“Area is clear,” Timothy said, panting.
Beckham put a hand on his nose. “Damn, that hurt.”
“At least it’s not broken.” Horn chuckled. “Kate wouldn’t be happy about that.”
A little laughter was a good thing, but it didn’t last. They had lost a lot of good soldiers tonight and were returning home with fewer men and women to defend what was left of the Allied States.
***
Azrael marched down the long corridor of the Citadel, the command center of the Land of the New Gods. Red tendrils of webbing covered the glass walls like oversized spiderwebs. Scions walked up and down the hall, and a few Variants crawled between them, some traversing the walls or ceilings, using the webbing as handholds.
Across the webbing, cocoons writhed, filled with prey the Variants or his Scions had brought back to feed the organic communication network.
Azrael took his time admiring the ecosystem on his way to the throne room. Two Scions bowed, then stepped aside so he could enter what had once been a lecture hall.
In his past life, he had attended a multitude of scientific presentations here. This had been a place of technological progress. A place where the greatest minds in the world had gathered to exchange ideas and build a brighter future for humanity.
The atmosphere had changed significantly.
Long ropes of webbing hung off the ceiling beams nearly three stories high. Two gigantic masterminds sat on either side of the stage at the back of the hall, their massive pink bodies appeared like brains that escaped from enormous skulls.
Tendrils stretched from their folds and into the network surrounding the throne room. All along the walls, Scions stood guard. Each with the face and gray flesh of a Variant, but the burning intelligence of human beings behind their golden, reptilian eyes.
Azrael ascended the steps to the stage, adjusted his black cloak, and took his seat at a throne made from the red vines of the organic webbing. Within the throne, a few humans were cocooned and imprisoned in the crimson tendrils, their low moans muffled by vines snaking through their mouths. Those insolent animals were now batteries for his network.
It was all a fitting reminder that he alone was the greatest achievement of nature and science, a being who would literally and figuratively sit atop all these mortals. He created and altered life. Death was just one of his instruments.
Yes, this place had once been a place of learning, the pinnacle of humanity’s innovation.
The labs within this facility had housed the development of some of humanity’s greatest achievements—and weapons.
Now he had created the greatest one. It was only right that this place served as the capitol to the New Gods.
He curled his clawed fingers around the armrest of his throne and surveyed the room. All the chairs that had once been lined in neat rows were covered by vines. The loud, gasping breathing of the masterminds filled the place, and their rotten stench swirled amid the odor of the vines.
A skinny silhouette appeared at the entrance to the throne room. One of the human faithful.
“Enter,” Azrael said.
Murphy, an old doctor wearing a white coat walked forward with a slight hunch. His fingers were crooked and knotted in arthritis, but still he dropped to one knee when he reached the throne. “Prophet, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have news about the Northeast Operation.”
Azrael grunted in disgust at the memory of what had happened. The Northeast Operation was supposed to have ended the war by launching the nuke from Mount Katahdin. But the former leader of the infamous Team Ghost and some other heinous traitors had managed to destroy the base and sabotage the weapon.
“Speak,” said Azrael.
“Our Scion scouts discovered a survivor at Mount Katahdin after the heretics sabotaged the base. He was barely alive when the airlift brought him here, but I managed to save him.”
“Save him?”
“Yes,” Murphy said, his eyes finally rising to meet Azrael’s. “And I made him better. Really, I had no choice. His human body was too damaged.”
“Did you give him my latest version of VX-102?”
“Yes, Prophet.”
“Good. I want to see how well the new formula reacts to the human genome.”
Murphy nodded and backed up slowly, never rising above his hunching bow until he had left the throne room.
While Azrael was pleased with the old man’s work, there was another who was responsible for this failure in the Northeast Operation whose work he had been less fond of.
“Bring me the general,” Azrael rumbled, his words echoing in the vast chamber.
The masterminds both quivered, their fingers twitching and curling, sending signals through the communication network.
Minutes later the general squeezed through the main entrance, bowing like the old man had. His cloak flowed behind him, and he kept his crocodile-snout aimed toward the ground. The bulging muscles along his arms rippled against his flesh, and his massive claws scraped the floor with every step.
“Prophet…” the Alpha Variant said, his voice coming out in a choking rasp.
He was a prime specimen of unrestrained evolution and adaptation, thanks to the impact of VX-99 on his body. His physique was that of a powerful predator, and his aggression on the battlefield had no match. But he was also a glaring example of why Azrael had worked so hard to better blend human intelligence with the body-altering epigenetic changes in the original bioweapons that had warped humanity.
This creature had too many faults. He could barely choke out his own words, and now Azrael feared the general’s mind wasn’t as developed and intelligent as he’d once thought.
Azrael had trusted this beast with a mission that he realized now was only truly suited for one of the New Gods. One of his creations. Azrael stood from his throne and stepped down the short stairs from the stage to the floor where the general knelt.
“You,” Azrael said, drawing closer.
The general, still towering above Azrael even as he knelt, flinched. “It was—”
“You ran like a scared rat,” Azrael interrupted, keeping his voice calm. “You should have stayed and fought to the death like a wolf.”
The general kept his head bowed. “I’m sorry—”
Azrael snapped his fingers, summoning red tendrils along the floor that rose like cobras. The vines snapped around the general’s wrists and legs. They pulled him into the air until he was suspended three meters off the ground.
“The Allied States should already be ashes and President Ringgold should be dead,” Azrael said. He let out a snort. “For nearly a decade, I’ve been patient, living in the shadows while creating this new world and now I have to wait longer…” He looked at one of the masterminds controlling the tendrils. “Tighter.”
The webbing pulled harder on the general, and the monstrous variant groaned, his bones snapping, popping out of their joints.
“You failed, despite all evidence that you should have succeeded,” Azrael said. “You defied every probability analysis I ran. It’s as though you intended to lose. You sicken me.”
Azrael looked at the other mastermind and made a simple waving gesture with his claws.
Red tendrils wormed into the general’s mouth and nostril, squirming through his body like parasitic worms. His agonized scream was muffled by the vines stretching down his throat.
Azrael snapped his claws again, and the vines retracted suddenly, letting the general’s joints pop back into place. The monster fell to the ground, landing with a sickening smack, then slowly pushed himself back up to one knee, his huge chest heaving.
Blood dribbled out his nostrils.
Azrael approached him, then put his claws under the general’s long chin, lifting his face to catch his gaze.
“You will not fail me again, will you?”
“No, Prophet, I will… die before… I fail you again.” Each word came out forced, rasping.
Azrael gestured to the two masterminds
at either corner of the throne room. “We have detected human interference within our network. They are trying to sabotage our communications.”
“Let me find them,” the general choked out. “Let me prove myself…”
Azrael retreated to his throne.
“Yes, find these humans, and bring me Captain Reed Beckham,” he said. “Or next time I will pull off your limbs myself and feed you to the Thralls.”
— 5 —
The light snowfall came down more steadily over the wilderness outside Banff. Cold wind cut into Dohi’s parka, finding every entryway to scrape over his flesh. His fingers were beginning to numb, and every breath of air seemed to freeze the inside of his lungs.
He wouldn’t let Mother Nature convince him to turn back though.
With the rest of Teams Ghost and Spearhead on his tail, he had only one singular thought: Follow the bears.
They had to figure out why they were organizing, especially if someone was using them for an impending attack on the Canadian base.
Dohi and the others were perched at the rim of the ravine, watching the bears follow a frozen stream nearly twenty meters below to the west. The beasts were heading directly northwest toward the Bow River.
“Where the hell are they going?” Toussaint asked.
“No idea,” Fitz whispered back. “That’s why we need to follow them.”
“I’ve been in this area long enough to tell you when a blizzard’s coming,” Daugherty said. “Even the best tracker can’t follow his prey when he’s frozen solid and buried under a ten-foot snow drift.”
“As much as I like solving mysteries, I like staying alive and killing bears more,” Sherman said. “Let’s just kill these ugly assholes and be done with it.”
Dohi lifted his binos and stared as far down the ravine as he could see, trying to find some clue as to where the monsters were headed.
“Dohi, what do you think?” Fitz asked.
Neilson was right, and as much as he hated to admit it, sometimes there was no advantage to being stubborn.
“The weather’s going to make it impossible to follow them,” Dohi said. “There’s no point in going on.”
“If we’re calling off the pursuit, I’d rather take these beasts down tonight so they’re not tomorrow’s problem,” Neilson said.
“Exactly,” Sherman said. “We didn’t follow these guys all the way here for nothing. Let’s make this count.”
Fitz nodded. “You’ve got a point, but damn, I really want to know what they’re doing.”
“Weather is shit, boss,” Ace said. “We’ve got the jump on them now. Better than them ambushing our guys later.”
“True, but…”
“He’s right,” Dohi said. “We really should take them down now, while we can.”
The bears were still marching in a line at the bottom of the ravine against the unrelenting snowfall.
“Okay, let’s do this quick, but safe, and then get our asses back to base,” Fitz ordered. “Ghost will run along the ravine to get ahead of the pack. Spearhead, you stay at their rear in case they turn tail. Radio silence from here on out until I give the go ahead.”
Dohi took off between the trees, taking the Delta Force operators slightly away from the ridge to stay out of the bears’ sight.
Once he judged they had run far enough ahead, he held up his fist. He, Fitz, and Ace then dropped low and crawled back to the edge of the ravine.
Sure enough the bears lumbered along next to the frozen stream, nearly one-hundred yards away. Dohi peered down the lip of the ravine to see the IR tags from Spearhead’s night-vision goggles as they too watched from their vantage points nearly fifty feet up from the bears. Spearhead was about twenty yards to the rear of the monsters.
Their positions would not get much better than this. The giant creatures had nowhere to hide along the stream except for a few lone trees and large rocks. But even that shelter was too meager for the hulking monsters.
Dohi raised his rifle and sighted up the first monster. Ace and Fitz mirrored his movements, each picking their targets. Everyone had already palmed in their magazines with armor-piercing rounds. It was their best and only shot of tearing through the thick hides of the beasts.
“Execute,” Fitz whispered over the radio.
Dohi squeezed his trigger. Rounds lanced into the chest of the lead bear, punching into its flesh. The creature staggered.
Other suppressed shots echoed from up and down the ravine as the operators joined in the fusillade, painting their targets with the AP rounds.
The bear Dohi had shot stumbled forward when more shots stabbed into its flank. But the big beasts were like walking battleships, huge muscled limbs covered in dense fur. They weren’t so easily dispatched. The monster let out a vicious roar that rivaled the bark of gunfire, and its eyes found Dohi.
It charged, opening a mouth full of curved fangs.
Three more bullets crashed through its mouth and forehead, breaking through bone and puncturing one of its eyes. The monster tripped and slid through the snow, pushing up a mound, steam rising from the fresh holes in its still body.
Fitz and Ace worked to take down another, and the Canadians began mopping up the monsters at the rear of the pack with headshots.
Dohi found his next target and unleashed a few controlled bursts into the monster’s side to get it to turn, then he sighted the head and fired.
The massive beast galloped on all fours straight for its attackers.
Dohi managed to take down the creature, and it slid across the ice. Another bear leapt over its dead brethren, then scrambled up the side of the ravine. Packed snow gave way under its claws, and it slid back to the rocky bank of the creek.
He fired again and again as the monster tried to barrel up the side of the ravine. A well-aimed round buried into an eye socket, and the creature collapsed, slipping back down over the ice, leaving a trail of crimson.
The last two made it further up, their claws finding purchase in the rock and ice, pulling themselves ever higher and closer to Team Ghosts and Spearhead.
They were nearly on Spearhead, just a few feet from the lip of the ravine. In seconds, they would be within striking distance. Spearhead fired desperately at them, but the thick hide of the beasts slowed the damage being done to them. Desperation and rage fueled them.
Dohi adjusted his aim, sighting up one of the monsters with blood dripping down its side. He fired at the skull and took off the jaw in the blast of rounds. It fell backward, crashing into the last creature.
The two beasts tumbled back toward the floor of the ravine, cracking against rock on the way down.
A final gunshot echoed and faded away. Dohi listened for the sounds of other howling Variants in the distance, waiting to see if something else would attack in response to the commotion.
He heard nothing except for the quiet of the falling snow.
“Clear,” Neilson reported.
“Clear,” Fitz said. He waited a beat, then added, “Let’s head back.”
The accelerating snowfall was beginning to bury the dead bears by the time Ghost caught back up to Spearhead.
“We aren’t going to make it back up the way we came,” Neilson said.
Daugherty nodded. “Hiking straight uphill in a snowstorm like this is suicide.”
“What do you propose?” Fitz asked.
“We can head north until we hit Bow River, then follow it back to base. It’ll be a hell of a lot easier than trying to climb straight up the mountain, and it’ll save us time.”
“Sounds good to me,” Fitz said.
They began their trek back toward Banff. Dohi checked his watch under his thick sleeve. By the time they made it back to base, it would be morning.
They marched as fast as they could through the increasingly deep snow. Dohi’s muscles burned with the effort to push through it. Neilson had been right. If they had continued following the bears, they would’ve been stranded in the arctic conditions.
&n
bsp; For another hour they pushed through the ice and snow.
“Not too much longer,” Neilson said.
“Thank, God,” Ace said. “I got to take a shit.”
Dohi noticed something different about the path ahead. He held up a fist and the team paused. Then he ducked down into a hunch and pushed through the snow about twenty yards through the trees toward the south.
Ghost and Spearhead were not the only ones who had planned on following the river.
In front of him, long swathes of snow had been pushed aside as if a group of people had come marching through. Given the intensity of the snowfall, it hadn’t been long since these people had passed.
Dohi hurried back to join Ghost and Spearhead, lungs burning from the frigid air.
“What’s up?” Fitz asked.
“Looks like someone was here.” Dohi panted. “Maybe… maybe a group of ten people or so. Are there other patrols out here?”
Neilson shook his head. “Let me find out.” He called command on his radio. “Command, Spearhead One. Are there other patrols in our vicinity?”
“Negative, Spearhead One. All other units were recalled about an hour ago.”
Dohi directed his NVGs at Fitz. Someone else was out here, and judging by the direction, they too were headed straight for Banff.
“Command, be advised, we found tracks,” Neilson said. “And they’re headed your way.”
***
“You’re too exhausted,” Leslie said. “Time to let someone else take over communicating with the network.”
Kate groaned. She had only managed a few hours of sleep. When Beckham had been called to the field, she knew she had missed her chance at rest. Instead, she had gone directly back to the tunnel entrance in the Houston hospital just outside the outpost gates.
Her staff was here now too, and Leslie had taken the chair, ready to connect. Ron reluctantly held a writhing tendril of webbing at the back of her neck while Sammy watched.
A team of soldiers stood guard over the research site, several of them watching.
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 103