Another flicker of light—sudden darkness—then back again the light. My eyes burn at the shift. I step forward, merging with restless forms, silhouettes pulsing in the intermittent glow. I massage my temples, trying to quell the hole drifting inside my skull—throbbing in rhythm with the flickering lights.
I vomit again—my second time since the collapse. My stomach grinds sour. The rest of the time I’ve spent in a corner, silent and separated. I don’t know anyone here except a handful I observed in passing through the tents. No familiar faces. No colleagues. No soldiers I’d met. The rest died under the plate or fell to monsters outside. Maybe a few escaped to the lakeside bunker—but I doubt it.
I trudge through the darkness, stoic and hollow. I feel nothing. No sorrow. No anger. Just... emptiness.
First, a soldier—a big one—standing rigid. His armor stained green. It marks him as one of the High Blooded. Extra strength, extra danger. But armor slows even them. He’s holding a massive rifle, shoulders broad as a wall.
He looks down at me with narrowing eyes. “What is it?” His voice is low, sharp. I see steel grey in those flickering blue eyes.
Behind him, a woman steps into the light. Blonde like him, hair caught in messy waves. She’s about my height—1.80. Slender, quick. No rifle, but twin daggers on her belt gleam ominously.
“Frank, don’t always scare them,” she scolds. She smacks his shoulder—big enough to sting. “Goddamn it, hold your gun low.”
Frank grunts. “But... not my fault if something happens and I’m too slow.”
She sighs. “So what is it?”
They approach me. I lick parched lips. Light pulses again. Then goes.
I inhale tight to speak. “I––“
I hear a sound as loud as the metal plate slamming shut—so sudden it punches the air from my lungs. The flickering lights overhead sputter once, then die entirely. I turn too fast, stumble over my feet, catching myself on my palms. Darkness. And then, light.
A blue glow pours in from above like strands of silk unraveling from the ceiling. It seems distant at first, dozens of meters away—right at the spot where that massive metal plate blasted apart our only entrance and exit. The hole pulses and grows.
Stones fall with the speed of bullets, whistling through the bunker. They rip through anyone beneath them in the blink of an eye. I see men and women torn open, blood blooming in grotesque patterns on the floor. The blue light intensifies, flooding a quarter of the room as the hole widens even further—until something moves in it.
Massive. Orange in color, like rusted metal or molten clay.
I go pale, and I see the same shock reflected in the others. My gaze flickers to Frank—broad-shouldered, breathing hard—and the young woman near him, her eyes wide. I squint at them as I scramble backwards, my knees and palms scraping against the rough floor.
“Get away!” a voice shrieks from somewhere behind them.
I turn and spot her—a woman pressing her shaking, blood-soaked hands onto the gut of a man lying beside her. Both look too damn young. His blood is everywhere, darkening the white strips of cloth she’s trying to knot over the wound. She sobs. The sound makes my stomach twist.
I keep crawling back, trying to make distance between myself and that orange limb reaching in from above. Frank and the girl grow smaller in my view. Other soldiers storm past me, rifles up, eyes hard.
Gunshots roar in the confined space, deafening, so many at once that it’s impossible to tell where they’re coming from.
And in the midst of this chaos, I see it emerge fully.
The orange creature. Ork-like in stature but worse—unnatural, its flesh pulsing, breathing almost. It looms over the girl. We stand far away, in the darkness, unable or unwilling to close the distance.
Their bullets strike it, but most shots miss or glance off harmlessly. The few that hit merely spark or bounce, leaving it unbothered. It doesn’t even flinch.
It walks instead. Slowly. Deliberately.
Toward the sobbing woman.
She doesn’t run. She can’t. She shakes so hard her teeth chatter, clutching the shredded man beneath her as though she could hold him together. Blood pools under them, made alien by the cold blue light.
All around them, others lie bleeding or perfectly still. Some are dead. Some are too shocked to move.
I keep crawling like an insect, hating every second of it. I’m on my back, legs kicking for purchase, palms scraping the ground. I want to scream at myself to stand up. Doctor, I sneer in my head. Coward.
But my body moves on instinct. I need cover. I need safety.
Finally I roll, force my legs under me, and stagger upright. My eyes are fixed on the horror ahead, unable to look away.
I see the girl’s upper body jerk violently.
Her torso blossoms open in a spray of organs and blood. It hits the walls with a sickening slap, paints the ground in shades of red that look almost violet under the harsh blue light.
Other hands follow through the ceiling breach, clawing their way in. Green hands. Blue hands. Each one inhuman, flexing with obscene purpose.
The gunfire dies. Clicks of empty magazines echo.
Soldiers lower their weapons, defeated. Except Frank. And one girl beside him.