’Neil’s labored breaths cut through the comm link into Dom’s ears. They were having as difficult a time as he was holding back the swarm of Skulls.

Near the edge of the room, a Skull caught his eye. The deliberateness and care with which the Skull prowled among the others immediately set off alarms in his head. There was a goddamn Hybrid down there. It ducked down behind some cover just as Dom raised the alarm.

“Hybrid spotted!” Dom said. “At my four o’clock, behind the bench with the red tool chest.”

Dom did his best to keep an eye on the bastard, but there was little he could do while also trying to prevent the Skulls from overwhelming their position. Somewhere below the scrape of claws and scratch of bone against metal, he heard a gurgling. His heart raced as he looked for the source of the sound. A blast of acid now would be a disaster.

“Drooler!” Miguel said, spotting it first.

A blast of gunfire lanced from Miguel’s rifle into a crowd of Skulls. Seconds passed before a blossom of brown acid exploded from within the horde. The liquid sizzled on the former Drooler’s comrades, burning their armor. Several of the Skulls shrieked as their flesh and bones dissolved, but their cries were quickly silenced as they were trampled by their brethren.

The Drooler had turned into a momentary blessing, leveling enough Skulls to put a dent in the swarm. But it still wasn’t enough.

Dom felt the grenades rattling on his tac vest. Throwing an incendiary or explosive grenade in here might be suicide. The place was just big enough that they might be saved from the blast, but if a fire caught too fast or if the blast hit some barrel full of explosive chemicals and set off a chain reaction...

No, a standard grenade wouldn’t help.

But one of the Pacifist Fog grenades that Lauren and the Germans had developed might do the trick.

This would be the first time they used one in battle. Dom hadn’t wanted to rely on something that might be a dud. Now they had nothing to lose. If it worked, they might yet live. If it didn’t, they were dead anyway.

He unclipped the experimental grenade from his vest, pulled the pin, and launched it into the crowd below. A red gas hissed out of it and spiraled around the Skulls. They ignored the weapon. A few clambered up a huge steel tank near the catwalk, using the pipes along its side like ladder rungs. The gas reached them, too, but they continued, unperturbed by the chemicals.

“Shit, Chief,” Miguel said. “What if that gas doesn’t work?”

“Then we kill them the old-fashioned way,” Dom said.

He continued to fire into the Skulls’ ranks. More poured in from the hallway, running into the gaseous cloud. Lauren had warned them the effects of the Pacifist grenade weren’t immediate. But it looked to Dom like there were no effects all.

This concoction was supposed to make the Skulls relax to the point that they essentially froze, but these Skulls raged every bit as hard as before. The only thing that calmed these skeletal monsters was death.

“O’Neil,” Dom called, “you feeling anything?”

Hybrids weren’t supposed to be affected by the Pacifist chemicals. At least, not any more than Hybrids influenced one another. Besides, O’Neil had always promised he could overcome anything the enemy Hybrids threw at him.

“Nothing yet,” O’Neil said. “Hybrids are still holding strong.”

Skulls growled and roared as they scrambled up the tanks and manufacturing equipment, throwing themselves at the catwalk.

“Sure doesn’t look like it’s doing shit,” Miguel said. He rammed the hidden blade in his prosthetic through the roof of the mouth of a Skull that had gotten too close. The monster fell back over the side of the catwalk.

A shriek drilled through Dom’s eardrums.

He spun to see a Skull barreling straight at him. Dom fired, but the Skull jumped, launching himself over Dom’s aim and slamming into his chest. The impact threw Dom on his back, and the Skull dove in, teeth bared. Hot saliva sprayed over his face. A gut-wrenching odor rolled from the creature’s mouth as it snapped and slashed at him. Dom grabbed the Skull’s wrists, trying desperately to push it off. The beast flailed, and its mouth came dangerously close to ripping an exposed artery in Dom’s neck.

All it would take was one unlucky slash. One unlucky scratch that let his lifeblood pour all over this goddamn catwalk.

“Bastard,” Dom spat, trying to shove the creature back.

Then the Skull stopped and suddenly went still. It stared at Dom with dull, dumb eyes. A long length of drool stretched from its fangs and dropped on Dom’s chest. No longer did the beast slash or scratch or scream. Dom heaved the thing over, and it flopped on the ground, shrinking back and sitting like a scolded puppy. A few groans and screams still sounded as the red cloud of Pacifist Fog swirled around the Skulls. The most recent arrivals pushed between those that were standing like... well, like zombies.

Slowly, the newcomers also succumbed to the Pacifist Fog. Their movements turned lethargic. Then they gazed straight ahead as if they’d forgotten why they came in here.

Miguel raised his rifle and fired point-blank into a Skull’s nasal cavity. Bone and blood sprayed from the exit wound, and the creature collapsed. None of the others moved.

“Well, shit,” Miguel said, lowering his gun barrel. “Doc wasn’t kidding about this stuff.”

“O’Neil, you still doing okay?” Dom asked.

O’Neil had a vacant stare. Blood trickled out of his nostrils. He nodded glumly.

“You sure about that?” Dom pressed.

“Yeah. I mean, yes, Captain.” O’Neil wiped his nostrils with the back of his clawed hand, smearing blood, and stood straighter. “I can feel the Pacifist Fog, but it’s not bringing me down.”

“You’re acting like me after waking up from a night I forgot,” Miguel said.

“No, it’s just...” O’Neil started then let the words drop off. “I was trying to get these bastards to stop, trying to do what I could to slow them. I almost passed out, but it wasn’t anywhere close to enough. Then that grenade does that.” He used a clawed hand to indicate the Skulls in their trance.

“And now you’re afraid you’re out of a job,” Miguel said.

“Right now, let’s just worry about doing our job and getting the hell out.” Dom pushed over another Skull on the catwalk. The beast toppled against the handrail and spun over the side. It cracked against the concrete floor. Bone split open. The Skull did not so much as grunt.

What the hell is in this stuff? Dom thought.

They descended the stairs from the catwalk and waded through the Skulls as if they were making their way through a crowd at a concert. Dom wasn’t sure they could afford the time and effort to kill every single one of these monsters.

Best thing they could do was get the hell out of here with the data they had recovered. Acrid smoke still poured out of the workshop room and was beginning to clot this space, too.

Sooner they left, the better. Dom saw the exit, only a dozen or so feet away.

Make it through there, and we’ll be home free.

A light tapping sounded somewhere behind him. He spun. The Skulls continued to sway, no more awake than trees in a breeze. Dom held up a fist. O’Neil and Miguel stopped. He listened for the tapping. It had sounded like claws on concrete. His first thought was that O’Neil was responsible. But O’Neil had boots that muffled his taloned feet.

No, this was definitely one of the Skulls—or a Hybrid.

Dom narrowed his eyes, peering among the creatures. A flash of gray bones sped through the bodies of Skulls somewhere to Dom’s left. He fired at the movement. The swarm of paralyzed Skulls absorbed the rounds. Monsters fell with grunts and sighs, crumpling and leaving a wide swath.

“Shit, move,” Dom said. “O’Neil, you got a read on Hybrid activity in here?”

“I... I don’t know. Everything is so muddled by the Pacifist Fog.”

“Son of a bitch...” Dom uttered.

He was six feet from the factory room’s exit. Movement burst from his right this time. His gunfire was joined by Miguel and O’Neil’s. There was no cry of pain or curses to signify they’d hit anything besides Skulls.

Then stillness prevailed again. The harsh, rasping breaths of the Skulls hissed all around. But the tapping was gone, the movement and flash of bone absent.

“Move!” Dom said, surging forward through the Skulls, knocking them backward.

Just as he reached the exit, something slammed into his side. He fell against another pair of listless Skulls. Spikes tore into his fatigues and skin. He lashed out with his rifle, trying to counter his attacker. But the Hybrid had disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.

“Chief!” Miguel yelled. He vanished beyond the bodies of the Skulls, swept off his feet.

The sound of struggling and gunshots exploded from O’Neil’s position. Dom pushed through the swaying Skulls, desperate to join his teammates. But the Hybrid returned and crashed into his chest. The Hybrid slashed at Dom’s rifle strap and then threw the weapon under the Skulls somewhere far out of his reach.

Dom pulled his legs up and pushed, trying to break the Hybrid’s grasp.

“You are not going anywhere,” the half man said with a thick Russian accent, eyes red as blood.

The Hybrid pressed down on Dom’s shoulders and put his weight behind them, holding Dom firmly in place. Lunging, the Hybrid tried to take a chunk out of Dom’s neck with a mouthful of crooked teeth. Dom twisted his neck with only a millimeter to spare then pushed out with his legs again, letting the Hybrid’s momentum carry him into the ground.

Dom rolled out of the Hybrid’s grip, putting his boots against the Russian’s chest, and kicked out. The Hybrid toppled backward, and Dom took the advantage. He put his knee into the Hybrid’s chest, keeping him down, then jabbed his other knee into the Hybrid’s ribcage. Once he had control, he spun the Hybrid over and put the half man in a chokehold, incapacitating both of the Russian’s arms with a tight bear hug.

The Hybrid flailed but wasn’t going anywhere. Dom had him secured and used his free hand to take out a knife. He pressed the knife under the Hybrid’s neck and scored the Russian’s graying flesh. Blood wept but didn’t gush out. He hadn’t caught an artery.

And he hadn’t intended to.

The sound of a gunshot exploded from behind Dom. He still lay on the ground, maintaining his submission hold on the Hybrid.

“O’Neil? Miguel?” he grunted.

“Hybrids are dead, Chief,” Miguel said, pushing through the Skulls. O’Neil joined them by Dom’s side. “You having trouble with this one?”

“No trouble,” Dom said. “Just want to talk.”

Miguel seemed to know what that meant. He grabbed the Hybrid’s shoulder and signaled for O’Neil to hold the other. Together, they kept the Hybrid down as Dom released the Russian. He put his knee back into the Russian’s chest and pressed him into the floor. The Hybrid’s breath came in strangled gasps. Dom’s pressure on the Russian’s sternum would make it painfully difficult to breathe.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dom asked the Hybrid, once again pressing his blade to the Hybrid’s throat.

O’Neil looked nervously about the room. Dom silently wished he would stop; he didn’t want the Russian Hybrid to see any sign of weakness or fear in them. But he could guess why O’Neil was nervous. At any moment, the Skulls might start coming out of their trance. And here they had their backs to them, sitting in the middle of the horde interrogating a Hybrid.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the Hybrid asked with a grating Russian accent.

“I’m the one asking the goddamn questions.” Dom pressed his knee harder into the Hybrid’s chest. He cut another slice into the Hybrid’s neck, careful once again to avoid anything fatal. The Hybrid winced.

Good, Dom thought. He could feel pain.

“We know you built Mokri’s yacht.” Dom pointed at some of the canisters on one of the machining benches. “Now I want to know what those devices are being used for.”

“They are being used for nothing,” the Hybrid said.

“Don’t be brave.” Dom waved the knife in front of the Hybrid’s face.

“I am telling you the truth.” The Hybrid’s eyes narrowed. “There is no use for them.”

“Bullshit,” Dom said.

O’Neil glanced around nervously at the Skulls. Dom didn’t like the way his eyes had widened. He looked like a mouse with the vague awareness that a hawk was circling overhead but without any idea where it was going to attack from.

Dom held the knife to the Hybrid’s eye. “We don’t have all day. There’s only one way you get out of this place alive... and with both eyes.”

The Hybrid blinked. His lips twitched. Just a subtle show of fear. He still said nothing.

But Dom saw he had broken at least one barrier with the Hybrid. The bastard knew Dom wanted out of here soon and was probably just stalling for time, with some knowledge, like O’Neil, that the Skulls wouldn’t be influenced by the Pacifist Fog forever.

Dom waited in silence as he dug his knee down harder. He wanted the Hybrid to feel the press of pain and time. To imagine the agony of losing an eyeball with that knife. Of losing two of them. He wanted the Hybrid to imagine that misery, imagine the way Dom would flay him.

And he wanted the Hybrid to think that by complying, there really was some hope he would make it out alive. Dom had been an old-school CIA agent. He was versed in the tactics of so-called advanced interrogations. Most of the time they just ended with the interrogee telling a CIA officer whatever it was they thought he wanted to hear—which meant it was often not accurate or helpful.

But every once in a while, Dom had learned something useful. He hoped now was one of those times.

The secret to a successful interrogation wasn’t inflicting pain.

No, the Hybrid had a damn good understanding of pain. If everything O’Neil had told him was true, Hybrids constantly endured the agonizing trauma of bones pushing through flesh. Losing an eye was another thing, though.

But as soon as Dom dug an eye out, it would be too late to try to extract any more answers with threats of pain or death. The Hybrid would have already accepted his fate. He would know he could endure the agony, and he would know his life was forfeit anyway. He would lose all hope and wouldn’t tell Dom a damn thing.

Pain was no good. Fear of pain was a whole other matter.

“Tell me what I want to know.” Dom pressed the tip of the blade against the bottom eyelid of the Hybrid just enough to draw blood.

“Screw you,” the Hybrid said. He spat at Dom and thrashed against Miguel and O’Neil.

Dom wiped the spit off his face and clenched his jaw. He really didn’t want to do this. As soon as he pushed that blade in, he wasn’t going to get any answers from this bastard.

“Tell me what Spitkovsky is planning!” Dom roared. This was probably the last chance he had before he had to make good on his word.

O’Neil gulped hard, staring at a nearby Skull. The monster’s claws twitched. The Pacifist Fog was wearing off.

The Hybrid grinned. “Spitkovsky?” He laughed. “You tell me. We have not heard from him in... I do not know how long, and I do not care. This island is ours now.”

Dom closed his eyes briefly, his composure slipping. The brutalized Iranian soldiers. The mutiny aboard the Sahand. The Hybrids hadn’t just rebelled against the Iranians; they’d rebelled against the FGL. These men had been turned into weapons, and now they wanted out of the very organization they’d been created to serve.

“You’ve abandoned the FGL,” Dom said, hoping the Hybrid would fill in the blanks.

“More like they abandoned us,” the Hybrid said. “We did what they asked, and they did not pay us, they did not reward us, so we teach them they should pay attention. You saw our friends in the barracks?”

Dom nodded reluctantly. “We saw what you did.”

“We wanted them to leave us alone,” the Hybrid said. “You will leave us alone, too.”

“There’s no more we left,” Dom said. “You really are alone now. If you want to be left that way, the best thing you can do is cooperate.”

The smoke from the fire was growing stronger now, and a few more of the Skulls were starting to stir. He had minutes, maybe seconds left to continue the interrogation.

“Before FGL abandoned Ikaria, what were they—”

Suddenly O’Neil let go of the Hybrid. He leapt over Dom and sank his claws into the neck of another Hybrid that was poised to attack. Dom’s interviewee surged up, trying to finish what the other had failed to do. But Dom finally drove his knife through the bastard’s eye. The Hybrid immediately went limp and fell back to the floor, the knife coming out with a sickening slurp.

“Guess you kept your promise, Chief,” Miguel said, one eyebrow raised as he looked at the Hybrid.

“Guess so,” Dom said, though he took no pleasure in it. He stood and pushed aside the Skulls as they continued toward the exit. One Skull grunted when he shoved it, but it didn’t lash out. At least, not yet. Outside, smoke choked the corridor, and the fire flickered angrily from the workshop. There would be no more data recovery here.

They jogged through the last few Skulls loitering in the hall under the trance of the Pacifist Fog.

“Bravo,” Dom called over the comms, “you read?”

“Loud and clear,” Meredith answered.

“Need backup? We’re on our way out of here.”

“Was about to ask you the same thing. All clear—or at least mostly clear—out here.”

“Good. Then let’s get the fuck off this island.”

-9-

The screams of the Skulls ricocheted off the walls of the hospital laboratory. Rachel fired at the first one splashing through the ankle-deep water toward her. Her tactical light reflected off the glistening blood that spewed from its wounds with each shot. Stumbling, the Skull slammed into a computer desk. Machine and monster fell to the floor with violent cracks, spraying the brown, noisome water all over Rachel.

She stepped back as the other creatures charged straight into Rory and Terrence’s gunfire. The Skulls flailed, pushing against the hail of bullets. Another two wheeled around the door where Rachel, Rory, and Terrence were supposed to be going. The service elevator and the next set of stairs were just past that door. But Rachel wasn’t keen to break through their ranks and climb multiple flights of stairs just to look for an HVT who was probably already dead.

One of the fresh arrivals sported what was once a white doctor’s coat. Scrubs, torn to rags, hung underneath the coat, and spikes protruded from the creature’s shoulders, piercing the ragged fabric. Behind it ran a second Skull donning a patient gown stained with dried blood.

“Guess the doctor will see us now!” Rory said.

“Jesus Christ, Rory, not now!” Rachel sighted up the doctor and plugged it full of rounds.

Each impact shuddered through the creature. The Skull twitched and twisted, its bloodshot eyes looking damn near possessed in the gleam of Rachel’s tactical light. Another round cracked through its sternum in a splash of crimson. It launched itself forward in the last throes of life as blood wept down its chest. Rachel dodged the beast. Its trailing white coat flapped against her, dragging with it the stench of death. When the creature fell, she fired into its spine. Momentum carried the creature forward until it rammed into a lab bench full of equipment and racks of vials. The racks spilled over the creature, and Rachel fired at it again to ensure it was dead.

Meanwhile, Rory and Terrence were sending a flurry of rounds lancing into the Skull in the patient gown. It didn’t make it far. Its gown ripped as it caught on a table, and the beast fell.

Rachel’s pulse raced in her eardrums, the rapid thump as loud as a Goliath’s footsteps. The group’s flashlights panned around the room, searching for new arrivals, something else that would pounce on them from the shadows. But now their only company was the carcasses of the freshly deceased.

For now, at least. High-pitched shrieks echoed down the halls and through the atrium. The commotion down here hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“We probably woke up the whole goddamn hospital,” Terrence said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Rachel?”

At his cue, Rachel took point, leading them through the doorway the Skulls had burst through moments ago. The stench of rot and mold wafted around them. A few corpses, bloated and gray with flesh sloughing off their limbs, floated facedown in the water.

“Shit,” Rachel said, “I guess even the Skulls have some standards. Moldy food ain’t good enough for ’em.”

“God, it smells awful.” Rory practically gagged as he spoke.

Water sloshed through Rachel’s boots as they advanced down the hall toward the huge silver doors of the service elevator.

“Sooner we get upstairs, sooner we escape the smell,” Terrence said.

“I hope you’re right,” Rachel said, “but I’m honestly not sure what’s worse: Skulls or rotten floodwater. Might not be much floodwater upstairs, but judging by the sound of things, there are gonna be a shit ton of Skulls.”

“Having second thoughts about the mission?” Terrence asked. “I can call it off right now.” He hovered his index finger above his smartwatch, ready to call for an extraction.

“Hell no,” Rachel said, putting her earlier thoughts of abandoning the HVT aside. “We’re going to go save this one.”

She passed the service elevator and made for the open doorway. Beyond it, a set of concrete stairs led upward. She started up with Terrence and Rory following. Terrence shut the door behind them. There was nothing to lock it, but Rachel prayed it took the Skulls a while before they either beat it down or accidentally opened it. She could still hear them shrieking and knocking over glassware in the phlebotomy lab.

Up the stairs she lunged, rushing away from the sounds. Round and round they went, fighting gravity and the exhaustion of already having been in the field for hours. Rachel barely registered the floor numbers. It took all her willpower to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

A loud roar boomed from the bottom of the stairs, and the din of Skull talons slamming against the floor rocketed up. The beasts had made it inside.

Rachel passed a sign for the fourteenth floor.

Great, just twelve more to go.

A copper taste danced across her tongue, and her breath came in gasps. Her muscles ached, her quads screaming at her to slow down. But the shrieks of the Skulls from below forced Rachel to keep moving.

And move she did. At least until they reached a landing covered in discarded patient beds and wheelchairs. IV poles and other pieces of medical equipment Rachel didn’t recognize added to the macabre jungle gym, preventing them from advancing further.

“We got to get past the barricade,” Terrence said as he caught up to Rachel and Rory. “Can one of you climb it?”

Rachel tested a handhold, pulling on one of the patient beds. The pile of equipment shifted, and an IV pole fell over the side of the stairs. The hollow ring of metal against metal sounded as it plunged into the abyss, hitting handrails on its way down.

“I’m not climbing that shit,” Rachel said. “Maybe we can clear it.”

They started to shovel some of the debris over the side of the handrail. Wheelchairs and biomonitors plummeted, crashing against the stairs and landings below. Maybe if they were lucky, some of it would land on the Skulls’ heads, killing the bastards.

As they dug through the pile, the patient beds started to shift, suddenly out of control.

“Oh, shit!” Rory said. “Get out of the way!”

Rachel pressed herself against the handrail, her back toward the now fifteen-story fall. The patient bed slid past her. Its weight dragged it down the stairs until it crashed into the wall of the landing below.

That was too damn close, Rachel thought.

At least seven or eight more of those beds were parked on the landing with three times as many desks and wheelchairs. It seemed that even with what they had cleared, they weren’t making any progress.

And the howls of the hunting Skulls were only growing closer.

“We’re not going to get through in time,” Rachel said.

Terrence glanced at the debris then flashed his light over the side. A few bloodshot eyes glanced back up at them, only a few stories below now.

“We have to try the other stairs,” Terrence said.

They sprinted back down a few steps to the nearest open landing and burst through the door. Rachel searched the dark hall for targets, her flashlight briefly illuminating unidentifiable stains along the walls, empty pill bottles along the floor, and folders strewn about an abandoned nurses’ station. A few emergency lights still flickered along the length of the hall, but judging by their wan light, they wouldn’t be illuminated much longer.

She walked swiftly into the closest patient room, looking for something to block the door to the stairs. A skeleton lay in one of the beds, the sheets stained brown around it.

Rachel and Rory maneuvered the bed out of the room and into position in front of the stairwell door so it stretched lengthwise across the hall. Terrence did the same with the other bed. Then they stacked the loose chairs and filing cabinets from the nurses’ station atop the bed.

Only once the beds were piled high did Rachel and Rory pause to breathe. They pressed their backs against the wall, lowering the flashlights and creeping away from the stairwell. The noise of the Skulls rushing up the stairwell pounded through the door.

Without their lights flashing through the thin, wire-reinforced window, there was no way for Rachel to see what the Skulls were up to now—but the crash of claws against metal gave her some idea. They were too dumb to understand what happened to the people they’d been after and too stubborn to give up. They tended to have one-track minds, and she guessed by the crash of the equipment that they were trying to scale the wall of debris blocking their path.

“We’ve got to find those other stairs that were locked from below,” Terrence said, leading them away.

A loud slam resonated through the wall; it sounded like another bed had crashed down from the pile. The Skulls’ screams grew louder, and the door to the stairwell shook.

“Shit, do you think they noticed us?” Rachel asked as they snuck past the nurses’ station.

The door shook again, and something fell off one of the beds they’d set there. Again, the door tremored, and a shiver snuck down Rachel’s spine.

“Maybe they’re just piling up on the stairs,” Rory said. “They can’t have heard us. They’re too loud.”

“Hope you’re right, bro.” Terrence consulted his smartwatch again. “Okay, should be down here to our—”

Terrence suddenly froze. Rachel leaned past him to see why he had stopped.

A shriveled Skull, skin drooping off between its plates and spikes, shambled out of a patient room. Two more followed.

More Skulls in hospital gowns and scrubs started to stumble out of other rooms all along the hall, some limping along with twisted and broken legs.

“Back away,” Terrence said, lowering his light and moving back into the hall where they’d come.

There had been at least thirty or forty of the creatures drifting out of their rooms. Something wasn’t right with these ones. They must’ve been starving, stuck up here on this floor without food, nearly dormant until the racket woke them up. Rachel didn’t want to see what they’d do when they spotted three tasty humans.

“Where do we go now?” she whispered.

The door next to the elevator shuddered again. She cranked her neck, looking down both sides of the hallway. Maybe there was another way to escape.

More Skulls shambled from the open doors lining this hall, too. They appeared more like skeletons than the fearsome beasts that Rachel was used to facing. But just because they looked sick and weak didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

“We can’t fight all of them,” Rory said.

The door to the stairwell shook again, followed by another loud thump.

“Got to get out of here,” Terrence said, seeming to be talking more to himself. “Got to get out of here... ah, shit.”

One of the Skulls ambling down the hallway looked up. Its moaning turned to a low growl, and its eyes seemed to focus on Rachel, Rory, and Terrence.

“The elevator,” Terrence said.

Rory swiveled on his heels, pointing his rifle at the Skull that seemed to have woken up. “But—”

Terrence ignored his protests. “Rory, help me get the doors open. Rachel, don’t fire unless you have to. As soon as you do, shit’s going down.”

Rachel knelt next to the patient bed still juddering from the Skulls struggling on the other side. Ghostly fingers seemed to creep over her flesh as she eyed the other monsters. The one that had been most attracted to the sound started to drag a stiff leg toward them. The Skull hobbled along as though it were wearing a cast. Might have been, for all Rachel knew, but she wasn’t about to pop up from her position to see.

Behind her, Rory and Terrence stuck one of the IV poles in between the elevator doors to pry them apart.

“Good, good,” Terrence said, widening the gap. When it was wide enough, they each grabbed a door and started forcing them apart.

The limping Skull bumped into two of his comrades. They growled and lifted their heads, as if to tell the limping one to go screw itself. Then one of them turned its gaze on the bed where Rachel was hiding.

Its lips peeled back, revealing a set of fangs turned golden by plaque. The monster unleashed an unholy howl and charged, knocking over the limping Skull. It riled up the others, and more Skulls barreled down the hall—some in the wrong direction but some straight at Rachel.

She stood and fired. Round after round, she let loose on the Skulls storming their position. The beasts were coming from three directions now, and the door to the stairwell trembled even more violently as the Skulls behind it tried to join the fray.

Rachel became a machine, firing and swiveling, firing and swiveling, taking down the closest Skulls in each direction. But even as she fought, she could see the monsters would make it past her meager defenses.

She wouldn’t hold out long.

“Rachel!” Terrence said. “We’re in! Come on!”

She fired on another Skull. It tripped and slid in its own blood. The monster’s body slammed into Rachel’s position, knocking the bed over. Another crash against the door sent the rest of their makeshift barrier skittering away. The first Skull whipped out of the doorway.

“Rachel!” Terrence yelled again.

Rachel turned just in time to see Rory disappear into the elevator shaft. It took her a second to realized he was climbing a ladder inside the shaft. She followed, pushing herself up as fast as she could. Terrence lunged onto the ladder and scrambled up behind her.

Just in time, too. Skulls shoved each other as they competed to be the first to claim the fresh meat. Two of them, caught up in their fervor, tumbled over the edge. A few seconds later, a loud crack and splatter echoed up from the pit of darkness.

Another Skull saw them climbing up the ladder and jumped. It snagged its hooked claws along a rung and pulled itself up. Terrence stomped on its claws then landed a kick that smashed the creature’s nostrils in. The beast spiraled away into oblivion. Onward the trio climbed, pausing occasionally to fire at the Skulls squeezing through the gap in the elevator doors.

Rachel looked up. Above was as dark as below.

Only eleven stories to go.

-10-

The ship rocked slightly as the Huntress drifted in the Aegean. Their return trip from Ikaria had been nowhere near as exciting as the trek to get to the FGL facility. The Pacifist Fog had held out long enough for Alpha team to escape the underground base, and once Bravo had met up with them, Dom had guided the Hunters far outside the town to avoid unnecessary contact with the remaining Skulls and Hybrids on the island.

He wasn’t sure exactly when the Hybrids had rebelled against the FGL—or if they had actually rebelled at all. All he had were the last words of that single Hybrid. Whatever had gone down between Spitkovsky and his monstrous soldiers, Dom hoped that this trip had still been worth it.

They’d been lucky that no one on the team had sustained anything more than superficial injuries. But the rest of the world was held hostage to a ticking clock. The FGL threatened whatever future humanity might have. The Hunters needed intel, and they needed it yesterday. They were gathered in the electronics workshop now for a briefing, all of them crowded around the conference table.

“Chao, please tell me you’ve got something good.”

Chao Li tapped on his computer. A 3-D modeling program appeared on the screen at the front of the workshop. The display showed a cylindrical model that looked similar to the devices Dom had seen in the facility.

“Good news or bad news first?” Chao asked.

“We got good news out of all this?” Miguel asked.

“I guess it’d be more accurate to say bad news or worse news.”

“How about we start with what you know about those devices,” Dom said, pointing to the screen.

“Unfortunately, the fire seemed to have destroyed most of the computers mid-transmission. Most of the data is useless, and we didn’t find much on the hard data you provided,” Chao replied.

“So you have nothing?” Meredith asked, hands flat on the table.

“I can offer speculations,” Chao said, using his mouse to rotate the image. “They are not quite the same as the canister you and Andris recovered from the crashed helicopter outside Morocco but similar. These canisters are smaller. They do have a pressure-release valve, indicating they were built to withstand some internal pressures.”

“Okay...” Miguel said, his patience clearly wearing thin.

“I’m guessing that means it was going to release some kind of gas, just like the aerosolized Oni Agent containers,” Chao said.

“But you don’t know for sure?” Dom asked. It was hard to believe they didn’t have a single document confirming the purpose of these devices.

“Like I said before, we can only guess.”

Jenna scowled. “I was hoping after all we’d gone through, we’d have something a little more than, ‘Hey, maybe they were using these things to spray some gas or some shit.’” She grabbed a water bottle, ready to take a swig, then stopped. “I don’t mean to be casting the blame on you. I just hate almost dying for nothing.”

“We haven’t heard everything yet, right?” Dom asked hopefully. He had to admit Jenna was right. So far, nothing they’d recovered from Ikaria was worth it.

Samantha Hamlin sighed, tapping the side of a water bottle instead of her usual can of highly caffeinated, sugary beverage. There was no energy drink in sight, Dom realized. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad sign.

“You haven’t heard it all, no,” Samantha said. “But the rest isn’t much better.” She gulped down a mouthful of water and then made a face, her eyebrows scrunched together. “Don’t know how you all can stand this stuff.”

“You telling me you don’t drink water?” O’Neil asked. As the newest member of the team, he was unused to Samantha’s unhealthy addiction to energy drinks.

“Somebody catch this guy up on how things work around here,” Samantha said. “And for your information, I’m running dangerously low on energy drinks. So unless you all see some next time you’re on land, I’m going to be screwed.”

“We got coffee,” Thomas said. “Good enough for me.”

“Good enough for you ain’t good enough,” Samantha said. “That brown toilet juice is worse than water.”

“Thanks for the image,” Dom said. Damn, the lack of caffeine really was throwing her off. He wondered if he could cash in a few favors next time they stopped at a friendly port in Portugal or Ireland. “But I want to know what this worse news is you’ve got for us.”

“Happy to share it,” Samantha began. “Well, happy isn’t the word I really want to use, but you get the picture.”

Miguel made a gesture rolling a finger as if to say move along. Samantha gave him a one-fingered salute, and Miguel grinned, laughing.

“Here’s the thing: There was a ton of manufacturing equipment in that facility,” Samantha said, “but there were also a couple of major problems. I went through all the footage from your helmet-mounted cams, but I didn’t see a single damn way to load gases or biological agents or whatever into those canisters.”

“Which goes along with what Chao was saying,” Dom said. “Nothing on the computers, either.”

“Right,” Samantha said. “Another weird thing is that there were only a couple of canisters. I don’t know why they were there or what they were being used for, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Sure, the lab had some documents on them, but you pulled that from a folder that had a shit ton of other projects. It was just one crumb of what the FGL’s research teams have been up to.”

A sinking feeling grabbed at Dom’s stomach. “You’re telling me we focused on the wrong stuff. We missed something.”

“That’s what I think,” Samantha said, hands spread wide. “We still don’t have a clue what they were building there, but those canisters don’t seem to be it. I’m sure the answers were somewhere on the computers that burned up. I’m guessing with the tools and welding equipment they had, they were using the base to modify smaller sea craft, like the yacht that Mokri used to take the Karlstad. That probably had something to do with all those ghost-fleet operations.”

Dom clenched his hands underneath the table. “You’ve got nothing? No leads, no workable intel? Anything we can take back to Kinsey?”

He was ready to dig into the data himself. There had to be something they’d missed. Some seemingly insignificant scrap of information that would lead to their next target.

“We got a whole lot of garbage,” Samantha said. “Well, we might have something. A bunch of handwritten documents with piss-poor resolution. And the handwriting is even worse, because my natural-language-processing software couldn’t decipher shit.”

Samantha tapped on her keyboard, and an image popped up on the screen. It showed a hand-drawn schematic of a canister alongside handwriting that made Dom think his own looked like a work of art.

“This is all we’ve got.” She looked at Glenn. “We were hoping you could tell us what this says.”

Glenn squinted at the screen. “It looks... Uralic?”

“Ur-what?” Samantha asked.

“Like Finnish... or Hungarian,” Glenn said. He leaned back in his seat, shaking his head. “But I don’t know any Uralic languages. Couldn’t even begin to tell you about this one.”

“Then it is good that I am here. I can tell you.” Andris grinned. “That is Estonian.”

“You’re sure?” Glenn asked.

“Positive,” Andris said. “My family did not vacation much. We could not afford it. But Tallinn, Estonia, was just a bus ride away for me. A good place for an escape, especially when I joined the French Foreign Legion.”

“Can you read it?” Samantha asked.

“Not at all. I am just telling you what it is, not what it says.”

“Anyone here know someone that can read Estonian?” Dom asked, looking around the table. He was met with blank stares.

“I might,” Meredith said, “but they were in the CIA.”

“Shit,” Dom said.

That meant they needed to ask Kinsey for help. He hated asking Kinsey for anything.

***

Kara sat on the edge of her berth. For once, she had the place to herself. Well, almost to herself. Maggie slept at her feet, the golden retriever keeping her toes warm.

She flipped open her laptop and enabled the satellite internet connection. The internet certainly wasn’t what it used to be, but servers here and there still hosted websites—and, most importantly, the medical research literature the Hunters had used early in the outbreak. Government and military servers had been better protected. But gone were the days of social media and constant posts about what everyone was eating for breakfast and who was taking pictures of their toes on the beach to make everyone else jealous. Kara couldn’t care less about that right now. Her only goal was to get in touch with someone she hadn’t seen in what seemed like months.

She pressed a key to open the video chat app. The app showed a connection in progress. Dots crossed the screen, vanished, then crossed again.

Come on, Kara thought. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having someone to talk to around here. She spent all day with Alden in the engine room, but that wasn’t exactly a social experience. Sadie was more than happy to talk... but she was still so much younger than Kara and it showed. The Hunters were all in a league of their own. No one was left on the ship close to her age. She hadn’t realized how important that was to her sanity until it had been taken away.

The screen suddenly fizzled to black.

“Not this again,” Kara muttered.

Just as she was about to close the laptop in defeat, a familiar voice sounded through the tinny speakers. “Hey, you’re the one calling me!”

The black screen melted into a pixelated face. It was still difficult to make out the speaker’s features, but the voice was definitely Navid’s.

“Sorry, hi!” Kara said. “Thought I lost the connection!”

She couldn’t suppress the smile that cut across her face.

God, it was good to hear his voice again. After the attacks on the Huntress and the threat of nuclear annihilation at the Mueller plant, she had thought for sure she would never see him again.

“Hi to you, too,” Navid said. His voice sounded hoarse.

“You have time to talk, or are you in the middle of something?”

“I’m always in the middle of something, but I’ll make time for you.”

Kara hated to admit it, but that made her feel good. “Seriously, I can let you go. Find time to call again.”

Navid laughed. “The only time we have is the time we make. Between you in the engine room and me in this crazy lab? It’s chaos. But I don’t have to check on the latest experiment for another two hours. I was going to take a nap and grab something to eat.”

The image on the screen finally stabilized to show Navid’s face in detail. Long dark hair, looking a little greasy. Purple bags under his big brown eyes.

“You sure you don’t want to take a nap?” Kara asked, silently praying he would say no.

“I look that bad, huh?”

“I mean—”

“Seriously,” Navid said. “Sleep is overrated. And... well, Lauren’s great. And most of the Germans are nice enough. But...”

“But it’s nice to talk to someone else once in a while,” Kara said. “I get it. Trust me. I can’t even imagine what it’s like over there.”

“Don’t try to. I was excited to be working in a lab like this at first, but now I wonder if I died and I’m in some kind of grad school hell where you have to do mad science experiments all the time. I’m looking forward to being back on the Huntress. Then maybe we could...”

He let the words trail off, but his eyes stayed intent on hers through the screen. The memory of his lips on hers still lingered, all this time later.

“Do you know when you guys might be done there?” Kara asked. She wanted desperately to hear that it would be just a couple of weeks. Maybe, just maybe, they were on the tail end of their project with Mueller.

Navid sighed, seeming to deflate as the image went pixelated again. “No idea.” He brushed a hand through his hair. “I think we’re—”

The door to the bunk burst open, and Sadie appeared, full of buoyant energy. “Kara, why don’t you come up to the mess with me?” She pranced over to her sister’s side then peered at the laptop. “Ooooh, you’re talking to your boyfriend.”

“Stop, Sadie.” Kara pushed her away. She loved the girl and was damn grateful for every day they had together. But Sadie was still her little sister—and she knew how to act like it. “Can I please have a few minutes? Then I’ll join you up there.”

Sadie looked ready to protest, so Kara did her best to imitate that stern expression their mom used to give them.

“Fine,” Sadie said. “But I’m taking Maggie.”

At the mention of her name, the dog’s eyes rolled open and looked around, tongue lolling out of her mouth.

“Come on, girl.” Sadie patted Maggie on the head. The golden yawned, stood, then stretched. Her tail wagged as she followed Sadie back out the door.

“She reminds me of my little sister,” Navid said. His eyes were lost to the haze of pixilation, but she could guess that they were filled with heartache. His parents and sister had been in Canada, where Navid was from, during the outbreak. He hadn’t heard anything from them and had no idea if they were alive. He had once told Kara he assumed they were dead. It was easier to believe there was some kind of finality to it because he didn’t want to think about them being Skulls.

Her fingers traced the scars across the side of her face. Her cheek and jaw had been ravaged in a Skull attack, and now they seemed to pulse with a slight warmth, the ridged, hard skin bumping up against her fingertips.

“I’m sorry to be such a bummer to talk to,” Navid finally said.

“No, no, no. Don’t be sorry. We’ve all lost something in this war. I mean, I can’t stop seeing my mom when she turned into a Skull. I still wonder if she’s down in our basement, scraping to be let out.” Kara shivered. “Or worse, maybe she is out. Maybe she’s hunting like the rest of them.”

“Do you know what they’ve got us doing here?” Navid’s voice was a little shaky.

Kara nodded. It was no secret that Lauren and Navid were working on some kind of biological weapon that targeted the Skulls.

“I can’t help but think that my family might be out there, and this weapon would tear them apart,” Navid said. “Your mom, too. What if...”

“But they’re Skulls now. We’ve already lost them.”

“I try to tell myself the same thing, but it’s so hard to believe sometimes.” He rubbed his chin, scratching at the dark stubble. “Maybe I’m just delirious, suffering from sleep deprivation.”

“No, you’re just human.”

Another beat of silence between them.

“What if our weapon hurts people?” Navid asked. “What if we screw this up? Am I even doing the right thing? Somedays I think I should just walk out of here. Just quit altogether. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Kara shook her head. “You’re doing the right thing. And I know with you and Lauren there, you’ll make sure this doesn’t hurt normal people. I mean, if someone else was there, I couldn’t trust that they would be as careful as you guys.”

“That’s what he said,” Navid muttered.

“Who?”

“Ah, the guy managing our work,” Navid said then looked straight into the camera again. His eyes locked with hers. They might as well have been in the same room with the intensity of his gaze. “But I still think about the people that might be out there. My sister and my parents... I know what I said before, but now... now I wonder if I’m helping them or hurting them. Wonder if I’ll see them again, or if I’ll be the one to finally kill them.”

“I can’t imagine the responsibility on your shoulders right now,” Kara said. “I can’t even begin to pretend to know. But what I can say is that everything you’re feeling right now—whether it’s the right thing to do, whether you’re the right person to do the job—that’s how I know you are. You and Lauren care way too much about other people to botch this up.”

Navid breathed in and out slowly, quiet for a moment. A dreamy look crossed his face. “I miss you, Kara.”

“Miss you, too,” she said. “See you soon?”

“See you soon.”

It was what they always said at the end of these all-too-brief conversations, a promise that there would at least be a next time. At the end of the world, that was the best either of them could do. Kara closed the laptop, letting her hand linger on the warm case for a moment, before heading toward the mess to meet her sister.

See you soon.

Those three words echoed through her head. It was a phrase filled with optimism. A promise they made to each other. They would come out of this war alive. They would come out together.

-11-

O’Neil’s talons tapped along the steel deck of the Huntress. The rest of the Hunters had already seen the medical staff for checkups. All of them had long since been vaccinated against the Oni Agent using the Phoenix Compound, but that didn’t stop normal bacteria from being deadly. In Ikaria, they could have been exposed to all kinds of nasty pathogens.

And despite O’Neil’s appearance, he was just as susceptible to these things as anyone else on the team. Perhaps even more so, the docs had told him. Something about his passive immune system being compromised by his “condition.” To top it off, they weren’t entirely sure how he reacted to normal human meds, so every day with them was an experiment.

Pausing in the empty passage, O’Neil stretched a hand in front of him. He had to file the milky yellow claws down every day so he could properly hold a rifle. But he was careful to keep them to a point, giving him an extra set of close-combat weapons in addition to the Hunters’ usual arsenal of blades.

The constant growth wasn’t unique to his claws and taloned feet. The horns brimming from his temple had to be filed down, as did the plates bulging from his back and the spikes rooted in his vertebrae. Every day it seemed those bones pushed out of his flesh a little farther. He probed a tender spot between a plate and his wrist. The skin there was constantly red. The docs had said it was inflamed. They said it would always be inflamed. And that inflammation also dug itself into his joints and muscles, where the bones grew into spurs and buds.

The pain never went away, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to it. The only time it was remotely bearable was when he was overcome by adrenaline on the battlefield or getting his meds from the docs. And since they weren’t charging into battle right now, it was time for a med-bay visit.

He pushed open the hatch to the bay, greeted immediately by the sterile odor of antiseptics. Sean McConnelly and Peter Mikos were busy in the laboratory section doing God knows what with some tweezers and a plastic dish. In the patient section of the med bay, Divya sat at a desk, perusing something on her computer. She turned in her chair when O’Neil’s talons clicked on the deck.

“Hi, O’Neil. The usual?” Divya asked, rising from her seat and heading to the refrigerator where they kept the cocktail of drugs used to keep his pain in check.

“Let’s mix it up this time,” O’Neil said, taking his place on the edge of one of the patient exam beds. “I’ll take twelve-year-old Macallan, neat.”

Divya turned from the refrigerator, a small glass vial in hand. She rolled it between her palms to warm it. “A wise choice. Superbly balanced, a solid oaky finish. Rather firm on the palate.”

He laughed, something he did rarely these days. “Doc, excuse my assumptions, but I didn’t take you for a Scotch gal.” O’Neil revealed the inner side of his elbow. Already, the few vessels available for injections had grown hard and scarred. There weren’t many accessible spots given the sheer number of bone plates covering his body.

Divya took a syringe with an attached needle and plunged it into the cocktail. “If anything I said was remotely accurate, consider it a vestige of my upbringing. My father was a doctor, too, and had a sizable liquor collection. When his buddies convened in his smoking room, they’d talk cigars and whiskey, and I’d listen from the door, trying to remember everything he said. Wanted to be like him, you know?”

“Damn,” O’Neil said. “Did you grow up in the eighteen hundreds or something?”

Divya laughed as she stuck the needle into O’Neil’s skin. The slight bite went away almost as soon as the plunger pushed the liquid into his bloodstream. “No, but my dad insisted on being a man’s man. I think it was all a big show, trying to impress his American buddies.”

“But it was a good enough show that you wanted to be like him.” O’Neil watched as she prepared and injected a second round.

“Some days I think he would’ve preferred if I was a boy. He was always trying to get me interested in sports and cars, that sort of thing. But those testosterone-fueled hobbies just weren’t my thing.”

“You became a doctor instead.”

“The ultimate stereotype.” Divya grinned. “You can only imagine how disappointed he was to find out I wasn’t going to open my own practice. When I went off to join Doctors Without Borders...”

A third injection, and then they were done.

“Thanks, Doc.” O’Neil closed his eyes and breathed in, enjoying the fresh moment after the injections. This would be the height of his day. All the pain melted for these few minutes. Slowly it would creep back, like a pack of wolves sensing injured prey, waiting for it to weaken and lie down. Then the pain would hit him hard, and the process would repeat itself.

“I should thank you,” Divya said. She gestured toward Sean and Peter. “Being stuck in the lab with these two all day leaves me starved for conversation. I’ll be seeing you same time tomorrow.”

O’Neil almost said, it’s a date.

God, maybe this Hybrid shit was eating at his mind, too, turning him into some kind of bozo from a chick flick. Divya was a smart, pretty woman. And he was a monster. This wasn’t Beauty and the Beast. And nobody was going to wave a magic wand and turn him back into a human.

“See you tomorrow, Doc,” he said gruffly.

He slipped off the table and strode out into the passage as Divya turned back to her computer. The passageway outside was empty. Most of the Hunters were probably at the gym, working out, or in the armory, cleaning up their equipment. O’Neil preferred to do those things at night, when everyone else was asleep and he could be sure he wouldn’t bother them.

For now, he figured he might as well head back to his berth. Grab some sleep before they made landfall. Rumor was they might finally have a new target. Some of Meredith’s old CIA connections had come through with intel, which meant O’Neil would need to be ready to deploy again.

He hoped they wouldn’t run into any more Hybrids. The bastards on Ikaria had tried to manipulate him the same way they did the Skulls. He could practically feel the strange sensations and chemicals tugging at his mind, calling him to violence. Shivering, he wrapped his bony arms around his chest.

His stomach rumbled, and he looked at the door to the mess. A few voices filtered out. Sounded like Miguel and Jenna. Maybe Glenn back there, too, with Dom and some of the ship’s engineers. He pushed open the door slightly to see them laughing and shoving food into their mouths.

Food could wait. He hurried through the passages and found solace in his bunk. As he sat on his berth, the bone plates started to itch. He pressed his eyes closed, knowing the pain would be back soon. He was stuck in his own prison. No one could understand it. No one could break him out of it.

The pain burned at his joints and the back of his eyes until he finally passed into sleep.

***

Meredith stepped into the electronics workshop where Chao and Samantha were at their usual stations. She took Adam Galloway’s old desk. Samantha had urged her to make the desk hers, but she just couldn’t throw his Watchmen figurines away or toss them in a box. Especially not the blue guy. Doctor Manhattan, she was pretty sure he was called.

She liked that one.

“How’s the ankle feeling?” Samantha asked, peeling her headphones back from one ear.

“Hurts, but I can run on it,” Meredith said. “Thankfully, it was just twisted. If I would’ve broken it, that’d be the end of my career as a Hunter.”

“And you wouldn’t want to be stuck in this cave with us,” Samantha said. “That’d be awful.”

“You know, I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or serious right now.”

“Probably a little bit of both,” Chao piped up from the front of the workshop. “She’s still trying this whole no-caffeine thing.” He spun around in his chair to face Meredith. “I’m at the point where I’ll volunteer for a field mission to find her some more of those energy drinks.”

“I haven’t been that bad,” Samantha said, rolling her eyes.

Chao said nothing. He just stared at her.

“Okay, okay.” Samantha held up her hands defensively. “Maybe I’ll try to start drinking that nasty shit you guys call coffee.”

“It’s the least you could do for us,” Chao said.

Meredith unlocked her computer and scrolled through all the recent reports she’d received from the United States. It was refreshing to see status reports on bases and cities around the country. Not that they were good or even optimistic. But the US government was trusting her with intel again. She had been thrown to the wolves when the CIA had suspected her of acting on behalf of the FGL. But after risking her ass over and over again, it seemed they had finally realized the truth. Meredith was no traitor.

Not that there had been any apologies. Not even by her old boss, David Lawson. Instead, they’d started sending her directives again, as if she still worked for the Agency. She felt more like a Hunter than CIA nowadays. She supposed Dom had felt the same when he’d left the service to start up the contract work that had led them all here aboard this ship.

As she scrolled through the standard reports, her eyes widened. “We got a hit!” she said, nearly standing up from her seat.

“What? What is it?” Chao asked.

Meredith pressed a command on her keyboard so the message she’d received lit up on the main bank of screens in the workshop.

“We need Dom and Thomas in here now,” she said.

Within minutes, they had assembled around the conference table in the middle of the workshop. Dom’s knee bobbed, his heel tapping against the deck as he waited anxiously. Thomas rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers. Samantha and Chao sat poised with their computers at the ready.

Meredith loaded the message she’d received for all of them to see.

“We have confirmation that the document from Ikaria, like Andris suspected, was in Estonian,” Meredith said. “It mentioned a testing site just outside Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn itself is largely in the dark, but there appear to be a few functional facilities around the outskirts of the city.”

She showed them an image of the Baltic Coast where lights glowed in the otherwise-empty expanse of darkness, indicating buildings where the power was still on.

“Most of the comms our sources tracked down center on that building,” Chao said, pointing at a facility overlooking the barren coast. “We now believe this is where the documents we found came from.”

“Wait,” Dom said, “do we know exactly what those documents said?”

Meredith shrugged. “They describe the function of the canisters in ambiguous terms, mostly talking about gas release and internal pressure. Honestly, it looks like a notebook you might find on a scientist’s lab bench, which is probably close to the truth. However, the document doesn’t go into detail on what chemicals were inside the canisters. Just the physical design.”

“And we’re going to Estonia based off this intel?” Thomas pinched his cigar. “Sounds a little nutty to me.”

“Everything we do sounds nutty to you,” Dom said. “These comms our sources intercepted, any idea what they were talking about?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Meredith said. “Intel was vague on the actual content. Mostly, they triangulated electrical activity around the local grid. Those comms they did intercept and decrypt weren’t particularly helpful. Requests for supplies and food—nothing incriminating in and of itself. But the most suspicious part is that never once did this facility try to contact any members of the EU. All their requests were routed to Russia and that old joint Russia-Iran facility in Baghdad.”

Meredith wished they had investigated that facility when they’d first discovered it. But General Kinsey had said trying to go into Iraq would be suicide. The United States had lost contact with the last ground forces they’d had in the area, and the joint facility had ceased observable activity after the Hunters had shut down the FGL base in the Congo.

“What do you think, Dom? It’s your call,” Meredith said.

“I say we go to Estonia,” Dom said. “Chao, see if we can get Colonel Ronaldo with some air support. Even better if we can get some more of those EU forces ready to go. If we have to blow this place, we need Ronaldo and the Germans on standby. Tell Kinsey’s people we’re going in.”

“On it,” Chao said.

Dom looked at Meredith. “You said this place is outside Tallinn. What exactly was this facility before the FGL supposedly took over?”

At that, Meredith grinned. Finally, she had a solid answer to give. “Patarei Sea Fortress Prison. An old KGB prison turned state-run facility. Last time it was open, it was a tourist attraction. It’s supposed to be haunted—and the locals have been using it for underground raves since the place closed down for good.”

“Sounds like my kind of party,” Thomas said. “Too bad I’m not going with.”

Dom clapped the man’s shoulder with a grin. “It’s time to get the crew together. Tell ’em we’re headed to prison.”

-12-

Somewhere over the horizon, beyond the blanket of clouds obscuring the stars and moon, Dom knew Ronaldo’s planes were out there. Like some kind of mechanical guardian angels, they circled unseen by him—and, he hoped, by the FGL. He also hoped they would remain unseen and unneeded. By the time Dom called them, it would probably already be too late for him and the rest of the Hunters. 

“There it is,” Miguel said, leaning over the gunwale of the Zodiac. 

Yellow lights glowed from the barred windows of what looked like a run-down castle next to the cold Baltic Sea. A series of chain-link fences surrounded Patarei Sea Fortress Prison, topped with coils of barbed wire.

“Where we bringing her in?” Glenn asked, manning the tiller. 

Dom pointed past the prison, eastward. “There.”

Spindly church steeples jutted from the coastal city like the spikes on a Skull’s vertebrae. Toward the edge of Tallinn was an empty park with a few leafless trees—an ideal place to check out the prison from afar before moving in. 

They beached the Zodiac on the rocky shore. Jenna, Meredith, Andris, and O’Neil bailed out first. They sprinted, maintaining combat intervals, and knelt to aim their rifles into the still darkness.

“Clear,” Meredith reported.

Dom, Glenn, and Miguel jumped out next and dragged their boat over the rocks and into the wet grass. They crept over the grass, flitting between the few trees and bushes until they reached a military museum only a couple hundred meters east of the prison. Here rested a few Soviet-era trucks and tanks, paint peeling and doors rusting. The canvas top on one of the troop transport trucks flapped in the sea-born wind.

“Glenn, spot?” Dom asked, settling in beside the Hunter.

Glenn brought a pair of binos to his eyes and started scanning the prison.

The rest of the Hunters crouched between the corrugated wall of a nearby warehouse and the tanks. A sign plastered on the side of the warehouse advertised rides in the transport trucks for two Euros per person.

“Think that thing actually still works?” Jenna asked, eying the rust-pocked truck.

“If the Russians made it, that is unlikely,” Andris said. “Do you know they only have one aircraft carrier, and it can’t even power itself out of the harbor fifty percent of the time? They must push it with tugboats.”

“Maybe those idiots in the prison are running the place with the same Russian engineering efficiency,” Glenn said, lowering his eyes. “So far, I’ve just seen one guard in each of those towers, four total. Two of them are sleeping. Another is reading a rather salacious piece of literature.”

“Playboy or Maxim?” Miguel asked.

“Don’t tell us,” Andris said, leaning against the treads of a tank. “When I get up there, I’ll ask him myself.”

“You’re going to take it back with you, aren’t you?” Jenna asked.

“It is lonely on the Huntress,” Andris said. “I have nobody.”

“I don’t care what you bring back to the ship,” Dom said, “as long as you’re bringing your ass back, too. That goes for every one of you.” He started to stand. “We got eight hours before we see the sun again. I want to be gone long before then. Alpha and Bravo, on me for infiltration. Charlie, you two are on your own starting now. Take care of yourselves and us. If this place really is FGL, we’re bringing it down.”

“Aye, Captain,” the others said in unison.

“Charlie, move,” Dom said, signaling to Meredith and Andris. They flew off on their own, disappearing into the overgrown grass near the chain-link fence. The duo would scale the prison’s walls and neutralize the guard towers, one by one.

The good thing about invading prisons was that they were made to keep people in rather than out. Those towers had been constructed to keep an eye on the activity within the prison’s walls. Securing them would give the Hunters that same advantage.

“Alpha, Bravo, let’s move,” Dom said.

He dropped to his stomach and crawled through the protection of the grass waving around him. They moved slowly and carefully toward the first set of chain-link fences. No alarms sounded. No gunfire exploded from the towers. The guards here must have grown lazy and careless.

The closer they got to the fence, the more Dom found himself wanting to hear a siren scream into the night. It wasn’t that he wanted to be spotted, but if the security was as lax as it seemed here, maybe this place wasn’t as important as they had suspected.

Beggars can’t be choosers, he thought. At the very least, he hoped to find a piece of intel leading to a more valuable location.

They reached the fence without incident. “Charlie, sitrep?” Dom asked.

“Rooftop,” Meredith reported. “Going for the first tower.”

“Good,” Dom said. “Miguel, take us through the fence.”

Miguel took out a fencing tool from his pack and started cutting links. Soon, he had an opening wide enough for even Glenn to crawl through. Once they’d cleared both layers of fences, they were inside.

The Hunters spread out against the stone wall of the sea fortress. Dom directed them to stay under the glowing windows and advance toward a door that faced the ocean. Fortunately, since the place used to be a tourist attraction before being shut down again, there had been a wealth of photographs and maps available. While Dom didn’t know what was going on in the facility now, he at least had some idea of which passages might be more heavily trafficked. There were a few areas, like the library, medical clinic, and gymnasium, that offered plenty of room to set up some kind of manufacturing workshop. And if their earlier intel was correct, the basement spaces were so large that underground raves used to be held there.

They needed to avoid those areas until they had a better idea of what was going on. Dom had chosen an entrance that led into a stairwell. From that stairwell, they would have several paths to choose from to get past the old prison cells.

When they reached the door, Dom signaled for Miguel to pick the lock. A minute later, the door creaked open, and they plunged into the murky prison stairwell. A distinct odor of mildew and rot slammed into Dom.

“My kind of lady,” Miguel whispered, nodding to his left.

On the cracked concrete wall, a spray-painted mural showed a topless woman smoking a cigar with an AK-47 cocked against her hip. Behind her marched an army of robots, and next to the army was an oversized cartoon mouse with bloodshot eyes and veins pulsing from its skinny arms, drool pouring from its mouth. A cartoon dog happily injected a syringe into the mouse’s arm. Red handprints covered the opposite wall. Dom assumed they were spray-painted, too, but he didn’t lean in closer to inspect.

He gestured for Miguel and Jenna to advance toward where the stairwell intersected with the first floor of the prison. They positioned themselves next to the doors. Beyond was only darkness. A long wail reverberated through the concrete halls, accompanied by groans and curses. Deeper down a passage, a howl responded, sounding like a Skull on the hunt.

A shiver crept down Dom’s spine. It sounded like hell.

With another wave, he started to signal for Miguel to open the door the rest of the way. The clatter of talons down the stairs stopped him, and he gestured frantically for the group to hide themselves in the shadows.

But Miguel was too slow. A Hybrid plunged down the stairs. His eyes locked onto Miguel, and nearly as soon as they did, he launched himself at the Hunter. Talons slammed against Miguel’s chest, knocking him backward. He lost his grip on his rifle, and it skittered across the concrete behind him. The Hybrid reared back, signaling to the two other Hybrids behind him.

They jumped down the remaining six stairs to land beside the first Hybrid. Dom didn’t give them a second. He charged the skeletal soldiers, slamming the first with the stock of his rifle and lashing out with a devastating kick that swept another off his feet. The Hybrids went down with the clunk of bone against concrete.

O’Neil pounced on one of the downed Hybrids. The Hybrid said something in Russian, an expression of confusion flickering in the eyes that shone from his bony mask. O’Neil didn’t give that confusion long to linger. He slit the Hybrid’s throat with a well-placed claw. Dom withdrew his knife and slammed it into the mouth of the other Hybrid.

In the brief fray, the Hybrid atop Miguel looked around, dismayed by his sudden change in fortune. Miguel twisted his wrist, and the blade within his prosthetic stabbed out, impaling the Hybrid through his orbital cavity. The half-man, half-monster attacker fell limp across Miguel.

Glenn helped drag the fresh corpse off him.

“Hide them back here,” Dom said, heaving his mark into the corner under the stairwell. The others followed suit, and Dom commanded the Hunters to sift through the Hybrids’ fatigues. They came away with a set of keycards and a radio. None had weapons other than sidearms.

The attack had gone quickly and quietly. Dom was thankful they’d had surprise on their side. And more than that, he was relieved to find this place guarded after all. If the Hybrids were here, then the FGL had been here, too.

“This is where we split up,” Dom said, doling out the keycards. “Bravo, take the second floor. I want you to head toward the old medical clinic.”

“Aye, Captain,” Glenn said before leading O’Neil and Jenna up the stairs.

Dom took Miguel through another passage, this one headed toward the library. He reasoned that the place might’ve been converted into an office or computer laboratory of sorts by the FGL. This time, he wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving even a scrap of data behind.

The distant moans and shrieks of the occasional Skull drifted through the air as they crept between empty prison cells. Each cell was nearly ten yards deep but only ten feet wide. Thick steel-plated doors lay cracked open in front of each as if to invite Dom and Miguel in.

Rows of bunks stood in some of the cells, fabric chewed by insects and mice. Magazine pages and yellowed papers peeled off the cell walls like the bark from a dying tree. Even when the prison had been a tourist attraction, the people who managed it hadn’t bothered to clean up from those days when murderers, thieves, and political prisoners had been forced to call this place home.

Another violent shriek exploded somewhere far overhead. Dom wondered if the goddamn place really was haunted. If it was, even the ghosts were probably afraid of what lurked within these corridors now.

The clink of chains rang down the hall behind them. Dom looked over his shoulder to see long, spiky shadows stretching down the corridor, heading toward them.

“In here,” Dom whispered, signaling to one of the cells.

The Hunters rushed into the chamber. Water pooled in the far corner, leaking out of a broken sink. Dom eased the door shut, afraid to close it entirely lest they become locked in this crumbling prison. He peered from the darkness as a Hybrid appeared, dragging a chain over its shoulder. Attached to the chain were half a dozen Skulls with iron collars around their necks. Their wrists were in shackles, as were their ankles, giving them just enough room to shuffle along.

Something about the Skulls bothered Dom. Why wouldn’t the Hybrid simply lead them using his biochemical influence as O’Neil might?

He squinted, studying the monsters. The poor lighting didn’t reveal much, but it soon became clear that they were fleshier than usual. True, spikes popped out of their joints and bumps lined their spines. A few even had the seeds of bony crowns. But these looked like people in the middle of transition.

Dom’s stomach dropped as he realized that was exactly what they were. These people still had their humanity intact. When they passed close by, he saw the defeated looks in their eyes, their gazes sweeping the floor like prisoners being marched to their execution.

Wherever that Hybrid was going, whatever he was doing with these poor people, Dom would find out. And he would put a stop to it.

-13-

Sweat poured down the back of Rachel’s neck, and her shirt clung to her back. She held up her light, her arm shaking, muscles nearly giving out. Finally, that beam of light showed her the top of the elevator shaft.

They had reached the twenty-sixth floor, where they would ideally find Dr. Ronald Bennet.

By God, that asshole better be there, because if he wasn’t...

Rachel heaved herself up the last rung, and she followed an I-beam toward the elevator door. Slowly, she inched toward the other side of the beam so that Terrence and Rory could join her.

“Now for the fun part,” Terrence said. He uncoiled a length of climbing rope from his pack and secured himself to the beam. Then he pried his fingers between the elevator doors and started pulling them open. Inch by inch, the gap revealed the hallway.

When the doors were open by about a foot, Terrence’s prosthetic feet slipped. He would have fallen all the way down except for the rope digging into his flesh. Even as he dragged himself back up onto the beam with Rachel and Rory’s help, Rachel’s stomach twisted. She couldn’t see the bottom of the shaft, but the abyssal darkness made her scramble back up against the wall. All she could imagine was falling down into that murk and slamming into the top of the elevator far below them, joining the splattered remains of the Skulls whose attempts to follow them had been fatal.

“Almost... there,” Terrence said, squeezing the door open a solid two feet. “Ladies first.”

Rachel hated the saying; it implied she was somehow weaker or less capable than the men she served beside. But in that moment, she didn’t give a flying shit. Sitting around in an elevator shaft had a way of convincing her to jump right through that door without a single objection. Terrence and Rory were not long behind.

They immediately set up a perimeter around the door, scoping the darkness with their rifles. The faint glow of light from the moon illuminated the scattered and soiled papers on the checkered tile floor. A few broken computer monitors lay inexplicably abandoned next to bags of spilled trash. Flies buzzed around the rotting garbage in thick clouds.

“I don’t like that smell,” Rory said.

“What?” Terrence asked. “Haven’t you gotten used to it yet? Everything out here in the field smells like death.”

Rory shook his head. “Yeah, but it seems to me that our chances of finding Dr. Bennet alive aren’t so good.”

“He’ll be up here,” Rachel said. “Because after all that shit we’ve been through, if he isn’t, I’m going straight down to hell and lugging his ass back up here anyway.”

“You sure he’s gone to hell?” Rory asked.

“A good man wouldn’t have made us slog through all that bullshit to save him.”

Terrence let out a soft laugh. “Come on.”

They prowled past open doors leading to offices that shared the same rank odor as the hallway. Shelves lay toppled or leaned against one another, spilling ruined books across the floors. Rachel stepped over an office chair with the stuffing leaking out of it like the entrails of a wounded animal.

Terrence paused at an intersection and glanced at his smartwatch. “Data laboratories where Dr. Bennet was hiding out are to our left.”

They turned the corner to another hall. One half of it opened up into a breakroom with a toppled refrigerator, a table, and plastic chairs. A microwave sat on the floor, its door open to reveal a cracked glass plate within.

But none of that registered at first. All Rachel could see was the aftermath of the carnage.

Bones were scattered everywhere. The carpet under the table had been soaked in blood that had long since dried. She couldn’t help wondering if some of the bones belonged to Dr. Bennet.

Terrence gestured for Rachel to take point at the next intersection. She ran to the corner and held her breath, listening for any signs of the Skulls.

“Contacts?” Terrence whispered.

Rachel peered around the corner. She saw nothing. But a soft scratching noise came from one end of the hall.

“Strange sound coming over there.”

“Shit,” Terrence said. “That’s where we got to go.”

They crept down the hall. Rachel took care to avoid the crumpled paper and discarded hospital gowns at their feet. A wheelchair sat empty near one door, one of its wheels bent and the other missing. She swatted at the flies buzzing around her face. The scratching grew louder as they approached the end of the hall where a door to a room lay open.

As they drew closer, Rachel thought it sounded like fabric brushing against something. Maybe an open window was blowing a curtain against the wall. But given everything they’d seen since the outbreak, she doubted it was anything so innocent. Nothing ever was when it involved Skulls.

Terrence motioned for her and Rory to watch his back as he approached the door. He walked into the room, his rifle pointed at something in the back. Rachel went in next as Rory stayed posted at the doorway. A long curtain divided the room into two separate spaces. The area closest to them had an empty patient bed with an EKG monitor and IV pole standing sentinel on either side of it. The door to the bathroom was cracked open to reveal a toilet and shower covered in mold. Black mildew climbed the walls.

The sound of the scraping fabric was somewhere behind that curtain. Terrence looked back at Rachel to see if she was ready. She gave him a curt nod.

Rachel’s heart thumped against her ribcage, and she pressed the stock of her rifle tight against her shoulder, her finger placed lightly alongside her trigger guard. Terrence tore the curtain back. Another patient bed stood in this section of the room.

But this one wasn’t empty.

Instead, a shriveled Skull lay in the bed. Good lord, it was ugly.

Restraints held its wrists and ankles into place. Its skin sagged, wrinkled and drooping between the nobs of bone protruding from it. The monster’s lips were dried and split, peeled back over its gums. Most of its teeth had long since fallen out, and even its eyes seemed sunken in, dried with neglect. Its head rolled back and forth, a brown worm of a tongue sliding across its gums. The Skull must’ve been stuck there since the outbreak. Rachel was surprised to see it was alive at all.

Then its head started to twist toward them. The monster’s gray eyes looked at Terrence and Rachel. Its jaw opened slowly, and a long rattle shook from its mouth as it sucked in a breath, ready to let out an ear-splitting shriek.

Rachel plugged the monster with three shots.

The Skull immediately went still. But the suppressed shots still echoed around the otherwise-silent hospital. For a moment, nothing changed. Three long fingers of blood seeped from the fresh bullet holes, and the already-filthy sheets under the dead Skull turned a darker shade of brown.

Then a low groan rolled down the hall. It was soon joined by the growls and muted cries of other monsters lurking somewhere on this floor.

“Son of a bitch,” Rachel said.

“Son of a bitch is right,” Terrence said. “Shouldn’t have fired.”

“I thought it was going to shriek.”

Rachel replayed the scene. Terrence was probably right. The monster seemed like it was going to scream, but after sitting here and rotting for so long, it probably had the lungs of an eighty-year-old who had been smoking two packs a day since preschool. It probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything more than that death rattle.

“Uh, guys?” Rory said, shrinking into the doorway. “We got company.”

Terrence looked at his smartwatch. “We don’t want to be stuck here. Let’s go get Bennet. Or whatever’s left of him.”

They rushed down the hall to find a room with a closed door. Skulls started to fill the hall behind them, attracted by the noise. Rory pressed himself against the door. A sign across it said DATA LABORATORY.

This was it. One more door, and then they’d find out whether their mission was to be a success or another wild goose chase.

“Come on,” Rachel said. “Get that door open.”

The Skulls hadn’t noticed them yet. They looked nearly as shriveled and weak as the one strapped to the bed. Most wore patient gowns, shredded on their own spikes. One of the monsters lurched ahead of the group. Its ears had grown out like a goddamn goblin’s, and its nostrils were long slits in its face. Its scalp was smooth, missing the horns the Skulls usually had. Instead of eyes, the Skull only had empty sockets. But somehow it seemed to stare at them with a quiet intensity that made Rachel’s skin crawl.

While the other Skulls ambled along mostly aimlessly, this one strode ahead, confident, like a big cat stalking prey.

“Door’s locked,” Rory said. “Won’t budge.”

Terrence eyed the pack of roaming Skulls at the other end of the hall. Some were dispersing at the intersection. But the eyeless one still seemed to be headed in their direction.

As though it knew exactly where they were.

“I’ll do it.” Terrence reared back his leg and slammed on the door with his heel. The door didn’t move, but the eyeless Skull did.

Its orbital cavities stared straight at them, and its mouth remained shut. The monster’s arm cocked back, and then it flung its hand forward as if scraping at some invisible prey in front of it.

Was it blindly lashing out? But wait, what were...?

“Duck!” Rachel yelled when she saw what it had done. She pulled Rory down beside her.

Three claws cut through the air like throwing knives. All three pierced the door and quivered in the wood.

“That was new,” Rachel said.

The eyeless Skull cocked back its other claw. Its actions had attracted the attention of the other monsters, and they started filtering toward Rachel, Rory, and Terrence.

Rachel pressed her rifle to her shoulder. Terrence slammed himself against the door again. This time it flung open and banged against the wall. The crash was like the starting gun at a race. All the Skulls sprinted forward. The eyeless one launched another series of claws. Terrence pulled Rachel and Rory into the room and kicked the door shut. The sound of the claws plunging into the wood reverberated through the door. Terrence pressed himself against it. The door shuddered, the broken lock no longer able to hold the Skulls back as they swarmed the lab.

Rachel swept the room with her light to look for something to push in front of the door. Tables full of computers sat on one side, and the other side of the room was filled with shelves of books. Plenty of heavy objects to help hold the door closed.

But there was something else in the room with them. Another eyeless Skull. It cocked back its arm, ready to throw a strikeout pitch. A sinister sound snaked out of its cracked lips as its arm sprung forward, and the claws tore away from its fingers, hissing through the air.

-14-

In the R&D lab of Mueller Pharmaceuticals, the purr of the laminar flow hood greeted Lauren as she reached inside it with gloved hands. She tilted the plastic tray sitting in the middle of the stainless-steel surface. Inside the plastic tray were ninety-six wells in rows of twelve, each about four millimeters in diameter and about eleven millimeters deep.

“For such tiny experiments, a lot is resting on you,” she said, her warm breath fogging up her goggles.

Inside half the wells were normal bone cells—osteoblasts. Just a few thousand in each well. And in the other half were osteoblasts infected with the Oni Agent. All the wells contained the pink liquid media used to keep cells alive when they were outside the body. The cell media in those wells with only healthy osteoblasts was an orange-red color. It was less vibrant than when she’d first put the media and cells in the wells several hours ago, but that was to be expected. That meant the cells were metabolizing the nutrients in the media normally, and the expected nutrient and waste exchanges were taking place, which over time affected the pH of the liquid media, hence the color change.

She rotated the plate a little more, avoiding spilling the media while getting a better glimpse of all ninety-six cell populations under the sterile air of the flow hood. The other half of the wells—those with the Oni Agent infections—told a much different story. Orange-red was healthy. But these... these were something else entirely.

The media in those chambers had turned a bright yellow. The color change indicated a highly acidic environment. Such conditions in normal experiments might be caused by contaminants like funguses or bacteria or a low-oxygen environment that caused cells to produce lactic acid. In this case, she knew the color change was because of the nanobacteria found in the Oni Agent. They devoured the nutrients in the cell media just as the Skulls devoured living flesh.

There was more than just the color-changing media to tell her that the Oni Agent was taking control of the cell population. If she had time to perform a proper molecular analysis, she would discover high concentrations of bone morphogenetic growth factors, alkaline phosphatase, and other molecules that indicated active bone formation.

She didn’t need any advanced laboratory techniques to know what was taking place. Even without the aid of a microscope, she saw the chunks of bone forming in the wells, tiny as they were. It was as if the Oni Agent was building a structure to escape the confines of the plastic wells and infect the healthy cell populations next to them.

But her interest wasn’t merely in replicating a process she and the medical team had grown to understand quite well since the Oni Agent outbreak. What she wanted to see was how the Tenth Plague prototypes worked in a cell experiment. She and Navid needed to show Becker proof that their idea would work.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, picking up a pipette. She dipped the plastic nozzle of the pipette into a vial with less than a milliliter of liquid in it. To any layperson, the liquid looked as innocuous as water.

She pipetted a tiny aliquot up into the nozzle then deposited the droplet into the first well on the plate. Well by well, she performed the same procedure. Each of those droplets contained a sample of the Tenth Plague. When she finished, she replaced the plate’s cover and set down her pipette. Then, careful not to spill the contents of the individual wells, she transferred the plate from the laminar flow hood and into a nearby refrigerator-sized incubator. The incubator’s door opened with a gentle tug, letting out a wash of warm humid air.

Footsteps sounded behind her as she shut the door, sealing the well plate inside.

“Already done?” Navid asked. “How’d it go?”

“Painless.” Lauren took off her gloves and flung them into the biohazard waste. She plucked a clean pair from a box of disposable gloves and started to slip them on. “You weren’t gone long.”

Navid offered a rueful smile. “Connection was bad. Couldn’t talk much this time.”

“Bummer,” Lauren said. “Kara and the rest of the crew doing okay?”

“Think so.” Navid plopped into one of the chairs near the flow hood. “I mean, as okay as they can be, given everything going on.”

Lauren sensed Navid didn’t want to talk about Kara. She could tell he missed her, just as she desperately missed Glenn. Talking might help... but Lauren wouldn’t push the issue.

“Sorry I wasn’t here for the dosing.” Navid gestured to the flow hood.

“It’s a one-person job. Besides, the interesting part is coming up.” Lauren glanced at the clock on the wall. “In about fifteen minutes, we can see if the Tenth Plague delivery mechanism worked.”

“Don’t we have to run a whole bunch of chemical assays for that?”

Lauren shook her head. “I didn’t fill the microparticles with the chelating agent.”

Using the chelating formula they’d already discovered to treat the Oni Agent had been another way they could save time. Lauren wished she could explore other drug or therapeutic options, but they simply didn’t have the time to discover and test a brand-new drug on the Oni Agent.

“I figured we’d save that for the functional tests later. For now, I just wanted to make sure that the mechanism actually delivers the microparticle’s cargo only in the presence of the Oni Agent.”

“So what did you encapsulate in the microparticles?”

“Fluorescein,” Lauren said.

“Ah, I see. So if the microparticle complexes come into contact with the Oni Agent, they’ll release the fluorescent molecules. We’ll see bright green everywhere, right?”

“Exactly. Healthy cells won’t glow. Infected cells will.”

“Brilliant.”

They chatted for several minutes, biding their time until they could take the well plate under a microscope for further examination. As the seconds ticked by, a nervous sweat trickled down the back of Lauren’s neck. She drummed her fingers on her thigh, worrying about whether the Tenth Plague would actually work as they’d hoped. So much was riding on this. If they messed it up, if the delivery mechanism failed, then they would have to come up with a brand-new idea.

A glance back up at the clock on the wall told her it was time.

“Here we go,” she said, rising from her seat. She gingerly opened the incubator door and slid the plate out again. Her gaze lingered on the plastic dish even though the fluorescence couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. She carried the small well plate into a dark room filled with microscopes. Navid shut the door behind them while Lauren placed the well plate on the stage of one of the microscopes.

She flipped a switch to turn the light source on. After putting her eyes to the scope’s eyepiece, she adjusted another dial until the right fluorescent filter clicked into place. She positioned the microscope stage using the software controls on a computer next to the device until she found one of the stages where only healthy osteoblasts were supposed to be. With a flick of another switch, the image from the scope’s eyepiece went through the scope’s camera instead and showed up on the computer monitor.

“Nothing but black,” Lauren said. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—get excited yet. But black was a good sign in the healthy osteoblasts.

Then she moved the computer mouse, positioning the stage so the microscope lens looked directly into a well with Oni Agent-infected cells.

Navid gasped, a grin breaking across his face, illuminated by the blue light of the monitor. All across the screen floated bright-green fluorescent specks. Lauren checked the next several Oni Agent-infected cell populations to be certain. Sure enough, bright green blotted the camera’s view, showing that the fluorescein had been successfully delivered to the infected osteoblasts.

“We did it,” Lauren said.

Navid rubbed his hands together. “Let’s kill ourselves some Oni Agent!”

Lauren grabbed the well plate, and they returned to the main laboratory once again. She stopped mid-stride, almost running into a woman in a pantsuit.

“They told me you two were in there,” Emma Fischer said in her no-nonsense tone. She looked at the well plate and raised a brow. “I assume this is one of your experiments?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “It was successful, so we’re going to advance to delivering the chelating agent in our next round of cell studies.”

“You are still on cell studies?”

“Still? We’re moving pretty quickly.”

“It must be quicker,” Fischer said. “We have spoken to many officials in the EU. They are all very interested in this bioweapon of yours.”

Lauren frowned behind her mask. “We haven’t even confirmed it works yet.”

“They will be coming here soon to see what you have created. By that time, I hope you are well beyond cell studies.”

“If everything goes well, we’ll be working on animal studies in a few days,” Navid chimed in.

“Animal studies?” Fischer scoffed. “I want to show our visitors something more interesting than that. I have promised them we will have a live demonstration with Skulls.”

Fischer turned away before Lauren could protest, her heels clacking on the floor as she left the lab.

Navid locked his gaze with Lauren’s. His eyes were wide behind his goggles.

“Skulls?” he repeated when Fischer was gone. “It’s going to take a miracle for us to progress that far that fast.”

Lauren couldn’t disagree with him. But what other choice did they have? “Then let’s make a miracle.”

***

Invisible tentacles hooked themselves on O’Neil’s nostrils and pulled him through the dark, musty hallways. Glenn and Jenna stayed close on his heels as they prowled past the empty prison cells toward where the medical clinic had once been. Each step he took on the fractured concrete floor sent fresh adrenaline surging through his body. The red fires of rage mixed with the constricting paralysis of sheer agony. He knew the feelings weren’t his own, but those of some other poor Oni Agent-infected creatures.

Though the pain and anger weren’t his own, he found himself breathing more heavily. His body yearned to crouch like an animal and run on all fours, to sink his fangs into the first FGL soldiers or Hybrids they ran into. Images of their arteries being torn from their necks, spraying delicious blood across the prison walls, inspired a dark need in him. Another part of him, the part of him that was still Brendon O’Neil, US Navy SEAL, pushed those feelings into the reptilian parts of his feverish brain.

A light at the end of the long passage called to him. Perhaps not as strongly as the biochemical signals, but he somehow knew that behind the door, there was something they needed to see. Something that would help them make sense of this place.

“What the hell?” Jenna whispered, pointing to one of the prison cells.

O’Neil slowed enough to peer inside. A Skull lay dead and rotting in the corner, its body emaciated around the massive bones pushing past its leathery skin. Its eyes had since been lost. Maggots crawled from the orbital cavity and dripped from the nostrils like living mucus.

The next cell held a Skull no better off than the first. Then they saw a third and fourth. Fifth and sixth.

“I don’t understand,” Glenn whispered.

That fiery rage in O’Neil flared like a bloody sunset. “In here,” he said, his voice coming out raspier than intended as he pointed a clawed hand at the door.

“You okay?” Glenn asked.

“Peachy,” O’Neil snarled.

“Whatever you say, man.” Glenn positioned himself first at the door. “We do this in three.”

O’Neil shuffled next to him, his rifle stock pressed against his shoulder. Jenna clenched her jaw and brought her rifle to bear. Glenn counted down on his fingers and then kicked open the door. They pushed into the doorway like a wave. It took them only a second to see there were no threats here. All along the room were shelves full of scalpels, sutures, IV bags, and bone saws. A bright bank of lamps leaned over two surgical tables.

One of those surgical tables was empty. The other was not.

O’Neil lowered his weapon, staring at the Skull strapped to the table. Glenn and Jenna matched his strides like twin shadows.

Rusting restraints held the Skull’s wrists and ankles to the table. Another strap pressed over its forehead, keeping the monster’s head securely in place. Long claws grew out of hands with bulging blue vessels. The rank odor nearly suffocated O’Neil. Jenna and Glenn turned a sick shade of green. The Skull’s torso had been split open from its neck to its groin to reveal a set of glistening organs. Strange bony growths encased parts of the monster’s stomach and poked between its intestines. Its heart still beat against a bony plate, the red smooth muscles around it pulsing slowly.

“A vivisection,” Glenn said. “This is sick.”

O’Neil approached the Skull slowly. He couldn’t believe the damn thing was still alive with its torso cut open like this. Then another thought occurred to him.

Shit, do I look like that on the inside? he wondered.

The rage burned hotter.

He traced a claw along the Skull’s arm then the creature’s neck, wondering if he should just end its suffering. Then the Skull’s eyes fluttered open. Its pupils dilated and swung back and forth as if in a haze.

O’Neil had seen Skulls continue an attack even after losing a limb or two. He’d seen one continue on when its stomach was hanging out of its abdomen and dragging along in the dirt. He sank his claw a little deeper into its neck, ready to end the creature before it screamed and announced their presence.

But it didn’t scream. Its eyes locked on his. There was no anger there, no hungry hatred. Only a deep pain that O’Neil understood all too well.

“Abi?” the creature asked. A language O’Neil didn’t recognize. Then in English, “Help?”

The word came out so weakly, so pathetically, that if O’Neil had been breathing any harder, he wouldn’t have heard it.

This was no Skull. It was a Hybrid like him.

At once a rush of images poured through O’Neil’s mind, hammering him like a Goliath on a rampage. All the needles the FGL had stabbed into his flesh to turn him from a human into the abomination he was now. All the times they had cut him open to poke and prod before sewing him shut. The men and women whose alterations had been less successful, who had gone mad, their brains obliterated by the genetic modifications turning them into Hybrids. The way he saw his SEAL brothers pulled apart by the FGL for fun when they didn’t turn out as expected.

And the pain. The unending pain that haunted him every goddamn second he was awake. The pain that had caused him to curl up like a child and cry in agony for the first few weeks.

O’Neil would never forget the pain, or the stench. The smell of their bodies close together, their refuse, and the carcasses of those who had finally lain down and died. Those who weren’t strong enough. Maybe they had been the lucky ones.

He had borne witness to all that, and yet the FGL was still doing more experiments. The bastards were still torturing people.

The rage in him finally broke. A cold darkness replaced it, his vision turning tunneled and his senses heightened. He dragged his finger along the vivisected Hybrid’s throat, granting the poor person’s pleas for help in the only way he could.

“Fuck them,” O’Neil growled. “Fuck this.”

Jenna started sifting through the room, clearly turning her eyes away from the Hybrid. “There’s got to be a computer, a notebook, something.”

She and Glenn began shoveling through the haphazardly organized supplies. O’Neil sniffed the air again. The odor of blood was growing stronger. Not from the dead Hybrid on the operating table.

The door handle clicked. Jenna and Glenn turned away from the shelves they were scouring and raised their rifles. O’Neil left his by his side. Darkness wrapped its icy fingers around his mind. The door opened, and a trio of men in white coats traipsed through, laughing and talking to one another in Russian.

Two of them wore rubber gloves and smocks covered in the blood of the Hybrid. One stopped and looked up at O’Neil. His jaw hung open as his eyes went from O’Neil to the operating table, no doubt wondering what black magic had brought another Hybrid into this space. Another of the men saw Glenn and Jenna with their rifles pointed at them. The crotch of his pants turned dark, the wetness dripping onto the floor around him as the scent of urine filled the room.

Glenn said something to them in Russian, and the trio put their hands up.

But the darkness did not let its hand off O’Neil’s mind.

He jumped over the patient bed and landed on the floor in front of the trio. Before anyone else could react, he rammed his claws into the soft flesh of the doctor who had soiled his pants. Slowly, O’Neil dragged his claws up through the doctor’s stomach, splitting it open as they had done to the Hybrid on the operating table.

One of the other doctors began yelling frantically in Russian. Glenn seemed to be gesturing for them to be quiet, but the doctors weren’t listening. O’Neil couldn’t understand them. Nor did he want to.

The maimed doctor slumped to the ground, clutching at his innards, trying desperately to stuff them back in. Blood bubbled from his lips, and he collapsed, leaking out into a sickening puddle.

Glenn stepped closer as Jenna prowled from the other side to take the doctors in a pincer movement. O’Neil thought he heard his name, but the darkness had overwhelmed his senses. Even as the doctor continued arguing with Glenn, O’Neil stepped forward and cut a new red mouth into his throat. The Russian crumpled, his fingers wrapped around his neck.

The remaining doctor wheeled around and ran out the door the trio had come through. His white, blood-stained coat whipped behind him. O’Neil sprinted to catch up. He felt as though his mind was nothing but a silent observer, already anticipating a known outcome. There were no surprises, no emotions.

Just a task that he knew had to be completed.

His legs propelled him forward a meter at a time. The Russian looked over his shoulder. His face was awash with white, and sweat poured over his features. O’Neil ignored the prison cells they passed. He heard voices—some human, some... not. Shapes moved in his periphery, but they did not matter right now.

The doctor was almost at the end of the passage. He reached for what looked to be a small red lever. An alarm that would bring the entire prison swarming to their location.

O’Neil pounced, tackling the doctor and slamming the man’s head against the floor. The man cursed in Russian. Blood trickled from a cut in his forehead.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” O’Neil said, holding the doctor down. He dug his claws into the man’s shoulders. “Was it worth it? Did you learn something really fucking important when you cut him open?”

The artery in the doctor’s neck pulsed. Droplets of sweat intermingled with the blood coursing over his head. O’Neil leaned in. A monstrous urge begged him to sink his fangs into the doctor’s flesh. He salivated at the thought of hot blood filling his mouth.

He started to lean in.

“O’Neil!” Jenna said. Her bootsteps echoed down the passage, punctuating the chorus of howls and groans from the prison cells. “O’Neil, stop! We need him alive!”

O’Neil dragged himself away. Glenn and Jenna caught up to him and pulled the doctor away. Glenn slammed the man into the wall, his thick fingers wrapped around the doctor’s neck. The doctor kicked his legs as Glenn demanded something in Russian.

Suddenly the darkness subsided, like the tide returning to the ocean, and O’Neil gasped for breath. His joints caught fire, and his muscles burned. The hellish chorus around him exploded against his eardrums.

O’Neil turned to Jenna. “What is he asking this guy?”

Jenna’s eyes gleamed with a hardness that hadn’t been there before. “He wants to know what they did to all these people.”

O’Neil looked around at last, taking in his surroundings for the first time. He moved past Jenna and started walking back down the hall. Every single cell held people. Or at least monsters that had once been people. They sported the same spikes and plates he did. They reached through the bars of their cells with clawed hands, pleading for help in languages O’Neil didn’t recognize.

He stopped at one cell where a man was curled up in the corner, whimpering. His ribs pushed up against the skin over his chest. O’Neil guessed it would only be a day or so before those ribs ripped through the skin for the first time.

“Those bastards,” O’Neil said. “They did this to me. Now to them. Why?”

Jenna looked at O’Neil then at Glenn. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

-15-

Dom crept down the hall, with Miguel by his side. He avoided a dark, stagnant puddle—it was impossible to tell whether it was water or blood or something else, especially given the smells of body odor, mold, and death choking the air. They had left the prison cells behind for a set of concrete tunnels lined with rusted pipes. Tracking the Hybrid with his gang of chained-up Skulls hadn’t been difficult. Their chains rang louder than a cellphone in a quiet theater.

“Chief, you hear that?” Miguel asked as they paused at a corner.

“What?”

Dom held his breath a moment, straining to listen. The constant clanging of the Skulls as they shuffled over the concrete floors drowned out whatever it was that Miguel seemed to think he was hearing.

Then he heard it. The faint rumble of machinery. A whistle, like steam escaping a furnace. But it sounded like it was far in the distance.

They continued along the dark tunnels, staying a safe distance from the Hybrid and his Skulls. What in the hell was the Hybrid doing with those monsters? Dom had hoped they would find answers soon. He was more than ready to leave this prison-turned-FGL-madhouse behind.

Bravo, on the other hand, had discovered a treasure trove of medical nightmares that sounded suspiciously like the experiments that had gone on in the Congo. But why would the FGL be replicating those experiments here? That seemed to be a waste of time. They already knew how to make Hybrids. Maybe they simply took joy in torturing people.

Soon the hall opened up into a wider passage lined by iron columns and a latticework of pipes and wires. Dom and Miguel crouched behind two of the columns. At the opposite end of the hall, a set of iron doors let out a flood of bright light that silhouetted the chain gang of Skulls. The sound of metal slamming against metal and the churning of diesel generators roared out. The door closed again and swallowed the group.

“What now, Chief?” Miguel asked.

“I want in there,” Dom said.

“Can’t go in the front door, can we?”

“Not likely.”

Dom studied the hall. A vent led into an air duct that snaked behind those doors. But there was no way they could fit in it. A few other closed doors lined the walls. There were no signs to give them any clue what lay beyond. Entering one would be a gamble, and Dom did not like their odds. But skylights lined the ceiling.

“We go out again,” Dom said. “Maybe there’s another door or window that leads in there.”

“Not too late to turn back,” Miguel said. “Maybe there’s something else we missed in one of those other passages.”

“I’m sure there are other things we missed, but whatever the hell we just saw, that was something new. And I’d bet the Huntress whatever is going on beyond that door is worth investigating.”

“I know you’re right, Chief. Just got a bad feeling about this place.”

“I’ve had a bad feeling ever since we stepped inside this goddamn prison. Sooner we figure out what’s going on, sooner we move on.”

“Can’t argue with that. Plan?”

“Get in, observe, play it by ear.”

“And kick some Hybrid ass?” Miguel asked.

“Without question.”

Dom pointed to one of the skylights. “Let’s get up there and see what we can see.” He chinned his comms. “Charlie, how’s it looking outside?”

“Towers are all under control,” Meredith said. “There are six two-Hybrid patrols prowling the grounds and a host of antiaircraft weapons.”

“Seems kind of light on defenses.”

“That’s not all,” Meredith said. “We saw quite a bit of activity closer to Tallinn, but it’s impossible to tell how many Hybrids are out there. They’ve got Skulls ambling around. A half dozen Goliaths, and human FGL soldiers, too.”

Dom blinked. “Jesus, we got lucky getting into the base.”

“Lucky doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“Be careful out there,” Dom said.

“You, too.”

Dom climbed up one of the iron columns and pushed open a skylight. It creaked on its hinges, and Dom pulled himself out into the night air. Carefully lifting a pair of night-vision binos to his eyes, he surveyed the landscape.

“See anything?” Miguel asked, pulling himself up beside Dom.

Just as Meredith had promised, there were Skulls, Hybrids, and Goliaths galore. “Plenty. Stay low.”

They crawled across the flat roof of the concrete building toward a much larger square-shaped facility. A fiery-orange glow bled from the windows. Slowly they advanced over the roof and reached the main building. The sounds of machine work drifted from the windows.

“Sounds like the right place,” Dom said. He lifted himself up enough to peer through the window. “Holy shit.”

Now he understood why those Skulls had been on chains. The floor below looked like a sweatshop, tables pressed tight against one another and all manners of tools and scrap metal spread between the workers. The workers seemed to be what Dom had mistaken for Skulls—Hybrids. At least, he had never met a Skull that could use a hammer or screwdriver. In one corner of the room, several Hybrids welded metal barrels together. At the tables, the chained-up Hybrids and humans assembled pieces of metal, thin pipes, and plastic tubing together.

“They’re making canisters,” Miguel said. “Just like the ones we saw in Ikaria.”

Dom’s mind immediately went to the Portuguese planes flying unseen miles from their position, their planes loaded with guided bombs. There was no way he could order an attack here now, knowing that the FGL had innocent prisoners being experimented on and forced into slave labor. He would be condemning them to a fiery death along with their captors.

But if the FGL was using this place as a facility to manufacture these canisters for the airborne Oni Agent, they needed to destroy it.

He wrestled with the best course of action, but even as he tried to justify the easiest plan—sabotaging the antiaircraft equipment and calling in an airstrike—he knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave those people to die here.

“We need to save them,” Dom said then chinned his comms. “Bravo, Charlie, we found—”

“You will need to save yourself first,” a menacing voice said in a Russian accent.

Dom spun around, raising his rifle. But even if he fired now, he was dead. Three Hybrids surrounded them. The bastards must’ve climbed over the side of the wall, a feat no normal human could accomplish.

“We have long suspected you would visit our facilities,” the Hybrid said, taking a step forward. “You will lower your rifle and come with us. We would very much like to talk to you.”

***

“Do we tell him we are saving his ass now or after we do it?” Andris asked, his scope pressed close to his eye.

Meredith lined up her mark. “It’s only fair to give him a little warning.” She chinned her comm lightly. “Alpha, we got you in our sights. We can take two of those bastards out. Keep ’em talking.”

Dom and Miguel gave no sign that they had heard Meredith. They each began to lower their weapons, and Meredith zoomed in on the chest of the Hybrid she was targeting.

“On my mark,” Meredith said. The Hybrids took a step closer to Dom and Miguel. “Now.”

Two muffled rifle reports rang out from their guard tower. Two Hybrids fell. Meredith adjusted her aim and sighted up the remaining Hybrid, but he had started to slip over the edge of the roof. Miguel lunged forward and twisted his wrist. A blade shot out of his prosthetic and jabbed through the back of the Hybrid’s neck. The half man collapsed.

“Thanks,” Dom said over the comms. He and Miguel picked up their weapons again and peered over the side of the roof. “Bravo, we encountered some resistance. All contacts eliminated, but listen for an alarm. Prepare to retreat to the rendezvous point on my call.”

“Copy,” Glenn replied.

“Charges are set as planned,” Andris said. “We can blow this place as soon as you want, Captain.”

“Copy,” Dom said. “But we’ve got to do something about all these civilians before we take this place out.”

“Knew he’d say that,” Meredith said. She scoped the grounds of the prison. So far it seemed no alarm had been raised. A Goliath lumbered behind two Hybrids near a gate. Outside the prison walls and the layers of fences, Skulls pushed through the overgrown, dried-out grass.

“We’ve got plenty of prisoners down here, too,” Glenn said over the comms. “All being experimented on, various stages of Hybrid transformation. Can’t leave them behind.”

“You are all too soft,” Andris said.

Meredith shifted past the body of the Hybrid they’d killed to take his spot. Looking out the other side, she surveyed the building where Bravo should be.

“You telling me you’d leave those people?” Meredith asked.

Andris waited a beat then sighed. “No, no. You all have made me soft, too.”

“We’ve got a minor problem, though,” Glenn said. “Most of the prisoners can’t run, much less walk. We take ’em out of their cages, the FGL is going to notice.”

“Glenn’s right,” Dom said. “And we can’t march a platoon of injured people into the jaws of the Skulls waiting outside this place.”

Meredith scanned the prison yard again. She spotted a pair of Hybrids shoving around a Skull. They slammed it into one wall, laughed, then slammed it into another. Whenever it fought back, they held out their hands. The Skull would fall into a stupor, undoubtedly affected by whatever biochemical cues they were breathing out over the monster.

Yes, escaping these cruel bastards wouldn’t be easy. If they screwed this up, they could inadvertently kill all the people they were trying to rescue. There had to be a way to get them out.

She scoped the prison yard and the fences around the facility. The explosives they’d set along the rooftop of the crumbling prison would come in useful later—but not until they got the prisoners out of here.

Then it hit her.

“Dom, this might be a long shot,” Meredith said. “But if you all can hold off a little longer, I think we can get everyone out.”

-16-

Dom wondered how many people, Hybrid or not, were now fueling the engines of the FGL’s war machine. He hated to think of the hundreds, thousands, maybe more, serving these cruel masters.

There was little chance that the Hunters alone could save them all. But they could save these people here and now. They could make a difference and strike a blow against the FGL in the process.

“We should be in position soon,” Meredith said over the comms. “As soon as we start this thing up, they’re going to know. Be at that front gate, or we’re all screwed.”

“Bravo, you ready?” Dom asked.

“Ready, Captain,” Glenn rumbled back.

“Then, it’s a go. Charlie, do your stuff. Meet you at the gate.”

Dom crept back up to one of the windows lining the manufacturing room, with Miguel at his side. The fiery glow flared as a skinny man with bones budding from his elbows opened the door to a furnace. The man reached in with a pair of tongs. Two Hybrids watched as he pulled a plate of metal out of the furnace. Slowly, he twisted around to place the plate on an anvil.

“Christ, what kind of medieval place is this?” Miguel asked.

No sooner had the question left his lips than did the skinny man drop the metal plate. One of the Hybrids yelled at the man and slashed him across the cheek with his claws, leaving bloody streaks. Another larger prisoner stood up and put himself between the Hybrid and the skinny man.

The half man did not wait. He grabbed the larger prisoner’s head and slammed it against the hot metal plate the skinny man had dropped. The Hybrid did not let the man go even as he writhed, skin sizzling against metal. His screams reached all the way past the noise of the machines. Dom could almost smell the odor of cooking flesh from here. Even when the man had gone still, the Hybrid kept him pressed against the hot plate.

Not a single other prisoner so much as lifted their eyes. Judging by their reaction, they must have known their protests would do no good. All they could expect was to share the poor bastard’s fate.

“I’ve seen enough,” Dom said. “We’re getting these people out now. You count how many Hybrids we got in there?”

“Eight,” Miguel said. “Looks like another six nearby outside.”

“Good.” Dom pointed to the far door of the manufacturing room. “We take those four out first. The others will scatter, but if we take the catwalks along the side of the room, they can’t hide from us.”

“Those bastards are going down!”

“Let’s make it happen.” Dom pried the edges of the window loose. The frame cracked as he pushed the glass out, and sweltering air blew against his face.

Then he pulled himself through, slipped onto the catwalk, and lay flat. He studied the room, waiting for the Hybrids to notice him. But not one batted an eye. The bastards had grown arrogant, confident in their domination over the local population. Not a single one carried a rifle. Their claws and teeth and bone plates were probably more terrifying to the people they had enslaved than any firearm would be.

Dom hoped they could use that to their advantage. He sighted up one of the Hybrids clustered near the doors on the other side of the tables full of workers.

“Fire,” Dom said. He plugged the first Hybrid with three rounds. Bone and blood sprayed over the steel door behind the Hybrid as his body fell backward. Miguel took out the one next to it. Their gunfire shredded a third Hybrid, whose surprise froze him in place.

The fourth escaped and began yelling in Russian. Dom fired at the Hybrid as he sprinted behind steel drums. The bullets sparked against metal and concrete. But none hit the Hybrid as he disappeared behind a stack of crates.

Screams erupted from the prisoners as they took cover behind their workstations. Dom started running along the catwalk. Now that they’d given up their position, there was no more need for secrecy. His boots clanged against the walkway, and he stopped at another corner above the furnace. Waves of heat rolled over him, distorting the air.

A Hybrid across the room jumped from one stack of crates to the top of a huge boiler. Like an acrobat, it threw itself at a column of pipes and scrambled up them toward the catwalk. Dom caught the soldier in his sights and fired. Bullets slammed against the Hybrid’s organic body armor. The Hybrid lost its grip and fell a meter. Its claws impaled the pipes. Water leaked out around the punctures, but the Russian didn’t fall. In fact, he started climbing again.

Dom let loose another burst. This time the Hybrid fell back and smacked against the floor.

Four down, four to go.

A growl exploded behind Dom. He dove to the catwalk and rolled, recovering in time to swing his rifle up at the snarling Hybrid. The monstrous soldier knocked his rifle aside, and Dom’s shots went wide. The rounds pierced a pipe that bled hot steam over both of them. Dom flinched from the scalding cloud.

The Hybrid caught the worst of the blast. He screamed in agony, his claws slashing blindly in front of him. Dom swung the butt of his rifle into the Hybrid’s face and knocked the bastard over the side. It slammed against the concrete floor, and the spikes along its back scattered into so many pieces.

Another two Hybrids jumped onto the catwalk to flank Miguel. Dom didn’t have a clean shot on either. He charged at the nearest one instead. The Hybrid spun on its heels, looking between Miguel and Dom for a fraction of a second.

Miguel took advantage of the Hybrid’s indecision with a blast of caustic liquid from his prosthetic. The Drooler-based acid cut into the Hybrid’s armor and ate through his flesh. The Hybrid screamed and swatted at his bubbling skin. Miguel spun in time to parry a downward-slicing claw from the other Hybrid. Another swing impaled Miguel’s prosthetic with claws that peeled away the silicone covering the mechanical apparatus.

Dom slammed his boot into the back of the screaming Hybrid’s leg, knocking him to the catwalk. He pressed the barrel of his rifle into its neck and fired. Acid still chewed through the Hybrid’s body, but he no longer screamed.

The remaining Hybrid slashed and clawed at Miguel with unbridled fury. More silicone tore from the prosthetic. A claw connected with the acid reservoir, and the liquid splashed out across both Miguel’s fatigues and the Hybrid’s legs. The half man didn’t slow his attack, even as the plates along his shins dissolved.

Bone rang against metal. Fabric ripped. Voices grunted and cursed. Miguel pushed back against the furious onslaught, but Dom could see the Hunter was losing ground. The Hybrid was desperate. Dom and Miguel had already torn through six of the monsters, and this one had seen enough not to underestimate them. He kept Miguel on his heels, knowing that as soon as he gave the Hunter a chance to play offense, it would be game over.

Dom had been in that position before. He knew what it felt like to be a cornered animal clawing for survival. Miguel needed help. But the catwalk wasn’t wide enough for them to fight side by side. Every time he tried to sight the Hybrid up, the bastard positioned himself to use Miguel as a meat shield.

Son of a bitch. Dom looked for an opening but couldn’t risk ruining Miguel’s rhythm. One misstep and the Hybrid’s claws would find the soft flesh of the man’s neck.

Then Miguel fell backward, landing hard on his spine. He put up a boot to push the Hybrid back, but the monstrous Russian jumped over it. He hammered down with both fists. Miguel blocked the strike with his ruined prosthetic arm. He couldn’t hold the Hybrid off for long. The beast leaned in, putting all its weight on the damaged arm.

Dom lunged forward. This was his opening.

He threw himself forward, jumping over Miguel. His shoulder slammed into the Hybrid’s. Sharp pain cut through him where one of the Hybrid’s spikes tore flesh and muscle.

But Dom didn’t let up. The Hybrid scrambled backward with Dom atop it.

“You’re not getting away, asshole.” Dom grabbed the Hybrid’s shoulder plates and kneed the bastard’s jaw. Blood gushed when the Hybrid bit his tongue. A claw slashed out, catching Dom’s side. Another dose of hot pain flashed just under his ribs.

An image of Miguel being disemboweled by the Hybrid blazed in Dom’s mind. Then he saw Spencer being cut down in France. Renee dying in the Congo. So many Hunters had paid the ultimate price. There was no way Dom was letting Miguel pay it today.

Another knee and then a heavy elbow into the Hybrid’s face cracked its jaw and the plates along its cheek. He threw the Hybrid backward, and the monstrous soldier scraped over the metal catwalk. Dom hoisted his rifle up and fired a burst of rounds. Geysers of blood spewed before a final death rattle escaped the Hybrid’s cracked lips.

“Thanks, Chief,” Miguel said between ragged breaths. He wiped his bloodied lips with the back of his hand. “One more of those bastards in here.”

Dom’s heart slammed against his ribcage like a Goliath trying to get out of a prison cell. The effects of adrenaline started to fade, and the pain in his side and shoulder burned hotter. He scanned the factory floor for the last Hybrid. But between the screaming prisoners and the machines still chugging along as if nothing had happened, no Hybrid showed itself.

“Can’t waste our time looking for it,” Dom said. “We’ve got to get these people out.”

They slid down a ladder. When Dom’s boots hit the floor, the impact resonated up his flank and inflamed the pain in his side. He grasped at his ribs, and his glove came away wet with blood.

Shit. Have to deal with that later.

All of the Hybrid prisoners were in chains. They huddled together like a litter of monstrous kittens left in the rain, as if they were completely unaware of the deadly weapons growing from their bodies. A few held the ironworking tools they’d been using as if that would protect them from a bullet.

“We’re here to help!” Dom said. He lowered his rifle and waved his hands, trying to beckon the people to follow him. “We’re getting you out of here!”

The screaming continued.

“Come on,” Miguel said. “We’re saving your asses!”

There was no indication any of them understood. Then a siren wailed somewhere outside the factory. It was echoed soon by a chorus of alarms inside. Red lights flashed across the ceiling, and gunfire exploded. That last Hybrid must’ve escaped and sounded the alarm, Dom realized.

More of the Hybrid prisoners began shrieking.

“Shit, this is like herding Skulls,” Miguel said.

Dom could see that action was needed. There would be no explaining to these people why he was here, that he wanted to free them and not kill them. He hated to do this, but he had no choice. Explanations would have to come later. For now, he needed efficiency. And there was one thing these people no doubt understood.

Fear.

It felt unnatural. But it was the only way he was going to get these prisoners out of here. He leveled his rifle at the nearest group and then indicated the exit.

“Move!” he bellowed. “Now!”

-17-

The claws of darkness scraped at the back of O’Neil’s mind, biding their time. More powerful now was the thrashing, drunk rage pummeling the inside of his skull. He felt the Hybrids descending around the prison. They announced their advance by spewing their biochemical cocktails to command the Skulls forward.

O’Neil fumbled with the keys they’d found as he let another prisoner out of a cell. The man stumbled out, mumbling words in a foreign language. He was skeletally thin from starvation. His fingernails appeared a golden yellow, just beginning to hook into claws, and his cheeks were gaunt with bony points pressing against his pale skin.

When he spoke again, O’Neil shook his head. “Sorry, buddy, only know English.”

“Oh... English.” The man’s eyes brightened. He took a few tentative steps forward then doubled over. O’Neil caught him, careful not to accidentally impale him with his claws. The man straightened. “Thank you.” Then fear flashed in his eyes. “You are rescuing us?”

“We are,” O’Neil said.

“Thank you,” the man said again. “I am Jaan Kask.”

“Hey, Jaan. I’m Brendon O’Neil. It’s good to meet you, but we’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

Glenn and Jenna were corralling the remaining prisoners at the end of the hallway.

“Last one!” Jenna said, helping a woman out. A pair of horns pushed out of her temples, and spikes jutted out of the back of her soiled dress.

The fervor in the air from the nearby Skulls and Hybrids was so strong O’Neil could practically taste fresh blood in his mouth. The monsters were hungry, and they were ready to feast. The prisoners must have felt it, too. They gave each other paranoid glances, their limbs shaking as if they were addicts going cold turkey.

“We need to get moving,” O’Neil warned. “We don’t have much time.”

Staccato gunfire popped somewhere in the distance.

“Bravo, Charlie, sitrep?” Dom asked over the comms in a strained voice.

“Charlie reporting in,” Meredith replied, sounding out of breath. “We’re going to be there soon. Hit some resistance. Hence the gunfire.”

“Bravo, here,” Glenn said. “Rounded up all the prisoners in the medical wing.”

“Then I recommend you all move out immediately,” Meredith said. “ETA between five and ten minutes.”

O’Neil hoped Meredith knew what she was doing.

“These men, the Russians... they are monsters,” a rasping voice said. “We must leave, or they will kill us.”

O’Neil turned around and saw Jaan behind him. “Trust me, I understand.”

Jaan’s eyes widened. “They change you, too. They do this?”

“Yeah, yeah, they did this,” O’Neil said. “Now go join the others. We’re going to save you, but you’ve got to cooperate.”

“Yes, yes, I will join.” Jaan pressed his palm against his chest. “I live in Tallinn. I know the city well. I help if need.”

“Good, thank you,” O’Neil said. “You need to get in line with those people now, though. You—”

The door at the opposite end of the hall exploded inward. O’Neil jumped in front of Jaan and lifted his rifle, aiming at the fog of smoke and dust spewing in. Dark shapes moved within the spreading cloud.

“Get down!” O’Neil yelled.

Glenn and Jenna dragged the prisoners they could to the ground, ushering them back toward the cover of the surgical suite. A hail of bullets screamed out of the smoke. O’Neil pushed Jaan into the cell where he’d been moments before. He let loose a flurry of rounds into the smoke, praying he took out at least a couple of the bastards in there.

Rounds continued to shriek through the air and crack into concrete. Some found their homes in the freshly rescued prisoners. Screams bled through the corridor, and a few of the rescued Hybrids collapsed. A handful froze in fear. Glenn barreled into them like a bulldozer and shoved them into the medical suite. Jenna followed with the rest of the prisoners, leaving only O’Neil and Jaan stuck in the prison cell.

Four FGL soldiers—humans, not Hybrids—rushed into the corridor, rifles pressed against their shoulders. As the smoke cleared and the soldiers advanced, three Hybrids stalked in. A Goliath lumbered behind them, its eyes glazed over. It dragged its knuckles like a drugged-up gorilla. The Hybrids had their mental stranglehold on the monster, wielding it every bit as dangerously as the rifles they carried.

The human soldiers continued to fire at the doorway where Glenn, Jenna, and the prisoners had disappeared. They were only a few meters away from the prison cell. If O’Neil tried to get Jaan to the medical suite now, they would be turned to a pile of pulpy flesh and broken bones.

“Stay back,” O’Neil said. They flattened themselves into the shadows.

The human FGL soldiers marched past, guns trained on the medical suite. The Hybrids came by next with the Goliath. Jaan flinched, and O’Neil pressed his claws over the man’s chest, imploring him to remain still.

The Goliath’s lumbering footsteps resounded down the corridor.

“We’re rerouting the prisoners,” Glenn called over the comms. “The way we came in is still open. Contacts headed our way, but we’ve got time. O’Neil, do you need backup?”

O’Neil couldn’t verbally respond, but he tapped the mic once to signify a negative response.

“Copy,” Glenn replied. “We’ve got to get these civvies moving or we’re toast. Meet us near the gate. If you aren’t there, I’ll double back and get you out myself.”

O’Neil double-clicked on the mic to signal an affirmative. With the FGL squad’s attention on the medical suite, he and Jaan could sneak behind them and exit right out into the prison yard.

The footsteps of the Goliath suddenly stopped. O’Neil held his breath.

Come on, come on. Keep going.

Jaan looked at O’Neil with wide eyes. Gunshots and shouts still exploded down the hall where the others had disappeared. The Goliath’s footsteps crunched on the concrete floor again, but this time they were growing closer.

Shit. Why’s he coming back?

O’Neil’s muscles tensed, and with each controlled breath, his ribs began to ache. A dull anger pulsed at the back of his mind, trying to pull him out of his hiding spot, urging him to march alongside the Hybrids. The mental shackles the Hybrids had on the Goliath were threatening to overwhelm him, too.

If the Goliath caught them in the prison cell, there would be no escape. All it had to do was run forward, and its bulky frame alone would demolish them, taking up the whole cell.

Maybe the Hybrids and the Goliath were doubling back because they had heard his breathing or the tapping on the mic. Maybe they could smell him or Jaan with their heightened senses.

“Ah, shit!” Jenna said.

Then Glenn’s voice. “O’Neil, we got a horde of Skulls flooding in from the other end of the prison now, too. There’s no way we can get all these people past ’em without taking massive casualties. We’ve got to push back your way.”

O’Neil double-clicked an “affirmative” on the mic. His mind whirred as he looked at Jaan, an innocent man turned Hybrid like him, in for a lifetime of never feeling human again. Of being alone.

Well, maybe not so alone as O’Neil had been.

All these people they were rescuing had been products of the FGL’s twisted experiments. All of them were poised to endure the seeds of pain, as O’Neil had. Those seeds would take root and grow, snarling through their insides and their minds, transforming their bones into something that fought against their own bodies.

The darkness returned. It pushed the raw anger and hatred to the back of his mind for the moment. A pair of Hybrid voices called out between the Goliath’s stomps. He thought about taking the Goliath out first, ending its miserable existence with a pair of claws through its eyes.

But then an idea came to him.

No, he would keep the Goliath alive for now. It was the Hybrids he needed to eliminate.

“I will take care of it,” O’Neil finally whispered to Glenn. He turned to Jaan. “Stay quiet, no matter what happens to me. The others will get you out of here.”

“What are—”

O’Neil fled the prison cell before Jaan could finish. If the man followed his instructions, maybe those FGL bastards would think it was only O’Neil who had been left behind. As long as Jaan remained in the safety of the cell, it gave O’Neil one less thing to worry about.

He stopped and stood in the middle of the hall. The Goliath, still dragging its plated knuckles, lurched forward, eyes glazed over as they stared straight ahead. Straight at O’Neil. The Hybrids scanned the corridor with the lights on their rifles, peering into each prison cell they passed, while the human FGL soldiers continued to beat on the door of the medical suite.

One of the Hybrids aimed his beam toward O’Neil.

Rolling to the side, O’Neil tried to dodge the light, but it caught him. The Hybrid yelled something, and bullets sparked against the concrete near him and ricocheted off the doors to the cells. A sudden roar exploded from the Goliath. The huge beast charged. It took up damn near the entire twelve-foot-wide corridor with its arms spread, claws raking the walls. O’Neil crouched in front of it in a three-point stance.

“Come on, you ugly bastard,” he muttered. “Let’s play.”

The Hybrids ran after the Goliath, hidden by its bulk. The floor shook. Cracks splintered through the concrete with each of the Goliath’s footsteps. But O’Neil didn’t move. He narrowed his eyes, studying the dumb, predictable beast.

Nothing but a tool of the Hybrids.

The Goliath lifted its fists above its head. They left gouges in the ceiling and broke through pipes that bled dirty water like an arterial wound. As the Goliath closed the distance, it brought its fists down in a hammer strike that would turn O’Neil into bone dust.

At the last second, O’Neil surged upward, leaping past the falling fists. His claws gripped the edges of one of the Goliath’s shoulder plates. He used his momentum and the handhold to fling himself over the Goliath’s back and landed hard on the first Hybrid there.

O’Neil slashed at the Hybrid’s neck. His attack opened a gaping wound that gushed blood in a pulsing fountain. He kicked aside the Hybrid’s rifle as the half man reached for his wound in the last throes of his pathetic life. The second Hybrid whirled his rifle at O’Neil. Ducking, O’Neil rolled under the Hybrid’s aim. Bullets punched into concrete, spraying fragments over O’Neil as he lunged for the Hybrid’s legs. He cut through the Russian’s boots, tearing into the cracks between the plates there. The Hybrid went down, his Achilles tendons cut.

The bastard let out a howl of pain as the third Hybrid brought his rifle to bear. The Hybrid was too far from O’Neil to close the distance without turning into a chewed-up chunk of meat. Instead, he rolled on his back, holding up the howling Hybrid as a shield. Bullets plunged into the third Hybrid’s comrade. O’Neil felt each impact tremor through his bones. He pushed himself up, carrying the now-silent Hybrid.

He threw the corpse at the other Hybrid. When the Russian ducked to dodge the carcass, O’Neil jumped upward, clinging to the wall. He used his claws to climb toward the ceiling. Then he scrambled over and dropped down on the bastard.

His feet crashed into the Hybrid’s chest. The half man’s skull smashed into the floor, and O’Neil reached down to end him. But suddenly something slammed into his back, sending him sliding across the floor until his head cracked against the wall. He blinked against the dizziness and blackness encroaching on his vision. Blood lingered across his tongue, and a sharp pain shuddered down his spine.

A huge shape loomed, casting a shadow over him.

In his bloodlust, O’Neil had forgotten about the Goliath.

He tried to push himself up. His legs wobbled. O’Neil collapsed, struggling for breath. The surviving Hybrid pushed himself up to his knees and let out a cackle, a demonic grin splitting his face. Blood trickled out of his nostrils as he directed the Goliath to go in for the kill.

-18-

“Slinger!” Rachel called out, the name for the terrifying Skull variant bursting from her lips.

The eyeless Skull hissed like a cobra ready to strike, its overgrown ears flicking. Rachel squeezed her rifle’s trigger, but the Slinger was already on the move. Bullets pierced the sodden, peeling walls of the Data Library and cut into the spines of the thick hardcover books on the shelves.

The Slinger disappeared into the shadows. For a creature without much in the way of muscle, it moved fast.

“Where the fuck did it go?” Terrence asked.

The soft clatter of bone against flesh sounded somewhere to Rachel’s left. She ducked instinctively, twisting her rifle to bear. Claws hissed through the air above her. The missiles pierced the wall behind her, quivering like arrows.

Adrenaline made Rachel feel as though it had dunked her in an icy bath of energy. Her vision tunneled down the sights of her rifle. She swept the room with her light. The beam played over rows of computers and desks. Stacks of canned food and empty water jugs littered the space. Something rustled behind her, and she swung around again.

But Terrence already had the Slinger in his light. “No you don’t, asshole.”

He fired, and Rachel swore she saw blood spray from the creature. But the bullets didn’t seem to slow it down. It lunged at Terrence. Even down a few claws, it was still deadly.

Terrence fell backward, his legs catching on a desk chair, as the Slinger pressed its attack. Rachel let her rifle drop and charged. Rory ran alongside her. Terrence kicked at the Slinger’s chest, slamming his boot into the creature’s chest. It grasped his ankles and tore into the fabric.

But the claws met the metal of his prosthetics instead of flesh. The Slinger didn’t seem to understand its mistake and bit down on Terrence’s ankle. Something sparked and broke. Rachel and Rory each grabbed one of the Slinger’s shoulders and yanked it off. They slammed the monster into a bookshelf. The shelf fell backward, spilling books.

Rachel let go of the Slinger’s shoulder as it scrambled to regain a foothold. Whipping her rifle up, she fired into the creature’s chest, completing the work Terrence had started. Blood popped and slurped out of the new holes in the Slinger’s torso. Its head flopped to the side, and its body teetered to the floor.

“Goddamnit,” Rory said. “Those bastards don’t give up.”

“Neither do we,” Rachel said, once again lowering her rifle.

A few Skulls still pounded on the door to the room. Shoving more bookshelves and desks in front of the door gave Rachel a semblance of safety. At least enough for them to search the Data Laboratory and see what in the hell had been going on here before Dr. Bennet went radio dark.

She shoveled past a pile of trash. She picked up a can with a dried crust around the edge. It was labeled REFRIED BEANS. “I take it he lived in here.”

Terrence knelt, examining his shredded pants and scratched prosthetics before sifting through some scattered folders. The way his ankle bent made it seem that the Slinger had actually done some damage to his artificial leg. “This place looks like the home of a hoarder.”

“Smells like death in here,” Rory said.

“The whole hospital does.” Rachel dropped the empty can back into the pile and stood.

“No, I mean, it’s really bad in here,” Rory said.

“The... what did you call it? The Slinger?” Terrence said, gesturing with a thumb back at the Skull they’d just killed.

“No, he’s not rotting yet.” Rory disappeared into the back of the laboratory, past more rows of boxes full of folders and old computers. “Hey, guys, check this out!”

Rachel carefully stepped over the dead Slinger and wound her way between the mazes of shelves and desks to Rory. Terrence joined them a second later. There was another office at the back of the lab, its door closed. Frosted-glass windows connected the office to the lab, giving them no good way to see what lay beyond. A placard on the wall declared, “Robert Bennet, PhD.”

“Stinks back here, too,” Rory said.

He was right. The stench was strong enough to make Rachel’s eyes water.

“Smells like shit,” Rachel said. “Maybe we got more Skulls on the other side.”

Rory shrugged then knocked on the door with the back of his hand.

“Rory, you idiot,” Rachel said.

“We’re going in there one way or another,” he said. “Might as well see if there’s something waiting for us.”

Another couple of seconds passed, but nothing threw itself through the window or scratched at the door.

Terrence motioned for Rory to move back and took the midshipman’s position. He rapped on the door. “Dr. Bennet, this is Terrence O’Connor with the US Army. We’re here to get you out.”

Still nothing.

“Damn,” Rachel said. “Guess he’s not here after all.”

But a sinking feeling in her stomach told her he probably was here. Just not alive.

“Watch my back,” Terrence said. He took a step back then slammed his heel into the door’s handle. The door slammed open, and the trio filtered in, their lights illuminating a space filled with more books and walls covered in awards and plaques. A streak of blood was smeared across the floor, leading behind the thick wooden desk at one end of the office.

Rachel approached the desk with slow, cautious steps. Her heart climbed into her throat. Her finger twitched slightly on the trigger guard. She kept one wall to her back as she skirted around the desk, her rifle at the ready.

“Son of a bitch!” She lowered her rifle. “I think I found Bennet.”

Flies crawled over the face of the corpse. Dried blood dribbled over his gray beard, and his eyes were glassy, staring up at the ceiling. His hands were still locked over his chest, frozen by rigor mortis, where three Slinger claws protruded from between his ribs.

“He can’t have been dead for more than a couple days,” Rory said. “We just missed him.”

Terrence turned and slammed a fist against the wall. The resulting tremor knocked one of the award plaques off the wall. It crashed to the floor. “Damn it.” Then he turned around. “You sure that’s him?”

Rachel picked up a picture frame from the desk. It showed a man with a white beard that matched the corpse’s with his arms around a woman with equally white hair. In front of them was a man in his thirties who looked like a younger Bennet with a brood of young children.

She handed the picture to Terrence. “Unless he was a creep and kept pictures of someone else’s family on his desk, this looks like him.”

Terrence glanced at the picture and sighed, then passed it to Rory.

“Wonder what happened to the rest of them.” Rory placed the frame back on the desk gingerly, as if that mattered.

“Doubt they fared any better than he did,” Rachel said. “Maybe we should fret over something else.”

She gestured to the laptop on the desk. There was a stack of portable batteries next to it, along with a couple of solar chargers. On a shelf behind the desk was the radio Bennet had been using to communicate with Fort Detrick.

“Let’s pack it all up and move,” Terrence said, already stuffing the laptop in his pack.

Rachel thumbed through some of the folders to see if they seemed important. There were so many damn stacks of paper, there would be no way they could leave with everything. They spent nearly half an hour sifting through Bennet’s desk, ignoring the Skulls’ clamor just beyond the door. Rachel even checked the man’s pockets, making sure they hadn’t missed anything.

“Think we got all we can carry,” Terrence said. “Base, this is Team Jaguar. HVT is deceased, but data is secure. We’re ready for that pickup.”

“Copy,” a voice called back over the comms. “Pickup at designated evac site confirmed. ETA twenty minutes.”

“Ready?” Terrence asked, motioning to the door that led to the hall. At least there were no Skulls beating against this one.

Rachel took a final look at the picture of Bennet and his family. She hoped all this had been worth it. For her sake and theirs. She turned back to Terrence and hoisted her rifle up. “Ready.”

***

Lauren peered at the white mouse running back and forth in its small plastic cage. She wore a white disposable “bunny suit” with booties and gloves that covered her from head to toe. The mask over her mouth and nose hadn’t settled right, and every time she breathed, a bit of moisture fogged up her safety glasses. The odor of the rodent habitat swam in the air, smelling of wet cardboard bedding.

“Tenth Plague control?” Navid asked, leaning down to look at the mouse. He was dressed in a similar bunny suit and had an extra hair net covering his growing beard.

Lauren still hated that name. “Yeah. Normal phenotype. No symptoms.”

Navid wrote down Lauren’s analysis. Then she took the mouse out of its cage, plucking it by the base of its tail. Its little legs whirred as it tried to wriggle out of her grip. She held the squirming mouse in place. Navid set down his notebook, picked up a needle and syringe, and took a blood sample from the mouse’s tail to analyze later.

When Lauren put the mouse back in its cage and replaced the top, it scrambled toward its water bottle and greedily licked the metal ball at the end of it.

Navid let out another long breath. “That’s it for the normal controls.”

“At least all of them looked good,” Lauren said.

The door opened to the animal-facility room, and Felix Becker came in. Somehow he seemed to have found the only bunny suit tailored for a slim fit. It hugged his body almost as closely as his normal suits did.

“How are my favorite mad scientists?” Becker asked, striding toward the shelves of mouse cages.

“Just dandy,” Navid said.

Becker ignored the sarcasm and clapped his hands. “Fantastic! And how about our little friends?” He bent down and tapped the cage of one of the controls. The healthy, white-furred mouse scurried over, giving him a quizzical look before scampering away again to gnaw on a lab block.

“The controls seem healthy,” Lauren said. “No signs of external bleeding, no lethargy, no secretions from their nose or eyes. Normal food and water consumption.”

“Good, good, good.” Becker scanned up and down the rows of the control mice. None of them had been infected with the Oni Agent before they’d been given a high dosage of the Tenth Plague. If Lauren and Navid had done their jobs right, the Tenth Plague would not affect them. “One hundred control mice and no side effects in any of them?”

Lauren shook her head, jostling her safety goggles. She nudged them upright again with the back of her hand. “No side effects that we’ve observed. So far, their blood samples show that the levels of Tenth Plague are decreasing as expected. All red and white blood cell counts are normal, too. No significant immune response, either.”

“Even better news.” Becker unlatched the top to one of the cages. He stuck his finger in. The mouse inside stared at him expectantly. Slowly he brushed the mouse’s head, rubbing its pink ears back.

“Damn,” Navid said. “Every time we handle them, they try to run or nip us.”

“That’s because you’re the one giving the shots.” Becker grinned. “They know Papa Becker is much friendlier.”

Lauren couldn’t help but raise a brow at that, but she didn’t want to get distracted from the task at hand. “We still have to run the last round of blood tests on these guys, but I’m optimistic that the trends we’ve seen will continue.”

“I, too, am optimistic.” Becker replaced the top of the mouse’s cage. “And how are the mini-Skulls?”

Lauren took a deep breath and pointed to the next shelf of cages. Almost all of them were empty except for a lonely trio. “Those are the last three. All the others have died.”

Again, Becker grinned. “As expected. Very, very good indeed. May I see the survivors?”

Lauren pulled out the shelf with the three remaining cages. The mice inside had been horribly transformed by the Oni Agent. Little nodules of bone pushed out of their foreheads, and their yellowed claws extended an extra couple of millimeters. Tiny skeletal barbs poked out of their tails and up their spines. Their hips jutted out of their gray, balding flesh.

When Becker leaned toward these mice, their pulsing red eyes locked onto him. They threw their tiny bodies against the clear plastic walls of their habitats, claws scratching and teeth scraping down them. Blood smeared each time their ribs and heads impacted the side.

“Feisty little buggers,” Becker said. “It is clear they are well and truly infected with the Oni Agent. But the blood?”

Little trickles of red leaked from the corners of their eyes and their snarling noses.

“The bleeding is definitely a side effect of the Tenth Plague,” Navid said. “Normal Oni Agent-infected mice don’t bleed like that. Blood tests show heightened inflammatory reactions. These three are fighters, but the Tenth Plague is working. By all accounts, they’re dying. Just more slowly than the others.”

“As much as I hate to see these little animals sacrificed, it is for the greater good,” Becker said, turning away. “How did the Tenth Plague affect them?”

“Almost completely as we expected.” Lauren picked up the notebook Navid had set down before. “The disintegration of the bony growths caused profuse external and internal bleeding. In many cases, the Tenth Plague also caused catastrophic organ failure and accelerated the neurological damage of the Oni Agent, causing brain death.”

Becker solemnly nodded. “These are very good results. I know this has been a difficult project, but humanity will thank you.”

I certainly hope so, Lauren thought. If she had failed in her job, they wouldn’t be thanking her. They would be cursing her for the untold number of deaths the Tenth Plague would cause.

“I still must voice my opposition to this project,” Lauren said.

“And if you and Navid weren’t in charge of this project, we would have someone else do it,” Becker said. “Your talents are being utilized to eliminate Skulls and save healthy humans. Always, you must remember that.”

Yeah, that’s how everyone justifies it. Still didn’t make Lauren feel any better.

“With these results, should we move to trials on actual Skulls?” Becker asked.

Lauren pictured the monsters residing in their cages within the basement. “Yes, we’re ready.”

“Good,” Becker said. “The rest of my colleagues will be pleased to hear it. I believe the EU leadership is anticipating an announcement of our results any day now.”

“I’m still uncomfortable that we’re not going to have any healthy controls,” Lauren said. Unlike the mouse experiments, they didn’t have a bunch of people lining up to inject the Tenth Plague in their vessels to make sure it didn’t harm a normal human. “I understand why we can’t, but I hope you’ll remind whoever wants this weapon that they have to take that into consideration if they deploy it.”

“At this point, there is no question of if they will deploy it,” Becker said. “They will, because the truth is, we are quite desperate to take our countries back from these monsters before the FGL dominates Europe in a new Reich.” Lauren opened her mouth to protest again, but Becker continued, “I will certainly impress the gravity of using such an untested weapon.”

“The results might not translate to humans,” Navid added.

Becker smiled. “Of course. I help run a pharmaceutical company. I am quite aware of how these things work.”

Eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, Navid didn’t look satisfied. In his expression, Lauren read the same fear coursing through her mind. “Probably right” wasn’t good enough. These meager animal trials weren’t good enough. Testing the Tenth Plague on just Skulls wasn’t good enough. None of this was good enough.

But what else did a cornered, dying animal do when a predator loomed over it, ready to strike the killing blow? It fought with everything it had. It tried to survive at all costs.

With the threat of an airborne Oni Agent and an expanding FGL empire, the Tenth Plague was humanity’s best bet for survival. But if they lost that bet...

“I want more assurances that the Tenth Plague isn’t going to harm normal people,” Lauren said. “More than just some tests on mice.”

“I understand.” Becker’s face grew gravely serious. “We have already discussed furthering the clinical aspects of this research with the military. I think you will be pleased to hear that the company’s leaders and the German officials believe clinical trials will be necessary.”

Lauren got the sense that Becker was holding something back. She narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Becker hesitated. “The truth is, neither the government nor our company want to force innocent people to take the Tenth Plague just to assuage our fears.”

Now it seemed they were back to square one. “We’ve got to do some kind of clinical trial, though.”

“I know,” Becker said. “Which is why the controls—the healthy humans—will consist solely of volunteers. Many men and women in the armed forces, as well as a few civilians. Our company also felt it was necessary we showed good faith in your work.” He took a deep breath. “Which is why I volunteered to be the first test subject.”

Lauren could say nothing. She merely nodded as Becker bid them farewell. He whistled a tune, strolling out of the lab. Navid’s eyes were wide, locked onto Lauren’s.

“Holy shit,” Navid said. “He’s serious about this, isn’t he?”

“I have no doubt,” Lauren said.

She wanted to feel better. They were actually going to have a legitimate clinical trial of the Tenth Plague. But knowing that Becker was going to be a part of the trial made it much more difficult to experience the relief she wanted so desperately to feel. An immense weight seemed to settle over her, adding to the already-burdensome scientific duties she had taken on, developing the Tenth Plague.

-19-

O’Neil tried to pull himself backward, away from the enormous Goliath looming over him. The monster lifted its huge fists in the air, ready to pulverize him. Behind the beast, the Hybrid controlling the oversized Skull let out a demonic laugh as if the bastard thoroughly enjoyed what he was about to do.

In his periphery, O’Neil could vaguely see the shapes of the human FGL soldiers as they broke apart the door into the surgical suite where Glenn, Jenna, and all the prisoners they’d rescued were stranded. Glenn and Jenna probably would have been able to escape on their own. But O’Neil had served with the Hunters long enough to know that they wouldn’t abandon a group of innocent people. They were all going to die here.

And now O’Neil would die here, too. He would be torn apart by a Goliath controlled by another Hybrid. He would not have his revenge on the FGL for what they’d done to him or to all these people in this godforsaken prison. He would just be another dark stain on the walls, forgotten among the shadows and the rats.

But then a gunshot rang out, loud and close, nearly deafening. The Goliath’s eyes lost their glassiness, and the beast froze, looking about as if it were an abruptly roused sleepwalker. O’Neil didn’t let the moment go to waste and scrambled backward. As soon as the giant realized it was losing a fresh meal, it would attack again.

He focused his energy on secreting the pheromones that would bring the Goliath under his control. The beast started after him but stepped forward in fits, its hands grasping and reaching for him, claws inches from his face. Each finger was nearly as big as one of O’Neil’s arms.

Blood trickled from his nostrils. He didn’t feel the other Hybrid fighting to control the Goliath any longer, but the strain of subduing the Goliath was enough to make his vision go nearly black. He teetered on the edge of consciousness. His brain screamed at him, and his nerves exploded as if his muscles were working overtime to hold up an enormous boulder.

The Goliath pushed against his control, fingers spread, ready to crush him. He pictured the plates and overgrown ribs protecting his organs cracking, imagined the pain as his insides were pulped by those massive fists. The distraction let the Goliath wrest control of itself for a flash, and the beast got its hands around him.

Focus, focus, focus.

He stared into the Goliath’s beady eyes, ignoring the darkness creeping over his mind, the pain of all the tortured prisoners here, and the agony in his own bones. The yells of the soldiers down the hall, the squawking of the comm unit in his ear, and someone else, close by, yelling his name—it all faded away.

The Goliath squeezed. One of O’Neil’s ribs popped. He gasped for breath, his brain on fire. But he pushed past the agony, past the animal instincts telling him to scream and flail and beat at the monster’s claws.

There was only one way out of this. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on the Goliath. His mind cleared, and all he saw was the monster’s dilating pupils.

Let go, he thought, the words resonating in his mind like a gong strike.

The fingers loosened. He sucked in a deep breath. He backed away, his mind still reigning over the Goliath. He could feel the biochemicals surging through his body as if carried by an electrical current. The Goliath stood there, dumb and silent, as O’Neil squeezed around it to the other side.

“You are alive,” Jaan Kask said. He held one of the dead Hybrid’s rifles. “I killed this one.” He gestured to the Hybrid that had been controlling the Goliath.

“Thank you,” O’Neil managed. “How...?”

“I shoot him. How else?”

That was not what O’Neil meant, but he was still struggling to recover his breath. Now the soldiers at the far end of the corridor were finding shooting positions. Two of them took potshots at the Goliath.

Still under O’Neil’s control, the beast didn’t react. O’Neil pushed Jaan back into the protection of the entrance to one of the prison cells.

“When eighteen, I serve Estonian Land Forces,” Jaan said.

O’Neil nodded, only half listening.

“I can use gun,” Jaan said insistently, gesturing with the weapon. His knuckles were bony, like O’Neil’s when he’d been first turned into a Hybrid.

Then it clicked. O’Neil was still so distracted trying to control the Goliath, he didn’t quite get what Jaan was trying to say. The man wanted to help break them out of here.

Goddamnit, if Jaan could help him now, while they had a Goliath under their control, they could actually pull this off.

“Glenn,” O’Neil called over the comms. His voice scratched up his throat. “Hybrids are down. I’ve got control of the Goliath. We’re about to get rid of those soldiers pestering you, and then we can get out of here.”

“Be my guest,” Glenn said.

“Follow my lead,” O’Neil said to Jaan. “Might need you to cover me.”

Jaan nodded and trailed after him. They used one of the iron columns ribbing the hall as cover. The FGL soldiers continued their desperate gunfire. Even with his speed, O’Neil worried he wouldn’t make it down there in time to stop them. Firing at them from this distance might only drag them into a prolonged gunfight that would give them plenty of time for reinforcements to arrive.

So he used the best weapon he had. His knees nearly buckled as he focused on the Goliath. More blood tickled his nostrils. But he thought of the prisoners he’d seen, the way they must have been tortured when the FGL had twisted their bodies into monstrosities like him. He used that anger to fuel the Goliath and sent it at the FGL soldiers like a living wrecking ball.

Bullets slammed against the Goliath’s plates. The Hunters could have easily taken the Goliath down as it loped down the long hallway. They knew where to shoot the monster to do real damage, to get between the organic armor that bolstered the abomination’s mass.

The FGL soldiers did not. They were used to fighting beside the things, not against them. When the Goliath slammed into them, there was no resistance, no struggle. It simply rolled over them, breaking the first two soldiers under its feet. The giant picked up one of the two survivors and swung the soldier against the wall until his head was a pulpy mess. The last soldier cowered, pressing himself against the wall. The Goliath snatched the man with one fist.

O’Neil could hear the crunch of bones and slurping pop of flesh all the way from his position as the Goliath pulled off the soldier’s head with its teeth and swallowed. Jaan turned green at the sight and retreated into the cell, vomiting over the floor.

O’Neil didn’t blame him. It was a grotesque sight. But the cold darkness in his mind pushed aside any feelings of revulsion. He saw only what needed to be done.

When the door opened to the surgical suite, O’Neil drew the Goliath away. Glenn poked out of the doorway, with his rifle pointed at the huge beast.

“Don’t worry,” O’Neil said. “I’ve got it under control.”

The sounds of gunfire continued to pepper the building outside. O’Neil heard the clamor of voices. Someone was attempting to break down the other entrance of the medical suite. The prisoners filed out quickly with the Hunters guiding them. O’Neil sent the Goliath charging down the opposite end of the hallway to ensure their route to the exit remained open. As the beast ran past him, he saw several bleeding wounds from where the FGL soldiers had managed to land a few shots. The Goliath was strong, but it wasn’t immortal.

O’Neil hoped he could use the beast long enough to get them out of this place. He made the Goliath bash down the next set of doors. They splintered apart to reveal a wider corridor bathed in darkness. Jaan stuck close to O’Neil, steering his rifle’s aim into the shadows beyond. Glenn and Jenna herded the freed prisoners from behind, corralling all twenty-odd people along.

“That door should take us outside,” Glenn said, glancing at his smartwatch. “Then it’s just a short trek between the outdoor prison cells and this building to get to the front gate.”

They just needed to secure the front gate and hold it long enough for Meredith and Andris to complete their part of the plan. O’Neil directed the Goliath to bash down the next set of doors. The creature stomped outside and stopped atop the doors. O’Neil peered out from behind the Goliath, lifting his rifle to scope out the exterior. Jaan mirrored his movements.

Almost immediately, a hail of bullets crashed into the Goliath. Human FGL soldiers charged the monster. Perched along the walls, using their claws to create new handholds, Hybrids rained down fire. There were at least six of them aiming at the Goliath, and nearly twice that many normal human soldiers.

O’Neil sent the Goliath forward.

“Focus on the Hybrids,” O’Neil whispered.

“The what?” Jaan asked.

“The ones that look like us.”

“Ah.” Jaan lifted his aim and sprayed at one of the Hybrids. The half man crumpled under his well-placed shots and fell two stories to the gravel pathway below.

Whatever Jaan’s story, he was at least a good shot.

The Goliath plowed into the first few soldiers. The others retreated as the sheer volume of their fire staggered the behemoth. Jenna and Glenn joined in, trading fire with the Russian Hybrids. O’Neil hoped the Goliath might stand until the Hybrids were eliminated, but it would be close.

The Goliath tore into two soldiers and crushed their bodies together. It tore off the arm of one man, still alive, and swallowed it whole as the soldier shrieked. The Goliath pounded him into the pavement until he stopped screaming. Then, growing bored, the Goliath struck out at the next soldier. It tore him into two pieces with hardly any effort.

The Goliath started toward the next retreating soldier. Blood trickled from the beast’s mouth and dribbled from between its bony armor. The Goliath was slowing. It continued ambling around them, but it looked like a drunk.

“You are making it do this?” Jaan asked as he reloaded his rifle, pointing to the Goliath.

O’Neil managed a nod. “Trying. Losing my grip. Those others are trying to take the Goliath back.” He pointed at the Hybrids on the wall.

“Can I do this, too?” Jaan asked.

Shit.

That hadn’t even occurred to O’Neil. He’d been so focused on maintaining his grip on the monster. “Try. You just got to focus.”

Jaan stepped back and lowered his rifle. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the Goliath. Blood trickled out of his nose just as it did out of O’Neil’s. The Goliath started to lumber forward, swatting at the bullets being flung at it.

This was it. They could overpower the remaining Hybrids if they just focused. Let Glenn and Jenna do the shooting while they wielded the Goliath. The big oaf swung a heavy claw and caught another soldier. The man crashed against a wall and fell, his arm hanging loose in a place where no joint existed.

Yes, they were actually doing it. They were succeeding by working together.

Then O’Neil realized that maybe it shouldn’t be this easy. Him and an inexperienced experimental Hybrid triumphant over the three or more FGL Hybrids out there?

It didn’t seem right.

Maybe those Hybrids were too focused on shooting. Or maybe...

“More Goliaths!” Glenn bellowed.

Four of the beasts barreled toward the Goliath O’Neil was controlling. The first rammed into it. The other three grabbed its limbs and began pulling, all roaring in victory when the arms and legs snapped off, leaving trails of blood and shredded sinew. O’Neil lost all focus and fell backward against the wall. Jaan gasped for air beside him, clutching at his head.

Then the four Goliaths began loping toward O’Neil and the others, blood on their claws and splattered over their chest plates.

There was no way O’Neil could control that.

-20-

Dom led the freed prisoners out of the factory and toward the front gate. A few Hybrids rushed to intercept them, firing from the rooftops. Miguel landed three rounds into the first. The Russian tumbled to the ground, and Dom brought down a second. The lone Hybrid jumped from the roof to bring the fight to them, but Dom caught him in a flurry of bullets as soon as he landed.

“You see?” he called back to the prisoners. “We’re trying to help you!”

A few seemed to understand through the veil of shock, yelling out in Estonian to the others. Several others still wailed and shrieked. Getting them out of here was not going to be easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

“We need to move before more get here!” Dom pointed at the dead Hybrids. “I’m not holding your hand, so either move with us or you die here.”

The people murmured between themselves. Somewhere in the distance, gunfire roared in relentless salvos, echoing off the walls of the prison yard.

“Chief, these people have no idea what’s going on,” Miguel said, his expression filled with worry. “Maybe we gotta cut our losses on this one.”

Dom let out a breath through gritted teeth. He hated to admit it, but Miguel was right. There was only so much he could do to save these people. “We move! Now!”

He ran with Miguel at his side, refusing to look back. He didn’t want to see how many had chosen to stay or run off on their own. The looks in their faces would haunt him.

Hell, this whole place would haunt him.

They rounded a corner. Another chorus of gunfire burst somewhere in the distance as alarms beckoned more FGL soldiers to join the fight. Silhouetted against the starry night sky, shapes flitted over the rooftops behind them. Dom paused only occasionally to fire at them with Miguel. Almost certainly those were Hybrids tracking their movements.

“Why the hell aren’t they just pouncing on us?” Miguel asked after they’d launched another volley toward the ghostly shapes.

“I don’t like it,” Dom said.

The moans and shrieks of Skulls rose in the air behind them, followed by a ground-shaking roar.

“Maybe that’s our answer,” Miguel said.

They ushered the remaining civilians around another bend in the prison yard, passing by a series of outdoor prison cells that looked more like dog cages. Chain-link fences covered spaces no bigger than six feet squared. Inside most were piles of skeletal remains picked clean of flesh. The farther they ran alongside the cells, the less clean the skeletons became. Rags of drying flesh hung off the bones of one skeleton propped in a corner. The next held a body with withered, dried skin around the beginnings of horns, claws, and spikes.

Another booming roar rumbled behind them. A Skull bounded around the corner, followed by a lumbering Goliath. Hybrids perched on the roofs at a healthy distance, watching the monsters.

“Shit,” Miguel said. “We can’t take ’em all. Not with the Hybrids up there.”

“Pacifist grenades,” Dom said, unclipping two from his tac vest. He threw them in quick succession.

The grenades trailed smoke through the air and clunked on the ground several yards in front of the Skulls. Miguel threw two as well. Red fog billowed between the prison buildings.

Dom waved the civilians on as he and Miguel stood their ground for a moment.

The first two Skulls that hadn’t had much exposure to the Pacifist Fog burst out of the cloud, wisps of smoke curling around their horns. Dom leveled them both with gunfire as the hulking shadow of the Goliath came next.

“Knock the bastard’s eyes out,” Dom said.

They fired into the beast’s face, bullets chewing at bony matter and rough gray skin. The Goliath carried on toward them with a wake of Skulls not far behind.

Not today, you ugly bastard, Dom thought, squeezing the trigger.

One of the Goliath’s eyes popped with a lucky bullet. The beast’s jaw dropped, and it collapsed forward, carried only by momentum, leaving a gouge in the ground behind it. It wasn’t just blinded; it was dead.

Smaller Skulls hurdled over its body, determined to take on Miguel and Dom.

But before they could reach them, the monsters slowed, their eyes glazing over. They stopped in the middle of the path, red fog devouring them where they stood. Some stared up at the stars with glassy eyes, drool stretching from their fangs.

Dom thought he heard Russian curses from the rooftops.

“We owe those geeks in the white coats big time, Chief,” Miguel said.

They sprinted to catch up to the freed civilians who were now running ahead. While Dom was certain that they had caught the majority of the Skull forces in the Pacifist grenades’ fog, they had no more of the grenades, and the calls of the Skulls still howled around the prison yard. More of the Hybrid shapes moved along the roofs. They were beginning to catch up to Dom and Miguel. Bullets ripped through the air and plunged into the ground near them.

Dom’s muscles burned as he ran behind the prisoners. He spun backward to return fire sporadically at the Hybrids pursuing them from above.

“Eat shit, you ugly bastards!” Miguel yelled before peppering one of the Hybrids with rounds.

The Russian tumbled headfirst over the side of the roof. His body and rifle cracked against the ground.

Only a handful of Skulls chased them now; the rest were still somewhere in the cloud of red Pacifist Fog. Dom had no idea how long it would last. The last time they’d used the grenades, they’d set them off in an enclosed space. On Ikaria, the Skulls had remained in their trance for only a few minutes. Out here, they might not even have that long.

Ahead, one of the prisoners doubled over, her hands on her knees. She started gasping for breath.

“Come on, lady, you’ve got to move!” Miguel said.

Dom glanced up at a Hybrid bringing a rifle up to fire. He shot the soldier before the Russian could squeeze his trigger. The Hybrid tumbled backward in the barrage of gunfire and disappeared. Dom grabbed the lady’s arm, his fingers wrapping around the rough bone covering her biceps.

“We have to keep moving!” he said.

She shook her head. Tears streamed from her eyes and traced over her cracked, scaly skin. A chorus of yells burst from the roofs. Muzzle flashes struck through the night like lightning, and fresh rounds kicked up clods of dirt and fragments of cement.

“We’re surrounded, Chief!” Miguel said.

“Inside!” Dom boomed. “Inside, now!”

He let go of the woman and kicked open the closest door, ushering people through. He had no idea what they would find in here, but he had no choice. They had been only a few dozen meters from the front gate, but charging ahead under the bullets raining down around them would have been suicide. One of the prisoners took a bullet to the back of his thigh. He fell to the ground and held his wound, his jaw set in a pained grimace.

“I got you!” Miguel said, lunging back out against the rushing crowd. He reached down to help the man, but three more bullets lanced into the man’s back. Blood and bone geysered up, and the man went still. Miguel jumped back as more rounds bit into the ground at his feet.

Another three prisoners crumpled under the onslaught. A fourth took a bullet to her shoulder but kept on running. An older man with a beard growing between the thin bone plates on his face stumbled when a round punched into his arm. Dom caught him and started to pull him into the safety of the hall.

He wasn’t fast enough. More bullets punched through the man’s body. Warm blood spilled across Dom’s gloves and fatigues. The man died in his arms.

“Goddamnit,” Dom said. He dropped the body and pulled the doors shut behind him as bullets rang against the metal. He looked around for the first time to take stock of their surroundings. They were in another wing of prison cells. In here, all the doors had been yanked off, and there were crates stacked within.

“Chief, I really wanna know what these bastards are shipping out, but I know we gotta go,” Miguel said.

Fusillade after fusillade slammed against the door, and the prisoners alternated between frightened screams and yells of urgency.

Dom looked at the crates. This might be a treasure trove of intel. But if they stayed in here for too long, the Hybrids would have them cornered once again.

Dom glanced down the row of open cells, past the people huddled together. “Maybe there’s an inventory sheet somewhere. Chao, do you read?”

“I’m here, Captain.”

“Got a live view?”

“Your feed is still clear.”

“Good.” Dom studied the boxes. There were Russian words scrawled across most of them, though he had no idea what they meant. “Record and translate. Miguel, bash open a couple of these and see what you can see. I’ll keep these people moving.”

The sound of cracking wood split the air as Miguel tore open a crate. The metal canisters from the factory spilled out. Another crate and more canisters.

“I’m seeing a trend here,” Miguel said.

Somewhere deeper in the building, he heard the distinct tap of claws on concrete. “Time’s up. Faster!” Dom said.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Miguel said.

Dom waved his arm, herding the people forward. “Mere, please tell me you’re ready to pick us up.”

“Not yet but soon!” she called back.

Dom thought he could hear the pop of gunfire through her transmission. Even amid the background noise, he sensed the worry in her voice, her words bouncing around in his mind as they ran.

They neared the end of the hall. Every crate Miguel had broken along the way contained the same canisters. The sheer number of those things meant something bad, but Dom didn’t have time to dwell on it. Once they reached the exit, he pushed through the surging prisoners with Miguel by his side.

“Hold them back,” Dom said.

Miguel held out his hands and tried to keep the prisoners from rushing into what might be another trap. Dom pushed the door open slightly. Another building was directly in front of them, blocking their view of the gate. A walkway led to the right, where it intersected with a wider path. His heart shot up into his throat. Over that path, he saw Bravo team with their own cadre of prisoners.

“We made it!” he said.

O’Neil stood at the front of the group, leaning out of the shelter of another building. Beside him stood another Hybrid. A prisoner, Dom guessed. They seemed to be staring intently at something out of his field of view.

As Dom started toward Bravo, it soon became clear what had their attention. Four Goliaths were running toward them, their footsteps shaking the ground.

“Son of a bitch,” Miguel said. “We can’t catch a break.”

-21-

Meredith leaned forward in the seat of the Unimog transport truck. The diesel engine let out a beastly growl when she pressed the pedal to the floor. The noise was undercut by an unhealthy grinding. When Dom had said they needed a way out of this place, her mind had been drawn back to the military museum and the truck that had once entertained tourists. Now the vehicle would be doing something a hell of a lot more important than lugging sightseers around for a couple of Euros.

“There is the gate!” Andris said, perched in the passenger seat beside her.

“And there are our friends,” Meredith muttered. Four Goliaths were charging across the courtyard. She squinted to see Bravo team firing at the beasts. A large group of people who appeared to be in various stages of becoming Hybrids crouched just inside the entrance to one of the prison wings. To her right, she saw Dom and Miguel leading another batch of scared-looking Hybrids to join up with Bravo.

She chinned her comms. “I’m here!”

Bullets crashed into the truck, sounding like a terrible hailstorm. At the same time, FGL Hybrids along the roofs of the prison began to descend.

“They do not know what is coming for them,” Andris said.

Meredith aimed the truck at the nearest Goliath. “Brace yourself.”

The truck slammed into the beast. The Goliath stumbled. It wasn’t dead—not even close. The truck’s hood was dented, and a spider web of fracture lines traced through the glass, but they were still moving. She pushed the truck onward, racing up to the next set of Goliaths.

“Andris?” she asked simply.

“With pleasure,” he replied.

As they passed the first Goliath, he tossed a grenade at its feet. The explosion went off a second after they surged ahead of the beast. A cloud of rock and dirt sprayed up around the Goliath’s feet, and the beast went down, bloody cracks tracing up its armor. Its legs were a mangled mass of glistening bone and blood. Somehow the thing was still alive and dragged itself forward using its claws, blood trickling between its tusks.

Andris lobbed another grenade at the third Goliath. The throw was off, and the explosion peppered the monster with shrapnel but didn’t bring it down. Wounds wept crimson across the beast’s side as it charged through the cloud of dirt toward them.

The beast pushed against Alpha and Bravo’s gunfire as if it were fighting against nothing more than a windy rainstorm. Meredith rammed the truck hard into the back of the giant. The monster toppled, crashing into the ground face-first.

The sudden stop sent her forward. Her ribs smashed against the wheel, and Andris slammed against the dashboard. Glass shattered and fell away in so many crystalline shards over the truck’s cab. A long moan dribbled out of the Goliath’s mouth as the beast started to push itself up.

“Alpha, Bravo,” Meredith yelled. “Load up. We’re getting you the hell out of here!” Then, to Andris, “Cover them.”

He nodded, even as blood trickled from a cut in his scalp, and bailed out the passenger side of the truck. Meredith jumped out the driver’s side and ran atop the fallen Goliath’s back. It was using its arms to push itself up on all fours, limbs quivering. She climbed between the spikes standing upright from its spine and reached the back of the thing’s neck.

“Stay down, you ugly bastard.” She emptied her magazine of armor-piercing rounds into the back of the Goliath’s skull, drilling into the bone. The Goliath let out a long roar then collapsed.

Meredith waved on the prisoners running toward her. For the first time, she saw the panic in their eyes up close, the utter fear behind their Hybrid masks. Even through the fresh bony growths adorning their bodies, their humanity was all too evident.

And so too was the frailty of their lives. The FGL Hybrids along the roofs of the prison yard continued their assault. Dirt and bits of concrete flew where bullets landed. A fresh wave of Skulls led by a pair of Goliaths charged up a pathway near the direction Alpha had come from. Along another intersecting road, FGL human soldiers ran to meet them, firing all the way.

Rounds caught a few of the prisoners, cutting their escape short, but the others managed to find cover behind the body of the Goliath and make their way into the back of the truck.

“Right on time, Mere,” Dom said as he helped the prisoners into the back of the truck. He swung up behind them. “Let’s go!”

Meredith and Andris slipped back into the cab. The soldiers had now turned their weapons on the personnel carrier. The Hunters returned fire, lobbing a couple of incendiary grenades behind them as Meredith turned the truck around.

One of the surviving Goliaths lurched in front of them. She swerved hard to the left. The Goliath swung. Its huge claws raked into the side of the vehicle, and it grabbed hold of Andris’s door. The door came away with the screech of tearing metal.

Meredith’s world narrowed to the dangerous path ahead. The sounds of gunfire and screams faded as she focused on the two Goliaths in front of her. The one dragging itself along, leaving a trail of bloody guts, was easy enough to avoid. The last one, wounded but still standing, ran headfirst at her. It brandished the horns atop its head like a rhino defending its territory.

The truck was strong. But it had already endured too much. She had no illusions about what would happen to the truck, much less her and Andris in the cab, if they met the Goliath head-on. All the while gunfire exploded in vicious salvos from the rooftops and the prison grounds as the FGL amassed their defending forces.

“Now?” Andris asked.

“Not yet,” Meredith said.

They just needed to make it past that rushing Goliath, beyond the front gate. Then she could let Andris have his fun.

“That Goliath,” Andris said, “he is still in front of us.”

“I know!”

From the corner of her eye, Meredith saw Andris tighten his grip on the edges of his seat. The color was draining from his face.

“Just trust me!” she shouted over the roar of the engine. Steam and smoke were pouring off it now. She must’ve broken the radiator when she hit one of the Goliaths. No surprise there. They didn’t need the truck to get them much farther anyway.

Just past this last Goliath.

A cloud of dirt spewed in the air behind the giant beast. It lowered its shoulders, and its claws shot forward. Now mere meters away, it lunged to close the distance.

Meredith yanked the wheel hard to the right. The truck’s tires squealed. The front wheel came up off the ground as momentum tugged at them. The Goliath’s horns missed, but its shoulder did not. Bone scraped against the metal. The prisoners yelled and screamed, shifting away from the Goliath and threatening the balance of the truck.

“Hang on!” Meredith yelled, twisting the wheel hard to the left.

For a second their inertia carried them forward. Meredith could feel that the vehicle wanted to go sideways, wanted to spill them all out along the pavement, leaving them defenseless against the FGL soldiers and Hybrids. Adrenaline slammed through her, seeming to slow time. A shroud of darkness pulled itself into the corners of her vision as her muscles tightened.

The front wheel of the truck smashed back down against the ground. It skidded along before both huge wheels regained traction, dragging them away from the Goliaths and through the front gate.

“Frank,” Meredith called over her comms, “we’re headed to the designated evac point now. Got a couple dozen passengers for you.”

“I hope they all have their tickets ready,” the helicopter pilot crooned back. “And remind ’em that we don’t have reserved seating, so it’s first come, first served.”

Meredith ignored his joking. The truck bucked as they crushed the broken chain-link fence they’d rammed into on their way into the prison. They sped past the lines of abandoned, rust-pocked vehicles around the perimeter of the prison and into an overgrown field.

“Now?” Andris asked.

Meredith glanced through the side window of the truck. Spotlights swept the ground around them, and gunfire peppered the side of the truck. A swarm of soldiers and Hybrids rushed out of the gate.

Meredith gave a sharp nod. “Now!”

A flash of light sliced through the dark at the far end of the prison. Another quickly followed. Then another and another as the sounds of a great crashing rumble rolled over Tallinn. Fire devoured the prison and the horde of FGL cronies in pursuit. One of the guard towers began to lean. Its collapse accelerated, bricks and mortar falling away, until it slipped sideways like a great redwood finding the earth at its roots. Another tower went down as a cloud of debris plumed up.

“Nice work,” Dom said, sounding out of breath over the comms. “Andris, Mere, we owe you our lives.”

“It was a pleasure,” Andris said. “Any excuse to blow something up.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Miguel called.

Black smoke blew into the open cab of the truck.

Her throat itched, and she coughed, her eyes watering. “Come on, baby,” she said. “Just a little farther.”

At least the FGL defensive forces were now buried under a pile of smoking rubble. Their demented factory-prison was gone, their slaves freed.

“Uh, you all seeing this?” Jenna asked over the comms. “We got company.”

Meredith stuck her head out of the side window. Dust rose into the air behind them, kicked up by a cadre of FGL vehicles—three four-by-fours with mounted machine guns.

“Oh, shit,” Meredith said, punching the gas harder. The engine sputtered, and a sickening clank of metal grinding against metal whined from under the hood.

“Double shit,” Andris said.

***

Kara stripped out of the oil-stained coverall and let it flop to the floor. The white T-shirt she wore under the coveralls clung to her back, stuck down by sweat. She mopped her head with one of the white towels that hung over the side of her berth. It came away stained in splotches of black and gray.

“Eww,” Sadie said from her own berth. Maggie sat beside her, tail whipping against the bulkhead, tongue lolling out. “You’re really dirty.”

“That’s what happens when you actually work.” She threw the oil-stained towel at Sadie.

Sadie dodged the towel with a disgusted expression. Maggie lunged and caught it in her mouth. She hopped off the bed and dropped it at Kara’s feet.

“Now Maggie’s gross, too.”

Kara took a big, long comical sniff of Sadie’s hair. The odor of butter and grease wafted up to greet her. “You don’t smell so good yourself!”

“That’s because I work, too.” Sadie rolled her eyes. “Been cleaning the kitchens and helping prep the food.”

Kara slipped on a pair of ratty jeans. A couple of slashes along the thigh and dark stains on the knees were reminders of their narrow escape from Maryland. She could’ve thrown these jeans away and chosen to wear the fatigues or sweatpants that were stocked on the ship. But there was something about the way these jeans fit. She’d broken them in so they felt almost like pajama pants, providing her a certain comfort at the end of a long workday in the engine room.

Maggie seemed to like them just as much as Kara did. Her tail whipped furiously as she wound between Kara’s legs. Kara bent down, and Maggie laid a series of slobbery kisses over Kara’s face. She pulled the dog into a hug, feeling Maggie’s whole body wiggle with her wagging tail, and she closed her eyes.

The warm doggy smell reminded her of home, back in Frederick, before the world had gone to hell. And despite everything they’d been through, the golden retriever still acted as goofy and dumb as any other golden.

When Kara ruffled the fur along Maggie’s back, the dog pushed against her, knocking her back against the bed. Kara fell on her butt. She couldn’t help the laughter welling up as the dog tried to get her to wrestle, bouncing back and forth on her front paws, ready to pounce.

“You’ve got way more energy than me, dog,” Kara said, swatting playfully at Maggie.

Maggie barked. She scrunched her nose then sneezed twice.

“Aw, come on, Mags.” Kara wiped at her arms. “I was planning on taking a nap, but she’s not going to let me, is she?”

“No way!” Sadie said. “Besides, I’m off shift, you’re off shift. Let’s go tire Maggie out with some catch or something. Then maybe we can all take a nap.”

Sadie dug through a duffel bag stuffed with her few possessions. When she pulled out her hand, she held a fuzzy tennis ball with a couple of holes in it. Dog toys weren’t one of the items the Hunters regularly restocked, so they had to make do with what they had for as long as they could.

The sight of the tennis ball sent Maggie’s tail beating even harder, nearly swinging the dog’s whole back end against the bulkhead. She jumped so she was standing on her rear legs and let out another excited bark.

Kara smiled at Maggie’s unbridled joy as she followed Sadie and the dog to the cargo hold. Maggie already knew the way, sporadically charging ahead then rushing back, her claws tapping along the deck.

Sadie flipped on a bank of lights at one end, illuminating stacks of crates and steel drums alongside toolboxes and a spare Zodiac boat. A wave of guilt rushed through Kara as they reached the mostly empty hold. She pictured her dad and Meredith and all the others out there in Estonia, gunfire breaking the calm of night and the howls that haunted her dreams rolling over the landscape.

Sadie tossed the tennis ball against the floor. The sound echoed in the vast hold, seeming so weak and silly surrounded by the thousands of tons of metal holding them afloat out here. Holding them away from the dangers her dad and the others were facing.

A bark startled Kara, and she looked down. Maggie sat in front of her, looking up with expectant eyes, the tennis ball sitting in a pool of saliva at her feet. Kara picked up the ball and underhanded it. The ball bounced against a crate then rolled behind a shelf. Maggie whined as she tried to find it.

“You okay?” Sadie asked, shooting Kara a look of concern. Before Kara could answer, Sadie’s face turned grim, and she gave Kara a rueful smile. “Never mind. I know.”

“Yeah” was all Kara could say.

Kara touched the rough scars along the side of her face as Maggie raced toward them triumphantly with the ball in her mouth. Whenever the Hunters were on a mission, it was nearly impossible to focus on anything else. She had found some solace in the engine room, doing her best to follow Alden’s advice and learn the ropes. Working on the machinery required intense focus or else she could screw up, hurting herself or the engine.

Maggie ran to Sadie this time, and Sadie pitched the ball to the far side of the hold.

“It’s hard not to think about them,” Sadie said.

“Really hard,” Kara said. “And after what happened in Croatia, I’m always thinking about Navid and Lauren, too. You know?”

Maggie’s tip-tapping footsteps announced her presence as she burst out of the shadows once more with the ball between her teeth.

“I know,” Sadie said. She didn’t tease her about Navid like usual. Kara kind of wished she would. At least then it would make things feel a little more like normal.

“It would be nice if we had someone here to talk to,” Kara said. “Like a counselor or something. I had a friend at school whose mom died. The college had free counseling services, and she said they helped.”

She took the ball from Maggie then tossed it again.

“You’ve got me,” Sadie said, eyes brimming with tears. She looked like a paper doll bending in the wind, ready to crumple. Kara closed the distance between them and wrapped her into a tight hug.

Sadie buried her face into the crook of Kara’s shoulder, and Kara pressed her cheek into the tangle of Sadie’s hair. Maggie bounded back to them and dropped the tennis ball. She pressed her furry body against their legs, squeezing herself between them, desperate to comfort them.

At that, Sadie let out a soft giggle and pulled away from Kara.

“You’re such a goof,” Sadie said, tousling Maggie’s ears.

Kara bent to pick up the neglected tennis ball. She cocked her arm back to throw it. But before she could finish, a voice broke over the intercoms.

“All available hands to the med bay.” It was Peter Mikos, the doctor in charge of the med team while Lauren was in Frankfurt. “All available hands to the med bay.”

Kara’s pulse raced, her heart climbing into her throat. They never called for all hands. Oh, God, something had gone terribly wrong.

-22-

Machine-gun fire chattered from one of the SUVs pursuing the Hunters. The freed prisoners crouched in the bed of the troop transport, screaming and yelling. Bullets sparked against the rear bumper of the truck and punched into the metal along the back gate.

Thank God this is a military truck, Dom thought. The damn thing would’ve been chewed up into so many pieces of metal confetti otherwise.

“Anybody got more bandages?” Jenna yelled over the panicked voices of the other passengers.

Glenn was cradling the head of one of the freed prisoners. She looked to be a woman in her midthirties, hair shaved to her scalp and pronounced cheekbones accentuating the bony ridges pushing up through her flesh. Jenna pressed down on a blood-soaked bandage covering the woman’s right arm.

“Here!” Miguel pulled a wad of bandages from his pack.

The truck jerked violently to the right, and Dom reached for a handhold, nearly tumbling out the back. He peered back over the edge of the truck, aiming his rifle at the closest SUV. He let loose a burst at the driver. Bullets punched into the glass, and the SUV swerved. The vehicle backed off, but it didn’t stop.

Trees whipped past them as they made it onto a highway. Dom didn’t have to look at his smartwatch to know they weren’t headed to the designated evac point. It would be too hot with these three vehicles spewing fire at them. As soon as they stopped to unload their passengers, they’d be shredded. And if they tried to board the Zodiac, that craft wouldn’t be floating long.

“Where are you taking us, Mere?” Dom asked, pressing himself down in the back of the truck.

“Not a goddamn clue,” she replied over the comms. “You all take care of our groupies, then we’ll get back on track.”

“Got a grenade?” Miguel asked, looking between Glenn and Jenna. They each handed him one. O’Neil crouched at the back gate beside him. “Let’s see if we can lose ’em.”

He pulled the pin, and O’Neil followed suit. They tossed their HE grenades at the trucks. One of the trucks curved hard into the ditch to avoid the explosives, and a second hugged the side of the highway. The third ran straight over one of the grenades. A blast of fire growled up through the vehicle, swallowing the SUV. The vehicle flipped and scraped the gunner riding on top into the asphalt.

A spate of gunfire burst from the other two SUVs as they raced to catch up to the truck.

“Shit,” Miguel muttered.

Dom had to agree with the assessment. Those SUVs were easily keeping pace with them. Far too easily.

“Mere, can’t you make this thing go any faster?” Dom asked.

“Engine’s giving out,” Meredith replied. “Faster ain’t going to happen.”

Dom twisted enough to see the black smoke spewing over the cab. There had already been a column of oily smoke spreading from the front of the truck, but it seemed to be getting worse.

Something in his gut twisted. Christ, if they lost the truck, if they got stuck here in the middle of the highway with all these people...

He’d promised them rescue from the hell they’d been living in under the FGL. And instead of bringing them to safety, he might have condemned them to a bloody death smeared across the highway outside Tallinn.

No, he thought. No way in hell am I letting that happen.

They had already lost too many people.

He poked his rifle above the lip of the back gate. The aiming reticle bounced wildly as he tried to catch the driver of the nearest SUV in his sights. He fired just as O’Neil and Miguel let loose their own shots. These weren’t the optimal conditions for good marksmanship, but what they lacked in precision, Dom hoped they could make up for in volume.

“Focus on that driver!” Dom said, directing the other two Hunters.

He kept his aim as steady as he could, even as the gunners of both vehicles sent a wall of lead in their direction. Bullets slammed into the truck. Another person behind him screamed. He couldn’t tell whether they’d been hit or just frightened. He prayed for the latter, but when he heard Jenna calling for more bandages and a tourniquet, he knew better.

The grinding noise from the cab of the truck grew louder, followed by a bang.

“Son of a bitch!” Meredith’s voice called over the comms.

Before Dom could ask what was going on, the truck began to decelerate. Dom focused his fire on the first SUV again. He fired a three-round burst that finally clipped the driver’s head. The SUV lurched hard to the left, connecting with an abandoned station wagon. Its front bumper caught on the vehicle. The momentum still dragging the SUV forward flipped it on its side. Sparks sprayed until it came to a rest.

The third SUV stayed on them like a vulture on carrion, maintaining a healthy distance even as the Unimog truck slowed, the knocking and grinding from the engine growing ever louder.

O’Neil straightened next to Dom. “They’re working on the Skulls. I can feel it.”

“They got Hybrids in that SUV?” Miguel asked him.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Then I will help fight,” a man said, leaning forward from the other prisoners.

In all the chaos, Dom hadn’t even noticed the guy was holding a rifle. Dom reached out to take it, shocked that the former prisoner had a weapon.

O’Neil held up a hand. “That’s Jaan. He’s a good man. Ex-soldier, I think. Helped me back at the prison.”

“You can handle that?” Dom asked, nodding to the rifle.

“Yes,” Jaan yelled over the grinding of the engine and the roar of gunfire. “Why are we going this way?”

Dom glanced at the man then O’Neil. O’Neil gestured with a hand as if to say they might as well tell him. Dom relayed their plan to get everyone back to the park on the coast. There, Frank would swoop in with the chopper to take the prisoners while the Hunters left in the Zodiac.

“I am from this city,” Jaan said, his accent thick. “I know good way we make it there and we stop them.” He pointed with one claw at the SUV pursuing them.

“Then get up to the cab,” Dom said.

“Meredith,” Dom said over the comms, “I got someone that needs to talk to you. Open up for him.”

The back window separating the passengers from the cab slid open, and Jaan leaned in. A few moments later, the truck took a sudden exit off the highway, heading straight for the center of Tallinn. They plowed through piles of trash and debris along the cobblestone streets, passing by vacant storefronts and under a huge castle-like gate. Skulls trickled out of the brick apartment buildings and crumbling churches, joining the pursuit. They formed a sort of vanguard around the FGL vehicle. They also didn’t howl or shriek like normal, which Dom thought was more disturbing than when they acted like the mindless monsters they were.

“The Hybrids have them now,” O’Neil said matter-of-factly.

“Shoot as many of those bastards as you can,” Dom said.

He, Miguel, and O’Neil fired into the Skulls’ ranks, dropping creature after creature. Their bones crunched under the feet of their brethren. Never did the advance of the Skulls slow.

“Hold on!” Meredith called.

The truck suddenly turned hard to the right, and they pushed into a narrow street. Wooden tables and chairs in front of restaurants were turned into splinters as the truck smashed them. Pinned down by gunfire, Dom could hardly see what was in front of the truck, but it was clear the path they were taking was growing narrower. Sparks leapt from where metal ground against a stone wall on one side and the brick storefronts of abandoned souvenir shops and pubs on the other.

Bullets plunged into the walls, sending blasts of rock showering over the truck’s passengers.

“Sit tight!” Meredith called over the comms. “Things are about to get crazy.”

The truck burst out of the end of the narrow roadway then lurched to a stop in the middle of a town square. A church bell tower loomed above them. Cream-colored buildings with red roofs lined the cobblestone piazza. Meredith forced the truck through a three-point turn then rammed it back into the narrow path they’d just driven through. A pair of castle-like towers stuck up on either side of it.

Meredith squeezed out of the truck’s cab through the rear window and into the truck bed. Jaan and Andris followed her as black smoke plumed around them, the truck’s engine clanking loudly even as it remained in park.

A fire bloomed from the engine compartment. There was no way the SUV was getting around that. They only had to worry about the Skulls.

“Move, move, move!” Dom yelled, waving the passengers off the back of the truck. Jenna and Glenn helped those too injured to make it over the gate by themselves, and soon the entire group was streaming across the cobblestones.

“Now do you know where you’re going?” Dom called to Meredith.

“Not exactly,” she said. “But this guy seems to!”

Jaan led them into a twisting alleyway filled with trash bags torn open like half-devoured animals. Dom checked his smartwatch’s GPS feature. They certainly seemed to be headed in the right direction, and they were much closer to the evac point than he’d realized.

A shriek exploded from behind him. A Skull stood atop the flaming cab of the truck. Fire danced across its body, but the thing didn’t care. It was too firmly under the control of the Hybrids. Four more Skulls bounded atop the truck, their eyes searching the piazza. One seemed to spot Dom just before he rounded a corner, blocking them from view.

A breeze cut over him, carrying with it the taste of saltwater.

Yes, they were much closer to the shore than he’d thought.

He just hoped it was close enough.

-23-

Rachel slowly pushed open the office door and peeked out. Six or seven Skulls clamored at the door down the hall. The beasts were no more than twenty feet from her position. They needed to make it to the stairwell that would take them to the roof. There, if they timed it right, they would meet the Black Hawk that would lift them the hell out of here.

More Skulls prowled in the darkness. Moonlight leaked through the windows and glinted over their horns and spikes. From her vantage point, she couldn’t tell whether any of them were Slingers or if they were all the normal variety of the bony bastards.

She gently shut the door, careful not to let it hit the frame too hard. Then, turning to Terrence and Rory, she said, “We need a distraction. We’ve got too many at the lab entrance, and there are at least as many down the hall near the stairwell.”

Rory spoke first. “How about a flare?” He palmed one from his pack, rolling the red cylinder between his hands.

“That’s good,” Terrence said, “But it might not be enough. You throw that down the hall, they’ll see us fling it or hear us run by.”

Rachel looked at the flare. “Then we don’t throw it down the hall.” She pointed to the lab. “We throw it in there.”

“Uh, how’s that going to help?” Rory asked.

Terrence rolled his eyes at the young midshipman. “You want to trap them in there, right?”

Rachel nodded. “It should work.”

“That’s insanely dangerous,” Terrence added. “Means one of us has to open that goddamn door.”

“What’s inanely dangerous is trying to barge straight past them,” Rachel said. “We’ll get surrounded in the middle of the hall. At least if this plan goes wrong, we can still barricade ourselves in the office.”

“And we’ll be back at square one,” Rory said.

“At square one but still alive.” Rachel paced near the office door. “Look, if there are Slingers down the hall and they see us, we have no cover out there.”

Terrence let out a long sigh, letting his rifle fall on its sling. He eyed the desks and bookshelves they’d pushed against the door. “You’re probably right. I don’t want to try shooting our way through all those guys if Slingers are involved. In all that chaos, one of those claws could come at us, and we wouldn’t even hear it.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Rachel said.

Terrence moved toward the laboratory door. “You two, stay in the office. I’ll crack open the door and sprint back. If it looks like I’m not going to make it, you shut the door and keep going.”

“Not going to happen,” Rory said. “You’re coming with us.”

Terrence looked down at his prosthetic legs. “Sure, I’ll make it. But just in case...”

The sprint from opening the door, tossing the flare, and making it into the office would take only a few seconds. But all it took was a single misstep and the entire plan would fail. Especially if the Slingers were involved.

Terrence had only just finished physical rehab, and his prosthetics were still new to him. He was capable; she’d never deny that. But there was a hint of uncertainty there, almost as if he didn’t yet completely trust his new legs. And now they’d been damaged. Long gashes in the fatigues showed where one had been dented and bent inward slightly, forcing Terrence to overcompensate for the awkward gait.

“No,” Rachel said, making up her mind. “I’m faster. Let me do it.”

“Not happening, girlie,” Terrence said.

Now Rachel fumed. “What the hell did you call me?”

“I’m not letting you put your ass on the line.”

Rory shook his head, smiling slightly. “Too late, bro,” he said. “You woke the beast.”

Rachel shoved the shelves over and pushed aside one of the desks. The Skulls on the other side of the door went into a frenzy at the commotion. The door shuddered. Cracks split the wood. She pushed aside another desk that screeched as it scraped along the floor. The wall tremored as the desperate Skulls tried to break through. More plaques and picture frames fell from the wall. Glass broke over the floor.

Rachel sucked in a deep breath. She tugged on her rifle to make sure it was secure on its sling then readied the flare in her left hand. If she was quick enough, the Skulls wouldn’t even see her. They’d just see the door swinging open and the flare burning bright, blinding them momentarily.

At least, that’s what she hoped.

She looked at Rory and Terrence. “Ready?”

Terrence held out his hand for the flare. “Let me do this.”

Rachel cracked the door open and backed away, intending to run toward the office where Rory and Terrence waited. But as she twisted around, the door flung open from the Skulls’ assault, slamming into her spine.

She sprawled on the floor. Exactly what she had worried was going to happen to Terrence.

She pushed herself back to her feet and pitched the flare behind her. It hissed and sizzled, red light flashing ghoulishly over the computers and bookshelves at the other end of the lab.

Most of the Skulls were drawn toward the flare. But the second she lost when she fell cost her dearly. One had seen Rachel. It let out a growl, its tongue flicking behind its serrated teeth. Saliva sprayed over Rachel. She swung her rifle up to catch the Skull under its jaw, cracking bone. The beast lashed out with a claw that caught her tac vest.

Her heart raced, and fresh adrenaline rushed through her body. The Skull yanked, threatening to drag Rachel down as the other beasts raced into the room. The flare had caught a few of the nearby books on fire. Given the amount of paper in the room, it would soon grow into an inferno. The first few Skulls that had reached the flare were thrashing about blindly in the smoke, looking for prey. They growled and shrieked when they couldn’t find any.

A Skull in a patient gown sprinted into the room. Instead of jumping at the flare with the others, it made for Rachel instead. The Skull leapt, mouth open and claws in front of it. Three hearty whoomphs blasted past her, and three new red holes shone in the Skull’s organic armor. It collapsed into one of the desks.

“Rachel!” Rory called. “Look out!”

She ducked, still struggling with the Skull clinging to her tac vest. A pair of claws swished inches above her head.

More suppressed gunfire barked behind her. Rounds punched into the Skull’s armor and sent it wheeling backward into two more of the bastards.

“Let go, you lousy asshole!” Rachel cried, pulling on the bastard stuck to her tac vest. She bashed at its head with her rifle while trying to peel its claws off with her other hand.

Another Skull at the doorway turned its attention toward her. She tried to expose the bastard’s flank to Rory and Terrence, but the monster followed her, growling and snapping.

Come on, come on, she thought.

This entire mission had turned into a shitshow. The high-value target was dead. This hospital was filled with Skulls and monsters they hadn’t seen before. And now she was about to get herself killed.

She’d really fucked this one up.

Then she heard a hissing from across the room. Another monster had entered, this one eyeless and shrunken, its skin like leather.

“Just what I need,” Rachel said. She took another step backward and dragged the Skull with her.

She grabbed the wrist of the Skull attached to her tac vest with her free hand. The Slinger cocked back its arm, ready to whip its loosened claws at her like disease-ridden throwing knives.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said.

The Slinger let out another hiss, its oversized ears perked, attuned to her movements. It licked its withered tongue against the roof of its mouth as if it were a goddamn bat using echolocation to find her.

On second thought, maybe this was exactly what she needed.

The Slinger flung its claws straight at her. Rachel dropped her rifle and grabbed the Skull in front of her. It snapped at her, teeth coming within inches of her nose. But then a series of solid impacts resonated through the Skull and into her arms. The beast went limp, and Rachel let it drop. Three claws jutted from the back of its neck.

Another hiss escaped the Slinger as it staggered forward.

Rachel pried the dead fingers loose from her tac vest. The Slinger reared back its arm to launch another volley of claws. She sprinted to the office. Her heart hammered as fast as her legs carried her, and she dove under Rory and Terrence’s rifles. The duo let out a burst of gunfire that decimated the Slinger and a few of the Skulls around it. Then they slammed the office door.

Still gasping for breath, Rachel helped them shove Dr. Bennet’s desk in front of the door to the lab.

“You okay?” Terrence asked.

Rachel nodded. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Rory said.

They launched out of the office’s back door and into the hallway. The Skulls continued to pour into the lab as the red strobe of the fire consuming the books drew them in. The hall near the stairwell had been emptied. Rachel would’ve let out a sigh of relief if she hadn’t already been so winded.

Without incident, they made it to the stairwell and lunged up the steps, taking them two or three at a time. Every step up to the rooftop was a step closer to freedom, a step closer to getting the hell out of Houston and back to their forward operating base. Wind rushed past them, warm and humid, as they made it to the roof. A pair of lights blinked above them, and the heavy beat of a chopper’s rotors grew louder.

“There it is!” Rory cried victoriously.

“Team Jaguar,” a voice called over their comms, “we have a visual.”

The Black Hawk touched down on the helipad. Rotor wash blasted over Rachel as they ran toward the chopper. She hopped into one of the seats, strapping herself in. Finally, she let out that sigh she’d been holding in. Pure elation swam through her.

They’d survived.

They’d actually fucking survived.

The helicopter climbed away from the helipad. Skulls started to spill out over the roof. They looked up hungrily at the chopper as it dragged Rachel, Rory, and Terrence away from them. Rachel swore she could still hear their howls through the din of the chopper’s engines.

But she didn’t care. The chopper banked hard over the dark expanse of Houston, headed toward the skyscrapers of downtown. The buildings stood now like silent monoliths, tributes to a society that existed only in history. Rachel scanned the city streets barely visible with the moonlight. Everything below them had changed. But at least, for this brief moment, she was still alive. She was alive, and she’d stay that way as long as she damn well could.

The copilot turned around, grinning. “Nice work. You guys ready for your next mission?”

Rachel narrowed her eyes, all joy at their escape gone now. “You have to be shitting me.”

-24-

The sight of the black water rolling on the horizon like an oil slick gave O’Neil the push he needed to keep going. They were almost to the evac point and the safety of Frank’s helicopter and the Zodiac.

“Everyone, move!” Dom bellowed.

Jenna, Glenn, and Miguel helped a few of the injured prisoners hobble over the paved streets and through the long grass. Skulls began to pour over the abandoned vehicles and buses, searching for their escaped prey.

Dom led the group toward the shore where they’d left the Zodiac while O’Neil hung back with Meredith and Andris to guard their retreat. Jaan had joined them, still carrying his rifle. A cold wind swept from the Baltic toward the city. That breeze provided him some relief from the pheromones of the Hybrids chasing them. He knew that somewhere beyond the mass of screaming Skulls were the FGL forces, using their minions as vanguards. But once the battle began in earnest, he would not only be fighting the Skulls but also the influence of the Hybrids trying to control his own inner beast.

But he wasn’t the only one with an inner beast in their group.

“Oh, son of a bitch,” he said aloud.

“What is it?” Andris asked.

“The rest of the Hybrids.” O’Neil pointed with one clawed finger as they ran. “The civilians. They may not be able to fight the FGL’s influence.”

Andris’s eyes went wide. “Son of a bitch is right.”

“Dom, we got a problem,” Meredith said over the comms. “O’Neil says the FGL may be able to influence the prisoners.”

“Are they going to go crazy on us?”

O’Neil chinned his comm link. “Maybe. I’ve had to push back against their influence. I don’t know if they have the practice I do.”

“Why didn’t they already go crazy then?”

“Don’t think FGL was trying before,” O’Neil said.

“Great,” Miguel said. “So the people we’re trying to rescue could fuck up the whole thing.”

“O’Neil, you got any ideas on how to stop this?” Dom asked.

O’Neil looked at Jaan. The Estonian Hybrid seemed to have a good handle on his own transformed body. Maybe it was because of his military discipline. Whatever the case, they could try to counteract the influence of the FGL. But the two of them would be struggling against damn near a platoon of Hybrids. Whatever aid they could offer might not be enough.

The Skulls’ hunting cries rose in a storm of unbridled fury. They rushed the Hunters and the rescued prisons like a cloud of locusts descending from the edge of the city.

Then O’Neil spotted it. A lone figure standing atop an overturned bus at the edge of the city. It raised its arms in victory, as if it could already see the Skulls devouring the Hunters and the prisoners. Three more figures surged up from the horde to join their comrade. Even from this distance, silhouetted as they were against the buildings and carnage around them, O’Neil knew they were Hybrids.

The distant beat of chopper blades should’ve sounded sweet. But every goddamn bullet left in their spare magazines wouldn’t be enough to stop the tidal wave of forces coming down on them now.

“We will need some fire,” Andris said, reaching for the grenades in his tac vest.

O’Neil ground his teeth together. The real threat was the walking time bombs in their midst. If the winds shifted or the FGL got too close, the prisoners would riot against their saviors.

“Pacifist Fog!” he chinned his comms and yelled it again. “Pacifist Fog! Drench the place. Our position and theirs. It might help the prisoners, and we’ve got the wind on our side!”

“You heard him,” Dom said. “Alpha, grenades out on our position. Bravo and Charlie, toss them toward the FGL!”

The hiss of Pacifist Fog spewing from the grenades sounded from all around O’Neil. He pulled the pin on his first grenade and lobbed it toward the advancing Hybrid forces. Then he threw a second, aiming for the Hybrids at the bus, but his throw came up far too short. The first throngs of Skulls pushed through the fog as it swirled around them. Red tendrils wrapped around O’Neil and the prisoners, marking the evac point.

“Throwing a rave down there?” Frank asked. “I thought I was the one bringing the party!”

The beat of the chopper’s rotors roared louder over the shoreline. The prisoners milled about in the spreading fog, clinging to each other. Some cried and wailed. Others stared silently at the Skulls that were racing through the long grass toward them.

“Open fire!” Dom bellowed.

The first salvo cut the Skulls down like a scythe through grain.

The wind swept the Pacifist Fog around them, and O’Neil inhaled deeply. He felt a soothing wave of coolness spread through him. His world slowed as he sucked it in.

He had expected to feel warmth, peace. But instead, he grew numb. As if nothing mattered. There was no pain coursing through his clawed fingertips, and no anger rearing up within him, threatening to devour his mind. It gave him the ability to focus only on the task at hand, ignoring the cries around him, the sounds of gunfire ringing out, the roars of the nearest Skulls as they sprinted, parting the grass around them like ships through open water.

He felt the punch of his rifle against his shoulder, each bullet flying from his barrel a singular message that he would not succumb to the FGL. He would not let them stop him. No matter how scarred his body was, how different he was from the others, he would never let the FGL bring him down.

Skulls crumpled, disappearing into the grass. More fell in waves, blood geysering from exit wounds. Bone collapsed when met with armor-piercing rounds. Then O’Neil felt something else. The tingle of something worming through the back of his mind.

The FGL Hybrids were advancing behind the hordes, plunging through the red fog as it swept over them on the sea-born wind. The Skulls began to slow, their gait growing lethargic. Some already stood like statues. But more kept coming. It seemed half the Skulls had been affected, but the later arrivals had not succumbed to the fog yet. They charged ahead as the winds carried away the sedating gas.

A few more grenades churned out the fog near the evac point. The chopper started to descend behind them. Rotor wash pushed the Pacifist Fog away.

But for now, O’Neil focused only on the monsters in front of him. Beside him, Jaan, Meredith, and Andris poured fire into the oncoming Skulls. Bullets began to whistle around him as the FGL returned fire. Vaguely, he could hear Dom ordering the men and women they’d rescued into the helicopter. He wondered how many they’d actually be able to save.

And finally, it seemed the human FGL soldiers had caught up to the Skulls and Hybrids. One at a time, O’Neil caught them in his sights, squeezed the trigger, and watched them drop before moving on to the next one. He could feel the FGL Hybrids trying to riot his emotions as they advanced. A fire burned bright in his head, and his fingers wanted desperately to lose his rifle. Let his claws sink into flesh. In his mind’s eye, he saw blood dripping down his chin. He grew hungry. Ravenous.

If he could feel that, so, too, could the prisoners.

Jaan twitched beside him, blood running from the Hybrid’s nostrils. He was trying desperately to withstand the FGL’s influence. The Estonian continued firing at their enemy. But between shots, he paused, waiting for what seemed an inexplicably long time to find his next target. O’Neil understood all too well what was preventing the man from firing more.

“We need to move,” O’Neil growled over the comms.

“We’ve almost got everyone on the chopper,” Dom said.

O’Neil stepped back, beginning to retreat toward the beach and the Zodiac behind them. In his head, the roar of the untamed beast fighting his consciousness grew louder. His breath came in quick gasps as his muscles tremored.

It was too much.

“Jaan, to the boat,” he managed.

Jaan hesitated, aiming at the FGL soldiers now running alongside the Skulls.

“No,” O’Neil said. “Go. Now. Get as far away from here as you can.”

The winds began to die, no longer coming in at their backs and blowing inland. The strength of the FGL Hybrids’ pheromones would be over them in full force now. O’Neil’s lips tore back in a snarl. His chest expanded in quick bursts.

Fuck. Get ahold of yourself, man, he thought.

Jaan’s head twitched. Maybe it was imperceptible to the Hunters. They were so focused on the Skulls and FGL soldiers they wouldn’t notice. But O’Neil could tell.

“Jaan,” O’Neil growled. “Get to the fucking boat!”

The soldier stared hard at O’Neil for a moment. But then the Estonian snapped out of it, and he started running.

“We’re packed in here,” Frank said over the comms. “Even with our generous carry-on allowance, we’re at capacity. Any more and this bird is going to make like a dodo.”

“Then get the hell out of here,” Dom said.

There were still four or five civilians that hadn’t fit on the Seahawk. Frank took off, but then the chopper started to tilt sideways. O’Neil’s heart lurched at the sight, and he ran toward it.

“Got a rowdy passenger!” Frank yelled. “Watch out down there!”

Dom and Miguel pushed the civilians out of the way as the chopper came down hard again, kicking up a cloud of dust and spreading Pacifist Fog. O’Neil could see through an open side door where the passengers were—mostly—strapped down. But one of them had broken free from his seatbelt. He looked like a man in his midfifties, dressed in the same drab prison garb most of the civilian Hybrids wore. One of the Huntress’s crewmembers who’d come with Frank to aid in the rescue was trying desperately to hold the passenger back, pushing against the Hybrid with one foot.

Deep red slashes formed over the crewmember’s arms as the Hybrid broke free and slashed at him. Frank tried to lift the chopper up again, but the Hybrid knocked the crewmember into the back of Frank’s seat.

O’Neil glanced at the advancing FGL horde. The first Skulls had reached Meredith and Andris, barely held back as the Hunters were forced to retreat.

That helicopter needed to take off, or the problems with its passengers would only get worse. O’Neil ducked under the rotors and jumped inside. He rammed hard into the unruly Hybrid, knocking the breath out of him.

“Go, now!” O’Neil roared at the befuddled crewmember. He dragged the angered Hybrid off the chopper and pulled him across the grass toward Dom. “We need to get the rest of these people out of here now!”

The Hybrid kicked and writhed in O’Neil’s grasp. Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as his eyes turned red as a Skull’s. O’Neil felt a burgeoning urge to punch the man in the teeth. He couldn’t tell whether it was the FGL’s influence over him or just his own desperate anger.

“Meredith, Andris, get your asses back here,” Dom said over the comms. “We’re leaving!”

Small-arms fire continued to cut through the air as the Seahawk finally took off. Bullets pinged against it, sparking along the fuselage and tail. O’Neil wanted to watch to make sure they escaped unscathed, but there was still the matter of the five civilians left and only one measly boat.

Jenna and Glenn pushed the Zodiac into the water, and Miguel jumped in after them, starting the motor. Warm air blasted past O’Neil as the FGL fired on them. Dom pressed the civilians flat into the boat as he beckoned the remaining Hunters in.

“Andris!” Dom called. “Get ’em off our backs!”

Andris threw a pair of explosives that clotted the air with dirt and fire. Plumes of smoke rose in spires around them.

The Hybrid lashed in O’Neil’s arms. Blood trickled down the man’s shoulder. He must’ve caught a bullet during their flight from the chopper toward the Zodiac.

“Jaan!” O’Neil cried as he reached the Zodiac. “I need some help with this one.”

The Estonian managed a nod. His jaw was clenched hard, and his chest heaved. He was undoubtedly struggling to retain control over his own body, but he helped get their charge into the Zodiac. Once in, O’Neil and Jaan pushed him into the bottom of the boat.

“Let’s go!” Dom bellowed.

The last of the Hunters joined them. O’Neil had never ridden a Zodiac as crammed as this one, and he half-wondered if it would even stay afloat with all the added weight. But somehow, Miguel managed to turn the thing around in the rolling waves and shoot away from shore. Gunfire cracked along the shore, and the howls of the Skulls chased after them. Meredith and Andris fired back from the stern of the boat, warding off the FGL soldiers who dared venture onto the exposed rocky shoreline.

Cold water splashed across them as they ventured toward the dark horizon. Each blast of water seemed to wash away more of the FGL’s influence over O’Neil. Soon his mind relaxed, and the raw, beastly aggression dissipated. The Hybrid he’d plucked from the chopper calmed, too, enough that Jaan and O’Neil let him go. The man looked between them as if he’d fallen from the sky and had no idea what had happened or why. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and began to sob.

O’Neil grimaced. With his mind finally free from the FGL’s grasp, the agony returned. It had been damn near a day since he’d had any painkillers to ameliorate the torture. The other Hybrids would be desperate for relief, too.

“I can’t believe we fucking did that, Chief,” Miguel said, a grin spreading across his face.

Glenn laid his rifle over his chest. “We made it. We actually made it.”

Jenna looked up at the stars. “It’s all those other Hunters watching over us. That’s the only explanation.”

O’Neil wanted to share in their joy over the narrow escape. But his eyes were glued to the civilians they’d taken from the prison. The Hunters thought they were rescuing these people, but O’Neil knew that they were just being taken from one hell to another. Now they would have to face a world where they no longer belonged. A world filled with physical and mental anguish, where no one else truly understood what they were suffering.

No one besides him.

-25-

The Seahawk had made it to the Huntress before the Zodiac, carrying civilians in various stages of Heikegani Agent influence. All of them were Hybrids. Some looked like O’Neil, with horns and claws that would make a demon jealous. Others must have just been turned. Their fingers had grown skinnier and longer, with the tips of claws just starting to grow from their nails.

But all shared a common trait: they were in pain.

Kara bustled in the med bay, her eyes dancing between all their new charges. She hated to leave Alden alone in the engine room, but she was needed more up here, along with a cadre of other volunteers who had descended on the med bay from other parts of the ship. Now more than ever, she felt Lauren’s and Navid’s absence.

Peter and Divya examined patients, doing their best to maintain some kind of triage procedure. Nearly half the Hybrid civilians had sustained injuries during the escape. From broken bones to bullet wounds and lacerations, they focused on stabilizing the worst, promising that they would distribute the painkillers that they all desperately screamed for.

“Please, now! I need!” One woman tugged on Divya’s white coat, and Kara had to help pry the woman off.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kara said. “Please, calm down.”

Kara tried to console them, tried to convince them that they would get their turn with the doctors. Half didn’t seem to understand English. Even if they could understand her, it didn’t seem to make a difference. Her words went unheard.

Back and forth, Kara and a few other volunteers served as runners for Divya, Sean, and Peter, providing the supplies they so desperately needed. Kara applied bandages when she could. She saw one woman sitting on the edge of a patient bed, holding her arm. Blood dripped from under her hand.

“Can you move that?” Kara asked, holding up the bandages to show her intent if the woman didn’t understand English.

The woman nodded. She removed her hand and revealed a wet, glistening wound. Chunks of yellow fatty tissue stuck up above red muscle. Kara gulped hard, feeling the press of nausea in her gut. She pulled the ragged edges of the wound together and saturated it with skin glue, then wrapped it tight with gauze. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would have to work until Peter or Divya got to the woman.

After helping Sean with a few more patients, there was little else she could do but retrieve supplies when Peter or Divya called out for something. Kara lost track of time as she ran between beds and drawers, navigating the demanding patients. When Kara thought they’d finally caught up, five more patients filed in.

A familiar Hybrid was with them.

Kara’s heart fluttered at the sight. “O’Neil, you came on the Zodiac?”

He nodded. Another Hybrid stood mute beside him, a rifle strapped over his back.

“How’s... how’s everyone else?” Kara asked.

“The Hunters are all fine,” O’Neil said. “We made it.”

Kara wanted to feel the cool sense of relief, but she wouldn’t truly relax until she saw her dad in person. There was something so unbelievable about what the world had become since the Oni Agent that it was nearly impossible for her to believe good news unless she had proof of it in front of her.

“Said he’ll be down soon,” O’Neil said. “Had to debrief Stateside command.”

“Thanks.”

She started to turn around, but O’Neil grabbed her shoulder.

“How is everyone holding up down here?”

“We’re doing what we can, but...”

“It’s a lot,” he finished. “Look, I came down to keep watch. We, uh, ran into some issues getting everyone out of Tallinn, and I just want to help, you know?”

Kara couldn’t tell exactly what he meant, but she wasn’t in command here, and she doubted Peter or Divya had even noticed he was lingering in the doorway.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Just let me know if anyone gives you trouble.” O’Neil used a thumb to indicate the Hybrid next to him. “This is Jaan. One of the freed prisoners. He’s from Tallinn.”

“Oh, I’m Kara. Nice to meet you.” She offered her hand to him.

The Hybrid looked uncertain then stretched out his clawed hand. He shook her hand as if he was trying to hold a butterfly in his palm. “It is nice to meet you, as well. I am here to help.”

“Okay,” Kara said. Judging by his almost nonexistent horns and short claws, he hadn’t been a Hybrid for long. He seemed to be holding himself together better than the other Hybrids. “Do you need anything? Are you hurt?”

He offered only a rueful smile. It looked damn near demonic with his fanged teeth although Kara knew that wasn’t his intent. “All my insides hurt, but I do not know if you can fix this.”

“He’s fine,” O’Neil said. “Just in pain. Nothing unusual for a Hybrid.”

Kara was about to turn away again. Then she saw a peculiar look cross Jaan’s face.

“It is normal to feel this pain?” he asked.

O’Neil raised a scaled brow. “Are you joking?”

“I am not making joke.” He shook his head. “I never felt this before now.”

“I mean, I assumed the FGL kept you drugged, but even when I’m doped up, I pretty much always feel it.”

“No, I swear to you. I did not know it felt like this.” He held his hands wide. “I...  I do not want to be free like this. In pain.”

“Shit,” O’Neil said. Then his eyes got wide. “Shit, shit, shit. Jaan, you got to come with me.”

And with that, the duo left. Kara returned to helping the patients as best she could, wondering what in the hell had gotten O’Neil so worked up. Besides the obvious, of course. Another Hybrid let out an ear-splitting wail as she clutched her stomach.

These might be the toughest patients the Huntress had ever seen.

***

The chirp and buzz of the computers in the electronics workshop welcomed Dom. Even with the computer’s supercooling setups, or whatever it was that Samantha called them, the room ran hot now. Probably because of all the people running in and out of the place, desperately relaying messages to him and the communications team.

From ship status reports to medical write-ups on the civilians to the latest reports from Kinsey and Shepherd, he did his best to parse and absorb all the information thrown his direction. Chao and Samantha were already scrolling through the videos and data they’d managed to take from Patarei Sea Fortress Prison. Dom feared they had come away with a good number of freed civilians but precious little data.

“I shouldn’t have made that a rescue mission,” he whispered to Meredith as they watched the two comm specialists working from a conference table. “I should’ve stuck to the intel grabs. We’d be closer to locating where all the airborne Oni Agent is going.”

Meredith gave his hand a squeeze. “You know you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you did.” She put a hand over her chest. “I wouldn’t be able to live with you. That’s not us, abandoning people. We saw the conditions they were living in, what happened to them. If you weren’t going to give the order to get ’em out of there, you know we would have done it anyway.”

Dom wasn’t so sure about that. Images of Miguel’s face back in France still haunted him. Back then, he’d made a decision that cost Spencer Barrett his life. And he’d made that decision knowing he was sacrificing Spencer for the lives of countless others, innocent civilians included.

That definitely didn’t make the rolling nausea in his gut feel any better.

He almost told Meredith he didn’t deserve her reassurances. But he knew she would give them to him anyway. She was always good at that. Reading people and doing what she could to keep the mission rolling forward.

“We’ve got more lives to save, and what’s done is done,” Meredith said. She nodded toward the desks where Samantha and Chao were. “I’ve got faith in them.”

“Me, too,” Dom said. “But even the fastest car only races when it’s got fuel. If we didn’t get them anything to work with, we’re either going to need to go back to the prison or pray to God that the US or the Europeans miraculously stumble on some new intel.”

The hatch to the workshop slammed open. Miguel sauntered in, flexing his prosthetic. The silicone around it had been shredded in their last skirmish, giving him a decidedly Terminator-esque appearance as metal and servos flashed under the faux skin. Thomas entered behind him.

Miguel looked at Chao then joined Meredith and Dom at the table. “I was going to ask Chao if he could make me look pretty again, but it looks like he’s a little busy.”

“Miguel, with a mug like that, there’s nothing Chao can do to make you pretty.” Thomas dropped into the seat next to Miguel.

“Harsh words, old man,” Miguel said. “Surprised you could hear what I was saying at all with all that hair growing out of your ears.”

Thomas brushed his hand over his smooth shaved scalp. “I didn’t want to lose all my hair, so it all went there. Used to hate it, but if it means it filters out your voice, I’ll count my blessings.”

Miguel feigned hurt for a moment before giving Thomas one of his shit-eating grins. They both erupted into laughter.

Dom let a slight smirk cross his face before the thoughts of the botched mission crushed it.

“Chao, Samantha,” Dom said, “we’re ready if you are.”

Samantha peeled the headphones off. A rocketing trumpet solo crooned out of them, like something from a Count Basie record, before Samantha turned off her music. Chao pushed away from his desk, and they both joined them.

“That’s not your usual music, is it?” Dom asked Samantha.

Dark bags hung under her eyes, and she held up a plastic cup with a teabag string hanging out. “And this ain’t my usual drink. I’m trying to live without those energy drinks. I’m not going to lie, Captain, it’s getting hard.”

“I tried to find you something,” Miguel said, “but there just weren’t many choices in the prison. Weird, huh?”

“I’ll let it slide for now,” Samantha said. “Chao?”

Chao sighed. “We analyzed damn near everything you streamed to us as we got it. The truth is, we didn’t come away with much.”

Dom clenched his jaw. That was exactly what he’d feared.

“It certainly looks like they’re making canisters for the airborne agent, but outside that, I don’t have much to offer,” Chao said.

Goddamnit, I shouldn’t have wasted my time on all those Hybrids.

But as soon as he thought it, he felt a wave of shame. He was beginning to dehumanize the civilians they’d rescued, thinking of them only as Hybrids. As if their lives weren’t worth as much as anyone else’s just because they had a few bones sticking out of their skin.

“If we don’t have hard evidence, there is something else that’s been bothering me,” Dom said. “I thought we determined that the FGL had control over the Heikegani Agent. That they’d perfected the alterations necessary to turn someone into a Hybrid. But we just ran into a facility where they were still experimenting on people.”

Miguel shrugged. “Yeah, but it makes sense to me. They were using the Hybrids as slaves.”

“Why’d they need to be Hybrids to be slaves?” Thomas asked.

“Stronger?” Miguel asked.

“I wouldn’t think you’d want your prisoners to be stronger than you,” Meredith said.

“That’s true,” Dom said. “But the FGL brought Titans into this world. Beasts they can hardly keep in chains.”

“Still, it seems overkill when all they’re doing is having those people construct bombs for them,” Meredith said. “I don’t buy it.”

“There’s something else going on,” Dom said. “And it’s not just forced labor. They were performing a vivisection on a Hybrid. Maybe they wanted to improve the Heikegani Agent or their own soldiers?”

“Maybe...” Meredith said.

“Oh, shit.” Samantha rushed over to her desk and clicked on the mouse. “That reminds me, we’ve got images of the lab. I found and isolated a notebook page next to the surgical table in one of them. It’s so distorted my natural language processing algorithm couldn’t pick it up.”

“But maybe Glenn can,” Meredith said.

“Chao,” Dom said.

Chao nodded and ran to the shipboard comms, placing a call to request Glenn’s presence in the workshop. The Hunter appeared in less than a minute. He mopped the sweat from his brow.

“What can I do you for, Captain?” he asked.

“Can you read that?” Dom pointed to the screen at the front of the workshop.

Glenn squinted. “Not a great image... the handwriting’s sloppy, too.”

“Please tell me you can make something out,” Thomas said. “For God’s sake, you have to read our chicken-scratch handwriting all the time.”

“Oh, I can make something out,” Glenn said. “It says something about organs looking normal and expected growth of bone achieved. Then, ‘injection unnecessary. Complete... something... administered.’” He shook his head. “I’m not good enough at Russian to make out the rest of this.”

The hatch burst open again. Dom hadn’t called anyone else in, but O’Neil rushed in. Behind him was Jaan, looking completely confused.

Before Dom could even ask what they were doing, O’Neil spoke. “The Heikegani Agent... it’s airborne.”

-26-

Lauren wasn’t sure she would ever get used to this smell. She wondered how the Hunters did it. The odor of rot and decay, like the dumpster of a seafood restaurant mixed with... well, with a bunch of dead bodies. Nearly every time she came down here, she had to stifle a gag.

Somehow Becker and Navid didn’t seem bothered by it.

Maybe Becker was relying on his acting chops again. He had told her and Navid before about how he’d studied acting on the side while pursuing his degrees in biochemistry and business.

Navid, on the other hand, wasn’t an actor. But he had survived for weeks in a Boston hospital overrun with Skulls, so maybe he’d just gotten used to the smell.

“Ready?” Becker asked, motioning down the rows of partitions, each holding a single Skull.

“This isn’t how I’d normally do my science,” Lauren said. “But sure, we can say we’re ready.”

Becker led Lauren and Navid toward a group of people. Each time they passed one of the chambers, the Skull inside flared in anger, throwing itself at the partition. Lauren forced her eyes to remain straight ahead and did her best to ignore the muffled cries of the monsters yearning to sink their claws into her. One battered Skull spread its mouth and tried biting at the hardened polycarbonate partition. It dragged its teeth over the plastic then hammered at it until its knuckles bled, leaving red smears with each blow.

The small crowd of people was fortunately only a few meters away. Lauren noticed a few familiar faces. Emma Fischer was there, as was Thomas Schuster. Four others she recognized from their prior meetings with the Mueller Pharmaceuticals higher-ups. But there was one man, wearing a gray jacket and green beret that looked like a military uniform, she definitely did not recognize.

“Dr. Winters,” Fischer said, stepping forward to introduce the man. “This is Oberst Otto Weber.”

Weber shook her hand vigorously. Before she could ask about his role in the Germany army, Fischer introduced Navid.

Becker leaned over to her and whispered, “He’s a colonel. The Bundeswehr obviously are very interested in our progress.”

Once the introductions were made, Becker asked, “Dr. Winters, do you have the Tenth Plague?”

Lauren nodded and reached into the pocket of her lab coat. Her fingers touched the cool plastic of the Tenth Plague syringe. In it was enough of the solution to dose five average-sized Skulls. She pulled out the syringe and held it out for Becker.

Instead, Fischer grabbed it and handed it off to another man beside her. She said something in German, and six soldiers rushed down the aisle to meet them. The group turned away from Lauren and Navid, watching instead as the soldiers opened the nearest Skull’s cage. The monster’s claws had been filed down, and each of its teeth had been pried out. Even so, the damn thing was still dangerous. It would probably bash its head against its victim until they both were a wreck of broken bones and bloodied tissue.

“Do we need to stay down here for this?” Lauren asked Becker. The group didn’t seem to want her or Navid for anything other than to deliver the syringe. She wondered if she should feel a little insulted. “If not, we should get back to the lab.”

Becker shrugged. “They might have questions about the function of the Tenth Plague. They wouldn’t want to waste their time having you run back and forth to answer them.”

“Don’t you mean our time?” Navid asked.

A smile crossed Becker’s face. “No, I believe some of these executives think since you are working for them, using their resources, your time is also their time now.”

“Did we just become indentured servants?” Lauren asked.

Becker put his arms around their shoulders, drawing them in. “My good doctors, neither of you have ever worked in the corporate world, have you?”

Lauren said nothing, but the answer was a resounding “no” for both of them. She turned her attention back to the soldiers. Colonel Weber stepped right into the Skull chamber with the soldiers. Three of them held the Skull down as a fourth injected the syringe’s needle into one of the bulging veins between the Skull’s plates. The other two soldiers watched with their weapons aimed at the beast, ready to fire. The monster shrieked and hissed.

After the soldier administered a dose of the Tenth Plague, the others continued to hold the beast until the colonel left the chamber. Then they threw the Skull against the far wall and stepped out before shutting the door behind them.

The Skull charged, leading with its shoulder. It slammed into the door over and over, the impacts continuing even after the soldiers had turned to the next chamber. They repeated the injection process until they’d given the Tenth Plague to five Skulls.

All five of those monsters were now throwing themselves at their partitions, whipped into a fury by those that had dared intrude on their space. The colonel stared at them, cleanly shaven jaw set, eyes narrowed. He never flinched or backed away as the Skulls clawed and mouthed the clear partitions separating him from a gory death.

“How long will it take?” he asked with a thick German accent.

Becker raised an eyebrow and shared a look with Lauren, evidently encouraging her to answer.

“It varies from individual to individual,” she said. “In our mouse subjects, we saw the Tenth Plague take effect in as little as fifteen minutes. The average was in the range of two to six hours, while some subjects clung to life for a day or more.”

“A day can be a very long time,” Weber said, crossing his arms. He glanced back at the Skulls. “How will we know it is working?”

“Hemorrhaging is the most obvious symptom,” Lauren said.

“Bleeding?” he asked.

“Correct. It’ll start in the places where their bone plates meet their flesh. Same with the horns and claws. Those areas bleed profusely as the chelating agent chews through all that bone.”

Weber stepped away from her and went back to the first cell. The Skull threw itself at the wall with even more gusto at his approach. Weber knelt, pressing a hand against the clear polycarbonate, studying the monster within. The Skull smashed its face against the tough plastic in an attempt to get at him. Blood started to spray where the Skull demolished the remainder of its shredded nose through each impact.

“If this continues, I will not be able to tell if the monster is affected by your weapon or if it is simply suicidal,” Weber said.

“Oh, you’ll be able to tell,” Navid said. “It gets pretty obvious pretty quickly.”

Weber didn’t seem convinced as he retreated back to the lingering executives and soldiers. They conversed in German again, glancing at the Skulls occasionally. Several minutes passed.

“What’s going on?” Lauren asked Becker.

“They are unsatisfied with the delivery method.”

“The syringe?” Navid asked. “What did they think we were going to do?”

“No, no,” Becker said. “It is not your fault. They expected us to have created some kind of chemical weapon delivery system for the Tenth Plague already. They want bombs, grenades, all those things that make those soldier-types happy.”

Lauren watched the conversation for a few minutes longer, trying to imagine exactly what they were talking about. Weber did not seem happy. He paced between the Skull holding cells and the Mueller representatives as he spoke, gesturing at the creatures then at his men.

Then one of the soldiers wandered over to one of the cells. He spoke quietly at first then louder to get the colonel’s attention. At that, everyone began crowding around. Lauren peered around them to see what they were studying.

The Skull inside had long tendrils of ragged brown hair tangled between the horns on its temples. Spikes poked out of the flesh along its spine, and its cracked ribs protruded from its chest just like so many other Skulls. But at the edge of those ribs, the skin had reddened. Blood had started to seep around the horns and matted down its hair. The ends of the Skull’s fingers wept blood where the claws had been filed down.

Soon, whenever the monster lunged at the partition, it painted the plastic with handprints of blood. Each time it tried mouthing the polycarbonate, it left a trail of red.

The Tenth Plague was working.

Weber took a step back. He looked at Lauren then back at the monster. Then he examined the other creatures. All of them started to leak crimson along the edges of their bony plates. They were still thrashing against their cages, desperate to get at the fresh meat teasing them from outside.

But Lauren could tell their struggle wouldn’t last much longer.

Weber no longer argued with the others in the group. He held out his hand to Lauren, shaking hers again. “You have done it. A new weapon, this will change our war.”

Something moved in Lauren’s gut. Like the hint of nausea, a surreal feeling washing over her.

A new weapon.

God, had she done this? Created a weapon instead of a medicine?

Sure, it was supposed to kill Skulls. But hearing that praise aloud, hearing that she’d created a weapon worthy of a colonel’s admiration... she didn’t like it.

***

Meredith could hardly believe O’Neil’s claim. Judging by the faces around the conference table in the electronics workshop, the other Hunters couldn’t, either. Or at least, they didn’t want to.

The Heikegani Agent was airborne now, too?

She shook her head. “I hope to God you’re wrong.”

“You have to hear Jaan out,” O’Neil said, still standing before them with Jaan at his side.

“Please, sit down,” Dom said, motioning at an empty chair.

“O’Neil has told me about how he became a... a Hybrid,” Jaan started in his stilted accent. “It is different than how I became this.” Jaan held up his hands, claws budding from his fingertips. “So much very different.”

“How so?” Meredith asked, her heart already racing in anticipation. Maybe, by God, he would have some clue to the way forward for them. Maybe saving him and the others had been worth more than they’d initially thought.

“O’Neil explained he was... how you say?” Jaan asked. “Shot. That is it.”

O’Neil butted in, his rasping voice outpacing even Meredith’s thoughts. The SEAL was excited. “He means all the work the FGL did on me was intravenous. All injections.”

“Right,” Dom said. “Lauren described the process.”

“There would be dozens of shots, if I recall,” Meredith said.

“That’s correct,” O’Neil said. “But that’s not the case for Jaan. He never got a single shot.”

“I don’t understand,” Thomas said. “What’d they do, ask him nicely to become a Hybrid?”

“They ask me nothing,” Jaan said, eyes narrowed. “They capture me in the city. I run away from them, but they find me and take me. When I awake, I find I am in prison. The prison you find me. That first day I am there, one of these people spray a gas in my face. I try not to breathe it in, but I cannot stop it. It itch my throat and eyes. My head hurt, and I fall asleep with such great pain.”

“Are you sure you didn’t get any injections when you passed out?” Dom asked.

Jaan held out his arms. The beginnings of armored plates were forming over his skin. His flesh was still white, not yet turned gray by the Heikegani Agent flowing through him.

“I do not know for sure, but I do not feel any sticks,” Jaan said. “And I never see any bumps in my skin from them. But I do know that I never sleep again while there, and I never get any more shot.”

Dom’s brow furrowed as he studied Jaan. Then he turned to Glenn. “Head to the med bay. Help the team question the other Hybrids, and see if they had the same experience.”

“Aye, Captain,” Glenn said. He hurried from the room.

“That’s not all,” O’Neil said. “The FGL has something to control the Hybrids.”

Meredith furrowed her brow. Of course, she’d seen the FGL exert their influence over O’Neil and now Jaan. She’d seen what happened to the passengers aboard the Seahawk. “You’re not talking about the usual pheromone crap, are you?”

O’Neil shook his head. “Something more old-fashioned. They’re turning these people into addicts.”

“The FGL is in the drug trade, too?” Thomas asked.

“Somebody’s got to pick up the business,” Miguel said. “World’s rife with opportunity now that the old cartels and mafias have to deal with the Oni Agent just like everyone else.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, man.” O’Neil’s fingers trembled as he showed his claws to them. “Every day, I can feel these things growing through me. It’s like my own body is torturing me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The FGL Hybrids don’t act like this, though. I used to think they hid it very well. But I was talking with Jaan... and he feels what I feel. But he didn’t used to.”

“What do you mean?” Meredith asked.

“For the first time I remember,” Jaan began, “the pain goes through me. I want so badly to have the pills that the FGL give me. When I take the pills, I do not feel this pain. I do not feel this crazy thing in my mind that make me want violence. I feel able to do what they say with these pills.”

“They turn their prisoners into Hybrids,” Dom mused, “and use their new powers for the benefit of the FGL, keeping them drugged up and complacent.”

Miguel played with one of the broken pieces of silicone on his prosthetic. “Chief, I don’t get it. So they can convince their prisoners to do what they want with the promise of these pills that make them magically feel better—but how powerful is this shit? I mean, are they just dosing ’em up with opioids? That’s nothing special.” Miguel motioned toward the corridor leading to the med bay. “It just means we’ve got a bunch of people in there that are going to be dealing with withdrawal symptoms.”

“It’s not the same,” O’Neil said, his fists clenched. “Lauren and her team have given me all kinds of painkillers. For God’s sake, even when I was high on morphine, I could still feel this stuff growing in me. Whatever the FGL has to stop this must be more powerful.” His jaw clenched, the muscles tightening under his leathery skin. “Much more powerful.”

“Makes sense to me,” Meredith said. “They created the Heikegani Agent. They understand it completely. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for them to create some kind of drug that ameliorates the effects of the Agent for their own soldiers.”

“Maybe we should direct the medical team to start coming up with our own cure to the Heikegani Agent, just like we did with the Oni Agent,” Thomas said.

“We’ve got more than enough samples, now, right?” Samantha asked.

O’Neil’s eyes narrowed at that. He didn’t seem to like hearing the other Hybrids referred to as samples. But he said nothing.

“The med team doesn’t have time to work on that,” Dom said. “We can pass this information on to Fort Detrick. Maybe Shepherd can assign a team, but they’re still struggling to reach production levels for the Phoenix Compound. Same story with the EU.”

“You’re saying we should just ignore the Heikegani Agent?” Thomas asked, plucking a cigar from his pocket. He gave the cigar a squeeze before shoving it between his teeth.

Meredith glanced at Dom. “We’re going to take it from the FGL, aren’t we?”

Dom nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

Miguel grinned at that. “Damn right, Chief. Use their own tech against them.”

“We’ve got the right team and access to resources to reverse engineer whatever they’ve developed,” Dom said. “It’ll save us having to do months of development and production work. But that’s still a secondary priority. We can’t lose focus on finding and stopping their shipment of the airborne Oni Agent.”

Dom’s eyes widened as soon as he said those words, as if a new thought had just occurred to him. Then it hit Meredith, too. She felt the blood drain from her face, an icy chill creeping under her flesh.

“Oh, shit. It’s worse than we thought,” Meredith said. “They’re testing an airborne Heikegani Agent. Maybe we’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”

“God, you’re right,” Samantha said, spilling some of her tea in the excitement. “They were field-testing it in Tallinn to see how well they can control the Hybrids afterward.”

“It’s not the Oni Agent they’re delivering on February 26,” Meredith said. “It’s the new version of the Heikegani Agent. They’re going to do what they did to those people in Tallinn.”

A heavy weight seemed to crush Meredith as she saw the realization spread over the rest of them.

“They’ll be enslaved by pain,” O’Neil said, his skeletal nostrils flaring. “Some people might resist. Others might find different ways to deal with the agony.” He clenched his bony fists. “But for most people, it’s going to be too much. They’ll do damn near anything to get those pills from the FGL. Whatever it takes, they’ll have truly turned men into monsters.”

-27-

Dom sat in the mess with Meredith across from him. It had been days since they’d warned their allies about the threat of the airborne Heikegani Agent. They were still waiting to hear positive news back from Detrick or the Germans, but the mood was grim aboard the Huntress. Word was that those governments left standing were revitalizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as best they could. Recent additions to NATO apparently had included about every country left standing besides Russia and Iran. Dom wasn’t sure what the list currently entailed, but he didn’t imagine it would be that extensive.

In any case, the NATO countries sought to pool their resources to defeat the FGL and their creations. If the airborne Heikegani Agent was deployed before they stopped it, then both the Phoenix Compound and the Tenth Plague would be useless. While the free world had spent untold resources, time, and personnel on developing cures and weapons, the FGL had been cooking up new horrors.

“I can’t believe all of this might’ve been a waste,” he said, his fingers wrapped around a cup of bitter coffee. No one else sat in the mess beside them, but Dom still kept his voice low. “Christ, if we can’t move forward on this, we’re looking at a world full of people suffering like O’Neil. And those people won’t have many choices.” He held up a finger. “One, self-medicate by whatever means necessary with whatever the hell is left out there.” He raised a second finger. “Or two, do whatever the FGL tells them to so they can stop the pain.”

Meredith sighed, twirling a spoon in her cup of coffee as she mixed in a packet of sugar. “Not to pile on, but I talked to Glenn. He’s still interviewing patients with the med team’s help. Pretty much all of them corroborate Jaan’s description of the Heikegani Agent delivery method. Some reported agonizing pain for days after until the FGL started giving them pills.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that, the pain went away, and the growth of the bones slowed or, in some cases, stopped altogether. Claws didn’t get any longer, horns didn’t stick out any more if they were on the pills. But if they disobeyed or weren’t productive on the factory line, the FGL would let them go a day without pills. You can imagine what the results were.”

“It’s insane.” Dom took a swig of the coffee. It was damn near scalding, burning his tongue on the way down. But he didn’t care. His pain was nothing compared to the cries that howled out of the med bay. “The FGL can control their bone growth, their pain, and through that, their minds. And even with the best scientists on the case, we’ve got nothing.”

“We need those pills.” Meredith set her spoon aside, leaving a small drop of coffee where it touched the table. “And we need them yesterday.”

“Shepherd’s sources assumed that the FGL was going to send out a shipment of the airborne agent in”—he checked his smartwatch—“two days now. We’re almost out of time.”

Meredith was about to take a sip of her coffee but set it back down. She stared at some point only she could see for a few seconds before finally speaking again. “I don’t want to live in a world where that happens.” Then her eyes locked with Dom’s. “We can’t let that happen.”

Of course she was right, but Dom worried there was precious little they could do to prevent it. They had no leads, and they were simply drifting in the Baltic, waiting for someone to give them something.

The hatch to the mess hall burst open. Samantha’s eyes were wide, and rivulets of sweat trickled down her forehead.

“You looking for a caffeine fix?” Meredith asked.

“Well, yes, but... mostly you two,” she said. She stood in the middle of the doorway, holding the hatch open. “I think we did it. I think we got a lead.”

Dom’s heart began to gallop, the anticipation striking through him like an electric current. But he fought back the optimism, refusing to cling to false hope.

“Then, let’s see it,” he said, standing from the table. Meredith joined him as they jogged out of the mess and followed Samantha to the electronics workshop.

There, in the middle of the deck, stood Jaan, O’Neil, and Chao. On the screen at the front of the room was an image of the factory at the prison.

He scanned the image, trying to understand what was so interesting about it. Samantha didn’t give him much time. She tapped on her mouse and zoomed in on a section that Dom hadn’t noticed.

A wooden crate on a pallet appeared there. Faded black Coptic letters were written across it, and she did her best to enhance the pixelated image.

“None of my processing algorithms picked this up because it was so blurry,” she said. “But Chao and I went through these videos frame by frame to see if there was something we missed. And here it is.”

“And what does it say?” Dom asked.

“It says in Estonian, Tallink,” Jaan answered.

“What does that mean?”

“It is the name of a ferry company that operated between Helsinki and Tallinn,” Chao answered.

Meredith folded her arms over her chest. “We’ve got a leftover crate that’s been repurposed and is sitting in a factory. You’ve got to show me more for this to be a verifiable lead.”

“We’ve got more,” Samantha said. She scrolled through other images of equally blurred crates with similarly pixelated words that Dom assumed said Tallink like the first.

“The prison is located next to the port.” Dom shrugged. “We already knew that. It would make sense to reuse these crates for whatever they’re doing with them.”

“That’s not it,” Samantha said. “Jaan?”

Jaan pointed a clawed finger at the words on the screen again. “It is hard to distinguish, but this bottom part has a date. February 26.”

Dom’s stomach sank. “That’s when the FGL is shipping out their mystery weapon. They were using the prison to manufacture the delivery canisters, but we haven’t seen anything in Tallinn suggesting mass-scale manufacture of the actual agent. We need to check other nearby ports. Helsinki seems like the obvious choice.”

“Let’s request a flyover now,” Meredith said. “Can we get one from Colonel Ronaldo?”

“Already done.” Samantha grinned. “He still had planes stationed in the area from the last round of recon work.”

Chao clicked on his computer, and the image changed on the screen. “We missed this because, with our allies’ current capabilities in NATO, we don’t have comprehensive, current images for every corner of the globe, much less Europe. And our previous round of surveillance images showed Helsinki as deserted as any other city overrun by Skulls.”

“But this time was different,” Samantha said.

An overhead image of Helsinki showed on the displays. At first Dom saw nothing out of the ordinary. Skulls littered the port like ants. They funneled around the neatly divided blocks near Helsinki’s West Harbor. One ship caught his eye; it stuck out of the water like a rock, half-sunk, its stern a ghostly image skewed by the water’s surface.

Jaan pointed to one of the ferries—it looked more like a huge cruise ship than the ferry Dom and the Hunters had taken in the Congo. Fluorescent green streaks colored the hull.

“That is a Tallink ship,” Jaan said. “I have taken them many times.”

“Please tell me you’ve got more evidence,” Dom said.

Chao’s face turned serious. “It’s not much, but we did spot these.”

The tech specialist manipulated the image’s focus to a docked freighter. A dozen trucks were lined up under a crane that was in the middle of lowering a container onto the freighter.

“These are Russian Kamaz Typhoons,” Chao said. “Same trucks we saw in Tangier. Saw them in the Congo, too. FGL vehicles by the look of it. The Finnish army doesn’t have anything like these.”

“And that’s our link?” Meredith asked.

Samantha nodded, her black hair bobbing. “Does it pass muster, Captain?”

Dom hesitated a second before he answered. All the circumstantial evidence was there, but there was nothing concrete. Nothing definitive enough.

The date, February 26, loomed in his mind’s eye. They didn’t have weeks to gather more intel. Circumstantial might be the best they could do.

“There’s still one missing piece I’d like to know. If they’re bringing the canisters they were making in Tallinn to Helsinki and loading up that freighter, where are they actually manufacturing the airborne agent?”

Now it was Samantha’s turn again. “Thought you’d ask. From their activity around the port, we’ve identified the likely candidate.” She clicked on her computer, and another image showed a rectangular building not more than a block away from the harbor. “Vintola Distillery and Brewery.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dom said.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Chao said, “but think about it. It’s right by the shore. They have all kinds of fermentation tanks, pipelines to deal with high-pressure gases and transportation of liquids. The infrastructure is all there. I mean, we couldn’t find any decent pharmaceutical companies nearby with this kind of capacity.” He pointed to the image. “And those fermentation tanks and vats could be converted for the nanobacteria that make up the Heikegani Agent.”

Dom looked to Meredith. “Is this idea as half-baked as it seems to me?”

She shrugged. “Half-baked is better than something that hasn’t even hit the oven.”

“We’ve got nothing else that looks remotely feasible for manufacturing the airborne Heikegani Agent or even just loading it up into those canisters,” Samantha said. “That is, of course, if we’re limiting our search to Helsinki. Sure, there are a shit ton of viable candidates around Europe, but the truth is, nothing else fits all our checkboxes as well as this one. It’ll take us half an hour to get within Zodiac range of the port.”

“So, Captain?” Meredith asked, with a smirk. “I heard it’s cold there this time of year.”

Dom glanced at the screen and then his crew. They were running out of time and leads. They had to at least try something.

“Get on your winter boots and parkas,” Dom said. “We’re going to Helsinki.”

***

In the belly of a Black Hawk, Rachel looked out over the ruins of Houston. Team Jaguar’s respite after their mission to the Texas Medical Center had lasted a couple of weeks. But it hardly seemed like enough.

Below them lay the wastes of the suburbs. The dams and reservoirs had failed, letting the water flow through the streets. Most of the land here seemed to have reverted back to the swamp it had once been. Rumor had it that a group of Houston residents had sabotaged most of the water-holding systems in the city in the hopes that the temporary flooding would drown out the Skulls. But by the looks of things, Rachel guessed that plan had backfired.

The six-lane highways were filled with abandoned cars. If Rachel squinted, she thought she could see corpses within some of those vehicles, dried out and shriveled. Almost all the cars in one section had been charred, nothing left besides the blackened skeleton of a vehicle and dark stains across the highway. Many of the houses, apartment complexes, and strip malls lining the highway had fared no better. Some buildings showed the scars of fires. Others were nothing more than concrete foundations with a sooty beam or two sticking up like broken bones protruding from flesh.

“This is Sugarland, huh?” Rory murmured over the comms.

“What’s left of it,” the copilot said, glancing back at them.

“Is there anything left down there, bro?” Terrence asked.

The copilot let out a sigh. “Haven’t seen much movement when we’ve dropped off other units. I mean, there’s plenty of Skulls, but...”

“Hardly any people,” Rachel finished for him. “Figures.”

“ETA two minutes,” the copilot said, pointing to a wide, flat building south of them. “That’s Stellicam Medicine.”

Rachel studied the parking lot around the building. It was mostly empty except for a few SUVs and sedans. A chain-link fence marked the facility’s perimeter, and though Skulls lingered around the nearby industrial complexes, there didn’t appear to be any near Stellicam.

“Shit, we might actually be lucky with this one.” Rachel turned back to Terrence and Rory. “Don’t see a single Skull in their parking lot. Maybe the fence actually kept ’em out.”

“You jinxed it now,” Rory said. “That whole building is going to be full of them. One bastard after another, just a whole goddamned horde. Way to go, Rachel.”

Terrence laughed. “I’m not the superstitious type, but I am suspicious. Seems strange that the place isn’t crawling with Skulls. Especially if Dr. Singh and her team are still alive down there.”

It had only been eight days since Fort Detrick had gotten in contact with Dr. Amita Singh. She was a senior scientist at Stellicam. The company specialized in developing antibodies for pharmaceutical applications. Rachel wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but from what Shepherd had told her, Dr. Singh’s work was going to be very important for some new biological tool or therapy or something the US was working on with Germany. Shepherd had said it could change the face of the war on the Oni Agent, and he’d claimed they had some mutual friends working on it in Europe. Rachel guessed that meant the Hunters, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. She didn’t press Shepherd too much on it. Ever since he’d gotten his post back at Detrick, his lips had been a bit tighter. She guessed that went with the position, though she missed the days when they were on more equal footing.

“Singh better be alive,” Rory said. “I’m getting really tired of Texas.”

Dr. Singh had warned that their facility would soon go dark when they ran out of fuel. Rachel clung to the hope that the scientist and her team had fared better than Dr. Bennet. She had no interest in wading through hordes of Skulls only to find that their HVT was already dead. So far, every goddamn mission she’d been on with Colonel Shepherd’s task force had ended like that. Not a living soul on one of them. Just once, she wished they’d respond fast enough to save someone’s life.

“I don’t know if this is true or not,” Rachel said, “but I remember reading an article about dogs specially trained to find people in the rubble after earthquakes. They usually find dead body after dead body. To keep the dogs from getting depressed, every once in a while one of the rescue team operators would hide in the rubble so the dogs could find them. I wish, just once, maybe Shepherd would send us out on a mission like that.”

Rory said nothing, drumming his fingers on his rifle and studying the horizon outside the window.

“I know what you mean,” Terrence said. “But I’ve got a feeling this time is going to be different.”

“Didn’t you say that last time?” Rory asked.

Terrence gave a noncommittal shrug.

The ground started rising up toward them, the Stellicam facility growing ever closer.

“We’re going to make a fast touchdown,” the copilot said. “LZ looks clear, and we want to keep it that way. You guys get your asses moving quickly, and we’ll move ours just as quickly. Got it?”

Terrence gave him a big thumbs-up.

Rachel checked her tac vest over once more, ensuring every spare magazine and grenade was in the proper place. This time she even had one of the experimental Pacifist grenades that they’d gotten from their German allies.

“Here we go!” the copilot said again.

The Black Hawk hit the asphalt hard, and Rachel yanked open the side door. She jumped out, staying low as the rotor wash blasted over her. With her rifle pressed against her shoulder, she scanned the cars and fence line. Two Skulls started to climb the fence toward her left, and four more scurried up it directly in front of her about two hundred yards away.

“Two contacts at our nine o’clock and four at our twelve.” She sighted up the beasts at her nine o’clock.

Rory and Terrence came out of the chopper next. Terrence slammed the door into place and slapped the side of the Black Hawk’s fuselage. The chopper took off, swirling dried leaves and paper that had accumulated in the parking lot around them.

Terrence knelt, aiming at the four beasts in front of them. “Open fire.”

Bursts of gunfire exploded from their rifles. All the rounds found their homes, taking down the monsters before they could clear the fence. Their bodies fell back into the flooded ditches circling the facility, disappearing into the muddy, garbage-filled waters.

“Move, move, move!” Terrence yelled.

They sprinted across the parking lot toward a side entrance surrounded by overgrown bushes and trees. A portion of the roof jutted out over a pair of doors. Dr. Singh had told them this would be the best entrance for them to avoid the Skulls’ attention.

“Oh, shit,” Rachel said.

The doors were already open.

-28-

It was cold.

No, it was fucking freezing.

O’Neil could feel it from the tips of his claws to the core of his spine and everywhere in between. Even with the cold-weather gear he wore like the rest of the Hunters, his claws poked through the ends of his gloves, and the air seemed to seep in at the edges of his hood and straight into his nostrils, pouring into his lungs.

If Hell was a land of fire and brimstone, the heat agonizing to all those cursed to eternal damnation, this was the exact opposite. A land of ice and wind that made O’Neil wish he were in Hell instead.

Fuck. Maybe he was in Hell.

“Doing all right, bro?” Miguel asked as they snuck down a snow-covered street.

O’Neil grunted. “Cold’s creeping into my bones.”

“Me, too, man.”

O’Neil didn’t have the breath to argue with Miguel about who had it worse. They flitted between the icy mounds in the streets. Dom and Meredith, Jenna and Andris, Glenn. They had debated bringing Jaan in case they needed his language skills—he’d proven to be a valuable asset back in Tallinn and even on the Huntress. But ultimately the Hunters had decided he wasn’t worth the risk. They still did not know him well, and they had no way to vet his background. He was still a fresh Hybrid, and after the challenges with the prisoners on the Seahawk during their escape, they worried Jaan wouldn’t have enough control over his own body if the FGL decided to turn him against them.

O’Neil had been there for that entire discussion. He’d been there when they’d talked about their plans for Helsinki, too, listening to what Dom had in mind with the support of NATO. But what they’d said about Jaan had stuck in his brain like a jagged piece of glass. He wondered if Glenn’s glances meant the big Hunter was suspicious of O’Neil’s own ability to keep himself in control. Or if Jenna really trusted O’Neil to have her back if shit hit the fan. Maybe Miguel, too, doubted that O’Neil could withstand the FGL’s Hybrids, and that was what he’d really been asking a moment ago.

The only thing really separating him from Jaan was his English fluency and the fact that Meredith had long ago confirmed O’Neil’s service records with her CIA connections. And still, O’Neil wondered if that was really enough. Maybe they were forced to take him, the liability that he was, because they’d lost so many other men and women in this fight. They needed the extra gun, and they thought he could carry it, despite the risk he represented.

He wasn’t crucial to this mission’s success. At least, not that he could tell. He could use his claws and send an extra wave of lead toward any FGL soldiers they encountered... and maybe that was the extent of his usefulness to the team.

His thoughts started to turn as cold as the air around him, and he shook his head to rid himself of them.

“Footsteps,” Meredith hissed. She pressed her back against the wall of a brick building. Icicles hung from a balcony above her, looking every bit as dangerous as a Skull’s claws. She crouched behind a snowdrift.

The Hunters found other snowdrifts for cover. Each shape suggested cars and trash cans—or the bodies of those left to rot when the spring thaw finally came—all hidden under the piles of white. O’Neil picked a spot near Meredith and tilted his head.

Now he could hear the crunch of footsteps through snow. These sounded determined and even. Not like the sloppy amble of the Skulls that they’d encountered roaming the streets. The images they’d seen of Helsinki prior to arriving at the harbor had made them think they would encounter hordes of ravenous Skulls. But the reality was that most of the beasts in the snow were quite literally frozen where they lay, starving or dead. They had been less of a threat than the icicles hanging overhead.

Maybe the cold wasn’t as bad as he’d initially thought. It kept the Skulls at bay, and maybe that was what made the FGL choose to use this place as a forward operating base.

Meredith peered around the corner. She turned back to the rest of the Hunters and held up two fingers, pointed to her eyes, then back at the corner.

Two FGL soldiers headed our way, he thought.

Then she pointed at O’Neil.

Hybrids. Two Hybrids headed our way.

Deep, rolling Russian voices came first. Then two shapes marched past the snowdrift where O’Neil and Meredith were.

There was one click over the comm link. O’Neil knew what that meant. He looked at Meredith, and she nodded.

As soon as the FGL Hybrids started to pass their snowdrift, they attacked. O’Neil launched himself straight up and over, his muscled legs acting like springs. Meredith whipped around the side. They each grabbed a Hybrid. O’Neil sank his claws into the soldier’s parka, tearing through down stuffing and reaching soft flesh where the Hybrid’s chin met his neck. Warm, steaming blood trickled out. The Hybrid had no time to scream.

Meredith took her mark down with equal prowess. They dragged the bodies behind their snowdrift and scoured through their pockets, pulling out identification badges and weapons. They spread the gear out across the snow.

“Having a yard sale?” Jenna asked when she scanned their haul.

“Keycard access and camo for grabs,” Meredith said, pocketing some for herself. Then she looked up at O’Neil, her eyes growing wide as if she’d been struck by inspiration.

He decided he didn’t like that look. “What?” he asked.

“Care to try one of these uniforms on?” she asked, pointing to the dead Hybrids.

“You can’t be serious,” he muttered. But he understood what she had in mind, and as much as he disliked the idea, it made sense. Nobody else on their team could pass as a Russian Hybrid.

She shrugged. “We need a way into that facility. Doesn’t hurt to have options.”

O’Neil picked the Hybrid with less blood on his parka. That wasn’t saying much, seeing as how they’d both been dispatched with cut arteries, but at least the uniforms were black. The cold cut through him as he changed out his parka for the FGL Hybrid’s. The blood covering the uniform started to freeze and crack when he moved.

At least it wasn’t sticky and wet anymore.

Meredith handed the keycards to Dom. He kept one and passed the other to O’Neil. Then Dom peered down the street from behind one of the snowdrifts toward their destination. O’Neil looked at the buildings Dom was studying. Deep gouges in the roofs and walls scarred many of them.

“Looks almost like a Titan has been here,” Dom said.

“God, I hope not,” Meredith said. “Any sign of them?”

“No,” Dom said. “Nothing but those marks. Could’ve been caused by their claws.”

He motioned for O’Neil to sidle up to him. “You sense any Titans?”

O’Neil sniffed the air. All he could taste was the cold. “Not yet.”

“Good. Take a look at that building.” Dom handed O’Neil the binos.

O’Neil aimed them at the building Dom had indicated. The brewery and distillery looked like something O’Neil would’ve imagined from a Dickens novel. Huge brick smokestacks pierced the sky, and black soot marks stained the walls. Spears of ice hung from the roof, nearly covering the few narrow, cracked glass windows of the facility. O’Neil spotted the batteries of antiaircraft guns and even a few S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile-launcher truck systems. He peered around the darkened streets on the opposite side of the harbor. There, he spotted more of the camouflaged missile systems he guessed to be the S-400 Triumfs the Russians had been proud to call one of the best air-defense systems ever made.

There was a damn good reason Dom and the Hunters had been the first group to respond to the FGL threat here. Bombing the place wasn’t an option. First, there was the matter of those deadly S-400 Triumfs. Then there was the possibility of accidentally releasing a shit ton of the airborne Heikegani Agent.

O’Neil shuddered when he imagined what would happen to all the survivors in Helsinki if they bombed the brewery. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy.

He looked down at the FGL Hybrid he’d stolen the uniform from. On second thought...

“We need entry into that building,” Dom said.

He pointed toward the loading dock of the distillery. Several trucks idled in front of it as soldiers lugged the same silver canisters they’d seen being manufactured in Tallinn onto the vehicles. There was little doubt what was going on in there now. A set of glass doors lay farther down the wall, looking as though they’d once been used as the main entrance. They were now boarded up and chained together. Hybrids patrolled the loading docks. O’Neil doubted there was any way to get in without being noticed, even with the cover of dark.

With the two guards they’d taken out, he knew the clock would be ticking, too. Eventually someone would try to call one of those dead Hybrids. Dom was discussing with the Hunters the best routes into the facility. All of them involved combat with the guards. There seemed to be no way to avoid it.

O’Neil could sense the hesitation in the other Hunters, even though they voiced their readiness. They each knew, like him, that they had no other choice but to make it into that facility tonight. If they didn’t, if they screwed up this chance to stop the shipment of the Heikegani Agent, then it would become that much more difficult to stop the FGL from turning the survivors of this devastated world into abominations just like him.

The team specialized in covert ops and stealth. They’d engaged in plenty of gun battles, but that wasn’t their forte. From what O’Neil could tell, that had been one of the reasons they’d lost so many of their numbers in the ensuing days since the outbreak. Going up against the fortified positions of the FGL would not be easy, and it would be a goddamn miracle if they made it out of this mission without more casualties.

Maybe O’Neil had actually gotten to know the crew in spite of his freakishness. Or maybe it was his Hybrid senses talking. But he could almost feel the leaden weight of their dread.

He turned his gaze skyward. They were going to need some kind of divine intervention tonight. Then he scanned the roofs of warehouses lining the roadway to the brewery. A spark flickered in his mind.

“Captain,” O’Neil said. “I think I’ve got a better idea.”

***

Through her binos, Meredith watched O’Neil climb up the warehouse walls and leap from roof to roof, as if he were Spider-Man. He melded into the night as he scurried toward the edge of a warehouse then threw himself over the loading dock of the brewery. His body slammed against the flat roof and rolled out of view. He must’ve made some kind of noise, because a few of the human soldiers lugging metal canisters paused and looked up.

She held her breath. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.

Soon one of the Hybrids started pointing and gesturing madly at the humans, appearing to shout at them until they began loading canisters into the truck again.

“Found a maintenance shaft on the roof,” O’Neil called over the comms. “I’ll go in and figure something out.”

Then there was only silence. Static crackled over the line, and for a moment she feared they had lost contact with him.

“Ho-ly shit,” O’Neil whispered over the comms. “This... this is definitely the place. I’m in the rafters now. There are separate lab and manufacturing facilities crawling with Hybrids and soldiers. And Goliaths. They’re using those to do their heavy lifting.”

He relayed everything he saw, from what looked to be the command center of the facility overlooking all the fermentation tanks and laboratory areas to the canisters near the loading dock and the workers in hazmat suits filling the high-pressure canisters.

“Any other way to get into that facility?” Dom asked.

“Negative,” O’Neil said. “The only way you’re getting in is over the roof like me or through the doors near the loading dock.” A beat of silence. “But don’t worry, I got an idea for a distraction. If you still want in.”

“Goddamn right we want in,” Meredith said.

“O’Neil, you set us up to get in there, and I’ll buy the drinks once we’re all back on the Huntress,” Dom said.

“Chief, you always say that,” Miguel said.

“You keeping track of how many rounds I owe?” Dom asked.

“Sounds like you aren’t, so I’d estimate about a dozen.”

“I’ll double that if you get us in there safely, O’Neil,” Dom said. “What’s the plan?”

In a matter of minutes, Meredith and Dom had led the Hunters the rest of the way between the warehouses and other buildings lining the harbor, flitting between the dunes of snow she presumed covered abandoned vehicles and dumpsters. They only had to dispatch a few Skulls on their way—all had been easy to take down, given their lethargic, half-frozen meandering. Now they waited at the corner of a warehouse directly in line with the brewery. A camouflaged S-400 missile system sat in front of them with two FGL soldiers manning it. Neither looked particularly alert as they sat in the cabin of the truck. One had his head cranked back as if asleep, and the other seemed to be thumbing through a dirty magazine.

“How close are you to the loading dock?” O’Neil whispered over the comms.

“Not quite there yet,” Dom said.

“I only got one shot at this,” O’Neil said. “And I can’t promise it’s going to work.”

“The whole world might be depending on this,” Meredith said. “No pressure or anything.”

Dom gave her a quiet hand signal, pointing toward the dock. She sprinted toward the S-400 missile-system truck. The last couple of feet, she slid in the snow and pressed herself low against the huge tire. Her position put the vehicle between herself and the loading dock. Low as she was, she also remained out of sight of the duo in the truck if they chose to bother looking out the window.

Turning slightly to catch Dom’s eye, she beckoned the next Hunter toward her. Andris loped across the snow and dove into position beside her. Meredith pressed herself to the door of the truck, listening for any sign that he’d been spotted.

Nothing.

She gestured for Andris to creep toward the opposite end of the truck. His white parka stood out only slightly against the mottled white netting and snow-covered tarps draped over the S-400. He posted up at the end of the vehicle, raising his sniper rifle to his shoulder.

Meredith curled her finger at Dom again. This time Glenn and Jenna barreled over the snow, kicking up a rooster tail of white behind them as they sprinted. Miguel and Dom shot out of their position last. But this time, a surprised, muffled shout exploded from the S-400.

Either the sleeping soldier had finally yawned awake to see his enemies hurtling across the icy street, or the man with the porno rag had finally had his fill of airbrushed silicon.

Son of a bitch, Meredith thought.

She acted without hesitation and yanked on the door of the truck. The soldiers out here had been complacent, not even bothering to lock it. Then again, when you were guarding the skies, staring at the birds, why would you think to worry about the ants at your feet?

Her fingers wrapped around the neck of the man at the driver’s seat. Sure enough, he’d set down his magazine and had the handset of his radio clutched in his fingers, his lips open, ready to ruin everything they’d worked for.

“Not today, asshole,” Meredith said. She heaved him out with all her strength, pulling his body past her. Then she whipped out her knife with the other hand and severed the cord connecting the handset to the radio. It came away with a snap as the man, surprised and disoriented, fell into the snowbank.

She left him to the wolves outside his door as she pulled herself across the bench seat toward the second soldier. He had woken up at the shocked yell of his comrade, and unfortunately he wasn’t the sort to react in yawning confusion. The man’s hand found his holstered pistol.

That was the last thing the Hunters needed. It wasn’t that Meredith feared the man would shoot her. He was too damn close to act fast enough. But the noise of a gunshot in the quiet wintry night would be almost as bad as hailing the FGL on the radio.

Her fingers found the man’s wrist. and she twisted hard, breaking his grip. He yelled out in a mixture of pain and anger. She never stopped, driving her shoulder hard into his chin while still keeping his hand from his gun. He hammered his free hand against the back of her neck, avoiding her helmet. A sharp pain ricocheted through her, but it was dulled by the surge of adrenaline icing her veins.

The soldier yelled something in Russian. He started to coil in his seat as if he was going to shove her back through the door. The handgun glinted in his holster. If he overpowered her for even a moment, she knew all was lost.

The Russian’s knee flew up into her face. Her teeth slammed together. She saw only red, and the taste of blood exploded on her tongue. But somewhere through her muddled senses, she could tell he was reaching for that goddamn gun again. Through the pain she reached out, letting go of his wrist and risking everything, grabbing at his head. Her thumbs found his eyeballs, and she pressed inward. The Russian yelled in agony.

Meredith slammed his head against the side window. Once. Twice. A sickening crack, then a spiderweb of fractures across the window. The man started to babble incoherently.

A wave of nausea crept up through Meredith’s stomach. She hated this part of the job. Absolutely detested it. When she was back on the Huntress, sleeping next to Dom, she would wake up in the dark as this memory came back to haunt her.

But she had no choice. She twisted the man’s neck. A distinct snap.

His body fell limp, and she let go, breathing heavily and backing out, her vision still bleary.

Hands fell over her shoulder, and she immediately swept back with an elbow. Whoever it was dodged her blow.

“Just me, Mere,” Dom said, his voice low and calm but sounding out of breath. “You okay?”

She turned and slipped out of the cabin. A splash of blood covered the front of Dom’s fatigues, and she looked down to see the other FGL soldier bleeding out into the snow.

“Problem?” Dom asked.

“Taken care of,” she replied.

Dom handed her the keycard and ID he’d taken off his mark. She realized she should probably retrieve the same items from her target. But a voice crackled over the comm link before she could slide back into the front seat.

“We need to do this now,” O’Neil said. “The Goliaths are about to leave!”

Meredith looked across the road from the S-400 toward the loading dock.

“Go,” Dom said. “Now!”

Nothing happened for a few moments. The soldiers around the loading dock continued to pack the transport trucks with canisters, the low gurgle of diesel engines rumbling over the white streets. Meredith’s boots crunched in the snow as she moved closer to the rest of the Hunters. Her heart still beat in a rapid staccato. The tips of her fingers trembled, fueled by adrenaline.

She hoped it would last long enough for what would come next.

A roar burst over the sound of the truck’s engines. A Goliath’s roar.

Something punched into one of the corrugated metal doors over an empty loading dock. Then another huge dent plowed into the door, a bulging pimple of metal ready to explode. A third blow. This time it gave way, and a Goliath stepped out, carrying two broken FGL soldiers in its fists. It threw the bodies into the snow and cocked its head back, letting out a bellow that shook Meredith’s eardrums.

The soldiers loading up the other trucks dropped their canisters. A couple froze, while the others took their pistols from their holsters. They seemed to immediately realize how poorly armed they were against a rebelling Goliath and ran back inside. Maybe to retrieve guns, maybe because they were scared shitless.

Meredith didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

“Go, go, go!” Dom said, waving the Hunters over to the loading dock.

The Goliath charged back into the recesses of the brewery. The clanging of something heavy slamming into metal rang out alongside bloodcurdling screams. Gunfire exploded, lashing out like lightning.

Meredith ran across the snow-covered street, her heart pounding.

More gunfire sounded. The Goliath roared again. This time its voice was ragged, as if blood was popping in its lungs.

Meredith sprinted past the first truck and slid under the half-closed loading bay door. She was the first one in.

“Cut the ignitions of those trucks,” Dom commanded the other Hunters.

Andris, Jenna, and Glenn spread out between the trucks, severing the wires. There might be other trucks nearby, but at least these ones wouldn’t be moving. The others soon joined Meredith in the entrance of the loading bay.

Now it was time for the real show.

-29-

Dom charged into the loading bay last. The Goliath that O’Neil had commandeered was a bleeding heap of fragmented bone and gray flesh on the far side of the warehouse. Crates and stacks of huge containers stood in neat rows over the concrete floor except where the Goliath had knocked them over.

Ahead of the Hunters was a wall that went halfway up the height of the building. From O’Neil’s description, Dom knew this was what separated the warehouse portion of the facility from the labs and fermentation chambers on the other side. The rest of the Hunters fanned out around him, finding shelter amid the canisters and crates.

Twenty or so FGL soldiers ran between the stacks to join their comrades examining the deceased Goliath. To them, it must have seemed as if the beast had suddenly gone mad. A few Hybrids prodded the Goliath with their claws, pointing accusingly at each other.

“They’re blaming each other for this,” Glenn whispered over the comms.

“Good,” Dom said. “Let them. To the command center.”

A metal staircase led up to the top of the wall ahead and into a huge series of rooms overlooking the entire facility. Its wide cockpit-like windows offered an expansive view of the place. And if O’Neil was correct, that was where Dom needed to be before the FGL cronies resumed their normal activities.

There were just two soldiers standing near the bottom of the stairs. They were either committed to their post or didn’t want to get too close to the Goliath. Dom nodded to Miguel. The Hunter knew exactly what to do.

Together they snuck between the crates and canisters. The two men near the bottom of the stairs were completely unprepared for what hit them. They went down in a flash of blades, lowered by Dom and Miguel to the concrete floor.

Glenn and Meredith rushed to help them hide the bodies beneath the stairs while Andris and Jenna guarded the group, rifles shouldered. With the bodies stowed, they surged up the stairs as quietly as they could. Dom crouched outside the bulky steel door of the command room. Miguel joined him and slid one of the key cards they’d stolen through the card reader next to the door. The handle turned.

The rest of the group positioned themselves along the catwalk. Below, the FGL soldiers and Hybrids had finally started to split away from the dead Goliath. A pair of Hybrids influenced two Goliaths to drag the corpse outside. The remaining Hybrids screeched at the humans, and Dom watched them scurry back to work.

It was now or never.

Dom counted down on his fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

Miguel twisted the handle and yanked open the door. There were nine men and women in the control room. None had weapons at the ready. Four of them sat at a table full of empty glass bottles, playing cards laid between them. Four others sat at various instrument panels with computer screens glowing blue across their faces. A ninth stood in the middle of the room, his eyes wide. He dropped the mug of coffee he was holding.

Dom watched the whole scene unfold as if in slow motion. His body hurtled straight at the lone man as if on autopilot. He lowered his rifle and rammed into the man as the mug hit the floor. Shards of ceramic spread from the point of impact, carried by a wave of coffee. The FGL man had no time to react, no time to defend himself as Dom took him down and cranked his arms behind his back.

The other Hunters descended on their prey. Jenna took one of the women at a console, Meredith tore a man from his seat next to a computer, and Andris elbowed another man hard in the nose, preventing him from picking up a radio. Miguel grabbed both a woman and man from their chairs at the table as Glenn pointed his rifle at the remaining trio getting up to make a run for it.

Glenn barked something in Russian, and they all raised their hands, frozen in place.

“Secure them!” Dom barked.

Dom wanted to take them alive in case they couldn’t operate the controls themselves. All they had to do now was shut down the power to the facility and, if at all possible, subvert the defenses organized around the base. They needed to hold the place down long enough for the German, Portuguese, and Irish forces already on their way to make landfall here. Then they could secure the facility once and for all, preventing the spread of the Heikegani Agent.

Once the FGL cronies were rounded up and pushed into a corner, Dom signaled Miguel. The Hunter flipped open a panel on his prosthetic arm and pulled out a few data links. He plugged them into each of the computers the hostages had been operating.

“Huntress, Dom here. We’ve got control over the command center.”

The hope was that they could take control, disrupting their power supply and communications. And hell, if they were really lucky, there might be a back door in the facility’s intranet for Samantha and Chao to take over the air defense’s targeting systems, making it even easier for the responding NATO forces to swarm the place. The goal was to cripple the base.

“Copy,” Chao’s voice broke over the comm link. “We’ve got a connection. Scouring now to see what we can access.”

Samantha broke over the line. “One thing’s clear, our suspicions were on the mark. They’re making that Heikegani shit here.”

“We got the right place, Chief,” Miguel said. “That’s good news.”

“That means we’re halfway there,” Dom said. He stood away from the windows overlooking the place so as not to attract attention. “O’Neil, you got eyes on the rest of the facility?”

“They’re going back to work filling up canisters. But this time they’re chaining up the Goliaths. Not risking another one going crazy.”

“Good,” Dom said. “Do they seem suspicious?”

“The soldiers look nervous,” O’Neil replied. “But the Hybrids seem to be shrugging it off. I’d say it’s probably not unusual that they lose control every once in a while. Workplace accidents, you know?”

Dom didn’t know, but he trusted O’Neil. “Stay out there, and let us know if they send anyone up to the command center to investigate.”

Somewhere out there, O’Neil was perched in the rafters, risking his ass to help the team. Dom was grateful to have the Hybrid—the man—on their side. Seeing O’Neil in action over the past few missions meant he would never underestimate the power of an FGL Hybrid—nor would he forget what the civilians back aboard the Huntress were enduring.

“Chao, I want you to sift this computer for any sign of the cure or therapy or whatever the hell they use to regulate the Heikegani Agent,” Dom said. “If they’ve got files on how they manufacture that, it would be a godsend.”

“Doing my best,” Samantha replied. “But without Glenn here to read all this Russian... oh, shit, wait a second.”

For a moment Dom felt a wave of relief. She must’ve found something. “What is it? Did you find something?”

“No, no. Hang on...”

That wave of hope shattered like a wooden ship crashing against a cliff face in a storm.

“Permission to let Jaan in on this?” Samantha asked.

Dom wavered for a second. The man was still an unknown to them. A Hybrid who claimed to have been an Estonian soldier. He’d had some useful intel, true. But could they really trust him? What if he was a plant?

“Captain?” Samantha called.

“Fine,” Dom said. “But be careful.”

“Understood,” Samantha said.

Then there was only silence over the line. Data transfer using these links was tedious at best, and Dom knew both his techies were working their asses off. But being on this side of the datalink, he couldn’t see their progress. What he could see was the nervous sweat trickling down the foreheads of their hostages and the flickering yellow lights providing ghoulish illumination over the work floor below. He heard the voices call out around the facility, echoing tinnily against the walls, along with the grunts of the Goliaths and the incessant stomp of boots.

The other Hunters stood stoically. Miguel and Jenna guarded the door, and Meredith kept her rifle aimed down a short hallway that led to a second reinforced steel door. A few cubicles were pressed up against the far wall along that hallway, but Andris had already cleared them.

Dom gritted his teeth as he waited for news from Samantha and Chao. As soon as they were done here, they could sneak back out of the loading dock and stop the freighter with the cargo. So long as their intel was correct, they still had plenty of time before the FGL even thought about sending the ship away from the harbor.

Things were going smoothly. Dom wanted them to keep it that way, but he had a hard time believing their luck would hold. Things were too goddamn easy. A shiver went down his spine.

“Chao, Samantha, I need an update,” Dom said. He kept his rifle aimed at the floor, but his finger traced the trigger guard.

What was going to go wrong tonight?

Would there be no way for them to shut down the facility’s power and stop the Heikegani Agent’s production? Did one of the FGL cronies they’d tied up already set off a silent alarm? Was he wrong to trust Jaan?

Sweat dripped down the back of his neck. He fought to control his breathing and the adrenaline eager to surge through his vessels like a racehorse at the gates.

No, no, we’ve got this. We’ve got a plan. We’ve got control. We will succeed.

“Found the power controls,” Chao said. “Still haven’t identified access to the air defenses. Problem is I don’t think there’s any way we can control them from in the command center. But I can make the whole base go dark. That should make it easier for you all to sneak around.”

“Good to know,” Dom said. “And that’ll freeze production?”

“Absolutely,” Chao said. “I can also shut down the power routing from their backup generators.”

“And how will you do all that without them realizing they’ve got intruders?” Meredith asked.

“I’m sure they’re going to be suspicious,” Chao said.

“Then wait until we’re outside the command center to hit the switch.”

“No can do, Captain,” Chao said. “Thing is, I need one of you to use the manual override on one of those consoles. There should be a console labeled ‘Power Control Station.’”

“Everything’s in Russian,” Dom said.

“Ah, yeah. Right. Well, it says ‘Power Control Station’ in Russian.”

Glenn glanced over his shoulder then pointed at one of the consoles. The station had three monitors, a keyboard, and couple of black buttons under a clear plastic shell. “That’s it.”

Dom sauntered over to the station, looking at the buttons. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way you can trigger these remotely?”

“Unfortunately not,” Chao said. “The only reason I even know those buttons exist is because it’s written here in the code comments for the power commands. They’re isolated from the rest of the intranet to prevent unintentional shutdowns.”

Meredith eyed the console. “Let Andris and me stay behind. We’ll trip the switch and sneak out. You all get out of here.”

The plan made sense. Dom stared into her green eyes, knowing she was right. They should minimize risks. As soon as the power went down, the FGL was going to be suspicious. Even if Chao did make it look like some kind of accident. They’d already had O’Neil make a Goliath go crazy. A second freak accident in a span of thirty minutes?

Unlikely that the FGL would write that one off.

Images of Spencer flashed through his mind. He’d had to make a call like this before, forfeiting the Hunter’s life for the greater good. And the mental wounds were still raw, pulsing with a red fire. He looked at his Hunters. There was no goddamn way he’d condemn any one of them. Not now.

No, they had time. They had control of this place. They had a plan.

They would make it through this. Every one of them. Including O’Neil, stuck outside the command center monitoring the FGL’s activity.

“Negative,” Dom said. “We’re all making it out of this together. No one’s staying behind. We shut the power down then make it over the catwalk to O’Neil’s position. We’ll exit the way he came in.”

“We don’t all have claws like him,” Jenna said.

“But we got climbing cords and shit,” Miguel said.

“That’s right,” Dom said.

“What about them?” Glenn asked, gesturing toward the hostages they’d secured.

The solution should have been simple. It wouldn’t be hard to execute them one by one, silently so no one else at the facility had any idea the control team had just been eradicated. That’s what Glenn was asking. They’d killed FGL soldiers and Hybrids before, but only when absolutely necessary. This was different.

Dom shook his head. “They’re going to know we’re here when we shut down the power anyway. Stuff all these people in one of the offices behind the cubicles, and lock them in there.”

“You got it,” Glenn said.

He and Miguel ushered the hostages down the hall. Dom kept waiting for one of them to play hero, but no one tried to make a run for it. After Miguel jammed the lock on the office door, he and Glenn shoved a couple of desks in front of it for good measure.

“I want all of you to be ready to run,” Dom said. “I’ll hit the buttons here to confirm Chao’s command. Once the power is down, we leave. O’Neil will keep our exit secure. Am I missing anything?”

“Ready to go when you are, Chief,” Miguel said.

Dom waited for the Hunters to position themselves near the exit. This would be it. Their chance to stop the Heikegani Agent from ever making it out of this goddamn facility. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on the FGL’s faces when their facility was shut down and the Hunters’ NATO allies rolled into this place.

“Chao, ready when you are,” Dom said over the comm link.

“Done,” Chao said.

Nothing had visibly changed except for the buttons now beneath Dom’s fingers. They glowed red, waiting for his touch. Each one pressed in with a satisfying click. A second passed.

Then all hell broke loose.

-30-

All the lights vanished, darkness devouring the command center. The brief dive into oblivion was broken by the malicious flash of red emergency lights and a wailing alarm. Metal panels rolled down over the outside of the door before Meredith could open it. She swiveled on her heels, desperate to find an alternate escape. With the butt of her rifle, she hammered at one of the windows overlooking the warehouse floor. The rifle bounced off the reinforced glass. It didn’t matter anyway. More metal panels rolled down over the windows.

“What in the hell is going on?” Miguel asked. He threw himself against the door.

A robotic Russian voice called over the intercoms throughout the command center, repeating something in an irritatingly calm voice.

“Emergency lockdown,” Glenn said, translating for them. “I thought Chao said he was knocking out the backup power!”

“I did,” Chao said, “I mean, at least, I thought I did. I don’t understand what’s going on. The backup power was rerouted. This shouldn’t be happening. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Meredith had only been a Hunter for a few months, but her tenure had been long enough to know that when Chao lost his cool, shit had definitely hit the fan.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” she said.

“I don’t know,” Chao said. “From my end, it says the whole facility has lost power. The emergency-lockdown controls must be independent. Oh, God, of course they are...”

Dom paced at the controls. “Son of a bitch.” A vessel bulged in his forehead, accentuated by the crimson light rolling over his face. “O’Neil, what do you see out there?”

“Metal barriers over the lab facility and the loading dock,” O’Neil said. “FGL is going crazy, running between all those huge vats. Turning wheels and valves. No idea what they’re doing.”

“Of course,” Meredith said. “This is a goddamn bioweapons facility. The FGL is more prepared than we’d thought. If shit goes down here, even they don’t want the Heikegani Agent released uncontrollably.”

“Well, we succeeded at fucking up their plans, Chief,” Miguel said. “Now we just need to unfuck ours.”

Dom’s jaw tensed, the muscle working as his gaze danced over the room. “O’Neil, you see a way to get us out of here? Maybe some kind of emergency release?”

“Nothing,” O’Neil rasped. A pause. The tap of claws against metal rang tinnily over the metal panels blocking the windows and doors. “Can’t... get... them open.”

“Fine,” Dom said. “Then we turn the power back on.”

“And make them fully operational again?” Jenna asked.

“We’ll fall back and come up with something else,” Dom said, taking a breath. “If we have to, we’ll use brute force.”

Meredith didn’t like the sound of that. Brute force meant prolonged gunfights when they were vastly outnumbered by Hybrids and men with superior firepower. They’d given stealth and technology a shot... but they’d missed.

“One problem, Captain,” Chao said. “Now that the power is out, I can’t remotely connect into the power main anymore. All the command-center data links we were relying on are out. I’m trying to get access, but nothing’s working.”

Dom slammed a fist on the desk next to the buttons he’d punched to shut the facility down. “There’s got to be a way to divert power to us.”

“I’m sure there is,” Chao said. “But it’s external to the command center. Probably just another failsafe.”

A screen fizzled to life at one of the stations. Dom backed away from it, his eyes widening.

“Shit, did I do that?”

Meredith sucked in breath, shouldering her rifle. “Maybe this isn’t a failsafe mechanism.”

The static on the monitor cleared enough to make out the image. Gasps exploded around the room. Meredith had never felt more like punching a computer monitor before that moment. But the scarred face before her inspired just that kind of malice.

Pyotr Spitkovsky. The infamous leader of the Forces of Global Liberation. The bastard responsible for the mess the world was in, for the deaths and mutations of millions, maybe billions, of innocent people. Never had Meredith fostered such a strong hatred for anyone or anything on Earth before.

“Dominic Holland, Meredith Webb,” Spitkovsky said in smooth but slightly accented English. “And all your favorite little pets.” The brows arched, and a gorge of wrinkles formed across his face. “It certainly seems like there are fewer of you now. You’ve made my job much easier than expected.”

“Screw you,” Dom said. His eyes searched the room. Meredith knew he was looking for cameras. “Why don’t you come out here? We can finish what we started before you ran away from me back in the Congo.”

Spitkovsky laughed. “I would if I were there. But my business has taken me far from Finland. You would be surprised to see where I am now.”

“You’re a goddamn liar,” Dom growled, his eyes back on the screen. “A pathetic coward.”

“Words do not rile me up,” Spitkovsky said. A demonic grin crossed his face. “I would like to offer you a deal. I truly did not expect to see you two in Helsinki. I thought it would be some SEAL team. Or maybe the Germans would have grown enough balls to send a special operations team of their own. But I am more fortunate than I realized. I’m also wise enough to respect my adversaries. Lay down your arms now, and we can have a chat.”

“Screw you,” Dom said.

Meredith flicked on the tactical light at the end of her rifle. She washed it over the room, doing her best to pretend that she was simply looking for a way out. It helped that the other Hunters were doing the same thing. Obviously Spitkovsky had mics in this place and cameras hidden somewhere. There was no way for them to discuss their plans now without him listening and watching. If they stood any chance of escape, she needed to locate them.

“I would like to make this easy for you,” Spitkovsky said. “You help me, and I will help you.”

“You know damn well that’s not happening,” Dom said.

Meredith had worked with him long enough to know he was trying to delay Spitkovsky, to drag as much information as he could out of him while giving the team a chance to find an escape that didn’t involve surrender.

“I can force you to talk,” Spitkovsky said.

Dom took out a knife. “I’ll cut out my own tongue.”

Then Meredith’s light glinted off a spot in a vent above them. She noted it mentally but didn’t linger. Then something else glimmered at the corner of a ceiling tile.

“Captain Holland, I am offering you a way out of this where you get to be alive.” Then Spitkovsky cocked his head as if in thought. “No, Holland, I think instead of killing you, I will force you to work for me. I will have you work against your country and”—Spitkovsky let out a dark laugh—“your family. Two daughters, isn’t it?”

Dom said nothing for a moment. Meredith couldn’t tell whether his face looked red because of the emergency lights or if that was raw anger flashing across his face. She made herself look away from his face and spotted another camera. This one was positioned at the back of the room.

“That will never happen,” Dom finally said.

Again Spitkovsky laughed. “You have seen our creations. You have seen how we changed the world. Whether you want to or not, I can make you work for me.”

Now Dom glanced at Meredith. She nodded. Her search certainly hadn’t been thorough, but they didn’t have time for an actual counter-surveillance sweep. She quickly gestured to each of the cameras. She hadn’t found any mics, but there were ways to avoid Spitkovsky listening in as long as he couldn’t see them.

O’Neil’s voice broke over the comm links. “In about ten seconds, you’re going to have company.”

“Have you made your decision?” Spitkovsky asked.

“Go to hell,” Dom said. He raised his rifle and fired into the screen. Meredith fired at each of the cameras she’d spotted, her shots rewarded with a shower of sparks.

Meredith crouched behind a desk with Andris beside her. Dom signaled for Glenn and Jenna to guard the other exit. He and Miguel stood in the middle of the command center, ready to divert their fire wherever they deemed it most necessary.

“Two Goliaths on either end,” O’Neil reported. “At least a dozen men and Hybrids supporting each side.”

There was something odd about his rasping voice. Normally it was laced with a hint of anger or pain. Very rarely did he sound emotional. But now there was a hint of something she had forgotten O’Neil could feel.

Fear.

His voice quaked slightly when he spoke again. “Tell me what to do, Captain, and I’ll do it. Anything I can to help you guys.”

The time for distraction was over. The FGL knew the Hunters were in here. If the whole goddamned place was on fire, Meredith doubted Spitkovsky would have any sympathy for the Hybrids or humans who ran away from that blaze if he ordered them into it to confront Dom and the others. She wondered whether Spitkovsky wanted them dead or alive.

She almost hoped it was dead. That way, if they failed, at least she wouldn’t be turned into a Hybrid or a Skull or God knew what else.

“Stay in position,” Dom said. “We’re going to survive this, and then we’re still going to need a way out of here. We may need fire support, but it’s suicide for you to take them on alone. Stay hidden.”

The command center began to shake. Meredith swallowed hard. The Goliaths must have been scaling the stairs. Then there was silence. A few muffled voices sounded outside. Meredith’s muscles tensed as she secured her rifle tighter against her shoulder.

Then something slammed into the door she and Andris were guarding. A couple of ceiling panels fell and crashed over the floor.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if they just opened the door?” Jenna asked.

Miguel let out a rueful laugh. “Spitkovsky, you big dumb bastard, for all your bluster, your people ain’t shit.”

“Chao must’ve done a number on your power system if even they’re having trouble reengaging the main supply,” Glenn said, his voice calm despite the tense situation.

The opposite door quaked, and a bookshelf spilled its contents. “When we get out of here—” Dom began.

“Yeah, we know, Chief,” Miguel interrupted. “You’re going to buy Chao a drink.”

Another Goliath slammed into the door. The metal panel bent inward, and the doorframe cracked. Meredith looked back at Dom once more. She shared a glance with him for no more than a fraction of a second. But judging by Dom’s expression, he understood. She didn’t want to voice her feelings aloud, refusing to give Spitkovsky, if he was still listening, the pleasure of hearing what she wanted to say to Dom in that moment.

Because, cornered as they were with such flimsy cover, she wasn’t sure how many—if any—of them would make it out of here. At least they had fouled up Spitkovsky’s plan to ship out the Heikegani Agent. The main power was still out, and the allied forces would be rolling in soon. Probably long after the Hunters’ bodies had frozen in the frigid Finnish landscape, but at least they would have saved the world from being conscripted into Spitkovsky’s growing army of biological abominations.

Then another rumble shook through the building. It wasn’t just a Goliath ramming itself into the command center again. A deafening roar thundered through the facility, followed by a second and a third.

The Hunters looked at each other as the Goliaths continued their assault on the metal panels over the command center’s doors. But the Goliaths were no longer the most frightening things out there. Meredith recalled the damage to the warehouses and buildings they’d seen. The devastation in the streets, undeniable signs that a Titan had been there.

And now it seemed the Titans were still here. She expected the roof to simply lift off the building at any moment. Instead, a far more frightening prospect sounded over the comms.

“I went to look back out over the roof,” O’Neil said. “There are four... no, five Titans in the area. All coming out of the warehouses. They’re headed to the harbor, and so are a few trucks.” His voice shook. “I’m not a sailor, but if I didn’t know any better, it looks like the freighter is setting sail.”

A heavy ball of dread dropped through Meredith’s stomach. Even the small victory she’d thought they’d won had been a sham.

Suddenly the door before her gave way completely to a cloud of dust and flying debris. Two huge hands with claws the size of Meredith’s rifle cut into the doorframe, peeling it back to make room for the hulking body behind them. A Goliath’s beady eyes caught hers, and the beast’s mouth opened, letting out a roar filled with primal hunger.

Spitkovsky had fooled them all, and now they were going to die.

-31-

Lauren slumped into a chair in front of Becker’s desk. Navid was still in the lab, pushing their research forward. They’d progressed enough that they could work in shifts to manufacture their first batch of the Tenth Plague, giving them some much-needed breaks. As soon as she let herself relax even slightly in the chair, she could feel her eyelids tugging down.

Becker had called her into his office for an urgent update on their project, but Lauren was pretty sure she could sleep through a nuclear blast at this point.

“Are you tired of your lab work yet?” Becker asked, hands folded across his desk.

“I’m just plain tired.”

Becker grinned. “We are almost there. From the Phoenix Compound to the Pacifist Fog and now the Tenth Plague, you and Navid have performed the work of a dozen scientists over a dozen lifetimes.”

“We’ve had help. Couldn’t have done it without your people.”

“Now you are being modest. You needed a team to help you, sure. But any half-competent science team could accomplish what they did with you at the helm.”

“That is a compliment, right?” Lauren asked, making sure her exhaustion wasn’t getting the better of her.

“What I mean to say is that it is you and Dr. Ghasemi who have driven the innovation and the ideas. You pulled together the knowledge we needed to make these things a reality. This entire company is just an organization of lab monkeys faithfully following the path you lay out for us.”

Now Lauren knew he was being modest. There were at least a few individuals at Mueller who she presumed would be offended by such an understatement. Fischer came to mind. But she held her tongue. She had a feeling he didn’t drag her up here to lavish her with praise.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I received an urgent message from the Hunters,” Becker started. “It was communicated to me through our allies back in the United States. There is reason to believe that the airborne Oni Agent we all feared has been delayed in favor of another bioweapon.”

Now Lauren forgot her exhaustion. Her stomach twisted. “Oh, God. What is it now?”

“The Heikegani Agent. They may be manufacturing vast quantities of an airborne version.”

“But... why?” Her mind started racing, trying to grasp the implications of turning people into Hybrids instead of Skulls.

“Evidence suggests they have also simultaneously developed therapies that stop the progress of the Heikegani Agent, stemming the growth of the claws and unrestrained osteogenesis usually attributed to the Agent.”

What Lauren wouldn’t give to have her hands on that. She thought of O’Neil. Of all the painkillers he’d needed just to function day after day. Then she pictured the people that had been transformed into Hybrids through the FGL’s experiments, now aboard the Huntress. From what her team on the ship had told her, they, too, had been in miserable condition, their lives utter agony.

On the other hand, the Hybrids working for the FGL were an entirely different story. Instead of acting as if they were in constant pain, they were happy to dole out agony on others. Things began to click.

“They’re trying to make entire populations dependent on them, aren’t they?” she asked.

“That is what we are all afraid of. The Hybrids that work for them seem to live functional lives. The FGL must have developed these therapies in tandem with the creation of the Hybrids and the Heikegani Agent.”

Lauren shook her head as Becker continued to explain the current working theories about how the FGL intended to enslave populations around the globe. The Skulls weren’t good enough. They were mindless. They couldn’t be forced to work in factories or fields or cities, building the FGL empire.

Hybrids with human intellect, dependent on the FGL to relieve the torturous agony they endured on a daily basis, could do all those things. And it seemed that if the FGL had their way, they would.

“This is terrible,” Lauren said. She rubbed at her eyes, feeling tears there. Maybe it was her exhaustion. Maybe it was the depravity of the whole situation hitting her like a Goliath knocking down a tree. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“It’s about your work.”

A pit of terror seemed to open up within her, threatening to swallow her. They’d already demanded so much of her. She knew Navid felt the same way. And now what? Would they need to develop a new weapon? Replicate whatever the FGL had been giving their Hybrids? She felt like a two-by-four propping up a whole house, trying to keep the whole thing from falling over.

“Look, there’s no way we can handle another project,” Lauren said. “I can’t do it. Navid can’t do it. We’re more burned out than a Drooler.”

“A Drooler?” Becker raised a brow.

Lauren leaned back in her chair and sighed. “The Skulls that spew acid.”

“Ah, yes.” Then Becker steepled his fingers together and leaned over the desk. “No, you will not be asked to create another weapon or therapy to combat the Heikegani Agent. You are right. We have already asked much of you. I want you to focus on your current projects. They must succeed.”

Now it was Lauren’s turn to raise a brow. “Then why did you want to see me? I don’t understand what my—”

She stopped midsentence. The clouds in her mind had suddenly cleared to reveal a black, starless sky. Everything she had originally assumed about this conversation was incorrect. Bleak understanding hit her like a cold rain shower in the middle of July.

She shivered. “If the Heikegani Agent is airborne... if the FGL releases it.” Her fingers curled around the chair’s thin armrests. “Then...”

Her words trailed off again. She couldn’t find her voice. It had been one thing to kill mindless Skulls, to eliminate those that were completely incurable.

But Hybrids were still people. They still had a consciousness. They still knew who they were. They were no different from a person suffering from a chronic illness or a genetic disorder. Hybrids looked different because of the bony growths caused by the Oni Agent, but they were still human beings.

And the Tenth Plague worked by devouring those growths. It stood to reason that there were enough similarities between the Heikegani Agent and the Oni Agent that if a Hybrid encountered the Tenth Plague, they’d experience the same profuse bleeding, the same organ failure.

“I was going to ask if you thought there might be a chance the Tenth Plague would affect Hybrids,” Becker said. “Judging by the expression on your face, it looks like you think there is.”

Lauren managed a nod. She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “I... I... We have to start over. The Tenth Plague will kill innocent people. We have to scrap it and start over.”

“Absolutely not.” Becker clenched his fists together. “The Bundeswehr is already targeting locations to deploy the Tenth Plague. We must move forward.”

“But if the FGL deploys the airborne Heikegani Agent, then we’re condemning everyone who comes in contact with it.”

“That we do not know for sure,” Becker said.

“We’ve got to run experiments!”

Becker gazed at her. “Where will you get these Hybrid volunteers?”

Lauren’s thoughts went to O’Neil. Then to the survivors the Hunters had saved from Estonia. She shook her head. No, she couldn’t do that to them. To tell them they’d been rescued from a life of slavery and experimentation then bring them to Germany to do the same thing.

“Yes, as I thought,” Becker said. “You have human volunteers here. We are about to begin the clinical trials at your behest for the Tenth Plague. Computer simulations and molecular assays will have to suffice for the Hybrid population.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It will never be enough. As I have said many times before, the world has changed, and so must we.”

A new fire burned within Lauren’s chest. This complicated things. Dramatically. She thought of the tests they would have to run to see what interactions the Tenth Plague had with an airborne Heikegani Agent. For God’s sake, they didn’t even have a physical sample of the Heikegani Agent. All they had was data and reports and the Hybrids as proof that it even existed.

Without a sample, she couldn’t confirm the molecular makeup of the Agent. Nor could she create a cell population to run a test to see what the Tenth Plague did to Heikegani Agent-infected tissues.

This was a mistake. A huge mistake.

“We must go forward,” Becker said, his jaw set. “I... We, Mueller Pharmaceuticals, accept the risks of this bioweapon. It is not my choice or yours. The EU has already distributed your technology to the United States, Asia, Africa, and our friends in Oceania. They are as determined as we are to ensure this proceeds no matter what happens here.”

Now Lauren felt as if her skin was melting into the chair, as if she would never be able to stand from this spot again. “No. They’re moving too fast. We need more tests, to be sure.”

“It is fast. But as I promised, we are still going ahead with the clinical trials here. I believe in your science and your work. I know you have done all you can do, Dr. Winters, and I know it is more than enough.”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“You are right,” Becker said. Lauren was surprised to hear him say it so abruptly like that. “Unfortunately, a terrible idea is all we have left. But if the Heikegani Agent is deployed, if we see people suffering from it, then we will halt our use of the Tenth Plague. I believe we will prevent the FGL from ever reaching that point. Even now, your group—”

“The Hunters,” Lauren clarified.

“The Hunters are infiltrating a facility suspected of manufacturing the Heikegani Agent. I assume you have faith in their ability to do that, especially with the aid of our allies?”

Lauren wasn’t yet sure how she felt about the rest of the world, but she trusted the Hunters. Doubt still lingered in her mind, though. They were one small team against a global movement. And even if they did succeed, the FGL was like a hydra. Cut one laboratory or base down, and two more appeared somewhere else around the world.

“I hope you are right,” Lauren said. But a twisting sensation in her gut told her that nothing was ever that easy.

-32-

O’Neil stared out across the dark city as the rapid report of gunfire exploded beneath him. He had left the skylight open so he could duck back into the facility to help the Hunters. But God only knew how he would help them. They were outnumbered by Hybrids and Goliaths and regular old foot soldiers.

And now a slow, dark flood of bodies surged toward the brewery.

The nearly frozen Skulls moved like zombies from a Romero movie. They weren’t fast, but there were so goddamn many of them.

O’Neil’s nerves sparked with uncontrollable energy. He wanted to join in the pack of monsters marching down the streets. There was something different about the waves of sensation tugging at his consciousness now. It wasn’t the precise directions the Hybrids usually imparted on his psyche. Instead, it was something more animalistic. Something blind. A deep-seated hunger that told him to head toward the promise of food.

The Titans, he realized. For the first time, he was getting a real taste of what those bastards had been created to do. They had been the original link between the FGL and the herds of Skulls, and now the five Titans that had emerged from the warehouses were calling their armies to do battle.

The huge monsters stood tall, breaking the horizon like living buildings, all arcing spikes and massive plates, tusks like tree trunks and claws large enough to disembowel a tank. At first he thought they were going to somehow join the battle against the Hunters. But he quickly realized that wasn’t the case at all. They seemed to be positioning themselves around the freighter in the harbor, another layer of defense to prevent anyone from stopping the shipment of airborne Heikegani Agent.

A cold wind cut through the blood-stained FGL parka he wore. As he stood on the rooftop, he had never felt so alone. So disconnected, both from the Hunters and from the rest of the world around him. He was surrounded by monsters. Titans, Goliaths, Skulls. Undoubtedly a few Droolers in the mix, plus the FGL Hybrids.

Hell, even the humans working for the FGL were monsters. He’d seen what they’d done to innocent people. Tortured them. Cut them open alive to see how they worked. Upturned the world and all the people living in it with no regard or respect for life.

Turned their prisoners into creatures like him.

Below him the sounds of frantic gunfire echoed. He perched at the edge of the skylight, looking at the Hybrids. He could take out three or four from here. Eliminate a handful of the human soldiers, too, before they realized where he was firing from.

But would that make a difference? Would that stop the Hunters from being slaughtered?

He hoped so. It had to. Or else what was his purpose here? He was a body and a gun. Nothing more.

His rifle pressed to his shoulder, he locked his sights on one of the Hybrids. The bastard’s crown of horns pushed past a mat of tangled hair. He imagined he could hear the Hybrid cackling madly between the spats of gunfire as the Goliaths dug their way into the command center. The metal panels groaned against the monsters fighting to make room for themselves, acting as the vanguard of the FGL forces descending on Dom, Meredith, and the others.

O’Neil sucked in a breath and started to squeeze the trigger.

Then he stopped.

Shit. This wasn’t what Dom would want, was it? Splattering the Hybrid’s brains over the floor wouldn’t do much to save the Hunters. And it definitely wouldn’t stop the freighter from shipping out with the Heikegani Agent.

The calls of the Titans and lesser Skulls drifted all around him, a hellish cacophony that stoked the fires burning at the back of his mind. They urged him toward violence and anger. But he couldn’t give in.

He lowered his rifle and stared at his tremoring claws. He was surrounded by monsters. Titans in the Harbor, Skulls in the streets. Goliaths and more Hybrids swarming in the brewery.

The Hunters were below, fighting for their lives. O’Neil had held himself apart from them, kept them at arm’s length. He envied their camaraderie, the trust built over countless missions. He’d had that once with his SEAL brothers, but O’Neil had convinced himself the Hunters would never accept him.

He was a freak. A monster.

But O’Neil was more than that.

He wasn’t exactly a Hunter. He wasn’t exactly a Skull. And he definitely wasn’t like the FGL Hybrids.

But there were bits of all those things in him. He had been running from who and what he was, trying to repress the crazed emotions and pain flowing through him. He had tried to hide his Hybrid nature for so long. Tried to deny himself the visceral pain of the bones flowing through his body and jutting out of his skin.

He would deny himself no longer. Tonight, it was time to retake this mission. To retake himself.

“Captain,” O’Neil said over the comm. “I think I can stop the ship from leaving port. Permission to go after it?”

“Go,” Dom replied.

There was no hesitation. O’Neil realized Dom and the Hunters were ready to give their lives to stop the spread of the Heikegani Agent.

And so was O’Neil.

***

The Goliath pulled back the metal paneling covering the door. Its claws impaled the wall, digging deep scars into the plaster and wood. The monster’s voice collided with the staccato blasts of exploding gunfire, and red saliva sprayed from its mouth.

Dom squeezed the trigger, sending another salvo of gunfire into the beast’s open maw. Bullets cracked into its mouth as it whipped its head around. Rivulets of crimson bled from the fissures in its armor as it pushed itself through the hole in the wall.

Miguel shot at the creature’s head. Rounds plunged into the gray flesh between the huge Goliath’s armor. The beast was taking the brunt of the Hunters’ fire on this end. Behind Dom, Meredith and Andris were holding off another Goliath, chipping away at its armor.

“How much does it take for this bastard to die?” Miguel asked, slamming a new magazine into his rifle.

The Goliath’s movements were more erratic now. One of its eyes was nothing more than red pulp. But even armor-piercing rounds seemed horribly inadequate against Goliaths. They might cut through the armor of the Skulls, but the bony plates growing out of a Goliath’s body seemed damn near as strong as the armor on an M1 Abram.

But at the end of the day, the Goliath was a creature of flesh and blood. Death came to it just like any other animal, no matter how fearsome.

Dom caught the monster’s head in his sights again and fired. Flecks of bone danced off its face. The spikes protruding from its shoulders scraped the ceiling. The beast was having a hell of a time squeezing the rest of the way into the command center. This place wasn’t built for a monster as big as it. Every time it tried to advance, it had to force its spiked armor plates through the command center’s scaffolding. The floor quaked as the Goliath hammered a fist into the floor, cracking through the tile and concrete, and dragged itself forward.

Blood dripped out of its mouth in long ropey tendrils. The monster gasped for air, its rancid breath washing hot over them. This one didn’t have long. A pool of blood seeped from its injuries, spreading along the floor, creeping toward Dom.

He squeezed off another burst into the monster’s head. The impact sent shards of bone and flesh flying, and this time the Goliath’s other eye exploded in a sickening pop. He unleashed lead into the monster until its roar turned into a growling stream of red bubbles. The monster reached out with one clawed hand, arm shaking. Then, with a final whoosh of air escaping, it fell flat on the floor.

Andris tossed something at the Goliath trying to bore its way through the other exit. The beast instinctively swallowed whatever it was, and a few seconds later, its midsection expanded. A low rumble shifted through its gut, and the Goliath opened its mouth, belching out its own tangled innards.

“Boom, you bastard!” Andris shouted.

Dom’s breath came in quick waves, adrenaline plunging ice through his veins as he looked between the two dead Goliaths. Their huge bodies blocked the exits. The odors of cordite and blood and death hung heavy in the hot air, mixed with the tang of sweat. Clicks sounded as the Hunters performed tactical reloads and prepped for the next round of horrors.

Swiveling on his heels, Dom whispered to the crew, “Everyone okay?”

“Still in one piece, Chief,” Miguel said.

“Aye, Captain.” Jenna positioned herself behind another terminal, putting some distance between herself and Glenn for a better firing position.

The tap-tap-tap of claws against metal suddenly burst all around them.

“Hybrids.” Glenn eyed the ceiling. “Think they can get in?”

“Lockdown means locked down, right?” Jenna asked hopefully.

“I would assume nothing,” Andris said.

“Smart man,” Dom said.

The tapping above them stopped. A chill cut through Dom.

“Move to the edge of the room!” he yelled. “Now!”

He dove away from his station and pressed himself close to the wall. The others did the same, retreating into the cubicles or near the bookshelves. White sparks exploded above them, chewing through the ceiling panels and scaffolding. A water pipe burst, spraying mist, and dust fogged the air. The sparks stopped—thermite, Dom guessed. Then a chunk of the ceiling gave way, crashing to the floor in a tangle of charred wires, singed ceiling tiles, and metal bars shorn from above.

All of it happened in no more than a couple seconds. But that was long enough for Dom to realize they’d been played once again.

The FGL had used the Goliaths to corral the Hunters into the middle of the command center. Before the smoke began to clear, Hybrids began dropping in, flashing claws and fanged teeth.

“Fire!” Dom yelled, blasting the first Hybrid that careened toward him.

The Hybrid stood no chance. His body crumpled and slid forward toward Dom’s feet, smearing red across the floor. But two more were behind him and let loose banshee cries as they lunged. This battle would quickly turn to one of close combat, and without knifelike claws of his own, Dom knew who had the advantage.

As the world around him devolved into chaos, filled with blood and the cries of the Hybrids, gunshots and the clash of metal against bony talons, Dom had only one thought: O’Neil, you better succeed.

-33-

O’Neil bounded off the roof of the brewery and landed in a snowdrift, a white cloud of frost bursting around him. All through the streets, the Skulls fought the blustering winds to surround the five Titans. The odor of their rotting flesh wafted around him, muted only slightly by the frigid air. Their feet crunched over the snow, and miniature icicles hung from their open maws and cracked eyelids. They seemed to be in a trance, sleepwalking toward the silent chemical call of the Titans.

A squad of FGL soldiers stood atop one of the S-400 missile systems. To O’Neil, they appeared like marooned sailors on the wreckage of their ship, fearful of the swirling ocean that threatened to swallow them at any moment.

Pushing against the flow of corpse-like bodies was a group of Hybrids, wearing uniforms like O’Neil’s. They seemed to be heading back toward the brewery.

O’Neil tried to blend in with the Skulls on the snow-covered streets. But his parka stood out among the spiked, half-naked bodies. One of the Hybrids called out to him, yelling aggressively. O’Neil had no idea what the Hybrid was saying, but he understood the gestures.

What are you doing? The battle is that way, the Hybrid seemed to be saying.

O’Neil shook his head and kept moving. He had to get to those Titans. Had to stop the freighter. The FGL Hybrid separated from his little pack and strode toward O’Neil, gesticulating wildly and barking orders. Then O’Neil saw the insignia plastered on the shoulder of the man’s parka. He was a goddamned lieutenant. O’Neil hadn’t bothered to see what the rank of the crony whose uniform he’d borrowed was, but he had a feeling it wasn’t above a lieutenant.

Shaking his head wordlessly wasn’t going to work, and now the other three Hybrids were staring at him curiously. They were starting to push their way through the groaning Skulls to get at O’Neil. He could feel their anger pummeling him, though they weren’t trying to affect him or the surrounding Skulls. The Titans seemed to be doing a good job of that.

The Hybrid grabbed O’Neil by the collar, yelling into his face. Then the Hybrid’s eyes went wide. The guy must’ve realized O’Neil wasn’t who he appeared to be.

Before the lieutenant could say anything, O’Neil swung his claws straight into the man’s open mouth. Warm blood gushed out over his hands. The Hybrid’s eyes were frozen in surprise as O’Neil withdrew his claws and let the body collapse.

The other three hoisted their rifles and fired. O’Neil ducked behind the ambling Skulls. The sound of gunfire ricocheted off the walls of the nearby warehouses. He heard the meaty thwack of bullets tearing into flesh and bone, and Skulls fell all around him. The creatures didn’t seem to care, too enraptured by the Titan’s grasp on their mind to notice anything else.

O’Neil sprinted between the monsters. Bullets sparked across a warehouse wall next to him, and two more Skulls went down in heaps. O’Neil turned around briefly to fire a return salvo, but his shots were no better than the FGL’s.

Other voices called behind him. More Hybrids had joined the pursuit. He charged ahead, his breath escaping in misty clouds. He fought against the screaming pain in his muscles as they cramped in the cold. He had to make it to the Titans, to the freighter.

The Skulls around him started to get restless, swinging their claws about lazily, trying to swipe him as he ran by. The Hybrids were trying to overcome the Titans’ influence in these small pockets. Trying to catch O’Neil. He strained his mind in an attempt to stop them, but already he tasted the blood trickling down the back of his throat. It was no use. There was too much going on for him to be able to counteract the tide of Skulls.

Instead, he pulled one of the Pacifist grenades from his tac vest and dropped it at his feet as he ran. The red smoke filled the air behind him, and it offered him a shield from the pheromones pumped out by the Hybrids in pursuit. He saw their shadows behind the smokescreen flitting behind the slower Skulls. They wouldn’t be able to see him as well now. Reaching into his tac vest once more, he pulled out a pair of M67s and tossed them back into the crowd. A few seconds later, two geysers of flesh and snow blew into the air. Shrieks of agony tore through the night.

Two Hybrids had avoided the fragmentation grenades. One leapt from the crowd and scaled a warehouse, using the brick as handholds. The half man made it to the roof. His silhouette contrasted sharply with the red smoke rising around him.

O’Neil tried to sprint ahead. His lungs felt as if they would soon explode, impeded by his overgrown ribcage. He heard the rattle of gunfire from the Hybrid on the rooftop. Snow and ice burst up around him as he zigzagged through the Skulls. A few of the unfortunate creatures groaned or shrieked as bullets cut them down.

Now he was One block away from the freighter and the Titans. He saw a pair of cranes next to the containers that were being loaded onto the ships by the FGL’s sailors.

He followed an icy street broken up by snowdrifts, diving and sliding in his haste. Behind O’Neil, the Hybrid pursuing him on the ground emerged from the crowd of Skulls. He barreled toward O’Neil, fangs bared. O’Neil couldn’t get his weapon around in time. Instead, he dug his taloned feet into the ice and snow, stopping suddenly. He raised his claws to intercept the leaping Hybrid. The Russian swiped at him, but O’Neil ducked and stabbed his claws into the Russian’s shoulders, catching his parka.

Rounds flew at O’Neil from the Hybrid on the rooftops. He hoisted the other Hybrid like a shield. The Hybrid’s body twitched with each impact. His eyes quivered until they turned glassy, and his limbs stopped moving. O’Neil tossed him aside and turned around another corner, shielding himself from the Hybrid on the roof. He ran behind a snowdrift, shoving Skulls out of his way as he made for the crane.

Leaping up, rung by rung, the cold metal pinging with each grasp of his claws, he scaled the crane. Rounds sparked against the metal around him, but the scaffolding protected him from the brunt of the Hybrid’s assault. Still, he swung side to side, zigzagging up the interior of the crane in an attempt to throw off the shooter.

The Hybrid stopped firing and threw himself at the crane as well. He deftly scaled it toward O’Neil. When O’Neil paused to fire at his pursuer, the Russian fired back. O’Neil squeezed between two struts to put himself on the exterior of the crane. Pull by painful pull, he dragged himself up toward the crane operator’s cab.

Each exertion sent a wave of agony through his left arm. He was afraid his muscles were giving out until he saw the dark wetness glimmering over the outside of his parka. He’d been shot.

Can’t let that stop me, he thought.

For now, the adrenaline kept the pain at bay, numbing it enough for him to continue. But the agony was growing worse. He knew he didn’t have long before the bullet stuck in his arm would tear his muscles more.

Then he was at the operator’s cab. His vision was growing red. The world below seemed so small, the Skulls swarming the harbor like insects, the buildings nothing more than pieces from a child’s playset. The door of the operator’s cab opened up. A man inside leveled a handgun at O’Neil.

“Nice toy,” O’Neil said. He yanked the man’s arm, pulling the operator from the cab. The man and his weapon cartwheeled into open air, disappearing into the swarm of monsters below.

The flames of pain lit up O’Neil’s left arm again, and he grasped at it with his right. The last Hybrid threw himself up to the platform outside the operating cabin, less than a yard from O’Neil. They stared at each other. The low rumble of the Titans’ growls rolled over them, accompanied by the rising moans of the Skulls below.

There was barely room for the two of them, and O’Neil didn’t like being cramped. He swung his rifle at the Hybrid, hoping to get a debilitating first strike on the half man’s skull. The Hybrid parried with his own weapon then tore at O’Neil’s rifle sling, sending the weapon flying over the precipice. O’Neil ripped the Russian’s rifle from his claws.

They were too evenly matched. But then the Russian bent low and tackled O’Neil.

The top half of O’Neil’s body fell over the side of the platform. The Russian forced the rest of O’Neil’s body over with a shove, and O’Neil reached out in time to get his left set of claws wrapped around a bar. His feet dangled below him, and the weight of his gear begged him to let go, gnawing at his muscles. The injured arm quivered, losing strength, and an intense jolt of electricity stabbed at his nerves.

Above him, the Russian grinned, his chest expanding and deflating rapidly as he caught his breath. The half man pulled out a handgun and took his time to aim it right at O’Neil’s face.

O’Neil tried to swing himself out of the way with his left arm, but he was too weak. He was going to die now, injured and broken. He had let the Hunters down. They had given him a second chance after the FGL had torn apart his body and rebuilt it into this travesty. And even though he had been given the opportunity to serve with them, he had thought of himself as one of the team.

The Russian said something to him, but O’Neil couldn’t understand him.

Didn’t care to understand him.

It was probably a last insult, a curse.

O’Neil watched the Russian slowly caress the trigger.

The sound of gunfire and muffled explosions echoed up from below. Probably the last attempts of the Hunters trying to save themselves.

O’Neil could picture it all too easily.

Miguel, dead. Glenn and Jenna, dead. Meredith, dead.

And Dom, his captain. All dead.

But he was still alive. Dangling by his claws, but still alive.

And by God, Dom had trusted him—him—with saving the world from the Heikegani Agent even when the Hunters knew their number had been called.

I won’t let you down, sir, O’Neil thought.

He mustered what little strength remained in his injured arm. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could swivel to the side. The handgun let out a deafening blast as the Russian fired. The rounds grazed O’Neil’s parka, kicking out down stuffing, but didn’t connect with his flesh. He swung harder now, gaining enough momentum that he could reach out with his right arm and grab another bar. His claws found purchase, and he dragged himself up the scaffolding. He surged up onto the platform as the Russian tried to track his movements, firing wildly into the night. O’Neil slammed his claws into the Russian’s chest and knocked the half man backward.

He turned away as the Hybrid fell, screaming. A splatter sounded from below. With a grunt, he rotated his injured arm, trying to will life back into it. His job wasn’t done.

At the end of the crane’s arm, the five Titans milled about, their huge, apelike faces scanning the distance, watching for threats.

O’Neil wondered if they would see this one coming. He took another deep breath then dashed over the platform and onto the crane’s arm. His feet padded along the slick surface. A voice screamed deep in his mind that he was going to slip and fall.

But he knew better than that. That was not his fate. Not tonight, at least.

He reached the end of the crane’s arm. O’Neil did not look down. His eyes never left the Titan in front of him. He summoned all the strength he could, imbued by the FGL’s genetic engineering, and he jumped.

***

A wave of rot and decay hit Rachel’s nostrils. Panes of light flooded in through the windows of Stellicam Medicine’s facility, casting a white glow over the macabre tableau before her. The tiled floor and white walls were stained with blood. Cold swept through Rachel despite the oppressive, stuffy heat and humidity trapped in the hall. Just when they thought they would actually find someone alive, they stumbled onto this.

“Contacts?” Terrence asked, prowling behind her with Rory.

“Negative,” Rachel said.

“Advance.”

They crept down the hall, keeping close eyes on every door and corner. There was only a single body here propped up against a wall.

“Check him out,” Terrence said. He and Rory secured either end of the passage.

The only sounds Rachel heard were her own breathing and the drip of water. Maybe a loose pipe in the ceiling. She crouched near the body and pushed it slightly with her boot to move it into one of the shafts of light pouring through a narrow window. She gasped.

She’d seen the horror of Skull attacks and had fought plenty of the monsters herself. But there was still something visceral about coming face-to-face with the destruction the monsters left behind. Chunks of this man’s neck were missing, his esophagus hanging out next to the white clefts of his vertebrae. His shirt had been torn open to reveal a cavity where his stomach and internal organs had been.

“Shit.” Rachel turned away, stifling a gag. Her stomach churned, and nausea pulled at her insides. She pressed the back of her gloved hand against her mouth and stepped away. “Skulls got in here.”

Rory’s face had turned a vivid shade of green though he kept his rifle pressed against his shoulder, trying his best to look away from the carnage while guarding the hall beyond.

Terrence looked down at the body then back toward the rest of the hall. “One body isn’t enough to cause all that blood.”

Rachel backed away from the mangled corpse, her stomach lurching dangerously. “And it’s rare that Skulls leave a meal like that. I mean, if someone escaped with a bite or a scrape, that’s one thing. But this guy was half-eaten already. So where the hell did the Skulls go?”

Neither Terrence or Rory had answers for her. There were no more bodies down this length of the hall. Only streaks of blood along the tiles and walls, just like the hall where they had first entered. For a moment, they stood in the middle of the corridor, bristling with weapons, waiting for something to ambush them. Rachel eyed the ceiling tiles suspiciously, noting each brown circle of mold growing there.

Nothing disturbed the relative silence here but their own breathing and that constant dripping.

“Let’s move,” Terrence said with a wave of his hand. “To the cafeteria.”

That was where Dr. Singh was supposed to have set up a shelter for the employees and their families who had arrived during the initial stages of the outbreak. She had reported that they’d pooled their resources to survive as long as they had, scavenging outside the property only when absolutely necessary.

Rachel wondered if someone got scratched by a Skull on a scavenging trip. They might’ve brought the Oni Agent back in here with them and destroyed this sanctuary from the inside out. Or maybe Skulls had followed someone to the complex and forced their way in. For that matter, the side door she, Rory, and Terrence had entered through might have been left unlocked so the Skulls could stroll straight in to a fresh feast.

When they had found Dr. Bennet’s office and lab, they had recovered enough data that Shepherd had declared the mission a success. But it would have been infinitely better to save the doctor himself. This research team was supposed to be crucial to complement Fort Detrick’s mission to bring the new biological weapon they were calling the Tenth Plague online. If they needed Dr. Singh’s team to accomplish that, then she guessed they were going to be sorely disappointed.

“Down that hall, then one left,” Terrence said.

They turned the corner, and Rachel froze. Her finger twitched next to her rifle’s trigger guard. A pit opened inside her stomach, threatening to swallow her. Blood covered the floor and walls just as it had in the rest of the building. But there was something else here.

Bodies. The hall was littered with human limbs and torsos, all covered with the bony growths of the Skulls. There had been a massacre here.

“My God,” Terrence said. “Is this Singh and her team?”

Rachel didn’t want to believe it. And the more she studied them, choking down her revulsion, the more she doubted it was the doctor’s team.

“These are Skulls,” she said flatly.

“No shit,” Rory said.

“No, I mean, last we heard from Dr. Singh was eight days ago,” Rachel said. “There was no indication she or anyone else in here was a Skull yet. Even if they were infected with the Oni Agent and turned, they wouldn’t look like this yet.”

She pointed at one of the Skulls with horns hooking out of its scalp. Others had long scythe-like claws capable of disemboweling a person in a single stroke. Spikes grew from their spines, and their shoulder blades rose from their backs like small bony wings. Most had ribs overgrown like armored chest plates. Their flesh was mostly gray and thin, revealing the sinew and vessels pressing up beneath.

“These Skulls have been this way for way longer than that,” she said.

She kicked one of the bodies with her boot. The corpse slipped sideways with a sickening slurp to reveal a spine lined with broken and crooked spikes. Tendrils of knotted hair sprouted from the Skull’s head, matted in dried blood.

The odor of the place made Rachel’s eyes water. The air was thick with death and rot, the sour stench of the Skulls strong. But that was par for the course for these monsters. They always carried that stink with them. In this hall, there were still wet pools of blood, too.

“Some of them were killed recently,” Rachel said.

Terrence knelt and studied the floor between the bodies. “You’re right. But what killed them?”

Rachel nudged the corpse near her again. Its throat had been shredded, and the broken knobs and spikes along its organic armor signified it had been damaged in some kind of struggle. “I don’t see any bullet wounds.”

“Weird.” Rory’s gaze scanned the place. “Don’t see any shell casings.”

“Same here,” Terrence said. He stepped gingerly over the sprawled limbs. The rags of a suit flapped off one of them, and he bent to examine it. “Their throats...”

“God.” Rachel worked her way between a trio of corpses, all whose throats had been slashed. Bloody stains covered their chest plates. “It’s like they’ve been attacked by a goddamn rabid vampire.”

“That’s not even funny,” Rory said. “We do not need another monster out here.” He looked up, eyes wide. “I bet some kind of crazy Skull did this to them.”

Terrence never let his rifle stray from his shoulder, but he shook his head slightly. “Doubt it, bro. I mean, a Titan might get mad and smack a couple around. A Goliath, too. But there’s no way either of those fit in these halls.” He probed one of the dead Skulls with the toe of his boot. “Nah, man, whatever did this is different.”

“So we’re really going with the vampire hypothesis?” Rory asked.

“I don’t know about that,” Rachel said. “But whatever did this is a bad motherfucker. And I pray to God we don’t run into it.”

-34-

The Hybrids poured in from the fresh hole in the ceiling of the command center. Meredith fired, choosing her shots carefully so as not to endanger the Hunters around her.

Ropes fell between the tangle of pipes and I-beams near the hole. Human FGL soldiers slid down, fanning out in the middle of the command center, firing madly into the Hunters’ ranks.

Andris flipped over a desk beside Meredith, beckoning for her to hide behind it with him as he sent rounds plunging into the FGL’s ranks. Meredith wondered what in the hell Spitkovsky had told them. They seemed to be in a suicidal fervor to take the Hunters out. She emerged from her own shelter—a bookshelf already tattered by rounds—and sprinted toward Andris. She felt the hot air trailing behind bullets around her, listening to their hiss as everything around her seemed to slow. A Hybrid ran to intercept her before she made it to Andris. His muscles coiled like a living spring, and he threw himself through the air.

With barely any time to react, Meredith tried to swing her rifle up to parry the attack. But she was too slow.

Fortunately for her, Andris wasn’t. Bullets peppered the Hybrid’s side. He was dead before his body smacked into Meredith and knocked her backward. His comrades wasted no time delivering a follow-up salvo. The rounds plunged into the back of the Hybrid, and the half man jerked with every impact. Warm blood gushed over Meredith, stinging her eyes and dripping over her mouth as she tried to push the bulky soldier off. The man must’ve weighed a solid two-fifty before he’d been turned into a Hybrid. The bone had to have added another hundred or so. Every time she tried to shove him off, his spikes snared themselves deeper into her fatigues. The scrape of bones against her flesh worsened each time she pushed.

Then suddenly the weight was lifted. Andris stood above her, smoke wafting behind him, sweat trickling down his forehead.

“Hello!” he called, grinning wildly. She crab-crawled out from under the Hybrid. Andris dropped the corpse, and they both ducked behind the heavy desk he’d turned into a makeshift barricade.

Together they sent a wave of rounds into the Hybrids going after Dom and Miguel. Chaos had so quickly erupted around them. Soldiers screamed in pain. Hybrids shrieked their mad cries. Hunters cursed and yelled over the comm links.

Everything flowed through Meredith’s brain in a hurricane of barely discernable thoughts, fueled by instinct and training. Her eardrums ached as hundreds of rounds of ammunition were expended in the relatively enclosed space. She thought she heard Dom saying something over the comms to O’Neil, but she couldn’t be sure. The Hybrid charging her position didn’t give her time to wonder.

She filled the bastard’s chest with rounds. He staggered as blossoms of red covered the front of his uniform then collapsed.

But behind him was another of his comrades. This Hybrid used his dead brother as a springboard, launching himself above Meredith’s line of fire. He soared with claws outstretched straight over the desk and slammed into her.

She crashed backward as claws raked across her chest. They met with body armor, her only saving grace. But her chest plates didn’t protect her arms. Hot pain seared through her flesh where the claws dug in, threatening to connect with bone. She yelled in agony as she tried to bring her knees up to her chest and force the Hybrid off.

Another Hybrid pounced as she struggled. For a moment she thought it was coming to end her. Then she realized it had tackled Andris. This time her partner wouldn’t be coming to her aid. She was in a room surrounded by the other Hunters, yet she was alone.

“Bastard!” she spat.

The Hybrid swiped at her face. She turned her cheek, but the claws slammed into her helmet and threw her head backward. Her helmet cracked against the tiled floor, protecting her scalp. None of that prevented her brain from being slammed against the inside of her skull.

Her vision went black, punctuated by white pinpricks. The tang of blood poured through her nostrils, and she could taste something metallic on her tongue.

No, no, no, she thought. I’m not going out like this.

She whipped her knee up blindly. It connected with something hard. A yowl escaped the Hybrid, and hot saliva sprayed across her face. Her vision started to clear. It was blurry, but she could make out the face of the Hybrid as his expression contorted in pain.

A grin cut across her face despite the madness around her. Hybrids might look like demons covered in bony armor. But there was one part of them that was still human.

Meredith delivered another unforgiving knee to the Hybrid’s groin and followed it up by twisting to throw the Russian off her chest. He scuttled across the floor, scrabbling to regain footing. Meredith’s boot found his head before he could. His neck snapped back, and Meredith swung her rifle up on its sling and fired into the Hybrid’s face.

She swiveled sharply on the balls of her feet. Rounds lanced into other soldiers and Hybrids. The clang of metal against claw and staccato of gunfire continued. Everything had happened so fast, but it felt to Meredith as if time continued to dilate, stretching into an eternity of blood and pain and screams of terror.

Then the flood of Hybrids and FGL soldiers from the ceiling ceased.

Bodies littered the floor. A few more Hybrids struggled to launch themselves over their battered colleagues, but they, too, were swiftly dealt with by the unforgiving touch of hot lead. The fighting seemed to settle as the last few Hybrids dropped.

Meredith looked about. Dom and Miguel stood near a trio of dead Hybrids. Glenn wiped his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, studying the hole in the ceiling then the carnage at their feet. An eerie silence passed over them while the red emergency lights flashed.

The alarms had been silenced. No more gunfire. No more fighting.

They couldn’t have won... could they?

Something wasn’t right.

Dread pooled in Meredith, and she turned, her eyes falling on Andris. The corpse of a Hybrid lay sprawled over him. She grabbed the Hybrid by his shoulder plates and heaved, feeling something in her lower back tug as though she’d exerted herself too far. She knew her back would be riddled with pain later, but for now she didn’t care.

“Andris!” Meredith cried as she knelt by him.

Dom hurtled over the dead FGL members and joined Meredith. He reached to check Andris’s pulse, and Meredith searched for wounds to treat first. Blood covered his face and fatigues. There was no telling what was his and what was the Hybrid’s.

But before she could even begin triage, the command center quaked. She turned over her shoulder to see the dead Goliath that had clogged the entryway slide out toward the stairs.

It was being dragged by another Goliath. Two more stood behind that one. And behind them stood the rest of the FGL forces.

***

The cold air ripped at O’Neil’s parka as he flew from the crane. For a moment it was as if he was soaring over the dark landscape below, suspended somewhere between the jeweled sky and frozen cityscape. That quickly came to an end. He plummeted several stories, grabbing the cable hanging from the crane and sliding down it. The metal dug into his bones, setting his nerves on fire. He didn’t care that the bone chipped and flew away; it would regrow like it always did, a double-edged sword carrying with it the agony that haunted him every moment of his life since he’d been given the Heikegani Agent.

Finally, when he was close enough, he kicked off the cable. He reached out with his claws for his target: the nearest Titan. He slammed into the shoulder of the gigantic beast and fought for a handhold. It wasn’t hard to find. The Titan’s bony armor was filled with craters and cracks. An odor wafted off the giant beast, reminding O’Neil faintly of a neglected zoo. He choked down his revulsion and grasped at the Titan, scaling the beast’s shoulder. The monster hardly seemed to notice him as its gaze swept over the hordes of Skulls now brooding at its feet.

The other four Titans stood sentinel over the freighter. Trucks pushed through the hordes of Skulls below, carrying the Heikegani Agent. Skulls moved out of their way, parting without struggle. And beneath it all, men and Hybrids worked to load the last of their cargo onto the freighter.

O’Neil marveled at the way the Skulls didn’t even bother them. The Titans and the Hybrids had an immense amount of control over the hordes. The frigid air probably also did its part, but it was still remarkable.

O’Neil hoped all that would soon change. He remembered what Dom and the others had told him about the method the FGL used to control the Titans. Back in the Congo, they had discovered some kind of device implanted in them, just like the one that had been implanted in Shigeru Matsumoto, the scientist who’d originally developed the Oni Agent. It was located at the base of the Titan’s skull, near its brain stem.

Sure enough, O’Neil spotted a mound of gray flesh on the Titan’s neck. He inched over the bony shoulders toward the bump. Vessels coursed under the beast’s thick, leathery flesh, each one near as big as O’Neil’s arms. The monster paid him no heed as he grabbed hold of the bones along its head to steady himself.

To the Titan, he was nothing more than a tick. O’Neil set his jaws together, grinding his fangs as he crouched next to the base of the Titan’s neck. He might be no more than a bug to the Titans, but even parasites could bring down an elephant.

“Let’s see how you do when the FGL isn’t bossing you around.”

O’Neil licked his cracked lips and drew one arm back, taking in a deep breath. He plunged his fist into the Titan’s flesh. The tough, wrinkled skin resisted his claws, fighting back. He wouldn’t be dissuaded. He pushed his claws in until he punctured the skin. The Titan let out a low rumble and swatted at its back.

With a grunt, O’Neil withdrew his claws and rolled out of the way. The Titan’s huge palm slapped against its back, sending a tremor through the plates along its shoulder. O’Neil nearly lost his grip as the vibration chattered through his bones and teeth. He waited a moment to see if the Titan was going to try swatting him again, but the beast let its hands fall to its sides.

O’Neil scrambled back to the bleeding wound in the Titan’s neck. He’d have to be quick about this. He inhaled deeply again then dug hard into the Titan’s flesh with both claws. When his claws hit something metal, he yanked at the device. He could already feel the movement of air as the Titan started to slap at its back again.

But O’Neil couldn’t let go. Not now. He pulled with all his weight, pressing against the Titan’s back with his feet for leverage. The Titan’s muscles tensed. The beast knew something was wrong now, more than just a minor nuisance.

A sickening slurp rewarded O’Neil’s persistence, and he dove to the side of the Titan’s shoulder, clinging to the metallic device with a few ripped wires dangling from it. The Titan’s hand, carried by inertia, slammed against the back of its neck. It drew away again with a string of blood stretching between its palm and the wound.

As soon as the creature lifted its palm away, it shuddered. O’Neil felt a strange sensation trickle through the back of his mind. It was almost as if something had been squeezing the back of his neck and suddenly let go. The Titan peered about as if woken in the middle of a sleepwalking episode.

It worked, O’Neil thought.

The pheromone influence of the other Titans wafted around him, but this one had lost its gusto. O’Neil risked a glance at the Hybrids and soldiers carting supplies onto the freighter. They carried on as they had been, apparently not noticing the Titan’s confusion.

If O’Neil’s plan worked, that wouldn’t last for long.

He dropped the device and watched the six-inch-wide cube with its tangle of wires tumble to the ground. Skulls trampled it into the snow as O’Neil climbed toward the back of the Titan’s neck where he’d pulled out the device.

The Titan was beginning to get restless, shuffling around.

Now was the time to act.

O’Neil hoped he was right. He knew that in times of duress and pain, it was easier for him to succumb to the whims of the FGL Hybrids. They could exert enough control over him that his mind swam with anger and hunger, and he would have to consciously swallow the violent urges that threatened to overtake him like a bad illness.

This time he planned to use that trick against the FGL.

He dug his claws into the Titan’s neck until he was elbow deep in muscle and blood. The Titan reared its head back and let out a roar that nearly deafened O’Neil. He worried his eardrums would burst with the power of that demonic voice. But it was a small price to pay.

Closing his eyes, he focused intently on the Titan. He couldn’t control the beast as if he were some space marine piloting a mech. But he could get across a general idea of what he wanted it to do. He hoped that would be enough.

In his mind’s eye, he focused on the crane he had just jumped off. The Titan didn’t move. O’Neil could feel the eyes of the men and Hybrids below looking up at him—or rather, the Titan. They might’ve missed O’Neil’s initial struggle with the behemoth, but they hadn’t missed that roar.

The Titan wasn’t cooperating. It stood there as if O’Neil were trying to influence a goddamn brick wall.

Come on, buddy. Come on.

If it stayed still for much longer, the Hybrids would spot him clinging to the back of the Titan’s neck. He could feel blood start to trickle out of his nose, and his mind swam. Pressure clamped around his brain, and the throbbing seeds of a massive headache took root. His consciousness faded in and out as he poured every bit of mental strength he had into urging the Titan on.

Then he felt it. A low rumble through his limbs and mind. The Titan turned. Cries of Skulls rose around him in an agonized chorus as the great beast walked over them, paying no heed to the monsters as they burst like blood-filled water balloons beneath its feet.

O’Neil could feel the Skulls break beneath the Titan’s feet. Not just because of the tremors quaking through the massive body as it walked back to the crane. But there was something else there. As though O’Neil had established a tighter link to the Titan than he’d anticipated. It felt as if he had opened his eyes in a silt-filled lake. He started to see and feel and hear and even smell what the Titan could, but it was all muddled.

He wormed his claws deeper into the Titan’s neck, twisting them around to inflame the tissue there, until his face was pressed against the giant’s leathery flesh.

It hadn’t been like this when he’d tried to influence the Skulls or even the Goliath back in Tallinn. But then he remembered that the Titans and Hybrids had been developed together. The FGL had meant for them to work in conjunction... and by God, he would use the FGL’s invention against them.

The Titan grappled at the crane, pulling on it. Metal screeched in protest. Shouts called out from below, and some of the Skulls started to grow antsy, their mindless moans turning into growls and a few shrieks.

Yes, the FGL had definitely noticed this rebellious Titan now.

The Titan’s muscles strained, and even O’Neil could feel the Titan’s immense strength was barely enough. Pain rocketed through the Titan’s arms, echoing into O’Neil’s mind. It resonated there until it grew stronger and stronger until finally the crane came free from its stanchions on the harbor. The Titan held the crane in the air, turning back to the harbor where the freighter was docked. The FGL soldiers and Hybrids there were now all staring up, dumbfounded.

All O’Neil needed the Titan to do now was make it back toward the harbor. Trash it as much as he could to block the ships from escaping. He couldn’t risk simply destroying or sinking the freighter lest he unwittingly spread the Heikegani Agent for the FGL. But he could make it damn near impossible for them to get a shipment out of here.

O’Neil’s Titan threw the crane toward the black water in front of the freighter. The FGL reacted quickly, somehow getting one of the other Titans to block the crane. But the heavy weight of the crane and its unforgiving inertia were too much even for that monster. The other Titan struggled to get out from under the crane, kicking up waves that splashed over the FGL soldiers and the Skulls.

The other three Titans turned toward O’Neil’s monster as he directed his beast to rip the roof off a nearby warehouse to add to his harbor blockade. The fourth Titan managed to escape the crane, letting it protrude like a sunken tree branch from the water. Water sluiced off the Titan’s armored body as it stood, and it joined the trio guarding the freighter.

O’Neil’s Titan now held the broken remnants of the warehouse’s roof in its massive hands. The Skulls, starting to escape the hold of the Hybrids, began to roil around the feet of the giant beast.

The Titan huffed as if to protest O’Neil’s influence over it. And with galloping steps that shook through the harbor, the other four Titans charged.

O’Neil twisted his claws in the neck of his Titan and thought about the Hunters trapped in the brewery. He had to finish this.

And fast.

With unbridled anger exploding through his mind—whether it was the Titan’s or his own, he couldn’t be sure—his Titan took off. It let out a thundering roar that made O’Neil’s ears bleed as it barreled toward the closest enemy Titan.

-35-

Dom watched Meredith drag Andris’s body into one of the cubicles. She struggled to pull the muscular man between the bodies of two FGL soldiers toward shelter, but Dom had no time to help her. He shouldered his rifle and fired over the dead Goliath being dragged out of the entryway. The rest of the Hunters followed suit, and a stream of bullets punched through the first group of Hybrids and soldiers now threatening to swarm in on that side.

The two living Goliaths quickly moved in front of the FGL soldiers, providing a protective barrier. They were no doubt under the influence of the Hybrids.

Which gave Dom hope that they might escape this yet.

“We need more Pacifist grenades out!” he yelled.

He tossed one of his own onto the landing where the Goliaths were. It came to rest in the crook of the dead Goliath’s elbow, spewing red smoke around the other two. Dom had no idea if it would be enough to truly pacify the Goliaths as it had the Skulls. But he remembered how it had shielded O’Neil and the Hybrids back in Tallinn, blocking their ability to control the Skulls. If he could just get the Goliaths to shake the Hybrids’ influence, maybe that would cause enough of a distraction to—

One of the Goliaths pushed through the red smoke. If the Pacifist Fog had done anything to dissuade the bastard from killing the Hunters, Dom couldn’t tell. The Goliath picked up one of the desks near the entryway and tossed it. Dom ducked. Behind him, Jenna dove behind another desk. Glenn wasn’t so lucky. The desk slammed into his chest, and he flew backward.

“Glenn!” Miguel yelled, turning away from the Goliath.

“Stop that thing, or we’re done!” Dom commanded. He wanted desperately to check on Glenn, but all it would take was half a second for the Goliath to take him out next.

The Goliath pushed past the bodies of a Hybrid and two humans. It picked up one of the dead soldiers and flung it. Dom ducked again but didn’t take his finger off the trigger. A loud snap cracked through the air when the dead soldier’s body smacked against the wall. The Goliath let out an ear-shattering roar and pushed through the wreckage toward the Hunters. Red tendrils of smoke swirled around it as the other Goliath emerged behind. The first kept its head moving wildly, making itself a difficult target. Fissures spread through their armor under the unrelenting wall of lead the Hunters threw at them.

Then six of the human FGL soldiers emerged around the side of the Goliaths. They raised their rifles and fired. Dom’s nerves rippled with electricity. Two Goliaths, and now the soldiers were making their way through the Pacifist Fog. His gambit hadn’t worked.

Dom tried to return fire, but the six soldiers kept him down. He army-crawled over the blood-drenched floor, trying to find a new shelter as the first Goliath reached the desk he’d been hiding behind. The Goliath brought its clenched fists down, and the desk fell into pieces as if it had been nothing more than cardboard.

Then two of the advancing soldiers stepped around the broken desk. Red smoke filled the air as they brought their rifles to bear on Dom. He started to fire back, but he couldn’t take two down at once.

He prepared to soak up the soldiers’ fire, praying desperately his body armor would stop the brunt of the attack. In his mind, he already felt the impacts.

Suddenly, one of the soldiers went flying backward, his neck snapping when he hit the wall. The other soldier twisted to see what in the hell had killed his comrade. The Goliath answered by swinging its fist into the soldier’s chest. The man’s ribs caved in. Gasping loudly, blood dripping in long, sticky ropes from his mouth, he started to push himself up, stunned by the blow, but Dom finished the job.

The second Goliath flailed its claws, slashing at the soldiers. They fled, no longer focused on bringing down the Hunters. The Goliath grabbed one of the men. Its face contorted in a vicious snarl, saliva hanging like vines from its tusks as it tore the soldier in half. Gruesome cords of pink and red glistened from the ragged wounds. The man yelled, as if he hadn’t yet realized he should be dead, as the Goliath discarded both halves. Then it turned its attention toward Dom.

The Pacifist Fog had worked to at least shield the Goliaths from the influence of the Hybrids. But that didn’t mean the brutes were suddenly allies of the Hunters. A squad of Hybrids rushed into the maelstrom of flying appendages and bullets. The Goliath lashed out at them. While they tried to avoid the beast, the Hunters took the Hybrids down.

Dom moved toward the middle of the command center again, backing away from a thrashing Goliath. “Mere, how’s Andris?”

“Not responding,” she said.

Shit, Dom thought. He couldn’t believe Andris had gone out like that. Not here in this goddamn hellhole, just when he’d thought everything had been going right for once.

“Chief!” Miguel cried, pointing at the dead Goliath clotting the second entry.

Then Dom heard a jarring scrape. That Goliath was moving now. The FGL was clearing the other entrance into the command center. The gap revealed another pair of Goliaths. He imagined a phalanx of FGL soldiers and Hybrids ready to enter.

He half-expected them to throw a barrage of grenades into the center. Maybe the hostages they’d taken were keeping the FGL from plastering the place with explosives. Maybe they didn’t want an errant explosive unleashing the Heikegani Agent without their control. Or more likely, Dom figured, they wanted at least one of the Hunters alive. Images of the Tallinn prison flashed through his head. Ending up in the FGL’s hands was a fate worse than death.

They needed an escape. Now.

He looked up at the hole that the Hybrids had cut into the ceiling. They might make it up there. But then where next?

They were trapped in this goddamn factory. The best Dom could hope for was taking down as many of these bastards as possible before he fell.

“Huntress,” he whispered over the comms. “Tell my girls I love them.”

***

O’Neil sensed the Skulls beginning to climb the legs of the Titan. But he wasn’t worried about those bastards. It was the four Titans charging him that made him wonder if these would be his last few seconds on Earth.

The first Titan met his in a thundering display of godlike strength, two monsters bashing each other with wild abandon. All O’Neil could do was hold on to his mount and push his anger through the Titan. He could no longer feel his own limbs. There was only pain, and anger, a stubborn determination to finish the mission.

Massive fists clashed against chest plates and shoulders. Each blow against O’Neil’s Titan reverberated through his own body, ringing in his brain like a bell. Vaguely he sensed the flow of blood out of his nostrils accelerate from a trickle to a constant stream. The same itchy liquid sensation dripped from his ears. But he didn’t retreat from his attempts to control the Titan. He couldn’t afford to lose this weapon—his only weapon.

O’Neil’s Titan grabbed hold of the other Titan’s head. It wrapped one bony arm around the beast’s skull. The power of the Titan echoed in O’Neil’s body as the giant cranked its adversary’s head. Bone cracked as the enemy Titan’s skull twisted unnaturally. Then its eyes widened, and its body went limp with a sickening snap. O’Neil’s Titan let it go, and the gargantuan corpse collapsed into one of the brick apartment buildings near the harbor. The building crumpled as if it were made of pebbles, bricks spilling over the snow. Skulls trapped under the Titan were crushed, and a few FGL soldiers screamed in terror as they were caught in the avalanche of bricks and bone.

One down, three to go.

O’Neil braced himself on the back of the Titan’s neck as two more met the behemoth in battle. Their claws slashed and scraped at his Titan, forcing it backward. Its feet crushed the Skulls milling about. A few that had been trying to climb to get at O’Neil were tossed off by the impacts shaking through the giant. Then the third Titan joined the battle.

Two of the monsters grabbed hold of his Titan’s arms. All O’Neil’s Titan could do was lash out clumsily with its feet in sporadic kicks. The third Titan put an end to that, slamming its fist into the throat of his Titan.

A fresh wave of agony ripped through O’Neil. Pressure built behind his eyes as if they would soon erupt into fountains of blood from his skull. He could feel his Titan trying to resist, trying to fight back against the others.

But the beast was going down. The raw fury fueling the monster was no match for three of its ilk. The Titan started to fall backward under the pressure of the trio. O’Neil would soon be crushed between the ice-covered street and the Titan, smeared across the ground like the hapless Skulls that had already gotten between the giants.

O’Neil’s gambit hadn’t worked. No matter how he tried to influence the Titan, he couldn’t control its every movement. It was more like watching a horror movie play out and screaming at the protagonist not to open that door. But as much as he screamed, it was going to happen anyway.

He was certain if he’d had full control, he could outsmart the three dumb beasts. He could take them down and end this madness. End the Skulls and Hybrids and—

Then he knew what he had to do.

He pulled out his claws from the back of the Titan’s neck. Gravity tugged at the beast. Dizziness swept through O’Neil’s mind, and his vision became tunneled, shadows encroaching. He knew the feeling well. He was going to pass out. Then he’d tumble into the masses of writhing Skulls in the snow below.

He couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let the darkness take him. He clumsily climbed around the Titan’s face, grappling the bumps in its organic armor. He swung out to grab a new handhold, but his claws slipped, numbed from the cold. His mind felt as if it were still swimming.

Come on, O’Neil, he thought. Get yourself together.

Gulping down a breath of frigid air, he felt the frost spread through his lungs and torso. The chill was enough to wake him up. A wave of hot, rancid air washed over him from his former Titan’s mouth as he scrambled up the arm of the giant bringing his old ride down. To the Titans, he was still an annoyance and nothing more.

Let them underestimate him.

He leapt up to the neck of this new Titan. Now he knew exactly where to plunge his claws. It took him a mere second to tear the device from the back of the Titan’s neck. Then another second to replace the metal and wires with his claws. The Titan reeled backward from the pain, letting the other three continue their battle.

It wouldn’t be difficult to finish off at least one of those Titans now. But he knew he’d likely end up in the same position as before by taking on two of the beasts—or three, if his old one survived—still under control of the Hybrids. He had realized taking out the Titans directly was a mistake. There was a much quicker, easier way to stop them: take out the bastards commanding them.

O’Neil focused on controlling this Titan. Once the device had been removed from it, the beast had stood dumbly by the others, taking a few moments to recover from its fugue. O’Neil pumped it full of pheromones, inciting the rage he knew he could find within it. But instead of directing it toward the Titans, he imagined the Titan charging the Hybrids and soldiers near the freighter.

It was time for some payback.

He pictured the Hybrids, their skeletal forms scuttling along the harbor, away from the trucks and back toward the shelter of the brewery. He heard the rattle of their guns as they fired up at the Titan, now seeing their fate draw near. Maybe it was his imagination, or maybe it was his melding with the Titan, but he swore he saw the Hybrids as they pushed through the crowds of Skulls, trying desperately to escape the Titan. But for every twenty steps they had to take, the Titan took one.

With the Hybrids on the run and no longer focusing on the control over the Titans or the Skulls, hell broke loose over the snow-covered landscape. The hordes of Skulls pressed against the Hybrids. Some even swiped at them, shirking the FGL’s hold over their minds. O’Neil thought he could smell the tang of blood as it stained the snow when the Skulls began digging into the human soldiers. Even some of the Hybrids disappeared under the press of the freed Skulls.

The Titan bent low and raked its claws along the street. It kicked up cars and trash cans hidden under the snowdrifts along with the bloodied bodies of Skulls and Hybrids alike. Then the Titan picked up one of those cars and tossed it at a squad of Hybrids scaling the side of an apartment building. The car crushed them against the wall. Mangled pieces of metal and flesh fell back to the Earth, swallowed under a wave of Skulls.

Bullets pinged against the Titan’s head like gnats. Annoying enough that the Titan turned. He was nearly losing his grip on the monster, fighting to direct it toward his goal. It lunged down the block toward a building where four Hybrids had made it to the roof. Long icicles draped over the edge of the square gray building. A plume of smoke snaked around them.

A sudden explosion of fire rolled against the Titan’s shoulder, and O’Neil felt the beast shudder, the stench of blood and charred flesh filling the frozen air.

RPG, O’Neil realized.

But before the Hybrids could launch another rocket at their rebelling Titan, the fourth floor of the building disappeared, concrete flying through the air, launched by the Titan’s balled fist. Somewhere amid the debris, O’Neil knew there were four Hybrid bodies. With their deaths, he felt something release.

No more bullets splashed against the Titan. O’Neil didn’t feel any more competing claims for the beast’s mind, either. The Skulls below had become their normal stupid selves again. A soft snow began to fall around them as they tore apart the remaining FGL soldiers. Their agonized screams carried into the air as blood slurped over the carpet of snow and ice.

O’Neil didn’t pay them any heed. Another sound beckoned for his attention. The groan of metal shook over the harbor along with the guzzle of diesel engines. O’Neil twisted the Titan around. Oily smoke chugged from the freighter as it pushed away from the harbor, pulling against the chains the crew hadn’t even bothered to retract. It tore off one of the pylons holding it back.

The freighter would have to go around the crane and chunks of warehouse O’Neil had already directed a Titan to throw in the harbor. But there was still enough room for the ship to escape. And with it, so would go the Heikegani Agent.

He turned his Titan around. The other three, released by the shackles of the Hybrids, were entangled in battle, desperately slashing and clawing at each other for reasons only God knew. Blood gushed from wounds in their exposed flesh, and some of their bony plates had been ripped off.

With all the confusion and the mortal injuries weighing the other Titans down, it took almost no time for O’Neil to finish them off. And before the freighter could free itself, those humongous corpses crashed into the murky water of Helsinki’s harbor.

O’Neil spat blood and grinned. The bastards weren’t going anywhere. Now, he just needed to go save his friends.

-36-

Meredith fired at the Hybrids surging through the red tendrils of Pacifist Fog. The Hunters had been backed into corners, and while she was defending Andris, she’d lost sight of the others. She’d had to drag Andris’s body into the cubicles.

Their hostages had broken down the office door. Meredith had yelled at them to stop, but most of them had run straight into the waiting claws of the two Goliaths. She wasn’t sure why she felt so bad to see them torn to shreds. At the end of the day, they were working for the FGL. They probably would’ve let her run into the hungry maws of those creatures had their roles been reversed. Maybe it was because they were unarmed, unlike the soldiers and Hybrids. Somehow it made them seem more innocent. Or maybe she just thought anyone being torn in two by a pair of skeletal monsters was gruesome.

Whatever the case, she didn’t have long to think on it. One of the Goliaths let out a howl that rocketed through the narrow space. Its eyes locked with hers, and it swung its fists into the side of the cubicle, knocking the wall down. Meredith dragged Andris’s body backward to the end of the cubicle with one arm and fired at the Goliath with the other. Her shots were wild, barely controlled with her one-handed approach, but it didn’t matter.

The beast was close enough she could smell the rot lingering on its breath and see the red blood vessels in its eyes. She let go of Andris and brought her rifle up to fire directly into those eyes.

But then something flew in from her right.

“Dom!” she yelled.

He plunged his knife deep into the back of the Goliath’s neck. The beast let out another roar, its tusked mouth gnashing wildly as it reached behind its back, swatting at Dom.

Meredith followed Dom’s assault up with a blast of gunfire that caught the monster under its chin. Rounds plunged into the gray flesh, and blood frothed up around its fanged teeth. A long rattle escaped the Goliath’s lungs as it collapsed onto its knees then fell forward.

Dom leapt over the monster’s body. Blood dripped down his face, mixing with ash and dust and sweat. His blue eyes stood out against the grime. “Are you and Andris okay?”

“I’m fine,” Meredith said then looked at Andris. “But I’m not sure—”

The shriek of bending metal bled through the air, drowning out her words. It seemed for a moment that even the remaining Goliaths and FGL troops storming the command center were surprised. Then something even more unexpected happened.

It began to snow in the command center. A blustery wind blasted through the hole in the ceiling, carrying flakes that danced among the macabre display of corpses and monsters. Meredith’s mind struggled to come up with an explanation, but then something huge pierced the top of the command center and tore at the ceiling. New clouds of dust mixed with the spreading snow, and a water pipe burst, spraying freezing droplets of water over the scene. Red Pacifist Fog swirled in the wind and then dissipated as the cold air stole it away.

Meredith looked up as she and Dom sheltered Andris’s body. Above them stood a monster that made the Goliaths seem like puppies. Huge black eyes peered down, topped with a brow brimming with scaly horns. Teeth jutted out of the monster’s mouth in odd angles, and plates grew from its shoulders, each big enough to take the place of a house’s roof. Every rib expanded with the groan of a wooden ship at sea each time the beast took in one of its long, rasping breaths.

“Titan,” Dom whispered.

And Meredith heard what he didn’t say. We’re fucked.

She didn’t think any amount of Pacifist Fog would be enough to stop this monster. It would tear the brewery apart. With that destruction would come the release of the Heikegani Agent. Meredith would die knowing that they had failed miserably.

“Miss me?” a voice called over her comm link.

O’Neil!

“Where are you?” Dom called.

“The Titan,” O’Neil replied, sounding nearly breathless. “I’m standing on its neck.”

The Titan scooped its hand into the command center, scraping up computers and desks, gouging the floor into a series of miniature canyons. It came away with the remaining Goliaths. The fingers squeezed, shaking slightly, and several sickening pops sounded. Strings of red and gray oozed from between the Titan’s claws. The FGL soldiers and Hybrids left began to fire at it.

“Get back against the wall!” O’Neil said. “I barely have control of this thing.”

Meredith had to force herself to breathe. She couldn’t believe this was happening. O’Neil had come back to rescue them in the most dramatic way possible.

The Titan lowered its hand again. There was hardly anything left of the furniture, floor, or even the bodies that had been there a second ago. The entire scene had been erased as if it hadn’t happened. Just more snow swirling in.

Then the Titan’s hand opened.

“I’m getting you guys out of here,” O’Neil said.

Meredith looked at the massive claws, thick as tree trunks. “I just saw that thing literally squeeze the life out of Goliaths. Now you want us to hop on board?”

“You don’t have many options,” O’Neil said. “Look, I’m having trouble maintaining my focus and talking to you guys. Either get on or die here.”

“I’ll take my chances walking,” Glenn said.

“No walking,” O’Neil said. “The place is crawling with Skulls.”

Miguel surged toward the open claw, looking back at Dom and Meredith.

“I trust him,” Miguel said, climbing into the palm.

“Me, too,” Dom said.

Meredith sighed. “Then that makes three of us.” Together, she and Dom picked up Andris and placed him on the Titan’s palm. The others hesitantly climbed up with them.

“We’re all here,” Dom said. His eyes met Meredith’s as they crouched beside Andris, holding him in place.

The hand rose out of the brewery, sweeping them away from the wreckage. A torrent of snow fell over them, and icy crystals formed along Andris’s eyelashes. Meredith desperately wanted to reach out and see if there was a pulse. But it was a struggle enough to keep his body in place and hold on for dear life, even with Dom doing his best to help secure Andris.

Each step the Titan took sounded like a miniature meteor strike against the Earth. Meredith stole a peek over the edge of the monster’s palm. Red fog rose from the hole in the brewery’s roof.

What once had been a bleak, white snow-covered landscape looked like the hide of a dog covered in fleas. Skulls ran amok everywhere. Their screams carried on the cold winds now that Meredith’s hearing was no longer drowning in the blast of gunfire in an enclosed space.

“What about the antiaircraft batteries?” Jenna asked, pointing at one of the S-400 outfits.

“Not... an issue,” O’Neil answered back, his voice strained. “Skulls took care of the soldiers there when I wiped out the Hybrids.”

“Madness,” Glenn said, holding onto one of the Titan’s massive fingers to maintain his balance. “This place is a wasteland now. How is anyone going to get the Heikegani Agent left behind? I mean, we pretty much wiped out the FGL, but the Skulls...”

“The Germans are going to have a hell of a time taking this place,” Jenna agreed.

“Tell them to bring Pacifist Fog,” Meredith said. “And lots of it.”

“No,” another voice croaked. “Explosives. Fire is much better. Boom.”

Meredith’s eyes went wide. “Andris!”

The Hunter’s eyes flickered open behind the coat of dried blood covering his face. “Where the hell are we?”

Dom grinned through his own mask of combat grime. “Long story, brother. But damn if we aren’t glad to see you awake.”

“I needed a short nap,” Andris said. “You all look like you do, too.”

Meredith punched his shoulder gently. “Don’t pull that shit on us again.”

“You missed me?”

“Nah,” Miguel said. “That’s not it, bro. We just missed the boom.”

Andris gave a weak smile, which Miguel returned.

***

O’Neil managed to steer the Titan into the harbor. It marched until the water was nearly up to its chest. They maneuvered past the other Titan bodies and the crane, all blocking the freighter. Skulls ran across the deck. Some hammered the glass on the bridge, desperate to get at the few sailors trapped in there. The freighter and its crew weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

A cold spray of salt water misted around the Hunters as they huddled together on the Titan’s palm. Their ride was taking them toward another pier. This one was filled with a few sailboats and motorboats, all personal-pleasure crafts.

“End of the ride,” O’Neil said. “Hopefully we can find something that works down here.”

The Titan’s hand quivered as it hovered over the pier. A relentless fire burned in O’Neil’s head as he fought the Titan’s urge to squish the Hunters between its claws. One by one, they jumped off. Meredith and Dom paused to help Andris down. The man looked like he’d been hit in the head with a rowboat paddle. His steps were uncertain and wobbly, a sure sign he had suffered a concussion.

O’Neil gritted his teeth together as he pushed on the Titan’s mind. Each second scorched his brain, and the taste of blood on his tongue grew ever stronger.

Come on, Andris. Move.

Slowly, Andris made it off the Titan and onto the pier.

“You coming?” Dom asked O’Neil over his comm link.

O’Neil’s voice came back strained. “Got... to hold... on. I let go now... we’re all lunch.”

It didn’t take long for the others to procure a speedboat that would carry them far away from Helsinki. Once they were clear, Frank would be able to pick them up safely without attracting the attention of a horde of Skulls. Meredith stood beside Dom as he drove the boat around the Titan. O’Neil—or rather, the Titan—lost sight of the boat, but he soon heard it gurgling behind him.

“We’re ready for you, O’Neil,” Dom said.

There was no way O’Neil could let go of the Titan now. That would be suicide. The Titan would turn on them. He was sure of it.

“I think... I think you better go without me,” O’Neil said.

“Not the way this works,” Dom said. “I said this once, and I’ll say it again. We don’t leave anyone behind.”

“If... if I let go... this thing is gonna go wild.”

“This isn’t our first rodeo with a Titan,” Meredith said. “And we owe you our lives.”

O’Neil wanted to protest more. He had done what he’d vowed to do. He’d gotten them out of that brewery alive, and he’d stopped the freighter from leaving the harbor. But his head felt as if a Goliath were squeezing it as the monstrous beast struggled against his control. Blood continued to stream from his nostrils, and the pressure behind his eyes had only gotten worse. Every muscle in his body felt as though it were being pulled from his bones, and electricity cut through his flesh where his armor pierced his skin.

“Go,” O’Neil said. “You’ve got to.”

The Titan’s rage churned through him. All this combat had made the thing bloodthirsty, and here he was, shackling the rabid dog, telling it to turn over for a belly rub. The monster fought against his control. O’Neil’s heart shuddered against his ribcage, fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. The effort to control the Titan was too much.

“Go,” he growled again.

“Goddamnit, O’Neil,” Dom said back. “We do not leave a Hunter behind. Abandon that Titan now. That’s an order from your captain.”

An order from your captain. The words resonated through O’Neil’s mind. Here he was, clinging to the Titan as if his place on Earth was with the monsters.

But that wasn’t right.

His thoughts surged all the way back to his first assignment as a Navy SEAL. Flitting through the night with the rest of his team on a high-stakes mission to eliminate an unsuspecting target. They had found their target, and he had been the one ready to take the kill shot. And then they’d been told to turn back at the last minute. Something that was above his pay grade to understand had changed. His trigger finger had itched. He had their target in his sights. But he’d heard those words then, too.

That’s an order.

He’d turned back then, because as much as he’d wanted to see their target eliminated, he valued the sanctity of brotherhood with his fellow SEALs too much to go rogue. He had been a part of a team with the SEALs. And now, he knew, he was a part of the Hunters. He couldn’t let his captain down.

O’Neil pulled his arms from the muscle. The skeletal plates along his wrists caught on one of the Titan’s vessels. He strained until the vein tore, spilling its contents over O’Neil. His heart continued its insane pace, and the shadows waiting at the corners of his vision started to march over his eyes.

Vaguely he sensed the boat sloshing about in the dark waves. The Hunters looking up at him. Their voices calling. He tried to climb down. But his limbs quivered. The Titan started to shake, and it let out an ear-shattering roar to celebrate its newfound freedom.

O’Neil fell backward. He waited for the cold water to meet him. Instead he hit something hard. His head slammed backward, and snowflakes danced in his vision. He couldn’t tell whether they were real or just figments of the pain rocketing through his skull.

Voices echoed around him. Said his name. He tried to stay awake as the motorboat growled louder. He could feel it taking them away from the Titan, and he hoped they would be fast enough. His ears burned, and the coppery taste of blood tingled over his tongue.

His world started to fade.

But at least he was surrounded by the Hunters.

His new brothers and sisters.

His crew.

-37-

Kara took a deep breath as she surveyed the medical bay. No more than an hour or ago, this place had been filled to the brim with Hybrid civilians. A few drawers still gaped open, and medical supplies were scattered across one of the workspaces. She knew Lauren would’ve disapproved of the mess. But Peter must not have been accustomed to dealing with such chaos. Plus, he’d been so short-staffed that Kara had had to abandon her duties in the engine room again. Even Sadie was helping.

Sweat matted the back of Peter’s scrubs to his back as he leaned over a monitor with Divya by his side. They were scrutinizing some images—X-rays or something, Kara wasn’t quite certain. Sean was scooping supplies into the open drawers, putting things back where they belonged.

Now there were only two patients left in the bay. One was Andris. Though his face had been a bloodied and bruised mess, and the docs all agreed he’d suffered a concussion, he was moving around as if nothing had happened to him. Right now, he was standing at the hatch of the med bay, talking to the last civilian Hybrid aboard the Huntress.

Kara watched him talk in a low voice to Jaan. From their bursts of laughter, it seemed they were telling jokes. Somehow, in all this madness, they’d bonded over their shared childhood growing up under the Soviet Union. The Estonian man held out a clawed hand, and Andris took it, shaking heartily.

“Thank you for all you have done,” Andris said. “You have helped us more than you can imagine and saved the lives of so many people.”

“I want other people to not share my fate,” Jaan replied in halting English. “I will fight the FGL however I can.”

Jaan disappeared out of the medical bay. His footsteps echoed from down the passage, and Andris turned back to the remaining patient—a Hybrid just like Jaan.

“How is he?” Andris asked, coming to stand over the bed.

O’Neil’s eyes were closed, and his chest expanded and deflated in a slow rhythm. Kara had dabbed clean the dried blood covering his face and ears. His arms, too, had been covered in gore that Andris had told her earlier was the blood of a Titan.

“He’s in a coma.” She parroted the words she’d heard from Peter earlier. “They said they’re not sure when he’ll come out of it.”

Sean packed another box of bandages into a drawer then joined them. Andris looked at him hopefully, but Sean merely shook his head.

“No sign of concussion,” Sean said. “Some internal bleeding that we managed to control, but the truth is we don’t understand how the Heikegani Agent works well enough to know what’s causing this. Best we can do is keep an eye on his vitals.” Sean turned to Kara. “Thanks for all your help. We can handle it from here if you want to take off.”

Kara nodded and started to leave. More bootsteps sounded from the hall before she made it to the hatch. Dom and Meredith entered. Dried blood and soot still covered their faces though smudges in the grime showed they’d made a meager attempt to cleanup.

“Kara,” Dom said simply. He wrapped her in a hug as if she were a little girl again.

There was a certain pungency wafting from his snow- and sweat-soaked fatigues, but she didn’t mind. “Hi, Dad.”

Peter and Divya greeted Dom and Meredith. Kara lingered near her father as the two doctors explained everything she’d already heard about O’Neil’s state. They nodded along with the statements, concern showing in their eyes.

Kara looked down at O’Neil. This man had saved her father and the other Hunters. The EU forces had arrived in Helsinki only hours after the Hunters had returned to the ship. And from what she’d heard, O’Neil had intervened with only minutes to spare.

“I’ll be back to check in,” Dom said, “but we’ve got a debriefing with some EU reps. Divya, I might need you there to talk about some of the medical details.”

Kara followed her dad out into the corridor but paused at the hatch. She called back to Peter. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You’ve done enough,” Peter said.

“I can do more,” Kara said.

Peter let out a soft laugh and smiled. “I know.”

“Is Alden not giving you enough to do in the engine room?” Meredith asked.

“No, he’s kept me busy,” Kara said.

“Good,” Dom said. “Then maybe you should head back down there while I talk to the EU reps. Once I’m done with this meeting, I want to spend time with my girls.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kara said. “Go tell them how you all saved the world again. Sadie and I will be waiting.”

“Thanks,” Dom said, squeezing her shoulder. “I’ll see you both very soon.”

He marched down the corridor with Meredith and Andris by his side. At least this time he wasn’t running after Skulls or Titans or Hybrids. With her father and Meredith safely home, there was just one more person out there she had to worry about.

Instead of going down to the engine room, as Dom had suggested, she returned to her quarters to see if Navid had responded yet to her latest message. Maybe he’d have time for a quick chat before her dad’s meeting ended. She had so much to tell him—and if she was being honest, she just wanted to hear the sound of his voice.

***

“This is insane, right?” Navid asked Lauren. “I mean, please tell me it’s insane.”

“It’s insane,” Lauren said. “I’ve been involved in my fair share of clinical trials, but this... this isn’t a clinical trial. This is... God, yeah, it’s insane.”

She and Navid stood in what served as the infirmary of the Mueller Pharmaceuticals’ compound. The sterile white room was outfitted with a pair of patient examination beds, a small refrigerator for storing medicines, and a nurse’s desk. It looked like a slightly oversized exam room at a clinic. Felix Becker had told her it served the company’s employees prior to the outbreak with things like routine work injuries, illnesses, and other such maladies. Patients who required more than an aspirin or a nap were sent to a hospital.

But without any nearby hospitals, this place now played a bigger role. Mueller Pharmaceuticals had taken in a few doctors and other medical professionals, providing them shelter and food in exchange for their services. They’d been trained by Lauren on how to properly administer the Phoenix Compound and chelating agents to combat the Oni Agent.

Now, not only was this place the first line of defense against acute Oni Agent infections, but it would be the site of the first ever clinical trials of the Tenth Plague.

“It feels wrong to be administering this stuff without more testing in the lab.” Navid closed one eye as he peered into a vial of the compound, holding it up to one of the ceiling lights.

“I know what you mean.”

A tight knot had formed in Lauren’s stomach since she’d woken up that morning. Woken up might have been an exaggeration. She’d been tossing around in bed for most of the night and couldn’t be sure she’d snagged more than a few minutes’ worth of sleep.

She absolutely hated the idea of plunging a needle into the arms of healthy people with an experimental drug. God, who was she kidding? It was a bioweapon that hadn’t been thoroughly tested. The results could be catastrophic.

Mueller Pharmaceuticals had made it clear they were going to move this work with or without her. It frightened her that they were willing to deploy the Tenth Plague over Skull-infested territories where there might be innocent survivors, healthy and uninfected.

“I guess we might as well figure out if this hurts healthy people rather than after it’s deployed all over Europe,” Lauren said. “Better we find out now then after thousands of people get sick or die from it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself,” Navid said. “But it doesn’t make me feel much better.”

The knot in Lauren’s gut tightened painfully. “Me neither.”

She paced nervously until their first clinical participant arrived with a knock on the door.

Becker entered, already rolling up his left sleeve. “Let us do this, shall we?”

He plopped down onto the end of one of the exam beds. His skin was awash in pallor, and he used his free hand to mop his brow with a handkerchief.

“Nervous?” Lauren asked.

Becker glanced at the syringe as Lauren plunged the needle into a vial of the Tenth Plague. She pulled back the plunger, and the syringe filled with clear liquid.

“I am not afraid of your work, Doctor,” Becker said. His eyes traced the needle as she withdrew it from the vial. “I am ashamed to admit it is the needle that frightens me.”

Lauren couldn’t tell whether that was the truth or not. Navid used a cotton swab soaked in alcohol to dab a spot on Becker’s exposed arm where a vessel protruded.

He backed away, biting his bottom lip as Lauren approached.

“Ready?” she asked.

Becker gave her one of those smiles that reminded her of an actor bowing at the end of the play. “I have never been more ready. Let us prove that together we will save the world, Doctor.”

Lauren sucked in a breath and inserted the needle. She pushed the plunger down and watched the clear liquid containing the Tenth Plague disappear. Unless Becker had some kind of strange allergic reaction, there would be no immediate way to tell whether the Tenth Plague was going to harm him. They would have to wait for at least a few hours before any symptoms like internal bleeding or liver or kidney failure started to rear their ugly heads.

“That’s it,” Lauren said.

“Not so bad,” Becker said.

“Please don’t go far,” Lauren said. “I know you want to work, but if anything at all starts to go wrong, we need to treat you as fast as we can.”

They’d given Kara too high of a dose of the chelating agent ages ago, before they had developed the Phoenix Compound. She’d gone unconscious and nearly died of liver failure. If the Tenth Plague was going to kill innocent people, it would likely happen like that.

There was an even higher concentration of the chelating agent lying dormant in the doses of the Tenth Plague. If it malfunctioned, if it didn’t work as they’d planned, it might make a person bleed out before Lauren could so much as diagnose them.

Becker stood and rolled his sleeve down. The color had started to return to his face. Maybe he really was just afraid of the needle and nothing more. “I have memorized the list of potential side effects and symptoms you gave me. At the first sign, I will let you know.”

“Thank you,” Lauren said, letting out a long breath. “I hope we don’t see you back here anytime soon.”

“Relax, Doctor. Everything will be—”

A distant boom interrupted their conversation. Becker stopped midsentence and cocked his head.

“What was that?” Navid asked.

“Maybe a power transformer?” Becker suggested. He didn’t seem convinced.

For a moment they stood in silence. Lauren might have spent most of her time since the outbreak on the Huntress. But she had learned enough to know that when something suspicious happened, there was a high probability that Skulls were involved.

Another boom sounded. Becker rushed to the nurse’s desk and picked up the landline phone there. He said something in German that Lauren assumed meant, “What in the hell is going on?”

Frantic voices answered back, and Becker looked at her and Navid. The pallor that had been there before he received his injection returned, as did the nervous sweat. His eyes widened. Nodding, he listened to the other end before finally hanging up.

“There has been an attack,” Becker said.

Gunfire was now going off in wild pops. Lauren ducked instinctively at the sound, although it seemed the gunfire was still outside the building. She prayed it stayed that way.

“Skulls?” Navid asked.

Becker shook his head. “Men with guns.”

“What do we do?” Lauren asked.

“Security said the building is on lockdown. We are to stay put while they deal with the threat.”

Lauren didn’t want to stay put. The FGL had tried to nuke the entire base once. Maybe they were trying another desperate attempt at shutting down the facility. If they succeeded, they eliminated Europe’s chances to control the Oni Agent. It would make the FGL’s job of finishing what they’d started that much easier.

Not to mention, the FGL would effectively end the production of the Pacifist Fog weapons the Hunters and other European forces had already begun using. And the Tenth Plague would never make it out of the lab.

“Christ,” Lauren said. “This couldn’t come at a worse time.”

“Is there ever a good time for war?” Becker asked.

More gunfire came in a sustained burst. Now the sounds of small-arms fire erupted. Lauren was certain some of those exchanges were coming from inside the building.

“I cannot stay here,” Becker said. “My people are out there, and I want to make sure they are safe. You two, stay inside.” He pointed at a coat closet. “Barricade yourself in there if you have to. Do not come out until you get the all clear from security, understand?”

“Don’t go out there,” Navid said. “It doesn’t sound safe.”

“Ah, you just don’t want to lose your first clinical-trial subject.” Becker winked. Then he disappeared out the door, and the tap of his shoes against the tiled floor echoed away.

“This isn’t good.” Navid paced the room, running his hands through his hair. “This isn’t good at all.”

“We’re going to make it through this,” Lauren said. “It was a surprise attack, but the Germans will push them back. They’ll win. Just got to hold it together, okay?”

Navid chewed his bottom lip but managed a nod.

“Help me with this desk.” Lauren started pushing the nurse’s desk in front of the door. With Navid’s help, she shoved the desk hard against the office door. She took a step back just as a flurry of bootsteps crashed in the hallway. Yells and curses rang out between gunshots and the wet sound of a body crumpling to the floor.

“Oh, shit,” Navid said, backing into the corner of the room. He crouched down.

The bootsteps grew louder. A female voice said something, and then a heavy force thumped into the door. The desk quivered, sliding a couple inches. Another abrupt impact sent the desk skittering backward. The door cracked open, slamming hard into the wall.

Two Hybrids strode in, wearing demonic grins that bared fanged teeth protruding from their overgrown jaws. They carried rifles and pointed the weapons at Navid and Lauren. Crimson stains marred their bare bony chests and splashed up their arms.

Just two of them. Maybe there was still a way out. Maybe—

But then four more soldiers came in. These ones were human, each carrying firearms of their own. Blood covered the arm of one, his skin exposed where his fatigues had been torn. With the soldiers was someone Lauren didn’t expect to see.

Tears streaked the woman’s face. “I am so sorry,” Emma Fischer said to Lauren. “They made me—”

A single gunshot exploded in the room. Blood blossomed from Fischer’s head, and she crumpled as the soldier holding her let go. He stepped over her body as a pool of blood formed under the woman’s head and aimed the gun at Lauren.

“You are Dr. Winters and Dr. Ghasemi.” The man pulled a pair of pictures from his pocket. His left hand never strayed from aiming the handgun as he glanced at the images. “Yes, yes. A longer beard for Ghasemi. Greasier hair for Dr. Winters. But it is you.”

He turned to the two Hybrids. “Take them.”

The Hybrids lunged for Lauren and Navid before either could attempt to run. Claws bit into Lauren’s shoulders, and the Hybrid forced her arms behind her back. Its hot, rancid breath washed over the back of her neck, and a tingle of fear shivered down her spine.

The man who’d shot Fischer approached her, narrowing his eyes, a thick Russian accent dripping from his words. “We send Captain Holland our regards. He takes one of our scientists, we take two of yours.”

“Please, don’t—”

He cut off Lauren’s protests with an ugly laugh. Turning to the Hybrids, he said, “Load them up. Then torch this place. Leave nothing alive.”

-38-

With Meredith, Andris, and Peter by his side, Dom entered the electronics workshop to see most of the chairs at the conference table had already been filled. All the usual suspects were there. Chao and Samantha waited alongside the Hunters—Jenna, Glenn, and Miguel. Thomas sat next to the tech specialists, rolling one of his unlit cigars.

There were two unfamiliar faces: the reps from the EU. One was a man who looked to be in his late fifties with closely shaved white hair. Next to him was a woman with short blond hair tied in a tight knot.

“I am Colonel Stefan Tempel of the German Army,” the man said, stretching a hand to clasp Dom’s.

“Major Angela Schoeps,” the woman said, shaking Dom’s hand next. “Joint Medical.”

He gestured for them to sit back down, and then he joined them.

“First, I want to thank you all for your efforts here on behalf of Germany and, I do not mean to be glib, the rest of the world,” Tempel said.

“If the FGL had succeeded here in shipping out the airborne Heikegani Agent,” Schoeps said, “it would have rendered useless all our efforts with the Tenth Plague. We could not widely deploy the weapon against the Skulls, knowing that we would risk killing thousands, maybe millions, of innocent civilians who had been turned into Hybrids.”

Thomas held his cigar between his thumb and forefinger, using it to make his point. “And to think the FGL would’ve conscripted all those people into their forces. That would’ve been disastrous.”

“To show our gratitude, I’ve got something for you all,” Tempel said. He placed two handles of Finnish vodka on the table. “Our early recon teams found these in the distillery warehouse.”

“You’re telling me the FGL didn’t drink it all themselves?” Thomas asked, raising a fuzzy gray eyebrow.

“Let us just say that there were plenty of empty bottles,” Tempel said. “These may be the last bottles of Vintola vodka in existence.”

“Thank you.” Dom took one of the bottles, rotating it in his hand as he examined the label. He looked directly at Miguel with a wide grin. “Told you I’d make good on my promise. Drinks on me.”

“Now, Chief, I’m not sure this counts,” Miguel said.

“You don’t have to have any,” Jenna said.

“I will have his share,” Andris added.

Miguel held up his hands in a placating gesture. “No, no, I take it all back.”

“As you can see, we’ll make good use of this.” Dom tapped the bottle.

Normally, alcohol was off-limits aboard the Huntress. He liked the Hunters to be on their A-game, and as much as they joked about it, regular social drinking wasn’t something they had time for. But after everything they’d been through, he had no problem making an exception.

“That distillery didn’t also have a stock of energy drinks, did it?” Samantha asked hopefully.

Tempel furrowed his brow. “I am not sure I understand.”

Samantha sighed, looking dejected. “I’ll assume that’s a no.”

Dom waved his hand to quiet the Hunters. “Back to business. I hear you’re taking off for Germany soon. We’ve got a lot to discuss and not much time.”

“This is unfortunately true,” Colonel Tempel said. “We were directed to document what happened here, but Major Schoeps and I must return to Frankfurt.”

“And Helsinki?” Dom asked.

“The city will be secured by the joint NATO forces here,” Tempel said. “They’ll remain behind to guard against any attempts by the FGL to retake the city. We’ve neutralized all the FGL antiaircraft weapons they left behind.”

“I don’t mean to be crass,” Meredith said, “but I’m less worried about the city and more worried about the Heikegani Agent at this point.”

Schoeps spoke. “We have over four hundred men and women waiting to infiltrate the harbor and round up all the remaining canisters of airborne Heikegani Agent. We also have over a ton of Pacifist Fog weapons that we will deploy over Helsinki to reduce the threat of the remaining Skulls when we do so. In short, it will not be a problem for us to ensure we have collected every last drop of the airborne Agent.”

“That’s reassuring,” Dom said. “Chao, Samantha, did you intercept anything regarding other shipments?”

Samantha shook her head. “The first and, as far as we know, only shipment was scheduled to go out on that freighter.”

“That is very good news,” Tempel said. “We have dodged, as you Americans like to say, a massive bullet.”

“There is one more important question,” Schoeps said. “We are very interested in figuring out how to treat the Hybrids in our care. Have you found any evidence of a cure from the data you recovered at this site?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Chao tapped his fingers along the table. “We’ll comb through everything we have again, but we haven’t seen any formulas or descriptions of the pills that the FGL was giving to their Hybrid prisoners. The only thing we do know is that they were using them to control the growth of the bone and the resulting pain.”

“Damn.” Schoeps balled her fists, her jaw muscles tightening. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Tempel met Dom’s eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your next mission involves finding what the FGL was using to dose those people.”

“Neither would I,” Dom replied. He looked at Schoeps. “Just to be clear, we found no evidence that they were manufacturing and shipping the airborne Heikegani Agent from any other facilities, right?”

“Our intel supports yours,” Schoeps said. “This seems to be the only one.”

“I hope that’s true,” Meredith said.

“The EU and all our allies need to keep an eye on this situation,” Dom said. “I trust you’ll make that clear to whoever you’re reporting back to.”

“You have my word on it,” Tempel said. Schoeps nodded in agreement.

They continued to discuss other matters. Dom and the Hunters gave detailed accounts of their missions, from Greece to Estonia to Finland, and Samantha and Chao provided a data dump over a secure link to intel officers in the EU. They’d soon be having these same conversations with Shepherd and Kinsey and God only knew who else from the States as they distributed what they’d learned these past couple of weeks. Despite stopping the Heikegani Agent from shipping out, he felt as if they hadn’t actually learned that much. For every answer they’d found, they’d uncovered another question.

How would they deal with the new civilian Hybrids?

Why was there a rebel group of Hybrids making their home in Ikaria? And were there other groups like them out there, staking their claim to the ravished lands left behind by the FGL?

What would the FGL do next, now that their ploy to release the Heikegani Agent had been foiled?

And most importantly, where the fuck was Spitkovsky?

As Dom’s thoughts roiled in his head, Tempel’s satphone suddenly went off. The colonel pulled it from his hip and looked at the screen. His face went sheet white, his eyes wide.

Dom didn’t like the look of that at all.

Tempel answered the call in German. The conversation was terse and rapid. Dom had no idea what they were saying, but judging by Schoeps’s gasps, it wasn’t good. Finally, he hung up, staring straight ahead at a point only he could see.

“There’s been an attack,” Tempel said. “Frankfurt.”

A fire erupted in Dom’s chest. He pushed up from his chair, knocking over the bottle of vodka. It crashed to the deck of the workshop. Glass shattered, and the burning aroma of alcohol wafted up, but no one moved to clean it up.

Dom’s heart climbed into his throat when he asked, “Mueller Pharmaceuticals?”

Tempel gave a rueful nod. “The research team... your people... Everything is gone.”

-Epilogue-

Rachel tried to ignore the stink of the dead Skulls littering the hallway. But with damn near a dozen of them, it was a lost cause. Best strategy was just to keep trudging past the carnage and hope that by the grace of God, Dr. Singh and the others here had somehow survived the wrath of whatever creature had massacred the Skulls.

“Cafeteria is that way,” Terrence said, pointing down another hallway that would take them away from this slaughter.

Something wet slurped under Rachel’s boot. She pulled it up to reveal a sticky puddle of half-coagulated blood. More carefully now, she stepped over the next Skull corpse. Its head hung from its shoulder as if a guillotine had half-heartedly tried to behead it, leaving part of the neck still intact.

A low moan caught her attention, and she held up a fist. She didn’t look back, but she heard the other two behind her stop. The moan sounded again. It was more of a rasp, really, all ragged around the edges.

The hell is that?

Rachel looked back to see if Rory and Terrence had heard it, too. Their searching eyes showed they had. She remained on point, carefully stepping between the bodies as the rasping grew louder. They passed open doors, each leading into cubicle-filled office spaces where trails of blood drew long roads in the blue carpet.

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. They pulled each of the doors closed as they passed, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching, waiting to ambush them. She worried they would soon come face-to-face with whatever massacred these Skulls.

Slingers, Goliaths, Droolers... what next?

It was all a bunch of bullshit. Just when they thought they could deal with one kind of monstrosity, the Oni Agent threw something else at them.

As it tore through the remnants of human civilization, penetrating the pockets of survivors trying to hold the fabric of humanity together, it seemed the biological agent had a warped imagination of its own, bending and twisting genetics to meet its own devastating and terrifying needs.

Rachel leaned in to close another door. Something skirted her peripheral vision, and she twisted her neck, bringing up her rifle immediately. But whatever she’d seen was lost to the shadows already. She held her breath for a second, listening for the telltale sounds of a rasping Skull or click-clacking footsteps.

She heard nothing but the constant drip of water and the low moaning that haunted this place.

“Rachel?” Terrence whispered.

Closing the door, she stepped back out into the hallway.

“Thought I saw something,” she said.

“Do we need to go in there?”

“Think it was just the shadows.”

“Or you hope it was just the shadows?”

She scrubbed at her eyes. “It’s getting impossible to tell.”

The ghastly moans sounded closer now, just beyond the pile of Skull corpses at the end of this infernal hall. The bodies were stacked nearly four high. Broken limbs stuck up from fractured plates and cracked claws, bloodied horns looking like the stumps of fallen trees. Every jagged surface and serrated edge made the jumble of bodies look damn near as dangerous as if the creatures were alive. The hair stood straight at the back of Rachel’s neck, and she suppressed a shiver.

“Something didn’t want us going through this way,” Rory said, his nerves making his voice shaky.

The ragged breaths sounded louder now, as if they were on top of whatever was causing that noise.

“Maybe some of them are still alive,” Rachel said, pointing to the barricade of Skull bodies.

“Shit,” Terrence said.

“Then I guess it’s back to the cubicles,” Rachel said. “There’s got to be another door there that’ll get us to the cafeteria.”

“Should be,” Terrence said. “Rory, get that door open.”

As Rory moved to the door nearest the pile of Skulls, the bodies shifted. He froze, bringing his rifle to bear on them. Rachel sucked in a breath and pressed her rifle tight into her shoulder. Terrence stepped beside her and roved his rifle barrel over the pile, waiting to see what had disturbed the slumber of the dead Skulls.

Something pushed against the pile. Now Rachel took a step back.

Good God, is this it? Is this the thing that killed the Skulls?

The monster must have returned to its killing den to feast. Or maybe it had woken from a nap to see a group of pitiful humans invading its sacred space.

A claw emerged from the wreckage of bodies. Long gray muscles glistened under shredded flesh as the beast pulled itself up. Another set of claws lashed out and yanked the creature’s body free from the dead beasts around it. Then the monster tumbled out and spilled across the floor.

“Son of a bitch,” Rachel muttered.

The ragged breathing and moans rasped out of the Skull before them. Its neck was split halfway open, and crimson bubbles popped from it. Its jaw worked weakly, opening and closing as if it were merely trying to ask them how their day was.

Its day had been fucked. Ropy entrails hung from its open abdomen, snagging on the bones of the dead Skulls around it. One of its eyes hung out of its socket like a dead snake. The other traced between Rachel, Rory, and Terrence.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m putting this thing out of its misery,” Rachel said.

Rachel put her rifle up to the creature’s face, and the dying Skull snapped its mouth around the barrel. She squeezed the trigger.

The muffled gunshot reverberated around the otherwise-silent hallway.

There were no more moans. No more ragged breaths. Just that drip of water above them.

“Still want to go around?” Rory asked.

Terrence lowered his rifle slightly. “Yeah, I think—”

Footsteps pattered down the hall beyond the Skulls. Was that the tapping of talons against tile?

They all braced themselves for another attack. Rachel’s heart thrummed in her chest, and she wondered if her blood vessels could handle the adrenaline plowing through her body. Her rifle never strayed from the space above the wall of Skulls, waiting for the moment the creature launched itself at them.

But that moment didn’t come. Instead the footsteps faded, echoing away from them.

“What...?” Rory started.

He didn’t need to finish the question. They had never encountered Skulls that ran away when there was a meal to be had.

For a moment, Rachel was confused. There was no way they could’ve scared a Skull. No fucking way. Which must’ve meant...

“The Skull is after something,” she said. “Maybe Singh is still alive!”

If the Skull was going after their HVT, they didn’t have time to look for an alternative route. They had to find Dr. Singh and whoever else might be in this hellhole. Rachel let her rifle fall on its strap as she scrambled to the top of the bodies.

She expected Terrence to tell her to stop. But he and Rory were right there with her. They slid over the bodies to the other side. Rachel felt the snags and tears in her fatigues as the Skull claws still reached out in death, deadly as ever. She pushed past them anyway, and her boots found the tiled floor on the other side.

“There!” Terrence yelled.

A sign on the wall pointed toward the cafeteria. Rachel’s vision tunneled as she raced after their prey. Between their footsteps and that of the monster they pursued, Rachel thought she heard murmuring voices. Or maybe those were just the groans of the Skulls or monsters they were about to face.

“Rory, use one of those Pacifist grenades,” Terrence commanded.

As they ran, Rory unclipped his grenade and rolled it down the hallway. It spewed red gas that dispersed quickly around them, fogging the hallway. Rachel hoped whatever monsters lived here would be just as affected by the Pacifist chemicals as normal Skulls were. They raced through the cloud until they made it to another set of double doors. Just as they reached it, the doors started to close.

“That’s it!” Rachel cried.

“Get another Pacifist grenade in there!” Terrence yelled.

Rachel unclipped hers and threw it through the crack in the door before it closed all the way. She heard the grenade hiss, spewing gas into the space. She grabbed the handle. Something from inside tugged at the door, trying desperately to shut it.

The tap of talons and scratches of claws exploded from inside the cafeteria. Then she heard... voices. Not the animalistic howls of Skulls. Human voices.

“We’re here to help!” she yelled. “We’re gonna protect you from the monsters!”

The door suddenly released, and she yanked it open. Fog from the Pacifist grenade filled the cafeteria. Shadows moved within it. Spiky shadows, undoubtedly from Skulls. But instead of attacking her, they cowered or stood in place, frozen, as she, Terrence, and Rory stood in the open doorway.

Low voices echoed in the room around them like spirits on the wind as they advanced between the tables and cots set up in the makeshift shelter. All the Skulls seemed to be staring at them now, entranced by the Pacifist Fog. Rachel searched for the source of the voices she’d heard.

“Dr. Singh?” Terrence tried. “We were sent by the US government on a special mission for USAMRIID command. We’re taking you and any other survivors to safety.”

Now the voices carried up around them in a haunting chorus. As if the goddamn Skulls were talking to each other. But Skulls didn’t talk.

Shit, is this Pacifist gas making me go crazy? Rachel wondered. Or...

Then one of the Skulls approached her. She pressed her rifle into her shoulder, her finger tight against her trigger guard. But the Skull didn’t pounce. It didn’t growl or snarl or snap or slash at her. It walked with the poise of a normal goddamn human, offering a clawed hand as if for a handshake.

The fog swirled around the creature until Rachel could make out its features. Or rather her features. Long braids of dark hair traveled the length of the Skull’s head and neck, twisting between the bumps of horns along her scalp. Claws—still short but growing—poked out from her fingertips. She wore what remained of a pantsuit though her feet were bare, revealing the first protrusions of talons through the flesh of her toes.

“I’m Dr. Singh,” the Hybrid said. She held her clawed hand in front of her, rotating it as if she couldn’t believe what had happened to her. Judging by the changes, she’d only been a Hybrid for a matter of days. “I don’t know what’s happening to us, but we’ve all turned. We’re just... not like them.”

Rachel tried to find the words, but it felt as if her mouth were disconnected from her brain.

“How long until we go crazy?” Singh asked. “I don’t want to turn into one of them. If you’ve come to kill us, please do it quickly.”

“Son of a bitch.” Terrence shook his head. “All of your group... they’re like you?”

Singh nodded.

“You’re not going to turn into Skulls. At least, I don’t think so. You’re... you’re Hybrids.”

“Hybrids?” Singh asked. “Like the super soldiers Shepherd told us about?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Terrence said. “At least, it looks that way. You’d have gone crazy by now if you were Skulls.” Then he gulped. “So, you guys did that to those Skulls out there?”

Again, Singh nodded. Rachel watched her closely. There was something haunting about the woman in this transformative state, and it frightened Rachel to her core.

“The pain is almost too much,” Singh said. “Until you released that gas, we were so angry. But now I feel like I’m high, like something is dragging me into the sky from here. Is this a permanent change?”

Terrence finally lowered his rifle. “I’m afraid not. We use the gas to calm Skulls. But once it wears off...”

“The agony returns.” Singh looked at her claws. “Can we stop it?”

Rachel looked around the room at all the people who thought they’d survived only to somehow be infected by the Heikegani Agent. It was unreal. Unbelievable. How had this happened? How in God’s name had the FGL managed to infect people on American soil with their brand-new biological weapon and not a goddamn person knew about it until now?

A leaden weight dragged through her insides.

Then she thought about what the Hunters had discovered. How the FGL had the ability to stop the Heikegani Agent and the pain that went with it. Maybe with Singh’s help, they would find a solution. Find a way to stop the FGL and uncover a true cure.

Rachel locked eyes with Singh. “We can’t stop it yet, but we will. Now let’s get out of here.”

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The End of Book 8 in The Tide series. The adventure continues in The Tide: Dry Gallows, Book 9: https://amzn.to/2Gjnb3t

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Thank you for reading The Tide: Devil to Pay! I’m thankful for every one of you that have followed along the Hunters’ adventures so far. You’ve made this series well worth writing, and the emails and messages I’ve received from readers truly help me to keep motivated while writing the next book. The series will continue in Book 9. If you would like to know when the next Tide book comes out, you can sign up for my newsletter here: http://bit.ly/ajmlist

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If you enjoyed the book, would you please leave a review here (https://amzn.to/2DrRvus)?

Reviews greatly help authors like myself, both with reaching new readers and improving our stories. Thanks!

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I love to hear from my readers. If you want to get in touch, there are a number of ways to reach me.

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About the Author

Anthony J Melchiorri is a scientist with a PhD in bioengineering. Originally from the Midwest, he now lives in Texas. By day, he develops cellular therapies and 3D-printable artificial organs. By night, he writes apocalyptic, medical, and science-fiction thrillers that blend real-world research with other-worldly possibility. When he isn't in the lab or at the keyboard, he spends his time running, reading, hiking, and traveling in search of new story ideas.

Read more at http://anthonyjmelchiorri.com and sign up for his mailing list at http://bit.ly/ajmlist to hear about his latest releases and news.