“Yes.”
The elderly fat man gave him an appreciative nod. “Then I can safely assure the good general that you are one of a kind.”
“My mission is to keep it that way.”
“I see . . . So the stories about you wandering the countryside destroying various nefarious supernatural beings are true. You are both a terror in battle and a scourge against any unearthly creature that crosses your path. Your fearsome reputation precedes you, sir.”
“I’m supposed to fight for you now.”
“General Washington’s letter mentioned you speaking briefly on this matter. May I inquire as to your motivations for joining our cause?”
“No.” If they’d thought about burning him before, nothing would stop them if they realized the truth. “But repair me, and I will serve you.”
The fat man thought about that for a long time. “I will not deny that I am intrigued by this idea; however, our noble endeavor to secure our liberties does not ask for servants, but rather free men, motivated by their own ideals, and governed by agreed-upon laws and contracts.”
“Then we make a contract.”
“We are men who will not be ruled by the arbitrary decrees of a king. Are you such a man?”
“No. I am Franks.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Franks. I am Benjamin Franklin. Let us discuss this hypothetical contract of yours . . .”
* * *
There was a mechanical hum. The gigantic blast doors began grinding open.
“Out of the way.”
The breaching crew didn’t even have time to shut their torches off before Franks had shoved past them. He caught a brief glimpse of the interior. It was a very large room resembling a factory, surrounded on all sides by catwalks and windows, but then Franks had to duck back when the surprised demons inside started shooting at him.
Franks turned around. Fifty men were eagerly waiting for their chance to fight some demons. “Two on the catwalk to the right. One on the left.” Somebody had let them in, but from the reactions, it didn’t appear to have been Nemesis. They needed to secure the entrance before Stricken closed the door.
“Bangs and disco. Now!” Cueto shouted. MCB agents rushed forward and began tossing distractionary devices through the gap. Some blew up with a bright flash and a lot of noise, but the really obnoxious ones were clear rubber balls filled with incredibly bright, flashing LEDs. Since it was such a big room, they wouldn’t be that effective, but it was mostly to draw the defenders’ eyes from what was coming next. “Toss the eyes.”
The next two MCB agents in line each had an object that looked like a black softball. They chucked them through the opening, each in a different direction. The sensors hit the ground rolling. “Eyes in!”
The door was still opening, but it wasn’t fast. It was wide enough now for a man to go through, but this was the very definition of fatal funnel. Even Franks wouldn’t make it through there without being chewed to pieces. They needed to secure their beachhead. Luckily, the MCB had a lot of tricks up their sleeves.
The sensor balls were weighted so that they’d stop bottom down. Their tiny tracks didn’t make them very fast, but they didn’t need to be fast since their thermal, IR, and seismic scanners could see quite a long ways. “I’ve tagged three defenders,” Archer said over the radio. He was in the comfort of the command truck, but for the next few seconds, he was the one having all the fun. “I’m going hunting.”
“Robots up,” Cueto ordered.
The little tracked vehicles weren’t that impressive, but they were heavily armored, and each one had an M240 machine gun mounted on it. The machines could work autonomously, but their decision-making wasn’t perfect, so Franks preferred flesh brains running things over electronic ones. Their controllers were back at the truck, watching monitors and driving the robots with controllers actually taken from popular video game systems. The first one rumbled through the narrow gap, through the smoke and flashing lights, until its controller spotted one of Archer’s marked targets and opened fire.
“Okay, men. This is it. We need proof it was Stricken who hit us. I want that pasty shit bird in cuffs,” Cueto ordered. “The rules of engagement are simple. Nemesis soldiers get put down. STFU personnel either cooperate or get shot. We are not fucking around in there.”
Once the second robot was inside and making a lot of noise as well, Franks ducked through the door. He rushed through the smoke and took cover behind a pylon. The defenders had retreated ahead of the robots’ fire so Franks didn’t have a shot. Franks kept watch as the robots rolled further in. As the gap widened, more MCB and Swiss Guard rushed in behind him.
“They’ve fallen back,” Archer said over the radio. “I’ve got at least five of them near you, but they’re retreating through the factory.”
“Five?” Agent Cueto crouched next to Franks. Even under Myers he had been the Strike Team’s operational leader, but he had never been the kind of commander content with staying in the rear and giving orders. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Franks nodded. This place was way too big for that few people. “Archer. What size is the facility?”
“Ground penetrating radar is still doing its sweep. There are at least two floors below you. It covers a lot of ground. I haven’t even gotten to the back of it yet.”
“We’ve got us a bug hunt,” Cueto said. “All the STFU people are going to be hiding and we’re going to have to dig them out like ticks. That’s always fun.”
“Worse. More exits.” Franks wasn’t happy. His force and his time were limited. He had agents above, including some on sniper overwatch, but if this place was that large, then Stricken and Kurst could have potential escape routes he couldn’t even see. Unless they were stupid enough to stick their heads out right in front of his snipers, the odds of them escaping had just increased exponentially.
Franks hadn’t noticed Gutterres approach. The Secret Guard was extremely good at moving quietly. “Leave a squad on this door.” Franks nodded toward the ladders to the right. “Have the Swiss clear the right.” Gutterres started giving orders. Then Franks looked to Cueto. “Send a squad of MCB to clear left.”
“You heard the man, Bravo Team, move out!” Cueto shouted. “The rest of us take that factory. If that’s where he’s built Nemesis, that’s our proof.”
“I’m on point,” Franks stated. Nobody argued.
They moved out. The bunker was enormous. There was an open space down the center large enough to accommodate trucks. As inviting as that was, they stuck to whatever cover was available. Despite being underground, so many lights were suspended from the tall ceiling that it was actually extremely bright. Most of the surfaces were stainless steel or painted white so that it seemed rather sterile.
“Have your flashlights ready,” Cueto ordered on the radio, “in case they blow the lights when they counterattack.”
“That’s what I would do,” Franks said. He could only assume Nemesis could see in the dark as well as he could. Better probably, since only one of Franks’ eyeballs was properly treated, and the other one had come from one of MHI’s cadavers and that donor had been nearsighted.
The overhead lights clicked off, plunging the huge room into darkness. The MCB and the Swiss Guard turned on their weapon-mounted lights and hunkered down, waiting for an attack. “Told you so,” Cueto said. Franks waited to the count of twenty and then signaled the nervous men to keep moving.
Their two robots rumbled along ahead of them. Their belt-feds were smoking from the heat, but they still had plenty of ammo left. “I’ve got nothing in sight,” Archer reported. “They’ve retreated. The sensor balls can’t open doors, so I’m cutting through an air vent and trying to follow them.”
Lights were still blinking on the various machines and computer monitors were still on, so they hadn’t lost power. “Somebody find a light switch,” Cueto ordered.
The agents moved quickly, leapfrogging from cover to cover. Only hardened c
ombat vets ended up on the Strike Team. They were ready, and all of them knew that just because the MCB’s fancy sensors hadn’t picked up any danger didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Franks didn’t recognize most of the machinery around them. It all seemed to be complicated diagnostic medical equipment. Franks’ medical knowledge was limited to putting himself back together, and when he had to do that himself it was usually the old-fashioned way, with needle and thread, though the invention of superglue had been extremely helpful.
Franks came around the corner and came face to face with a demon.
His flashlight beam reflected off the glass between them. It wasn’t awake yet. The body wasn’t fully formed, but he could sense the evil spirit already clinging to the congealing mass of protein. To one of the Fallen it might as well have put up a sign saying that this property was claimed and there was no trespassing, but to the humans it would just look like a fleshy, humanoid blob. It was floating in a greenish liquid, inside a large glass container, held upright by dozens of wires and tubes stuck through its body.
“That’s disgusting . . .” Gutterres said. “It’s unnatural.”
Franks walked around the glass tube. The tissues were soft and pink. Layers of muscle were slowly building on top of the skeleton. There was no skin yet.
“I know you need evidence, but my gut is telling me to burn these things,” Gutterres said.
Franks knew that wasn’t his gut talking, that was Gutterres’ human decency offended by this spectacle. Some humans were more sensitive to the presence of evil than others.
While the sweep teams reported in, Franks signaled for the men to spread out and search the factory. One of the men stopped in front of a monitor. “That thing’s got a heartbeat. According to this, there’s a bunch more too.”
“Is there a birth date?” Franks asked.
“Yes, sir. Most are really recent, but the oldest one is from a few months ago.”
Cueto and Franks shared a glance. There was their evidence that Stricken had been working without authorization.
Franks looked over the agent’s shoulder. This workstation was monitoring heartbeats for prototypes fourteen through twenty-six. Each screen had a heartbeat, except for the last, which showed no signal. Franks glanced down the aisle. There were six glass tubes on this side. There was something growing in each one. Some were nothing but hardened skeletons with a pink glaze of new flesh growing over them, while others appeared to be fully formed human beings, sleeping peacefully in their pseudoamniotic fluid. Franks stepped out into the lane running down the center of the factory. There were six more tubes on the other side . . .
And a blank spot on the end.
Tubes and wires were lying there, hastily disconnected, and there was a puddle on the floor. “One of the tanks is missing.” That can’t be good. He walked forward and played his light across the area. Big tires had rolled through the fluid and tracked it deeper into the facility. “It was loaded on a truck.”
“What’s Stricken up to?” Cueto asked.
“This is Archer. I’ve found something. There’s a room full of dead bodies. They’re fresh. I’m trying to get an angle here, but it looks like they got dumped in a big pile. I’ve got at least twenty so far, male and female. Some are dressed in scrubs or civilian attire, but I’ve got a bunch in coveralls that look like security guards.”
Franks frowned. It was starting to sound like Stricken wasn’t in control here after all.
“Hello, Franks.” The voice came over the intercom. “Welcome to my childhood home.”
“Kurst . . .” Franks muttered.
His men immediately took cover between the machines and tanks, flashlights stabbing out in every direction. More lights bounced along the catwalks and windows above.
“Aren’t they beautiful, Franks? They were made in your image.”
Franks put his hand to his transmitter and whispered, “Archer, locate that transmission.”
“On it, Franks. Uh oh . . . They’re on the way back toward you guys! Shoot. I’ve lost signal.”
Kurst had a maniacal laugh. “I stepped on your little toy. Humans are so remarkably clever. Maybe that’s why they were the ones who followed The Plan. They had the imagination necessary to believe the World Maker, while the rest of us lacked the faith. The time has come to right this injustice. The albino made us in your image, but I will improve the design. This time, I shall be the Creator. I will fix the mistakes made before.”
“You do not belong here!” Franks shouted.
“Then neither do you!” Kurst’s sudden outburst caused the intercom to buzz into static. When the ringing subsided, he sounded calm again. “This world belongs to whoever is bold enough to seize it, and I have allied with one strong enough to defeat all the other factions. I will serve as his general and in exchange he will grow more bodies for the Fallen. In honor of our new alliance he has presented me with a Gift. We may have been created in your image, but we have evolved beyond. The first generation has already partaken of this gift, and now I bestow it upon the next.”
“Sir!” the MCB agent by the monitoring station shouted. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Their vitals are spiking. Heart rates are through the roof.”
Franks turned toward the nearest growth tank. The thing inside was watching him through the glass with milky white eyes. “Shit.”
“Awake, my army.”
Kurst had released some powerful mutagenic chemical into the tanks. Every Nemesis creature Franks had eyes on was stirring. Some were twitching violently, as the greenish fluid around them turned red. Bodies were changing, bones were twisting. Horns were sprouting from heads. Someone shouted a warning as a Nemesis demon spread its newly grown wings and the glass of its tank cracked. Another tank ruptured, and the rushing fluid swept several men from their feet.
“Kill everything!” Franks bellowed as he pulled the trigger.
Glass shattered. A rushing wall of sticky fluid struck him, but Franks was planted there, unmoving as it swept by. Franks kept on shooting as the demon ripped itself free from its wires and tethers. There was movement all around him as the MCB opened fire. Demons either burst through the glass or clambered out the tops of their tanks, their soft, ill-fitting flesh leaving bloody trails. Lights were swinging wildly. There were muzzle flashes all across the factory as his agents engaged the demons.
Franks hammered the demon in front of him, putting round after round through its soft organs. The first noise it ever made was a frustrated screech as it sliced its palms to ribbons trying to crawl across the broken glass. Franks kicked it through the opposite side of the tube.
The tank fluid was as slick as soap, and his men were sliding and falling on the concrete. The wet, misshapen creatures weren’t doing much better, though a few had already adapted and grown suckers on the ends of their limbs. One demon was climbing up a pylon like a monkey, preparing to leap down on top of some of the Swiss, so Franks aimed his rifle and shot the thing through the back of the head. It slipped and tumbled twenty feet to bounce off the floor.
A wet, naked, pink blob of mutating flesh hurled itself at Franks, but it was intercepted in a flash of steel and driven against the floor. One of the Swiss Guard had impaled it on the end of his halberd. Sometimes the old ways were still best. As that man pinned the screaming thing down, two of his comrades rushed up and shot the Nemesis demon to pieces with their Sig 556 rifles. There was a lot to be said in favor of modern hardware as well.
“That way. Move right! Move!” Agent Cueto was shouting over the continuous rattle of gunfire. He was trying to get his men out of the center of the room. That was smart. They had firearms. These moist things didn’t. Why sit in the open and slug it out? Except now that the concrete was covered in slippery slime, moving was easier said than done. Cueto’s boots came out from under him and he crashed on his side.
One demon, its body so young that most of its muscles hadn’t yet bonded to its bone
s, was crawling rapidly across the floor, dragging its legs behind it, heading straight for Cueto. Franks didn’t have a shot. “Behind you!”
The senior agent rolled over, trying to lift his rifle, but the demon had already reached him. A claw flashed and Cueto roared in pain as it sliced his leg wide open. He kicked out, and his combat boot tore the demon’s soft face off, but that barely slowed it. It began crawling up his legs, scratching at his armor, as Cueto tried to push it back.
“Hang on,” Gutterres rolled across a table and landed with a splash next to the demon. He shoved the muzzle of a 12-gauge against the side of the demon’s head and sprayed a ten-foot cone of pink brains. Cueto hurled the demon off of him. Gutterres got up, grabbed onto the drag strap on his armor and pulled him away. Even though blood was pouring from his leg, the Strike Team commander got his rifle up and kept on shooting.
The surviving demons were momentarily retreating for some reason. This was their chance to get to a better position. “Move!” Franks shouted as he walked backwards, firing controlled pairs at each momentary glimpse of slimy demon flesh. The men above them on the catwalk were shooting as well. There was a terrible crash. Franks looked up in time to see one of the Swiss Guard being tossed over the railing to crash headfirst through a diagnostic machine. His halberd landed, clattering across the debris at Franks’ feet.
A huge Nemesis soldier looked over the side to admire his handiwork. He was clothed, and appeared human, until he saw Franks and opened his mouth full of fangs to shout, “The traitor!”
So the regular Nemesis soldiers had joined the fight. Good. Franks didn’t have the time to go looking for them. The demon leapt over the edge, dropped smoothly to the floor, and landed in a crouch. This Nemesis soldier was several inches taller than Franks, and so broad he probably had to turn sideways to fit through a door.
“Remember me, Franks?”
“No.”
“You cut my legs! You blew me up with fire! You blew up my sister! You broke our good bodies. Franks is mean!”
Force . . . That meant Violence was around here somewhere. “You’re dumb.”