The Gathering (The Last Storm Book 2)
Date: 2023-04-16 00:00:00+00:00
Description: THE NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN. They thought the worst was behind them, but they were wrong. Very wrong. After surviving one brutal night against a creature they call the obayifo , Cent and Torres are unexpectedly reunited when both are recruited by the mysterious billionaire Harold Campbell to join his fight against the creatures that lurk in the shadows. For Cent, it's an easy decision: Find and kill the obayifo and rid the world of their scourge. For Torres, it's a little more complicated. There are forces turning her against people she trusts, with her future-and those of the people she love
Publisher: Independently published
Rights: Copyright 2022 Sam Sisavath. All rights reserved.

THE GATHERING

THE LAST STORM, BOOK 2

SAM SISAVATH

CONTENTS

About The Gathering

1. Cent

2. Torres

3. Cent

4. Torres

5. Mac

6. Torres

7. Cent

8. Torres

9. Cent

10. Torres

11. Cent

12. Torres

13. Cent

14. Torres

15. Benton

16. Cent

17. Torres

18. Cent

19. Torres

20. Cent

21. Mac

22. Torres

23. Benton

24. Torres

25. Cent

26. Benton

27. Torres

28. Cent

29. Torres

Epilogue

ABOUT THE GATHERING

THE NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN.

They thought the worst was behind them, but they were wrong. Very wrong.

After surviving one brutal night against a creature they call the obayifo, Cent and Torres are unexpectedly reunited when both are recruited by the mysterious billionaire Harold Campbell to join his fight against the creatures that lurk in the shadows.

For Cent, it’s an easy decision: Find and kill the obayifo and rid the world of their scourge. For Torres, it’s a little more complicated. There are forces turning her against people she trusts, with her future—and those of the people she loves—in the balance.

From abandoned basements to dark sewers to secret complexes, Cent and Torres will be inducted into a world they didn’t even know existed until now. And it’s much, much more complicated and vastly more dangerous than they ever thought.

After The Last Storm has receded, it’s time for The Gathering to begin…

1

CENT

Its eyes. They were different and yet, familiar. Black as the night and dark as the bottom of an endless ocean.

Lifeless; and yet, alive.

Somehow, alive.

There was only one inside the dusty basement where it had dwelled for God only knows how long. Only He knew how it had gotten here, or who it used to be when it was still someone and not just an undead thing.

Cobwebs draped the ceilings and covered up corners. Every nook and cranny was infested with some type of living thing. Or formerly living thing. The carcasses of insects big and small, rodents furry and furless, filled the place.

The creature could have settled here weeks ago. Months ago. Maybe even years ago. It was crouched in one of the corners, the stink radiating from every inch of its pruned black flesh, more powerful than anything Cent had ever had the displeasure of enduring. It was all he could do to start breathing through his mouth, but even that didn’t really help.

It took him over two weeks to track it down, which was par for the course. Most people didn’t like to talk about the monster hiding in their shadows. This city and its populace proved no different. But, finally, those efforts had born fruit.

It took Cent three times as long as it should have to come down the stairs, every step creaking under his weight. Old wooden slabs near their breaking point, threatening to drop him without a moment’s notice. But they held, if just barely.

Cent expected it to pounce as soon as he reached the bottom of the stairs, but it didn’t. Instead, it watched him from the darkness, black eyes glinting against a streak of moonlight that shone through a high window above it. The moonlight was its friend; in the daytime, the sun was its mortal enemy. As if with all things sinful, the light brought forth the truth of the world. And this thing—this creature—had no uses for the truth.

Now, he stood less than three yards from where it perched on the floor, slightly bent over the body of a cat. Or what was left of one. There wasn’t very much there. Even though his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, Cent still found it difficult to make out where the feline’s limbs ended and where the creature’s skeletal frame began.

There was blood on the heavily scarred cement floor, along with patches of fur and organs. The killer didn’t care for organs, whether they be human or animal. It only ever wanted one thing: Blood.

Just the blood.

It’d had to gnaw its way through flesh and muscle and bone to get to that blood. Patience was not something they lacked. The same was true for their appetite. They were insatiable, living only to feed.

There was no telling what this one used to be. Male or female. Young or old. Once they turned and the hairs fell out, they discarded all the things that made them human—clothing, sex organs, and any vanity or embarrassment. His mother and his grandfather called them obayifo. Maybe that was their real name and maybe it wasn’t. None of it mattered.

What mattered was the here and now. In this dark basement, in this part of the city that had long ago pretended the house above him even existed. The creatures thrived in places like these, abandoned by “civilized” people, and only treaded by the bravest of the forgotten.

Cent watched it, a part of him sickened by the sight. The other part was mesmerized. It truly was something that defied all laws of nature, not to mention God Himself.

And yet there it was. Alive, but not really.

Cent breathed in and out…in and out…each time forcing his heartbeat to return to its normal state. It took a lot of work, but he’d learned to control his emotions when he had to. He did that now, willing everything back to normalcy as he prepared himself.

The creature finally stopped bothering with the cat and peered through the shadows at him, beady black eyes focusing in for the first time. Maybe it’d sensed him. Or smelled him. Or, more likely, it’d heard the blood moving through his veins. They could do that. There was something extraordinary about them despite their frail, malnourished appearance. It was one of the things that made them so…complex.

But there was nothing complex about the dark black eyes that zeroed in on him now. His breath quickened slightly. Not by much, only the barest bit. It couldn’t be helped. The heat of upcoming battle was something he couldn’t ignore.

Cent flexed his gloveless fingers around the handle of the knife in his right hand. The weapon was just slightly over sixteen inches long, eleven of those making up the sharp blade that was slightly curved near the center. The remaining six inches made up the dark rosewood handle. Cent had seen militiamen carrying something like it back in his native Nigeria, and he’d always been fascinated. Later, he would learn it was patterned after something called a kukri.

The one he held now looked similar to that traditional Nepalese knife but was his own design, made specifically for his hand. The blade, too, was a novelty: Mostly traditional metal with a thin coating of silver along the edge.

A silver knife, essentially.

The creature’s eyes—tar pits devoid of whites—moved downward, leaving Cent’s face and resting on the knife in his hand. Even in the darkness of the basement, Cent thought he could see the fear that flicked across its face. But that could have just been a figment of his imagination. Did they even feel fear? Did they even feel anything? Or was it all hunger? Insatiable, undying hunger?

Whatever it was that played across its gaunt face, the pruned black flesh of its skin seemed to move, every inch of it like worms twisting just underneath the surface. It was about to attack.

God be with me.

It lunged. Red liquid flitted across the dank basement as the creature opened its mouth, revealing a cavern of jagged, broken teeth. It had lost more than it retained, but what it still had were capable of puncturing Cent’s skin through the layers of clothing and reaching the skin underneath. And then—its ultimate goal—his blood.

A year ago, Cent would have been caught unprepared by the speed of its movement. Despite its frail state, its skeletal frame, the obayifo moved with impossible swiftness, its speed defying all the laws of God.

But this wasn’t a year ago, and Cent was ready.

He sidestepped and it flew past him, swiping out with its left hand as it did so. Or what was left of a hand. There was just a stump there, ending somewhere about the elbow. The wound had been cauterized long ago, looking more like a stump of flesh than anything.

Cent slashed with the knife—

And missed!

It was the angle. He wanted to blame it on the angle, anyway. He’d overestimated his ability to catch the creature while it was in motion. Similarly, he’d underestimated just how fast it could move. This one was faster than the others he’d encountered. Maybe it was the lack of a full arm. Or, maybe, it was just his overconfidence finally catching up with him.

Whatever the case, Cent righted himself quickly. He turned just as the creature stopped and did the same.

It snarled at him before charging again.

Instead of sidestepping this time, Cent swung the blade from right to left and caught the creature across the top of its domed head. The silver-coated edge cut through flesh and bone with barely any resistance, almost as if he were chopping through gelatin dessert instead of what used to be a human skull.

As the creature continued to barrel toward him, its forward momentum carrying it forward, Cent stepped slightly back and to the side, allowing the deformed thing to crash onto the floor face-first.

It laid perfectly still and didn’t try to get back up.

There was a reason Cent used a silver-bladed weapon instead of a gun. This was America, and he could have gotten a ghost gun just about anywhere. But guns didn’t do anything to an obayifo except annoy them. Sometimes it didn’t even do that. He’d seen it for himself; the failure to recognize the futility of projectile weapons quickly enough had cost the lives of his friends. For a man like Cent, who avoided friendships, the loss of those men had been heartbreaking. Maybe, he thought, this was why he hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of new friends since.

Cent stood over the creature and waited just in case it wasn’t really dead. You could never be too sure.

Seconds passed.

Then a minute…

“It dead, man?”

The question came from the short black kid perched at the top of the basement stairs. Roland. He was the one who had led Cent here in the first place. Just thirteen years old, though he looked older. Life on the streets did that to you.

Cent slid the knife into the sheath behind his back and turned around. “Yes. It’s dead.”

“You sure, man? ‘Cause 2G thought it was dead too when he shot it with a whole clip, but it got up and ate his ass instead.”

Cent kicked the creature in the side of its head. Coagulated clumps of something that might have been brain matter, blood, or something else sloshed out of the hole at the top of the skull where Cent had struck it.

The creature itself didn’t move.

“Damn,” Roland said. The kid stood up. “Didn’t think anything could kill it. You some kind of special cop or something?”

Cent smiled. “No.”

“You sure? You got the vibe of Five-Oh.”

“I’m not a cop. Special or otherwise.”

“Shit, you got it man. You got it.” He paused for a moment. “What you gonna do with it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Cent looked up at the single high window in front of him. He picked up the creature by its bony legs—there wasn’t much flesh or muscle to hold onto, just bones—and dragged it a few feet over to the left. He deposited the obayifo in a spot where it laid almost entirely in a pool of moonlight. When the night gave way to morning, sunlight would pour in through that window and over the creature. Once that happened, there wouldn’t be very much of it left except bones. The flesh would melt away, taking whatever tainted evil that had overcome it, with the new day.

He turned and headed back up the stairs.

Roland was staring past him and at the creature below. “What’d you do that for?”

“So the morning can take it,” Cent said.

“Come again?”

“Come back in the morning. You’ll see.”

“Hell nah. This’s the last time I’m ever coming down here.”

Smart kid.

He said, “Where do you live?”

Roland blinked at him as if Cent had just spoken in a language he didn’t understand.

“Where do you live?” Cent asked again.

“Here, man. I live here. A lot of us do. Until that thing showed up, anyway. Got Michael C. and Tony Cray-Cray when they tried to evict it.”

“It’s yours again, now.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.” The kid grinned, showing brilliant pearl whites for someone who survived on junk food and soda and probably hadn’t seen a dentist in maybe forever.

They left the basement, Roland leading the way. The kid talked the entire time to the front door. He told Cent about other people that used to live in the abandoned house. They all had names that were clearly made up.

Roland opened the door and stepped outside and froze in place.

Cent reached for the knife behind his back.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Freeman,” a voice said. Female. Unfriendly. But not threatening, either.

Cent walked past a still-frozen Roland to get a look at the speaker.

A woman in a black pant suit and white blouse. She was wearing thin glasses that looked almost invisible against the night air. There was an SUV parked behind her that wasn’t there when Cent first arrived at the house. He couldn’t see anyone inside, but of course the woman wasn’t alone. She might not have sounded very friendly, but being unfriendly and voluntarily driving into a place like this was not the smartest thing one could do. Especially when one was Caucasian and dressed like that.

She stood on the sidewalk. “I come in peace, Calvin.”

“What did you call me?” Cent asked.

“I’m sorry. I forgot that you prefer Cent.”

Cent stayed silent.

Finally, he said, “Who are you?”

“I’m here because of my employer. He’d like to meet with you.” She took something out of her breast pocket and held it out to him.

Cent didn’t move to take it. He also didn’t take his hand away from his sheathed knife either.

“I assure you, he just wants to talk,” the woman said. “We’ve gone to great pains to set up this meeting.”

“How did you find me?”

“A lot of research. It’s something we’re very good at.” There was nothing that sounded like boasting in the way she’d said those words. She was simply stating a truth as she saw it.

“You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“My name is Madeline.”

“I don’t mean your name. I mean who are you?”

A ghost of a smile appeared on her naturally thin lips. “Call this number and find out.”

She didn’t move, but didn’t put the card away, either.

Somewhere behind him, Roland hadn’t moved or said a word. Maybe, like Cent, he couldn’t quite believe Madeline’s presence.

Finally, he took the six steps forward to take the card.

Up close, Madeline was much more attractive, if in a severe sort of way. She was just an inch or two shorter than his own six feet. He hadn’t met many women who was as tall as her who didn’t play for the WNBA.

“What does your employer want?” he asked.

“Just to talk.”

“About what?”

“What you just did in that house. What you did in the Bronx three weeks ago. And San Diego a month before that. Chicago, Tampa Bay, Dallas…” She stopped. For dramatic effect, he assumed. “And Houston, of course.”

Houston. That was a city he hadn’t heard in a while. It was a place he didn’t want to remember, even if it did play a key role in who he was, and what he had done, tonight.

“You know about Houston,” he said.

“My employer does. He shares your goal, Mr. Freeman.”

“Which is?”

“Saving the world, of course.”

2

TORRES

Torres had a long list of regrets in life, but telling the truth was something she didn’t think would ever be on it. And yet, here she was, having told the truth—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God—only to see everything fall apart. Her career was gone, as was Macy. Both were forcibly stripped from her. She’d looked high and low for ways to fight back, but it always returned to one thing: Money. She needed a lot of it and she didn’t have it. And what she did have was not enough. Not nearly enough.

Maybe that was why she didn’t answer the phone call the first time.

Or the second time.

Or any other times after that.

The only times she even considered returning a call was when a familiar voice popped up on her voicemail:

“Hey, it’s Will. You’re a hard lady to get ahold of these days. Heard about what happened to you. Abso-fucking-lutely bullshit if you ask me. Anyways, give me a ring if you ever wanna grab a drink. The strong kind, of course. And oh by the way, Danny says hi.”

Will. It’d been a long time since she’d heard from him. A long time since she’d heard from any of her “friends,” actually. She wasn’t surprised he was the first one to reach out. Will was always a rebel. Him and that smartass friend of his. Torres didn’t return his call even though she wanted to. She didn’t want to drag him into this. Right now she was a leper, and anyone that touched her was liable to get infected, too.

The days were long, and the nights even longer. She would have drunk herself into a stupor if she thought it would help and if she was a drinker. But it wouldn’t have done any good, and she wasn’t. Spending her days online, searching for ways to fight back and reclaim everything she’d lost, seemed like the better alternative. She took copious amounts of notes, but it all came back to one thing:

Money.

She needed money.

A lot of it.

There were ways to acquire what she needed, and fast, but they were all illegal. Richter would have come to the same conclusion, but he would have gone on ahead with it anyway. But she wasn’t Richter. She was a cop. Or she used to be. So what was she now?

She fell asleep at her desk, the browser on her two-year-old Mac Air opened on a forum created by amateur lawyers. She dreamt of Macy, of Wheeler, and the events at the Wilshire Apartments. That was normal these days. She rarely went a sleepless night without reliving what had happened when Hurricane Matthew ripped through the city.

One night. That was all it had taken. Who knew one single night could change her life so much?

The knocking came from the living room.

It was soft but persistent.

She sat up in the chair and waited for whoever had knocked to go away. Her wall clock ticked to eight in the evening. That was surprising. She could usually go all the way up to midnight before she tired herself out. Maybe she was just getting old.

More knocking and still just as persistent.

She counted to ten.

The knocking wouldn’t go away.

She sighed and got up, then padded into the living room barefoot. The apartment was a single bedroom with two baths. The kitchen was decent, but that was about it. It was all she could afford at the moment.

Torres looked through the peephole first. A tall woman with large wire-rimmed glasses smiled back at her. Her visitor either knew Torres was looking out or had anticipated it.

“Officer Torres,” the woman said. “May I have a word?”

“What do you want?” Torres asked. She hadn’t bothered to couch it in a friendly tone. She didn’t have the patience for that these days.

“I’m here on behalf of my employer. He wishes to speak with you.”

“Who’s your employer?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Then you’re out of luck, lady.”

She turned to go.

“Officer Torres,” the woman said, loud enough to be heard through the door. “We know what really happened at the Wilshire Apartments.”

That stopped Torres briefly, but not for long. “If you’re a reporter, you’re too late. That boat’s sailed.”

She started walking away again.

The woman, on the other hand, didn’t go anywhere. Her voice remained loud enough for half of the floor to hear. “My employer believes that you saw what you told your superiors you saw that night. He also believes that you didn’t tell the whole truth. Not for your own sake, but for the sake of others. You, the girl, and the boy weren’t the only three to leave the Wilshire alive. There was a fourth. A young man named Cent.”

This time Torres stopped completely.

“Do I have your attention now?” the woman asked.

Yeah, you do, Torres thought as she turned fully around and walked back.

Cent. The woman had said Cent’s name. No one knew about Cent except her, Macy, and Mickey. And Mickey had disappeared after giving a bullshit statement to the first police officer he met after being rescued. As for Macy, the girl hadn’t said much. No one else should have known about Cent.

“Who are you?” Torres asked.

“I’m just a messenger. If you’ll open the door—”

Torres did just that before the woman could finish. She looked out at a tall figure in a tailored pantsuit and blazer. Early thirties, wearing minimal makeup. Blonde hair tied in a ponytail behind her, giving her a somewhat hard-edged look.

The smile that greeted Torres face was only mildly smug. “We’ve been trying to reach you by phone, Officer Torres.”

“I’m not a cop anymore. Stop calling me Officer Torres.”

The woman nodded. “Ms. Torres, then.”

Torres stepped aside and the woman entered. Before she closed the door, Torres glanced up and down the hallway.

There was no one else out there.

At least, no one that Torres could see.

“Thank you for hearing me out,” the woman was saying. “My employer—”

“Give me a name,” Torres said as she closed the door with a soft click. She thought about pushing the lock into place but decided against it. The 9mm Glock in the holster behind her back, hidden underneath her shirt, would have to do for security.

“My name is Madeline,” the woman said.

“Not you. Your employer.”

“He will tell you himself when the two of you meet.”

“I’m not meeting with anyone until I know their name.”

“That’s your prerogative,” the woman who called herself Madeline said. It could have been an alias, of course, but there was something about her that just fit a “Madeline.”

“So convince me.”

“The young man you know as Cent has already met with my employer. They’re waiting for you to join them.”

“How do you know about Cent? Did Mickey tell you?”

“No.”

Macy? she thought but quickly dismissed it.

Torres said instead, “Who, then?”

“No one. We know Cent was there that night just as we know what you and he confronted. A creature that didn’t die when you shot it, stabbed it, or mutilated it. But a creature that did die when you used the right weapon.”

“Which is?”

“Silver.”

Torres didn’t say anything. She stared at Madeline, trying to decide if she was being tricked. Was this woman actually a reporter? Or maybe Internal Affairs trying to lure her into some elaborate trap? Except none of those possibilities made any sense. The Houston Police Department had already sent her packing, and no one she’d contacted in the press about her story had bitten. Not that she blamed any of them. Who would believe a single thing about that night? She wouldn’t have either if she hadn’t lived through it.

“You’re alone?” Torres asked.

“Of course not,” Madeline said. “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t drive.”

“Yes, I get that, but why don’t you have a driver’s license anyway?”

“Because”—she smiled again—“I don’t drive.” Madeline took out a business card and held it out to her. “My employer is waiting for your phone call. If you want to make sure what happened at the Wilshire wasn’t all in vain, you’ll meet with him.”

Torres took the card but didn’t look at it. She pocketed it instead. “You mentioned Cent.”

“He’ll be there as well.”

“And he’s already met your employer?”

“He has.”

“How is he?”

“Doing very well, actually.” Soft hazel eyes roamed the tiny living room they were standing in. “And so have you, considering all the obstacles that have been placed in front of you.”

Now that’s a bold-faced lie.

Torres could say a lot of things about her current situation, but “doing very well” wasn’t one of them.

“What do you know about it?” she asked Madeline.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. But you seem to know a lot about my…situation. I don’t like that.”

“We’re very good at research, Ms. Torres.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…you should meet with my employer before he leaves the city.”

“And if I don’t?”

“That’s your choice.” She pursed a smile. It was only partially genuine. “If that’s your final decision, I’ll leave you to your research. I hope it bears fruit.”

Torres watched the woman walk to the door, open it, then turn back around before stepping through. “And I hope you get her back.”

“‘Her?’ Who are you talking about?”

“Macy. I hope you get her back. Child Welfare Services is no place for a child that’s already lost as much as she has.”

Before Torres could respond, Madeline stepped through the door. As soon as the door clicked softly shut, Torres hurried forward and pushed the two locks into place. She put her hand on the Glock behind her back and rushed across the living room.

She reached the far window and leaned against the wall, peeking from behind the curtains at the street below. It was already dark and streetlamps had come on. Torres knew exactly where the building’s front doors were and watched them closely.

Almost a full two minutes later, Madeline stepped outside and onto the sidewalk, then walked toward a parked black SUV. One of the vehicle’s back doors opened as she approached and climbed inside. Torres couldn’t see make out the driver behind the tinted windows as the car drove off into the mostly-empty street.

Torres took her hand away from the handgun and retrieved the business card from her pocket. It was plain white with a single seven-digit phone number in the center. When she turned the card over, there was a single handwritten word on it.

It read: Obayifo.

“Cent,” she said out loud.

Images of the young African refugee flashed across her mind’s eye. The last time she saw him, he was saying goodbye to her back at the Wilshire. His final words to her were, “Maybe we’ll meet again one day.”

She had smiled at that, and replied, “I doubt it.”

That had brought an equally dubious grin from him.

Over the months since Hurricane Matthew, she’d wondered if Cent was still out there. Now, she knew the answer.

Torres walked to her bedroom and picked up her phone and dialed the number.

A man answered on the third ring. “Officer Torres.”

“Just Torres.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. Force of habit. I’ve always just thought of you as Officer Torres, but obviously you’re no longer with the Houston Police Department.”

“You know a lot about me.”

“We do our research.”

“So I hear. You know a lot about me, but I don’t even know your name.”

“I’d rather not say it over an unsecured phone line.”

Unsecured phone line?

What did the man think they were doing, playing cloak and dagger spy stuff?

“That doesn’t seem fair, does it?” she said. “The least you can do is tell me your name.”

The man on the other end didn’t answer right away. She imagined him trying to make up his mind.

“I’m hanging up now,” Torres said even though she made no motions to do any such thing.

“Harold,” the man said. “My name is Harold.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Why would anyone choose Harold for an alias?”

She smiled to herself. He had a point. She could come up with a hundred different names on the spot and none of them would have been Harold.

“All right, Harold. Where do we meet?”

The man told her.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“You have a sick sense of humor, Harold.”

“Not at all. I just think there’s no better place to discuss what we have to discuss. A reminder of what we’re up against.”

She thought about it. Did she really want to go back there?

The answer was obvious: No.

A thousand times no.

As if he could sense her doubts, Harold said, “We need to go back to where it all started, Ms. Torres. We need to go back to the Wilshire Apartments.”

3

CENT

The smell was the same — the thick and unnatural aura that oozed from the building’s pores. He hadn’t been able to place it at the time, but now it was as easy to spot as breathing. It was still there after all these months. Why did he think it would get any better? Maybe he’d just been hopeful. Or deluded. The truth was, things didn’t get better anymore; they only got worse. Cent had learned that the hard way. He started breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t have to deal with the stench.

The lobby was already showing signs of repair work being done. It wasn’t going to look any more hospitable once they were finished than it had been before Hurricane Matthew ravaged it, but it would look…decent. Cent felt sorry for the people who had to reclaim the property. He hoped that was a long time coming.

He walked down the familiar back hallway and found the stairwell, next to the out-of-order elevators. He went up, the only sounds for seemingly miles coming from his boots and slightly labored breathing. The number of stairs in front of him wasn’t responsible for the latter. The reason was what he knew was waiting for him.

The tenth floor. The place where everything changed. Even now, Cent wasn’t sure if the change had been for the better or worse. He’d gotten a new calling in life, but was that actually a good thing? He supposed time would tell.

Until then…

In the months since that night, other homeless refugees of Houston had taken up temporary residence in the Wilshire. Empty cans had been replaced with fresher-looking empty cans; old syringes had been replaced with newer ones. It was all the same, just different expiration dates. It never ceased to amaze Cent just how lowly people could fall, and continue to fall.

He was sweating from the heat and humidity by the time he reached his destination. He didn’t want to think about how hard it was going to be for Harold to get up here. But then, Harold wouldn’t come alone. Cent doubted that the man did anything by himself these days.

He pushed open the metal stairwell door and stepped through it.

The floor was the same now as when he’d last seen it, as if not a single soul had come up here since. But of course he knew that wasn’t true. He’d read some of the official reports by the investigators that Madeline had provided him. There had been others up here since that night, searching for answers. They had wasted their time, not because they were incompetent, but because they didn’t know the questions to ask in the first place.

He moved along the hallway, the scent from the discolored walls and cracked ceiling following him wherever he went. There were no lights but plenty of natural sunlight to see with. Besides, he wasn’t afraid. Cent had come prepared. Unlike the first time, when he and his friends didn’t know what they were facing.

And he knew exactly how to kill it if he should meet one again.

The door into Apartment 1010 was wide open. Now that was a familiar sight. He remembered approaching it months ago, with that same door just as wide open, as inviting then as it was now. But unlike then, Cent wasn’t afraid as he reached it, turned, and went through without hesitation.

She was standing next to the living room window, peering out. New glass and plywood boards shielded the apartment from the outside world. It was an improvement, albeit not by very much. He could smell the stink of death in every inch of the room. That was something that would never go away, a forever reminder of what had transpired here.

“It looks the same,” Torres said. “I expected it to look different, but…it looks the same.”

“Yes.” Cent walked over. “It even smells the same.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?”

“To be back here.”

“It’s…not what I would have done with my Saturdays.” Then, before they could dwell on the uncomfortableness of their surroundings, “How long have you been waiting?”

“Half an hour.” She paused, before continuing. “I wasn’t sure I could even come inside. A part of me was hoping there would be locks.” She shrugged. “I guess the city doesn’t think very much of this place. But they certainly cleaned it up pretty well, didn’t they? You could barely tell that night even happened.”

Cent glanced around the room. There were hints that people had fought for their lives here and there, but nothing that could be generously called “concrete evidence.” Blood stains clung to the coarse carpet and some splatters remained along sections of wall where the sun didn’t reach. The sun was a purifying agent, but it couldn’t rid the world of what it couldn’t touch.

“The city cleaned it all up?” Cent asked.

“The city, the county, the state… They all wanted it to go away. They buried everything. Or what was left after the sun had razed the place, anyway. By the time they were finished, I couldn’t get a job working security at a 7-Eleven.”

“You told the truth.”

“Of course I did. The whole truth. But you know what happens when you fight City Hall.”

“No. What happens?”

She smiled. “Sometimes I forgot you weren’t born here.”

He returned her smile. “So what happens when you fight City Hall?”

“You lose,” Torres said. “Just like I lost.”

Cent didn’t bother going into the bedrooms. He’d already read everything Madeline’s employer had on the building. There were fresh video footage and deep-dive reports on everything that had been found.

He walked over and leaned against the wall across from Torres.

“You don’t look surprised,” she said. “Why is that?”

“His people already combed the building.”

“Madeline’s boss.”

“Yes.”

“This Harold.”

He nodded.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Probably the only man who knows more about what happened to us that night than we do.”

“He knows about what happened to the bodies? All the evidence that disappeared?”

“He does.”

“Wanna tell me, Cent?”

“That depends…”

“On?”

“Are you in?”

She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, Torres watched him closely, and he took the moment to do the same.

Officer Torres had aged noticeably since the last time he saw her even though it’d only been months instead of years. Being a cop had failed to make her life post-Hurricane Matthew easier than his. If anything, she’d had it worse. Wearing a uniform meant she had to answer questions and provide explanations to things and events that couldn’t be explained. All of that had ground her down. He could see it on her face, in the way her shoulders drooped and her posture. She wasn’t the tall and upright law-enforcement officer he remembered meeting that first time.

Cent, on the other hand, hadn’t had to endure any of the things that Torres had. He was a criminal, after all. After that night, he was essentially persona non grata to everyone and everything. He’d always been, he guessed, but that night had made it official.

Finally, Torres said, “I don’t think I have a choice.”

“You do.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I did. And so do you.”

“I’ve lost everything, Cent.”

“I know.” Then, off her questioning look, “Madeline’s employer knows everything about us.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Don’t you find that somewhat disturbing?”

“I find that very disturbing.” Then Cent shrugged. “At first. But the more I think about it, the more I realize there’s not a lot about me to know. I’m a refugee from Africa. I don’t have any relatives in America. There isn’t much else to know about me.”

“What about Richter? Your past with his crew?”

“He knows about that, too. None of it matters. What matters is what’s out there.”

“Which is?”

“You know what.”

She shook her head. “I don’t. I don’t even know what any of this is about.”

Cent didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stared at her.

“What?” Torres said.

“When I said Harold’s people knows everything about us, I mean it, Torres. They know everything.”

Again, Torres didn’t respond right away. Cent thought he could see the gears turning inside her head, trying to decide just how much Madeline’s boss really knew about them. About her.

Finally, the ex-cop said, “They know everything.”

“Yes.”

“Including the research I’ve been doing about what happened that night.”

He nodded.

“What about you?” she asked. “What have you been doing since that night, Cent?”

Cent reached back, brushed aside his coat, and drew his bladed weapon. He held it out to her, handle first. Torres took it hesitantly, but that quickly gave way to curiosity. She turned the knife around, reacting to the way a stream of sunlight reflected off the silver-coated blade.

“It’s silver,” she said.

“It is.”

She looked up at him. “The crosses…?”

He shook his head. “No. Something I had made myself, from my own money.” Then, smiling with some embarrassment, “Well. Not my money.”

She smiled back at him, understanding what he’d meant. The money Cent had used for the knife’s creation came from the same funds he’d earned working with Richter and Dutch. After his mother’s death, there was more than enough to do anything or go anywhere he wanted with them. Instead, he’d found a weaponsmith.

“Why are you carrying this around with you?” Torres asked.

“You know why,” Cent said, taking the knife back and putting it away.

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” Cent didn’t say anything else.

Torres sighed like someone finally breathing for the first time. Or, maybe, someone admitting a fact she’d been hiding and had been weighing her down. “There’s more of them out there.”

“That’s an understatement,” a voice said.

Both Cent and Torres turned to look toward the open door into Apartment 1010, where Madeline stood behind a man sitting in a wheelchair. The latter had been the one who’d spoken.

“Torres,” Cent said, “this is Harold Campbell.”

“The mystery man on the phone,” Torres said. Then, as familiarity flashed across her face. “Wait. You’re that Harold Campbell?”

“That would be me,” Harold said.

“The billionaire. Founder and owner of Campbell Conglomerates. The man whose money built the HC Dome ten miles from here.”

“Those are all me, too, though I can’t remember how the naming of the football stadium came about.”

Harold Campbell glanced up at Madeline and nodded. The woman pushed him into the room a few feet before retreating and closing the door after her. Harold rolled across the living room on his own toward them. The chair was a state-of-the-art motorized device, its arms fastened with controls and plugs, with space for even more connections. Cent had been around the man three times now, and each time he’d seen how well Harold used the chair’s controls.

Cent looked back at Torres, who was staring at Campbell. Not because the man was in a wheelchair, but because the man was in a wheelchair and, for some reason, had chosen the most wheelchair-unfriendly location to meet.

Harold must have understood her expression too because he smiled. “I had help getting up here, in case you were curious.”

“Odd place for a man in a wheelchair to choose,” Torres said.

“Odd, but necessary.”

“Why ‘necessary?’”

“It all began here for the two of you. And it’s poetic that it should begin here again, for the three of us.”

Harold Campbell was in his forties and as frail-looking now as when Cent had first met him. For a man who couldn’t go anywhere without assistance, he seemed to always be in remarkably good spirits.

Like Cent when he first met the man, Torres couldn’t help but stare at Harold for a few seconds too long.

“Paralyzed from the waist down,” Harold said as if reading her mind. He’d done the same to Cent.

“I’m sorry,” Torres said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s all right. I don’t blame you. The doctors have a name for it as long as your arm, mine, and Mr. Cent’s combined. Whatever they call it, the result is the same: I haven’t been able to walk under my own power since I was twenty-one. It’s been a bane and a gift.”

Harold had stopped about five feet in front of them. A slash of sunlight highlighted his pale face, giving him an even more brittle look than normal. And yet, that smile remained on his face. Even now, Cent couldn’t tell how much of it was forced.

“A gift?” Torres said.

“I wouldn’t be in the position I am today if I hadn’t been confined to this thing,” Harold said. He tapped the metal arms of the chair. “Well, not this exact thing. This one is the latest in a long line of models I designed myself. I’ve modified it to keep up with my needs.” Harold sat back and folded his hands in his lap. “So. How does it feel to be back here?”

“It feels wrong.” She looked over at Cent, as if for confirmation.

He nodded. “Sounds about right.”

“Your lives changed in this building seven months ago,” Harold said. He focused on Cent. “For Mr. Freeman, it gave him a new purpose in life. One that is, I like to think, more noble than his previous profession.”

Cent gave a slight smirk.

Harold turned to Torres. “But I know it hasn’t been smooth sailing for you. You’ve discovered that the truth is not always the truth. I suspect that was a very rude awakening.”

Torres pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

“Which is why the three of us are here,” Harold continued.

“And that is?” Torres said.

“To find the truth. To expose the lies to the world. And, if we do it right, save everyone in it in the process.”

“That’s a hell of a sales pitch. How long did it take you to come up with that?”

Again, that amused smile on Harold’s face. “Not too long. I thought it up on the flight over.”

“Good for you. Now why don’t you tell me what it is that you really want from me?”

“I already did, Ms. Torres.”

“To save the world? The three of us? Is that it?”

“Is that such a hard thing to believe?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would say that.” He turned over to Cent. “That’s why Mr. Freeman is here.”

Torres looked over at Cent. “What does he mean by that?”

“You’ve been looking for them since that night,” Cent said. “But I actually found them. There’s more of them out there, Torres. Houston wasn’t the only city.”

“You’re talking about them. What did you call them?”

“Obayifo.”

“Is that what you still think they are?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what they do. And have been doing for some time now.”

“What are you saying, Cent?”

“He means,” Harold said, “that the ones you encountered seven months ago weren’t the first. They also weren’t the second or the third, or even the hundredth.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I’m dead serious, Ms. Torres. There’s no joke here. No punchline. Just the truth.”

“I tried telling the truth. All it got me was a kick in the teeth. That’s not something I plan on going through a second time.”

“That’s their loss. And our gain. These creatures…these obayifo that Cent calls them…they’ve been a plague on humankind for as long as there have been humans walking this planet.” He leaned slightly forward in his chair for emphasis. “My people estimates there could be as many as a few hundred to a few thousand.”

“That’s…a wide range.”

“Yes, it is. The thing about these creatures that makes it so hard to nail down their exact number is the same thing that makes them so hard to find: They’re smart. They’re too smart. They’d have to be, to have stayed hidden for so long. But, every now and then—like what happened to you and Cent at the Wilshire—they reveal themselves.”

“So why don’t you take all this great research that your team apparently does so well to the press?” Torres asked.

“You did that. What happened?”

“I’m not Harold Campbell. I’m not a billionaire.”

“You really think that matters?”

“Of course it does. Anyone who tells you money doesn’t buy influence is lying through their teeth. You have it. The money and the influence. People would believe you.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Harold said. He sat back in his chair, a darkness coming over his face. “I tried. Like you, Ms. Torres, I tried. And they kicked me in the teeth, too.”

4

TORRES

“Do you trust him?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“For the same reason you’re here.”

“You don’t know my reasons, Cent.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You read what they have on me.”

He nodded. “I also read what they had on me. It won’t come as a surprise to you that your folder was bigger than mine.”

She and Cent looked at each other. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find but the grown man—not that he wasn’t already a grown man when they first met—sitting across the table from her in her kitchen wasn’t it. He seemed taller somehow, though she didn’t think that was possible. Cent was already in his mid-twenties and you didn’t grow taller at that age. He’d clearly put on bulk, which was easy to distinguish from his broader shoulders and overall bigger build. But it was his face that was different from when she last saw him in person. He was more serious, more somber, like a man holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The meeting with Campbell had come and gone over two hours ago, leaving Torres’s head spinning more now than it’d had that fateful night when her entire world came unglued. The things Campbell had told her should have had her rolling on the floor laughing. That is, if she hadn’t seen the things she’d seen with her own eyes. It was the same reason no one in the press believed her. And, despite his money and power, no one believed Campbell, either.

I guess there’s a limit to what money can buy after all.

“What’s he got you doing?” Torres asked.

“Nothing yet.” Cent played with a mug filled with soda and blocks of ice. He’d only taken a sip since he sat down.

“But he’s got plans for you.”

“For both of us.”

“We’re not there yet, Cent. At least I’m not there yet.”

“He’s telling the truth, you know. I can verify a lot of it with my own eyes. They’re out there, Torres.”

“And the scope of what he’s saying?”

“That…I can’t confirm.”

“It’s just been you all this time. Out there, looking for these things…”

He nodded.

“Why?” Torres asked. “Why do you do it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

Torres didn’t fully believe him. Cent knew why he was doing what he was doing but he didn’t want to tell her for whatever reason. Maybe because he didn’t think she’d believe him. Despite everything they’d been through, they really had only known each other for one day. And it wasn’t even a full day, at that.

“How many?” she asked. “How many have you seen out there?”

“Seven.”

“Seven? There are seven of those things out there?”

“Seven that I’ve come across. More that I haven’t.”

“According to Campbell, there are hundreds—maybe thousands—more that you haven’t run across yet.”

He nodded. Again, that somber expression.

“Tell me the truth, Cent. The whole truth, so God help you: Do you believe all the things he told us back there?”

“I believe that he believes it.”

“What about you? What do you believe?”

Cent didn’t hesitate. “Most of it. But I’m willing to believe the rest if I can see them for myself.”

“You’re really committed to this.”

“I have to be.”

“You ‘have’ to be? What’s that mean? Why do you ‘have’ to be anything, Cent?”

He gave her a forced smile. Cent didn’t lie very well, and he certainly couldn’t sell a fake smile worth his life. “After everything I’ve seen, I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen, Torres. I survived that night for a reason. Richter, Dutch… Those were better men than me. Stronger. Bigger. And smarter. But I survived. Why?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It must have been for a reason. Maybe this is it.”

“Hunting down obayifo.”

“Yes. Whether it’s my fate or not…” He shrugged. “I’ll let God sort it out when I reach the end.”

She leaned back in her seat and sighed. “That’s…a hell of a reason to do something, Cent.”

“It’s been a hell of a life, Torres.”

She stared at him in silence again. He met her gaze and didn’t look away. She didn’t have to wonder if he believed any of the things he’d told her. The answer was quick and obvious: He did. Every little bit of it.

“You’re really going through with this, huh?” she asked.

He nodded. “I already gave him my word.”

“Campbell.”

“Yes.”

“You really think your word means anything to a man like that?”

“It means everything to me, and that’s all that matters.”

“God, Cent, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Does that mean you’re coming along?”

Torres sighed and toyed with her own mug of coffee. It wasn’t a very good idea to drink coffee so late in the day, but then again, she was doing a lot of things that wasn’t very healthy for her these days. Meeting a man like Harold Campbell at the Wilshire this morning was one of them. She had sworn she’d never go back there again, but there she was anyway.

“Someone has to keep you out of trouble,” Torres finally said.

“I appreciate that. But is that the only reason?”

“No.”

“Macy.”

Surprise flashed across her face. “How did you know?”

“Harold has an extensive report on you, remember? I read all of it.” He shrugged. “I had nothing to do while waiting for them to contact you.”

“What else does it say? The report?”

“You’ve been trying to get Macy back.”

“And?”

“And you haven’t been gaining a lot of traction.”

“They’re right. I haven’t.” She took a sip from her coffee before continuing. It was already too warm. “You need money to take on City Hall, Cent. Campbell promised to help with that. And I believe him because money is one thing that man has loads of.”

“How much is he promising you?”

“Enough to get Macy back. You have your mission from God, Cent, and I have Macy. I’ll do anything to get that girl back.”

“You’ve really become attached to her.”

Torres smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Every time she thought about being with Macy, she could feel the girl’s contagious happiness filling her up. “Trust me when I say that I’m just as surprised by it as you are.”

He chuckled. “What makes you think I’m surprised?”

“Because I am,” Torres said. She got up. “You want something else to drink? How about coffee?”

“I don’t think coffee is a good idea this late in the day.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been following through on a lot of not-so-good ideas these days. You too, from the sounds of it.”

He smiled but didn’t say anything.

* * *

Cent’s words echoed inside her head long after the young man left. He’d taken a taxi even though Madeline had offered to send one of the organization’s cars. Cent obviously had money. More than she did, which made Torres just a little bit jealous.

I guess crime does pay after all.

After Cent left, she took a shower and thought about everything Campbell had told her. About the creatures—Cent called them obayifo but Campbell only referred to them as creatures—and how they’d managed to escape detection all these years. They’d surfaced every now and then, like they had seven months ago at the Wilshire. But it’d always been a stray creature or two, like the ones Cent had hunted down and slayed. If she wondered why they were never on the news, all she had to do was think about her own attempts to convince someone about what had happened to her. Every reporter had all but laughed in her face. If even a man like Campbell, with all his money, couldn’t convince someone in the press, what chance did she have?

A snowball’s chance in hell. Maybe not even that.

Her mind wandered back to Macy as she dried herself and then dressed in slacks and a T-shirt. Once upon a time, she would have been preparing for her shift. Those days were long gone. These days, she was happy if she had something to do beyond scouring the Internet for ways to get Macy back that didn’t require massive amounts of funds.

She hadn’t lied to Cent when she said she was only joining them because Campbell could help her get Macy back. Even now, according to Madeline, they were working on ways to extricate the girl from the state's welfare service. The thought of being reunited with the kid again filled her with emotions beyond the dark ones that usually surrounded her these days.

“How long will it take?” she’d asked Madeline.

“As long as it takes,” the secretary had responded with that resting bitch face of hers.

“How exactly are you going to get her back to me?”

“That’s for the lawyers to figure out. From what they tell me, they don’t anticipate it taking very long. A week, at the most.”

She’d been surprised by that. A week, after the months of being without Macy, felt like a blink of an eye. Torres never thought she’d become so attached to someone—especially the daughter of another woman—but the months with Macy had brought out maternal instincts that she didn’t even know she had. Since then, getting the girl back was all she could think about. Her last image of Macy was the eight-year-old being taken away from her, tears streaking down her cheeks as she cried. That cloudy day was just three days removed from when they celebrated her birthday.

And now, she was on the precipice of getting Macy back. All she had to do was go along with Campbell’s crusade to, in the man’s words, “save the world.” Whether any of that was true or not, she didn’t know. And until Macy was back in her arms, she’d play along.

While she dressed, Madeline called and told her a car would be on its way to pick her up. “Pack lightly. We’ll have everything you need when we reach our destination.”

Whatever you say.

The thought of someone footing the bill of this little adventure was a pleasant one. Whatever happened with Campbell during the week, at least she wouldn’t be out any money that she didn’t have.

The phone rang again just as she finished putting on her socks.

It wasn’t Madeline, but a man’s voice. “Ma’am. We’re waiting for you downstairs.”

“That was fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll be down in a bit.”

She put the phone away, grabbed her keys, and stepped outside. She didn’t know why she bothered locking the door. There wasn’t anything inside worth stealing, and even her computer setup was heavily discounted and running on a six-year-old processor. The only valuable things were her police uniform, some trinkets that her mother had bequeathed to her, and Macy’s clothes. None of those things, though, would be any value to anyone but her.

That last thought left her more than a little bit sad as she turned the lock and headed to the elevator.

One week. She could do that.

One week, and she’d get Macy back.

Hell, she’d done way more for less.

* * *

The driver waiting for her on the curb was a thirty-something blond in a decent suit. He smiled as she came out of the building and moved to open the rear door of a parked BMW for her. She would have told him not to bother if she’d known he was going to do it; Torres didn’t like the idea of people in her neighborhood seeing her being chauffeured around, much less having car doors opened for her.

But she said, “Thanks,” anyway, and climbed in. Anything else would have been impolite.

The man beamed. Tall, strong shoulders, and light blue eyes. Even handsome if she were into his type.

“You’re welcome, ma’am,” he said. He was the voice on the phone earlier.

Her driver hurried around the parked Benz and climbed in behind the steering wheel. He glanced up at her in the rearview mirror as he buckled up. “I’m Owen, ma’am.”

“Nice to meet you, Owen,” Torres said. She didn’t offer her name.

Owen didn’t seem to mind as he started the car and maneuvered them into the flow of traffic. Torres leaned back against the plush upholstery. It’d been a long time since she sat in the backseat of a car, never mind one this expensive. A Houston Police Department patrol car had nothing on a BMW.

She didn’t have much by way of luggage, just a backpack with some essentials she didn’t want the hassle of looking for later. The only weapon she had was a small folding knife in the outside pocket of the pack. Not much of a weapon if she happened to run across one of Cent’s obayifo on the way to the airport.

Torres looked out the window and watched the city go by. She wasn’t going to miss it. After everything she’d been through, Houston could go to hell for all she cared. Once she got Macy back, Torres had every intention of leaving the state altogether. She wondered if that was even allowed. She’d have to ask Madeline about that. If she couldn’t leave Texas, she’d move cities. As far as she could put Houston in her rearview mirror—

Something about the traffic outside caught her attention. Torres leaned slightly forward. “Where are we going?”

Owen glanced up at the rearview mirror. “The airport, ma’am.”

“This isn’t the way to the airport.”

“It’s an alternate route.”

Torres reached toward her backpack, resting next to her, with one hand and unzipped the pocket with the knife. “Bullshit. I’ve lived in Houston my whole life. This isn’t the way to the airport.”

The driver gave her a confused look. “Ma’am, I don’t know what to tell you. This is the route they gave me.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Ma’am?”

“Who gave you the route?” Torres asked as she palmed the knife, her thumb searching for and finding the stud that would flick the blade out. She kept the weapon slightly hidden but ready to use.

“Madeline, ma’am,” the driver said. He began to slow down. Cars zipped by on their left and right. “Would you prefer I take another route, ma’am?”

“Yes,” Torres said, leaning forward some more. “I want you to go to the airport, not away from it.”

“Shit,” Owen said.

“What did you say?”

“Shit,” the man said again. He grinned at her in the rearview mirror. “You got me. Usually most people don’t pay attention to the roads when they’re being chauffeured around.”

“Pull over!” Torres shouted as she lunged forward, flicking the blade free as she did so.

The glass partition came out of nowhere, sliding up rapidly between the back and front seats. Torres managed to slam one fist against the material while it was halfway up but couldn’t do anything more to stop it. Instead, she stabbed the glass with the knife. The partition wobbled slightly but didn’t break. There were also no marks where she’d made contact. It wasn’t glass but some kind of material resistant to breaking.

“Sonofabitch…”

“Relax, we’re not the enemy,” Owen said. His voice came through a hidden speaker in the back seat. She could make out the back of his head through the partition as he picked up speed and continued on the same course.

Torres scowled back at him, the pocketknife still clutched tightly in one hand. “Who the hell are you?”

“I already told you. Owen.”

“Let me guess: Madeline didn’t send you.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Harold Campbell?”

“Not him, either.”

“Then who did?”

“People that want to talk to you.”

“Give me a name.”

“Not yet.”

Torres punched the partition, this time out of pure frustration. It moved but, like before, didn’t break or appeared even remotely damaged.

She sat back in her seat and stared daggers at Owen’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “So if we’re not going to the airport, where are we going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” her fake driver said. “Until then, sit back and relax. It’ll be a short ride.”

Torres didn’t reply. Instead, she tried the door, even though she could see the lock was engaged and had been since they started moving. The door wouldn’t budge no matter how hard she pushed against it.

Owen chuckled. “I would have been disappointed if you didn’t at least try. And don’t bother with your cell. It won’t work inside the car.”

“Who the hell are you?”

Owen didn’t answer her. Instead, he drove in silence.

Torres looked out the window. She recognized the landmarks. They weren’t any closer to the airport. If anything, they were moving farther away from it.

And her day was just starting to look up, too…

5

MAC

He shouldn’t have let the kid join the unit so quickly. It was his fault. It was all his fault. When someone died there was no one else to blame, no cans to be kicked down the street. He made the first, middle, and final decisions. And when someone died because of those decisions, he took responsibility.

Full. Stop.

All Mac could do was listen to Jeremy scream as the creatures dragged him down into the manhole. The kid had done the stupidest thing possible—stuck his head into the opening, flashlight in hand, and then took his eyes off what was down there when he didn’t see anything. His last words were, “There’s nothing down there.”

Except he only got “There’s nothing down” out. Mac just assumed Jeremy’s final word was “there,” but of course he could be wrong. He couldn’t ask the kid because he was too busy screaming his lungs out, the prospect of death enveloping him the way it did everyone in battle.

Except this wasn’t battle. Not really. The enemy didn’t use guns or knives. Or explosives. That was them. They did. The unit. Those weapons should have given them the advantage. And it had, for a while.

…for a while…

Payton, who should have known better, ran up to the manhole and unloaded his rifle into the opening. The staccato flash of his gunfire lit up his face—ghost-white, which was amazing because Payton was as dark-skinned as they came. Payton was one of the first members of the unit to welcome Jeremy in. They’d become fast friends.

“Stop it!” Mac shouted, running over. “Stop your shooting, goddammit! You’re gonna hit him! You’re gonna hit Jeremy!”

Payton did finally stop, lifting his rifle and taking a step away from the manhole. He was breathing so hard Mac thought people could hear him from a county away.

The opening appeared to glow like some otherworldly door to another dimension. They could still hear Jeremy as he was dragged away, his screams mixed with the splashing of water. Sewage water. Smelly, stinking, rotting sewage water.

The others gathered around the manhole, rifles and flashlights pointed down. There was a single source of light below—Jeremy’s. The Maglite lay in the ankle-high still water, LED pointing south. That was the wrong direction. Jeremy had been taken north.

Hot breath and haggard breathing filled the air. Mac didn’t join in. He wanted to think he was used to all of this after working for Harold Campbell the last five years, but the truth was he was only willing himself to calm down for everyone’s benefit.

Five people—six, just a few seconds ago—standing in a tight semi-circle within a long-ago abandoned warehouse should have afforded them plenty of space to breathe the night air that filtered in from the open high windows around them. Instead, the two-story structure was suffocating, the air tainted by the presence of creatures that had called this place home for God only knew how long. The rotting bodies they’d found in the back, hidden from the light of day, hinted at the possibility of years. How many exact years would be left to the egg heads. Mac only knew the corpses as confirmation they’d been sent to the right location.

The closest one to Mac was Jane, standing to his right. The big ex-Army NCO was just inches from rubbing shoulders with Mac. He could hear the man’s breathing without trying; Jane was practically gulping for air as he pointed his FAL battle rifle down into the hole before them.

“It’s stopped,” Jane said. He was referring to Jeremy’s screams. It’d ceased almost exactly five seconds ago.

“He’s a goner,” Pierce said. The Brit was across from Mac and Jane. Not quite as tall or big as Mac or Jane, and skinnier than he was athletic. Mac had been worried about his ability to hold his own in the field, but Pierce had more than proven himself. It didn’t hurt that he was extremely good with the L115A in his hands. The sniper rifle actually looked almost too big for him.

“You don’t know that,” Watson said. The shortest member of the unit by far, and also the only woman. Mac hadn’t wanted a woman but Campbell insisted that sometimes a woman’s touch was needed even if Watson didn’t look very “womanly” in her all-black outfit, knitted cap, and black face-paint. Her small hands held an MP5K with a pistol grip.

“We could go after him,” Taylor said. His MP5SD was unwavering as it aimed through the open manhole. Taylor was the only other member of the unit wearing paint besides Watson. It was obvious the two had helped each other apply their “war face.” They were also fucking. Mac didn’t approve, but neither seemed affected by the relationship. Not yet, anyway.

“No,” Mac said.

“He could still be alive,” Watson said.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Don’t we have to make sure?” Taylor asked.

“It’s not our call.” Mac let his AK-74U fall back to his side before turning to Pierce. “Call it in. Tell them we’ve made contact. Incident confirmed.”

Pierce slung his rifle and walked off, speaking softly into his throat mic. “Homer, Homer, this is First Base, do you read. Reporting confirmed contact with tangos. Over.”

A voice that wasn’t Pierce’s answered through their shared comm ear pieces. “Roger that, First Base. Incident confirmation noted. How will you proceed? Over.”

Pierce glanced back at Mac in lieu of answering.

“Recommending termination,” Mac said.

Pierce squawked his radio before speaking into his throat mic. “First Base Actual recommends termination with extreme prejudice. Over.”

“Roger that, First Base.” There was a brief pause—two seconds, three, five—before the voice returned in their ears. “Terminate with extreme prejudice, First Base. Over.”

“See you boys in a few, Homer.” Pierce walked back to them. Not that he’d wandered very far in the first place.

Mac took another long look through the opening. The water below had gone deathly still and the smell seemed to have grown in intensity. There were no signs of the creatures; they’d been satisfied with taking Jeremy. There had to be more than one. The creatures weren’t very strong and Jeremy wasn’t a small kid. He’d fought the entire time, but he’d been taken anyway. Which meant more than one.

Two, maybe three. Or more.

It was the or more part that bothered Mac.

I should have kept him in the truck for a few more months. Goddammit.

The others were already preparing to go down, unclipping their gas masks, putting them on, and making sure they were firmly in place. They checked each other’s placement, giving a tap on the shoulder and a thumbs up when everything checked out. Mac did it to Jane, who checked him in turn.

“Down into the shit again,” Jane said. He was probably grinning as he said it, not that Mac could see with his gas mask on.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mac said. Unlike the others, both he and Jane had seen actual combat during their deployments.

“And I thought we were going to have a boring night like usual.”

“You assumed. You know what happens when you assume.”

“I’m always right?”

“Not quite.”

Jane chuckled as Mac turned back to the opening and flicked the twin “headlights” on top of his gas mask down until the bright LED lights shone through the hole. This was more practical than relying on their Maglites. The masks were products of Mac’s own designs. When your work almost always took place at night, you figured out very quickly what you needed and didn’t need. Lights, in this case, was one of those necessities.

There was a ladder leading down to the sewer below, but they didn’t need it. It was only a ten-feet drop straight into water. Mac went first—he always went first—and landed in ankle-high sewage with a loud and spectacular splash. He remained upright, though he did almost lose his balance for a few seconds.

He snapped the AK-47U up and into firing level, lighting up the direction of the tunnel where the creatures had dragged Jeremy off in. His eyes cleared the nothingness in front of him before he spun to clear the other side.

Also nothing.

“Clear!” Mac shouted before taking a few steps north to allow room for the others to “drop” in after him.

Jane followed first, then the others. One by one, they landed in the sewage, their clothes quickly drenched in filthy water. No one made a verbal comment about that, though. They were used to it. This wasn’t the first time they’d had to go down into the bowels of a city in order to chase the creatures. If anything, the ankle-high water was a nice change of pace. Three months ago they’d gone “swimming” in waist-high sewage.

“Pierce, you have our six,” Mac said.

“Roger that, boss,” Pierce said.

Mac moved up the tunnel, the twin wide beams of his lights now joined by the steady illuminations of three other pairs. Pierce would follow from the rear while keeping an eye—and weapon—on their backside.

Water splashed around them, their breathing lost in the sounds of their movements. The masks provided more than adequate protection against the stink. Mac spent more time worrying about the beads of sweat dripping down his face than he did about getting a whiff of the floating city refuse.

“Boss,” a voice said from behind him. Taylor. He wasn’t using their comm, which would have required taking one hand off his weapon to press the transmit lever on his radio. They were bunched up tight enough that they could hear each other just fine.

“What is it?” Mac said.

“This is new, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they’ve never done this before. Am I right?”

“Are you sure?” Watson said before Mac could answer.

“Unless I’m wrong,” Taylor said. He didn’t sound entirely convinced.

Mac stopped, as did Jane to his left. He looked back at Taylor, standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Watson.

“Am I wrong?” Taylor said, meeting Mac’s stare from behind the lens of their gas masks.

“No,” Mac said.

“Are you sure?” Jane asked.

“I’m sure.”

Mac looked past Taylor and Watson at Pierce’s back just a few yards behind them. He was close enough to hear the conversation but hadn’t joined in.

“New tactic?” Jane said.

“I don’t know,” Mac said. He turned back around, his “headlights” flashing the oval-shaped structure of the sewer tunnel. Scarred gray concrete, slathered with the waste of mankind, looked back at him.

“Maybe we should go back, boss,” Watson said. Her voice wavered slightly. Not much, but just enough to be noticeable.

“What about Jeremy?” Taylor asked.

“They took him. You know what happens when these things take you.”

“Gotta be sure,” Jane said. He glanced over at Mac. “We gotta be sure. We owe the kid that much. We never left anyone behind before, can’t start now.”

“And we’re not going to now,” Mac said. “We—”

Their comms squawked and they heard Pierce’s voice through the ear piece. “Movement. I have movement.” Pierce was calm, as if he were discussing the weather.

Mac turned. “Jane, take point.”

Jane moved past Mac to take the lead while Mac himself faced south. Pierce was still a few yards from the rest of them, cradling his rifle, but not aiming it because, as far as Mac could tell, there wasn’t anything to aim at.

“Pierce?” Mac said out loud.

“I saw something,” Pierce said, back still turned to them. He was a statue in the semidarkness.

“I don’t see anything,” Taylor said. Like Mac and Watson, he’d turned to look behind them, focusing all three pairs of their headlights on that side of the tunnel, along with Pierce’s own.

Taylor was right. There was nothing back there. There hadn’t been when Mac first looked and nothing now as he continued to search for signs of movement.

Water splashed as Mac took a few steps toward Pierce. “What did you see?”

“Movement,” Pierce said.

“Can you be more specific?”

“No, boss. Just…movement.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that shouldn’t be back there.”

Pierce’s voice remained steady, which was the only hint Mac had that the man wasn’t losing it or giving in to paranoia. Besides, the Brit was the last person—alongside Jane—who Mac thought had the potential to “lose it.” He might not have had the experience of actual combat like Mac and Jane, but the skinny bloke, as he liked to call people, was as cool as they came in hot situations.

“I don’t see shit,” Taylor said.

“Neither do I,” Watson said.

“Doesn’t change the fact that I did,” Pierce said.

Mac reached Pierce and put a hand on his shoulder. “Tighten up on the group. You’re drifting too far back.”

“Right, boss.”

Mac gave the tunnel behind them a long look before he started to turn around. Pierce followed suit next to him. They were halfway turned when the world exploded.

Or someone opened fire, the crash of gunshots coming one after another like rolling thunder, made even more ear-splitting because of the tight confines around them. The only upside was the thick slabs of concrete that deadened much of the gunfire.

Jane. Up front. Shooting.

What was he shooting at?

He didn’t have time to ask Jane. Mac was moving toward the big ex-Army man when Pierce suddenly spun back toward the south end of the tunnel and began unloading his rifle. Unlike Jane, Pierce was limited by his bolt-action, which could only fire one round at a time no matter how fast you pulled the trigger.

Mac muttered a curse as he saw flickering glimpses of something moving up the tunnel toward them, bouncing from one side of the wall to the other, appearing and disappearing in Mac’s headlights like a ghost. Bullets ricocheted off the sides of the tunnel as the staccato flash of Jane’s rifle—he had since slipped to full-auto fire—lit up their world, the spent casings plop-plop-plopping into the water around their ankles.

It was a creature.

It was a goddamn creature.

Mac didn’t have to see all of it to know that. Nothing in this world could move like that. Its movements were supernatural, its speed and agility would make Michael Jordan blush with envy. Between every round Jane fired, the creature got closer.

And closer.

And closer.

“Contact!” Mac shouted even as he stepped up beside Jane. “We got contact!”

The submachine gun jumped in his hands as Mac let loose with a full-auto burst. His rounds razed the curving concrete wall as he attempted to pick up the creature, but it was like trying to catch a jumping lizard, one that possessed preternatural abilities. Mac had faced the creatures before, but they were never this fast.

Jesus Christ it’s fast!

Behind him, Taylor and Watson had also opened up, but Mac couldn’t see their lights or their bullets going in the same direction as his own. Which meant they were shooting at whatever it was that Pierce had spotted earlier.

Another creature. It had to be another creature. They were attacking from two sides, almost as if they’d planned it.

…almost as if they’d planned it…

They’d been lured down here. The creatures had pulled Jeremy into the sewer for the express purpose of getting the unit to follow.

And they’d fallen for it.

They’d fallen for it like a bunch of idiots.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!

It was his fault. He’d led the others down here. He hadn’t seen the trap. Taylor had, even if it was a little too late. But he’d seen it nonetheless, whereas it’d never occurred to Mac.

His fault. They were going to die and it was all his fault.

Jane screamed as the creature leapt the last few yards and landed on top of him, pummeling the big ex-Army man into the shallow sewage. His FAL vanished somewhere next to him as did half of his body.

The shooting behind him, too, had suddenly stopped.

Mac turned, scrambling to reload as he did so. “Run!”

But he didn’t run.

And neither did anyone else.

Taylor and Watson bobbed in the water like dead fish, while Pierce was nowhere to be seen. Blood painted the walls around them and reached out across the water toward Mac’s position. For the first time since he stepped foot down here, Mac stopped smelling the stink. All he could focus on was the taste of blood in his mouth. It was metallic and unwelcoming.

Then he became aware of something peering out of the darkness at him. Mac tilted his head slightly, aiming his headlights to get a better look.

It stood upright, bony legs positioned at awkward ankles, as wet clumps of blood dripped from its arms, slithering from its shoulders to the crook of its elbows to the tips of its long, almost elegant fingers. Taylor’s or Watson’s or Pierce’s. Or all three. It looked back at him, eyes pulsating a hellish blue color, like twin moons peering out from a timeless ocean. It was hairless and its domed head gleamed brilliantly against Mac’s LED lights. Razor-thin lips fashioned themselves into something that almost looked like a smirk as it gazed back at him.

Blue eyes…

Mac was aware that they existed. He’d been told about them but had never seen one himself. The Blue Eyes, as Campbell called them. For the longest time Mac didn’t think they actually existed, that maybe it was a figment of the billionaire’s imagination. For five years, Mac and the unit had hunted the creatures, and not once did they run across one of these things.

But here it was, watching him from the shadows, eyes glowing in the semidarkness.

Mac pulled back the charging handle on his weapon and lifted it to fire. Before he could, he sensed something moving behind him, followed by hot and cold air pushing against the back of his neck.

Jesus. Behind me!

He spun around.

Another Blue Eyes stared at him, its pruned black flesh covered in blood. It wasn’t nearly as close as he’d thought. Almost ten feet.

Mac whirled around to confront the first one. It hadn’t moved. He was sure it would use the opportunity with his back turned to jump on him, the way the other one had done to poor Jane. But it hadn’t and didn’t appear too interested in doing so even now.

Then the creature did something Mac had never seen, and didn’t even know they could do. It spoke:

“Meat sack,” it said, its voice slithering across the tainted space in a rushing hiss. “Your master has been looking for us.”

“Tell him,” the other one said—Mac spun around to confront it—in that same slithery hiss, “that he’s got our attention.”

6

TORRES

Harold Campbell.

This was all about Harold Campbell.

Her captor, Owen—if that was even his real name—hadn’t said so but he hadn’t denied it, either. She didn’t think this was Campbell’s doing, though; there was no reason for the man to kidnap her when she’d already agreed to come along. Besides, she needed him more than he needed her. Or, more precisely, his money.

But Campbell was involved somehow. She just didn’t know how.

Owen didn’t take her nearly as far as she’d expected. Instead, he’d turned off the feeder road somewhere along the 45 Freeway then drove them toward an industrial area with a pair of warehouses enclosed within wide hurricane fencing. She glimpsed a few business names before they arrived, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of them. A Kroger’s in a strip mall, a Home Depot, and a few other big box stores. The kind of places you’d find in any city.

By the time they slowed down and approached a gate that rolled open for them, she knew they’d reached their destination. They were, from what she could tell, only ten minutes from the airport. Was that on purpose?

The parking lot was massive, with only a couple of cars parked in front of the first of two buildings. Both structures had clearly been used for machine work in a previous life but had been repurposed. There were no decals or signs to indicate what they used to be, but she could see the backs of other businesses in the area on the other side of the fencing.

She didn’t bother asking Owen why he’d brought her here. He hadn’t answered the half dozen questions she’d already tossed at him during the ride and didn’t think he’d answer her “Where are we?” anyway. Instead, she kept quiet as he parked next to the two vehicles and climbed out.

The lock on her door snapped open, startling her just a bit.

She stared at the unlocked door but didn’t reach for it. The thoughts, This is a trick. This is some kind of trick, rushed through her head.

She watched Owen walk over from the driver’s side door. He opened her door and took a few steps back. “They’re waiting for you inside.”

Torres glared out at him but didn’t move.

“Inside,” Owen said, nodding toward the warehouse.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“They’re waiting for you.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

An amused smile flicked across the man’s face. “Well, it’s up to you,” he said before he turned and walked to the building and went inside a side door.

What the fuck?

She continued to sit still and not move. The pocketknife remained in her hand, ready to slash.

But nothing came out of the warehouse and no one exited the other two parked vehicles. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone at all around her except the massive and mostly-empty parking lot.

Finally, Torres climbed out of the car and looked around. The place was just as lacking as it’d appeared from inside her recent “prison.” Even more so, actually. She glanced over at the buildings. Both warehouses were two stories, constructed of smooth steel walls with corrugated metal near the top. There was a garage door near the front for heavy vehicles, with a much smaller side door next to them for personnel entry and exit. The gate into the area had closed after they entered but the surrounding fencing, despite being ten feet high, didn’t have barbed wire at the top. Climbable, if she wanted to.

So why didn’t she head straight for it?

Because someone had brought her here and wanted to meet her. It wasn’t Harold Campbell, that was very clear now. Campbell had no need for any of this. So who else wanted to “talk” to her? The only way to find out who those “people” were was to follow Owen inside.

She did that now, even if every step felt like she was walking straight to the gallows. Except no one was leading her; she was doing it on her own free will.

Mostly.

The door was unlocked and Torres went inside. Fresh air filled the place, but there was a staleness to it that told her the warehouse hadn’t been “reopened” for very long. Maybe just a few days. Or the day before. Two floors, a catwalk ringing the second, and lacking anything that would have informed her what it’d been used for until today.

The “people” that Owen had brought her to meet were nowhere to be seen. Neither was anyone that could have arrived in the two vehicles parked outside. But there was a third car waiting for her within. A black Mercedes with tinted windows, chrome grill flashing in the sunlight. There was no license plate or markings of any kind on it.

“Couldn’t resist, huh?” Owen, standing next to the door, with that smug self-satisfied look on his face that made her want to punch it off.

She gave him a look.

The man grinned and raised both hands in mock surrender as he backed up. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“What if the messenger is annoying?”

“Well, in that case…” He nodded toward the Mercedes as if she didn’t already know where to go. “They’re waiting.”

“Who is ‘they?’”

“You’ll find out inside.”

“I just came out of a car. I’m supposed to go inside another one?”

“If you want to talk to the people that brought you here, then yeah.”

That was a good question. Did she really want to know? Or did she just want to turn around and head back to the BMW and drive to the airport, where she was supposed to be in the first place?

“Your choice,” Owen said as if he could read her thoughts.

“I can leave…”

“Sure.”

“You don’t sound very sure about that ‘sure.’”

“I’m sure.”

“Sure, sure?”

He chuckled. “Sure, sure. Sure.”

She started walking toward the Mercedes. It wasn’t parked very far—almost exactly in the middle of the large warehouse about twenty feet from the doors.

Up close, there were still no identifying marks on the car except for how obviously low the undercarriage was to the floor. It was armor-plated. Someone inside didn’t want to take any chances. Of course, Torres knew from first-hand experience that there was no such thing as a “bullet-proof” car. Just about anything could be compromised if you knew where to strike.

The front windshield was tinted like the rest of the windows, completely hiding the interior. That wasn’t regulation. Every state she knew of disallowed the complete tinting of windows, since cops liked to see who they were looking at as they approached a stopped car.

Halfway to the Mercedes, she glanced back at Owen. The blond was leaning against the wall next to the door, thumb flicking down the screen of a smartphone. He looked oblivious to her presence.

An echoing click as the car’s rear driver-side door opened. An invitation if she ever saw one. The kind that only a fool would walk through. Torres wasn’t a fool. She’d never been one.

And yet…

She leaned over to peek into the backseat. There was no one in there. From where she stood she could make out the silhouette of a man—she knew it was a man from the shoulders—sitting behind the steering wheel up front.

But there was no one in the back.

Just as she was about to shout at Owen, there was a soft ringing sound.

It came from a phone resting on one of the empty seats. She hadn’t seen it before because she was so intent on finding a face instead.

“It’s for you,” Owen said from across the warehouse.

Torres let out an annoyed grunt before leaning in and picking up the phone. It was cheap and plastic. What criminals in the streets called a “burner” phone. You could buy it at any gas station or phone store. Once you used up the available data, you’d toss it so it couldn’t be traced back to you.

She answered the phone on the fourth ring, pressing the speaker button so she didn’t have one ear glued to the phone at all times, and could keep both of them on everyone—and everything—around her. She didn’t trust Owen, and she sure as hell didn’t trust that there weren’t more people hiding somewhere in the warehouse. Those two vehicles outside hadn’t driven here by themselves.

“This is all a little elaborate, don’t you think?” she said into the phone.

“Elaborate, yes, but necessary,” a voice on the other end said. A woman. “We can have some privacy if you step inside the car.”

“No thanks. I’ve had enough of sitting in cars for today.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Funny. I was told you were to blame.”

A chuckle. “All necessary, I assure you.”

We’ll see about that.

She said, “Who am I talking to?”

“You can call me Ana. One ‘n.’”

“Is that your real name, Ana with one ‘n’?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Should I believe that?”

“I wouldn’t, in your shoes,” the woman who called herself Ana said. “But I assure you, we mean you no harm.”

“Who is ‘we?’”

“My colleagues and me.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I know you have a lot of questions. I’ll answer three of them for you. After that, you’ll have to spend some time listening to me. Deal?”

Like I have a choice.

“Sure, why not,” Torres said. Then, without missing a beat, “Who are you?”

“Ana, with one ‘n’.”

“Ana what?”

“Is that the second question?”

“No. You already told me your name was Ana.”

“Yes. And you asked my name anyway. That’s one question down. What’s the other two?”

Torres smirked. You clever bitch.

A flood of questions flashed across her mind, but she only had two remaining. She could have tried to play games, get more than two in, but her opponent had already revealed she wasn’t going to play fair.

Torres decided to focus on the important ones. “What do you want with me?”

“We would like to discuss Harold Campbell’s interest in you.”

“For what purpose?”

“Is that your third and final question?”

Not even close.

She said, “Yes.”

“We believe Harold Campbell is playing a very dangerous game. One that, if not tempered, may result in more harm than good.”

“And what’s my role in this?”

“That’s a question, Kerry. You’ve already used up your three questions.”

She winced at the mention of her first name. Not that she thought it was private or anything, but she’d always just gone by Torres for so long that having a strange woman she didn’t know, speaking to her on the other end of a phone line, use it made her extremely…uncomfortable.

“Then we’re done here,” Torres said and tossed the phone back into the Mercedes.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Ana said just before Torres slammed the door shut on her.

Torres walked briskly back across the warehouse. Owen, still leaning next to the side door, looked up from his phone. She enjoyed the look of surprise on his face.

“That was rude,” the man said.

“Give me the keys to the BMW.”

“Sorry. The car’s a rental.”

“Bullshit.” She took the pocketknife out and thumbed the blade from its housing. “The keys. Now.”

If she thought she could put anything that even resembled fear into the man, Torres was disappointed. Owen grinned back at her. “What are you going to do with that? Pick your teeth?”

“Mine? No. Yours? Maybe.”

“That’ll hurt.”

“Let’s find out.”

He chuckled as she continued to advance on him. She’d gotten within ten feet when Owen tossed his phone in her direction. Torres acted out of instinct and snatched the phone out of the air with her free left hand.

The phone—a more advanced version than the burner—was already connected to another line, and Torres heard a familiar voice through the speaker:

“Macy,” Ana said.

Torres stopped. She stared at the phone but didn’t reply.

“We can help you get her back,” Ana continued.

“I don’t need your help.”

“I know. Harold Campbell told you that his people are gaming the system for you, and that soon the two of you will be reunited. What he—or his assistant Madeline—isn’t telling you is that they’re stuck. The system has shut them down.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because we’re the system, Kerry.”

That confused her for a moment. You’re the system? What the hell does that—

“You’re the government,” Torres said.

“Now she gets it,” Owen said.

Torres shot him an annoyed squint. He raised his hands in mock surrender again and backed up slightly.

She focused on the phone. “What are you? FBI? CIA? NSA?”

“No,” Ana said. “We don’t go by any three letters that you know. But you can be one-hundred-percent certain that Harold Campbell’s people can’t do anything to get Macy back for you if we don’t allow it.”

“Since when did the U.S. government start using kids to get leverage?”

“Don’t be naïve, Kerry. It’s always been like this. When the security of the United States is the goal, anything goes.”

Torres fumed. She was certain her face had turned a dark shade of red. Maybe even Owen saw it because he took a not-so-subtle step to the left, putting just a little bit more distance between the two of them.

“We can help each other,” Ana was saying.

“How?”

“We can discuss that later. For now, I’d like to offer you an olive branch.”

The line went dead, but before Torres could question Owen, who had stepped back yet again, the phone dialed on its own. After a few rings, a familiar voice answered on the other end:

“Hello?”

Macy!

Torres quickly pressed the speaker button and put the phone to her ear, turned, and walked away from Owen. “Macy?”

“Kerry?”

Macy. It was Macy!

“Are you finally coming to get me?” the girl asked. The hope in her voice was impossible to miss. “I’ve been waiting for like, forever!”

God, I wish I could, she thought, but said, “Not yet, sweetheart. But soon. I promise. I’ll come get you soon.”

“Oh, okay.” The kid’s disappointment was palpable. “I thought you were coming to get me.”

“I know, sweetheart. But soon. Okay? Very soon.”

“Promise, promise?”

Torres smiled. It came easily and naturally. She couldn’t count the number of “promise, promises” she and the girl had made to one another in the months since that night.

“Yes, sweetheart. I promise, promise.”

“Cool,” Macy said. There was suddenly excitement back in her voice.

“Are you doing okay, Macy? Are they treating you well?”

“Um, not really.”

Torres’s gut seized up. “What happened? What did they do to you? Tell me everything.”

“They like SPAM too much.”

“What?”

“SPAM. You know, that weird meat? The people I’m living with really likes it. I don’t. It tastes…icky.”

Again, Torres couldn’t help but smile as the relief flooded through her. And she knew exactly what the girl was talking about. Anyone who grew up in a single-parent household did.

“Yeah, I don’t like it too, sweetheart. SPAM is icky.”

“I know, right?”

“No SPAM for us when you come back.”

“Awesome!” Then, the disappointment back in her voice, “Kerry, they say you have to go. Do you have to go?”

No, she thought, but understood what was happening. The people on the other side were cutting their conversation short now that they’d established their bona fides.

“I’m afraid so, Mace,” Torres said. “I gotta get back to work so I can get you back with me as soon as possible.”

“I really miss you, Kerry.”

“I know, sweetheart. I really miss you, too.”

“Oh, Kerry?”

“What is it, Mace?”

“I got new shoes. The people I’m living with gave it to me for my birthday, even though I told them it was too late, but they did it anyway.”

“That’s awfully nice of them.”

“They’re okay. I’d rather live with you, though.”

Torres fought back the tears. “I’d want nothing more, Mace.” Then, because she knew she’d start crying if she didn’t end it now, “You be good, okay? I’ll see you soon. Very soon.”

“Okay, cool,” Macy said.

The line went dead.

For a few seconds before it buzzed again.

Ana. “All we need is thirty minutes of your time. That’s how long it’ll take Owen to drive you to the airport and meet with Harold Campbell’s people.”

“You want me to go back to Campbell after this?”

“Yes. His people can’t know about this.”

“What happens if they ask where I’ve been? I was supposed to be at the airport ten minutes ago.”

“Houston is known for its traffic. This is just another workday.”

“Fine, but his people were supposed to pick me up before your errand boy grabbed me. How do I explain that?”

Owen made an “ouch” face at her. Not that she believed the man was capable of having his feelings “hurt” by anything she could possibly say for even a second.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Ana said.

Owen was holding the side door open for her. “Ladies first,” he said, again with that smug smile that she wanted desperately to wipe off his face.

“So what’s stopping you from going first?”

“Double ouch.”

She smirked at the man as she walked past him, the phone against her ear. “All right, Ana with one ‘n’. You have my attention…”

7

CENT

“His name is Mac. Macintosh Hillard.”

“Like the computer?”

Madeline might have smiled. Cent couldn’t be entirely sure without looking over at her, and he didn’t want to do that.

“Yes,” she said. “Like the computer.”

“What happened to him?”

“They did. The creatures you call obayifo. Except these weren’t the black-eyed kind.”

“Blue eyes…”

“Yes.”

“And he’s still alive?”

“Only because, according to him, they wanted to send a message.”

“A message? To who?”

“Mr. Campbell,” Madeline said as she pressed the spacebar on the laptop sitting in her lap.

That played a video that was already cued up on the screen, with Macintosh Hillard sitting behind a table inside a brightly-lit room staring down at his hands. As the video resumed playing, it was hard not to notice that Hillard was trembling, from his shoulders all the way down to his hands. And those were only the visible parts. Cent had a feeling the rest of him was just as similarly traumatized.

Cent and Madeline sat inside the backseat of the Audi that had arrived to pick him up. Torres would be joining them at Bush Intercontinental Airport in a separate car. News about Hillard and his unit had reached Madeline before she showed up at the cheap three-star hotel where Cent was staying. Campbell’s people had offered to put him up someplace with more stars, but Cent had politely declined. He had committed to working with Campbell and his people but didn’t want to ever become indebted to the man, even if it was something as minor as temporary lodging.

Now, as the Houston traffic rushed by outside their windows, Cent focused on the laptop’s screen. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t help but notice Madeline’s long and slender legs underneath the PC. She was more athletic than she was thin, and without pants to hide them, those legs were…not entirely unattractive.

Focus.

He did, zeroing in on Hillard’s face as what was obviously an interview-in-progress continued. A voice that wasn’t Hillard’s and came from an unseen part of the room spoke first. “Tell us what happened again.”

Hillard glanced up from his hands, looking visibly irritated. “I already told you. How many times do you want me to go through it?”

“One more time.”

Hillard sighed. Cent wondered if he was annoyed at having to repeat things or if it was more having to relive it. “We arrived at the warehouse after receiving reports of a possible incident.”

“Your unit,” the unseen speaker said.

“That’s right.”

“Please continue.”

“My unit…” Hillard paused briefly before continuing. “We arrived at the location at exactly 1:14 A.M. We proceeded inside the warehouse. There, during a search, a member of the unit was taken.”

“This was Jeremy Tanner.”

“Yes.” Then, clearly agitated. “Can’t you just read my report?”

“I understand this is difficult, but if you’ll indulge us further...”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Resuming with what happened to Jeremy Tanner. He was a new member of unit, wasn’t he?”

Hillard sighed. “Yes.”

“Who brought him in?”

“Me. I did.”

Hillard’s face darkened.

That’s a man who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders…and the fate of everyone under him.

“Continue, please,” the unseen voice said.

Hillard didn’t appear as if he would. And it took a while before he did. “Jeremy…Tanner was taken into the sewers underneath the warehouse.”

“Please note,” the unseen voice said, not to Hillard but either to someone else in the room with them or just to the recording itself, “that the body of Jeremy Tanner remains unrecovered as of this interview.” Then, back to Hillard, “Please continue.”

Hillard had looked visibly disturbed by the mention of Tanner’s as-yet-recovered body. Once again, it took him a while to continue. “After Tanner’s abduction, my team and I proceeded down into the sewers.”

“All five of you?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened then?”

“We encountered the creatures. The Blue Eyes.”

“There were more than one.”

“Yes. Two. There were two.”

“At which point you lost the rest of your unit.”

Hillard stared back down at his hands. He put one over the other to stop both from shaking. It didn’t really help. “Yeah. That’s when I lost the rest of my unit.”

“Can you elaborate for us?”

Hillard glared at the unseen voice. “It’s in my report, goddammit. Read the fucking report.”

“We have, but this is a recorded interview,” the unseen interviewer said. For the first time, he was asserting authority over Hillard. The man would not be deterred. “Elaborate on what happened to your unit for us again.”

Hillard grinded his teeth. “They killed them. They killed my fucking unit. That’s what fucking happened.”

Murmurs in the background as unseen voices communicated with one another. They were whispering so it was difficult for Cent to understand what they were saying. He could, though, easily understand the look on Hillard’s face. It was what Dutch used to call the Thousand Yard stare.

He’s reliving it again. All of it. And they’re not going to let him stop.

Cent didn’t know anything about Hillard, but he felt sympathy for the man anyway. If someone had forced him to vividly relive the details of what had happened that night back at the Wilshire Apartments, whether he wanted to do or not, anger would be just one of the many volatile emotions Cent would feel.

Madeline clicked the spacebar on the laptop and the video paused again. “Some background. Mac is a former NCO in the United States Army. He was Special Forces. Rangers and Green Beret.”

Cent nodded. He understood what Madeline was telling him without spelling it out: Macintosh Hillard was not a normal civilian who was traumatized by what had happened to the man. The man was a combat veteran, and yet, after coming face-to-face with two Blue Eyes, had been reduced to this wreckage of a man.

Madeline resumed the video, with the unseen interviewer speaking. “Let’s skip the rest of the events for now. Please tell us again what the creatures said to you.”

Hillard wrinkled his nose. Cent thought he might be remembering the stink of the Blue Eyes. When it was dark and he was half-asleep, Cent could still smell the creature’s stench from that night. And he’d only had to survive one of them. Hillard had gone up against two. The same two that had already butchered his unit.

But for the grace of God…

“Do you need a break?” the interviewer asked when Hillard didn’t say anything right away.

“No,” Hillard said.

“Then please proceed.”

“They told me to tell Mr. Campbell that he’s got their attention.”

“What else did they say?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it? Word for word?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“Do you remember what they said? Word for word? Please take a moment to think about it. It’s very important that we have their exact words.”

Hillard did seem to think about it for a moment. His hands, Cent noticed, had started to shake even worse now.

“Commander Hillard?” the unseen voice prompted when a full twenty seconds had passed.

“That’s it,” Hillard said. “That’s all I remember. Just that they know he’s been looking for them and he’s got their attention.”

Again, Madeline froze the video. This time she closed the laptop and slid it into a carrying case she picked up from the floor of the vehicle. “Considering what happened to his unit, you can probably understand how he feels about reliving this.”

“Where is he now?” Cent asked.

“He’s still in Florida under after-action protocol.”

“What’s that?”

“Every unit has to go through certain steps before they’re cleared to return to action. When someone suffers the kind of losses Mac did… Let’s just say it’ll be a while before we see him again.”

If you see him again, Cent thought, remembering the shaking hands and Thousand Yard stare on Hillard’s face. That didn’t look like a man who could “return to action” anytime soon, if ever. And Cent wouldn’t blame him one bit.

“How many men were in his unit?” he asked.

“Six, including him.”

“And everyone except him are dead?”

“Four that we know for sure, but the fifth, Jeremy Tanner, remains missing.”

“He’s dead,” Cent said. He didn’t even have to think about it. “Or if he’s not dead, he might as well be.”

“You’re referring to what happened to your friend, Franklin.”

Cent nodded even though he didn’t really consider Franklin a “friend.” The man was more of a recent acquaintance, but there was no point in correcting Madeline. She only knew about what had happened to Franklin because Cent had filled her and Campbell in on the details of that night, and he’d only told them what they needed to know. There were some things about that night that Cent never wanted to see the light of day. Ever.

“The Blue Eyes,” Madeline continued. “You believe they’re what turns victims into the others. The black-eyed ones.”

“Yes. It’s something in the blood. Richter and Torres thought it might have been some kind of virus, spread by blood.”

“Our people have speculated something similar from the remains of the Black Eyes that we’ve managed to recover. But their understanding of what we’re facing—at least from a scientific angle—has been hampered by the limited number of viable evidence. Once they’re killed, the creature’s physiology seems to die with them.”

Cent gave her a questioning look.

Madeline shrugged. “I’m sure there are long scientific words for what happens after they die. The point is, capturing one alive has been difficult and until we can do that, we’re having a hard time understanding what they are or how they’re spreading.”

“You’ve actually been trying to capture them alive?”

“Yes. It’s imperative that we do so we can study them. The more we know about them, the easier it will be to kill them.”

“You already know how to kill them. The silver. At first I thought it was something else, but since I’ve been hunting them, I’ve come to realize it was always the silver all along.”

“That’s what we thought, too.” Madeline took a folder out of the same laptop briefcase and handed it to him. “Mac’s full report. Read the first line at the top.”

Cent opened the folder. There were multiple pages stapled together. He gleaned the header of the first one: MACINTOSH HILLARD AFTER-ACTION REPORT. And right below that was another headline, this one in bright red letters: SUMMATION: BLUE EYES ARE NOT AFFECTED BY SILVER.

The rest of the papers were filled with Hillard’s interview. The same ones, Cent guessed, that Hillard had given before the one that was repeated on the video.

“Silver doesn’t work on the Blue Eyes?” he asked.

“No. All the units are armed with silver bullets. It had no effect on the Blue Eyes that Mac’s unit encountered.”

“But I killed it. The one on the tenth floor. I killed it with silver.”

“I don’t think you did. You and Torres killed it with the crosses. You told us the two of you completely obliterated its head.”

“That’s right.” He handed the folder back to her. “Is that it? The head?”

“Maybe. We don’t know.” She put the folder back into the carrying case. “That’s why it’s so imperative we get one of them into the labs. Alive.”

“That’s going to be difficult. You’re already having trouble getting a living Black Eyes. Now you want a Blue Eyes?”

“That is the challenge ahead of us, Cent. And one we’re hoping you and Torres can help us with.”

“I don’t know how I can do that. I used to think silver could kill all of them. And now you’re telling me it doesn’t have any effect on the Blue Eyes…”

Cent looked out the window at the passing traffic. He couldn’t help feeling depressed by everything he’d just learned. He knew the things he knew—or thought he knew—only because he’d faced against it that night. Over the months since, he’d fought and killed more obayifo but had never encountered another one of the Blue Eyes. It hadn’t occurred to him just how much he still didn’t know about the enemy. For a while, he’d almost been convinced he knew all there was to know.

Oh, how wrong he was.

“You implied that Hillard’s unit wasn’t the only one,” Cent said, looking back at her. “How many people do you have in this organization of yours?”

“It’s a big group, Cent. Most of them are researchers. Only a small group are out there actively investigating possible incidents.”

“Your soldiers.”

“We don’t actually call them soldiers.”

“What do you call them?”

She smiled. “Field Technicians.”

“And how many of these Field Technician units do you have?”

“As of today? Nineteen. But we’re constantly expanding that number. The more we have, the more ground we can cover.”

“In America?”

“Everywhere.”

“Your operation is global?”

“Not quite, but we’re getting there. Mr. Campbell’s goal is to have units in every country in the world. This isn’t an American thing, Cent. This is a world problem. As bad as we have it here, can you imagine how fast and active these things could be in parts of the world where they’re still living in Third World conditions?”

“Like Africa.”

“Yes. Like Africa. And others.”

He nodded. He hadn’t considered that, and the realization left him feeling more than a little guilty. He’d always considered the “America first and only” crowd to be narrowminded, believing the world revolved around them and them only. Maybe it hadn’t been on purpose—he liked to think it wasn’t on purpose—but that was exactly how he’d thought of this problem until just now.

How many of these creatures were out there? If they could thrive for years in inner cities and abandoned buildings, how much more active could they be in all the war-ravaged or just neglected countries? Who really gave a damn about what happened to citizens that lived in the ghettos of countries whose names most people couldn’t even pronounce?

“How far are you from creating these new units?” he asked.

“Too far. Mr. Campbell has vast resources but not enough people to use them. We have to be careful about the people we recruit.”

“Why is that?”

“There are factions out there that don’t want us to succeed. Not everyone shares our view of the world.”

“You’re trying to save the world. How can anyone disagree with that?”

“People have agendas, Cent. Some of them collide with ours.”

It was a strong statement, but Cent believed her. He’d seen too much with his own eyes, sometimes up close, to know that the welfare of the world wasn’t everyone’s goal. For many, it wasn’t even close. So why did he ever expect the world to come together to fight the obayifo? How could they possibly do that when they didn’t even know—and some didn’t want to know—that the creatures even existed?

“We’re trying,” Madeline was saying. “We’re trying hard. But people like you and Torres don’t come around often.”

“How many are in each one of the units you have so far?”

“It ranges. As few as five to as many as ten.”

“And they all know what they’re dealing with?”

“Oh yes. Many of them have had first-hand encounters before we recruited them. It would be suicide to send the rest out there without telling them what they were facing.”

And yet Hillard’s unit still got slaughtered.

“Excuse me,” Madeline said when her phone buzzed. She accepted the call and listened carefully and quietly, before responding. “Keep me apprised.”

She put the phone away.

“What happened now?” he asked.

“Torres wasn’t at her apartment when her car came by to pick her up.”

“Is she okay?”

“We don’t know. We can’t seem to locate her.”

“Torres is not a damsel in distress. She can take care of herself. She probably just had to do something before meeting us at the airport.”

“You’re probably right.” She pursed that same smile that Cent couldn’t quite decide if it was genuine or not. “We’ll wait for her at the airport.”

“How long can you wait?”

“As long as it takes. The good thing about using one of Mr. Campbell’s private jets is that we can leave whenever we want.”

“It must be nice to be able to fly everywhere at a moment’s notice.”

“You did, before we showed up.”

“Yes, but I flew economy to save money.”

“Was that really necessary?”

“Which part?”

“Saving money. You did okay when you were working for Richter’s crew.”

He wanted to laugh, but Cent only smiled in response. “How much exactly do you people know about me?”

“Mr. Campbell likes to know the people he partners himself with.”

“Is that what Torres and I are? His partners?”

“That’s how he sees it.”

“Interesting.”

“How do the two of you see it?”

This time it was Cent’s turn to shrug. “Temporary acquaintances with a shared goal.”

“I guess we see things differently, Cent. Mr. Campbell and I don’t see this as a short partnership. What’s out there—what we’re trying to accomplish—is not going to end in a week or month, or even a year from now. It’s going to be a long struggle.”

“Campbell told me he thinks there are thousands of them out there.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Why? Was he exaggerating?”

“No.” Again, that ambiguous smile. “I believe Mr. Campbell was being…cautious.”

“Cautious how?”

“He said thousands. What our researchers actually think is different.”

“How many?”

“More than thousands.”

“How many?” he asked again.

“Tens of thousands,” Madeline said. Then, “Maybe more.”

“Maybe more?”

The concept of that boggled Cent’s mind. Just one of the creatures had managed to wipe out his entire crew, including two of the most capable men Cent had ever known. But to think that there were tens of thousands out there? Or more?

“Don’t fool yourself, Cent,” Madeline said. “The ones you’ve seen hiding in basements and dark corners were only the tip of the iceberg. This is not a problem that can be solved in a few years. We’re talking decades, maybe longer. You have to be ready for that. Are you?”

Cent didn’t answer her.

Madeline leaned forward and tapped on the glass partition separating them from the driver. “Ed. Pull over for a moment.”

The car slowed, then maneuvered out of traffic and onto the shoulder of the road.

“What are you doing?” Cent asked.

“Giving you a last chance.” She leaned over and opened the door slightly. The sound of traffic and a rush of warm air filled the vehicle. “If I were you, I’d take it.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because this is bigger than me. It’s bigger than Mr. Campbell. Because, Cent, if we don’t do this, then who will?”

“You’re talking about saving the world.”

“Save the world. Save ourselves. However you want to think about it. All I know is that I can’t look the other way. Not after everything I’ve seen. Maybe, if I’d never seen any of it—don’t know what’s really out there—I could have gone on blissfully with my life. Like they say: Ignorance is bliss. But I don’t have that luxury. And neither do you. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

He stared at her.

She returned it.

Finally, Cent leaned across her to close the door. “We have a plane to catch.”

8

TORRES

They were waiting for her at the airport, inside one of the private hangars. Bush Intercontinental was sprawling and it took a while to find the place that Harold Campbell’s people had rented out. Cent was standing outside when her cab pulled up.

The “cabbie,” Owen, gave her a smile as she paid him with cash before climbing out. “Very much appreciated, ma’am. Have a good flight.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she said under her breath.

He grinned and drove off once she was outside the car.

“Everything okay?” Cent asked as she walked toward him with her backpack.

Torres nodded. “Everything’s good. Why?”

“Madeline said you missed your ride.”

“I had an errand to run. Instead of heading back to the apartment, it was faster to just grab a cab over here.”

“That’s what I told her happened.”

They walked through the massive open hangar doors together. A Gulfstream jet was parked inside, men in uniforms moving around it like busy bees while two pilots in the cockpit were making last-minute checks. There was no sign of Madeline.

“Where is she?” Torres asked.

Cent nodded toward an office in the back. Madeline was visible inside, talking on her phone. She spotted Torres and waved.

Torres returned it. “She wasn’t mad about me missing my ride?”

“She didn’t seem to be,” Cent said. “Did the errand have something to do with Macy?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“I sent her a care package so she wouldn’t forget me.”

“After what happened to that kid? I doubt she’d ever forget you, Torres.”

She pursed a smile. That had been a lie but there was some of truth in it, too. She did hope that the girl didn’t forget about her.

Madeline had come out of the office and walked over to meet them at the jet. “Thought we might have lost you.”

“No such luck,” Torres said.

“Get your errands done?”

“Yes.” Then, before the woman could ask any other questions, “When do we leave?”

“Whenever we want.”

Madeline walked over to the cockpit and gestured to get one of the pilot’s attention. When the man glanced over, she gave him a thumbs up.

The secretary looked back at them. “Let’s fly.”

They climbed the ladder and found comfortable seats in the cabin. Without saying a word, Cent sat down next to Torres, while Madeline occupied the seat opposite the aisle from them. The plane’s engines were already revving, sounding nothing like the commercial planes she’d flown on. Which was to say, she didn’t immediately have a headache from just the vibrations alone.

No wonder Campbell loves these things.

“There’s something you should see,” Madeline said. She took a laptop out of a carrying case and passed it over to Torres. “Cent and I have already seen it.”

Torres took the laptop and exchanged a glance with Cent.

The young man nodded. “You should probably use headphones so you’ll hear everything.”

Torres didn’t like the much-too-serious look on Cent’s face when he’d said that.

She found headphones from one of the pockets and slipped it on, then opened the laptop. It was already cued up to a video player, frozen on a man in black tactical gear sitting behind a desk, hands folded in front of him.

* * *

Blue-eyed obayifo.

Two of them.

Jesus. There were two of them.

Torres listened with rapt attention to everything Macintosh Hillard said, and when she was done, she replayed the video interview a second time. She didn’t want to miss a single detail. She and Cent called them obayifo but Campbell’s people only referred to them as “creatures.” She guessed that was as good a name as any.

She didn’t finish the video all the way through the second time. There was something about Hillard’s face—or more specifically, his eyes—that haunted her. The man had seen too much. The fact that he was a combat veteran made his trauma even more impressive, if that was even the appropriate word for it.

When she handed the laptop back to Madeline, Cent said, “They were armed with silver bullets.”

“Silver bullets?” Torres said, to both Cent and Madeline.

“All our units are sent out with proper equipment,” Madeline said as she slid the laptop back into its carrying case. “But it appears silver doesn’t work as effectively on the blue-eyed ones as it does their black-eyed counterparts.”

“You say ‘as effectively.’ How ineffective are we talking about?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Ineffective enough that it didn’t stop the two that Hillard met,” Cent said.

“What about the one in the Wilshire? We killed it with the silver crosses.”

“Was it the silver crosses? Or was it because he destroyed its head?”

Torres didn’t have a response for that. Ever since that night, she’d always wondered if it was Cent’s God that had been on their side or just sheer human brawn.

“What about with Franklin?” Torres asked. “You told me all it took was stabbing it with one of the crosses.”

Cent nodded. “Yes. Franklin died the same way as all the others I’ve faced. Silver did the job.”

“Every incident report I’ve read said the same thing,” Madeline said. “But those dead creatures all had one thing in common…”

“Black eyes,” Torres said.

The other woman nodded. “Yes. Our theory is that they’re the same species, but two different mutations. In this case, one is much harder to kill than the other. Not impossible, just harder.”

“Their heads,” Cent said.

“Yes. That seems to be their one weakness. Maybe their only weakness.”

“What about the sun?” Torres said, looking at Cent. “You said the sun could kill the black-eyed ones just as easily.”

Cent shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a blue-eyed one in the sunlight. Maybe it’s immune to that, too. We just don’t know.”

“Which is the problem we have to solve,” Madeline said. “We don’t know enough to fight them effectively.”

“Are we sure there’s only two mutations of these things?” Torres asked.

“Again…”

“You don’t know.”

“We don’t.”

Torres sat back in her seat. They were already in the air and had been for the last ten minutes or so as she digested the video recording. Despite the comparatively quiet engines of the plane, Torres was developing the usual headache again.

“How many times have your people run across one of these Blue Eyes?” she asked Madeline.

“This was the first time,” the other woman said.

“How is that possible? If there’s as many out there as you guys seem to believe.”

“Did you hear what Hillard about the creatures that confronted him?”

“I heard everything he said.”

“Did you?”

Torres squinted back at her from across the aisle. “What are you getting at? What did I miss?”

“They spoke to him,” Cent said.

Torres opened her mouth to argue but nothing came out. He was right. The creatures had spoken to Hillard. They’d even given him a message to send back to Campbell. How in the world had she missed that?

“They’ve never spoken to you?” she finally said.

He nodded. “Never. I’m not sure if they’re even still capable of it.”

“Two different mutations of the same species,” Torres said, this time more to herself than the other two people with her.

“Different mutations, different strengths and weaknesses,” Madeline said. “We really, really need to get one of these things in the labs. I have a feeling they may be more than just an offshoot of the same species. Maybe one created the other.”

“It would make some sense,” Cent said. “One does seem to be more…advanced than the other. The black-eyed ones out there almost seemed primitive to me. Creatures that acted out of their basest instincts. Everything they did was for the simple purpose of survival. But these…”

The young man shook his head. Torres thought she could see the gears turning as he tried to understand what they were facing.

Join the club, Cent. Join the club…

“They’re sending messages,” Cent finished. “That’s new.”

“But you already knew about their existence before what happened to Hillard’s unit,” Torres said to Madeline.

“Yes,” the secretary said. “There was an incident many years ago where one of our people encountered a Blue Eyes. We didn’t know much about it then and still don’t, now. But we could never confirm his encounter. He wasn’t…much help after giving his after-action report.”

“What happened to him?”

“He committed suicide with his own gun.”

“Jesus.”

“Since then, there have been anecdotes about the same type of blue-eyed creatures out there, but we’ve never been able to corroborate any of them.”

“Until now. With Hillard.”

“Yes.”

“How are you handling him?”

“Do you mean, are we monitoring Mac, in case he tries to off himself, too?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“He’s being monitored.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He’s being monitored.”

Torres didn’t think the other woman had anything else to say, so she let it go. She said instead, “Hillard said these creatures know Campbell’s looking for them. What did they mean by that?”

“We don’t know. But it seems reasonable to say they’ve become aware that we’ve been hunting them. That awareness, along with their ability to speak, would seem to indicate reasonable intelligence on their part.”

“Maybe that’s why they’ve managed to stay hidden for so long,” Cent said. “They’re smarter than the Black Eyes.”

“The ones we faced in the Wilshire wasn’t that smart,” Torres said to Cent.

“No, but it did manage to stay hidden until that night. If it hadn’t been for the hurricane, and we didn’t all head to the Wilshire when we did, it might have gone hidden for who knows how long. It was very different from all the black-eyed ones I’ve seen. Or from Franklin.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Franklin’s humanity was gone, leaving just a shell of a person. There was nothing human about him anymore.”

Cent went silent, as did Torres next to him. She knew exactly what Cent was thinking: The same thing she was—about that night.

Even Madeline seemed to suffer from a loss of anything to say, and only the sound of her phone buzzing made all three of them snap out of it. She fished it out of her jacket pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Then, looking back at them, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to take this call.”

Torres watched the other woman get up and leave the cabin.

“I didn’t know you could take phone calls on a plane,” Cent said.

“Only if you own your own private plane, apparently,” Torres said.

She glanced out her window at the passing clouds, everything they’d talked about running through her head. She had difficulty trying to process all of it. She had even more difficulty trying to understand what they were up against and how it was going to help her get Macy back.

And then there was Ana. What kind of agenda did that woman have?

Goddammit. I should have turned down Campbell’s offer to meet and stick to trying to get Macy back myself.

Goddammit.

Madeline reappeared in the aisle, walking back toward them. “Change of plans. We’re detouring to Florida instead.”

“That’s where Hillard encountered the creatures,” Torres said.

“Correct. We have a lead.”

“A lead to what?”

“Potential whereabout of the creatures that killed Mac’s unit,” Madeline said. “We’re going to have to throw you both straight into the fire. I hope you’re ready.”

Not in a million years, Torres thought but kept it to herself.

* * *

They touched down in Tallahassee, Florida four hours later. There were already two big black SUVs waiting for them when the plane taxied into a reserved private hangar. The vehicles gave her flashbacks to the warehouse meeting where Owen had taken her earlier in the day.

There was still plenty of light out, enough that Torres could see the beginnings of a thunderstorm in the horizon. A quick check of her phone’s weather report predicted the storm dropping buckets of water over the Florida state capital before the night was over.

The thought of being stuck in a foreign city during a thunderstorm left her anxious. Not that what they were going to get tonight would be anything close to what Hurricane Matthew had wrought. Her mind knew that but her bones didn’t. And neither did the hairs along her arms and at the back of her neck.

She didn’t like that they were going to be tossed “straight into the fire,” but she couldn’t do anything about that. She could have said “No,” but that wouldn’t have gone over well with Madeline or her boss. And after everything Ana had said to her during their thirty-minute ride to the airport, Torres didn’t think she had any room for mistakes. Saying no to Campbell’s people now would most likely qualify as a big mistake.

The problem was Cent. Torres wanted to tell him everything. With the exception of her, Cent had every right to know about what was really going on. That is, if Ana had told her the truth. In Torres’s experience, the U.S. government was just as liable to lie to you as the State or the City. Or, in this case, use a little girl as leverage against you.

Screw all of you. You can all die and go to hell and back.

They left Tallahassee International Airport in the two vehicles. Torres, Cent, and Madeline rode in one while whoever had arrived to pick them up followed in the second. Torres hadn’t seen anyone when they deplaned and still hadn’t now that they were on the road heading toward their destination.

Madeline didn’t clue them in on what the plan was for tonight and Torres didn’t ask. Neither did Cent. The young man was content to watch the city pass by outside their car’s window. Torres didn’t disturb him. Cent was lost in thought, as was she. She doubted if he was thinking the same thing she was though, but that was a secret for him to keep. Just as her thoughts were hers.

Secrets. She was keeping a lot of those these days.

And so was everyone around her, apparently.

Instead of a mysterious meeting place in the middle of nowhere, they were taken to a motel outside the city limits. Besides an old state highway to one side there was just woods all around them. A big billboard with faded letters declared they were getting THE BEST COMFORT MONEY CAN BUY with a curved arrow pointed into the parking lot. CONLON’S PLACE blinked in neon red and yellow letters underneath that.

Madeline’s people had already reserved rooms for them and Torres took one near the middle, next to Cent’s. Madeline had her own on the other side of Cent’s room.

“Get some rest,” the secretary said. “We’ll reconvene in two hours.”

Neither Torres nor Cent asked her what would happen in two hours. Maybe like her, Cent was just too tired. Inside her room, Torres locked the door and tossed her bag on the bed. She unzipped one of the inside pockets and took out the burner phone she’d been given and went into the bathroom.

She turned on the faucet, then ran some water in the tub before pressing speed dial on the only recorded number in the phone.

Owen answered on the first ring. “How’s the weather in Florida? I hear you guys have a storm on the horizon.”

“How did you know I’m in Florida?”

The man chuckled and instead of answering her question, said, “Did the man himself meet you at the airport?”

The “man” was Harold Campbell.

“No,” Torres said.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. Some people in SUVs.”

“No one special, then.”

“How did you know I’m in Florida?” she asked again.

“Be careful, Torres,” Owen said instead of, once again, answering her question. “We took a risk reaching out to you. Campbell’s assistant might not have given it away, but they’re going to be keeping an extra eye on you from now on.”

“Great. You risked my life and didn’t bother to tell me until now?”

“It’s part of the job.”

“I didn’t ask for this job.”

“Neither did I, but here I am.”

Now what the hell does that mean?

“What else do you know?” she asked instead.

“That’s all.”

“Bullshit.”

The man chuckled again. “You really should be more trusting, Torres.”

“With you? I doubt that will ever happen.”

“Aw, and here I thought we were becoming friends.”

“You kidnapped me, asshole. In my book that’s starting off on the wrong foot.”

“Right. Forgot about that.”

“I didn’t.”

“Maybe one day you’ll forgive me.”

I doubt that.

“In case I actually have to say it, you should tread lightly,” the man continued. “And remember, if you need help, I’m just a phone call away.”

“You’re in Florida too, aren’t you?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“It’s the phone you gave me. It has some kind of tracking app on it.”

“That phone couldn’t handle a finger appetizer, never mind any kind of app.”

“Then you have a tracking device in the phone itself.”

“Don’t be so paranoid, Torres.”

“You didn’t deny it.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No.”

“Okay, okay. There is no tracking-anything on the phone we gave you.”

“Bullshit.”

Owen laughed. “Get some rest, Torres. Looks like you might have a long night ahead of you.”

The line went dead.

Torres ground her teeth and thought about throwing the phone into the toilet and flushing it down into the sewers.

But she didn’t.

Macy. She had to think about Macy.

“Goddammit.”

9

CENT

Cent’s distaste for guns went all the way back to his childhood in Nigeria. Guns were more than just an instrument of death. They were the hammer that broke his country apart. The spear that chased him from his birthplace. The fire that turned his history to ashes.

He hated guns.

And being around them now reminded him of why.

He had only two choices that he could see: Go along with it or leave. The former would be difficult but the latter…undoable. When he closed his eyes, Cent saw his mother’s face and heard her voice as she urged him to do his part. God, she would say, had put him on this earth—in this place, this now—to do exactly this. It was all God’s plan, and who was he to rebel against it? Who was he to say No?

So Cent went with the former and swallowed his doubts.

It started around 8:11 PM when someone who introduced himself as “Madeline’s assistant” came to get him and Torres, whose room was next door.

An assistant to the assistant, Cent thought at the time.

That was something new to him. Then again, anything office-related was. Cent’s entire employment history consisted of driving for Richter.

Kyle Dunbar was tall and skinny, with drooping shoulders underneath a tailored suit. The man led them from their rooms and over to a small conference hall at the end of the motel. The others were waiting inside. Cent hadn’t seen any of their faces before, but he guessed they were likely the ones in the other vehicle that had been waiting for them at the airport.

There were four of them—all men—and they were gathered around a cheap plastic foldout table, drinking coffee. They looked as if they’d been there for a while. Two more cups, unclaimed, were waiting, with a bucket of ice next to them.

I guess that’s ours.

The oldest of the four new faces turned to look at them, then motioned to the two available coffees. “Help yourselves. It’s going to be a long night. Might as well get juiced up.”

Cent exchanged a look with Torres and neither one of them moved to pick up a cup. Cent had never been much of a coffee drinker and Torres probably just didn’t have the appetite for one.

“Where’s Madeline?” Torres asked.

Cent had noticed the absence of Harold Campbell’s secretary as well.

“She has other duties to perform for Mr. Campbell,” Dunbar said. “I’ll be acting as liaison between the group and her for the rest of the night.”

“Does that mean she’s returning?” Cent asked.

“That’s the plan.” The assistant’s assistant remained standing near the door, hands clasped in front of him. Apparently his part in the “meeting” was over.

The man who had spoken to them walked over. “I’m Kripke.” He nodded at the others. “That’s Lorraine, Kyle, and Carlson. In that order.”

The others each held up an unenthusiastic “Hey” hand as they were introduced. Kripke was somewhere in his forties, with the men in his unit all in their thirties. Everything about Kripke and his men screamed “mercenaries,” from their athletic build to their rough facial features to their holstered sidearms. A couple of them—Kyle and Lorraine—were carrying extra handguns behind their backs. They were wearing black clothing—cargo pants with plenty of pockets, and the kind of belts that you could add more pouches to. Tactical outfits.

Most of all, it was the eyes that scrutinized him and Torres as they entered the room. These men knew what Cent and Torres were doing there, and they didn’t like it.

“You’re Cent and Torres,” Kripke continued as he shook their hands. “They told us you can help us. Got the inside baseball and everything.”

“Inside baseball?” Cent said.

“He means inside knowledge,” Torres said.

“Ah.”

Kripke flashed an amused grin. “Where you from, son?”

“Chicago.”

“I mean originally.”

“Nigeria.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

They don’t know anything about us. Madeline didn’t tell them.

“There’s only four of you?” Torres asked Kripke.

“Yup,” Kripke said. “Why? You think we need more?”

“Have you ever gone up against these Blue Eyes before, Kripke?”

The man shook his head. “Nope. But you have, apparently.”

“Both of us have.”

“They didn’t tell us much about you two, but they did mention that. They also told us silver doesn’t work on this breed. You have to take out their heads.” He pointed at his own forehead. “Or the brain. I guess it’s an either/or situation. As long as you get the head.”

“You seem to know everything already,” Torres said. “So what are we doing here?”

Kripke gave her another smile. This one was less convincing. “I’m just a soldier, ma’am. They tell me we’re getting consultants on this op, I don’t question it.”

“‘Consultants?’” Cent said.

“That’s you folks.”

Cent couldn’t help letting out a soft chuckle. People had called him a lot of things in his life, but “consultant” was never one of them.

The door opened and a fifth man entered the room holding a laptop.

“Just in time,” Kripke said. “This is Benton. The last member of our unit.”

“I thought there was only four of you,” Torres said.

“I didn’t say that, ma’am. You just assumed it.” He smiled. “And you know what happens when you assume.”

Torres grunted, but let it go.

The late arrival was the youngest of Kripke’s men by a mile. Mid-twenties and the outlier among the unit not just in terms of age but also appearance. Benton didn’t look as if he’d ever shaved in his life, and despite wearing the same black tactical clothing, his was noticeably cleaner.

The newcomer nodded at Cent and Torres. “You guys must be the consultants.”

“Apparently,” Torres said.

“Welcome aboard.”

“Thanks. What’s the laptop for?”

“Show them,” Kripke said to Benton.

Benton walked over and placed his laptop on the table and flipped the cover open. It was already turned on, with a satellite image of the area on the screen. Benton clicked on the keyboard, fingers flying across the keys. He knew what he was doing.

“This is the spot where we traced them to,” Benton said.

“The creatures?” Torres asked.

“Uh huh.”

“How did you manage that?”

“A combination of field and computer mapping and AI algorithm prediction. If you know where someone started, have a good lock on the current terrain available, you can track anyone anywhere. Usually.”

Cent and Torres got closer to get a better look at the map. It was zooming in on a group of buildings. Quickly, one building came into focus. Or its rooftop. To Cent, it looked like any other rooftop he’d seen hundreds of times, albeit never from quite this angle.

“It’s a condemned building,” Benton continued. “Three stories. Used to be part of a strip mall until they tore most of it down. That’s the only thing left standing.”

“Why didn’t they finish the job?” Torres asked.

“Dunno. Could have run out of funds. Got bored. Delays. Could be anything. It’s in a rundown part of town. No one cares enough to do anything with the property, probably because there’s not enough income around there to make it worth their while.”

“That’s where they thrive,” Cent said. “Places that are forgotten, with people that don’t matter anymore.”

Benton glanced over at him. “They tell us you’ve had your share of run-ins with them.”

“Yes.”

“How was it?’

“It wasn’t…fun.”

“I bet. Looking forward to it myself.”

“Why?” Torres asked.

Benton shrugged. “The boss wants a live one. And what the boss wants, the boss gets.”

He was talking about Campbell. Cent guessed it was a given that whatever a man like Harold Campbell desired, there would be plenty of people scrambling to give to him. In return for favors, of course.

“Our goal is to capture one of those Blue Eyes,” Kripke said. “Research is dying to get their hands on them. They say it could be a game-changer.”

“How are you going to do that exactly?” Torres asked him. “Two of them already killed one of your units. Do you even know how many of them are in there?”

“No. But unlike Mac’s crew, we came prepared.”

Torres all but laughed. “Trust me, Kripke. No matter how prepared you think you are, you aren’t even close.”

* * *

The building used to be an Archers Sports and Outdoor and was easily the biggest structure in the former strip mall. It was, in fact, the largest Archers that Cent had ever seen, boasting two floors and a massive front entrance. Even if it hadn’t been the lone store in what used to be a large shopping area, it would have still stood out.

Cent sat in the back of the van with Torres, the two of them watching monitors attached to one side of the vehicle. There were five slim LCDs in all—four broadcasting live feeds from the helmet cams of Kripke and his men, while the fifth broadcasted real-time footage of the area, including the store half a parking lot from where they were parked.

It took them an hour and a half to reach the location, and another thirty minutes for Kripke’s men to gear up for the breach. Cent’s theory that they were mercenaries was proven correct as he watched the men getting ready. They joked and checked their weapons, and if there was any fear in them, he couldn’t see or feel or hear it. Of course, they could have just been good at hiding it, but he didn’t think so.

Kripke’s group had done this before. Many times. And that, maybe, was the problem. They’d faced the black-eyed obayifo but they’d never seen a Blue Eyes in person. Hearing that they existed and what they could do was one thing, but actually having to stand in front of them when they did those things was another animal entirely.

Cent could see the same doubt on Torres’s face as she watched Kripke’s men climb out of the van and move stealthily toward the front entrance of the Archers. None of the four men said a word, and they didn’t have to. They’d done this too many times and knew how to work as a team. They were impressive. Cent just hoped that was enough.

It was dark outside with only moonlight to see with. Their van was housed in a pitch-black area with no working lights. There were the occasional flashes of headlights on the elevated highway behind them but no regular traffic. There had been no reason to come here for a long time now even by the tenants that lived in the area. On the drive over, Cent couldn’t help but notice how dilapidated everything was. This was truly a forgotten part of the city. It was like the Wilshire Apartments back in Houston, the perfect nesting ground for something that didn’t want to be found.

There were no bright lights outside but they didn’t need them to see. The POV cameras from Kripke’s men were night-vision-capable and presented the dark world in a surreal green glow. The same was true for the camera on top of their vehicle. Headlights on the highway beyond flickered by as white spots, here and gone in seconds.

“What about police?” Torres was asking Benton. “What happens when people hear gunfire and call it in?”

“No one’s going to hear gunfire,” Benton said. He sat next to them in a swivel chair, leaning back on the chair as far as it would go. Cent kept expecting the chair to buckle and send him to the metal floor, but it never did. The man was eating from a large bag of Lay’s potato chips as if he were on a Sunday picnic.

Cent was wrong about Benton: He was older than he looked. Older than Cent, at least, but still the youngest in Kripke’s unit by far. Beyond his age, there was something about Benton that Cent didn’t like.

The man was too eager.

“How can you be sure?” Torres was asking. “It’s dead quiet out there. Sound will travel.”

“Did you see the neighborhood we drove past to get here?” Benton said. Then, as if that answered everything (and, Cent guessed, it did), “No one’s going to hear gunfire. Or if they do, they’re not going to call anyone, least of all the po-po.”

“Po-po?” Cent said.

“Police,” Torres said.

“Ah.”

Torres had refocused on the monitors. “Do the cameras have some kind of steady-cam feature on them?”

“What do you mean?” Benton asked.

“The video feeds. They’re barely moving, even while they’re moving.” She was pointing at the van cam showing Kripke’s group as they were set to reach the Archers’ front doors. Cent understood what she was saying: Why was Kripke and the others so calm, even as they were about to enter the lion’s den?

“No steady-cam,” Benton said. “They’ve just done this before.”

“How many times?” Torres asked.

“Too many to count. I got three years in the unit but the boss and the others have been around longer.”

“You’re the new guy.”

“Yup.”

“Is that why you’re stuck in the van with us?”

“Someone’s gotta do it,” Benton said, though Cent didn’t think he was happy with that. Benton didn’t look, or sound, like someone who was content to be stuck in a van with two “consultants” like them.

On the monitors, Kripke and his men were getting ready to enter the Archers. There were plenty of options for them to take—four glass doors on one side, four more on the other, with two in the middle. Half of the glass was shattered and there were no signs of locks. Cent watched the four men exchanging hand signs before Kripke went in first, sweeping the interior of the store’s first floor with his gun and, simultaneously, his camera. Two bright round beams of light flashed everything he was looking at.

When the store was shut down, its inventory was removed. The only things remaining now were checkout and service counters near the front and empty racks and shelves everywhere you looked. Half of those were on the floor, having been toppled by, Cent guessed, local troublemakers. The place was barebones, its walls covered in all manner of vulgar graffiti.

Kripke and his men scanned from right to left, top to bottom. They moved expertly, their breathing in complete control.

They really have done this before. A lot of times before, from the looks of it.

Kripke remained at the front, his back visible in the cameras of the other three whenever they turned their heads to look in his direction.

Finally, Kripke slowed down and transmitted through his radio, his voice coming through a portable two-way radio sitting in front of Torres and Cent. “Looks like no one’s home. We’ll search it before proceeding up to the upper floor.”

“Copy that, Cryptkeeper Actual,” Benton said into his throat mic.

“Cryptkeeper?” Torres said.

“Our callsign.”

“You chose Cryptkeeper for your callsign?”

Benton grinned. “A little too morbid?”

“A little, yeah.”

“It’s a play on words on Kripke’s name.”

“Yeah, I get that, Benton.”

Cent looked over at Benton. “Does it have a basement?”

Benton shook his head. “No. Why?”

“They like basements. It’s dark and hidden from prying eyes.”

“No basements. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless someone put one in and didn’t tell the construction crew. But there’s no basement in the blueprints.”

“What happens if they need help?” Torres asked.

“What do you mean?” Benton said. The question seemed to have caught him off guard.

“If Kripke’s men need help. Is there a backup unit available?”

Benton shook his head even as he crunched on more potato chips. “It’s just us. Every other unit’s occupied elsewhere.”

“Is that wise?”

Benton shrugged. “Dunno. You’ll have to ask the bosses. I’m just a guy in the back of a van with potato chip crumbs on his pants.”

Torres turned to exchange a worried look with Cent. Neither one of them said what they were thinking, but Cent was pretty sure she had the same thoughts as him: I don’t like how this is going.

“Homer, this is Cryptkeeper Actual,” Kripke was saying through the comm. “Take note.”

Cent focused on Kripke’s cam. He was pointing his lights on something on the floor. A large splash of wetness, as if someone had taken a giant brush and swiped a bucket of thick water across the floor. It started in front of Kripke and continued into the darkness where Kripke’s lights didn’t reach.

Benton leaned forward to get a better look at Kripke’s cam. “What is that, boss?”

“That’s blood,” Kripke said.

“You think it’s his?”

“I don’t know.” Kripke, visible through the cams of the other three with him, went into a slight crouch. The leader touched the wetness with a gloved finger and held it up to his light. “Still wet. If it was Tanner, then he could still be alive.”

Tanner?

Then he remembered: Tanner was Jeremy Tanner, a member of Macintosh Hillard’s unit. The young man was taken down into a sewer where he disappeared, forcing Hillard to follow, only to step into an ambush.

“If he’s alive, we need to find him,” another member of Kripke’s unit said. Cent couldn’t pinpoint the speaker.

“Wait a minute,” Torres said. She picked up the radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Kripke. It’s Torres.”

“Go on,” Kripke said.

“It can’t be Tanner.”

“Why can’t it be Tanner?”

“He was taken earlier this morning. Why would they keep him alive this long?”

“I don’t know. You’re the expert, you tell me.”

“They wouldn’t, is what I’m saying,” Torres said. Cent could see the visible frustration on her face. “Something’s going on. It could be another trap.”

“Like the one Mac’s group walked into?”

“Exactly.”

“We can’t just ignore this, chief,” someone in Kripke’s unit said. Again, Cent couldn’t locate the speaker because he was too busy focusing on what Kripke was seeing through his cam.

“We’re not,” Kripke said. Then, “Homer, I need authority to effect a rescue.”

“Roger that, Cryptkeeper Actual,” Benton said. “Give me a minute.”

“Holding…”

“Kripke,” Torres said, her voice more forceful this time. “This is a trap. You gotta see that.”

“It might be,” Kripke said. “Or it might not be. If it’s Tanner, and he’s still alive, we need to find him. Case closed.”

“Goddammit,” Torres said to herself because she hadn’t pressed the radio’s transmit lever when she’d said it. She turned to look at Cent. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re right,” Cent said. “They wouldn’t keep someone alive for so long. There has to be a reason.”

They both turned to Benton, who had scooted over to one side of the van and picked up a bulky phone attached to the wall.

“What is that?” Torres asked.

“Sat phone,” Benton said. “It’s our line to headquarters. Secured from end to end. No need to worry about eavesdroppers.”

Benton didn’t need to dial anyone. He simply pressed a button and waited for a response.

Cent looked back at the monitors with Torres. Kripke and his men were holding their places, standing, from what Cent could make out, almost back-to-back. They were scanning the empty first floor of the Archers around them, dual bright lights from their helmets flickering across empty shelves and more graffiti on the walls. These were even more vulgar than the ones he’d seen near the front of the store.

One of Kripke’s men—a label on the monitor showing the man’s POV designated it CARLSON—was staring at some of those colorful graffiti. Two women and a very well-endowed man were locked in a tight sexual embrace.

“Damn, look at that,” Carlson said. “Someone’s got some real talent.”

“Stop jacking off,” another voice said. It wasn’t Kripke, so it had to be one of the other two men in the unit.

“Just giving credit where it’s due.”

“Maybe you can find whoever did it and ask for an autograph.”

“Maybe I’ll do just that,” Carlson said as he looked over to his right. He gasped and practically jumped back, shouting, “What the fuck?”

On the other monitors, the others were turning, their cams zeroing in on Carlson as he backtracked before stumbling over his own feet. Carlson was raising his rifle as he did so, scrambling to line up a shot.

“Carlson, what are you doing?” someone asked. It might have been Kripke.

But Carlson didn’t respond because he had opened fire, the staccato flashes of his weapon lighting up the surreal green glows that filled all the monitors.

“It’s an ambush,” Torres said. Her voice was breathless. “Goddammit! It’s another ambush! Get out of there! Get out of there!”

Cent’s eyes swiveled to Kripke’s monitor as the leader turned frantically, screaming, “Contact! We have contact!” just before he, too, opened fire.

10

TORRES

The Glock felt good against her right hip as she jumped out of the van and darted across the parking lot toward the Archers. Torres didn’t know how comforting the weight of a sidearm on her hip was until the Houston Police Department took it away from her. She could have gotten a concealed carry license, but that was more hassle than it was worth. Besides, she had more important things to do, like try to get Macy back.

But now, as midnight turned the parking lot into an ambush-prone universe, Torres wished she had an entire HPD SWAT team at her back. Instead, it was just her running all by herself toward a building that had been abandoned long ago. A building that, right now, probably hosted an obayifo nest, the occupants of which were, in all likelihood, shredding one of Campbell’s mercenary units to ribbons.

So why was she running toward that chaos?

Because she had no choice.

Because even without a badge or a uniform, she still knew what the right thing to do was.

Neither Benton nor Cent had followed her out of the observation van. If one of them was on her heels, she couldn’t tell because Torres never spared the second or two it would have taken to glance back to confirm or deny. Instead, she raced through empty parking spaces and hopped over speed bumps until she was on the dirt-strewn sidewalk.

She hadn’t seen it before via the cameras, but the area around the Archers was littered with junk. Soda cans, used newspapers, and all manner of debris that gathered over the years. But at least there were no obvious signs of junkies having made a home here because she couldn’t see any needles or other dangerous items in her path.

There was no need to open any doors. She just lunged through the first open glass entrance and into the inner area of the Archers.

Gunfire from the other side, their flashes lighting up the interior of the store like bolts of lightning. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

But there was continued shooting, which meant some of Kripke’s people were still alive. That made her mad scramble to get here a lot easier to justify. If she’d arrived and there was no one to save, Torres would have felt like a real idiot. Not that she didn’t already.

Glass crunched underneath her sneakers as she moved into the store, the Glock already in her hands. Her eyes, not yet adjusted to the semidarkness, had difficulty distinguishing the service counters from the cash registers and the empty shelves. The floor was covered in slick linoleum tiles, with the occasional stretches of carpet here and there.

More gunshots coming from the back of the store.

How had Kripke’s people gotten that far? Had they retreated? If so, why did they go back instead of running for the front? Had they lost their way in the ensuing melee?

A scream cut through the blackness as more gunfire ricocheted off the walls and ceiling and bounced off the smooth floor.

Torres made a beeline for the flashes. It was impossible not to see. Even though they appeared and disappeared in a heartbeat, it was still easy to spot their origin—

Something flickered in the corner of her right eye.

Torres stopped, turned, the Glock swinging up to find a target.

A figure lunged out of the darkness as if the shadow itself had spat it out at her.

Torres took two, then three unwitting steps backward, pulling the trigger on the pistol as she did so. The first shot’s recoil took her by surprise. It’d been too long since she went to the range and the lack of practice sent her second shot high.

Fortunately her first shot hit where she’d aimed it—right at the thing flying at her.

It crumpled to the floor at her feet, malformed limbs in a pile, dark black eyes—even blacker than the darkness—looking up accusingly. It laid still, unmoving, a small drip of black sludge sliding out of the hole in its chest where she’d shot it.

Obayifo.

One of the black-eyed ones. The silver-tipped bullets in her gun had stopped it in its tracks. If she ever needed confirmation that it wasn’t Cent’s “hand of God” that had killed the creatures back at the Wilshire, it was lying a foot or two from the toes of her sneakers now. It wasn’t God that had saved them then. It was the silver in the crosses. At least when it came to the black-eyed ones.

Screaming coming from the back of the store. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ they’re everywhere!”

Torres darted in that direction. She couldn’t tell if the screamer had been Kripke or one of his men. Not that it mattered. It was one of them, which was more proof she hadn’t made a fool’s run into the Archers.

She was drawn further into the unwavering darkness by more screams and occasional gunfire. It was harder to pinpoint the voices than it was to see the shooting. The muzzle flashes were like beacons designed specifically for her. She could see at least two individual flashes near one another. Which meant at least two of Kripke’s people were still alive.

Even as she ran, Torres scanned the store around her, eyes snapping left then right, then forward, then left and right again. She didn’t know if the obayifo she had killed had been lying in wait for her or if it’d just gotten “lucky.” It didn’t matter. They were in here with her and there could be more of them. In fact, the chances of there being more of them were high.

She didn’t bother looking behind her. If they were on her heels, she would feel it. Or she hoped she would feel it, anyway.

“Go go go!” someone shouted. It sounded like Kripke.

“Go go go?” Go where? You’re already going the wrong way!

If Kripke or one of his men was ordering a retreat, then why was she seeing gunfire moving even farther into the back of the large warehouse store? Shouldn’t they be coming toward her instead?

She picked up her pace—and nearly slipped on a large puddle of wetness on the slick floor.

Torres just managed to catch her balance and remain upright. She glanced back at what had almost felled her.

Blood.

A lot of it.

Fresh blood, too.

The taste of metal was on the tip of her tongue, just as the stench—

The smell. Jesus, the smell. She hadn’t realized it until now but her olfactory was drowning in a rotting stench that swarmed her from all angles. The odor seemed to come out of nowhere, tainting the air all around her. Or maybe it had always been there but she just hadn’t picked it up with the adrenaline rushing through her as she made her run toward, then through the Archers.

Now, it was impossible to miss.

Now, it was all she could do not to suffocate underneath the onslaught.

How had Kripke’s people not noticed it? Or maybe they had, but they had done this so many times it never occurred to them to mention it. She’d have to ask them later. If there was a later for them. For all of them.

She pushed on toward the flashes of gunfire.

There was only one weapon firing now. She’d also stopped hearing voices. Neither of those were good signs. But as long as someone was still shooting, it meant at least one person was still alive and needed help. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do when she got there, but she’d find out—

The shadows in front of her squirmed as it came alive.

Torres slid to a stop, nearly slipping on the smooth tiles and falling. But like last time she managed to stay upright, the gun in her hand rising, taking aim.

Two bright blue orbs glowed in the darkness. They pulsated, like two stars growing larger with every pulse.

Images of what had happened that night at the Wilshire Apartments replayed themselves in Torres’s mind. In the blink of an eye, she remembered the confusion, the fear, and the unmistakable feeling that her life, from that moment on, would be forever changed.

Her gut sank, deeper and deeper, until it was replaced by a black hole that sucked in every ounce of bravery she thought she possessed. There was something about this pair of eyes—it was much brighter and much bluer than the one that had stared at her in the Wilshire. That night, she thought she’d looked into the soul of pure evil.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

If those eyes were evil, then that were these?

True evil?

In the back of the store, all movements had ceased. There were no more sounds, no more screams, and no more gunfire. She was, all of a sudden, the only living, breathing thing in the entire Archers.

The darkness moved again, seeming to disperse, until there was just her and the Blue Eyes. It stepped out of the shadows, moving on long but steady limbs. Unlike the one she’d killed earlier, this one stood upright, as if it still remembered how to be a human being. But there was nothing human about it. Nothing natural. She was staring at an abomination; a supernatural thing that couldn’t possibly exist. And yet, and yet…did.

Obayifo.

Its arms—thin and bony, like bent chopsticks—hung casually at its sides. It didn’t have any uses for clothes and there was nothing remaining that could assign it gender. Sunken chest seemed to quiver as if it still breathed. (Did it? She couldn’t tell.) Its head was oddly shaped, like a deformed egg. Its domed head was hairless, as were the rest of its pruned flesh, all of it seeming to glisten in a sudden stream of moonlight.

Torres’s heartbeat picked up and crashed against her chest with the strength of a thousand sticks of TNT going off again and again. Her breathing was haggard, every breath taking a lot more out of her than it should.

The creature stood less than ten feet in front of her. She held the gun pointed at its head, telling herself to Shoot for the brain. That’s the only way to kill it. Shoot for the brain!

Her finger put pressure on the trigger.

Slowly, so it wouldn’t know the exact moment when she pulled.

Slowly.

Slowly…

It grinned, lips forming as if by magic from the remains of its sharp facial features.

She fired.

The pinging sound of the round bouncing off something in the darkness at the back of the store.

The creature remained standing. It had moved. Barely. And only its head. It’d jerked it to one side, bright blue eyes leaving her for half a heartbeat before returning to scrutinize her. There was absolutely nothing on the thing’s face that looked like fear.

She fired again.

And again.

And again.

And each time she did it moved just a bit. Its head, its body, sometimes just its chest. From ten feet away, every one of her shots should have landed. She might not have visited the range in a while, but ten feet was child’s play for a cop.

She should have hit it.

But she didn’t.

…but she didn’t!

The snap of the Glock’s slide as it sprang backward one more time—and stayed locked in place. The gun was empty. She’d fired everything and the pistol was light as a feather in her hand.

The obayifo remained standing.

And smiling (or something that might have passed for a smile, but not quite).

“I know you,” it said, those simple three words coming out of its mouth as hisses, sending shivers up and down Torres’s spine. “I know your stink, meat. We’ve been meaning to visit you.”

Its words made her flesh prickle. Or maybe it was the way its eyes drilled into hers, even as its voice took on the tone of familiarity.

The magazine in the Glock was empty, but she had two spares in the pouch on her left hip. Kripke had offered more—like an AR-15 or submachine gun—but she’d declined. Torres was used to handguns and the occasional shotguns. She wished she’d taken Kripke up on his offer, even if she didn’t think it would have mattered. Hillard had been equipped with a fully auto weapon, as were Kripke’s people, and it hadn’t made a bit of difference for them.

Torres flicked the eject switch on the pistol, heard the clatter of the empty mag landing even as she fumbled blindly for a spare. There, where it was supposed to be. She pulled it out and slapped it into the mag well.

The creature never moved, never lunged forward to stop her. It simply stood its ground and watched her, just a hint of amusement on its gaunt face. If she didn’t know better, Torres would think the obayifo was…playing with her. It didn’t try to stop her from reloading because it didn’t have to. She’d already emptied one magazine at it and it’d simply dodged every round.

“One more time, then?” it hissed, that gruesome smile—or something that closely resembled one—spreading from one side of its shriveled cheek to the other. Its face was so thin that its skin hung off the skull underneath rather than covered it.

Torres aimed the Glock to fire—if it wanted to give her a second chance then who was she to say no?—and was about to pull the trigger when she heard footsteps behind her. It wasn’t just any footsteps, either, but the squeaking of sneakers.

She spun, just as a figure emerged from the darkness, coming from the direction of the front doors. “Torres, get down!”

Cent. It had to be Cent.

God, she hoped it was Cent.

She still didn’t know if it was Cent or not as she dropped to the slippery floor—it was covered in sweat for some reason but she didn’t know if it was hers or someone else’s—as a shotgun boomed somewhere above her, loud enough to almost shatter her eardrums.

Torres glanced back just as the creature took one step back, reeling from the shot. It was trying to stop its momentum when Cent fired again.

Then again.

And again.

The creature turned and fled, leaving a trail of flesh and black goo. Cent hadn’t hit it in the head, but he’d gotten close. Torres thought she could see a piece of the monster’s skull on the dark floor where it had been standing just seconds ago.

She looked over as Cent stuck out his hand toward her. She grabbed it and let him pull her up.

“How many?” he said.

“What?”

“Blue Eyes. How many Blue Eyes?”

“One,” she said. “I just saw one.”

“Not two?”

“I just saw one,” she repeated. Then, breathless, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Kripke?” Cent said, looking toward the back of the building.

Torres wiped wetness off her palms. There were red streaks on her fingers. Blood. So she hadn’t landed in a puddle of just sweat after all. There was some blood there, too.

She followed Cent’s gaze. “They’re gone.”

“Gone where?”

Before she could answer, Cent lifted the shotgun and fired again. The sound of bones clacking to the tiled flooring echoed. She couldn’t make out what had fallen, but she had a good guess. To find out for sure would require wandering into the shadows, and Torres had no interest in doing that.

“The smell,” Cent said.

“Yeah, I know. The place is full of them.”

“Why aren’t they attacking?”

“I don’t know.”

Cent hadn’t had to rack the shotgun. It was a semi-automatic and loaded itself with a new shell each time after firing. She wished she had something like that instead of just a handgun. The young man was staring off into the darkness as Torres spent the next few precious seconds wiping blood and sweat and…something else off her palms. She looked toward the front doors. She could just barely make out the obayifo she’d killed earlier, halfway to the exit.

“Where’s Benton?” she asked.

“In the van.”

“He didn’t follow you out?”

“No.”

“Did he even try?”

“I don’t know.”

Torres didn’t know what she had expected. Benton was a member of Kripke’s unit, but he hadn’t done anything even knowing they were in trouble. Was he scared? Or following protocol?

“We should go,” Cent said. “You first. I’ll watch our backs.”

She didn’t argue and turned to go. The Glock was heavier in her hand than it should have been. She blamed it on the blood and whatever else she had clinging to both palms and clothes. Cent followed behind her, the squeaking footsteps of his sneakers a soothing companion.

Even as she moved briskly, Torres couldn’t stop thinking about the Blue Eyes, and what it had said to her:

“I know your stink, meat. We’ve been meaning to visit you.”

Being called “meat” was insulting, but it was the latter part that hung heavy in her mind.

“…We’ve been meaning to visit you…”

What did it mean by that?

Or maybe the question she should have been asking herself was, did she really want to find out?

11

CENT

“We’ll take care of it,” Benton said before a second van appeared in the parking lot and took Cent and Torres back to the motel. They sat in the back of the vehicle with two strangers, staring across the small space at each other. Cent wasn’t sure what Torres was thinking, but Cent’s own thoughts were solidly still back at the Archers.

Obayifo.

There was supposed to be two Blue Eyes according to Hillard. Only one had confronted them in the sports and outdoor store. Cent remembered the surprised look in its eyes when he fired at it with silver-laced buckshot. It hadn’t gone down like the black-eyed ones, but it’d been hurt. He could see that much in its reaction.

Silver doesn’t kill them but it still hurts them.

Even hurt, it’d still been fast enough to sprint away before Cent could finish it off. He had to be satisfied with saving Torres and taking out two of the black-eyed ones. It could have just been Cent’s imagination, but he swore those two had appeared simply as a barrier to stop him from pursuing the blue-eyed one. Was that possible? Had the Blue Eyes somehow commanded them to get in Cent’s path in case he pursued?

And that was the problem. The biggest one of them all. They just didn’t know enough about the creatures. Harold Campbell was absolutely correct in that respect. How can you ever hope to defeat the enemy if you don’t truly know what it’s capable of?

We need to find out. One way or another, we need to find out, or we’ll always be one step behind them.

Back in his motel room, Cent stripped down to nothing and attempted to wash away the night underneath a scalding hot shower. He could still smell the stench clinging to his skin when he stepped out and put on the only other wardrobe he’d brought with him. Cent tossed the old clothes into a bin and laid down on the mattress. The night’s events, as expected, came back in a rush.

Running in after Torres.

Seeing those blue eyes burning in the darkness.

Then shooting it.

It was those blue eyes that stayed with him. They looked nothing like the pair he’d faced in the Wilshire Apartments. These were brighter, more…alive somehow. As if he were looking at a creature that had achieved full power whereas the one he and Torres had killed was still transitioning.

There was an intensity to these set of eyes that refused to loosen their grip on him even now. As he stared up at the ceiling, Cent felt like they were still watching him, piercing through the darkness and into his very soul.

He almost jumped off the bed when his room’s phone rang.

Cent was expecting Torres—he had a feeling she might still be awake, too—but it was Dunbar. The secretary’s secretary was much too peppy. “Wanted to check in and see if you needed anything, Mr. Freeman.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you sure? You and Ms. Torres had quite the close call from what I heard. I could have someone bring over a late dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“A late drink, then?”

“Not thirsty, either.”

“That wasn’t the kind of drink I was referring to, Mr. Freeman.”

“I know what you were referring to. And I don’t need it.”

“Very well, Mr. Freeman. Please don’t hesitate to call my room if you need anything.”

“Did Benton come back yet?”

Dunbar didn’t answer right away. Maybe he was even trying to decide if he should answer or not.

Finally, the man said, “Not yet, Mr. Freeman. If you would like, I’ll inform him that you asked about him.”

“What about the others?”

“Others, sir?”

“The ones that brought us back to the motel. Are they back?”

“Ah, them. No, Mr. Freeman. They haven’t returned as yet.”

“What are they doing back there?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. But I’ll be happy to let Mr. Benton know about your questions. Perhaps he can fill you in.”

“Never mind.”

Cent hung up and went back to lying on his bed. He didn’t like Dunbar. There was a snobby quality about him, even in the way he called Cent by his surname. The man just seemed to take too much joy doing it.

He went to sleep.

Or tried to.

After about an hour of futility, he got up and went to find Torres.

He opened his door and was about to step out when he remembered. Cent closed the door and went back to his bed and picked up the sheathed knife. He put it behind his back and covered it up with his shirt.

It was well past midnight and he was the only soul outside the motel. The parking lot was half-full and there were only a smattering of lights still on from the other rooms. The sign blinked brightly next to the street, pointing potential weary customers into the establishment.

Cent walked the short distance to Torres’s room and knocked. She opened the door before he could finish the second knock, as if she’d been standing on the other side waiting for him to show up this entire time. From the look on her face, he had a feeling Torres couldn’t get past what had happened at the Archers, either. Not that he blamed her one bit.

“Thought you might be asleep,” he said.

“No.” She stepped aside to let him in. Then, when he entered, she peeked out the door just before she closed it. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

“No.”

“Dunbar called me.”

“The secretary’s secretary?”

She smiled. “Him.”

“He called me, too. I asked about Benton, but he didn’t know anything.”

“Same. You think he’s lying?”

“About not knowing?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. He’s just a replacement for Madeline. Maybe he doesn’t know everything.”

“Maybe.” She stared at him. “You can’t stop thinking about him, can you? The Blue Eyes. Back at the Archers.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking about him, too. It. Whatever you want to call it.”

She walked over to her bed and sat down. Like him, Torres had changed clothing and showered. Her hair was still wet. And like him, she hadn’t gotten any sleep since they returned back from the Archers.

Their rooms were identical, with one single bed in the center, a nightstand, and entertainment center. It wasn’t five stars, but he’d slept in worse conditions. The bathroom at the back was open, wisps of steam from a hot shower still lingering around it.

“It wasn’t the same one, right?” Cent said.

“What do you mean?”

“The Blue Eyes. It wasn’t the same one that we killed back at the Wilshire.”

Torres shook her head. “It wasn’t.” Then, giving him a curious look, “You weren’t sure?”

“I was, but…”

“You wanted confirmation.”

“I guess that’s it.”

She nodded. “It wasn’t the same one, Cent. It was another Blue Eyes.” She might have shivered slightly before she added, “I’m not sure if that should make me feel better or worse, to be honest with you.”

“I’m going with the latter myself.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking, too.” She paused for a moment, staring off at nothing. Not actually nothing. She was looking at the window, as if she were expecting unwanted company. “I’m starting to believe what Campbell said. About there being more of them out there than we thought. A lot more.”

Cent sat down on an armchair in the corner. He looked across the room at her. “It’s not too late. You can still jump off this runaway train.”

She might have smirked. “We’re well past the point of no return, Cent. So far past I can’t even see the signs anymore.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think Campbell would let you off if you wanted. He has no right to keep you here.”

“It’s not that simple.” Torres had the eyes and face of a woman who had a lot on her mind but refused to say them out loud for whatever reason.

“Why isn’t it that simple?” he prodded.

“I can’t leave after knowing what I know. Maybe, if I’d never picked up that phone call, I could have. In fact, I’m sure I could have, even after what happened at the Wilshire. I could have told myself it was an isolated occurrence and that I was lucky to survive it. If I hadn’t picked up that phone call from Campbell, I could have gone on with my life, spending every waking hour trying to figure out a way to get Macy back.”

Cent didn’t say anything. He had to keep reminding himself that, unlike Torres, his situation was much simpler. He was alone in the world, with no dependents or obligations. He could do anything he wanted. He’d earned more than enough money from working with Richter to last a few lifetimes. At least, the kind of lifetimes that Cent lived, which consisted of public transportation, cheap food, and cheap everything else. He had no uses for brand names or cars or jewelry. The knife he carried was the only valuable thing he had on him other than his life.

And Cent wasn’t even so sure about the latter.

“It said something to me,” Torres was saying. She had returned to staring at the window. “Back at the Archers.”

“The Blue Eyes?”

“Yes.”

“So they really can talk. Hillard wasn’t lying about that.”

“He wasn’t.”

“What does their voice sound like?”

Torres seemed to consider the question seriously for a few seconds before answering. “Like hissing.”

“Hissing?”

“Like how a snake would hiss.” Again, she might have shivered unwittingly. “It was unsettling.”

“What did it say to you?”

“It said…” Another pause.

“Torres?”

She turned to face him. “It said it knew me. It knew my stink. And that they’ve been meaning to visit me.”

Cent stared at her, digesting what she’d said. He understood now why Torres kept looking at the window. She was afraid. More than that, Torres was petrified by what had happened at the Archers.

“What else did it say?” he asked.

“Just that. Then you showed up and shot it.”

“It said it knows your smell?”

“Stink, Cent. It said stink.”

“Right. You said it knows your stink? Not they? But it?”

“I think so. Why?”

“You mentioned it said, then later, they said.”

Torres’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did. Did you mean it?”

“Yes. That’s what happened. It used the I pronoun before switching to we.” She squinted back at him. “What do you think that means?”

“I’m not sure, but I know one thing for certain now.”

“And that is?”

“There’s more than one Blue Eyes out there. I know Hillard said two of them ambushed his team, but to hear them actually say it, from their own mouths…” Like Torres two times now, Cent might have shivered without intending to.

Torres stared at him in silence. He hadn’t noticed it before but she was still wearing the Glock on her hip. He’d given the shotgun back to Benton before they left, but Torres hadn’t relinquished her weapon. Apparently he wasn’t the only one feeling a little unsafe tonight.

She got up and walked over to the window. Torres leaned against the wall and peered out at the dark parking lot beyond. “More than one, Cent. There are more than one of them out there. The blue-eyed ones. God knows how many more.”

Cent joined her at the window, on the other side of it. He glanced out at the world, but there was nothing to see except parked cars. The van that had brought him and Torres back to the hotel was gone. He guessed those men had returned to the Archers with Benton to “take care” of the situation. He still didn’t know what that meant.

“Is that why you’re still wearing your gun?” he asked.

“The same reason you’re still wearing your knife,” she said, smiling across at him.

“You noticed.”

“Hard not to.”

“Seemed like a good idea.”

“So is this,” she said, patting the gun’s grip. “Not that it did any good against the creature back there.”

“Did you hit it?”

“It…dodged my bullets.”

“It dodged them?”

“Yeah. From almost point-blank range. I couldn’t even touch it.” Her face grew serious again. “Cent. That thing back there, it was fast. Faster than the one at the Wilshire.”

He nodded. He’d suspected the same thing when he watched it flee. “It looked faster to me, too.”

“No one dodges bullets, Cent. But that thing did. Effortlessly.”

“Did you go for the head?”

“At first, but I couldn’t hit it. I went for the easier shot—the body after that. Same story. Where did you hit it?”

“The chest. I think I got some buckshot on its face, too. Not enough to kill it, unfortunately.”

“I don’t know if buckshot would have done it. It probably takes more than that.”

“Next time I’ll get up close and take its entire head off.”

“That’s what I would do.”

“So we know this one was faster than the last one. Was it stronger, too?”

“I don’t know. I was lucky enough to avoid finding out. Though I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t shown up.”

“I should have been there earlier. It took a while to convince Benton to give me the shotgun.”

“Better late than never.”

“What else?” he asked. “What else did you notice about the obayifo?”

“Its eyes…”

“They were brighter.”

She nodded. “You noticed it, too.”

“I did.”

“Bluer, faster, and probably stronger, too. What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. We don’t know enough about them.”

“What Campbell said.”

“Yes.”

“So you agree with him on that, too?”

“I do now. I thought I knew them, but I don’t really know anything. This thing we’re up against, it’s…” He paused for a bit. “It’s a lot more complicated than I thought.”

Torres might have chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You. Thinking that any of this was even simple to begin with.”

That made him crack a smile, too. “I guess I was being a little naïve.”

“Just a little?”

“Maybe more than a little.”

Her face sobered up quickly. “I still don’t trust him. Campbell. Him or his organization. Or his men. Not even his secretary. Or his secretary’s secretary.”

Cent could tell that she’d been thinking about this, and he didn’t interrupt her.

Torres continued. “There’s something they’re not telling us. I don’t know what it is, but they don’t want us to know it. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

“They’ve been at this for a while. Maybe there are secrets they don’t want to share. At least, not yet. Not until he thinks he can trust us.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

“We should give them some time. They’ll come around.”

“I have limited time, Cent.”

“Why?” he asked but then quickly figured out the answer himself. “Macy.”

“If they’re able to get her back to me, I can’t be doing this. I need to stay with her. At home.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“But until then, we need to be careful. We can’t trust anyone.”

“What about us? Can we trust us?”

She didn’t answer him right away.

“Torres…” he said. Then, softer, “Kerry. Can we trust us?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re keeping something from me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can see it on your face.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You don’t trust me, either.”

“I do. Cent, I trust you. You’re probably the only person I can trust right now.”

“But you still won’t tell me.”

She pursed a smile. “I’ve told you everything.”

He didn’t believe her for a second, but Cent nodded and smiled anyway. “All right, then. At least we know we can trust one another.”

12

TORRES

Conlon’s Place motel promised THE BEST COMFORT THAT MONEY CAN BUY, but Torres wasn’t so sure about that. It was cheap and out of the way—the latter was the only thing Campbell’s people cared about—with the lights of downtown Tallahassee far in the distance. As a staging area for a raid on an obayifo nest, they couldn’t have asked for more.

But Torres could.

She wanted more from the hard single-sized bed and definitely more from how the night had gone. Her hand shook as she closed the door after Cent and continued trembling when she laid down on the bed and tried to sleep.

It didn’t happen.

She ended up staring at the ceiling, watching a spider spinning cobwebs in hopes of trapping some ignorant pest for the next two hours. Midnight came and went and before she knew it, it was two hours into the next morning. The Hour of the Wolf. It was said that the “hour”—really, hours—was when people’s nightmares were at their most real.

She managed to somehow fall asleep sometime after three. When she opened her eyes again, it was to the sound of car doors slamming.

Torres sat up and immediately swung her feet off the bed, one hand going to the gun on her hip. The feel of the cold grip was comforting, not that it completely chased the gnawing fear away. She got up and hurried across the dark room over to the window. Torres leaned against the wall and peered out, careful not to touch the curtains and give her presence away.

There were two vehicles parked outside, just a few doors down from hers, that wasn’t there the last time she looked. Both were vans. She recognized the one that had taken her and Cent to the Archers and the other one that had brought them back to the motel. Benton was outside, directing traffic as men in black tactical gear—she couldn’t be sure if they were the same ones that had picked her and Cent up—unloaded wooden boxes from the back of both vans.

She used the men’s height to gauge the dimensions of the boxes. She guessed 5x5x5. She counted three in all, with Campbell’s people taking turns carrying them out of the vehicles.

Dunbar had appeared next to Benton. The two men conversed while the others did all the heavy lifting. Torres followed the boxes as far as she could, but they eventually vanished out of her peripheral vision. There were more motel rooms down there. She waited to hear doors opening and closing but couldn’t detect it. Which meant they weren’t taking the boxes to the rooms nearby but farther away.

What else was down there? The conference hall, which would have made for a decent storage area.

Torres tried to read Benton’s and Dunbar’s lips, but they were too far away and just happened to be standing in a spot that didn’t have a lot of lights. She could only make them out at all because of the blinking neon motel sign.

The final box came out of a van. Torres made note of how drastically the van’s suspension moved—the tires seeming to almost bounce upward—as soon as the box was unloaded. Which meant its content was heavy.

Really, really heavy.

When the last item disappeared, Benton and Dunbar walked off after them. Torres didn’t bother to follow with her eyes. She stood still and waited instead, eyeballing her watch as she did so.

One minute.

Two…

Ten minutes later, Torres slipped out of her room. She looked left and right, then checked the parking lot to make sure there was no one standing out there. Campbell’s people hadn’t put guards anywhere all night and they still hadn’t, now.

Conlon’s Place had twenty rooms in all, spread out among three sections that made an angular “U” shape. The only lights were the neon sign and three streetlamps spaced out across the parking area. There should have been six, but only three were working. She walked casually down the sidewalk toward the conference hall, just like someone who had every right to be there would have done.

She passed Cent’s room and briefly considered waking him up. Cent would want to know what Benton had brought back from the Archers with him and why it took six men to carry each one.

But she didn’t knock on his door and kept going.

Besides her, Cent, and Campbell’s people, there was only a handful of customers. Most were Floridians judging by the license plates, but at least three vehicles were out-of-towners. That included the two vans behind her, along with a Ford rental.

Like most people who decided to shelter in roadside motels, the ones at Conlon’s Place had elected to park their vehicles as close to their rooms as possible. This usually meant right in front of their doors. That made it easier for Torres to figure out which room belonged to a weary traveler and which ones were housing Campbell’s people.

She made a beeline for the conference hall.

When she finally reached it, Torres skipped knocking and tried to open the door. The ruse she had settled on depended on the straightforward approach. The doorknob turned but the door didn’t budge. She remembered seeing a deadbolt on the other side.

She knocked. “Anyone home?”

She waited a few seconds as footsteps approached the door, followed by a male voice. “Can I help you?”

“I forgot something inside.”

“Who is this?”

“Torres.”

A beat. She heard muffled voices before the deadbolt clacked loudly and the door opened.

There were two men inside, both wearing black tactical clothing. She recognized one of them as having gone to the Archers to pick her and Cent up. She didn’t know his name or the one with him. Both men carried sidearms and additional weapons. The one she’d seen before had a submachine slung in front of him while the other one carried a shotgun behind his back.

The lights were on inside and there was an iPad on the meeting table, the video that it’d been playing on pause. She sneaked a glance past the two men without making it too obvious but couldn’t glimpse anything that looked like the three boxes she’d seen unloaded earlier. But there were two more rooms inside with closed doors.

The man she recognized gave her a pleasant enough smile. His eyes were slightly puffy from the long working day. “What’d you forgot, ma’am?”

“My keys,” Torres said. “I can’t find them, but I remember I brought them in here with me.”

“Motel room key?”

She nodded. “Did you guys see one in here?”

“No, ma’am,” the first one said. He looked over at his partner. “You see a key in here?”

The second one shook his head. He’d gone back to sitting down at the table, feeling no threats from Torres. “Nope.”

The first man turned back to her. “You sure you forgot it in here, ma’am?”

She smiled. Normally it would have annoyed her that a young man was calling her “ma’am.” Where she came from, you called only two types of people “ma’am”: The ones you respected, and the old ones. She was pretty sure it was the latter in this case. She had a good five years or so on Campbell’s man and maybe only one or two on the second one.

But Torres let it go. The man’s “elderly respect” for her would allow her to get away with more tonight.

“Had to be here,” she said. “I looked everywhere else. Can I check?”

The young man nodded and stepped aside to let her in. “We’ll help you look.”

“Thanks, guys. Sorry to bother you.”

“No worries.”

Torres stepped inside and glanced around. She made sure to look at the table first, then began moving along the chairs. The two men did the same.

“I don’t know your names,” she said to them.

“I’m Matt and this is Lew,” the first man said.

“Nice to meet you. What are you guys still doing in here? Shouldn’t you be asleep by now?”

“Late-night duty,” the one named Lew said. He pulled a chair out and checked it briefly before shoving it back underneath the table and moving on to the next one.

Matt yawned, then gave her a shy smile. “Excuse me.”

“You guys must be tired,” Torres said.

“Bushed.” He shrugged. “But it’s our turn, so…”

It didn’t escape her that neither men had even come close to telling her what their “late-night duty” entailed.

“What’s in here?” Torres said as she headed toward the two rooms in the back.

She’d guessed that one would be a bathroom and she was right—there was a picture of a toilet on the door. The other one didn’t have anything on it, and it was that one she made a beeline for.

“Ma’am,” Matt said. There was just a touch of warning in his voice, but he’d gotten it out just a second before she reached the door, opened it, and looked inside.

There was definitely something in the darkness. She quickly flicked on the lights.

Eureka.

It was the three wooden crates piled in one column near the back. Up close they didn’t look any more special than they had when she had glimpsed them in the parking lot. Wood sides, tops and bottoms, and nothing that indicated what was inside. There were no markings or decals and the packaging was clearly repurposed from something else.

Matt appeared in front of her, sliding between her and the open door, and flicked the light switch off. The room went dark as the young man swung the door close, moving forward as he did so to force Torres to retreat.

“What’s that?” Torres asked him.

He smiled, though it wasn’t nearly as friendly as it’d been earlier. “Just additional supplies, ma’am.”

“Where’d they come from? I didn’t see them before.”

“They were just delivered earlier.”

“Why do we need more supplies? I thought we were leaving at daybreak.”

“We are, ma’am.”

“So why do we need more supplies?”

He pursed a smile. This time Matt didn’t bother to hide his growing annoyance. “I can’t answer that, ma’am.”

“Who can?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Dunbar.”

“I guess I’ll do that.” She smiled at him, then walked past Lew—he’d taken a few tentative steps toward her—and toward the front door. “You boys let me know if you find my room key, okay? I think they’re going to charge us extra if we lose them.”

“We’ll do that, ma’am,” Matt said.

She opened the door and looked back at them. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Matt said.

Lew just nodded.

Torres didn’t look back at the conference hall once as she returned to her own room. There was a chance Matt or Lew, or both, might be watching her to make sure she did just that. She was just a woman looking for her room key, after all. Nothing more, nothing less. She’d left her room unlocked because of that, but she was still startled when she opened the door.

“Jesus Christ,” Torres whispered. She quickly closed the door and locked it. “What the hell are you doing here?”

It was Owen.

He sat on her bed, legs crossed as if he were at home, while flipping through a King James bible. He was wearing black pants and black T-shirt. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’d been waiting for her all day.

He held the bible up with one hand. “I didn’t even know they still have this thing in motel rooms.”

“They have it everywhere,” Torres said. She walked over, snatched the book from his hand, and put it back into the nightstand drawer. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on you.” The man leaned back, hands on the bed behind him. “Heard about your adventure in the Archers. What happened?”

“Heard” about it? How the hell did you hear about that?

Torres gave him a hard stare before picking up the remote and turning the TV on. Cent was next door and the walls had proven to be too thin. She turned up the volume just enough to mask their conversation.

She looked back at Owen. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“It’s all right. No one saw me.”

“That’s not the point. You’re making this unnecessarily risky for me.”

“This is necessary.”

“Is it?”

He nodded. “The conference hall.”

She tried to hide her surprise, but he probably saw it. He would have to be dense not to since he was staring at her when he answered.

“The crates,” she said.

“The crates.”

“What’s inside them?”

“We don’t know. But we know they brought it back with them from last night’s adventures.”

“Stop calling it that.”

“Calling what, what?”

“‘Adventures.’ It wasn’t a goddamn adventure.”

“What would you call it, then?”

Traumatic event.

Torres said, “Doesn’t matter what you want to call it as long as it’s not goddamn ‘adventures.’”

“Understood.” He sat up slightly. “What did you see in the conference hall?”

“Just the crates.” She walked to the window and peered out from behind the curtains. Owen got up to join her on the other side. “Super heavy crates.”

“How heavy?”

“Heavy enough it took six people to carry them one at a time.”

“That’s heavy.”

She looked across the window at him. “How are you monitoring them?”

“We have our ways.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

He smiled. It was smug and, for maybe the twentieth time, she wanted to wipe it off his face. “It wasn’t supposed to.”

“Satellites?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s satellites.”

He gave her a noncommittal shrug.

“What does she have to say about all of this?” Torres asked. “Your boss.”

“She hasn’t given me any new marching orders yet.”

“What’s your standing orders?”

“Keep an eye on you.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Does keeping an eye on me include visiting my motel room and risking both our lives? But more importantly, mine?”

“I had to.”

“And why did you have to?”

“To give you this.” He took something out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

Torres didn’t reach for it right away. It looked like a pen. An ordinary pen. A plastic grip near the bottom with an opaque container that revealed black ink within. There was even a BIC logo on the side.

“It’s a pen,” she said.

“Sort of.”

She took it. It even felt like a pen. When she clicked the end cap with her thumb, the writing part came out the other side just like it was supposed to. “Let me guess: Ana wants me to write an essay for her?”

“Not quite. In a few hours, Harold Campbell is going to fly you and Cent to his sanctum sanctorum. It’s a place that very few outsiders that aren’t part of his organization have visited. Some of the ones there haven’t seen the sunlight in years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Campbell takes secrecy seriously. Everyone who is there is getting paid very well.”

“It’s not always about money, you know.” Torres held up the pen. “So what am I supposed to do with this?”

“When you get there, you’ll be given access to Campbell’s main computer system. Everything he has—everything he’s gathered since he began this crusade of his—is in there. Ana wants you to give us access to those contents. That pen will help you do that.”

She turned the pen over in her hand. It really did just look like an ordinary pen. She’d seen hundreds like it from high school to college to the police academy. “How?”

“Click the end again. Three times in rapid succession.”

She did—three times, quickly.

Instead of a ballpoint end, this time a long metal needle-like object slid out in its pace. Torres held it up to the moonlight shining in through the window to get a better look. It was sharp—almost sharp enough to pierce skin. And it was definitely not a pen point.

“There will be a slot on Campbell’s computer to insert that,” Owen said. “Once you’ve done that, everything will take care of itself.”

She clicked the end cap and the sharp point disappeared back into its housing. Torres pocketed it and looked across at Owen. “What if you’re wrong and he doesn’t give me access to his computers?”

“He might not hand them over to you, but you’ll be in rooms with them. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

No. But it might hurt me.

She said, “That’s your big plan? Stick a pen into one of his computers?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“It’s not a very good plan.”

“We didn’t say this would be easy. Remember, we did give you the chance to say no.”

She squinted at him. Yeah, right. As if she could say no to the very real possibility of being reunited with Macy. Or getting her career back on track. Or living her life like a normal human being once again. Ana had promised all those things and from what the woman had shown her, she could deliver.

“What happens if I get caught?” she asked.

He smiled. “I guess you better not get caught.”

She grunted, and thought, Twenty-one. That was the number of times now that she wanted desperately to punch Owen in the face.

“Get out of my room,” she said.

“No nightcap?”

“Get…out.”

He did that mock surrender thing again as he backed up toward the door. “Remember, don’t get caught. We can’t help you if Campbell turns on you.”

“You’re telling me there’s no rescue if I run into trouble?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

She sighed, and thought, Then I guess I better not get caught.

13

CENT

Instead of a private plane, a chopper landed in the middle of the motel parking lot and whisked them away. Cent would have liked to say he wasn’t impressed with Harold Campbell’s resources, but that would have been a lie. The man had the kind of money that could get anything you wanted, whenever you wanted it. It was nice to be filthy rich. Not that Cent was envious of the man. In his experience, money only brought more trouble. Or violence. Sometimes both.

And yet, he didn’t have one but did have plenty of the other, so maybe being both wasn’t such a bad thing.

He wasn’t sure where the pilot was taking them, but it was somewhere south of Florida. Dunbar sat across from Cent and Torres, the secretary’s secretary wearing a headset that looked odd perched on top of his well-coiffed head. Benton and the others else hadn’t gotten onto the chopper with them and as they took off, Cent could see the man in question and a few of the others exiting their rooms and heading toward the parked vans.

Torres hadn’t said much since last night, not even when they were having breakfast while waiting for their ride. She looked lost in thought, and besides a few scattered topics, they hadn’t gotten into any meaningful conversation. Cent didn’t ask her what was on her mind; if she wanted to tell him, she would have. After last night, he didn’t think she had any inclinations to do so. After all, he’d asked her if he could trust her and she had replied, with a straight face, that he could.

It was a lie.

He knew it then and he knew it now. If anything, the awkward breakfast only confirmed it. Torres wasn’t here because she wanted to be. And yet, she hadn’t jumped off the Campbell train yet. Why not?

Macy, of course. But was that all it was?

Cent only knew that he couldn’t trust her. Not completely. He shouldn’t have been too surprised by that sudden epiphany. How much did he really know her? They’d spent one night together, eight months ago, and even then they’d barely talked. They had shared a nightmarish battle with a Blue Eyes but beyond that, he didn’t even know her first name until Madeline told him.

He sat next to Torres but he didn’t look over. He didn’t have to. She was staring out the open hatch as the Florida landscape flashed by underneath them. Streets, rooftops, and more rooftops. He had no idea where they were going. He’d only been to Florida two times before last night and both was for a job with Richter. When you were on a job, there was no time for sightseeing. Even when he was out on the road canvassing locations, Cent was usually so focused on the task at hand that he didn’t see, as Dutch would say, the forest for the trees.

Last night’s chaos and the lack of sleep took their toll on Cent and he drifted off about three hours in. That was a surprise. He didn’t think he could sleep with the sound of the chopper blasting away in his ears.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to Dunbar tapping him on the shoulder. The man shouted, “We’re almost there! ETA ten minutes!”

Cent looked out his side of the open hatch at the sheets of water below. The Atlantic? No, not the Atlantic. It’d only been a few hours since he fell asleep according to his watch. They couldn’t have already crossed Florida and reached the other side of the state. He was looking at the tranquil and gleaming waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Or a very small part of it.

He couldn’t see anything that looked like buildings or civilization below. At least not for another ten minutes, when suddenly sandy white beaches appeared in the horizon. An island. A long one, from the looks of it, with mountains at the corners.

“Bird Island!” Dunbar shouted. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the helicopter rotors. “Mr. Campbell is waiting for us there!”

Next to Cent, Torres was also awake. He couldn’t tell if she’d fallen asleep like he had, but she looked wide awake now. He’d spotted the puffiness around her eyes during breakfast. Whatever Torres had been doing last night, it hadn’t involved sleeping. She looked tired.

“You fell asleep!” Torres said. She, too, was shouting to be heard.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night?”

“I did. But I guess it wasn’t enough.”

She smiled and he thought, Looks like you didn’t get a whole lot of sleep either last night, Torres.

He shouted over at Dunbar, “Bird Island?”

Dunbar nodded. “Mr. Campbell bought it about seven years ago! It has a pretty storied maritime past! I can regale you with them if you’d like!”

“Sure. Sounds interesting.”

Dunbar beamed, apparently believing Cent’s response even though Cent thought it wasn’t even remotely believable himself.

Torres said to Dunbar, “How far are we from the mainland?”

“Not too far. Fifteen miles from the coastline, give or take.”

“Fifteen miles?”

“Give or take.”

Torres nodded but didn’t say anything else.

Cent looked over at her. “What’s so special about fifteen miles?”

“International waters.”

“I don’t understand…”

“A country typically controls the waters around its coastline up to twelve miles. Or just under twenty kilometers. Fifteen miles—”

“Is in international waters,” Cent finished.

Torres nodded.

Cent turned back to Dunbar. “Was that on purpose?”

Dunbar smiled. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Campbell that! But I can say that Bird Island is where the majority of operations are formulated! This is the heart of the organization!”

As they got closer to the island, Cent could see more of it. Bird Island was longer than it was wide, with its highest peaks coming in the form of mountains on the two corners—north and south. They were headed toward the center where Cent could already spot the white rooftops of buildings underneath the sparkling sunlight. Their helicopter swooped past the white sandy beaches and what looked like guard towers spaced out about once every thousand yards or so. A series of roads had been cut into the island, creating winding paths around the forest that dotted the landscape from end to end. Those roads also connected the buildings from what looked like docks that extended out from the beaches at specific locations.

A flock of birds glided in a jagged V-shape underneath them without fear as the chopper swooped lower, nearing its destination: a helipad on one of the buildings. A big golden “H” inside an equally golden circle marked their landing spot, along with a familiar face.

Madeline.

Campbell’s secretary stood nearby. It was a good thing she had a ponytail or the helicopter’s blades might have played havoc with her hair. There was no one else down there except the statuesque executive assistant.

The pilot guided them down with expertise but didn’t turn off the rotors when he set down. Instead, Dunbar leaned over to Cent and Torres and shouted, “Off you folks go! Ms. Madeline will take it from here!”

“You’re not coming, too?” Torres asked.

“Nope! My job here is done!”

Cent undid his seatbelt and hopped through the open hatch. Torres did the same on the other side. They braced themselves against the wind ripping at their faces and clothes. Madeline stood at one side of the rooftop waiting for them. The chopper ascended before they had even gotten halfway to Madeline.

He reached the secretary first. “You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Here, there, wherever Mr. Campbell needs me,” Madeline said. “How was your trip?”

“He fell asleep halfway here,” Torres said.

“I fell asleep halfway here,” Cent said with a grin.

“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” Madeline asked him.

“Not quite.”

“Well, there’ll be time to make up for that later. Right now Mr. Campbell is waiting for us. Follow me.”

By the time Madeline had led them to the rooftop access door the chopper was already a small—and getting smaller—dot in the sky behind them. They stepped into a stairwell and went down. The first thing Cent noticed was the cold air conditioner; it was a welcome relief after the harsh heat of Florida.

Madeline led the way, with Cent to her left and Torres on the other side, the two of them slightly behind the secretary. Their footsteps clanged against the metal steps as they descended. Madeline’s was louder because she was wearing inch-high heels. Torres, like Cent, had on sneakers with soft soles.

“I read the reports on what happened at the Archers last night,” Madeline said. “Quite the situation.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Torres said. “What happened to Kripke’s unit? Other than Benton, I mean.”

“They didn’t make it.”

“All of them?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It was a trap,” Cent said.

“That would appear to be the case. We knew the possibility was there, and Kripke was certain he was prepared for it.”

“He wasn’t,” Torres said.

“No. I guess he wasn’t.”

“What did Benton and the others bring back with them last night?”

“Bring back with them?” Cent thought. What was she talking about? Cent had slept through the night after returning from Torres’s room. Apparently she hadn’t done the same. What else was she doing while he slept?

Cent kept quiet and waited for Madeline’s answer. Torres had clearly thrown the question at the other woman hoping to catch her off guard. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Torres watching Madeline closely, even secretly thanks to her lucky angle. She was trying to gauge Madeline’s reaction and response. Ironically, Cent was doing the same to her.

Madeline didn’t answer right away. It took her two steps down the stairs before she finally spoke. “Last night?”

“Yes. Last night,” Torres said. “They returned to the motel with three crates. Heavy crates. It took six men to carry each one out of the vans.”

“Ah. That.”

Slight surprise on Torres’s face. Apparently she hadn’t expected Madeline to confirm the existence of these crates.

“Mr. Campbell will have all the answers,” Madeline continued. “He’s waiting for us below.”

Cent thought “below” meant one of the lower floors. He’d counted five stories since they came down from the rooftop and finally reached the first floor. The landing had two doors waiting for them—one marked F1 and the other marked S1. Madeline made a straight line for S1. They followed her down a new set of stairs, the sounds of their footsteps seeming to die just a bit faster than on the previous upper floors. Even the echoes of their voices didn’t have the same intensity.

“We’re underground,” Torres said.

“Yes,” Madeline said.

“How far down does this building go?”

“Five. But there’s nothing between the first sub floor and the upper floors except solid concrete. Only S5 is currently usable.”

They rounded a sign indicating S2. Because there was just as much artificial light down here as there’d been on the other floors, Cent was able to glimpse a S3 on the wall below them.

“Five underground floors but four of those are buffers against the surface,” Torres said. “What’s your boss afraid of?”

“Nothing,” Madeline said. “He just believes in being cautious.”

Against what?

But again he kept the question to himself. Madeline and Torres were in some kind of struggle for information. Torres clearly knew more than him, so he let her do all the work for both of them.

Despite the nearly ten-floor walk, none of them were winded or struggling. Maybe it had a little something to do with the cold pumping through the plentiful ventilation. Either that or Cent was just refreshed from last night’s sleep and this afternoon’s nap.

They finally reached S5 and for the first time, Cent saw armed men in black tactical uniforms standing guard against a metal door at the bottom of the landing. They recognized Madeline and moved aside, one of them opening the door. It was clearly a heavy door, and Cent saw at least one inch of solid steel when it was fully opened.

Cent and Torres followed Madeline inside, but not before the two of them exchanged a brief glance. Like him, Torres had taken note of the armed security. Cent wasn’t sure why he was surprised by it because he shouldn’t have been. For a while, he had forgotten what kind of man Harold Campbell was.

Rich.

And rich men had a lot to safeguard and protect themselves from. Especially one like Campbell, who was a campaign against something that Cent was sure defied every law of nature and God Himself. Campbell most definitely had enemies, and not all of them launched attacks wearing suits and ties.

There was a long hallway on the other side of the steel door. More concrete walls, floor, and ceiling like in the stairwell followed. Arrow markings along the walls and floor pointed them up toward an intersection about fifty yards away. It was a long walk. Cent wasn’t sure why the directional arrows were necessary; there was nowhere to go but forward. Certainly, no room to enter before the intersection.

“What is this place?” Torres asked. “Your boss’s home away from home?”

“In a matter of speaking, yes,” Madeline said. “He spends more time on the island than on the mainland.”

“Doesn’t he have business affairs to deal with? Last I checked he had billions of dollars locked up in dozens of multi-national companies.”

“It’s the 21st century, Kerry. Meetings can be held in dozens of ways. Most of them don’t actually need someone to be physically present. Or are you really asking how does someone like Mr. Campbell navigate the floors?”

“That, too. We just walked down ten flights of stairs.”

“Keep in mind the entire complex was built specifically with him in mind.”

“You’re saying there are elevators.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen one yet.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“Secret elevators?”

“Not at all. You just haven’t looked hard enough.”

Torres didn’t reply to that.

There were more clear directions at the end of the hallway. Two arrows pointed in opposite directions. The left one was marked OPERATIONS while the right declared RESEARCH.

Madeline led them left.

“Operations?” Torres said. “What does that mean?”

“It means…operations,” Madeline said.

Torres made a slight smirk.

Madeline smiled…and so did Cent.

They didn’t have to walk as far this time. OPERATIONS ended twenty-five yards later with two more men standing guard outside another steel door. Like before, the men recognized Madeline and one of them turned to open the door.

“I didn’t know underground bunkers were possible on islands,” Torres said. “Especially something this elaborate.”

“Anything’s possible if you have enough time and money,” Madeline said. “Fortunately Mr. Campbell has both.”

“Must be nice to have everything be so…flexible.”

“I wouldn’t know. I only make secretary wages myself.”

Yeah, right.

They stepped through and into a massive room that had to be at least three stories high. Madeline had said the four subterranean floors above them were nothing but concrete but apparently that wasn’t entirely true. At least parts of S4 and S3 weren’t, because there was a large hangar-style structure in front of them that clearly went well past just one floor’s height.

The room was cavernous and filled with boxes—some wooden, others metal—stacked on top of one another. Tarpaulins covered bulky objects that ringed the place in a rough circle, hiding their contents underneath heavy canvas. There were at least a dozen vehicles parked inside. ATVs, military-style Humvees, and what Cent was sure were heavily modified SUVs.

Campbell himself was there in his wheelchair watching as a dozen or so men unloaded wooden crates out of two large trucks that had left muddy tracks in their wake. There were three crates in all. Cent guessed these were the same objects that Torres had asked Madeline about.

“Sir,” Madeline said.

Campbell turned around in his chair. He smiled at them. “Welcome to Bird Island. Glad to see that both of you got through last night unscathed.”

“We did, but Kripke and most of his unit didn’t,” Torres said.

Campbell nodded somberly. “I’ve been informed of that unfortunate event.” The billionaire sighed, seeming to genuinely be affected by the losses. It was either that or he was a very good actor. Cent couldn’t decide which one it was. “This is a dangerous crusade we embark on, have no doubt. But at least we now have two very capable soldiers to fight alongside us.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Cent said.

“Neither am I,” Torres said.

Campbell smiled. If he was annoyed by their retort, he didn’t allow it to show on his face. “It was a figure of speech.”

He turned back around as his men removed the last of the boxes. They sat it down with some effort. Whatever was in there, it was heavy. The same was true for the other two crates. Once they were done, the men dispersed. Some left the room while others went back to other duties. The truck itself started up and drove off, disappearing down an entrance to another corridor on the other side. Cent wondered just how big the place was exactly.

“The boxes,” Torres said. “They’re from the Archers last night.”

“Yes,” Campbell said.

“What’s inside them?”

“Perhaps something that will change this war in our favor.”

Torres turned to look at him. Cent, meanwhile, hung back. He was doing something that Richter liked to say: When people are voluntarily serving information up to you on a silver platter, don’t interrupt them.

“Stop playing games,” Torres said to Campbell. “You brought us into this because you think we can help you. So let us help you. Tell us what’s in those crates. Or is that another secret you’re going to keep from us?”

“It’s not a secret,” Campbell said.

“It sure feels like a secret to me. Your people won’t tell us anything.”

“That’s because I told them not to. Not until you were here.” Campbell rolled over and picked up a crowbar resting on one of the crates. He offered it to Torres. “Be my guest.”

Torres didn’t hesitate. She took the crowbar and went to work on the first crate, prying the top loose, then went to work on one of the sides. The sections fell away, revealing something else within.

Another box.

Except this one was metal. Very, very heavy metal steel, if all the effort needed to transport it was any evidence.

Torres straightened up, crowbar in hand, and took a breath as she eyeballed the inner box. “Is this a joke?” She turned to look at Campbell. “A box within a box?”

“One is to transport it. The other is to protect it,” Campbell said. “Or, perhaps I should say, protect us.”

Campbell’s wheelchair buzzed quietly as he moved over to where she stood. He leaned slightly forward before pressing a recessed button on one side of the metal object. The top slid open…revealing a clear glass section underneath.

Torres leaned over the box to get a better look at its contents. Cent went over to join her.

There was something inside that was folded up like a pretzel, arms and legs bent at odd angles, its head lolled to one side. It might have been asleep or damaged.

Or dead.

“Jesus Christ,” Torres said almost breathlessly.

Cent wouldn’t go that far, though the sight was definitely a surprise. He’d expected to find a lot of things on Campbell’s island, but this was not one of them.

It was an obayifo.

“Is it dead?” Cent asked.

As if it could hear him, the creature’s eyelids opened and bright crystal blue eyes peered out from behind the thick glass at Cent. It bored into his soul as if trying to swallow him whole even as it laid inside its prison.

Campbell’s people had finally captured a blue-eyed obayifo.

14

TORRES

“I know you have questions,” Campbell said.

No shit, Torres thought but she said, as diplomatically as she could muster, “That’s an understatement.”

“Just know that this is necessary. We can’t defeat the enemy until we know what it is. That includes what it’s capable of. What it can do, what it can’t. We need to know everything if we’re going to win this war.”

“I just don’t know if you’ve considered all the dangers involved with this.”

“The risks are worth the potential rewards.”

“Who decided that. You?”

“It’s my name on the island’s deed. And my name that writes the checks. So, yes, I guess I’m the one who decided.”

Torres stared at the back of the man’s head as they were led out of the OPERATIONS warehouse and back into the hallway. Madeline walked ahead of them while Cent was somewhere to her right and slightly behind. The young man hadn’t said much besides the occasional questions ever since they arrived on the island.

Cent.

Torres could see the way he looked at her when he didn’t think she noticed. It wasn’t a leap to say he knew there was something going on with her that she wasn’t telling him. She couldn’t be sure if he even believed her when she’d told him they were the only two people they could trust last night. She couldn’t blame him; she wasn’t sure if she believed it.

And he had every right not to trust her. Torres was withholding a lot of information from him. He would have realized that by now if he hadn’t already; Torres had asked Madeline too many questions that Cent wasn’t privy to on the way down here. It didn’t escape her that the young man had listened quietly and rarely interrupted her back-and-forth with Campbell’s executive assistant.

They had been walking for the last five minutes or so and the hallway never seemed to end. Not that it was easy to tell because they all looked the same—gray concrete walls, gray ceiling, and gray floor. The only way to keep track was by using the arrows that indicated they were heading toward the QUARTERS area of the structure.

The place looked half-finished, but that might have been the original intention. For all she knew, Campbell was a fan of the almost-finished-but-not-quite look. She didn’t think so, though. More likely the complex had been created to do work and that meant aesthetics had to take a backseat to practicalities. Soon she’d learn what they had been doing down here, but for now she had to be content with trying to—and failing—to memorize her way around the place. Thank God for the arrows.

Back at the large warehouse space they’d just left, Campbell’s people were doing something with the boxes they’d brought back from the Archers last night. Boxes that contained obayifo. According to Campbell, his men had successfully captured three of them—a Blue Eyes and two Black Eyes. Torres wanted to ask to see the reports from that capture but bit her tongue. For now, she had to give Campbell the benefit of the doubt.

Or at least let it seem that way.

She thumbed the pen that Owen had given her, inside her jacket pocket, the man’s words echoing in her head:

“When you get there, you’ll be given access to Campbell’s main computer system. Everything he has—everything he’s gathered since he began this crusade of his—is in there. Ana wants you to give us access to those contents. That pen will help you do that.”

She didn’t understand how that was supposed to work, but she guessed she’d figure it out when the time came. Ana’s people seemed to know a lot more about Campbell than she did—hell, than most people did—and she had to take it on faith they would also understand how his computer systems worked. Because if they were wrong…

Nothing. Nothing would happen if they were wrong. She’d go back and tell them it didn’t work and wash her hands of it. She’d done her part, but it wasn’t her responsibility to make their plans work. Meanwhile, they would have no excuses not to follow through with their end of the deal: Get Macy back to her. As for the rest of their deal, she could live with or without them. But it was Macy that was the linchpin. Torres didn’t know how hard it was to live without the girl until the orphan had come into her life.

What’s that saying about life happening while you were too busy making plans?

They turned another corner, Madeline still leading the way. The executive assistant hadn’t said a word since they left the OPERATIONS warehouse. All the talking was between Campbell and Torres. Occasionally they ran across someone either in a white lab coat or black tactical outfit on their way. The men or women usually nodded at Campbell as they passed but ignored the rest of them. Everyone knew who was signing their very healthy paychecks.

“You’re playing with fire,” Torres said. “You know that, don’t you? That thing back there is not to be taken lightly. It’s stronger than it looks.”

“We’re well-aware of its strength,” Campbell said.

“It’s fast, too. I shot at it point-blank and it dodged my bullets as if I were throwing rocks at it.”

“I’ve read all the reports on the incident.”

“So why are you treating all of this like you haven’t?”

“You’re wrong. I’m taking this very, very seriously. But we have to know why silver doesn’t kill it. And what else doesn’t kill it? Is it just silver? What about the sun? What about explosions? Decapitations? Or is striking a blow against its brain the only way to end them?”

“It wasn’t just a blow,” Cent said. It was the first time he’d spoken in a while.

“Correct. You and Kerry destroyed its head.”

“Yes.”

“The point is, it can still be killed. But a bullet to the head is much harder to accomplish than one to the chest. I believe there’s a term for that?”

“Center mass,” Torres said. “They call it shooting for center mass.”

“Not that. Something else.” He tried to think of the answer but came up blank. “Madeline?”

“The Mozambique Drill,” the secretary said.

Torres wasn’t the only one surprised by Madeline’s answer. Cent, just visible in the corner of one of her eyes, was too.

Now how does a secretary know about the Mozambique Drill?

“Yes, that’s it,” Campbell was saying. “Are you familiar with it, Kerry?”

“Yes,” Torres said. “You’re trained to shoot two times to the chest, at center mass, and finish the target off with the more difficult headshot. Our SWAT guys were taught the technique, and sometimes we run it on the range to change things up.”

“Exactly. But it’s a little difficult to shoot a Blue Eyes in the chest and finish it off with a headshot when two in the chest won’t do very much. It would be easier if a single shot to the chest, from a safe distance, could put the creatures out of our misery. Don’t you think?”

“Safer for who?”

“For you. Cent. My men in the field.”

Your men in the field? Torres thought, wondering just how much Campbell really cared about guys like Hillard and Kripke. As far as she knew, Kripke was dead and Hillard was out of action. That was to say nothing about the men in their units.

“I don’t see Benton around,” Cent was saying.

“He’s returned to the field,” Madeline said.

Torres was surprised to hear that. So was Cent, from his reaction.

“Already?” the young man asked.

“He said he was ready.”

“He saw his entire unit wiped out in one night. How does someone become ‘ready’ after that?”

Torres wanted to throw in with Cent’s doubt but didn’t. She remembered the sight of Benton at the motel parking lot last night. He didn’t look as if he’d been all that traumatized by what had happened to his unit. In fact, he looked almost…happy?

“He insisted he was fine,” Madeline was saying.

“People lie,” Cent said.

“He has no reasons to. He knows our protocols. We give the men every opportunity to recover after an operation. Benton had the same choices, but he chose to return immediately to the field. Don’t worry, he has ready access to plenty of help should he need them. All our people do.”

“Don’t worry about Benton, Cent, we take care of our people,” Campbell said. “No one does anything they don’t want to. And no one goes back to work when they’re not ready. That goes for everyone, including the two of you.”

“I’m sure they appreciate that,” Cent said. It was probably the closest to sarcasm she’d ever heard from him.

“But back to the Blue Eyes,” Campbell said. “You have to remember that we’ve been at this for a while. I can assure you, there’s no need for concern. We’ve taken every necessary precaution. There will be no lapses in judgement when dealing with this species.”

They turned another corner—Was this the third one? Fourth? She’d lost count—and came to an end. There was a long hallway in front of them this time with metal doors. She counted twenty rooms in all with ten on each side. The quarters area.

Madeline turned around to face them. “The civilian quarters. We’ve assigned rooms to the two of you.”

She took two white keycards out of her pocket and handed one each to Torres and Cent. The cards had deceptive heft to them and were magnetic, with a single number engraved in the center. Torres’s had 5 written on it while Cent had 7. That meant their rooms were side by side again since the numbered rooms were evens on one side and odds on the other. Both of theirs were on the right.

“Where do the soldiers stay?” Torres asked.

“They have their quarters area,” Madeline said. “And remember, they’re not soldiers. They’re—”

“Field Technicians,” Torres said. “Right. I forgot.”

Madeline smiled. “Someone will be around to fetch you two when we’re ready to proceed. Until then, get some rest. Food is available in the cafeteria and there’s a shower in every room.”

“Private showers?” Cent said.

“With rainfall showerheads.”

“Fancy.”

“Not quite, but they’ll do,” Campbell said. He turned around in his chair and beamed at Torres and Cent. “I’m very glad to have the two of you here. We are in the fight of our lives and I wholeheartedly believe that both of you will be a major asset.”

“I don’t know why you think we can help,” Cent said. “You have plenty of men. More capable men who know how to use guns.”

“I do, but I don’t have men that have actually faced a Blue Eyes before. Not just faced those things but killed them. The two of you are the first to do that.”

“We got lucky,” Torres said. “That’s all.”

Even as she said those words, Torres knew Cent wouldn’t agree. The young man believed a higher power had had a hand in their survival at the Wilshire. She remembered how he had referred to the crosses as God’s Hands. She hadn’t bought into it then and still didn’t. If anything, she was even less convinced now.

“According to you,” Campbell said. He was clearly undeterred. “Or there’s something else. Something…unexplainable.” He’d looked over at Cent as he said that last part.

Unexplainable?

Then she understood: God. He’s talking about God.

Torres was surprised by that revelation. She didn’t know very many rich men and women who had that kind of belief. In her experience, the people that got rich, who didn’t just earn it by the privilege of coming out of the right woman’s womb, got there by believing in very little but themselves. When you had to screw—financially, physically, and emotionally—your way to the top, was there really any room left for God?

“Yes,” Cent said, nodding. “I believe that also.”

“You and me both, son,” Campbell said.

Torres was good at reading people—it was, after all, a part of her old job—but when she looked at Campbell and listened to him, she believed that he believed what he was saying. Campbell was sincere. Impossibly so, in fact.

Unless he was very good at lying. She didn’t discount that possibility. If being a cop had taught her anything, it was that everyone lied. Sometimes the lies were bigger than others, but everyone lied. Everyone.

“Get some rest, you two,” Campbell said. “Our adventure has just begun. We will win this war.”

“You keep calling it that,” Torres said. “A war.”

“Because that’s what this is.”

“But you refuse to call your soldiers, soldiers.”

“That’s…a good point.” Again, that sincere smile. “Maybe I’ll have to reconsider their classification. What do you think, Madeline?”

“Everything gets reclassified sooner or later,” Madeline said.

“But I get to keep the title of consultant, right?” Cent asked. He was grinning.

Campbell laughed. “Whatever you want, Cent. I think you’ve earned the right to call yourself whatever you choose.”

Torres and Cent watched Campbell as he rolled away from them, Madeline following closely behind. They turned the corner, the sound of Campbell’s wheelchair, barely audible when it was moving in front of them, quickly fading into nothing now that it was out of their view.

“That was interesting,” Cent said.

Torres turned to him. “Among other things.”

“What’s your take on it? On”—he waved one hand at their surroundings “—all of this?”

“My take is that our new friend has a lot of money. Maybe more money than he knows what to do with.”

“So he builds a five-story underground bunker on his own private island? I could think of much more useful things to do with that kind of money.”

“You’re not Harold Campbell.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Don’t be so down about that, Cent. Money has its own problems, too.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t those be nice problems to have?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

They walked up the hallway, scanning the door numbers for theirs.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use a shower,” Torres said.

“I thought you already took one at the motel.”

“I could use another one.”

“You should grab a nap, too. You look tired.”

“I feel tired.”

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

Torres forced a smile. “On and off. I guess what happened at the Archers was still on my mind.”

“That’s understandable.”

They found their rooms. They were side by side, the doors featuring a polished steel panel next to the equally shiny lever. There were no slots to insert the keycards, so Torres tried waving her card in front of the panel. Her door clicked, opened slightly, and stayed that way.

Cent was watching her from his door. He’d also opened his. “You think this is a mistake, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Campbell. Bringing the Blue Eyes here.”

“I think it’s a mistake his men didn’t kill it back at the Archers when they had the chance.”

“What about the others? The Black Eyes?”

“They’re less so, but the blue-eyed one…”

“I agree.”

“You do?”

Cent nodded. “It’s too dangerous. Better to just kill it on sight.”

“You should have tried to convince him with me when you had the chance.”

“I didn’t see the point. A billionaire many times over won’t take advice from a war refugee from Africa.”

“Or an ex-cop that got fired from the job.”

They exchanged a smile. For the first time since they both boarded that chopper and came here, Torres didn’t see any suspicion in Cent’s eyes.

I should tell him everything.

But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “I really need that shower.”

“Me, too,” Cent said.

She entered her room and closed the door behind her. She didn’t hear Cent’s door closing on the other side of their shared wall, so the rooms had pretty good soundproofing. The room was bigger than she had expected. Ten feet wide and fifteen feet long, with a private bathroom at the end. A small bed with what looked to be a very comfortable mattress was pressed against the wall she shared with Cent’s room. There was also a kitchenette, complete with a small eating table, on the left side. Not quite all the comforts of home, but she had expected worse. If their employees and guest quarters were this good, she wondered what kind of room Campbell had.

Torres went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, setting it to hot. She walked back to the bed and laid down. It was, as she’d guessed, as comfortable as anything she’d slept on in a long time. It made the motel bed look like a pile of rocks…with nails jutting out of them.

There was a nightstand next to the bed on her right, with a reading light jutting out of the wall above it. A panel was embedded into the wall above that with a landline phone and a small screen. Torres took out the pen Owen had given her and put it inside the nightstand’s only drawer.

I really need that shower.

She got up and stripped down before walking barefoot into the shower. The water was scalding and she was sure it’d leave a scar, but it was exactly what she needed. Last night at the Archers didn’t completely wash away in an instant, but there was less of it the longer she stood underneath the hot spray.

15

BENTON

Kripke was dead. So were the others, but it was really only Kripke that Benton knew anything about. The man had recruited him into the unit himself while the others were already there. They hadn’t welcomed Benton into the group then and still hadn’t, right up to last night’s bloody events.

All’s well that ends well, as they say.

When he watched them die one by one on the monitors, Benton didn’t really feel much grief. There was a pang of sadness when Kripke went down, but it didn’t last very long. Maybe it was because Benton was used to people dying on him. His mother had when he was born. So did his father when he was nine. His maternal grandmother had been the one to raise him and she’d done a very good job, if he did say so himself.

After the FUBAR at the Archers, Benton returned to the motel with the Prize of the Day.

Hell, the Prize of the Week, maybe.

No, check that.

The Prize of the Century.

Considering how excited everyone was, from Dunbar to Madeline to Campbell, that was probably a fair bet. Not that Benton spoke to the big man himself, but he’d been relayed the message of “Job well done!” from the chief through his executive assistant over the phone. They’d asked him if he wanted to take a break and get some R&R. He had his pick of a dozen Caribbean countries to do it in. All expenses paid. But Benton was too jacked up, too ready for what was coming next. He was the one who had led the capture of the three creatures—including the biggest prize of them all, the Blue Eyes—and he’d be damned if he was going to miss all the accolades that came from that massive feat.

Benton asked for and got his own unit, making him the youngest squad leader in the organization by far. At twenty-six, he was still supposed to be taking orders from veterans like Kripke and not leading men twice his age.

You did good, grandma. And so did I.

I guess we both won, even if life did give us shit to start with.

They were waiting for him at the helipad on the rooftop of the main building when he arrived. The flight from Florida to Bird Island had been nice. Normally he would have been stuffed into a chopper with a dozen other guys. But Benton was moving up in the world and he could ask for—and more importantly, could get—his own rides now, even if there were no scheduled trips on the docket.

There were three of them, watching him slowly descend to the large H marking. One woman and two men. He’d read their files on the trip over. They were all older than him, with Maxwell, an old jarhead, coming in at forty-two. The other one was Stevens at twenty-eight. The woman was Cassandra, who had just one year on Benton.

It was Maxwell that Benton had to worry about. Maxwell had the most experience in the field by far than any of them and would be a problem if he didn’t completely buy into Benton as leader. Fortunately Maxwell was a former NCO so he knew how to take orders from younger men. At least, Benton hoped he still did.

They didn’t bother to salute as he hopped off the chopper and rushed over to them. No one saluted in the organization. They might wear tactical uniforms and carried weapons as if they were military, but they weren’t. Not officially, anyway.

“Let’s get off this rooftop, it’s hot as hell,” Benton said before anyone could speak.

He led them into the stairwell. Ben was familiar with the building, having been on the island a good dozen or so times the last few years. They fell in behind him, Cassandra up front while Stevens and Maxwell hung slightly back. He could feel their eyes on him, especially Maxwell’s.

Gotta get him on my side or this won’t work.

Benton had no intentions of failing in his first leadership role. Not if he wanted to keep climbing the organization ladder. The extra pay and benefits was triple what he would have gotten by being one of the grunts. Not that Benton needed the extras, but it was always nice to have them when you didn’t need them, than not have them when you did.

“Cassandra,” he said, moving briskly down the stairs. Their boots clanged against the metal stairs. “Is that what you go by?”

“Cass,” the woman said.

“All right, Cass. How long have you been with us?”

“Two years.”

He glanced back at her. She’d seemed familiar when he was reading her file, and up close he was sure he’d seen her before. “Have we met?”

“Not officially, but I’ve seen you around.”

He nodded. He’d have to keep a close eye on Cass, too. Not because he didn’t think she was capable of doing her job but because she had very nice green eyes. Add the blonde hair—even if it was cut too short, taking away some of her femininity—and athletic physique, and she was a potential flirting headache.

“Maxwell,” Benton said. “You were a Marine.”

“I was in the Corps for ten years,” Maxwell said. To Benton’s unsurprise, the man had a gruff voice and growled more than he talked. Exactly how he’d expected someone with that many lines on his face and a permanent buzzcut to sound.

“You went into security after you left.”

“That’s right.”

“Why’d you join the organization?”

“I saw something that changed my life.”

“One of the creatures.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” Benton asked. He didn’t really need to hear Maxwell’s answer because he’d already read the older man’s files, but Benton wanted to get a feel for them and this was one way to do it.

“One of those things abducted a kid and took him to a dumpster next to the building I was working. I found it while doing a search. Tried to kill it every way I knew how, but it kept coming.”

“How’d you survive? Most people don’t survive their first incidents.”

“I got lucky. People from the organization showed up and took care of it. They’d been tracking its feeding patterns for a while. That led them to my work.”

“Then you joined up?”

“They gave me a nice offer. Came with lots of benefits. More than I had at the old job by a long shot. Couldn’t say no even if I wanted to. Besides, after you’ve seen what we’ve all seen, how can you turn them down?”

“You’ve seen them, and so have I,” Benton said. “What about you guys?”

“Not yet,” Stevens said. He sounded mousy. Or maybe he was just embarrassed by his lack of experience with the creatures.

“It’s a no for me, too,” Cass said.

Benton nodded as they rounded a floor and continued down. Just like with Maxwell, he’d already known that neither Cass nor Stevens had personal first-hand encounters with the creatures. Asking them the question anyway was to let Maxwell know that the two of them—he and the ex-Marine—shared a common bond and to make himself look humble. There was no way all three of them hadn’t already heard about what he’d achieved last night. Information like that spread like wildfire.

They reached the final floor landing where there were two doors waiting for them. Benton already knew that his prized captures would have already arrived downstairs by now.

He led his newly-formed unit into F1. There would be a lot of people behind that door waiting to welcome him back like a conquering hero. Benton was ready for it. He’d been waiting for this his entire life, after all.

“You guys hungry?” he asked. “After last night, I could eat a horse.”

* * *

First the woman, Torres, took off. Then the kid followed her. Or maybe he wasn’t really a “kid” but he looked like one. Truth was, Benton probably only had a few years on the one they called Cent. (What kind of hell name is that?)

After the duo left the van, Benton sat inside the vehicle all by himself, watching as Kripke and the others fought for their lives. It was not going well and it was hard to follow who was down and who was still standing. That confusion didn’t last for very long, though. Soon, they were all down.

The only upside was that everyone’s helmet cams were still running, giving Benton a front-row seat at what happened next. Even with all the cameras resting at odd angles, it was easy to make out the next few minutes thanks to the lights and night-vision filters.

The woman showed up first and took some shots at the creature. This wasn’t an ordinary creature, either. It was a Blue Eyes.

The prize to end all prizes, Benton had thought.

Then the kid joined the fray. It was his shotgun blasts that forced the Blue Eyes to flee with what looked like half its face hanging from its chin. Now that was something Benton hadn’t seen before, or thought he would ever see if he were being honest.

Silver buckshot doesn’t kill it, but it sure as hell hurts it.

Benton put all that into his report when he was back at the motel. He also included every detail, including everything the Blue Eyes had said to the woman, Torres. Apparently the top brass wasn’t lying when they told Benton that Torres and Cent had prior experiences with the creatures.

Even before another team arrived to take the civilians away, Benton was already taking control. He knew an opportunity when he saw one and this one was gaping wide open just waiting for him to jump through with both feet.

It took a few hours for them to get ready, but eventually they had everything they needed. All he had to do was make sure he didn’t get dead attempting it. As for the others’ wellbeing, well, it was all part of the job, wasn’t it? No one joined the organization thinking they were going on a field trip to Disney. Everyone knew the risks. Many of them had even seen the creatures up close.

There was just enough of the Black Eyes still inside the store to make it difficult, but with overwhelming firepower, caution, and a lot of patience, Benton and Co. couldn’t be stopped. They found Tanner, a missing man from another unit, near the back. But it was the Blue Eyes and two of its black-eyed friends in the inventory room that was the priority.

“Nobody shoot it in the head!” Ben shouted at the men gathered around him. “We want it alive! We want that ugly motherfucker alive!”

The others grumbled, but they’d been told that Benton was in charge. The order came down from Madeline herself, and when Madeline talked, everyone listened. She was, after all, Mr. Campbell’s mouthpiece.

“What about the other two?” someone asked. Benton hadn’t caught his name. He was older than Benton. They all were.

“We want them alive, too. Swap ammo. Shoot them to stop them, then lock them down. Avoid their teeth. That’s an order!”

They grumbled some more but they did as he ordered. The silver bullets were swapped with regular ammo.

In the end, they lost ten men and women, but they were able to overwhelm the creatures, including the blue-eyed one. Benton had been told by the egg heads that the Blue Eyes were hard to kill, never mind capture. Two of them had wiped out Hillard’s unit and just hours ago they’d done the same to most of Kripke’s.

Not that it was easy all the way around. The ten dead notwithstanding (a chopper with more men arrived later to replace them), Benton himself almost died. Some of it was his fault. While others went for the less dangerous Black Eyes, Benton went for the grand prize.

It came at them with the kind of ferocity Benton had never seen before, breaking the bones of one man before decapitating another with a swipe of its hand. Benton took out its right arm with two buckshot rounds from a few feet away while another grunt shot the creature’s left leg from underneath it. Everyone else was shooting too, sending buckshot after buckshot into it from every angle. It was a miracle Benton wasn’t caught in the crossfire. A few of the new faces actually did.

After that kind of volley, the Blue Eyes should have fallen down, but instead it attempted to retreat farther into the back of the room.

Oh no you don’t!

Benton ran forward and pumped two more shots into its remaining leg. It had been bouncing away from them as if it were riding some kind of pogo stick. The sight was borderline hilarious.

The Blue Eyes did go down that time and Benton pounced.

He ran toward it, shouting, “Don’t let it back up! Don’t let that motherfucker get back up!”

It tried to do just that, but Benton put another shotgun shell into its chest. He remembered the reports about the creature’s weak point—its head—and made sure to aim low enough that he took out nearly its entire lower jaw, leaving behind a gaping, jagged, black ooze-dripping hole where its mouth used to be.

Benton ran up and stared down at it, the shotgun pointed straight at its forehead. It glared up at him, blue eyes pulsating like something out of this world. A sudden rush of triumph raced through Benton as the creature lay still and didn’t try to move.

It had surrendered.

“That’s a good boy,” Benton said.

It might have snarled. He thought it would say something to him—these blue-eyed ones, unlike the Black Eyes, could talk—but instead it simply lay there, defeated.

Around him, the others were bounding the two Black Eyes with zip ties and slapping duct tape around their mouths to prevent them from biting. They thrashed and fought, even with missing limbs. One of them had lost half of its face, including half of its brain. But that hadn’t killed it, whereas, he was told, it would have killed the Blue Eyes. None of that was logical to Benton, just as the egg heads back at Bird Island couldn’t figure it out, either.

Benton waited until the remaining men came over and did the same to the Blue Eyes. All the while, the creature stared at him, either unable or unwilling to break the connection.

“What the fuck are you staring at, ugly?” he asked it.

It didn’t answer, but it might have…smiled?

No, it wasn’t a smile. It was something else. What was it?

Benton had no idea. The creature’s face was shriveled like a prune that had been left out in the sun too long, making it difficult to read. Its lips were thin slivers of puffy flesh over dark black skin. They didn’t even look like lips anymore.

But it was the eyes that Benton couldn’t look away from. There was something about them that bothered him. Unnatural, yes, but it was more than that. He couldn’t figure out what it was, or why it just kept staring at him.

Ugly motherfucker, aren’t you?

No matter. The night was over and he went back to the motel with the Prize of the Century. Madeline called him herself with Mr. Campbell’s gratitude. Gratitude! It wasn’t just a job well done but a fucking great job well done. Not that Madeline said those words exactly, but that was the gist of it.

Now, as he stood on the first floor of the main building on Bird Island and bathed in the adoration of his peers—nearly all of them older than him—Benton smiled and played the humble team player. He didn’t want to tell them that this was just the beginning of his climb. Unit leader was a nice advancement, but there were positions that were even higher that he had every intention of claiming.

For now, this would do.

Oh yes. This would do just fine.

16

CENT

Cent had stayed in better places with better beds, but this was still pretty good. He’d always been barebones when it came to his living conditions, even more so now without anyone to take care of beside himself. But just because the room had a soft mattress and a private bathroom didn’t mean it was homely. Because it wasn’t. Not at all. The walls, ceiling, and floor was too gray and barren and lacking in personality. This wasn’t a place you stayed in voluntarily but because you had to. In many ways, the entire Bird Island complex reminded him of something a prepper with too much money on his hands would build in preparation for the end of the world. And maybe Harold Campbell fit that description. He certainly had the “too much money” part down.

Cent didn’t shower, but he did try to nap. With his eyes closed and nothing going on around him, he let his mind wander. For the first time since he arrived, Cent heard the humming in the background. He realized it’d always been there ever since he stepped foot into S5. His mind had registered it, but it’d never come to the forefront.

Now, as he lay still, he couldn’t help but hear it. It was an ever-present hum. Some kind of generator; the main source of power running everything down here. Thanks to the island’s location, it wouldn’t surprise Cent if the entire place was fueled by some type of hydropower machine that he hadn’t seen yet.

Cent sat up and stared at the far wall for a moment. It’d been almost an hour and Campbell’s people hadn’t come to get him nor Torres yet. Even with the bright LED lights in the room, there was a suffocating feel to his surroundings. Cent didn’t like it. It reminded him too much of the refugee camps in Nigeria.

He got up and walked to the door, but not before picking up his room’s keycard from the nightstand. The hallway outside was empty, the lights out here even brighter than those in his room. Like the hum, he hadn’t noticed the intensity of the lights before, but it was impossible to miss now. He liked to think his mind was too busy absorbing other information and just didn’t have the room to pay attention to his background.

Cent half-expected one of Campbell’s not-soldiers-soldiers to come around the corner and order him back into his room and tell him that he wasn’t allowed to roam about on his own. But no one showed up. The only person he saw was a man in a white lab coat coming out of his own room across from him.

“Hey,” the man said before walking off. Apparently strange faces in the complex was nothing new given how little interest the man had in Cent.

Cent decided to go for a walk. He followed the guy in the lab coat around the corner, then around another corner. There were markings along the walls telling him where he was going but it wasn’t until the third corner that he had the option of heading left toward OPERATIONS or right to RESEARCH. Cent had seen what the operations area looked like, so he turned right to get a better look at what Campbell’s lab coats were doing. He had a feeling the Blue Eyes would end up there sooner or later.

He passed more people in the hallway. Some acknowledged him but others went about their business. If anyone noticed or cared that he was wearing the knife in a sheath behind his back, no one spoke up. Then again, he saw more than a few people with holstered pistols. Compared to that, a sheathed knife was probably not that big of a deal.

There was a noticeable uptick in markings when he finally reached the Research wing of the floor. Whereas he’d only seen a smattering of designations as they were leaving the Operations area, there were plenty in this section that it even had a directory on the wall. Cent stopped to read it.

RESEARCH was written at the top, with a list including RECORDS, EQUIPMENT, LABS, and OBSERVATION on the bottom. He wondered what Campbell’s people kept in STORAGE. Arrows pointed him in the direction of each room but most of them pointed up, so that was where Cent went.

Around another corner he saw more people in lab coats. Most of them were young. Twenties and early thirties. Not that he was an old man among kids. At least not physically. Emotionally, Cent felt fifty. And that was being generous.

Like the other occasions, no one here gave him much attention. A few nods of “Hey” as he passed but that was it. There were less of Campbell’s not-soldiers-soldiers down here, probably because it was where the lab coats worked. He did see two of them walking around, but that was it. He supposed they didn’t really need guards down here since all the doors were locked with access cards. He saw one of the lab coats use his to go into a room marked LAB 3, the light on the panel turning green when his card buzzed, then red again when the door closed.

Cent kept going, wondering just how big the entire complex was. It hadn’t looked that big from the air. Tall, maybe, but he hadn’t gotten a good sense of its actual size. Now that he was down here, deep in the bowels of the monster, so to speak, he still didn’t quite know the exact measurements, but “big” seemed to fit. And these were just the parts he’d seen. Cent had no idea where the generator hum he heard in the background was originating from.

He checked his watch. It was easy to lose track of time down here and he was surprised it was just 3:14 PM. It’d seemed like a lifetime ago since he climbed onboard the helicopter back at the motel this morning.

“Lost?”

Cent turned around and was surprised to see someone with spiked hair standing behind him. Young—maybe mid-twenties, about his age—with green eyes and pointy hair that had been dyed bright red. She was wearing a lab coat that, like the others he’d seen so far, had a name tag on it. Hers read: VICKS.

“You must be lost,” Vicks said. She was all smiles. “You need help finding your way around this place? It can be pretty intimidating at first. All the gray. Probably why we call it the Gray Zone. Get it? Gray Zone? A play on The Twilight Zone?”

She waited for him to respond, but she’d spoken so fast that Cent could barely keep up.

Finally, he said, “How do you know it’s my first time down here?”

“I’m psychic.” She put a finger on her temple and feigned “reading” his mind. Then, grinning, “Nah, just kidding. You practically scream ‘tourist’ down here.”

“My clothes…”

“Among other things, yeah.” Again, that easy smile. “So where’re you going, tourist? I’m not the official tourism police or anything, but I bet I could point you to your destination.”

Cent shook his head. “I don’t really have anywhere to go. Just…wandering around, I guess.”

“So you’re not lost?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, good. Because I’ve only been down here for a few months myself and I’m not sure I know where everything is yet, either.”

“But you said—”

“I know, I was bluffing.”

They exchanged mutual smiles.

Cent said, “Vicks?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Vicks said. She had a peppy sing-song quality to her voice that he liked. God only knew he could use some pep in his life.

“I’ll try not to.”

“It’s just a saying.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you weren’t from, you know.”

“Africa,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m originally from Africa.”

“I knew it!” She almost jumped forward, sticking out her hand for a shake. “Welcome to America!”

He smiled again as he shook her hand. Cent didn’t bother to correct her. He’d been in America long enough that every official document with his name on it listed him as an American. But he didn’t feel like spoiling her enthusiasm.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You liking it here?”

“Where?”

“America!”

He couldn’t help but smile, maybe because she kept smiling, too. “Yes. It’s great.”

“Hey, you hungry?” she asked as if they hadn’t just been talking about his feelings about America seconds ago.

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“You know where the cafeteria is yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Great! I get to give you a tour after all! One thing I do know for a fact is where the food is! Come on!”

She went, and he followed.

* * *

There wasn’t that much difference between the cafeteria down here and the ones Cent had eaten in in middle school and high school. Except for the furniture, which were designed for adults, and instead of long dirty plastic benches, there were oddly shaped metal tables in “clover” designs, with six “leaves” sprouting outward and ending in round chairs with comfortable-looking foam seating. The tables were spaced out to accommodate small and large groups, and that was how the soldiers and lab coats sat themselves. There were more seats than people eating at the moment, giving the room a cavernous feel. The food was stored inside buffet-style crystal domes on one side of the room to keep them warm. Similarly, the drinks were kept chilled in refrigerators. Everything was free to take.

There wasn’t a line when they stepped inside, Vicks having spent time in the hallways pointing out different sections of the complex on the way over. He was hungry by the halfway point, but Cent didn’t interrupt her. He liked the sunny way in which she described everything to him as if she were in charge of picnics down here instead of working in a lab coat five floors underground.

They grabbed a shiny metal tray—like the tables, it was also round and “clover” styled—and picked out their food and drinks. Cent opted for ham and cheese sandwiches on lettuce and two glasses of orange juice. Vicks chose a Cobb salad and water. They found seats nearby, with the closest neighbor five tables behind them.

“Comfy, right?” Vicks asked.

It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to. “The seats?”

“Yeah, the seats. It’s totally avant-garde.”

“It’s something, all right.”

Vicks immediately dug into her food, spearing gobs of greens and small tomatoes with her metal fork. The glasses holding his orange juices and her water, along with everything else, would be returned to a receptacle for cleaning afterward. Vicks told him the entire cleaning process was automated.

“No wet soapy hands!” she said.

He took a bite from his sandwich. Not the best he’d ever eaten, but it wasn’t too bad. The bread tasted fresh and so did the ham and lettuce.

“Everything’s fresh and grown down here,” Vicks said as if she could read his mind. “Have you seen the hydroponics yet?”

“What’s that?”

“What’s what? Hydroponics?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know what a hydroponics is?”

He shook his head, feeling a little stupid. Again, as if she could feel what he was feeling, Vicks laughed in a way that made him feel less stupid.

“It’s how they grow food down here,” Vicks said, spearing more chunks of salad. The way she was attacking her food, she was going to finish before he even got done with his first sandwich. “It’s basically growing plants—like this tomato”—she held one up—“without soil. It’s actually a pretty simple process and much more efficient use of resources. I’ll take you to the garden sometimes. It’s huge.”

“Interesting,” Cent said even though he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. How did you grow plants without soil? If that kind of technology existed, then why were people in Africa still starving?

But that was a somber thought that had no place in the here and now. And not while he was sitting across from the cheery Vicks.

“What do you do down here?” Cent asked.

“I thought this would be a dead giveaway,” she said, tapping her name tag.

“That’s just your name.”

“Huh?”

“That tag. It’s just your name.”

“Tags!”

“Tags?”

“There are two tags, silly.”

“I just see one.”

She looked down and her eyes went amusingly wide. “Oh shoot! I must have dropped the other one! Darn it.” She made a face. “I wonder where I lost it? Probably my room. Or maybe at the labs. Or…” She paused and tilted her head slightly to one side in heavy thought. “I dunno. Darn it!”

“Can you get a replacement?”

“Sure, but it’ll take, like, weeks.”

“Why so long?”

“They’d have to make me a new one. Then there’s all the paperwork. It all has to go into the system.” She groaned. “The system is such a pain!” she added, stressing the pain as if she was, just by saying it, in physical pain.

Cent took another bite from his sandwich. “Can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, it is, believe me. You’re new down here, but you’ll see. Trust me.”

“I trust you.”

Suddenly she leaned forward. “Say, I forgot to ask you your name.”

“I forgot to ask you your name.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you just repeat what I said?”

“You told me to say it.”

Her eyes exploded wide. Vicks sat back and broke out into howling laughter. Cent didn’t look around, but he assumed there were additional eyes turned in their direction at the moment.

He realized the silliness of the moment quickly, but instead of letting her know, he continued playing along. “What’s so funny?”

“You!” she said, pointing at him while trying to control her laughter. “You’re funny!”

“Am I?”

“You are!”

He grinned. “Glad to amuse you. I’m Cent, by the way.”

That made her stop laughing and stare at him puzzlingly. “Your name is Cent? Like, the coin? Cent?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“Well, it’s just a nickname.”

“Oh!” She rolled her eyes at him. “You should have said that before. I mean, who names their kid ‘Cent?’ Like, duh!”

“I know, right? Duh.”

“Duh!” she said again.

He grinned. Cent couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed himself so much. The last time was…

No. He couldn’t remember. It’d been that long.

They continued eating and Cent would have liked to drag it all the way into evening and dinner, but that wasn’t meant to be.

Vicks glanced at her watch and quickly shot up to her feet. “Shoot! I’m late!”

“For what?”

“My shift!” She glanced around hurriedly, from her tray to the receptacle where it was supposed to go, and back again.

“I got it,” Cent said. He stood up and picked up her tray and slid it over his, mashing the half-eaten sandwich below it. “Go on.”

She gave him a grateful smile. “You sure?”

“Yes. Go.” Then, before she could do exactly that, “Maybe I’ll see you around again.”

“Why? You think you’ll get lost again?”

“Hey, it’s a big place.”

“Yup. It sure is.” She started off, but turned and waved at him while continuing to backpedal. “See you when I see you, Cent!”

He waved back and watched her jog out through the side door.

“She’s cute. Did you get her number?”

Cent turned around. Torres was standing behind him, smiling like a proud mom. He wasn’t sure how to take that. She looked fresher and cleaner after an obvious shower.

“I don’t think she has a phone,” Cent said. “I haven’t seen anyone with a phone down here.”

“I was just being an ass, Cent.”

He smirked. “You hungry? There’s plenty of food left. Apparently they have their own garden down here.”

“Madeline told me. Hydroponics.” She nodded toward one of the doors. “Come on, they’re waiting for us.”

“Wait.” Cent walked the two trays over to the receptacle before hurrying back to her. “Who’s waiting for us?”

Torres was giving him an odd grin.

“What?” Cent said.

“Nothing,” she said. Then, starting off again, “Campbell and company. Madeline sent someone to come get us, but you weren’t home. I volunteered to come looking for you.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Someone saw you coming this way. You don’t exactly blend in, Cent.”

“I guess not. Did they tell you what they’re going to do with it?”

“No. But I think we’re going to find out.”

“I still don’t like this.”

“Neither do I, but we’re both down here anyway. What’s that say about us?”

“We need better travel agents?”

She threw him a surprised look. “Was that a joke? Did you just tell a joke?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I think that was a joke.”

“It wasn’t.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Must be the girl. She’s a good influence on you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cent said, and walked faster toward the door until he’d left her behind.

She had to jog to catch up. “You should have gotten her number, Cent.”

“Oh, shut up,” he said.

17

TORRES

It wasn’t hard to find where Campbell (along with Madeline, Torres assumed) was waiting for them. All she had to do was follow the arrows from the cafeteria to the RESEARCH part of the complex. When she did get lost—which happened twice—she asked the nearest person wearing a lab coat, reasoning (correctly) that they either worked in the Research branch or knew where it was.

As she led Cent through one hallway after another, Torres marveled at the size of the place. Campbell had built something big down here and had done it for a very specific purpose. While there was nothing pleasing about the décor, there was plenty of impressive elements to be found, from their quarters to the sturdiness of the walls, floor, and ceiling. This place was built to be worked in and not for pleasure tours.

The faces that she saw along the way seemed happy. The ones that weren’t smiling or chatting amicably with a colleague just looked bored. But boredom was not the same as dissatisfaction. The people who were down here wanted to be here. The money Campbell was throwing around had a little something to do with that, of course.

But maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t about the money for all of them. After all, it wasn’t for her, and definitely not for Cent. For Torres, it was something else: Macy. Eight months ago she couldn’t imagine going on this kind of mission for another human being. Even Wheeler, who she’d known seemingly forever, wouldn’t have elicited that kind of determination from her.

Macy was different. In the months since the girl had come to live with her, Torres had fallen in love. And, she liked to believe, it was the same with Macy. Even as the department dragged her through the mud with their investigation, coming home to Macy somehow made all of it worthwhile. Torres had never seen herself as anyone’s mother before and maybe she still didn’t, but she’d be damned if she didn’t feel like one anyway.

“What’s on your mind?” Cent asked as they rounded another corner. This one had more men and women in lab coats than the previous, which meant they were getting closer to their destination.

“What makes you think I have something on my mind?”

“You look like you have something on your mind.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“I guess I do.”

“Want to talk about it? I hear sometimes that helps.” He shrugged. “I hear, anyway.”

She smiled. “But you never found it to be true?”

“Not really, no. They tried to make me talk to someone when I first came here. Then once again when my mother went into the hospital. Neither time helped very much. But that was me. Maybe it’ll work better for you.”

“I don’t think so, Cent.”

“All right, but the offer’s out there.”

“Thanks. Maybe one day.”

Torres knew they’d reached the right place when she spotted Dunbar standing outside a double-door room marked LAB 13 with two armed men in black tactical clothes. More of Campbell’s not-soldiers soldiers. Or Field Technicians, as Madeline called them.

“I think that’s the right one,” Cent said.

“Looks like it.”

“Lab 13,” Cent read. “How many labs do they have down here?”

“Safe to say, it’s a lot.”

“What else do they have down here? Besides a generator that seems to be running nonstop and a garden that grows itself.”

“Maybe Campbell will tell us when he fully trusts us.”

“Something Richter used to say comes to mind, about hope springing eternal within the breasts of men.”

“Are you thinking about that cutie with the spiked hair again?”

Cent sighed, and before Torres could keep needling him, Dunbar, who was fiddling with an iPad, finally looked up before walking over to greet them.

“Saved by the doofus,” Torres said just slightly under her breath.

Cent grunted.

Dunbar was all smiles as he put his iPad away. “Nice to see you two again. Mr. Campbell is waiting inside.”

The secretary’s secretary reached over and placed his hand on a panel on the wall next to the door. A scanner read his palmprint before a door clicked open. Torres hadn’t seen that kind of security before down here, but she guessed it wasn’t a surprise Campbell would want to keep whatever was happening inside his “labs” safe from uninvited eyeballs.

“You coming?” Torres asked as she walked through the door.

“Not today,” Dunbar said. Again, with that smile that could be fake or real. “Mr. Campbell was strict about who can be in there and who can’t. I’m not one of the privileged, I’m afraid.”

The doors clicked closed behind her and Cent as they entered a room that looked much bigger than it had any right to from the outside. It was at least twice the size of her room and that was only the observation area. Two people in lab coats fiddled with controls on a computer board along the right wall while Campbell, in his wheelchair, with Madeline standing next to him, faced a glass partition that made up an entire section. A line of monitors—six in all—lined the top part of that wall.

The see-through glass looked into a separated room about the same size. There was nothing in the second room except the crate that had been brought over from the Archers. The wooden sides were gone now, with only the metal container remaining. It sat ominously at the very center. Literally and figuratively the center of attention.

Campbell turned around first. He beamed that familiar happy smile. Unlike with Dunbar, Torres didn’t have to wonder if the billionaire meant his. He did. “Welcome to the beginning of a new day for us. I hope you’re both ready.”

“Ready for what exactly?” Torres asked.

Campbell turned back around to look into the next room. “That creature in there will tell us more about these things—these obayifo as Cent calls them—than we’ve managed to unearth in the decade or so since all of this began.”

Decade or so? Christ. How long has he been at this, exactly?

Torres and Cent walked up to stand beside Campbell. They stared through the glass at the metal box. Bright LED lights flooded the other room, giving it an almost surreal ambiance.

“You need to be really careful here, Mr. Campbell,” Cent said. It was as serious as Torres had ever heard him. “They’re dangerous. More dangerous than you can imagine.”

“All precautions have been taken,” Madeline said. She nodded at the two lab coats in front of the computers to their right. “If anything happens, if it becomes a threat that we can’t manage, we’ll flood the entire room with liquid nitrogen.”

“Flash freezing?” Torres said.

“Yes.” She looked almost surprised that Torres knew that. “So rest assured, there is no danger to us.” Then, with a smile, “Only to it.”

“Not that we anticipate needing to resort to flash freezing it,” Campbell said. “Like I said, everything is under control. The only things that will happen is what we allow to happen. No more, no less.”

Torres glanced over at the lab coats. One of them had familiar spiked red hair. The girl Cent had been talking to in the cafeteria. Her name tag read: VICKS. The kid—and she really was just a kid to Torres—was smiling-not-so-slyly over at them.

Check that. Not them, just Cent.

Now how’d she get here before us?

Apparently there were easier and faster ways from the cafeteria to the labs that Torres didn’t know even existed. That was the only way to explain how Cent’s new friend hadn’t just gotten here before them, but from the looks of it had been here for some time now in order to get things ready for Campbell’s little show-and-tell.

The girl looked way too young to be in here with them.

Jesus. How old is she?

She remembered what Dunbar had just said, about not being one of the privileged to see what was going to happen. But Vicks, apparently, was. Torres would have expected older personnel to be working such an important assignment. The man next to Vicks was much older—at least in his early forties—and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. The two of them—Vicks with her spiky red hair, and the sour-looking older man with grays along his temple—was quite the contradiction.

Vicks, though, only had eyes for Cent. The two of them exchanged an awkward “Hey” gesture.

Torres glanced over at Cent. The young man gave her a “What?” expression before returning his focus to the glass partition. Torres smiled to herself and joined him.

“How is this going to work?” she asked.

“We’re going to see exactly how hard it is to kill these things,” Campbell said. “Once we’re done with it, the smart boys and girls will break down the data to their very essence. When we’re done, we’ll have a new weapon to deal with them.”

“There’s a theory that the boys in the labs are working on,” Madeline added. “They think the Blue Eyes are creating the Black Eyes. Not exactly giving birth to them, but turning victims into them.”

“That’s what happened back at the Wilshire,” Cent said. “The blue-eyed obayifo bit Franklin and he turned.”

“Exactly. We’ve always suspected it, but it’s always just been theories. Much like a lot of things surrounding these creatures. But now, thanks to last night, we’re one step closer to collecting real solid evidence.”

Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow up in your face.

But Torres didn’t say that out loud, of course. One, Campbell wasn’t going to take her advice anyway. And two—well, there was no two. She was basically a guest down here. A glorified tourist.

Madeline had looked toward the lab coats. “Are we ready?”

Vicks nodded back. “Yes, ma’am. Everything’s on standby.”

“Sir?” Madeline said, this time to Campbell.

The billionaire leaned forward in his chair, eyeballing the metal container as if he could see through it with X-ray vision. Torres understood why Madeline had thrown the go-ahead back to him. This had to be the pinnacle of Campbell’s personal crusade against the obayifo, something he’d strived toward for at least a decade now.

And here it was, in front of him…

“Open it,” Campbell said.

Vicks pressed a button, and there was a soft whir as the same metal slate over the box slid open as it had back at the warehouse to reveal the viewing glass.

Here we go…

Torres didn’t need to be inside the room to see the Blue Eyes within its steel prison. She could see its shriveled face on one of the monitors. The camera projecting it was attached to the ceiling and pointed straight down. The other five cameras captured the other parts of the second room, giving them a wide view of just about every angle of the container.

Torres’s focus was glued to the monitor with the Blue Eyes.

Unlike back at the warehouse, this time the opening was bigger, revealing all of its body inside. It seemed to be sleeping, eyes closed. Its body remained crammed in the container as before, elongated limbs draped awkwardly across one other. It was incredibly uncomfortable-looking. If she tilted her head slightly, the sight would have reminded her of a bat hanging off a cave ceiling, right down to its blackened flesh. The flood of LED lights revealed every inch of it in their unholy glory.

Torres couldn’t tell if it was the same one she’d confronted in the Archers. They looked the same, but there was something different about this one. Or maybe it was the exact same creature and their near identicalness simply made it impossible to tell them apart. Even if it wasn’t the same one, Torres felt a shiver race up and down her spine. It hadn’t been the same feeling back at the warehouse when she’d first seen it, but in here, watching it…slumbering, she couldn’t fight the sensation of fear. It was overwhelming.

…and so was the gnawing feeling that this was a very, very bad idea.

Torres turned back to the two lab coats and wondered which one of them was going to push the button when the Blue Eyes proved more than Campbell could handle. Torres wasn’t sure which technician she preferred. The kid, who probably had a faster reflex. Or the old man, who would probably keep his calm better in an emergency.

“Look at that,” Campbell was saying as he leaned forward in his chair. “Its limbs…”

“It’s regenerated the lost limbs,” Madeline said. Like Campbell, there was no missing her rising excitement. It was, Torres thought, the first time she’d ever heard the other woman express an emotion other than placidity.

“What do you mean?” Torres asked. “What limbs?”

The secretary glanced over. “In order to capture it, the Field Technicians had to delimb it. It was missing both legs and arms. But now”—she turned back to the monitor—“they’re back. Reptiles like lizards have the ability to enter a state of what they call super-regeneration when they lose a limb or tail. It’s not without cost, but the results are usually the same. New body parts within days.”

“You said days. This one didn’t have that luxury.”

“Apparently these things work faster. Hours, instead of days or weeks.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Campbell said. “Among other things.”

Torres turned to Cent. “Back at the Wilshire. The Blue Eyes we fought. It did the same thing. Richter told me he’d shot half of its skull off, even shot it point-blank multiple times, but when I saw it, it didn’t have anything that even looked like a wound on it.”

“Those kinds of injuries aren’t the same as regrowing whole limbs,” Cent said.

“I know, but it’s the same process, isn’t it? If that thing could do that—if it could heal from bullet wounds—why can’t it do this, too?”

“Maybe…”

“What does your African legends say about this, Cent?” Campbell asked.

The young man shook his head. “They didn’t mention this part.”

“Are you sure you remember every story they told you?”

“I must have heard it a hundred times. Why do you think it stuck in my mind for so long?”

“Fair enough.”

“Stories are one thing, but this is cold hard facts,” Madeline said. “That’s why it’s here. To help us sift the truth from the myths.” She turned back to the lab coats. “Open the box.”

“Wait. What?” Torres said, alarmed.

“Phase one. We need to see just how durable it is.”

“And to do that, you’re going to let that thing out of its prison?”

“It’s the only way to know for sure,” Campbell said. Then, as if Torres had not even objected, “Proceed.”

“Opening the box,” Vicks called out.

Torres saw Cent glancing toward the female lab tech. He might have been about to ask her not to do what she’d just announced, but it was too late. Vicks had already pressed a button on her keyboard and the glass part of the Blue Eyes’ cage began to open.

Slowly.

Impossibly slowly.

Torres exchanged a worried look with Cent.

He thinks this is a mistake too.

But like her, Cent already knew they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. If Campbell wanted to do something, then by God, he would do it. If he couldn’t himself, then there were a hundred people in this place who would willingly do it for him, and with all smiles, too.

On the monitor, the entire top section of the metal container had opened. Within it, the creature stirred.

Then it opened its eyes.

Torres almost took an unwitting step backward but somehow, somehow managed to stop herself. To her left, Cent’s entire body tensed noticeably, while on her right Campbell and Madeline stared, jaws slightly open, at the sight on the monitor. Their reactions couldn’t have been more different from Torres and Cent’s.

The creature’s limbs began to unfurl like a spider slowly waking up from a long slumber. They extended, forcing blood back through their appendages. As it did so, men entered the room through a door on the right side. They wore something that almost looked like police riot gear. Protective armor moved with their joints like plastic and gauntlets covered their hands to their elbows. Each men wore sidearms on one hip and sheathed machetes on the other. Their faces were hidden behind the tinted visors of their ballistic helmets.

She counted ten in all, and thought, That’s not enough. That’s not nearly enough men for this.

They filed inside and formed a jagged half-circle around the metal box, leaving about ten feet of space between them and the edges of their target. One of the men stood almost directly in front of the glass partition, partially blocking their view of the room. Or he would have if not for the monitors. A second camera was also focused on the obayifo from the ceiling’s POV, except this one was from a much wider angle; it also revealed the entire room underneath it.

The obayifo grabbed the sides of its prison with long bony fingers. First, it stuck its head through the opening, then pulled the rest of it up. It glared at the men surrounding it, blue eyes pulsating against the bright lights. It was impossible to tell if any of Campbell’s men were regretting their current location at the moment with their faces hidden. And underneath their body armor, Torres couldn’t pick up any shakes.

She waited for something to happen. A few seconds felt like minutes, which in turn became hours.

Then the Blue Eyes turned its head until it had arched its neck and was now staring up at the camera pointed straight down at it. Its mouth opened, strips of saliva dripping from broken jagged teeth.

“Campbell,” it hissed.

In front of her, Campbell finally responded with something other than anticipation or excitement: He tensed, the hands holding the controls of his wheelchair tightening at the sound of his name.

He’s scared. And he should be.

On the monitor, the obayifo grinned. Or she thought that was a grin. It could have been any number of emotions—or none of them. There was no telling what was going on behind those thin razor-like lips. Or what was spinning behind its glowing blue eyes.

Campbell pulled out a small thin tube connected to a retractable plastic cord from a hidden compartment along his wheelchair’s right arm. Some kind of microphone. He clicked a button and spoke it. “You know who I am.” His voice boomed as it was broadcasted through hidden speakers inside the second room.

The Blue Eyes’ lips squirmed as it hissed in reply. “We know who you are. You should have let us stay in the dark.”

“Not while you’re hurting people.”

“We only hurt what we need to in order to survive.”

“Killing is not survival.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s murder. You’re a plague on us.”

“How amusing. I wonder if your animals—the ones you gorge yourselves on by the millions every day—think the same of your species.”

Torres squirmed in her stance. There was something abnormal about this. Not just the creature’s very existence, but Campbell having a conversation with it. She’d seen this thing tear through Kripke’s unit. It could very well do the same to them and not even think about it for a millisecond.

“It’s playing with you,” Cent said. Then, when Campbell glanced up at him, “It did the same to us back at the Wilshire.”

“When you said in your report that it ambushed you?” Madeline asked.

“Yes. You should tell your men to kill it now.”

“Not yet,” Campbell said. He looked back at the glass partition and said into his mic, “How many of you are out there?”

The Blue Eyes might have snickered up at the camera. It had stood up completely now, bony body like a series of chopsticks connected at the joints with flesh draping off them. But it hadn’t tried to step out of its prison.

“You shouldn’t worry about them,” it hissed. “You should worry about me.”

“I don’t need to worry about you,” Campbell said. Then, his voice growing with confidence, “You don’t understand, do you? You’re not in charge here. I am.”

The creature cocked its head slightly as if it were still human and capable of human curiosity.

“Gentlemen,” Campbell said, his voice booming out of the speakers in the other room, “you may proceed. And remember, avoid damaging its brain at all costs.”

The armored men in the room drew their machetes and advanced.

The Blue Eyes scowled at them. Then it leaped at the nearest one. It was fast. So fast that the camera could barely keep up with it. It caught its intended victim off guard, before the man could even react, and knocked him down. Then it turned, grabbed the next closest one, and threw him into the wall as if the man weighed nothing. Torres thought she could hear bones cracking through the speakers.

Before the creature could do anything else the remaining eight men swarmed, machetes slashing. It screamed, then kept screaming as the blades hacked into its body over and over and over again.

It might have been faster and stronger but there was only one of it, locked in a small room with ten men that knew what they were doing. More than that, they understood the dangers and had come prepared. And they weren’t afraid. They showed no fear of the creature at all, and maybe that was why they had the edge.

Torres felt almost sorry for it. There was a difference between fighting the thing and using it as an experiment. Maybe it wasn’t human anymore, but there was something about the way it was screaming as blades chopped into it that sounded almost…human.

For the first time, and surprising even herself, Torres felt as if she might throw up.

“You okay?” Cent asked. He hadn’t whispered, but Torres wasn’t sure Madeline and Campbell, close to them, could hear. They were too busy staring at the scene, faces lit up with excitement and wonder.

Torres nodded and let out a breath. It was a struggle just to do that.

In the other room, she had lost sight of the blue-eyed creature. It was somewhere in the pile of black-clad men as they continued to strike it, over and over. She had, though, no problems hearing its screams.

Jesus Christ, she could hear it screaming in pain…

18

CENT

Something that almost resembled pity flashed across Cent’s consciousness. Just a flash, before it disappeared in an instant. This might not have been the same Blue Eyes that had ripped Richter and Dutch and the others apart at the Wilshire, but it was the same species. And from what he could tell, it shared in the other one’s desire to feed.

He recalled his mother’s words as if she had spoken them to him just this morning:

“The obayifo comes for us all, regardless of race, age, or social status. It is driven by an insatiable desire to feed. It has no interest in our politics, our agenda, or anything else that we, as humans, suffer from. It simply…feeds.”

And this was an obayifo, same as the one in the Wilshire. Same as all of their species. They would not hesitate to feed, for it was what they did. It was all that they did.

Good riddance to one more. How many left?

Cent would later learn that the creature broke multiple bones on all ten men during their short but chaotic melee. To their credit, Campbell’s men didn’t give in, and sucking in their pain, continued their assault. Machetes arced through the air, slicing off flesh and chopping off limbs. The obayifo had regrown its arms and legs once, and Campbell wanted to know if it could do it again, and how long that would take. The only thing the men inside the room didn’t attack was the creature’s head. They left it alone, though a few stray slashes did cut into its temple, nose, and a big section of its right cheek.

When they were done, the undead thing laid in a heap on the floor in a pool of its own thick black blood. Campbell’s men, out of breath, their protective gear covered in the creature’s liquids, picked each other up and limped to the same door they’d come through earlier. More men rushed inside to help them exit.

Then there was just the obayifo left, lying in its own puddle. It was still alive, its armless and legless torso lying on the concrete floor, one sunken cheek pressed against the cold hardness. Its eyes, still pulsating blue, stared back at them through the viewing glass. Its mouth remained still, what it was trying to pass off as lips unmoving.

But it was still alive. Even if it didn’t move, Cent could tell that it wasn’t dead. (Or dead again. Or however that worked with these creatures.) It was resting, waiting, having been defeated.

Defeated, but not broken.

Oh no. It wasn’t broken. Not even a little bit.

“Well, that was interesting,” Campbell said.

Cent wasn’t sure if he agreed with that. He’d expected the monster to stay alive even after the encounter. After all, it had done so back at the Archers. And the one at the Wilshire had survived all the way up to the moment they smashed its head into something that almost resembled baby food.

He had a lot of words to describe what he’d just witnessed, but “interesting” wasn’t one of them.

Campbell sat back in his chair. “And a little disappointing, I have to say.”

“You expected more?” Torres asked. She was disappointed too, from the sound of it, but not in the same way that Campbell was.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Why?”

“I expected it to put up more of a fight.”

“It was hurt,” Cent said.

Campbell, Torres, and even Madeline turned to look at him.

“From the Archers,” Cent continued. “It was recovering. If it had been at full strength, it might have taken more than ten men to put it down.”

“Those weren’t just any ordinary ten men,” Madeline said. “They were former Army Special Forces. The best of the best.”

“They’re still just men.”

“He’s got a point,” Torres said. “Even a lizard isn’t at full strength after its regeneration is complete. Everything in this world needs time to fully heal. Even these creatures.”

Cent stared at the glass partition and at the creature on the other side. Its blue eyes continued to watch them, almost as if it were listening to every word. He wondered what it was thinking at this moment.

“Can it hear us?” Cent asked.

“No,” Campbell said.

“Are you sure?”

“I turned off the mic. It can’t hear us.”

Then, as if it could hear them, the creature’s lips formed a smile.

“It can hear us,” Cent said.

The others followed where he was looking, back at the obayifo in the other room.

“How do you know?” Torres asked.

“It smiled at me,” Cent said. “As soon as you told me it couldn’t hear us. It smiled at me at that exact moment.”

“Are you sure?” Madeline asked because the monster wasn’t smiling anymore. It lay unmoving on the floor, tar-like blood continuing to slurp out of the stumps that it used to call arms and legs.

“I saw it.”

Madeline looked over at the lab coats, one of whom was Vicks. Cent had been very surprised to see her in here. “Vicks. Replay the close-up of the creature. Start back one minute.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vicks said. She pressed some buttons, then reached over to a knob and turned it slowly.

They focused on the monitor that showed the creature’s face in close-up. The angle was from in front of it, the camera itself probably somewhere below the wall of glass that separated them. The obayifo’s shrunken black face stared at them, spaghetti-like lips unmoving.

It didn’t smile.

“Run it again,” Madeline said. “This time back five minutes. Double time it.”

Vicks turned the knob a little higher and the footage sped up to two times the speed. For some reason, the obayifo never smiled on camera the way Cent had seen it.

Eventually they were back to the live feed.

Madeline looked over at Cent. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Neither did I,” Campbell said.

Torres had turned to look at him, too. “Are you sure you saw it?”

Cent didn’t answer right away.

Was he sure? Yes.

No.

Maybe…

He shook his head. “Maybe I was wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Campbell said. He stared at the creature lying on the floor. “We’ll let it recover, then do this all over again tomorrow. Until then, the smart eggs want to get a really good look at all that fresh mess.”

“‘Mess?’” Torres said.

“Its blood and body parts,” Madeline said. “This will be the first time the researchers get to look at them so soon. Before, it was usually hours, sometimes days or weeks, after the bleeding or one of their deaths. And that’s if we’re lucky. Usually the sun has already taken away most of them, leaving behind just bones.” She glanced over at Vicks again. “Wash it.”

Vicks pressed another button, and sprinklers appeared out of the ceiling and began hosing down the room. The water filled up quickly, and was followed by grated holes that opened up along the sides. Something unseen began sucking the water into those holes—and with them, the creature’s blood.

The creature—or just its torso and head, really—lay still as water flowed around it, the pulsing of its blue eyes visible even through the flood of darkly diluted water that threatened to swallow it whole.

* * *

“Did you really see it smile?”

“I thought I did.” Cent shook his head. “I guess it was nothing. Maybe I imagined it.”

“You sounded pretty confident,” Torres said.

“But I was wrong. The recording proved that.”

Torres didn’t say anything, but she kept looking at Cent curiously as they walked up the hallway and back to their quarters. With the day’s “event” done, Campbell had dismissed them. The last Cent saw of the obayifo, it was still lying on the floor as if it simply refused to move without its limbs.

There were less people in the corridors this time, which made sense since they were fast approaching evening. Soon, the complex would settle into the night shift with most of its personnel off-duty. The only people still walking around by then would be Campbell’s not-soldiers-soldiers. He wondered if they carried machetes along with their guns at night, given how useful it’d proven in the lab.

Cent himself would have used a longer blade. The farther you could stay out of the obayifo’s reach while still being able to affect it, the better. He’d experimented with a longer version of the knife he had sheathed behind him, but it’d been too cumbersome. That was nothing to say about taking it with him around the country. A knife was easy to hide. Anything longer, like a machete or a sword, was too easy to spot out in the open.

“You should have gotten her number,” Torres was saying.

Cent squinted at her. “What?”

“Vicks. You should have gotten her number.”

He sighed. “Again with that?”

Torres grinned. He could tell she was having a very good time at his expense. “I’m just saying. Never know when you’ll see her again.”

As if on cue, they saw spiky red hair as soon as they turned another corner.

“You were saying?” Cent said.

“Geez. How’d she beat us here? Are there shortcuts in this place that no one’s told us about? You should ask her.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Just ask her.”

“I said I’ll think about it.”

Torres chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Cent asked.

“You.”

“Why am I funny?”

“You just are.”

The subject of their conversation looked over as they approached her. Vicks was chatting with a male co-worker in a lab coat, but not the same one from the Lab 13. The woman beamed at them.

“Looks like she’s happy to see you, too,” Torres said.

“I guess.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Come on what?”

Torres walked on ahead of him. “Have fun. Just don’t stay up too late.”

“What’s that mean?” Cent said as he watched her walk even farther away.

Torres exchanged a pleasant nod with Vicks as she passed her and the other lab coat by. She turned the corner and disappeared.

The man talking to Vicks did the same, heading off in the same direction as Torres. That left Vicks, who hadn’t moved. She continued smiling at him. There was something impossibly charming about that smile. Or maybe it was the sincerity behind it. Did Vicks come out of her mother’s womb with a smile plastered on her face?

“Hey, you,” Vicks said.

“Didn’t we leave the lab before you did?”

“Oh yeah, you did.”

“So how did you get here before us?”

She gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

“We left before you, but you beat us here.”

“Oh. That. You took the long way for some reason, silly. I took the shortcut.”

“There’s a shortcut?”

“There are shortcuts everywhere. You didn’t know?”

“No.”

She cocked her head her slightly. “No wonder you took so long to get to the lab. I thought you and Kerry were taking another tour of the place or something.”

He smiled. “We weren’t.”

“Hunh.”

Cent nodded up the hallway. “Your room is in the same place as ours?”

“Of course. Everyone’s room is.” She glanced down at her watch. “Did you eat yet?”

“Just earlier, with you.”

“That was hours ago. Wanna grab a late bite?”

He nodded. He couldn’t have come up with something else better to do even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. “Maybe more than a bite. I’m starving.”

“Great!” She leaned forward and, in a faux conspirator’s voice, “I don’t want to scare you, but I can really eat a lot.”

“Is that a threat?”

There was a gleam in her eyes when she answered. “Maybe.”

Instead of his room, Cent turned and with Vicks at his side headed back to the cafeteria. Not that he actually knew where they were going, but he assumed Vicks would take the lead whenever she needed to.

“You were surprised to see me back in the lab, right?” Vicks asked.

“Was it that obvious?”

“Uh huh. Kerry was surprised, too. She didn’t hide it nearly as well as you, though.”

“You saw that, huh?”

“Does it help if I tell you I have a Masters in Biology?”

“Yes, actually.”

“I got it when I was twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one? I thought it takes longer to get something like a Masters.”

“Usually.”

“How did you get yours so quick?”

“I slept with my professors.”

Cent’s gave her a startled look.

She laughed. “I’m just kidding, Cent. I just worked my ass off. I was also homeschooled since I was five. Got my high school diploma equivalent when I was ten. After that, I bounced around majors looking for something that wasn’t totally boring, until I found biology. Ding ding! I probably would have graduated sooner if I hadn’t wasted five years trying to decide what my calling was.”

“That’s amazing.”

She laughed again. “Hardly. Plenty of people have done it.”

“I think it’s pretty amazing.”

Vicks shrugged. “From a purely academic point of view, I guess it might be. But it’s nothing compared to what you went through just to get here.”

He gave her another surprised glance. “You know about that?”

For the first time since they met she looked almost shy, maybe even slightly embarrassed. “I sorta snuck a peek at your file.”

“‘Sorta?’”

“Sorta. I hope that was okay?”

He let out a short chuckle and nodded. “It’s fine. I don’t hide anything about my life anyway. It’s a part of me. Everything that’s happened, happened for a reason.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“I’ve always grappled with those concepts. Destiny. Fate. That sort of thing. I guess that’s why I eventually ended up in biology.”

“How did you end up here?” he was going to ask her as they turned a corner but never got the chance because he saw something else that demanded his attention.

It was a familiar face crossing the three-way intersection in front of them.

Hillard. Macintosh Hillard.

As if he could feel Cent’s intense stare, the man turned to look back at Cent and Vicks. Just for a second, though, before he continued on his way.

“That’s Mac,” Vicks said.

“You know him?”

“We met once or twice.”

They reached the end of the corridor and looked after Hillard as the man continued moving away from them. He had long strides and seemed to be walking with a purpose.

“What’s he doing back here?” Vicks asked.

“Doesn’t he work here?”

“He used to. He was taken off the roster after what happened to his unit.” Her forehead wrinkled in thought. “He’s not supposed to be down here. Or anywhere on the island.”

“Maybe we should ask him.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely.”

They started following in Hillard’s footsteps.

“Do you know where’s he headed?” Cent asked.

“That’s the way to Research. Why’s he going there?”

“I don’t know. But I think we should tell Campbell. If Hillard’s not supposed to be down here—not even supposed to be on the island—and yet he is…”

“I don’t know about you, Cent, but I don’t have the boss’s personal number.”

“Neither do I.” He glanced around. “How do you guys communicate down here?”

“Phones aren’t allowed for security reasons, but we have this,” she said as she walked over to the nearest wall.

Cent had seen it as he went from corridor to corridor but had never really investigated. It was the same type of panels that was inside his room, made of polished steel that was so reflective he could see his own reflection in them.

Vicks placed her palm on the panel, and it lit up to show an LED display along with a table of contents. Vicks pressed the tab labeled SECURITY.

A voice answered through hidden speaker in the panel. “Security.”

“Security, this is Vicks from Research.”

“What can we do for you, Vicks?”

“I just saw Mac Hillard in the hallways. Can you confirm if he’s been reassigned to the island?”

“Give me a sec, Vicks.”

Cent had walked over to join Vicks at the panel. They exchanged a look. Apparently Cent wasn’t the only one concerned with Hillard’s presence. According to what he could see in Vicks’s eyes she wasn’t expecting him here, either. And like him, she knew what the man had gone through.

The voice on the intercom returned. “Vicks.”

“I’m here.”

“I have no records of Hillard being reassigned to Bird Island.”

“Well, he’s here.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“It was definitely him. I’m with someone who saw him, too.”

“Gotcha. Let me fly this up the flagpole and see what comes up.”

“Thanks, Security.”

“Anytime.”

Vicks looked over at Cent. That wrinkle on her forehead again. “He’s not supposed to be down here.”

“But he is,” Cent said.

They both looked in the direction where Hillard had gone.

“Maybe we should find out what he’s doing here,” Vicks said.

“Is that our job?”

“It’s not my job, no, but it’d be fun. Unless you’re really hungry and can’t wait?”

He shook his head. “I can wait.”

“Great. Let’s find out what Hillard is doing here.” She beamed. “Dang, I love me a mystery!”

Cent couldn’t help but share her enthusiasm. The woman was downright contagious. The fact that she was extremely cute didn’t hurt, either.

19

TORRES

Torres sat on her bed staring down at Owen’s pen and trying to figure out how she’d come to this point. Not only had she agreed to work with an outside party against Campbell but she had, literally in this case, brought the instrument of her betrayal with her.

The pen. The ordinary-looking pen that wasn’t ordinary at all. She still didn’t know where she was going to plug it, but Owen had been insistent that that was all she had to do. The computer board that Vicks and the older man had been working on back at the lab had plenty of places to insert things. Or it appeared that way. She didn’t know for a fact; she wasn’t a computer expert.

Owen hadn’t been very helpful about finding the right place, either.

“When you see it, you’ll know it,” he’d said.

Gee, thanks for that super unhelpful contribution, Owen.

Torres put the pen away and lay down. To her surprise, sleep came easily. Maybe it was the ever-present hum of the generator in the background vibrating through the walls and ceiling and floor of her room.

She dreamt about Macy, about a life without danger, without violence.

The dream didn’t last.

She woke up to the bright LED lights in her room flashing. Instead of the usual daylight brightness, there was a soft glowing red. The small panel next to her bed had turned on on its own and the word SECURITY flashed across the screen in red letters. That was accompanied by a voice coming through a speaker buried somewhere in the walls of her room:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

It sounded like a pre-recorded announcement repeating itself every few seconds.

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

Despite the cobwebs, Torres was already on her feet and moving toward the door before the announcement repeated for a third time. She grabbed the lever and pulled the door open and stepped outside—

And was almost run over by two of Campbell’s black-clad men. They looked like phantoms moving in the red lights—it was equally red out here as it’d been in her room—while wearing their dark uniforms. Both were carrying holstered pistols and rifles, and unlike Campbell’s “Field Technicians,” these BDUs had red stripes on their shoulders. Each one wore name tags with the word SECURITY underneath their names.

One of the heavily armed men stopped and whirled on her. “Get back into your room, ma’am!”

“What’s going on?” Torres asked.

“Please get back into your room!”

“Tell me what’s going on first.”

The man glared at her.

She returned it.

Finally, he said, “We have an active shooter situation.”

Torres didn’t need to ask the man what an “active shooter situation” was. She had seen that exact thing play out more than once since she started patrolling the streets of Houston. Someone was going around shooting people in the complex.

“Where?” she asked.

“Ma’am, please get back into your room!” the man said before turning and racing off to rejoin his partner, who had rounded the corner without him.

Torres looked after him but didn’t step back into her room as ordered. Instead, she glanced up the other direction even as the announcement repeated itself. It was clearly on a loop.

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

She didn’t see anyone else in the hallway. The ones already in their rooms were obeying the announcement. Those that weren’t already “sheltered” would be doing so now while the complex’s security team took over. Which was the smart thing to do. She didn’t remember seeing any of the lab coats—the civilians—having weapons to protect themselves with from a shooter, so it would be up to Security to provide protection.

Torres walked briskly in the direction where the two soldiers had gone. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing but sitting in her room, waiting for it all to be over, wasn’t something she even considered. Maybe it was the cop in her; they could force her to relinquish her uniform, but they couldn’t take away her instincts.

One of these days that dumbass mantra’s going to get you killed, girl.

The lack of weapons weighed heavily on her mind, but it didn’t stop her. Even the announcements, following her everywhere, didn’t make her turn around and run back to her room. She could hear the clacking of locks behind closed doors to both sides of her as she passed them.

Smarter people than me doing the smart thing.

Instead of righting her stupidity, Torres started jogging. She had just turned another corner when she heard the faint popping of gunshots. They were coming from another part of the complex. Not close enough for her to make out what kind of guns were being used.

She should have turned and fled back to her room at that moment. If there was ever a point to do that it would be now.

Instead, she continued on.

More gunshots. This time sounding much closer, and she could just make out the booming roars of shotguns.

Who was firing, and at what?

Torres picked up her pace when the looping announcement stopped suddenly and was replaced by a clearly live human voice.

She stopped to listen.

“All security units proceed to Research. We have a Code Black. I repeat: We have a Code Black threat.”

Code Black?

She’d never heard that one before, and she was familiar with most law-enforcement emergency codes, even some that were used by federal agencies. But Code Black? That was a new one.

The live voice was soon replaced by the same repeating recorded:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

Torres started running. She’d lost track of how many turns she’d made or where she was. Markings on the walls flashed by but she didn’t stop to read them. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was listen to the continued bangs of gunshots and head right for it.

Running straight toward gunshots without any weapons. Lord, I must really be losing my mind.

Out of the corner of one eye, she glimpsed the word RESEARCH. It was impossible to miss given the size and font of the letters. The live voice had specifically mentioned the Code Black taking place in the Research wing of the complex.

Torres was making another turn when her feet gave out underneath her. She slammed into the hard concrete on her back, the pain like a spear made of ice driving through her entire body. She groaned and turned over onto her chest, then reached down to push herself up.

Dark black liquid.

Not just any liquid, but blood. She’d mistaken it for something else because of the red hallway lights, making the blood darker than it should have been.

But it was blood she had slipped on.

A lot of blood.

She pushed herself up to her knees, eyes roaming the hallway. Her body was sticky with wetness, but she did her best to ignore it. There was no doubt blood on her pants and shirt and palm and back. All of her felt like one big sticky sponge.

She focused on what was ahead of her instead.

Two bodies. She didn’t recognize either one, but they were wearing white lab coats. Civilians. Both had been shot at almost point-blank range in the head. There were brain splatters on the wall next to them. They’d been shot again after they fell. Or maybe even while they were falling given how much blood was on the floor.

Torres stood up, nausea ripping through her. She was used to the sight of blood—you had to be, in her former profession—but getting them on her wasn’t the same thing. She wanted to vomit at the thought of being covered in two people’s blood but managed to push through it.

More gunshots, coming from even closer now.

Pistols, rifles, and shotguns. They exploded hard and fast and continuously as if she were listening to a raging gun battle. The question was, who was shooting at who, and why? Or maybe the better question was what groups were shooting at what groups and why because it sounded like a war.

A war that she was walking into, unarmed.

Torres glanced backwards over her shoulder. There was a difference between being proactive and being stupid. Right now, she was being very stupid.

Don’t be stupid, girl. Because you’re not this stupid.

She turned around and did what she should have done earlier and began walking back—

“Torres.”

The sound of her name stopped her in her tracks and Torres spun around, hands forming fists at her sides, the thought, A weapon. I need a weapon! racing through her head.

It was Dunbar, the secretary’s secretary, turning the corner. He had one hand against the wall for support while blood dripped from a gash in his temple. He’d looked better. A lot better. Dunbar was wearing the same clothes that Torres had seen him in earlier back at the entrance of Lab 13. His face was pale and the usually unreadable smile was gone, replaced with…

Fear.

That was fear on Dunbar’s face.

Pure, unadulterated fear.

There was blood all over one side of his face and more on the front of his shirt. The fabric of his pants stuck to his legs. Blood. He was covered in even more blood.

“Torres, help me,” Dunbar said before he stumbled—toward her, one hand reaching out—and fell.

Torres rushed forward, trying to grab him before he could strike the floor but was just a half-second too late. Dunbar landed with a painful-looking thump and the best Torres could hope for was that he was already dead and didn’t feel that.

With Dunbar on the ground, Torres saw that much of the blood was coming from Dunbar’s back. His clothes were torn to ribbons and whatever had slashed through them had gotten to the skin underneath. Torres flinched when she glimpsed some of Dunbar’s ribcage underneath the wound.

“Torres,” Dunbar whispered into the floor.

He’s still alive. Jesus. I can’t believe he’s still alive.

Torres helped Dunbar to turn over onto his back, simultaneously so he could speak to her and so she didn’t have to stare at his gruesome wound. Dunbar’s mouth trembled as he stared up at her.

“Jesus, Dunbar, what happened?” Torres asked.

“They’re here,” Dunbar said. He was struggling with every word. “They’re here.”

“Who’s here?’

“They’re here,” was all Dunbar said, and would ever say again, because he closed his eyes and Torres could feel the life draining, completely, from his unmoving body.

“Dunbar,” Torres said. “Dunbar!”

But he was gone. Dead. His entire body went limp in Torres’s arms even if the rest of him continued to pump out blood. A heavy trickle had begun to take over the half of his face that had previously been spared. Soon, there would be a mask of blood where his face used to be.

“Attention. Attention.”

Torres stood up and glanced around.

“All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter.”

Dunbar was dead. God knew how many else. And the entire complex was on lockdown.

“Attention. Attention.”

And she wasn’t going to find any answers standing there. Like it’d been since the first time she’d foolishly stepped out of her room and followed Campbell’s security personnel, she should have turned and fled back to her room.

“This is not a drill.”

Another burst of gunfire, this time coming from much closer than the previous instances. They were much louder, more insistent.

Instead of running away from it, Torres ran toward it.

She couldn’t leave. Not now. Not without completing the mission she’d come here for in the first place. The pen was still in her pocket, and she wasn’t going to find a better opportunity to plug it in and let it do its job. This was it, while Campbell’s entire security team was occupied with the active shooter. She’d seen the computers in Lab 13. That was where she needed to be. Not Lab 13 exactly, but another one just like it. And all the labs, as far as she knew, were in front and not behind her.

It wasn’t just her future at stake here, but Macy’s, too. Ana’s people had already proven they could bring the girl home to her. Besides, as much as she appreciated what Campbell was doing, hunting down the obayifo, there was something about the man that didn’t quite sit right with Torres. Maybe it was all the money at his disposal that allowed him to build something like this place, this entire island just for this single purpose.

Wherever the truth lay, she couldn’t trust Campbell. Not that she could trust Ana and Owen and whatever federal group they were working for either. But at least the latter had told her things that made sense. Things that didn’t put Campbell in the best of light.

And maybe, more selfishly, they could give her what she wanted. What she needed.

They could bring Macy home to her.

More gunfire, this time the very distinct sounds of bullets striking the concrete wall. She could already see pulverized cement powder coming around the corner in front of her. She was getting close. Way too close, but what choices did she have?

Torres rubbed the plastic pen in her right pocket.

“When you see it, you’ll know it,” Owen had said.

Christ sake, man, could you be more unclear?

She hadn’t reached the turn yet when one of Campbell’s security team stumbled around it. The man fell and began crawling on his hands and knees even as he spat out blood and struggled to breathe. The man looked up and raised a begging hand in her direction.

“Hold on!” Torres shouted and ran faster toward the man.

Instead of continuing to crawl, the man stopped and sat upright on his knees, eyes glued on hers even as blood pumped out of a massive cut along the side of his neck. He was going to bleed to death. Even if Torres reached him in time, the man was going to—

He didn’t get the chance to die from his wound. A black object leapt from the corner behind him and onto the man’s back, pummeling him down to the concrete floor. A scream, then the tearing of flesh as the creature bent over the man’s back and began chewing its way through his exposed neck.

Blood—so much of it—arced from the fresh wound and splashed the wall and floor and even managed to hit the ceiling above. Despite the emergency red lights that drowned out the hallway, it was impossible to miss the lively stream of human blood.

Around her, the recorded voice continued, as insistent and monotone now as it had been since she first heard it:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Attention. Attention…”

20

CENT

Harold Campbell’s security didn’t know why Macintosh Hillard was back on the island and down here in the complex. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to be here at all. So why was he back? And how exactly did someone who wasn’t supposed to be here, got here in the first place, never mind down here?

Cent wanted to find out. Vicks had the same idea. So they traced Hillard’s footsteps, but the man was much faster than he should have been for someone of his bulk and age. By the time both Cent and Vicks had turned the corner, they had lost sight of Hillard. The hallway at the end was split into two sections—the left side went back to RESEARCH while the other led to the cafeteria.

Cent and Vicks walked up the hallway, not in any hurry. He suspected she was thinking the same thing he was: Left or right.

She proved him correct when she asked, “Where did you think he went?”

“Depends. What’s in Research besides, you know, research?”

“Nothing. Just research.”

“Is there anyone working at this time of the night?”

She glanced down at her watch. “Maybe a few late-nighters, but there shouldn’t be that many.”

“No second shift? Or third?”

“Nope. Not nearly enough of us for that. Besides, everything that needs done gets done pretty much in the daytime.”

“Would he be going to the cafeteria?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he’s hungry?”

“Maybe,” Cent said even though he didn’t think so. Hillard hadn’t looked very hungry. At least not in the brief glimpse of the man that Cent had caught.

“Maybe he has work in Research,” Vicks said.

“Has he been down there before?”

“Sure. Most of them have at one point or another.”

“But it’s not his main job.”

“Not even his secondary or third job. But he has been down there. I remember seeing him once or twice.” She paused.

“What is it?”

“He’s not supposed to be down here to begin with. Never mind in Research.”

They’d reached the end of the hallway and stopped. Cent looked left, then right. Not that there was any clue which direction Hillard had gone. There wasn’t anyone present to ask if they’d seen Hillard, though Cent could hear plenty of chatter coming from the right side—the cafeteria. Which made sense since some of the staff would be there now enjoying their dinner before heading back to their quarters.

“Wanna go heads or tails?” Vicks asked. He looked back at her, and the confusion must have been apparent on his face because she added, “I mean, flip a coin?”

“I don’t have a coin.”

“I got one.” She dug into her pants pocket and took out a quarter. “Never leave home without one. Tails we go left. Heads we go right.”

“Sounds good.”

She flipped the coin and caught it again.

Tails.

“Research it is,” Vicks said as she returned her coin back into her pocket.

They turned left and walked down another long hallway.

“You really keep that in your pocket all the time?” Cent asked.

She might have giggled. “Nah. Not really. I just happened to have this one today.”

“Why?”

“Would you believe I won it in a bet?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“What if the bet was about the blue-eyed—what do you call it? OBGYN?”

He smiled. “Obayifo.”

“Yeah. That.”

“What was the bet?”

“If those machetes would put it out of its misery. I said no, but Hank thought yes.”

“Who’s Hank?”

“The old guy working the computers with me. Anyways, I won.”

“A quarter.”

“Hey, a quarter’s a quarter.” She patted her pocket. “Three more and I could buy us a bag of chips.”

“I thought everything down here was free?”

“They are, but it’s not like we’ll be down here all our lives, you know.”

“Ah. That makes sense.” Then, smiling at her, “So you’re going to treat me?”

She winked sideways at him. “Depends on how you play your cards, mister.”

They reached the end of the hallway and turned in the only direction available—right. They were now at the start of the Research wing. For some reason, a slight shiver raced up and down Cent’s spine at the prospect of heading back to where they’d experimented on the blue-eyed obayifo.

“You okay?” Vicks was asking him.

“Hmm?”

“You okay?” she asked again.

He nodded and tried to smile. It was mostly believable. Or at least he thought so. “Fine. Why?”

“You look weird.”

“I do?”

“Uh huh.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know. Just weird.”

He smiled again. This time he thought it was much more believable. “I’m not sure if we’ve known each other long enough for you to know my ‘weird’ face.”

She laughed. “That’s true. I was juggling between weird and constipated.”

“It’s probably the latter.”

“Bad food?”

“Probably—”

The sound of gunshots cut him off.

Cent immediately stopped in his tracks—as did Vicks next to him—while still halfway up the hallway.

“That’s not good,” Vicks said.

Cent almost laughed. Now that was an understatement.

Before he could say or do anything, Vicks was already running up the corridor toward where they’d heard the shots come from.

“Vicks!” he shouted as he ran after her.

She slowed down just enough to glance back at him. “Come on, slowpoke!”

“Wait! It might be dangerous!”

She didn’t stop and he lost sight of her momentarily as she turned the corner. Cent picked up speed, using the long strides that he was capable of. He skated around the same corner and caught up to her almost immediately.

More gunshots, coming from the same direction. These sounded farther away, as if whoever was doing the shooting was continuing to move up the corridor away from them.

Then someone screamed from the same direction.

If the shots hadn’t slowed Vicks down, the scream did. She stopped so suddenly Cent almost ran right into her.

“That’s not good, either,” the redhead said almost breathlessly. Again, another major understatement. Vicks turned to look at him. The eagerness was gone from her face. “What do we do?”

“What’s the protocol for something like this?”

“Uh…”

“There is a protocol, right?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, this has never happened before.”

More gunshots from the same direction. That was followed by more screaming. More than one person was either shooting, dying, or in pain.

The thundering of footsteps from behind, making them both turn around.

Three men in black uniforms were racing down the hallway, clutching rifles against their chests. One of them, spotting Vicks and Cent, shouted, “Get back to your quarters! Get back to your quarters now!”

The man didn’t wait for Cent and Vicks to respond. He, along with the other two, ran past the two of them. Cent glimpsed red stripes on their shoulders, which was the first time he’d seen that on one of Campbell’s not-soldiers-soldiers. The trio turned the corner and disappeared. They were heading straight toward the chaos.

“That’s security,” Vicks said.

“How can you tell?”

“The red stripes.”

“Oh.”

“We should probably let them handle it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

They started to turn around when the lights around them flicked from bright white LEDs to a soft red color. That was followed by an automated voice broadcasting through speakers along the walls that Cent couldn’t locate:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

“More not-so-good developments,” Vicks said.

“Yes,” was all Cent could think to say in response.

They started to walk up the hallway and away from the action. Cent didn’t feel like a coward at all. He was armed with only a knife and Vicks wasn’t even armed. To run into danger with those kinds of advantages was a fool’s errand, especially given the loud gunfire that continued to ring out behind them.

“Mine or yours?” Vicks was asking him.

He glanced over. “What?”

“Should we go to my quarters or yours?”

She was grinning at him playfully. Cent wanted to tell her that this wasn’t the time but couldn’t bring himself to. He just liked the way she smiled, even when it was at an impossibly inappropriate time like now.

He managed a smile. “Depends on which one’s closer.”

“Sneaky,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“Mine’s closer.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

She clearly didn’t believe him. “Uh huh.”

He almost laughed. “No, really, I—”

Another burst of gunfire from behind them, this one seemingly going on forever. They both stopped and turned back around.

“That was a lot of shots,” Vicks said.

“Yes,” Cent said. He turned. “We should probably move faster.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Vicks said as she jogged to catch up to him.

Around them, the automated voice continued broadcasting through the speakers:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

The accompanying red light did nothing to convince them to stop or even slow down. If anything it encouraged them to keep going, and faster.

Pounding footsteps as even more of Campbell’s security team—Cent saw more red stripes on their uniform’s shoulders—appeared in front of them. Five in all and they didn’t bother to stop and shout orders at either him or Vicks. They were clearly in a hurry and nearly bowled them over as they ran down the hallway.

Vicks stopped to look after the men. “That’s a lot of security.”

Cent did the same, but the men were already around the corner and out of view. “How many security guys do you have down here?”

“I don’t know. I never bothered to count.” She paused and cocked her head slightly. “Is it just me or is the shooting getting louder…and closer?”

Cent nodded. He’d noticed the same thing. “It’s not just you.”

“Good. Cause I thought I might be going bonkers for a while there.”

Suddenly the automated voice cut off mid-sentence and was replaced by another voice. This one was clearly live, with the speaker sounding more than a little anxious:

“All security units proceed to Research. We have a Code Black. I repeat: We have a Code Black threat.”

As soon as the voice faded, the automated emergency message returned.

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter…”

Cent looked over at Vicks. “Code Black?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.” Then, almost embarrassingly, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Cent said when he heard the same thundering sounds of approaching footsteps.

Except this time they weren’t coming from behind him but in front—from the same direction that the previous five security personnel had disappeared.

The first of the soldiers appeared around the corner. Cent recognized him as one of the five that had passed them just seconds ago. The man’s eyes were wide and blood covered half of his face. He hadn’t looked like that before. His rifle was missing and he was holding a pistol in his hand as he ran toward Cent and Vicks.

“Run!” the man shouted. “Get out of here! Run!”

Vicks took a stumbling step backward and Cent was going to do the same when something appeared from around the corner behind the fleeing man. Except it wasn’t on the ground like its prey but moving on the wall.

The security man must have sensed it because he glanced back. He shouldn’t have because it only slowed him down. Not that it would have mattered. Cent could see the way his pursuer was moving. It was fast. A blurred form against the red lights of the hallway, like some kind of rippling motion. It didn’t so much as climb the walls as it ricocheted off them—at least until the moment it jumped off and landed on the running man.

The impossibly brutal sound of bone crunching as the man slammed face-first into the hard cement floor, the gun clattering helplessly out of his hand. Cent could only hope the man had died on contact because it would have been the more preferable way to go considering what was about to happen to him.

Black bony fingers gripped the back of the soldier’s head and lifted it up. The man was still alive even though his entire face had been reduced to little more than a messy and unrecognizable blob. He’d left behind bones and flesh and a pool of blood on the hallway floor. The thing that was holding him had pruned black flesh and blue eyes that gleamed against the red of the hallway lights.

It was an obayifo.

A blue-eyed obayifo.

It rested on top of the fallen security man, perched on his back as if it were riding an animal at the zoo. Despite its frail appearance, it held its victim’s head in its one hand without any effort.

Cent stared at it, and it stared back.

Then it smashed the security man’s face back into the floor. The sickening crunch of even more broken bones and flicking shards of teeth made Cent’s stomach turn. Even as it had crushed the man’s face into the floor, the creature’s eyes never wavered away from Cent.

It wanted him to see it.

It wanted Cent to know what awaited him.

“Cent?” Vicks behind him. She was whispering, but that did nothing to hide the trembling fear in her voice. “Cent?”

But he didn’t run because he didn’t have to. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t have made it. The creature would have stopped him. It was too fast and powerful and too close at the moment. The only thing Cent could do was what it wanted: Stand there and watch the brutality it was inflicting.

The obayifo climbed off the back of the unmoving security man, extending its body to its fullest length at a gradual, almost glacial pace. It seemed to keep rising and rising until it would reach the bottom of the ceiling itself. It didn’t, of course, but for a moment it’d seemed as if it might.

He thought it might say something, but it didn’t. Instead, the monster picked up the dead security man by one ankle and turned, then walked back around the corner. It dragged its victim behind it, leaving a bloody trail of blood and flesh and broken bones in its wake.

“Cent?” Vicks again. This time she was much closer. “Why did it do that? Why did it just do that?”

It wanted me to see. It wants me to know what’s coming for me…for all of us.

But he said, “I don’t know.” Cent turned and grabbed her arm. “Come on. We have to go.”

They ran up the hallway, Vicks struggling to keep up next to him. He only slowed down to let her catch up when they’d rounded the corner and there was nothing in front or behind them but empty red hallway.

“Where are we going now?” Vicks asked as she tried to catch her breath.

He found that he was doing the same thing even as he continued moving at a quick pace that was just on the verge of panic-running. “Out of this place. Topside.”

“But we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because”—She somehow managed to pull free of his grip and stopped moving. He turned around to face her—"there’s nowhere to go, Cent.”

“What do you mean?”

“The emergency broadcast,” Vicks said, looking upward as if she could see the voice that was repeating itself again. “When that comes on, the complex is automatically locked. Sealed. There’s no way out.”

“No way out?”

She shook her head. “No way out.”

“It said to seek shelter.”

“It means the quarters.”

“And then what?”

“We’re supposed to wait.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I guess for the emergency to be resolved. Until then…” She shook her head. “We wait.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

He sighed and thought, That’s a stupid plan.

But he didn’t get the chance to say it because there was a loud roar of gunfire from the corridor they’d just turned away from. That was followed by the sight of bullet casings rolling across the floor, appearing from around the connecting hallway.

Cent took an involuntarily step back. “They’re too far.”

Vicks did the same next to him. “What’s too far?”

“Our quarters. They’re too far. We’ll never reach them in time.”

Cent snapped glances around them. There were two doors to his right and none to his left. He’d run past them earlier without noticing. They weren’t quarters but looked like offices.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm again and pulling her toward the nearest door. Like most doors in the place, this had a panel with a palm reader on the side.

Thankfully Vicks didn’t fight him

He grabbed the lever and saw that the door was already ajar. He pulled it open further and slipped inside with Vicks. There had been some kind of writing on the wall, but Cent hadn’t risked the second or two it would have taken to read it.

He closed the door and was going to lock it, but didn’t have to. There was a buzzing sound and hidden latches slid into place. A panel on the wall lit up, the word SECURED flashing in red. Cent wondered if he would have even been able to gain entry to what was clearly a secured door if someone hadn’t left it open by accident.

What was that Dutch always liked to say about looking gift horses in the mouth?

“Cent,” Vicks said.

“We’ll stay in here until it’s over. I don’t think anything’s getting through this door.”

He banged on the door for effect, producing two solid thuds. The door was metal and heavy, and even more secured than the one in his quarters.

“Cent,” Vicks said again.

He turned around to look at her.

Vicks was standing in front of the far wall. Except the entire section was taken up with two rows of monitors on top and what looked like a communications system at the bottom. Cent walked over to get a closer look.

The monitors were showing different parts of Campbell’s underground complex, giving Cent and Vicks a live look at the slaughter taking place outside their door.

“Jesus, Cent, how did we come to this?” Vicks whispered. The happy-go-lucky girl with the spiked red hair he’d been talking to all day was gone, replaced by a woman who wrapped her arms around her chest and struggled not to shake, and failing.

Cent didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. He’d come here to help Campbell fight the obayifo, but he never thought they’d end up on the defensive. But here they were, with the enemy not just on their doorsteps but inside their house.

If this was God’s idea of sending him to battle evil, then surely He had a very strange sense of humor.

21

MAC

His head hurt. It was the kind of pounding hurt that made him question if dying would have been an easier—if cowardly—way out. He’d been on countless missions even before he signed up with Harold Campbell’s crusade and it’d never been this bad.

The doctors couldn’t figure it out. They gave him pills to help before mumbling something about it being all in his head. They were mostly right because it was in his head, though he didn’t think that was exactly what they meant. They wouldn’t come right out and say it of course. Maybe it was the look in his eyes. What the boys in the Army used to call the Thousand Yard stare. Mac knew he definitely had it when he got his first glimpse of himself after the operation.

An hour after leaving the egg heads and the pills still hadn’t taken effect. Two hours later and his head continued to buzz as if he were playing host to a dozen drumline banging away at once. It started after Florida and didn’t let up.

Florida. Where he lost his entire unit. A first. He’d never suffered that kind of loss before.

All of them. Every man and woman under his watch.

And the pounding headache wouldn’t go away. It was as if the gods were punishing him for losing his crew.

“You deserve this,” they said.

“Fuck you,” he would say back.

“No,” they would say, in a much louder voice than he was capable of, “fuck you.”

He didn’t ask them why because the answer was obvious: Because he was still alive and his men weren’t. They were gone. All of them. He’d failed them, almost as if he’d killed them himself and they didn’t go down under the claws and teeth of two undead things.

…two undead things…

That talked. That could talk. He’d heard about the Blue Eyes and how they were different from the Black Eyes. But it was all theory. It was all reports and conjectures by the egg heads. Nothing concrete. No first-hand knowledge.

Until now.

Because they had definitely spoken to him and told him to pass on the warning (was that what it was?) to Campbell. Mac had done as instructed. He was too afraid not to even though it was bright outside. So bright, in fact, that his eyes hurt almost as much as the pounding in his head when he stepped out of the motel where he was holed up and got on the chopper.

“You heading back to home base?” the pilot shouted at him.

Mac nodded. “Gotta get my things.”

The co-pilot, a ginger named Alexis, glanced over at him. “You okay? Heard what happened to you last night.”

Mac nodded again. He couldn’t muster the energy to do anything else. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Why? Don’t I look good?”

She shook her head. “Not from where I’m sitting, Mac ‘ol pal.”

He smiled. Or did his best to attempt one. “I’m okay. It was rough, but I’ll get over it. Part of the job, right?”

“I guess.” She turned around. He could tell she didn’t believe him. Not the fake smile and definitely not the words.

The pilot, whose name escaped Mac, didn’t chime in. They didn’t really know each other as well as Mac knew Alexis. The co-pilot had been around almost as long as Mac had. They’d signed up for Harold Campbell’s crusade in the same year and had become friendly acquaintances.

“Buckle up!” the pilot shouted over the roar of the spinning turbine.

Mac hadn’t realized he hadn’t put his seatbelt on yet. He did that now before settling back against the hard upholstery for the ride down to home base aka Bird Island. In something of an irony, being in the chopper with blades spinning all around helped to tamp down the pounding headache.

Somewhat, anyway.

* * *

Voices in his head.

He wasn’t sure where they came from. He wasn’t even sure if they’d always been there, but he’d just never managed to hear them clearly enough over the intense pounding, like waves of an ocean crashing against his skull over and over, trying to break free.

The voices were odd. Like reptiles speaking. That is, if reptiles ever learned to speak. If that ever happened, Mac assumed this would be what it would sound like.

Hissing.

A lot of hissing.

It made the words difficult to understand. Gradually, the individual syllables became more obvious and Mac was able to finally able to understand.

There were two of them and they were talking.

About him.

“He’s under,” one said. “You were right. It is easy.”

“They’re weak,” the second one said. “Fragile. Little more than meat sacks. We should have conquered them a long time ago.”

“He said to wait.”

“He always says to wait. How much longer?”

“As long as it takes.”

“They’re ruining everything. We need to take them now. Purge the planet of their filth.”

“But not entirely,” the first one said. Was it laughing as it said it? It was hard to tell through all the hissing.

“Yes, not entirely,” the second one agreed. It, too, might have been laughing.

It took him a while to conclude that they weren’t just talking about him. He wasn’t that important, after all. He was little more than a messenger.

“He’s awake,” the first one said.

“Yes, he is,” the second one agreed. “It’s time to give him back to them.”

“Will it work?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very sure.”

“Remember, they’re weak. Fragile. Easily manipulated. This one will do what he’s told.”

What I’m told? Mac remembered thinking. What was that?

Right. Give their message to Campbell.

That was all.

Wasn’t it?

* * *

The rest of the day was a blur. He heard stories—gossip—but nothing that stuck. Or maybe he was too busy dealing with the headache. It had gotten worse. He hadn’t thought that was possible, but there it was.

Worse.

Way, way worse.

Somehow the next twenty-four hours came and went. He recognized faces as they spoke to him.

“Sorry about your unit.”

“You good?”

“Anything I can do?”

“Sorry, man.”

“Tough luck.”

“Get ‘em next time.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Give me a shout if you wanna talk.”

“Not your fault.”

“Could have happened to any one of us.”

“Don’t think it’s your fault, brother.”

“You good?”

“Not your fault, man.”

“Don’t blame yourself.”

“…your fault…

“You okay?”

“…fault…”

“Get some downtime.”

“…fault…”

“…fault…”

“…fault…”

* * *

He woke up with bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t even sure when he’d fallen asleep inside his quarters but there he was, drowning in his own sweat. The shower didn’t help and neither did the half hour he spent standing in front of the mirror trying to recognize the man that stared back at him. According to his watch it was morning, but the morning of what day was a mystery.

He hadn’t dreamt while he slept. It’d seemed like he’d blinked one second and by the time the blink ended, hours had passed. Which was impossible, of course.

Wasn’t it?

Maybe, but here he was anyway. He was supposed to have already left the island after picking up his supplies. The idea was to get away, to ease down from the misery of the last few days. (Weeks? Was it days or weeks?)

He shook it off. It wasn’t nearly as successful as he had hoped.

His duffel bag was on the floor next to the bed. The same bag he’d taken out of the Corps with him. It was old and faded and had seen much better days. Like him in more ways than one. He didn’t use to think that. Mac used to believe he still had a lot left in the tank, that he was still the point of the spear when needed. Then again, Jane probably thought the same thing until he got chewed up by those Blue Eyes in the sewer.

Those Blue Eyes…

They did something to him. He was sure of it, even if the egg heads couldn’t find anything wrong. There was nothing abnormal about his physical self, but Mac could feel it in everything else. Specifically, the times when his mind would wander.

And there was that conversation he’d overheard from the creatures. It’d seemed crystal clear when he remembered it just yesterday. Now, as he tried to recall it, everything was…disjointed. The words were muddled, the sounds more like a persistent beeping than actual voices.

He remembered the hisses most of all. The Blue Eyes didn’t so much talk as they hissed out every word, as if they were trying to intimidate him. Not that they had to. Oh, no. They had him by the balls. By the fucking balls. They’d only let him go so he could deliver their message to Campbell. And he’d done that.

So why couldn’t he shake it off?

Or maybe he was being too hard on himself. It’d only been forty-eight hours (More? Less? What day was it, anyway?) since his encounter and everyone knew that battle scars didn’t go away overnight. Or two nights. Or a week, even.

He jumped back into the shower and tried to shake the whole thing off.

It worked. Maybe a little too well.

Mac stopped thinking about that night in the sewers.

Hell, he stopped thinking entirely.

* * *

The first people he saw as he entered the Research section of the underground complex were Rob and Taylor. They were ex-Army. Young men in their mid-twenties. They’d left the Army to pursue other options now that the wars overseas had all but wound down. Rob and Taylor were junkies, but their drug of course wasn’t drugs. They’d tried to indulge with extreme sports but neither had found it appealing. Coming to work for Harold Campbell provided everything they wanted.

They were in the hallway chatting, hands on their hips when Mac turned the corner. Both men glanced over and Mac saw the confusion on both their young faces. They hadn’t expected to see him there. He didn’t blame them. He hadn’t expected to still be there either.

Taylor recovered first. “Hey, what’re you still doing here, Mac?”

“I had something to do,” Mac said. His voice was calm. Strangely calm. He wasn’t sure why. But then, he wasn’t sure what he was doing here anyway.

“You forgot something?” Rob asked. He was a few inches shorter than Taylor, with light brown hair but wide shoulders that came with daily workouts. Taylor was the total opposite—tall and skinny and blond.

“Yeah, I did,” Mac said.

“What’s that?” Taylor asked.

Rob grinned. “You’re getting old, old timer.”

“I know,” Mac said.

He wasn’t sure when the Glock appeared in his hand, but suddenly there it was. Both young men’s faces lit up with another round of confusion and neither one of them reached for their weapon immediately. It took two seconds.

It was one second too long.

Mac shot Taylor first, since the blond was the first to snap out of his shock and reach for his sidearm. He swiveled slightly and shot Rob in the face. The brown-haired ex-Army man toppled backward, the back of his head landing with a hard crunch against the concrete floor. He hadn’t even started reaching for his weapon like Taylor.

Taylor was still on his feet, stumbling around, still trying to pull his gun out. Blood began pooling at the front of his shirt, though it was difficult to see clearly against his black clothes. His eyes were easy enough to spot: It was a mix of pain and confusion.

Mac fired two more times and put Taylor out of his misery.

Then he stepped over the two bodies, careful to avoid the widening puddles of blood, and continued up the hallway.

After that it was a blur of bodies in black outfits and white lab coats. They came from his left and right, reacting to the sounds of gunshots. Mac squeezed the trigger on his Glock again and again. When he ran empty, he slapped in a new magazine.

Then another one.

He was carrying four spares in his pockets—one in each front pants pockets and two more in each back pocket. Had Taylor and Rob looked closer, they would have spotted the extra magazines. But they hadn’t because they were too focused on Mac’s face.

He strode up the hallway, taking corners without a moment’s hesitation, and equally unhesitant when it came to shooting at fleeing forms. He lost count of how many bodies dropped in front of him. It could have been five, or ten, or twenty.

By the time he reached his destination, he was already on his last mag and the lights in the hallways had turned red. He wasn’t sure when that had happened. The red of the lights gave the place an eerie feel, though for some reason Mac felt at home. Almost as if they’d switched over the lights just for him. It was comforting.

Someone was calmly talking through the speakers. He recognized it as the automated emergency message. There was an emergency going on.

Makes sense, he thought as he entered the room marked LAB 13. He’d never been in here before but for some reason he knew exactly where to go, almost as if he had been in here before. But he hadn’t.

Hadn’t he?

Things weren’t making any sense these days, but that was okay. His head had stopped pounding and, for the first time in his life, Mac had a sense of direction. There was a goal in front of him and there was a rush of excitement every time he neared it, almost as if his entire life had been geared toward this one moment.

The room was separated into two, with a glass partition taking up an entire wall. Something stood on the other side, staring back at him. It was short, almost like a child. Except it wasn’t, of course.

A Blue Eyes.

It smiled at him, stumps for arms sticking uselessly out of both shoulders. Black tar-like substance oozed out of the points of separation along its limbs. It had only looked short because its legs had been chopped off at the knees. Like its arms, black liquid pooled around its “footing.” If the creature felt any pain, Mac couldn’t see it on its face.

“You did well,” it said.

No, not said. It hissed.

It hissed inside his mind.

“Thank you,” Mac said. Unlike the thing looking back at him between the glass partition, Mac had to use his mouth to talk.

“Now free me.”

Mac was going to ask how, but the fatherly voice told him how. The computers. All he had to do was press the right buttons. He walked over to them and did as he was instructed. The father knew exactly which buttons to push and what codes to enter.

There was a hissing sound as something opened. Mac shivered and the hairs along his arms spiked against a rush of cold wind.

“Seal the door.”

He did, walking back across the room and closing the door. Then Mac fired his final two rounds into the control panel to ensure it couldn’t be opened easily by anyone on the other side.

When he turned back around, he was surprised to see it inside the room. But it didn’t look as despicable or fearsome as it should have. Instead, Mac saw a fatherly figure waiting to embrace him.

“Come,” the father said, his voice whispering lovingly inside Mac’s head. “I need you.”

Yes, Mac thought. It was exhilarating to be wanted, to know that he was loved and desperately needed.

He wasn’t sure when he fell to his knees, but suddenly he was almost face-to-face with the father. A smile, just before sharp needles punched through the flesh on one side of his neck. Instead of pain, Mac was filled with contentment.

Mac knew, without really understanding how he knew, that this was what his life had led to all this time.

And it was glorious.

22

TORRES

A Blue Eyes.

Jesus Christ, it was a Blue Eyes.

It might even have been the same one that Torres had watched get dismembered by Campbell’s men earlier today in Lab 13. Its legs, like its arms, weren’t as long as they should have been. Everything that was supposed to be there was there except not at their full length. It was growing them back, but it hadn’t completed the process yet. Not that the lack of its full appendages did anything to stop the creature from tearing through the soldier’s neck as if it were chewing Jell-O.

Torres turned and fled, the scream of Campbell’s man ringing in her ears, doing its best to drown out the droning emergency broadcast that was still being pumped through hidden speakers all around her.

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

She turned the upcoming corner with wild abandon, shoes scraping against the hard concrete floor. There was just enough purchase down there that she didn’t slip and fall on her ass, which would have been an amazingly bad thing to have happened.

A face appeared out of nowhere in front of her, and before Torres could dodge left or right to avoid the collision, she slammed into it head-on. Torres spilled to the floor, the man she’d run into falling next to her.

The guy rolled over onto his back, hands fumbling with his face for some reason. “My glasses. My glasses…”

Torres was already on her feet. The instinct to keep running was overwhelming, but she somehow stopped herself and glanced around, searching for the man’s glasses. There, just a few feet away from its owner. There was no reason the guy hadn’t spotted it by now unless he was blind as a bat without them.

She grabbed the glasses and handed it to him. Fortunately the man wasn’t so blind that he couldn’t make out her trying to give him back his eyewear. Asian, maybe the same age as Vicks. Way too young to be down here doing what they were doing.

“Thanks, thanks,” the guy was saying as he continued fumbling with his hands and face, this time to put his glasses back on.

“Get out of here,” Torres said. She glanced down the hallway.

Still empty. For now.

“What’s happening?” the man asked.

“Don’t ask questions. Just get out of here!”

She started to go when the man said, “Hey, wait,” as he stumbled up to his feet. For some reason he was having a lot of trouble. Maybe she’d hit him harder than she thought.

“Get inside!” she shouted as she continued up the hallway.

She didn’t glance back to make sure the man obeyed. He wasn’t her responsibility. None of these people were. And even if she wanted to protect them, she didn’t have the means to do it. Like an idiot, she’d run toward the sound of gunfire without a gun herself.

Stupid. That was stupid.

God, why were you so stupid?

She rounded another corner. Torres had lost track of where she was. She hadn’t had time to memorize the place and it was going to take days—maybe weeks—for her to become familiar with every twist and turn. If only she knew some of the same shortcuts that Vicks had been using all day.

After the Asian lab coat, Torres didn’t see anyone else outside in the hallway. She guessed they had better sense—

Piercing screams coming from behind her.

Torres stopped in her tracks and turned around. The Asian lab coat. It had to be. He was the only one close enough. Had the man remained outside in the hallway after she left?

“Oh God, oh God,” a male voice shouted. That was followed by, “Help me! Help me!” except the last me turned into a shrill scream.

Goddammit! Torres thought even as she ran back.

She reached out to grab the corner to help her make the turn faster and to keep from slipping.

The man was on the floor. The same one. He hadn’t gone back inside the way she’d told him. Instead, he was on his stomach, trying to crawl forward, toward her, as a black figure perched on top of him, literally riding on his back as it tried to chew through his exposed neck.

Despite her best efforts, Torres found herself frozen and staring. It was simultaneously horrific and fascinating. The creature had black eyes like the ones she’d seen in the Archers two nights ago. Pruned black skin gleamed in the red light of the hallway, rail-thin body arched in an impossible angle as it bent over its prey, lapping up spurts of blood.

The lab coat’s arm was outstretched toward her even as he wheezed out the words, “Help. Help…” Blood dripped from one side of his face, more flowing from the large gash in his neck. The creature on top of him ignored Torres’s presence and bit down on another part of the man’s neck, its cavern of jagged teeth meeting little resistance.

Then Torres found herself running.

Not up the hallway, but down it.

Toward the lab coat.

Toward the creature.

It didn’t even look up as she crossed the halfway mark. It continued to slurp, biting into the lab coat’s neck. More blood—so much blood—turned the man’s white clothes into almost a shade of pink.

She was almost on top of it when the creature finally lifted its head—slightly, as if in curiosity. Dark black eyes seemed to widen as she approached, almost as if the undead thing was trying to figure out what she was doing.

It was an ugly thing, shriveled face and hairless domed head looking even more unnatural against the red hallway lights. It was perched on top of the lab coat like some kind of gargoyle on a building, but instead of a concrete ledge, its bony toes dug into his coat. Blood dripped from its chin and strings of flesh dangled from jagged teeth as it bared its mouth at her.

She hadn’t seen it the first time but now, up close, Torres could make out bullet holes in its chest and arms. It was also missing a large chunk at the top of its head, like something had hammered away at a section of the skull up there. It’d clearly been shot, more than once, but for whatever reason whoever had done the damage hadn’t been using silver bullets. Why the hell weren’t they using silver bullets?

Before the creature could react, Torres kicked it with everything she had, and could feel the nose of her sneakers sink into its already-sunken chest. Something that might have been bone cracked and the undead thing was lifted into the air and sailed backward down the hallway. It smashed into the wall and fell, crumpling like paper on the floor.

Torres grabbed the suddenly-free lab coat. “Come on. Get up. Come on!”

But he wasn’t going to get up. He was too injured for that. Blood gushed out of multiple gashes in his neck, pouring out like geysers. The sight turned Torres’s stomach. She retched a few times but fortunately didn’t manage to bring anything up.

“Come on!” she shouted. “Come on!”

It was hopeless. The man was still alive—she could hear him moaning in pain—but nothing on him worked. He didn’t try to get up and his legs were useless as she attempted to drag him up to his feet.

“Come on, goddammit!”

More groaning. More useless feet. More pouring blood.

A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, and Torres stopped pulling the man up momentarily to glance to her right, down the hallway.

The creature was already on its feet, black liquid oozing from the bullet holes in its chest. More blood—the lab coat’s—dripped from its bony chin. The entire lower half of its face was covered in a thick wetness. It opened its mouth, teeth like bone knives reflecting back the red lights.

“Brad?”

Torres’s eyes snapped up the hallway even as a voice in her head told her to Don’t look away! Don’t you look away from that undead thing!

She did anyway, if just for a second.

There were two people behind her. One of them was Campbell’s not-soldier-soldiers and the other was a woman in a white lab coat. It was the woman who had called out Brad. That had to be the Asian man, even though he wasn’t wearing a name tag for some reason.

The soldier was the one she focused on: He was tall, wearing all-black, and was holding a shotgun.

“Get down!” the soldier shouted just as the air shifted behind her.

Her head spun around just in time to see the creature moving toward her. It was fast. She was surprised by how fast it was. One heartbeat it was standing at the intersection and the next it was a few feet from her.

Torres dropped to the floor, letting go of Brad at the same time. There was a loud boom as the shotgun rocked the hallway. Torres glanced over as the creature staggered back. There was a large gaping hole in its chest, big enough to put her fist through, that wasn’t there before.

But the creature hadn’t gone down.

Goddammit. No silver? Why aren’t you people using silver, for God’s sake!

The creature staggered as another slug round slammed into its chest, creating another hole.

And it still didn’t go down.

“The head!” Torres shouted. “Shoot in the head!”

The soldier gave her a brief glance before doing just that. He racked the shotgun for a second time and fired again, and half of the creature’s skull exploded in a shower of bone, thick gooey liquid, and spongy material that could have been parts of its brain.

The creature stumbled and fell to the floor…when it started to get back up, hands groping the floor even while long-limbed feet, the bones sticking out through the thin layer of flesh, awkwardly tried to straighten.

“Jesus Christ,” the soldier said as he racked the shotgun again.

“Forget it!” Torres said. She staggered up to her feet. “Help me with him!”

The soldier turned to her. “What?”

She grabbed Brad’s arms and attempted to drag him up. For a small man, he was deceptively heavy. “Help me with him!”

“What about that?” the soldier said, pointing at the creature with his shotgun.

It was still trying to get up even as thick black substance slurped out of the exposed top of its head. It still had eyes but not much else. Its mouth opened and closed as if it were having difficulty remembering how to keep it closed—or open. The clacking of bones as it slowly managed to rise from the floor.

“Forget it!” Torres shouted. “You can’t kill it anyway! But we can still save him!”

The woman ran over and grabbed one of Brad’s arms. Her male colleague was of no help. If not for the fact Torres could still hear Brad’s haggard breathing, she would have given him up for dead. But he was still alive and every ounce of her being told her that if he was still alive, she couldn’t abandon him.

Even with the woman’s help, Torres had trouble lifting Brad up from the floor. His limbs twitched as he continued to bleed, the woman—unlike Brad she still had her name tag: LETTY—had taken out a handkerchief and was wrapping it around his neck. Blood squirted free anyway, covering her hands as she worked. To her credit, Letty refused to stop even as Torres could see the queasiness overwhelming her face.

“Help me with him!” Torres shouted at the soldier.

The man didn’t obey right away. It took him maybe two seconds or more as he glanced back at the creature, the shotgun in his hand almost rising to fire. Finally, he relented and slung his weapon and grabbed Brad’s other arm. Unlike Letty, he was much stronger and Torres was able to lift Brad high enough to drag him up the hallway.

“We gotta get inside!” Torres shouted at them.

“Where?” the soldier shouted back.

“Anywhere! As long as it’s inside!”

“Roger that,” the man said. He was young—mid-twenties as far as Torres could tell—and like Letty he had a name tag: BANKS.

Torres and Banks dragged Brad up the hallway, the lab coat’s legs sliding against the floor. Torres would have worried for him if not for the fact he was bleeding the entire time, and in a perverse way, all that blood did a good job to lubricate him against the cement. Besides, she didn’t think he could feel the scraping anyway given his current state.

It took a moment for Torres to realize it was just her and Banks moving. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Letty still in place, staring at the creature. The undead thing had since made it up on its spindly legs and was now moving toward Letty. Banks and whoever had shot it before might not have managed to kill it, but they’d inflicted enough wounds on its appendages that the creature staggered like a drunk skeleton with poor balance.

“Letty!” Torres shouted.

The other woman looked back at her. There was an odd expression on her face that Torres wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“Get your ass over here, girl!” Torres shouted.

Letty seemed to snap out of it and ran over to join them. “Is he okay?”

“No,” Torres said.

“Doesn’t look okay to me,” Banks said.

“He’s bleeding so much,” Letty said.

“He’s going to die out here if we don’t get him inside somewhere and dress his wounds,” Torres said.

“What about that thing?” Banks asked. He was looking back down the hallway.

Behind them, the black-eyed creature didn’t pursue. Instead, it fell to its knees and bent over a puddle of Brad’s blood and began lapping it up. It reminded Torres of a dog, hungrily drinking water after a long day of playing.

“Fuck me dead,” Banks said. “Look at it. Look at that fucking thing.”

I’ve seen all I need to see.

“Forget it,” Torres said. She struggled to get a better grip on Banks’s unresponsible arm. “Let’s go. Let’s go!”

They started moving again even as the automated voice droned on in the background:

“Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. Attention. Attention. All civilian personnel, proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”

“That fucking voice,” Banks said. He sighed. “I hate that fucking voice.”

They were turning another corner when Letty said, “Guys. Stop.” Then, when they didn’t stop, “Guys. Stop!”

They finally stopped and looked over at her.

Letty was staring at Brad. “He’s gone. He’s…gone.”

Torres checked Brad’s vitals. Letty was right. He was gone. There was no pulse and he had stopped breathing.

“Shit,” Torres said and lowered Brad’s limp body to the floor.

Banks, now with free hands, unslung his shotgun and looked back down the hallway. “What about that thing?”

“Forget that thing,” Torres said. She looked down at her hands and clothes. They were covered in blood. She couldn’t even begin to tell whose blood they were. “We need to get inside before something else catches up to us.”

“‘Something else?’ Like what?” Banks said.

Torres walked up the hallway with purpose. “Something with blue eyes.”

23

BENTON

He should have gone back topside instead of the cafeteria with his unit, but Benton wanted to get a meal with them before the day was over. It was a good way to bond, but as it turned out, not the best time to do it.

The first hint that the shit had hit the fan was the lights going red, followed by the familiar automated message telling everyone to shelter in place. That basically meant private quarters or any room with a lock on it. Unfortunately for Benton, the cafeteria wasn’t one of those places. It was a communal space after all.

Benton stood up along with the others in his unit. They had grabbed a table for themselves near the middle where they could be easily seen. Benton was still enjoying the high of being “the guy” that had caught the Blue Eyes, a feat that no one had managed before. It’d worked, and he’d spent just as much time chatting with his guys as he did taking congratulations from random schmoes in the room.

In all the years he’d been with the undertaking, Benton had never seen or heard the emergency protocol being blasted through the speakers. But here it was, loud and clear…and very red.

“What’s happening?” Cassandra asked.

“What should we do?” Stevens asked.

Maxwell didn’t join in. He was watching Benton carefully from the side, gauging his reaction to what was, clearly, some kind of emergency.

Benton picked up his bottle of water and drained the remaining half. He did it calmly, confidently, like a leader should. There was no panic in his movements. At least as far as he could tell.

Finally, he screwed the top back onto the bottle before putting it down. “You heard the man. We shelter in place. But not here. Cafeteria isn’t meant for that. So follow me.”

He took the lead, walking over to the middle aisle and then heading toward the nearest exit. Almost everyone that had been enjoying dinner in the cafeteria with them had evacuated the large room, leaving mainly Benton’s unit and a few stragglers that, for some reason, fell in behind them.

Benton smiled. He knew exactly why the others had joined in. It was because he was leading it. Benton was that guy.

The first gunshot came outside the cafeteria. It was followed by another, then another. Not close enough to alert Benton, but the mere fact there were gunshots was more than enough to do that. It was a good thing they were all strapped with sidearms.

“Use your weapons only if you have to, but watch your fire,” Benton said. “Last thing we want is friendly fire.”

“Gotcha, boss,” Stevens said.

Benton liked the sound of that. Boss.

More gunfire. These were much closer than the last ones, but still far enough away that it didn’t put Benton on edge.

“Security should be handling this,” Maxwell was saying. “Bird Island’s theirs.”

“You want us to sit this out?” Benton asked.

“It’s their job. We should let them do their job.”

“It’s their job, but they could use some help. Don’t you think?”

The vet didn’t reply. But he also didn’t break away from their little group. Just as Benton had expected, getting Maxwell’s loyalty was going to be a challenge. That was fine. Benton liked challenges anyway. It made life worth living.

What he wasn’t too keen on was walking into a warzone without knowing who was doing the shooting or why. But that was exactly what he was doing because he didn’t have any other choice. He had to lead. That was what leaders did, after all. Sure, he could have sat this out and sought shelter like the recorded voice kept telling them, but that wasn’t what Benton had signed up for.

Shelter in place and miss all the action? Fuck that.

Benton picked up his pace. Those familiar pangs of adrenaline spiking along his veins made him move even faster. So fast, in fact, he quickly left the others behind and when he glanced back saw them struggling to catch up.

“Keep up,” he said.

He turned back around just as the twin doors burst open and one of the lab coats stumbled inside, blood pouring freely from one side of his neck. The man was trying to stanch the bleeding with both hands. A lot of good that did; the blood still found their way through his fingers, splashing the floor and wall and one of the swinging doors. All that blood, underneath the red emergency lights, was a surreal sight.

“Jesus.” That was Stevens.

Benton drew his weapon and rushed toward the lab coat. “Christ, man. What happened to you?”

The lab coat fell face-first onto the floor, striking the concrete with a loud thump that must have really hurt. He stopped moving entirely except for the blood coming out the side of his neck. That was a lot of blood. It always surprised Benton how much people can bleed.

“Everyone stay frosty!” he shouted even as he continued toward the downed man.

“Sir, wait.” Cassandra, still behind him.

But Benton didn’t. Leaders didn’t wait. They took charge of the situation no matter how dangerous. And this was definitely a dangerous one.

Benton was almost on top of the lab coat when it burst inside and immediately jumped onto the wall and scurried along it like some goddamn Spider-Man. Benton reacted on instinct by squeezing off half a dozen rounds in the creature’s direction.

It was a Black Eyes and it moved with amazing speed, much faster than any Black Eyes Benton had encountered before. Certainly faster than the ones he’d gone toe-to-toe with back at the Archers two nights ago.

Benton’s bullets struck the wall, sending pulverized concrete into the air as the creature ricocheted into the air and landed on one of the tables. Benton continued to track it, trying to land a shot. It didn’t take very much to kill a Black Eyes. A single round from a silver-tipped bullet would do the trick.

If he could nail the fast-moving bastard!

The others had joined in with prompting, their combined gunshots like thunderclaps all around him. The creature leapt from table to table as if it were trying to circle the entire room. Somehow, everyone kept missing—until someone finally landed a shot and the creature fell in mid-leap. It crashed into one of the tables before folding over the side and onto the floor like an accordion made of black flesh and clacking bones.

Benton had no idea who’d gotten the undead thing. Everyone was shooting at once and it could have been anyone. He moved toward the sad-looking thing. It was pathetic—all skin and bones, a hairless head that resembled a bowling ball. It was oozing thick blood from a hole in its cheek and more from its chest.

“Look at those bullet wounds,” Cassandra said. “It had those before it got to us.”

“But it was still moving,” Stevens said. “I thought all it took was one silver bullet to take them down?”

“It does,” Benton said. He crouched next to the creature and poked at it with the muzzle of his weapon. It didn’t move. There were at least four bullet impact craters in the creature and there was no telling which one had ended its life. “They were shooting it in the hallway without silver bullets.”

“They were Security,” Maxwell said. “SOP is to use normal ammo unless otherwise needed. I guess they didn’t know they needed it.”

Benton glanced up at him. “You know this for a fact?”

“I used to be Security before I transferred.”

“So why didn’t anyone tell them to cowboy up with the right bullets?”

“I don’t know. Maybe no one knew what they were dealing with until it was too late.”

“That was stupid,” Benton said as he stood back up. He paused briefly to listen to the droning voice telling them to shelter in place. It hadn’t stopped since it began.

“Where’d it come from?” Cassandra asked, staring down at the creature. Unlike him or Maxwell, she’d never seen one in person. Neither had Stevens.

Cassandra’s question was a good one. Benton had captured a Blue Eyes and two Black Eyes from the Archers. All three would be on Bird Island now being poked and prodded by the egg heads. Was this one of the three? Did it escape? And if it had, then what about the other two? What about…

“Blue Eyes,” Benton said out loud.

“What was that, sir?” Stevens asked.

“Blue Eyes,” Benton said again. He turned to face the others. “There was a Blue Eyes down here. If this one escaped, it—”

A burst of automatic gunfire interrupted him.

He glanced back toward the same doors that the Black Eyes had come through earlier. The latest torrent of gunshots had come from farther back in the complex. Not close enough to be dangerous, but loud enough to get all their attentions.

“What do we do, sir?” Stevens was asking him.

“We help out however we can,” Benton said and started to walk toward the doors again. “Those are our brothers and sisters out there. We’re not going to let them fight for their lives all by themselves.”

Wow. He’d sounded confident when he said that. Really confident.

Just like a leader should.

“We should hang back,” Maxwell said.

Benton stopped and turned around. Maxwell hadn’t moved to follow him unlike Stevens and Cassandra. The four stragglers that had joined in with them had also stopped moving, as if they’d chosen Maxwell as their new leader.

And there it was.

Benton knew he’d have to deal with this sooner or later: Someone would question his leadership. Maybe it was his age, or his brashness, or something else. But he knew it’d happen eventually.

And of course it would be Maxwell.

“What did you say?” Benton asked. He’d put just enough bark into his question to be threatening.

The ex-Army vet didn’t look very impressed, though. (Sonofabitch.) “I said, we should hang back, sir.”

“And do what?”

“Nothing. Just like the announcement says. Shelter in place and let Security do their job.”

Benton pointed at the doors, toward the continuous sounds of gunfire. “Does that sound like Security has it handled?”

The older man didn’t look fazed by the question. “It’s not our job.”

“I’m making it our job.”

“It’s not your job to do that, either.”

You fucker.

He could see the looks on the others’ faces: They were caught between him and Maxwell, like kids stuck in the middle of two warring parents.

What to do, what to do?

Benton flashed a smile. “Okay, Maxwell. You hide in here while the rest of us go out there and give our people a hand.” Before the older man could respond (Benton was sure he had a comeback), he turned to the others. “The rest of you can stay in here and huddle under the tables with Maxwell. Anyone else with any guts can come with me.”

He turned and resumed walking to the doors. Benton wasn’t sure if anyone was following him, but he assumed some of them were. Maybe Stevens and Cassandra and some of the stragglers.

Or none of them.

No. There had to be at least one or two, or more. He’d been pretty convincing in his mocking of Maxwell. Anyone with any self-respect wasn’t going to stay here and hide while the war was going on out there. After all, no one signed up for Harold Campbell’s crusade because they wanted to hide in the corners. They were here to kick in doors and save the world.

The dead lab coat that had come inside earlier remained on the floor in front of the doors. The man hadn’t moved since he fell. A large pool of blood had settled underneath and around him, the redness of the liquid looking almost black against the red emergency lights.

Benton wanted desperately to glance back to make sure he wasn’t alone, but he didn’t. He fought against the urge and kept walking. He was reassured by the sounds of some footsteps behind him. Maybe it wasn’t all of them, but it was some of them. That was good. When this was all over, he’d deal with Maxwell’s insubordination. This reminded him of those stories about new—and usually young—Hollywood directors picking out and firing someone on the movie set during their first day in order to set an example to the others. That was exactly what Benton was going to have to do with Maxwell.

“Sir,” a voice said. Stevens, jogging slightly to catch up. “We’re with you.”

Benton finally allowed himself to look over. Stevens wasn’t alone; Cassandra was also there, but not the others. The rest had stayed behind with Maxwell. They stood huddled together like the cowards they were.

Two out of three. I’ll take it.

“Good,” Benton said. “Glad to know I can count on you two.”

“Wherever you go, we go,” Cassandra said, even though she looked and sounded very nervous. He didn’t blame her, actually. He was a little nervous himself, though he liked to think of it as more anxiousness than anything.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Benton said.

“What about the rest?” Stevens asked. He didn’t have to elaborate who the rest were.

“I’ll deal with them later. Right now, we have more pressing matters to attend to. Our friends need us out there.”

They walked swiftly the rest of the way, stepping around the dead lab coat on the floor. The shooting had intensified and were now coming from multiple directions within the complex. It was difficult to pinpoint where the fighting was most heavy. That was the problem with working inside an underground building built entirely from concrete.

As soon as Benton peeked through the open doors and out into the hallway, he instantly regretted his decision. There was blood on the floor, on the walls, and he swore, on the ceiling, too. How that last part was even possible was something he couldn’t figure out. A jagged row of bodies, all wearing black tactical BDUs, covered the corridor. Most, but not all, had the red slash on their shoulders, indicating they were part of Security. Weapons lay scattered in the pool of their former owners’ blood.

“Oh, man.” Stevens, breathing just a little too hard against the back of Benton’s neck. “That doesn’t look good.”

“No shit,” Cassandra said.

Benton had to smile at that.

And he was doing so when it turned the corner, blue eyes like lasers slicing through the red emergency lights. The blueness of it was hypnotic, reaching across the length of the corridor to take hold of Benton’s soul.

It may or may not have been the same Blue Eyes from the Archers. It was hard to tell the difference. Or maybe the correct word was impossible. The legs, bony and rail-thin, looked the same. As did the shrunken cheeks and hairless domed head and skeletal frame. Its arms seemed strangely longer than it should have been, thick liquid dripping from its extended fingers.

No, not liquid. Blood.

The creature was covered in blood.

“Oh…fuck.” Stevens, once again, being the master of understatement.

The Glock in Benton’s hand bucked as he fired.

Cassandra and Stevens had done the same on the left and right. The three of them emptied their entire magazine, sending a fusillade of silver-tipped lead toward the creature. One or two might have struck it but didn’t slow it down. Black goop flitted from its wounds—the ones they’d put on it and those it’d arrived with.

“The head!” Benton shouted. “Shoot for the head! It’s the only way to stop it!”

Benton stepped back and scrambled to reload. Stevens and Cassandra, to their credit, stepped right up and continued shooting at the incoming creature. The dull pings of their bullets striking the wall, sending pulverized concrete into the air.

He wasn’t sure if Stevens and Cassandra were aiming for its head as he’d instructed, but the Blue Eyes never fell. It continued to move—left, right, and back again. At times it didn’t even bother to dodge with its entire body, just its upper torso—and the head resting on top of it. It was impossibly casual about the whole thing, almost as if it was…playing with them.

Benton snapped the magazine into his Glock and had just ratcheted the slide when something grabbed him from behind and pulled him back into the cafeteria. Whatever it was, it was strong, almost yanking Benton off his feet.

Maxwell, shouting, “Get back inside! We’re sealing the doors! Get back inside now!”

No, wait, Benton thought but before he could turn them into actual words, he slammed butt-first onto the hard concrete floor.

Maxwell was suddenly in front of him, surrounded by the others, as they scrambled to close the doors.

And just like that, Benton’s ascension to the top of Campbell’s army stopped cold in its tracks.

24

TORRES

Maybe staying in the hallway and looking for another room would have been the better option. At least that way it would have spared Torres the sight of the massacre. And that was exactly what she was looking at: A massacre.

Under the red emergency lights, the bloodletting was somehow even more grotesque, as if she’d stepped into a butcher’s playground instead of sanctuary. Blood dripped from the walls, ceiling, and were spread so generously among the floor that Torres’s shoes, like Banks’ and Letty’s, stepped into the thick liquid before she even had a chance to steer clear of them. It would have been impossible to avoid them anyway. They were everywhere.

Torres hadn’t spied the room marker before she followed on Banks’s heels. Letty was bringing up the rear, but Torres didn’t have time to worry about her. She was too busy reeling from the smell. The stink of blood covered the entire room, tainting the air that she breathed in and out, in and out.

It was another room like the one she’d been in with Cent, Campbell, and Madeline. Like that one, this was really two rooms separated by an entire wall of glass. Or it used to be an entire wall of glass. It had shattered, leaving a jagged hole near the center. Something had broken their way through. Something strong. Very, very strong. Campbell wouldn’t have used anything but the strongest—and most expensive—material for a room like this one with its valuable “content.”

“What in the hell?” Banks was saying.

Letty didn’t say much. She just doubled over and started throwing up, chunks of whatever she’d eaten earlier in the day mixing in with all the blood on the floor.

Torres walked away from them and toward the remains of the glass wall. She was fascinated by it. Or, more specifically, by what had happened to it. Something had come through from the secondary room.

She stepped on an arm, the flesh making a squeaking sound as she put weight on it accidentally. Torres quickly took her foot off, the sole of her sneakers dripping with the blood of a lab coat still wearing thick-rimmed glasses. The dead woman laid awkwardly on her side, exposing her neck and the gash in it. She was deathly pale, as if whoever had killed her had drained her dry first.

Banks was talking to Letty. “Take it easy, take it easy. Just breathe. Just breathe.”

He’d gotten the second Just breathe out before Letty made a retching sound and spewed the rest of her meal. Torres didn’t see it, but she heard and smelled it. The mixture of regurgitated food and spilled blood made for an odd taste in her own mouth. A taste that she didn’t ever want to remember.

The popping of gunfire outside their room continued, but there were now intermittent pauses. Torres tried to tune it out, assured in the belief that the labs came with locks that would take a lot of effort to break through. She had a feeling the obayifo had other, easier prey that would keep them from stopping and trying to get into the room. It wasn’t exactly a heroic thought, but there it was.

She continued to the partition, this time being more careful not to step on a body, or body parts. There had been three people in the room, all wearing white lab coats that had turned a pale pink. That change in color was a combination of the red lights and the blood that had poured out of the victims.

She walked around an arm that laid by itself a good five feet from its owner, who leaned against the wall with his head lolled slightly to one side. The blood that had gushed out of his torn socket had sprayed the area until the man simply ran empty. He, too, had a gaping gash in his neck.

The third victim was another man. It took Torres a second to discover that since there was just a headless body on the floor. The decapitated head lay across the room, lying on its cheek. The mouth was open, as were the eyes. For some reason, not a single of the three bodies had their eyes closed, as if they’d been forced to witness the last moments of their own lives.

Glass crunched underneath her shoes as she got close enough to look in at the room on the other side. It was identical to the one she’d been in with Cent and the others earlier in the day. There was also another metal box inside. This one was already opened, but there were no signs of any “experiments” having taken place here. Whatever had been in there had simply climbed out when the lid was opened and broken its way through the glass. It’d left behind footprints. Not shoe prints, but footprints. Because it hadn’t been wearing anything as it slaughtered the trio of humans inside the room.

Obayifo.

The footprints went all around the room, from one side to the other, and everywhere it went there was blood. A lot of it. Torres had seen a lot of crime scenes during her time in uniform. She’d seen this before, too. This was the act of a killer that enjoyed what they were doing.

“What is that?” Banks, appearing beside her. His boots also crunched broken glass underneath them.

“You don’t know?” Torres asked.

“Why? Should I?”

“They were using those things to transport the creatures here.”

“Oh.” He squinted at the metal container.

“You didn’t know?” Torres asked again.

Banks shook his head. “I’m just Security. They don’t tell us much.” He held up his shotgun. “Like the fact we should have been swapping the ammo with silver ones.”

“Why the hell didn’t they?”

“Beats the hell outta me. Maybe no one knew what the emergency was for. A lot of things down here is need-to-know. But probably shit just went down way too fast for anyone to figure it out.”

“Do you have any silver bullets on you?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, right?” Then, “Look at that.”

Banks had crouched and picked up a shard of glass from the floor. It was half-covered in a black substance that more resembled tar than it did blood. The killer had cut itself as it was coming through the window, then stepped on more pieces along the floor. Not that that had done anything to slow it down judging by the carnage it’d wrought on the personnel.

“This is what I think it is?” Banks asked.

“Blood,” Torres said.

“Not any kind of blood I’ve seen.”

“Don’t,” Torres said when Banks reached up to try to poke at the “blood.”

He jerked back in surprise. “What?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Just…don’t do that. We don’t know what it does.”

“What what does?”

“That’s not blood. I mean, it’s blood, but it’s their blood.”

“Oh.” He turned the glass over in his hand. “You know what this is?”

“The glass?”

“Yeah.”

“What about it?”

“It’s not just any normal glass.” He nodded at the remains of the glass wall. “That’s polycarbonate. Probably the strongest glass money can buy. But whatever was in there didn’t give a damn. It wanted out and it got out. So the question is: What can do that?”

“Blue Eyes,” a voice said.

They both turned around to see Letty. She’d regained some of her composure and was leaning against the other wall, hands on her heaving chest. Her face was pale even underneath the red lights.

“Whose blue eyes?” Banks said.

“One of those blue-eyed things,” Letty said. “They’re strong. Really strong.”

Torres nodded. “She’s right. But”—she turned back around to look at the metal box on the second room—“what’s it doing in here? There was supposed to be just one of them, and that one got de-limbed in another lab.”

“‘De-limbed?’” Banks said.

I guess they don’t tell these guys anything.

She said, “They chopped it up with machetes. Took off its arms and legs. The last time I saw it, maybe four or five hours ago, it couldn’t even move on its own.”

Banks nodded at the hole. “Yeah, well, whatever came through that definitely walked.” He turned to the nearest dead lab coat. “Unfortunately for these guys. Jesus Christ. What a mess.”

Torres looked back at Letty, but the other woman was staring across the room at the bank of computers. “What is it?”

Letty looked over at her. “What?”

“What are you looking at?”

“That,” she said, pointing.

“The computers?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Letty pried herself from the wall with some effort before making the bloody trek from one side of the room to the other. “They record everything.” She pointed at the monitors along the ceiling, similar to how they were displayed in the other lab. Except these were all blank.

“There are recordings?” Torres asked as she walked over to join Letty.

The other woman seemed to know what she was doing as she stepped over one of the lab coats—Letty might have flinched as blood squished underneath her shoes when she placed them back on the other side of the dead man—to get to the computer.

“How long before you can get the recordings up?” Torres asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to look at what they have first.”

“Let us know when you’re done.”

“Okay,” Letty said as she used the sleeve of her white coat to swipe at some blood clinging to the monitor she was using. She might have trembled slightly when she did that, but at least she didn’t vomit whatever she had left in her stomach.

Torres turned back to Banks. “I need a gun.”

“Come again?” Banks said.

“I need a gun. It’s either your pistol or your shotgun. Either one’s good with me.”

Banks put one hand possessively over his holstered pistol, his other hand reaching for his slung shotgun. “Sorry, but both of these have my name on them. If I lose either one, I’ll have to pay for it.”

Torres stared at him. Banks was taller, younger, and could probably take her easily in a fight, but at that moment she was the aggressor and Banks knew it. He didn’t exactly shrink back physically, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that he was going to do what she asked.

“Okay, okay, geez.” Banks drew his Glock and handed it to her. “Here.”

Torres took it. “Spares?”

“Sure. Take them too, why doncha.” He reached into his pouches and produced two magazines. The rest of his pouch was still full with shells. “You know what you’re doing with that?”

“I was a cop.”

“‘Was?’”

“I got fired.”

“I hope it wasn’t for improper use of a deadly weapon.”

“It wasn’t.”

Banks was clearly waiting for her to give him the real reason and when she didn’t, “You gonna tell me?”

“No.” Torres put the handgun in her front waistband and the spares into her pocket and walked over to Letty. “How’s it coming?”

“I got it,” the other woman said. Letty’s fingers glided over the keyboard and a video recording popped up on the monitor she’d been wiping blood off earlier. She hadn’t been entirely successful and there were red streaks from one side to the other. Letty was sifting through multiple files on the computer, sorted by day and time. She went directly to the last one and double clicked on it. “This is it. The last video that was recorded.”

Banks came over to stand behind Torres as they watched the video play. It was a wide angle shot of the second room. The camera was from a high vantage point, giving the viewer a complete view of the metal box inside.

“One of those things is inside that?” Banks asked.

“Yes,” Torres said. Then, to Letty, “Fast-forward to when it opens.”

Letty fidgeted with the controls and the video fast-forwarded.

“I’ve never seen one before,” Banks said.

“Never?” Torres said.

“Nope. Never thought I would, either. At least, not working Security. That’s why I asked to join one of the units.”

“Why didn’t they let you?”

“I dunno. Maybe I didn’t have enough experience. A lot of guys in those units are vets. I’m not one of them. Most guys in Security aren’t.”

“But you all want to be out there. To see these things in person.”

“Well, yeah. Why’d you think we joined up?”

“The pay?”

“Sure, that’s good, too, but mostly for the action. You don’t get a lot of action on the island.” He chuckled. “Well, you didn’t use to.”

You got plenty of action now.

There was still the occasional gunfire outside, but it was very clear that the chaos was starting to slow down. Maybe it was the walls of the lab but every shot sounded almost muffled, like wet firecrackers instead of gunshots. It made trying to figure out their location difficult.

“There,” Letty said.

Torres focused on the screen and could feel Banks, just a little too close for her comfort, leaning in to get a good look, too. She bit her tongue and didn’t tell him to back off just a little bit.

Letty had stopped the fast-forward and was letting the video play out. It showed the same metal box in the center of the white room, but this time the lid on top was sliding open.

“Who opened it?” Torres asked.

“No one did,” Letty said. “There’s no record of it. It was being prepped for tomorrow.”

“Then how is it opening?”

“I don’t know.”

They found out the answer seconds later when claw-like fingers grappled the opened edge of the lid and pushed it down further. This time it opened much faster than previously, probably because the creature inside had a better grip.

The obayifo. That’s what’s opening it.

The others knew it, too. Even Banks went dead quiet and might have stopped breathing for a second or two too long.

On the screen, the obayifo raised its head out of the box and looked around.

“What about the people inside the observation room?” Torres asked. “Didn’t they notice it opening?”

“I don’t know,” Letty said. “There aren’t any logs to indicate what happened after this.”

They watched in silence as the creature stepped out of the box, elongated legs extending out first like a spider’s, and then its entire length following.

“It’s…longer than I thought it would be,” Banks said.

As if it could see them watching it, the creature slowly turned its head and looked right at the camera. Even from across the room, with the video not zoomed in, it was impossible to miss the crease at the lower half of its face.

It might have been smiling.

And there was something else about the creature that she hadn’t noticed until it looked into the camera.

The obayifo had glowing blue eyes.

“That’s impossible,” Torres said.

“Is that…?” Letty asked in a soft whisper.

“Yes,” Torres said. “That’s a Blue Eyes.”

Somewhere over her left shoulder, Banks shuffled his feet as he leaned in even closer. “I thought there was a black-eyed one in that box?”

“There was supposed to be,” Letty said. She hurried over to a shelf next to the computer and grabbed the folders stacked there. She flipped through them, finger tracing the pages as she sought out something to explain what they were seeing.

On the screen, the creature had walked off frame.

“Letty,” Torres said. “What did you find?”

The lab coat looked back at her. Her face was pale. Even paler than it’d been before.

“Letty,” Torres said. “What did you find?”

“There was supposed to be a black-eyed one in there.”

“But it had blue eyes,” Banks said. “So what gives? Someone fucked up somewhere?”

“I don’t—” Torres started to say when the repeating emergency voice suddenly stopped. She’d become so used to the voice that it’d faded into the background—until she could no longer hear it.

What now?

She might have thought it was just in her mind, but the others noticed it too by the way they were craning their heads toward the ceiling.

“What just happened?” Letty asked.

“Thank God,” Banks said. “Damn voice was driving me nuts.”

They waited for something to replace the voice, but there was only silence. Dead air.

Poor choice of words, girl.

“What does this mean?” Torres asked Banks.

Banks shrugged. “Why’re you asking me?”

“You’re Security, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m as low-level as they come. You’d have better luck asking one of those dead guys out there.”

“Great. Turns out you’re useless.”

“Hey, I resent that.”

Before she could unload more frustration in Banks’s direction, a familiar voice spoke through the same speaker system:

“Hello. Is anyone there? If you can hear me, please respond.”

Torres’s eyes widened. It was the last voice she’d expected to hear over Campbell’s PA system.

She turned to Letty. “Can we answer that?”

Letty nodded. “Yes. But who is that?”

“Show me how?”

Letty turned back to the computer dashboard and began punching keys again.

“Anyone out there?” the voice continued through the speakers. It was definitely live and not pre-recorded. “If anyone can hear me, please respond.”

“Who is that?” Banks asked.

Torres smiled. “Cent.”

“What about it?”

“It’s Cent.”

Banks sighed and began digging into his pockets. “I don’t know if I have any…”

“No, you idiot. His name is Cent.”

“Oh,” Banks said. He still looked confused. “Cent. Why didn’t you say so before?”

Torres ignored him and waited for Letty to finish. When she did, the lab coat turned back to her before pointing to a button on the console. “You press that to broadcast.” She indicated a small tube above the button, “And speak into that.”

“That’s a microphone?” Torres asked as she moved toward the tube.

“Yes.”

Torres pressed the button, then leaned closer toward the microphone, though it didn’t look like any mic she’d ever seen. “Cent. It’s Torres. Can you hear me?”

“Now release the button to hear the response,” Letty said.

Torres did. She’d expected the whole thing to be more complicated, but it was just like using a two-way radio.

“Torres!” It was Cent. “You’re alive!”

She couldn’t help but smile. “You sound surprised.”

He chuckled through the speakers. “I’m surprised anyone’s still alive out there.”

“What do you know about what’s going on, Cent?”

“We’re in trouble,” Cent said. “We’re in a whole world of trouble, Torres.”

25

CENT

At least he still had his knife. He hadn’t been sure if Campbell’s people would let him bring it onto the island much less down here, a place brimming with security personnel. Or it used to be until the obayifo somehow got loose.

…somehow got loose…

Cent had a feeling there was more than just chance at play here. If this had only been the black-eyed ones, then Cent could have believed it was just bad timing on everyone’s part that allowed the creatures to get free. But it wasn’t just the Black Eyes. There was a Blue Eyes out there. Maybe it was even the same one that had been dismembered in Lab 13. Now, it was wreaking havoc on Campbell’s men.

For the moment Cent could only worry about himself and Vicks. Although from the looks of it, he only really had to worry about himself because Vicks looked right at home. As Dutch would say, she was handling the whole thing like she’d been to this rodeo before.

They were inside one of the complex’s Security rooms. When he asked how many there were, Vicks said, “Three,” Vicks had said. “The main one’s upstairs. There are two down here. Smaller hubs like this one.”

The room came with a complete communications system and two rows of monitors—ten in all—that allowed them to see into different sections of the underground complex. At the moment, there wasn’t a lot of very good things to see.

There was blood and bodies everywhere. It was a slaughterhouse out there. Whatever had happened, it had caught Campbell’s people off guard. Even the security personnel hadn’t managed to stop it. If anything, they’d only contributed to the body count. Cent could tell that much from the red stripes on the shoulders of the dead.

“I can turn on the sounds,” Vicks said. “The security guys had them muted.”

“No,” Cent said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He thought he might have heard her sigh with relief.

“Look,” Cent said. He pointed to the screen showing the cafeteria.

There were people still inside the large room. Maybe a handful from what he could tell, and they were shooting at something. A Black Eyes. It was scaling the walls as they fired at it. Somehow the damn thing kept avoiding the bullets—until it couldn’t. It fell on top of a table before its momentum carried it to the floor.

“That’s one of them,” Vicks said. “I’ve never seen one do something like that before. Is that normal?”

“Yes. The ones that have been turned for a while. They can do that.”

“Like friggin’ Spider-Man.”

“Something like that.”

“You think it’s one of the two they brought over earlier?”

“I don’t know.” Cent squinted at the monitor, but there were no details on the creature that would tell him it was the same one or not. “They all look the same once they’re turned.”

Vicks shivered. “The way it was moving…” She glanced back at him. “You’ve killed them before.”

“Yes. A few.”

“How do you do it?”

He took out his knife and showed it to her. “With this.”

“I get that. But… How do you do it? Go up against these things?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Do you believe in God?”

He’d already guessed the answer, but Vicks confirmed it by pursing a smile. It was a shy smile, as if she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Not really,” she said. “Is that why you do it? Because of God?”

“Something like that.” Then, before they could continue what would, he was sure, become an extremely uncomfortable conversation, said, “What about that?”

He was pointing at the same hallway where he’d entered with Torres a day earlier. He didn’t actually recognize it, but every screen was labeled with a tag at the bottom. This one read: ENTRANCE HALLWAY.

Vicks turned around to look. “The entrance?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“The door. I can’t see it. Is it still closed?”

“Yes,” Vicks said even as she typed on the keyboard.

The camera view panned from one end of the hallway to the other. Cent could see the metal door they’d come through. It was still closed.

“Once the emergency protocols are in place, the doors in and out of the underground complex are sealed,” Vicks said. “The only way to open them again is with an all-clear.”

“What’s that?”

“An all-clear?”

“Yes.”

“When Security says everything’s okay.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I mean, if they can’t.”

She looked confused for a brief moment before finally understanding. “Oh. You mean what if they’re all dead.”

He nodded. He hadn’t wanted to actually the say the words for fear of scaring her. From the looks of it, though, Vicks wasn’t going to be easily scared. After everything they’d seen, Cent found that extremely impressive.

“Well, someone has to give the all-clear,” Vicks said. “If the guys down here don’t, then I guess it’s up to whoever’s up there. There’s a reason for the protocols.”

“What protocols?”

“The kind that keeps what’s down here from getting up there.”

“You’re talking about the creatures…”

She nodded. “Mr. Campbell made the decision himself. If the underground complex becomes compromised, prevention measures are put into place.”

“‘Prevention measures?’”

“It’s a fancy way of saying they’re going to blow us up. Or worse.”

“There’s a worse thing than getting blown up?”

“Well, I don’t really know what they’ll do, but if the goal is to keep whatever’s down here, down here, then my guess is it’s not going to be something we’ll like.”

“But you don’t know what it is?”

She shook her head. “It’s not part of my job. I only know this much because I’m friends with some of the Security guys.”

“If you don’t know the details, then who would know?”

“Security, for one.”

Cent looked to the monitors again. It was impossible to miss the number of dead security personnel out there.

“Who else?” he asked.

“I guess Mr. Campbell would know. And Madeline. She basically knows everything he knows. Some people say she knows more.”

“I thought she was just his secretary.”

“She’s not exactly just a secretary. The talk around the water cooler is that she knows where all the bodies are buried. Even the bodies that Campbell doesn’t even know exists.”

Cent believed her. He didn’t really think Madeline was “just” Campbell’s secretary in the first place, but it did surprise him she could know more than Campbell himself. But maybe he shouldn’t have been so doubtful. A man like Campbell was used to having things done for him. Sometimes, he didn’t always need to know everything. What was that saying Richter used to say about ignorance being bliss?

“The rooms,” Cent said. “I don’t see any rooms on the cameras except for the cafeteria.”

“The hallways and cafeteria are public spaces. There are no cameras in the labs or rooms like this one or the private quarters.”

“There were cameras in the lab we were inside earlier.”

“Those were turned on manually during the observations. The cameras aren’t left on at all times. And there are no cameras in the quarters for privacy reasons.”

“So we don’t know how many people made it to their quarters?”

“No. Speaking of which...” She brought up another screen, typed quickly, and suddenly the automated voice speaking through the speakers stopped in mid-sentence.

Cent had essentially tuned the recorded voice out and didn’t even remember it was still there. But now that it was gone, there was blissful silence. Even the screams and shootings had ceased outside their door.

“You could always do that?” he asked Vicks.

“Well, yeah. Did you want me to do it earlier?”

He smiled. “I guess it doesn’t matter.” He glanced up at the ceiling. Or, more specifically, the red lights. “What about the lights?”

“No can do. That’s part of the protocols.”

“Which you can’t turn off.”

“Nope. Not from down here.”

He leaned toward the computer she was sitting in front of, but it was like staring into a car engine, only shinier. Cent didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. “What else can you do from in here?”

“Pretty much everything besides turn off the protocols. It’s a security room. Off limits to everyone but Security.”

“For instance?”

“Well, for one, we can broadcast to the complex.”

“How?”

Her fingers clicked-clacked their way across the keyboard again. Then Vicks leaned over and pulled a metal tube that couldn’t have been bigger than a straw out from the wall. She kept pulling and it kept coming out, then bent into an odd shape that, somehow, stayed that way when she let go.

“Go ahead,” Vicks said. “You can speak into it.”

“Into that?”

“It’s a microphone. Let me know when you’re ready to broadcast.”

Cent nodded. He hadn’t counted on this particular job. Cent wasn’t a speaker, and no one knew that more than he did.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Vicks said.

“Okay,” he said, and leaned toward the mic.

She pressed a key, then gave him a nod.

Cent spoke into the mic. “Hello. Is anyone there? If you can hear me, please respond.” He leaned back and waited. When no one answered, he turned to Vicks. “They can hear me?”

“Yes.”

“What about the quarters?”

“It’s complex-wide, just like the emergency announcement.”

“And they can respond?”

“Not from the quarters. Only from rooms like this one.”

“Security rooms.”

“Also the labs. Any room with its own computer system.” She nodded at the mic. “Try again. There’s got to be someone still out there, maybe even hiding in rooms like us.”

He leaned forward again. “Anyone out there? If anyone can hear me, please respond.”

Again, they waited.

And again, there was just dead silence.

Cent was about to speak into the mic again when a familiar voice spoke first over the speakers: “Cent. It’s Torres. Can you hear me?”

“Holy shit,” Vicks said.

Cent grinned and all but shouted into the mic. “Torres! You’re alive!”

“You sound surprised,” Torres said. He imagined her grinning when she said it.

He chuckled. “I’m surprised anyone’s still alive out there.”

“What do you know about what’s going on out there, Cent?”

“We’re in trouble. We’re in a whole world of trouble, Torres.” He took a breath before continuing. “I need you to give me a second.”

“Okay,” Torres said.

Cent turned to Vicks. “Can we limit this conversation to just the two rooms? Hers and ours?”

“Can do,” Vicks said. Her fingers flew across the keyboard again. In seconds she was done. “There. It’s just the two of us now. No one else in the place can hear.”

Cent nodded. He went back to the mic. “Torres. It’s just the two of us now.”

“Why did you do that?” Torres asked.

“Because I have something to tell you. It’s not just about the obayifo anymore. Do you know about the protocols that are activated when the complex is compromised?”

“No. What’s that?”

Cent told her.

“You’re kidding me,” Torres said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Jesus Christ. As if this wasn’t bad enough.” She went offline for a moment.

After about thirty seconds and she still hadn’t returned, Cent said, “Torres? You still there?”

“Yeah,” Torres said. “I was talking to the people I’m with. One of them’s security. He just told us about these protocols. But he doesn’t know the details or how to turn them off. He only knows that they’re, to quote him, ‘Not gonna be pretty.’”

“That sounds about right.”

“Can you guys stop it?”

“No. Apparently only a few people have the power to do so.”

“Let me guess: All those people aren’t available right now?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is it just us, Cent?”

“No. There’s more survivors in the cafeteria,” Cent said even as he looked toward the monitor showing the cafeteria.

The people inside had barricaded the doors with the clover tables and were now having some kind of a discussion. It must have gone badly for one of them because he was on the floor while another man hovered over him. There were no sounds so Cent couldn’t tell what was going on, and the camera was too far way to make out any of the faces.

“Looks like things are getting intense in there,” Vicks said.

“I guess so.”

“Cent?” Torres’s voice through the speakers.

Cent responded. “I’m still here.”

“You come up with any ideas to get us out of this yet?”

He couldn’t help but smile. “Not yet.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping you might because I have one. Unfortunately it’s not a very pleasant one.”

“That’s one more than I have. What is it?”

“The security guy with me—Banks—said you must be in one of the security rooms. That that was how you turned off the emergency announcement.”

“He’s right. I’m here with Vicks.”

“Banks says the main security guy—his boss—has access to an external comm system. It should be on the wall labeled EXCOM.”

Cent glanced around, as did Vicks. They spotted it almost simultaneously: A small viewscreen just to the right of the last computer. EXCOM was written underneath it.

“Don’t bother trying to turn it on,” Torres was saying. “Banks says only Taylor, his boss, can use it. It runs on his biometrics.”

“Fingerprints?” Cent asked.

“Handprint and facial recognition. Banks says if you can turn it on, you can make contact with the topside security.”

“And they can turn off the emergency protocols,” Cent said.

“Bingo.”

“Hot dang,” Vicks said. “Now that’s the best news I’ve heard all hour.”

Cent said into the mic, “So where is this boss guy, and how do we get him here?”

“That’s the problem,” Torres said. She might have sighed too. “He’s dead.”

“Crap,” Vicks said. “That’ll teach me to be all optimistic-like.”

Torres continued: “Banks saw him go down in one of the hallways. He thinks it might have been number ten, but he’s not sure. He says it was chaos and he was trying to save his own skin at the time.”

A male voice said in the background, “Hey, come on, that wasn’t necessary.”

Cent ignored the back-and-forth in Torres’s room and looked down at Vicks. “Can you get us hallway number ten?”

She turned back to the computer and flicked her fingers across the keys. One of the monitors switched to show a specific hallway. There was a number 10 on the lower right corner.

Cent leaned in to get a better look. There were four bodies inside, but there’d been more until they were dragged away, leaving two messy trails in their wake. Two of the figures that were left behind were wearing security uniforms while the other two were lab coats. He focused on the two men in black but couldn’t get a good look at their faces. Or, more potentially helpful, name tags.

“Can the camera zoom in?” he asked.

“No,” Vicks said. “What you see is what you get.”

“One of them might be Banks’s boss.”

“Might. Or might not.”

Cent went back to the microphone. “Torres.”

“I’m here,” Torres answered.

“I can’t tell if one of the bodies in hallway ten is Taylor’s.”

“How many do you see?”

“Four. Two security and two lab coats.”

“Banks says four of his guys went down in that hallway.”

“They must have taken the other two. There’s just two down there at the moment. One of them could be Taylor.”

“And what if it’s not?”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to figure out something else.”

“I got some more bad news for you, Cent.”

More? How could there be more?

He said, “Let’s hear it…”

“Banks just remembered that the protocols are in place for twenty-four hours. If it’s not turned on after that time expires, this ‘preventive measure’—whatever it is—is activated.”

“And he doesn’t know what that is?”

“No. He’s a low man on the totem pole. I’m shocked he knows this much.”

“Hey, come on, that was unnecessary,” a male voice that Cent guessed was Banks said. He sounded very hurt.

Torres ignored him and said through the speakers, “That gives us less than twenty-three hours, Cent.”

Vicks’s chair squeaked loudly as she leaned back and let out a heavy sigh. “When it rains it pours, right? And dagnabbit if it isn’t pouring elephants and rhinos right now.”

“We have to risk it,” Cent said into the mic. “I don’t see any other way.”

“Neither do I,” Torres said. She let out her own heavy sigh through the connection. “So which one of us is leaving their safe little room to go fetch Taylor’s biometrics?”

“I’ll make you a deal. The one whose room is closest to hallway ten goes.”

“Deal.”

Cent turned to Vicks. “So who’s closer? Us or them?”

Vicks, having heard the conversation, had already brought up the schematics of the underground complex and was zooming in on the hallway in question. When she was done, she leaned back and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Cent asked.

“This,” she said, pointing at her monitor.

Cent squinted at the screen but couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to find so funny. “I don’t see anything.”

“The distance between us and them, in relation to hallway ten.”

“And…?”

“It’s basically identical. Hallway ten is smack dab in the middle of the two of us.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Vicks used her fingers to indicate the distance on the screen. “See?”

She was right. Hallway ten was right in the middle between their room and Torres’s.

But of course it is.

“Cent,” Torres said through the speakers. “So who drew the short straw?”

“You won’t believe this,” he said into the mic, “but hallway ten is right in the middle between our two rooms. It’s a tie.”

“You’re kidding me.”

That’s what I said, he thought with a grin.

“So what does this mean?” Torres asked.

“I think we both know what this means, Torres. Are you up for it?”

“I don’t think either one of us have a choice,” Torres said. She let out another heavy sigh. “You still got that knife of yours?”

“Yes,” he said, reaching back and feeling the grip of the weapon just to be sure it was actually still there.

“Good,” Torres said, “because we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

26

BENTON

He was fucked.

Screwed.

Shit on.

The command he’d been longing for had vanished in the blink of an eye and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.

Maxwell was the reason for that. The big Army vet had dragged Benton back into the cafeteria and deposited him onto the floor as if he were a little child.

Maxwell.

Fucking Maxwell.

Benton scrambled up from the floor, his hand tightening around the Glock with the forefinger in the trigger guard, ready to squeeze it and take his command back. He got halfway up before Maxwell punched him in the face. Benton fell back down again, but this time he lost the pistol. It bounced away at least five feet. Still close enough that Benton could lunge for it—

“Don’t.” Maxwell, his gruff voice thunderous for some reason.

Benton turned onto his back and glared up at the older man.

Maxwell didn’t look all that impressed. Instead, he turned to the others. “Barricade the doors. We can’t let anything get in. The order was to shelter in place, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

The others scrambled to obey, even Stevens. Cassandra hesitated a bit but she, too, eventually moved to help the others grab the tables and pushed them over to the doors. It was easy work despite the furniture’s weight thanks to their wheels.

Maxwell pointed at two other lab coats. “The side door. We need that sealed, too. Let’s get to work, people.”

They got to work as if Maxwell had been their boss this entire time.

Fucking Maxwell.

Benton sat up on his butt and wiped his hands on his pant legs. Without the pistol, which Maxwell walked over and picked up, Benton felt useless. The knife he usually carried on operations was back in his quarters. The only thing he had left were his fists, but Benton wasn’t sure he could take Maxwell in a straight-up fight. Besides, this wouldn’t be a straight-up fight. Unlike him, Maxwell was still wearing his gun.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Benton said. He tried to make his tone as dangerous as possible.

But like before, Maxwell wasn’t impressed. “I shouldn’t have done a lot of things. One of them was allow them to put you in charge in the first place.”

“Exactly. They put me in charge. Not you.”

“Yeah, well, tough times call for tough choices.”

“And you made the wrong ones.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Benton slowly picked himself up. The others were busy running around doing Maxwell’s bidding. They were piling tables over the two doors into the large cafeteria then bracing them with more tables. Wheeling the furniture over was the easy part; picking them up or upending them in order to stack them on top of one another took some effort.

He looked back to Maxwell. “You think you’re going to get away with this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Maxwell said. He had put Benton’s gun into his front waistband. “Whatever happens when this is over, happens. Right now all I care about is keeping everyone alive.”

“What did you think I was doing?”

“Trying to get people killed.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

Maxwell stared at him. “No. We don’t.”

Benton grunted even as he gauged the distance between them. He might not be able to take Maxwell in a hand-to-hand brawl, but he didn’t have to if he could reach the gun in the man’s waistband. There was about six feet or so between them. Not close by any stretch of the imagination but not terribly far, either. All Benton needed was a momentary distraction…

“Go ahead,” Maxwell said as if he could read Benton’s mind.

“Go ahead what?”

“You know what.”

Benton shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.”

Maxwell walked over to Stevens and Cassandra, who were halfway back to the door with another table. The big Army vet joined them by grabbing a corner of the table and helping to stack it on top of two existing ones. Cassandra glanced over at Benton and they locked eyes for a brief second or two. Benton couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought Cassandra was trying to give him a hint. Maybe she was telling him she was still on his side but for now she was going along with Maxwell.

Then again, he could have been reading that glance entirely wrong.

They had two tables turned onto their sides and pressed against the door with a third one resting on top. Two more became braces against the makeshift pile. It didn’t look stable at all, and Benton kept expecting the whole thing to topple at any second but it never did.

Stevens was wiping sweat from his brow. “That should do it.”

“That’s not going to do it,” Benton said.

“That’s five tables. At least one-fifty pounds each. I think they’ll hold.”

“You’re wrong. Or didn’t you get the memo about how strong the Blue Eyes are?”

That worried Stevens enough that he looked to Maxwell, as if for confidence.

What are you looking at him for, Stevens? I’m your boss, you fuck.

Maxwell glanced the barricade over before nodding. “We need to put more on it. The more the better.”

“And when we have to take it all down after the all-clear?” Cassandra asked.

“Then we take them down after the all-clear,” Maxwell said matter-of-factly. He turned to the others. “Stack them high and wide! Nothing gets in here until we get the all-clear!”

He was still shouting instructions when the automated emergency broadcast ended suddenly and in its place was a voice that Benton thought sounded familiar but couldn’t quite place:

“Hello. Is anyone there? If you can hear me, please respond.”

Everyone stopped moving except to turn their heads toward the ceiling. They were all looking for the same voice that had suddenly taken over the emergency broadcast.

“Who is that?” Stevens asked.

“Someone’s taken over the PA system,” Cassandra said.

“Thank God. I was starting to think we were the only ones left in this place.”

When no one responded to the voice, it continued. “Anyone out there? If anyone can hear me, please respond.”

That kid, Benton thought. The kid from the motel in Florida. The same one that had arrived with the woman. They’d been at the Archers the night that Benton caught the creatures. Now how the hell did he get control of the comms?

Benton kept that inside baseball to himself. It wasn’t much, but at least he had something on the others. Specifically, Maxwell.

Then a voice that Benton also recognized answered through the same system. “Cent. It’s Torres. Can you hear me?”

“Who’s Torres?” Cassandra asked.

Benton knew the answer, but again kept it to himself.

“Torres!” Cent again. “You’re alive!”

“You sound surprised,” Torres said.

“I’m surprised anyone’s still alive out there.”

“What do you know about what’s going on out there, Cent?”

“We’re in trouble. We’re in a whole world of trouble, Torres.”

“No shit,” Stevens said. “I could have told them that. So what are we going to do about it?” he added as if the two speakers could hear him.

If they could, neither one responded. They didn’t answer Stevens and they also didn’t say anything else.

“Now what happened?” Cassandra asked.

They waited.

And waited…

After a minute Maxwell said, “I think that’s it. I don’t think we’re going to get anymore from them.”

“But who were they?” Stevens asked. “Who’s Torres and Cent? And what kind of name is Cent, anyway?”

“Whoever they are, they have control of the comms. Let’s hope they’re on our side.”

“Now that’s a plan,” Benton said. He only half-snickered, just enough to get across his disdain but not enough to be too obnoxious about it. “Let’s just sit around and hope for the best. I’m sure that’s worked out in every war.”

Maxwell trained those hard eyes on Benton again. “What would you have us do? Run out there and start shooting again? We don’t even know what’s happening. Or how many of those things are out there.”

“What’s the matter, Maxwell? You scared?”

Benton was hoping for some kind of reaction and he got it. Except it wasn’t what he’d expected.

Maxwell snorted. “No, Benton. I’m not scared. I’m just smart. And I follow orders.” And just like that, the conversation between them was over. Maxwell was no longer talking to him. He shouted at the others instead. “All right, everyone! Let’s finish up the barricades! I don’t want anything getting through those doors unless they’re driving a goddamn tank! And even then I want it to be hard!”

“What about what we heard on the speakers?” Cassandra asked.

Maxwell turned to her. “What about it?”

“Shouldn’t we find out what’s happening?”

“What’s happening out there is happening out there. That’s out of our control. What we can control is in here.”

Benton smirked. Loudly. “Sounds like someone doesn’t want to make the tough choices.” He eyed Stevens. “What does it sound like to you?”

Stevens kept wiping at his sweaty brow even as he tried to avoid looking Benton in the eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Sounds like it to me,” Cassandra said.

Benton looked over at her and grinned. Yup. He had at least one ally in here.

He turned back to Maxwell, who was glaring at him. “If you don’t want to lead, don’t waste everyone’s time, Maxwell.”

The others had wandered over to them, drawn by the conversation. Or maybe it was the intensity of that conversation. They stood around and watched, and waited.

Just like wolves in a pack, waiting for the alpha to assert himself again.

That’s me. I’m the fucking alpha.

He said to Maxwell, “Well? Are you wasting everyone’s time or not?”

“The only one wasting time is you,” Maxwell said.

“Sounds exactly like what someone with no idea what he’s doing would say.”

Maxwell flashed his own smirk. “You really think that’s going to work?”

“What’s going to work?”

“Your little childish attempt to ego me. It’s not going to work, Benton. You know why it’s not going to work?” the big man added as he walked over.

Benton resisted the urge to retreat. He held his ground even if it took every ounce of his courage to do so.

Maxwell didn’t stop until his face was only inches away from him. Up close, Maxwell’s face was grizzled and ugly. And very dangerous.

“It’s not going to work,” Maxwell said, “because you’re a boy trying to play the role of a man. The difference between you and me? I am a man.”

Benton grinned back at him. “And you fucking fell for it, you stupid moron.”

He saw the confusion in Maxwell’s eyes. The bigger man might have even said, “What the hell are you talking about?” if he’d had the chance. Except he didn’t because even as Benton spoke, he was reaching across the short distance between them and pulling out his Glock that was stuffed in the front of Maxwell’s waistband.

The idiot had brought his gun right back to Benton on a silver platter.

The sound of the gunshot was surprisingly loud. His ears were ringing as he watched Maxwell stumble back, hands reaching for, then clutching, his stomach. A small squirt of blood appeared around his fingers. More would come out in time.

The others took a step back, shock and awe on their faces. And, Benton was happy to see, more than a little bit of fear, too. Even Cassandra, who was probably rooting for him, was surprised.

Maxwell was going to die, but he wasn’t quite dead yet.

“What’s the penalty for mutiny again, Max?” Benton asked as he followed the older man as he continued to stumble back. More blood had begun to squeeze free between his fingers now.

Even if Maxwell could still talk, Benton didn’t give him the chance to. He shot the man two more times, putting both rounds into his chest. The former Army vet collapsed on his back and stared, wide-eyed, up at the ceiling.

Benton holstered his weapon and turned to look at the others. He stared at one face at a time, letting them know who he was.

I’m the fucking alpha.

“Now,” Benton said, “anyone got any ideas about who should lead us?”

No one said a word.

Benton smiled. “Good. Now that that’s out of the way—”

An explosion rocked the cafeteria. It’d come from behind Benton. Unlike most explosions he was used to, there was no concussive force, and instead of being thrown forward by an invisible wave Benton temporarily lost his balance, more surprised than physically thrown.

He regained his composure and turned around, expecting an army of Security people to storm inside and demand the reasons why he’d just murdered Maxwell. “Mutiny,” he would say. It was that simple.

Except there weren’t an army of men where the door used to be.

There wasn’t any man at all.

There was just a blue-eyed creature standing like some tree that had sprouted out of the concrete floor. It filled up the doorframe, arms that looked more like branches hanging limply at its sides. The tables that had been blocking the doors were cast aside as if they were little more than leaves to be discarded.

The Blue Eyes had broken through Maxwell’s barricade with hardly any sweat.

At least I was right about it not holding, Benton thought even as someone opened fire.

Stevens, running forward to Benton’s right, shouting as he did so. “Kill it! Go for the head! Go for the head!”

Easier said than done, Benton thought as he watched the Blue Eyes move.

Or he tried to. It was simply too fast. One second it was there, and even before that second had expired, it had disappeared to the side. Stevens tried to track it down, squeezing off round after round. He was trying to hit the creature in its head, which was the only surefire way to kill a Blue Eyes. Everyone knew that. It was in the folders that everyone had to read. Destroy the brain and you destroy the creature. Wound it anywhere else and it just kept coming. Even silver bullets only annoyed it.

Then Cassandra was doing the same thing, running toward the creature while shooting. The ones with weapons followed her while the ones without—the lab coats, mainly—ran toward the back to get as far away from the Blue Eyes as possible. Benton wanted to tell them there was nowhere to go that it couldn’t find them. The only way out was, well, out.

Which was exactly what a couple were trying to do. They were desperately pulling down the same barricade they had put up on the side door. It was slow going. Painfully slow going.

He turned back to the creature as it bounced from one of the walls to a table. It moved so fluidly, as if it existed with the wind instead of against it. Benton couldn’t even smell the tortuous stink they were known for. Either he’d gone smell blind or he just wasn’t acting like himself for some reason.

…wasn’t acting like himself for some reason…

He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t lifting his weapon to fire the way Stevens and Cassandra were. They were doing their best and failing. He, on the other hand, wasn’t even trying.

Why was that? Why wasn’t he even trying to kill the supernatural thing?

Stevens screaming as the Blue Eyes punched its fist through his chest while the man was trying to reload his Glock. He never got the mag in before it flung him through the air like a rag doll.

Cassandra, also fumbling to reload, took the hint and fled.

Or tried to.

It caught up to her easily and ripped her right arm out of its socket, then used her own appendage to hit her in the back of the head as if it were teeing off on a baseball diamond. She fell screaming, blood flowing freely from her stump. Her face was twisted in agony as she rolled around, crying out in pain.

The Blue Eyes broke the legs on a lab coat but left the man trying to crawl away. He wasn’t so kind to a second one and buried his already-bloody fist into the fleeing man’s back. For some reason it didn’t go after the remaining two lab coats that were still trying desperately to open the other cafeteria door.

Instead, the creature turned to look at Benton.

It grinned.

Or it was something that mostly resembled a grin. It was difficult to tell what it was trying to do. There was no humanity there, nothing that could possibly pass for a natural creation of God. Not that Benton believed in God. Even when he learned about these creatures’ existence, he still couldn’t quite make himself swallow the concept of an All-Mighty being.

But now, looking back at the creature, Benton wasn’t so sure.

Surely, if something this evil could exist, then there must be a counter?

“No,” it hissed at him.

“No?” Benton said. He still couldn’t understand why he hadn’t raised his gun to shoot it. He hadn’t even tried. Not when it came through the door and not now.

“God doesn’t exist,” the creature hissed as it moved toward him. It seemed to be gliding more than it was walking. “If he did, do you really think he’d let me do all of this?”

It spread its hands out and Benton understood. This was the carnage it’d wrought on the cafeteria. On Stevens, with that hole in his chest. On Cassandra, who was still beautiful even in death and missing one of her arms. And that lab coat whose name Benton had never bothered to find out. Or the other one who was still trying to drag himself away with two useless legs, crying as he did so.

The creature stopped inches from Benton, its shriveled face inches from his. Its blue eyes pulsed, two blue oceans that went on and on without end. Benton didn’t so much as look into them as he peered into existence itself.

Existence…and death.

So, so much death.

“You didn’t really think it was that easy to capture us, did you?” the creature asked, lips forming something that could reasonably be mistaken for a smug grin. “Oh no, meat sack. Oh no. Oh no, no, no…”

27

TORRES

“Well isn’t that convenient.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, two rooms and we’re both exactly the same distance from hallway ten? You buy that?”

“Why would he lie?”

“Why wouldn’t he.”

“Banks…”

“Yeah?” Banks said.

“Think about it,” Letty said.

They’d been going back and forth about what Cent had told them for a while now. At least two minutes, and Torres wasn’t entirely sure who was winning. She knew one thing for certain, though: Banks wasn’t very bright.

“What?” Banks said.

“Think about it, will you?” Letty said.

“Think about what?”

“If Cent wanted to lie about the distance between us and him in relation to hallway ten, why would he say we’re even?”

“Duh. So he doesn’t have to go out there on his own, that’s why. Pretty basic if you ask me.”

“Banks…”

“What?” Banks said. “Just say it already. Geez!”

Letty sighed and looked over to her for help.

Torres grinned back at her, before saying to Banks, “Letty means that if Cent was lying, he wouldn’t call it a tie. He’d say we were closer so we’d have to go, not him. Get it now?”

It took Banks a few seconds too long to “get” it.

Then, finally, “Oh. That makes sense.” Then, as if confirming it to himself after doing some calculations in his head, “Yeah, that definitely makes sense.” Then, quickly and louder (probably because he wanted to change the subject), “So. Just the two of us, or are you coming along?” He’d directed that last question to Letty.

“I’m not staying here by myself,” Letty said. She shivered as she said. “Besides, we all have to go over to their room anyway. That’s where the comm system is.”

“You don’t even have a gun.”

“Neither did Torres until you gave one to her.”

“That’s all I have. This shotgun and that pistol. I don’t have anything else for you.”

“I don’t need one anyway.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how to use a gun.”

“It’s a gun. How hard can it be to use?”

Letty sighed again. Her frustration with Banks was overflowing. “I just don’t know how to use one, okay?”

Once again Torres decided to end their back and forth. “She doesn’t need one.” Then, to Letty, “Stay behind me until I tell you otherwise.”

The other woman nodded gratefully.

“Well, now that that’s solved,” Banks said. He walked over to the door, stopped, and glanced back at them. “Are we ready?”

“I’ll let Cent know,” Torres said. She pushed the button to transmit and spoke into the mic: “Cent.”

“I’m here,” Cent answered almost immediately.

“We’re ready. How about you?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“What about Vicks?”

“She’ll wait for us here.”

“Wish I could stay there and wait for you guys,” Banks said.

Torres ignored him and said into the mic, “Sounds good.” She glanced down at her watch. To her surprise, they were creeping up on ten in the evening. “Let’s synchronize our watches. Ready?”

“Ready,” Cent said.

They did just that, then agreed to move in exactly five minutes. Torres walked across the room to join Banks. Even if she didn’t know where he was standing, she could have just followed the bloody shoe prints he’d left behind. All three of them did. Three pairs of shoes—Nike sneakers for her, loafers for Letty, and boots for Banks—crisscrossed the dimensions of the room, tracking the blood of the three dead lab coats with them.

She should have been grossed out by it all, but Torres had become so used to it that she barely noticed. Even the smell didn’t really get to her anymore. The stink wasn’t just coming from the bodies but from the creature’s presence. It was there, in the air, suffocating everything it touched.

Torres settled on the other side of the door from Banks. Letty was behind her, about five feet away, but it was Banks that Torres focused on. The man knew how to handle a weapon, but he was also not the brightest. Which was fine; she could deal with that. All she had to be sure of was that when the obayifo came, Banks was standing between her and them. Something her old partner Wheeler used to say about not having to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy running alongside you, came to mind.

It hadn’t taken very long for the complex to fall. There were two Blue Eyes out there roaming the hallways. She knew that now without a doubt. One of them had been inside Lab 13 when Campbell performed his experiments. The other one had come from this very room. It had forced its way out of the metal box and killed three innocent souls that had the misfortune to be in the same room with it.

…forced its way out of the metal box…

“Shit,” Torres said out loud.

“What?” Banks said. “What is it now? Don’t tell me. More good news? And by ‘good news’ I of course mean shittier news?”

“What is it?” Letty asked from behind her.

“The Blue Eyes,” Torres said.

“What about it?” Banks said.

“The one in Lab 13. It could have gotten out of that metal prison your people put it in. But it didn’t. It stayed inside until Campbell opened it to run his experiments.”

Banks flashed her his trademark puzzled look.

But Letty understood right away. “You think it let us capture it, don’t you? Back at the Archers last night?”

“Yes,” Torres said.

“Why the hell would it do that?” Banks asked.

“Because they know about Campbell. They know he’s a threat. He and his units running around out there killing their Black Eyes.”

“They’re fighting back,” Letty said. Her voice had dropped noticeably as if she were afraid of being overheard. “Because they think we’re a threat.” She looked back at the second room behind the broken window. “There was another Blue Eyes in there. How did it do that? How did it change its eye color?”

Torres shook her head. “How can they do any of the things they can do? That’s one thing Campbell got right: We don’t know nearly enough about these assholes. And until we do, we’ll always be one step behind them.” She sighed and drew the Glock from her waistband. “All right. It’s almost time. Let’s get this over with.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Banks said. He held up his hands, shotgun dangling precariously from a sling in front of him. “What do you mean ‘get this over with?’ If what you’re saying is true and those things let themselves be captured, why are we still going out there? They want this. Right? Right?”

“They already got what they wanted,” Torres said. “They got inside the complex and put a major hurt on Campbell’s organization. But none of that changes the fact we’re stuck down here with them and”—she glanced down at her watch—“we have less than twenty-four hours to get out or we’ll never get out.”

* * *

If she thought the condition of the room was bad, it was even more suffocating outside. The length and plentiful air vents that lined the hallway didn’t do a damn thing to help her breathe. Letty, behind her, only occasionally gagged on the stink. Fortunately the lab coat had already thrown up everything that was in her stomach. Banks, up front, was surprisingly calm and fleet-footed as he moved around bloody trails on the floor and the occasional splatters that dripped from the ceiling.

Since the last time she’d been out here, the place had gotten much darker. It’d seemed like another lifetime ago since she last saw white lights. There were bodies up ahead and the evidence of three others that had been dragged away. Those responsible for absconding with the dead left their tracks in the puddles of blood.

Footprints.

Bare footprints.

Obayifo.

There were more than one of them. Three in this hallway alone. Blue Eyes? Or Black Eyes? How many Black Eyes had the blue ones turned since all of this began? How long did it take to turn a person? And did she really want to find out?

She wasn’t entirely sure who was more scared—her or Letty. It was probably a tie considering how hard both of them were breathing. Banks seemed to be adjusting well to their bloody surroundings. Maybe she hadn’t given him enough credit. The man wasn’t the brightest but he wasn’t a coward, either, apparently.

Torres didn’t bother asking Banks how far they were from hallway ten. She figured he’d tell her when they got there. Or let her know when they were close. Right now he only had eyes for what was in front of them, his shotgun leading his way. She was surprised to see that he didn’t have his forefinger in the trigger guard already; that was a sign he’d been well-trained to use the weapon.

Good. I have a feeling we’re going to need all of that experience.

The Glock was loose in her hand. It was probably all the sweat she was generating. She had to switch the gun from one hand to the other in order to wipe her palms twice since they stepped through the door and started moving up the hallway.

As far as she could tell, they were making decent time. Cent would be on the other side doing the same thing toward hallway ten right this second. She didn’t envy the kid—he was there all alone and armed only with a knife. Then again, considering just how inefficient the guns had been at killing a Blue Eyes, maybe Cent’s weapon of choice was the better option.

“Why didn’t you put silver bullets in your weapons?” she’d asked Banks back in the room.

“Why would we?” he’d answered.

“What do you mean ‘why would you?’ Because that’s the only way to kill those black-eyed things.”

“We didn’t know it was them at the time. When the emergency went off, we just grabbed our gear and ran out. The silver ammo was on a different rack. We use them when we have to. We didn’t know we had to.”

“But you had them?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“And it never occurred to Security to have silver ammo in your weapons at all times?”

“I mean, sure, when you think about it, it’s the obvious thing…” Banks had shrugged. “It wasn’t regulation. You wanna bring it up with the bosses? Be my guest.”

If I survive this, I just might, she had thought.

None of that mattered now as she turned the corner to keep up with Banks.

“Watch your step,” he said a split-second before she stepped on a dead body and a thick gob of blood spurted out of a gash in the man’s neck.

Jesus Christ.

Letty was smarter and didn’t make the same mistake. She went around the dead man, staring at the body as she did so. From the look on her face, the lab coat probably knew the man.

There were more bodies around them, but not enough given the carnage she’d witnessed earlier. There was one here, one there, but it wasn’t the meat grinder she’d been expecting.

They took the bodies.

They took the bodies to feed.

She remembered what had happened back at the Wilshire Apartments and how the obayifo had taken its victims upstairs to its nest in order to feed on them. The ones that had taken over Campbell’s underground complex was doing the same thing.

So where’s the nest?

She looked up as Banks reached the end of another corridor and stopped. He leaned forward and around, sneaking a quick peek, before pulling back. She waited patiently for him to update her. Banks was taking his sweet time.

Finally, he glanced back at her. “He’s there.”

She was going to ask Who? but understood. Banks was talking about Taylor, his former commanding officer. The body they were looking for.

Wow. Good news. How’s that for a change?

Torres gave him an ‘After you’ nod.

Banks slipped forward and around the corner, his shotgun snapping up with such force that she actually heard the wind splitting as the barrel of the weapon sliced upward.

Torres hurried after him, stepping around a dead security personnel as she did so. There was a hole in his chest about where his heart would have been. It wasn’t a bullet hole, either. No, it was much too big for that.

That’s a fist. Someone—something—punched his chest in with their fist.

The man had a frozen look on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened to him.

“Goddammit,” Banks muttered under his breath.

Torres turned to see what he was pointing his shotgun—and cursing—at:

Cent.

The kid (Why did she keep calling him a kid? He wasn’t a kid. He’d never been a kid even when she first met him, and he was far from one now.) was peeking around the corner on the other side of the hallway.

“Almost shot his ass,” Banks muttered.

“Good thing you didn’t,” she said as she stepped around him.

Cent might have breathed a sigh of relief as she hurried over to the middle, where he came out to join her. He had his knife out and ready in one hand. Like her and Banks and Letty, Cent left bloody footprints with every step he took.

“Taylor?” Cent asked.

“That’s him,” Banks said, pointing his shotgun at the two dead security men.

One was sitting on the floor, back against the wall. Taylor. The other one was on the ground. Torres didn’t bother to ask Banks if he knew the other man. There were drag marks around them. There had been, once upon a time, more people here.

The nest. They took them to the nest.

So where’s the nest?

Banks stood over his former CO. “So…what? We drag him back with us to your place?”

Cent shook his head. “No. He’s too heavy. It would just be a burden. And it’s a long way from here to there.”

“So how are we gonna get him there, then?”

In lieu of an answer, Cent changed up his grip on his blade.

“You’re not going to…” Banks said but let the rest trail off. He said instead, “Aw, geez. I always liked the guy, too.”

Cent looked over at Torres and Letty. “You guys might not want to watch this.”

Torres didn’t shy away from his gaze. “Do it. We’ll keep an eye out.”

Cent nodded and crouched in front of Taylor. He once again changed up his grip on the knife.

“How long is this gonna take?” Banks asked.

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” Cent said. “But it shouldn’t be too long.”

Cent cocked his hand back, took careful aim, and swung.

The thwacking of sharp metal going into flesh, then hitting the bone underneath, echoed slightly in the hallway. He’d gotten Taylor in the side of the neck where he’d aimed.

“Jesus Christ,” Banks said before looking away.

Cent went back to work.

Thwack again.

A third time and Taylor’s head came off. What was left of blood inside Taylor spurted into the air, before dying off quickly.

The sight of Cent “at work” should have bothered Torres, but for some reason it didn’t. Maybe she’d just seen too much to be affected anymore. Or maybe she just knew it had to be done because the alternative wasn’t feasible. Taking Taylor’s head and hand was a lot easier than carrying the large man back to Cent’s room.

“Grab that,” Cent said.

Banks stared at Taylor’s decapitated head but didn’t move.

“Grab it,” Cent said again.

Banks sighed and picked Taylor up by the wet hair. Wet, but not because of sweat. It was blood. Banks groaned as he changed the head from one hand to the other, then wiped the blood on his pants legs. That only meant his other hand was also now bloodied. He wiped that one, too, still groaning the whole time.

Cent adjusted the now-headless Banks’s left hand, placing it on the floor with the palm turned upward. Unlike the head, which took three swings, Cent was able to take Taylor’s hand with just one perfect cut.

Damn. He’s gotten really good with that.

Cent stood up and shoved Taylor’s hand into his back pocket.

“This is so fucking gross,” Banks said. He was holding Taylor’s head with an outstretched arm, the man’s face turned in the other direction. He looked over at Cent. “Lead the way back to your place, pal.”

Cent turned to go. Banks followed.

“Stick close to me, Letty,” Torres said as she followed the men.

She waited to hear a response from Letty, but the other woman didn’t say a word. In fact, it had just occurred to Torres that Letty hadn’t said a single word since they met Cent in the hallway.

“Wait,” Torres said before she started turning around, tightening her grip on the Glock as she did so.

Letty was still back there, staring at her.

But she wasn’t alone. There was someone standing behind her.

Blue eyes, like the devil’s heartbeats, peered over Letty’s right shoulder, slicing like a laser through the red air back at Torres.

28

CENT

It wasn’t that long ago that he met a man who knew how to make weapons. Any weapon, as long as you could pay. When Cent gave the man his drawing of what he wanted, the guy stared at him, maybe trying to decide if Cent was messing with him.

“I’m not,” Cent said.

“You’re not what?”

“Messing with you.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you were thinking it. You’re still thinking it.”

The man grunted, essentially admitting that Cent was right.

The older man—he had at least twenty years on Cent and all those years came with the scars, dark skin, and wrinkles of his profession—went back to looking at the paper drawing. It had taken Cent an entire month to put it together. The one the man held now, drawn on a piece of paper, was the fifteenth version.

“You draw this with a pencil?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s different.”

“What is?”

“This,” he said, waving the paper slightly. “Most of the time people come to me with computer drawings. Fancy shit. Didn’t used to be like that, but them’s the times now.”

“I don’t know how to do computer drawings or any fancy shit.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He put the piece of paper down and eyed Cent over the slightly dark space of his basement workshop. “I can do what you want, but you’re going to have to supply me with the materials.”

“I assumed as much.”

“I’m talking about the silver.”

Cent took out his rolled-up traveling leather pouch. He put it on a table and unfurled it, revealing the three bars of silver inside. There were writings on them indicating the place where they had come from. They were, among other things, part of Cent’s payment for a job he’d done with Richter a few years back.

The large man in the overalls picked up one of the bars and turned it over. “Silver?”

“Yes.”

“Sterling silver?”

“Pure silver.”

“Goddamn, kid. Where’d you get your hands on these?”

“Does it matter?”

The man gave him a noncommittal shrug. “Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.”

“Smelt them down and use what you need to make my knife.”

The guy scratched his head for a moment. “Even if I covered every bit of what you want covered, there’s a lot left.”

“Whatever’s left is your payment.”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise. “You shitting me, kid?”

“I’m not.”

“That’s more than what this job costs.”

“So make sure you do your best work. That’s all I ask.”

The man let out a boisterous guffaw before reaching over with a proffered hand. “All right, kid. You got it. Come back in a week.”

Cent shook his hand. “I need it sooner than that.”

Another guffaw. “All right. Three days. Come back in three days and I’ll have you your…what do you call this?”

“The New Hand of God.”

“Now that’s a hell of a name.”

Cent turned to go.

“Hey,” the man said. Then, when Cent looked back, “What do you need this for, anyway?”

“Hunting.”

“Last time I checked, you don’t need a silver edge to gut a fish or skin a deer.”

“Yes, well, the animals I’m hunting are…harder to kill.”

“Is that right?”

Cent smiled before turning to go again. “I’ll be back in three days.”

* * *

Obayifo.

The eyes were much bluer than Cent remembered. Even underneath the red hallway lights there was no denying that the color was stronger, deeper than they had been with the one at the Wilshire.

This thing that stared back at him may or may not have been the same one that Campbell’s people had been experimenting on. It was impossible to tell. This one had all of its limbs as it stood behind the girl Torres called Letty, having come out of nowhere. Cent wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed the monster’s presence because the air had gotten thicker, the stench of death radiating out of the pores of the walls the way they hadn’t before despite all the blood and death.

It did that. The obayifo. Its very existence mocked the natural order of things and turned God’s creation into a foul cave brimming with fear and anger and misery and, more than anything else, the maggot-filled gaping wound of death itself.

“Welcome to hell,” it hissed, worms on its face squirming to form something that might, in some nightmarish way, represent a grin.

The creature that stood behind Letty, holding her against its breast with fingers as long as tree branches and as curved and sharp as the knife in Cent’s own grip. He knew, now, that it had lured them out here. Not just him but Torres and the others, too. And it had allowed them to make their way to Taylor before it struck.

It was a game. A sadistic game.

“None of you will leave here alive,” it hissed, its voice cutting through the air like a missile—sharp and deadly and impossible to dodge.

The soldier, Banks, reacted first. Cent would have shouted for him to Stop! Don’t do it! if he’d had advance warning. But he didn’t and so he couldn’t stop Banks before the man shouted, “Torres! Get the fuck down!” and opened fire.

Torres lunged to one side as Banks’s buckshot sailed past her and down the hallway. Most of it struck Letty, dark patches of wetness appearing across her white lab coat as if by magic. Instead of letting Letty go, the creature lifted her by the neck and moved her around, fanning her in front of it like some kind of human shield as Banks racked and fired again.

And Banks didn’t stop shooting until he’d completely exhausted his ammo. He stumbled back and fumbled to load more shells into the breech. He’d killed Letty, but he hadn’t done a damn thing to the obayifo. The creature lifted her helpless and buckshot-riddled body and flung it at them. Letty struck Banks in the chest and knocked him back and to the ground with a loud grunt of pain and surprise. His shotgun clattered across the floor.

Then Torres was shooting from her position, slightly crouched to one side of the hallway. She was moving as she did so, rising and shouting, “Cent! Go! Go go go!”

Cent obeyed. He didn’t have a gun and his only weapon was a knife and it was only good for close range. So he turned and fled, the weight of Taylor’s severed hand heavy in his back pocket.

Banks had gone from being in front of Cent to behind him. The man was trying to scramble up from the floor, his face contorted in agony, when Cent grabbed one of his outstretched arms and shouted, “Go go go!”

“My shotgun!” Banks shouted.

“Fuck your shotgun!” Torres said even as she turned and ran toward them, ejecting and then putting a new magazine into her pistol as she did so. Cent envied her ability to do that with such smoothness. He was never good with guns and couldn’t have done that in his best days.

Banks’s eyes were still on his lost weapon as he stumbled up to his feet and, with Cent’s “help,” turned and fled up the hallway.

“The head!” Cent screamed as he glanced back at Torres.

She understood immediately and snatched up Taylor’s decapitated head that Banks had dropped before opening fire. “Get to the room! Don’t wait for me!”

Cent was running as hard as he could, dodging blood and guts and bodies along the way, and trying hard not to slip. Banks was close on his heels while Torres, behind them, carried Taylor’s head in one hand and her gun in the other. Cent imagined it would have been a hell of a sight for anyone who saw them at that moment. Vicks, for one, would be watching on the monitors. He wondered what she was thinking right now. In fact, he wondered what she was thinking as he chopped Taylor’s body apart with his knife. Who knows? This might in fact be the final nail in their budding relationship. Of course, for them to have any kind of a relationship, they’d have to survive this entire ordeal, and that wasn’t a given.

He took another corner, then another one. Three down and two more to go.

Just two more to go…

Gunshots as Torres opened fire behind him. That was a bad sign.

Cent glanced over one shoulder.

Banks, a few steps back, breathing hard as he ran toward him. They locked eyes.

“What is it now?” Banks shouted.

“Keep going!” Cent said.

“What?”

“Keep going!” Cent repeated as he stopped, spun around, and raised his blade in his right hand.

A blur of motion as Banks, doing as he was told, kept going. That was smart of him. A little cowardly, too, but smart nonetheless.

Heavy footsteps as Torres appeared at the turn, backpedaling as she did so. Her gun bucked in her hand as she continued to fire it at something that Cent couldn’t see. And she might have kept firing until that gun was empty a second time if something hadn’t struck her in the chest and knocked her into the wall.

Was that a basketball?

Cent saw what it really was when it bounced on the floor and rolled away.

Letty.

It was Letty’s decapitated head and it landed inches from where Torres had dropped Taylor’s head. The two bodiless heads ended up on their sides, wide eyes staring at each other as if they were meeting for the very first time and neither one knew what to say. It was simultaneously horrific and comedic.

But mostly it was horrific.

“Torres!” Cent shouted as he ran back toward her.

Torres was on her butt on the floor, back against the wall, grimacing from the pain. She was holding her chest with one hand, the other one desperately trying to maintain her grip on her Glock.

She glanced over at him. “What are you doing? Go! Get out of here!”

But Cent didn’t go or get out of there. He kept running toward Torres even as he heard the sound of something approaching her. It was soft, like bare feet. Torres turned back down the other hallway, hand still fumbling to get a better grip on her gun. She was covered in blood from the chin down to her clothes.

Cent ran faster, and as soon as he glimpsed it, he launched himself forward—

—and caught it in the side just as it appeared!

A flash of blue as Cent collided and threw it off its momentum toward Torres. The two of them slammed into the wall, Cent doing his best to try to crush the undead thing against the hard concrete with his body. He imagined Richter or maybe Dutch shouting, “Nice tackle, kid!” as he broadsided the creature.

Cent fell first, gravity pulling him down to the floor. Fortunately he landed in a slight crouch, something that the obayifo couldn’t do for whatever reason. It crumpled to the floor instead, where it sneered up at him. Cent cocked back his right hand, the knife in it ready to end its miserable life with one plunge.

The head. Go for the head!

He was about to do exactly that when the creature’s hand blurred, moving so fast Cent could barely distinguish it from the rest of the monster’s body. His chest burned as he flew back across the hallway and crashed into another wall, before flopping back down like a sack of nothing.

His knife, like Banks’s shotgun before, fell from his grip and clattered across the floor.

It hurt.

Damn did it hurt.

It hurt more than when he’d been struck by the blue-eyed creature in the Wilshire Apartments. This one was faster and stronger. Much, much stronger.

Every fiber of Cent’s body burned, the flames rising from the tips of his toes and raging their way up his legs, into his chest, and searing his brain. He would have cried out in miserable pain if he had the wherewithal do to anything other than roll over onto his back and wheeze out a couple of breaths.

The bang of gunshots as Torres, thankfully, wasn’t as helpless as he was at the moment.

Cent rolled over onto his side as the blue-eyed creature stumbled back as her bullets struck its chest, neck, and cheek. Torres was shooting high, going for its head. One of her shots struck the obayifo in the temple and turned its head. There was a look of shock on its face, as if it couldn’t believe she’d managed to almost land a killing blow. Torres hadn’t had much luck when it was chasing her down the hallway, but now, while sitting down only six feet or so from it, her aim had improved significantly.

A flash of odd emotions flickered across the creature’s face. Was that fear? Confusion? Or a realization that it wasn’t impossible to kill after all?

Blood spurted out of the gaping holes in its neck, chest, cheek, and now temple as it turned and fled. Cent watched the creature go, its elongated shape vanishing around the corner. Just before it turned, though, it looked back and locked eyes with him.

Die. Why don’t you die, you abomination?

Almost as if it could hear his thoughts, the creature’s lips twisted into that pretense of a smile.

It was a cruel expression.

Beyond evil.

Then it was gone.

“Come on, Cent,” Torres said as she reached down for him. “Get up. Get up.”

He got up with a lot of effort. His body screamed with every movement. Even blinking seemed to send pain through him.

“You okay?” Torres asked.

“No,” Cent said as he searched for, found, and snatched up his knife. “You?”

“Not even close.”

Torres had also retrieved Taylor’s head, holding it by its bundle of blood-covered strands. If she had any feeling of queasiness, it was long gone. “Let’s go.”

“What about that?” Cent said, pointing at Banks’s lost shotgun, resting about ten feet away.

Torres hurried over and picked up the shotgun. She slung it while keeping one eye down the hallway. “It’s still back there.”

“We could finish it off. You hurt it.”

“Maybe…”

“You almost had it, Torres.”

“Almost.” She turned and rushed back to him. “But almost only counts in grenades and horseshoes. And right now, I wish I had some grenades. And maybe a bazooka or two while I’m daydreaming.”

29

TORRES

“A head. A hand. And a blue-eyed asshole go into a bar. The asshole asks the bartender for a drink. The bartender says, ‘Sorry, Mr. Blue-Eyed Asshole, but we don’t serve drinks to your kind around here.’ To which the Blue-Eyed Asshole responds, ‘Well, that sucks! What does a guy have to do to get served around here? To that, the bartender answers, ‘Well, for one, you gotta be able to pay the tab. And sorry to be so frank, sir, but you don’t even have any pockets to hold any money!”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it did flash across Torres’s mind as she was running down the hallway with Cent in front of her leading the way. The young man glanced back with a confused look on his face, so Torres realized she might have actually laughed out loud at her own stupid joke.

“Nothing,” she said. “Keep going!”

He didn’t exactly nod, but his head did move slightly before it turned back around and he led her around another corner. She’d lost count how many hallways they’d run through. It could have been as many as a dozen or as few as one. Time didn’t exactly fly when you were fleeing for your life, but it did tend to get all jumbled up.

She shot a quick glance over her shoulder—For the first time? The tenth? Maybe the hundredth? No, probably not the hundredth. Probably—to see if it was in pursuit. It wasn’t. It was nowhere behind her. And it hadn’t been since she sent it scurrying away with a half-dozen bullet holes in it. Bullet holes that didn’t kill it but sure as hell had hurt.

“Almost there!” Cent said.

Good, because I think I’m going to faint soon.

It wasn’t the running. She was still in pretty good enough shape that she could probably do a half-marathon without too much trouble. (Though she could have just been a tad too generous on that point.) It was really the pain coming from her chest. The bastard had thrown Letty’s head at her like it was a football. Though that football had the strength of a missile behind it.

The pain hadn’t been confined to her upper body, either. It’d made its way down to her legs and along her arms and even her head. She had a pounding headache as she ran, the gray walls of the complex passing her by in a series of indistinguishable blurs. She would have taken the moment to check her injury if she had the time or the ability to. But she didn’t have either because both her hands were busy and time was not on her side.

Finally, after what might have been an actual half-marathon, Cent began to slow down. As he did so, one of the doors in front of them opened as if by magic. Or, more likely, Vicks had spotted them on the cameras and opened the door for them.

Cent didn’t hesitate and jumped inside. Torres was right on his heels.

She didn’t feel safe until she heard the heavy metal door slamming shut behind her, followed quickly by the sounds of locks sliding into place. Only then did she bend over, dropping Taylor’s head but holding onto her gun, and braced her fists against her knees and caught her breath.

The first thing she noticed was that the room wasn’t infused with the stink of an obayifo. The air was fresh like a cool ocean breeze. Of course it was probably not that fresh but compared to the smell of the other room, then the bloody hallways, anything would have smelled like fresh roses.

As she gathered herself, Torres looked up and saw Letty. Or, more specifically, Letty’s head on one of the security monitors.

“You okay?” Cent was asking her.

She nodded and struggled to stay standing without reaching for the nearest wall for support. “You?”

“Good. All things considering.”

“You mean like how we just survived a blue-eyed obayifo?”

“Yeah. That.”

They exchanged a quick smile. Like her, Cent was rubbing his chest where the creature had struck him in the hallway. If his injury was anything like hers, then there would be flames trying to burn him from the inside out right now.

Slowly, very slowly, the misery began to ease. It didn’t completely go away, but enough of it did that she was able to stand more confidently and not have to keep looking for a wall to lean against.

Torres glanced over at Vicks, standing next to Cent. “The cameras. Why didn’t you warn us it was in the hallway?”

“I couldn’t,” Vicks said. “I didn’t see it until it got Letty. By then it was too late, and I didn’t see any point broadcasting to everyone who didn’t already know that you guys were out there.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I missed it. I was watching every hallway like a hawk.”

“They’re fast,” Cent said.

Torres reluctantly nodded. “He’s right. They’re fast.” Then, softer and to Vicks, “Forget what I said. It’s not your fault.”

“I know it’s not, it’s just that…” She let the rest go.

“Hey, you picked up my shotgun,” Banks was saying as he walked over to her.

“Someone had to,” Torres said. She unslung it and tossed it back to its owner.

Banks grabbed it. “You shouldn’t have bothered, though.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, I mean, you didn’t need to. We’re in a security room. I left it down there for a reason, you know.”

“Come again?”

“I’ll show you.”

Banks walked over to another side of the room, stopping in front of something that looked like a square-shaped door with a handle jutting out of its center. There was a panel next to it. Another one of those palm readers.

The security man placed his hand on the panel and a green light scanned his palm. When it was finished, the square door clicked before sliding a few inches out of the wall. Banks grabbed the handle and pulled it out—and kept pulling until he’d removed about a six-feet-long metal slab that looked like a filing cabinet. Except instead of folders it was holding racks of weapons.

“They had more guns in here the whole time?” Torres asked.

Banks looked back at her. “Yeah. Why?” Then, to Cent and Vicks, “You guys didn’t know?”

Cent and Vicks exchanged a look.

“I think that’s a no,” Torres said.

“You didn’t mention it on the comm,” Cent said.

“I thought you guys knew,” Banks said.

“We didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“It’s the first time I’ve been in one of these rooms,” Vicks said. “How was I supposed to know you guys have a secret cabinet with guns?”

“It’s not exactly a secret,” Banks said. He pointed at the word INVENTORY stenciled near the top of the door.

“Yeah, well, ‘inventory’ could have been anything from staples to paper.”

“This is Security. We don’t carry staples and paper.”

“But you needed your palm to access it.”

“That’s right. And?”

“Then it’s a moot point since neither one of us are Security.”

“Oh yeah, that’s true, I guess.”

Torres walked over to Banks. She found that if she kept moving, the pain lessened even further. It was still there—she didn’t think it was going anywhere anytime soon—but with some concentrated effort, she could force it into the background.

“Pick your poison,” Banks said to her.

Most of the weapons were the same types she’d seen the other security men carry. AR rifles, Remington shotguns, and Glock pistols. And of course, ammo for them. She snatched up a box of 9mm and began reloading her magazine. Banks did the same to his shotgun—he’d elected to keep the old one instead of grabbing a new one—before filling up his empty holster with a new handgun.

Behind them, Vicks and Cent were talking in the kind of low voice that told Torres they’d gotten closer since all of this began. There was a saying, about you not knowing if you truly like or hate someone until you’d been in a foxhole with them. She’d had that experience with Wheeler when he was training her. She’d also had it with Cent, who she’d liked after the Wilshire.

“You actually chopped off his head and hand,” Vicks was saying.

“It wasn’t exactly chopping,” Cent said. “I just cut them off.”

“That was chopping, Cent.”

“Was it?”

“Oh yeah.”

The way she’d said Oh yeah wasn’t filled with disgust at what Cent had done. If anything, Torres thought she sounded almost…intrigued.

Weird girl.

But then Vicks would have to be a weird one to be down here with them. She was young and attractive and smart, and could have had any number of jobs after college. And yet, she’d ended up down here. Or maybe “ended up” wasn’t quite the right phrasing. She’d chosen down here.

Definitely a weird girl.

Banks was stuffing extra magazines into his pockets—Torres envied his many pouches—when he glanced over at her. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” Torres said.

“No, I mean, your face. It’s…”

“What?”

“There’s some blue in all that chocolate.”

Torres squinted at him.

“What?” Banks said.

“Never mind,” she said and snatched one of the shotguns off the rack. It was a semi-automatic Remington, identical to the one Banks was carrying. Torres put as many extra shells as she could into her back pockets.

“Thought you’d be a rifle girl,” Banks said.

“Shows how little you know me. This’ll do.”

“Okey-doke.”

They walked back to where Vicks and Cent were, standing in front of another biometrics panel. This one was next to the EXCOM terminal. Cent had picked up Taylor’s head from the floor and Vicks was using his palm on the reader. The same flashing green light that had read Banks’s palm on the other panel appeared followed by a bolded command: FACIAL BIOMETRICS REQUIRED.

Cent took Vicks’s spot in front of the panel and held Taylor’s head up by the hair, not looking nearly as queasy doing it as Banks seemed to be just watching it being done. Another flashing green light followed by the response: RECOGNIZED.

The metal door slid open, revealing another screen with a series of menus scrolling across it.

“Voila,” Vicks said.

“Now what?” Cent asked.

“Contact topside and tell them there are still people down here,” Torres said. She turned to Banks. “Will that work?”

The security man shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s never been done before. I mean, this has never been done before. So…” He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“It better work or I just cut off a man’s head for nothing,” Cent said. He walked over to one table and placed Taylor’s head on it.

“You’re up,” Torres said to Banks.

The man gave her a surprised look. “Why me?”

“You’re Security, aren’t you?”

“I’m Security, but I’m not the Security.” He nodded at Taylor’s severed head. “That’s him.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the closest one we have right now. So you’re up.”

“I guess,” Banks said, not sounding all that enthusiastic at all. He scrolled through the menu until he finally found the one to the Aboveground Security. “Here goes." He pressed the SEND button and leaned forward. “This is Belowground Security. Anyone up there?”

He waited for a response—they all did—but there was only silence.

“Maybe no one’s home,” Vicks said. “Or they’re all asleep. It’s eleven at night.”

“Now?” Cent said. “After what’s happened down here?”

“Maybe they don’t know.”

“Too many maybe’s,” Torres said. Then, to Banks, “Try again.”

He nodded and did. “This is Belowground Security, trying to reach anyone topside. Is anyone up there? Hello?” Then, with emphasis, because apparently he thought that might work, “Hello?”

But it didn’t work, and they continued to get nothing but silence.

Banks pulled back slightly from the comm system. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”

“Is that normal?” Torres asked.

“No. There should always be someone on the comms.”

Torres looked over at Vicks. “Can we see what’s happening up there on the monitors?”

Vicks shook her head. “Nope. We’re confined to belowground.”

“Can we try reaching anyone else beyond whoever’s up there?” Torres asked Banks.

“No,” Banks said. “It’s strictly for communication between us and the boys upstairs.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Vicks said.

“You said it, sister,” Banks said to her. Then, looking quickly over at Torres, “No offense meant.”

Torres was considering punching him when a voice came out of nowhere: “Hello?” It was a woman whispering, even though they could all hear her clearly through the speaker.

“Holy shit,” Banks said as he whirled back to the terminal. He pressed the SEND button. “Hey, hey, I thought you guys were all asleep up there. Glad to hear your voice finally.”

“Who is this?” the woman asked.

Banks squinted in confusion before replying. “Downstairs Security. Who is this?”

“Jenkins,” the voice said. “Sarah Jenkins.”

“Who is Sarah Jenkins?” Torres asked.

“I have no idea,” Banks said, shaking his head. “There’s twice as many security guys up there as there are down here, and I don’t even remember the names of everyone down here.”

“I can find out,” Vicks said. She hopped back into her swivel chair in front of the computers and began typing on a keyboard. Torres marveled at how fast she could type. And maybe more amazingly, how accurate. What looked like the entire personnel database of Harold Campbell’s organization scrolled across her screen in no time.

“Try asking her who she is first,” Torres said to Banks.

He nodded and said into the comm, “Sarah. You Security?”

“Security?” Sarah Jenkins said. “No. I’m not Security.” She was still whispering and there was something else about her voice that stood out…

“She’s scared,” Torres said.

“Of what?” Cent asked.

Sarah Jenkins said, “I’m in Records. Recordkeeping. I just do recordkeeping.”

“Human Resources,” Vicks said as she swivel around in her chair to face them. “Sarah Jenkins. Thirty-two. CPA-slash-human resources-slash-recordkeeper.”

“So what’s she doing in the security room?” Cent asked.

“Ask her what happened,” Torres said to Banks.

He did. “Sarah. What happened up there? Why are you in the security room?”

“They’re gone,” Sarah said. Her voice shook noticeably as she spoke. “They’re all gone. All gone.”

“Who?” Banks said. “Who is gone?”

“Everyone,” Sarah said. “Everyone’s gone.”

Torres was about to ask Banks to ask Sarah what happened, but the man beat her to it. “What happened? Who took everyone?”

“They did,” Sarah said. Her voice was starting to crack. Apparently Sarah had been fighting to keep it together all this time and was now slowly losing it.

“Hurry,” Torres said to Banks. “Get her to tell us everything before she can’t.”

Banks glanced in her direction with a look of confusion.

“Do it,” she said, just a little harder than she’d intended.

But it did the job and Banks turned back to the terminal. “Sarah, what happened? Tell me what happened up there? Who took everyone?”

“They did,” Sarah said. Her voice continued to crack. Torres pictured the terrified woman huddled in a dark corner somewhere clutching to the mic she was speaking into. “They took everyone.”

“Who is ‘they?’ Sarah. Who is ‘they?’”

“They.”

“But who is they?”

“They’re everywhere,” Sarah said as if Banks hadn’t asked anything. She might have just been talking to herself.

Torres looked over at Cent. He was staring back at her. They both knew, even if Sarah didn’t tell them, who they were.

“The island,” Sarah was saying. “The island is full of them. I don’t know where they came from, but they’re everywhere. The island…the island…”

Sarah’s voice faded until it was replaced by silence.

Then she wasn’t broadcasting anymore.

“Sarah?” Banks said. “Sarah. Are you still there? Sarah. Sarah?” Then, leaning back, “Shit. I think we lost her.”

“What did she mean?” Vicks asked. “Who’s on the island? Who was she talking about?”

Torres and Cent continued to stare at one another.

“Guys?” Vicks said. “What’s going on up there?” She looked from Cent to Torres and back again. “Come on. Someone tell me something. There are only two things I hate in this universe. One is mayo on everything, and the other is not knowing something. So tell me.”

“Them,” Cent said, nodding at the monitors. “She means them.”

But of course he wasn’t talking about the electronics. It was the carnage on the screens.

“They must have found a way up,” Torres said. She looked over at Banks. “Is there another way up besides the front entrance?”

Banks thought about it for a moment.

A moment became five seconds.

Then ten…

“Fuck me,” he finally said.

“How?” Torres asked.

Banks turned to Vicks. “The cave.”

“The cave?” Cent said.

“The big ass warehouse building where they brought the creatures in through. We call it the cave.”

Vicks was already at the keyboard again flicking through keys until she found the warehouse in question. The camera was at a high angle and showed a large section of the cavernous room. The vehicles were still there, as were the heavy tarps. Except they were now joined by seemingly random patches of blood and discarded weapons on the ground, but no signs of bodies.

They took the bodies. Where are they taking the bodies?

“Dammit. I forgot about the cave,” Banks said.

Torres sighed. Suddenly everything became crystal clear. “That’s why there was just the one in the hallway. The rest were busy doing to the island what they’d done to us down here.”

“Welp, it’s over, then,” Banks said. He sagged back against the wall, hugging his newly reloaded shotgun to his chest.

“What happens to the protocol if the entire island has been compromised?” Cent asked.

Banks shook his head. “I have no idea. I work down here, remember? They don’t tell me about topside unless I have to go do something. And that never came up.”

“I don’t think we want to wait and find out,” Torres said. She reached into her pocket and thumbed the pen inside. It’d been there the whole time, but she’d forgotten all about it until now. “But I might have something…”

All eyes turned to her as Torres took the pen out.

“Nice,” Banks said. “You gonna write a SOS letter and put it in a bottle? I guess that could work. Now all we need is to find an empty bottle and a big ocean to throw it in. Wait, there’s an ocean out there…”

She half-rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not a pen. I mean, it is a pen, but it’s also a transmitting device. It was given to me to use on your computers.”

“How?” Vicks asked.

“I was told I’d know how to use it when the time came. I still don’t know what that means.”

“Can I see it?”

She handed the pen to Vicks. “Click it three times rapidly.”

Vicks took the pen and did as instructed. As the lab coat did that, Torres sensed eyes staring at her.

Cent’s.

She looked over and saw the unspoken accusations on his face.

“We need to be careful. We can’t trust anyone,” she had said to him back at the motel in Florida.

“What about us? Can we trust us?” he had replied.

She hadn’t answered right away.

“Torres…” he had said. Then, in a softer voice, but one that had a lot more emphasis anyway, “Kerry. Can we trust us?”

She had nodded and lied. “Yes.”

I’m sorry, Cent. I should have told you all of it, but it’s too late for that now.

Vicks was eyeing every angle of the long needle that had come out of the pen. “Well, it’s definitely not just a pen. As to what else it can do…”

“Can you figure out where to put it?” Torres asked.

“Shouldn’t be too hard. Only a few outlets will take this kind of connection.”

The lab coat slid her chair along the length of the computers, stopping in front of a terminal near the very end. Vicks pushed a panel and it clicked open, revealing two rows of plugs. Some were familiar to Torres, like the USB ones, but others were foreign. Vicks pushed the pen’s sharp needle into a round plug. The pen jutted out like some foreign missile about to launch, but it was clearly a perfect fit.

“Now what?” Banks asked.

As if on cue, the clicker changed color from white to green and began flashing.

“What’s it doing?” Torres asked.

“Its job, would be my guess,” Vicks said. “You said it’s a transmitting device?”

Torres nodded. “That’s what they told me.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then it looks like it’s doing what it was meant to do. It’s transmitting data from our database.”

“Does that mean the people receiving it will know about what’s happening down here?”

“I don’t have enough information to answer that.”

“Wait, wait,” Banks said. “You mean to tell me that little pen thing can transmit off the island, but we can’t with all our fancy schmancy computers?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Because our computers were specifically designed not to be able to reach anything outside once the complex is locked down. We’re cut off—figuratively, literally, and technologically—from the outside world until the all-clear is given. It’s a fail-safe measure. Mr. Campbell didn’t want anything down here to get out if there’s a worst-case scenario. And this, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is most definitely a worst-case scenario.”

“But that little pen thing can get around all that?”

“All it’d need to do is bypass our security measures and piggyback on our comm systems. The system is still there, it’s just blocked from us.” She turned to Torres. “That’s some fancy tech. Wanna share with us where you got it?”

“I will”—Torres glanced down at her watch—“in twenty hours and thirty-two minutes. Which is exactly how long we have to get the hell out of here before Campbell’s island kills us all.”

EPILOGUE

Owen woke up to the sound of his phone playing the Star Wars Emperor’s Theme ringtone and vibrating on the nightstand next to his bed.

He snatched it up without bothering to look at the caller ID. There was only one person who had the phone number anyway. “Our girl came through?”

“She did,” the voice on the other end said. “I need you back in Florida ASAP.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes.”

That was Ana. Nice and sweet and short. Well, maybe not very nice or sweet, but definitely short when it came to conversations.

“Who else?” Owen asked as he struggled out of bed and grabbed his clothes from the floor. Boxers, slacks, then T-shirt. In that order. And oh, his gun from the nightstand drawer.

“Charlie and Bravo Team will be waiting for you at the airport. Alpha, Delta, and Epsilon will be waiting on the other side. The rest are in reserve.”

“So that bad.”

“Yes, Owen. That bad.”

“Figures. Well, on the plus side, at least we’re finally getting some action.”

“Yes,” Ana said, though she didn’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as he did.

“Cheer up, buttercup. This is what we’ve been waiting for, right?”

“Maybe…”

Definitely not very enthusiastic. I guess it must really be that bad.

“So what are you gonna be doing while I’m having all the fun?” he asked.

“I’m currently on hold with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yes,” Ana said. “Definitely oh, shit.”