AUTHOR NOTE :-

I'm very sorry for the extreme delay between the last chapter and this one, there has been a lot of stuff going on at the moment with workload increasing rapidly as well as everything else that's going on. We're hiring some new staff to start in July so in about 6 weeks everything should (I hope) level out and allow me more time to do stuff and more writing as well.

She felt the air knocked from her lungs as she hit the floor hard, the flames of the humvee she had been using as cover burned wildly, its explosion having sent her flying several meters away. As she lay on her side gasping for breath she could see through blurred bloody vision the burning corpse of one of her comrades stuck in the roof gun-hatch as blood ran into her eye from a large cut on her forehead, her ears were ringing not just from being so close to the explosion but from all the gunfire and screeching of Thirin creatures that rang out from all around her. She cursed as she pushed herself onto her elbows, hot pain shot through her chest and as she looked down she could see that there were several small shards of metal protruding from her chest rig with blood dripping from at least three of them.

The bloodthirsty screeching of Thirin puppets grew louder as her hearing began to return. From the woodland behind a chain-link fence topped with razor-wire roughly forty feet from her that marked the boundary of the base poured another wave of puppets numbering in the hundreds, their skin and fur replaced by the thick dark ooze that had become the tell tail sign of someone who was infected. She quickly looked around her for assault rifle that had been knocked from her paws in the blast and saw it lying on the ground a few feet behind her. She tried to stand up to get it but only managed to scramble across the floor, she rolled onto her back as she grabbed the rifle and aimed it at the fluid like mass of puppets as they clambered over the fence with the first rank piercing themselves on the razor-wire as the ones that followed used them as a ladder. She aimed at the wave as it poured towards her and pulled the trigger, a hail of bullets tore into the first puppets that landed her side of the fence until a huge black shape leaped from the treeline clear over the fence landing on all fours only fifteen feet from her. The creature was as large as a bull, its body looked like an undulating tar like mass, each of its limbs were thick like tree trunks with long razor sharp claws, its four red eyes stared intently at her and it opened its mouth to reveal rows of needle like teeth as it let out of loud low guttural roar. It was a young Thirin.

She fired directly into its face, each bullet that hit sending a spray of black ooze into the air but it seemed to not notice them. It brought back one of its arms and leaped towards her, she quickly rolled to the side as the creatures large claws dug a deep hole where she had just been. Using the momentum of her roll she clambered to her feet and fired more rounds into it. It swung for her again aiming at her head, she ducked low and quickly moved around it, although they were fast at closing gaps Thirin were large and it was more difficult for them to hit small fast moving targets like her, never the less being hit by one even this small would be extremely dangerous and so she kept dodging around it as she looked for an opening.

As the creature brought its claws in an upward sweep as she got closer to it it raised itself up onto its hind legs, its height grew tremendously as it went to bring its full weight down on her, but that gave her the opportunity she needed. She levelled the rifle and fired all the ammo that was left in the clip into its right knee, the resulting splattering and roaring was quickly followed by a heavy thud as it fell backwards hitting the ground hard as its right leg completely gave out. She dropped the rifle and and drew her pistol to keep up the attack but she failed to notice it spin its left leg around as it hit the ground, it hit her in the side sending her flying into the side of a hangar building a few meters away, the impact denting the sheet metal outer wall.

She felt something snap inside her as she hit the floor and she spat out a mouthful of blood onto the floor, her pistol was nowhere to be seen as she pulled herself to her feet and saw the Thirin dragging itself towards her at a considerable speed. She could feel her blood boiling more than usual and she drew her knife from her rig holding it in a vice grip. The Thirin roared once more and lunged at her with an open mouth. She waited till the last possible moment and leapt up onto its head and stabbed out one of its eyes. The Thirin screamed and thrashed about but she held on for dear life and stabbed again and again in rapid succession. She could feel herself being consumed by blood lust as she herself yelled with every strike, and she let it take her. As she did so she began to hear whispers inside her head, illegible at first, but even though she couldn't make out the words the growing chorus of different voices had clearly malevolent intentions that made her feel cold inside. The chorus grew louder and louder as she could feel herself losing more and more control and she started sinking into a blackness that seemed to come from nowhere that began enveloping her. As she felt the last parts of her mind begin to ebb away a booming voice blasted the others into silence, it was a voice she new well and missed greatly.

"Remember your duty, you are a Sentinel"

Like jumping into a freezing cold river her senses flooded back to her all at once. Without thinking she mumbled

"Max?"

She was stood over the corpse of the Thirin, its head was a mangled mess and she was covered in black spray, her knife had snapped half way at some point and the rest of the blade was probably lodged somewhere inside the creatures skull. She dropped the knife and with gunfire continuing further within the bases grounds she put her earpiece in just in time to hear a broadcast.

"Colonel Laine is dead, this is Major Oliver taking command. All forces consolidate at the bunker entrance and hold there, we need to buy more time for the doctor. Do not let them through!"

She spotted the corpse of another soldier close by and grabbed its rifle before running as fast as she could towards the bunker, she couldn't let the Thirin win today.

Running as fast as she could she charged between hangars and smaller concrete buildings that had long been abandoned, the site was a mess before they had arrived, picked clean by opportunistic scavengers in the aftermath of the Thirin invasion. Nobody had managed to get into the heart of the facility though until now, and as if sensing the importance of their mission the Thirin were throwing everything they had at them. As she barrelled through an old refuelling station she stopped just before exiting and she could see the bunker entrance with it's defences that the Major had set up. A horseshoe shaped ring of portable ballistic walls and military vehicles, some still with their mounted machine-guns, had the entrance encircled with every available soldier firing on the huge number of puppets that just kept emerging from the forest surrounding the base. The bunker itself lie behind them deep within a mountain, it's only entrance being two huge metal doors almost 30 feet tall that had remained sealed the for the entire war. Between her and the defensive line was a large open area that was littered with bodies, there would be no cover to mask her presence from the puppets. She checked the magazine on the gun and let out a sharp breath as she saw it was just under half full, she'd used the last of her ammo against the Thirin. Nothing was left to do but run. Spotting a gap in the puppet ranks she charged forward making a beeline for the command vehicle, one of the few armoured carriers still left operational, and where the Major was likely to be. She managed to get halfway across before the puppets noticed her, but when they did they turned en-mass towards her. She fired at any who came too close causing a few to become entangled and fall giving her some more distance between them. One of the puppets that had been running in front of her stopped dead in it's tracks and spun around to attack her as if it had eyes in the back of it's head and had seen her coming, she shot it in the head and saw the bolt lock back, the gun was empty. She held onto it and kept running, from the line she could hear shouting and she could see soldiers waving franticly at her. The screeching of the puppets was all around her now and she felt one of them grab at her rig only managing to get a hold of her flashlight before it quickly released it as a hail of bullets tore through the group around her as one of the heavy machine-guns opened fire in her direction. She poured all her energy into her legs as she heard her comrades calling for her and made a mad dash for the last few meters, as she got to the defences she felt herself come off the ground as a bear leant over the wall and pulled her over by her rig and dump her unceremoniously behind him before he turned back and continued firing with the others. As she looked around at the soldiers and got her bearings she heard the Majors voice calling out orders from the end of the line and she quickly scrambled towards him. A group of soldiers were huddled around a humvee that was firing along the treeline at more puppets as they emerged, the Major, a doberman, was easy to spot amongst them with his fiery temper and red beret as he barked orders to the group who quickly nodded and ran to other groups further down the line.

He turned around as she got to him and his angry face softened a little, not that any of the others would see it but she had been around him long enough to notice.

"Lieutenant Violet I'm glad to see you're still alive, where the hell have you been?"

"Dealing with a Thirin problem Sir, i'm out of ammo. Where on the line do you need me?"

He handed a mag from his rig to her and she quickly reloaded.

"We're low on ammo so make it count. I need you elsewhere, can you still ride the wave?"

She looked uncomfortable and hesitated for a second,

"Sir you know what happened the last time I did, I don't know if I'll be able to control it this time"

"We're in real danger of being overrun here and if that happens we lose everything we've been fighting for, can you do it?"

She looked around her at the soldiers, they were fighting very hard but the puppet waves were getting larger each time and they were getting closer and closer.

"I need a live puppet..Sir"

"You'll get one"

He turned to a small group nearby and yelled loudly,

"Jenkins I need a puppet, alive. Go over the wall and drag one here"

The soldiers looked at each other with confusion.

"That's a fucking order soldier, do it now!"

She could hear the soldier, a buck, swearing as he climbed over the wall and moved quickly towards a puppet half his size that was still twitching on the floor. He grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and dragged it as the other soldiers covered him. He hoisted it over the wall and clambered over himself just as another wave pushed closer than before and reached where he had just been. As they fired at the horde Violet and Oliver dragged the creature to a corner away from the wall and dumped it on the floor.

"You sure you need me to do this?"

"I have reaper on station and ready to act but I need a target, you're the only one who has a chance of finding it"

She looked back at the puppet, its bright yellow eyes were twitching wildly as it stared back and forth between the two of them, a bullet had torn through its chest and blown a hole through its back paralysing it but leaving it alive.

Oliver could sense her apprehension and crouched down next to her,

"If something looks bad I'll pull you out straight away but I need you to do this, we all need you to do this."

She slowly nodded,

"OK..Here goes nothing"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she grabbed the puppets head and forced it to look at her. It's eyes darted around for a moment before focusing squarely on hers, they became unmoving as if it had suddenly been frozen in time. Just as Max had taught her she slowly let go of her senses and the world around her began to fade out as the sound of hundreds of indistinguishable whispering voices began to creep inside her head. Soon her vision changed and she could see herself through the puppets eyes, her violet and yellow marbled eyes staring blankly down on it. The whispering grew more intense both in number and volume and she found herself being torn away from where she was, her senses darted between different puppets in rapid succession from those that were fighting inside the base to those that were still charging through the forest who had yet to begin attacking. The number of puppets was growing rapidly and it became increasingly difficult to try and focus on any specific one of them. Suddenly, as if it was calling out to her, a louder singular distorted voice boomed through the cacophony of whispers. She forced herself to focus on it and as her senses jumped between puppets deeper into the forest it became louder with every call until she found herself in a small clearing and in the centre was a small concrete building next to a huge metal tower that rose high into the sky, so high that she couldn't see the top.

Oliver looked on unable to do anything as Violet suddenly went limp and slid onto her side, her eyes had turned completely yellow and unmoving. He checked her pulse to make sure she was still alive when a panicked soldier yelled,

"Sir the west walls collapsing!"

He spun up onto his heels and looked over to where the soldier was pointing and saw that the portable defences they had brought with them were bending and cracking under the sheer weight of the puppets attack.

"Maria grab the 50 and follow me!"

A buffalo that had been firing at the horde at the other side of the defences took a moment to register what he had said before she picked the 50 cal up like it was an assault rifle and legged it after him. Oliver jumped into the drivers seat of one of the transport trucks and drove it forwards pressing it against the damaged wall before jumping out and shouting to the squad that had been guarding it to get on the roof. Maria knew what he was doing and as soon as the truck had stopped she was already climbing the side and mounting the gun on the cab roof. The squad quickly followed and started cutting down the puppets with heavy fire. From on the roof Oliver could see across most of the base, there were far too many puppets and they wouldn't last much longer. He quickly made his way back to Violet.

Whichever puppets senses she was borrowing pushed against a tide of puppets that poured out from the building and crawled through a missing section of wall and into a tunnel that had been dug into the floor that looked like savage animals had made. The creature descended further through the darkness until the tunnel opened into a cavern, a dried up underground lake that was filled with nearly a thousand puppets. As the puppet moved through the crowd she could feel the lifeless eyes of the puppets beginning to stare at her, she had a bad feeling about this but there was nothing she could do, she was along for the ride. After a minute the puppet stopped in front of a large undulating black mass in the floor and from its centre a large claw protruded. The claw moved and slowly a huge creature emerged from the darkness, it was nightmarish covered in spikes and tendrils that slowly whipped back and forth. It stared down at the puppet that was less than half its size, it was then that Violet realised she really was in danger as she felt the Thirins red eyes stare through the puppet and at her directly. She tried to withdraw herself back to her body but she couldn't leave no matter how hard she tried. The Thirins tendrils wrapped around the puppet and effortlessly lifted it off the ground until she was staring at eye level with the creature. It opened its mouth and let out a booming roar that seemed to shake the cavern and made her feel extremely cold. She stared in horror as smaller tendrils came out of its mouth and levelled with the puppets head, the ends were made of bone and looked razor sharp. The tendrils moved forward and slowly pushed through the puppets head, instantly she felt agony like no other and inside her head she screamed as loud as she could, the Thirin could sense her pain and although it had no facial expressions she could tell it was getting satisfaction from this. The tendrils withdrew from the puppet allowing her a respite from the pain, she struggled once again to free herself but to no avail. The tendrils levelled once more, this time with her eyes, and she braced herself as best she could for what was to come, but it never did. Her world shuddered and distorted for a moment before going black.

Oliver slid to a stop and scooped Violet in one arm, her body had contorted and convulsing like she was having a seizure.

"Violet. Violet can you hear me?"

He forced one of her eyes open and could see the blood vessels turning black. This was far worse than the last time she had done this and he was kicking himself for making her do it.

"Medic! Medic get over her now. Hold on Violet"

A stag ran over and knelt down next to them as he took his helmet off.

"Shit what the hell happened?"

"She's riding"

The stag looked gob smacked at Oliver before checking her eyes and pulse, her heart was beating faster than anything he had felt before.

"She's got to be nuts. Lay her on the floor, hold her down"

Oliver did as he was told and tried to keep her still as the stag rummaged through her rig,

"What are you doing?"

"James said she's always got a pack on her. Here"

He took a small metal cylinder out of one of her pouches, unscrewed the lid and pulled out an injector pen.

"Pray this works"

He jabbed the pen hard against her thigh and watched as the orange liquid inside drained out rapidly. Within a couple of seconds she stopped convulsing and relaxed her limbs, but her eyes didn't open. The stag pulled her eyelid back, the black faded a little and the normal purple colour began to come back. She gasped and pulled her head away from his hoof, here eyes wide and full of horror till she saw Oliver.

"Radio tower"

"What?"

"They're beneath the radio tower, there's a Thirin in there controlling them"

The stag lent in,

"I got her Sir"

"Make sure she's good"

Violet was still slightly disorientated as the stag checked her over quickly but she could make out Oliver ordering in and air strike and the sound of a jet flying high in the clouds above them. She pushed the stag off her and pulled herself to her feet just as a rapid series of flashes erupted from the base of the radio tower, she watched it twist and buckle before being grabbed by Oliver and pulled into cover behind a humvee as a deafening blast and shockwave from the jets bombs reached them covering the entire area in a dense cloud of dust that made them unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of them. She shouldered her rifle and expected to fight more puppets but there was silence. After a few moments the dust began to settle and as far as the eye could see the corpses of the puppet horde that had been attacking them lay convulsing and melting into puddles of black ooze. Everyone slowly got up from their positions and looked around at the carnage, some of the soldiers jumped over the defences and began checking the puppets to make sure they were dead while the rest looked on in relief. From somewhere amongst them someone asked "Is it over?" when Oliver's radio went nuts.

"Ground this is Reaper, you have a huge horde heading in your direction from the North. Estimate 15 thousand strong, they'll be on you in ten minutes get the hell out of there"

"Fuck sake can't we get a break"

Oliver grabbed his radio,

"Doctor Sinclair we're pulling out grab what you can and get topside now"

All that came back from the radio was static and bursts of illegible speech.

"Doc can you hear me? Doc?"

Again all that could be heard was static. Violet turned and started to run towards the bunker entrance when Oliver called back to her,

"Where the hell are you going?"

"The bunkers got to be lined, I'll get the doc you turn these guys around"

She carried on running, from behind her she could hear him barking orders and the sound of engines starting up.

The bunker went deep into the mountain and was used to house vehicles and other things that the military wanted to keep from curious eyes, now their cold hardened structures were the only places that the Thirin or scavengers hadn't yet raided. She soon reached a huge elevator shaft, she could just make out the shape of a large armoured transporter at the base of the shaft several floors below her. She made her way around the side of the shaft to an emergency ladder built into its side and slid down it to the bottom. As soon as she reached the bottom she grabbed her radio as she continued to run and called into it.

"Doctor Sinclair can you hear me? Doc come in"

The radio crackled and a slightly distorted voice spoke back,

"Violet is that you?"

"Yeah doc listen we're about to be overrun you need to grab what you got and get out"

"But we aren't done yet, we only managed to free a few of the cells"

"It doesn't matter we have to go"

She spotted a number of large metal cases next to a heavy bulkhead door that was open and dashed inside. There were two mammals in chemical suits and respirators inside a small room with another bulkhead behind them with an observation window next to them. They had just closed one of the metal cases and there were more open ones stacked up waiting to be filled. She ignored the two as they tried to stop her and she cranked the bulkhead door open and went inside. The room was huge and lined with large cylindrical tanks with radioactive warning signs painted on them, there were another six mammals in suits inside who were shouting warnings to her to get out but she went straight over to the one that had two silver bars on its arm.

"Violet you have to get out its not safe in here"

"To hell with that listen to me this place is going to fall any minute"

"Fall? I thought the Colonel had this place secured for us to work"

"The Colonels dead Doc and we will be too if we don't leave now"

"But...But we aren't finished I still have to get more cells our our plans won't work without them I mean"

Violet had enough of his babbling and backhanded him making him shut up.

"Listen to me, all of you, there's 15 thousand enemies on their way and we can't stop them, we're leaving with or without you"

The others stared at each other for a moment before quickly dropping their tools, picking up the closed cases and going as quickly as possible out of the room. Violet grabbed and shoved the still stunned doc towards the door,

"Move it doc or i'm leaving you here"

"Yes...Yes lets go. Give me a hand"

He grabbed one side of another case and she grabbed the other side, it was a lot heavier than she had anticipated but never the less they managed to run it back to the elevator just as one of the suits pressed the button and started sending it up. It moved slowly, the trucks extremely heavy weight making it struggle. They locked all the cases into the back of the truck and as the others got into its cab she jumped on the outside next to the driver.

"Listen they're coming from the north so take a left out of the base and move as fast as you can, the convoy will get you as much cover as possible but don't stop until we're long clear of this place do you understand"

The driver nodded rapidly in a panic, as the elevator came close to the top the trucks engines revved and as soon as it stopped at the top the truck pulled off as fast as it could. The screams of the approaching Thirin forces was loud already and getting louder by the second, as the truck pulled out of the bunker entrance it barrelled through what remained of the defences and made a bee line for the bases entrance, ahead of them the convoy was ready and waiting and as soon as the truck turned onto the highway the rest of the vehicles began to move as well except for one humvee with a door open. Violet jumped off the truck and into the waiting humvee, it pulled away as soon as she got inside. Oliver was sat in the front but she didn't stop and climbed straight into the gunners seat and swung the turret round behind them and what she saw made her skin crawl. A cloud of dust was quickly moving towards them that spread as far as she could see and at the base of the cloud were thousands and thousands of abominations vying for their blood.

"Oliver"

"I can see. Get us out of here soldier"

"We're going as fast as we can sir, the trucks slowing us down"

Violet fired towards any creature that broke through the Thirin ranks and charged ahead as the humvee turned sharply. They found themselves on a highway that was filled with abandoned rusting cars that they blew a path through to get here, now the mess of vehicles was helping them as the Thirin horde had to clamber their way over the tops to get to them. The other vehicles fired along with Violet and other soldiers who were leaning out the side of their transports to slow down the horde. The horde was getting closer and it was getting harder to slow them down, as one of the soldiers passed a new box magazine up to Violet she heard Oliver calling over the radio,

"Delta we're almost at the bridge, you better be ready we're bringing company"

Violet looked behind her quickly, the armoured truck was leading the convoy and had just entered the on ramp to the bridge, it was the only way over a deep wide gorge for at least a hundred miles and was their last line of defence. She turned back just in time to see a young Thirin just like the one she had fought earlier leaping through the air at her, she ducked inside just in time as its claws cut straight through the metal roof missing them my inches. She quickly got back onto the gun and shredded its feet with fire as it prepared to jump again. They were now halfway over the bridge when she heard Oliver yell

"Delta now!"

A series of rapid explosions ran up the support struts of the bridge and across the roadway causing a huge section of the bridge to crumble away dropping hundreds of creatures into the valley bellow, dozens more fell off the edge before the horde came to a stop as the convoy accelerated away as it was joined by another humvee. As the they left the horde in the distance Violet climbed back down inside the humvee and finally sat down to rest. They were still several hours away from the safety of the Citadel, but for now it was over.