-8-

Keeeeayyyyaah!

It was a screech that reached their bones. John gave one glance at Sam whose eyes were glued to him through the window overlooking the Ark. The bubble grew to a monstrous size and in a minute spat something huge and dark out. The thing screeched and collided against the walls of the chamber.

Bazooka was the closest thing to it. The gun happy giant was only too pleased to oblige.

The first thing John thought of when he saw the enormous bird was dinosaurs.

It looked like the model of some ancient raptor, which formed some sort of missing link between reptiles and birds. Its head looked like a hammer-head shark's and its body was like a dragons coupled with an arrowhead tail. He did not join in the mayhem of screeches, the sound of flapping wings mixed with the sound of gunfire. The bird thrashed about, and all John did was avoid getting hit by its sharp wings or talons.

He kept his eyes on the core. Another bubble was forming. He knew his weren't the only eyes on it. Phoenix had both her gaze and her gun fixed on the bubble that was forming.

It wasn't a screech this time – it was a thunderous roar that silenced the guns.

The raptor sputtered and finally gave in and fell dead, only a few seconds after another demon as big as Hell Knight sprang through the bubble, only to be greeted by his and Phoenix's bullets.

John sprang over the console and fired his rounds from its back, desperately trying to get the head while Phoenix tackled it from the front. A bullet whizzed by his ear, which he ducked and jumped towards the circular panels, rolling on the floor, barely missing the next monster than was thrown out.

"POET!" He heard Genghis say. "WE HAVE TO STOP THE FUCKING ARK! KEEP ALL EXITS SECURE!"

All soldiers moved to the periphery, except John because he was trying to make his way outwards. He lost count of how many creatures entered or how they look – the only thing he could see with any clarity as heavy bodies lunged at him was the flash of light when the guns discharged, the only thing he felt was his hand moving in unison with the recoiling vibrations of his gun and the only thing he heard was the roaring of the monster and the screams of the men. Blood and body fluids splattered every where. John rolled over to a kneeing position and fired his rounds at the incoming monsters, his finger only leaving the trigger to reload.

He was out of ammo soon enough, he ducked under a table and shouted it out. From somewhere a magazine was slid to him, he caught it and punched it in. He crawled out to find Phoenix standing nearby her face set in stone as she blew the head off one of the imps. John continued to fire, as he tried to move towards the hub entrance to guard it. The closest route was not possible – most of the demons were being flung in that direction.

"Cover me!" he shouted as he decided to take the longer way around. Phoenix moved along with him until he slid sideways towards the entrance and she moved forward to cover Bazooka. She suddenly turned abandoned her heavy chain gun and pulled out her heavy duty pistol.

She had run out, too.

John kept his eye on her as he continued to fire. Why did she give him her magazine? Was she stupid? She would have known she'd be out soon. Suddenly keeping the door safe became a lesser priority in comparison to the woman who looked miniscule as she defended herself against a grotesque creature with only a goddamn pistol.

"Reaper!"

John looked up and caught the pack of magazines that Poet had just thrown to him. Poet was blowing up the demons through a porthole in the Hub wall, above the door, that John had forgotten about.

"Keep that righteous bitch alive!" Poet yelled. He also tossed John a high power double barreled shotgun. He made his way towards the interior of the chaos, looking for Phoenix, whom he didn't find anywhere. He slammed the butt of his gun against an imp who had just pounced on him. The creature fell back; he ripped it apart with his gunfire.

He ducked around a table and blew up a couple more.

The core fell silent and for a minute everyone lowered their guns. John looked around. Where was Phoenix?

"WHERE the fuck is PHOENIX?" Genghis hollered as he finished the mushroomed the last one - huge creature with too many eyes.

John scanned the pile of dead monsters, and found one that was crouched, snarling and struggling with its head ducked under, as though it was trying to bite something.

Please! Don't let it have gotten her! Not for him! He didn't want anyone dying for him.

John was about to aim at it when the ark started to spit out a group of monsters one after the other. They were all similar. Pink, with big heads and horns and dirty yellow eyes. They crouched in a circle around the core for maybe a second and then began running towards the men.

The flurry of gunfire that followed seemed to last forever. John avoided shooting with the shotgun as much as possible and tried to make it towards the imp. One of the pink monsters pounced on to his back and he fell face down into a pool of blood and slime, writhing to get on his back as he fired. John wedged his gun between the pinky's slimy mouth and his face and fired. Its head exploded into a gazillion pieces.

Heaving as he got up he saw that the imp whom he had seen before suddenly looked up and turned its head towards him. Its filthy teeth had blood trickling from the edges. John sighed despondently crouched again, ready to kill it with a vengeance as it jerked suddenly – not at him, but rather it flopped down, on its back. John saw the undersurface of its head had a gaping bullet hole. There was movement between it. John aimed his gun, ready to fire at the emerging demon he assumed Phoenix might have become when the same imp was flung back and he saw Phoenix, her shoulder grazed with scratches and her shift covered with blood, sat up and shook her head. She had a disgusted face when she tried to wipe the blood out of her eyes. She scrambled off the ground and straightened up.

John made to help her when she suddenly pointed her pistol at him, between his eyes. He froze, raising the hand with the shot gun in a gesture of defense.

She only said one word – in a loud, clear, unmistakable order.

"Duck."

Bang.

He obeyed, feeling the heat of the first bullet slicing through the air over head, missing his head – but close enough to make the hair of his head stand straight.

Bang.

The second bullet went over his head as he had crouched to his knees.

Bang.

The third bullet zipped past his head as he fell to the ground. John turned on his back, firing – but stopped when he saw that there was no need.

The pinky with three strategic bullets; through its brain, its heart and its stomach bend over and fell just as he rolled away from its landing site. John flipped on to his knees, firing his chain gun at the packs of pinkies that were coming in. Phoenix stood by his side, standing straight her gun recoiling as she fired rounds in a circular fashion at the increasing number of demons.

"Phoenix!" He tossed the gun to her just as she pulled her pistol back when the rounds were over.

She didn't bother playing with the pistol any more and aimed the shotgun at the heads of each demon. Even in the heat of battle John noticed that she fired only one shot at each demon, that too only in the head between their eyes and it was all that was needed for the goddamn motherfuckers.

John raised himself and they both made towards the hub entrance, through a mess of corpses, blood and empty shells. When they reached the entrance and flattened themselves facing towards the core. Genghis hollered from the north exit.

"Poet! Throw us a couple of SST grenades."

"NO!" Sam shouted. "It'll kill you all. The core is still active."

"We're as good as dead anyway, we're running out of ammo!"

"NO! You don't know what you're gonna be doing!"

"She's right!" Poet yelled.

"POET!" Phoenix shouted, looking up at the porthole. "Where the hell are these things coming from?"

"Hell, itself." John muttered.

"What?"

"Mars, goddamn, it, where else?"

"Smith!" Phoenix shouted. "Were there any incoming frequencies to the base, when the power came on?"

"WHAT?"

"I said, were there any incoming frequencies to the base when the power came on?"

Smith replied with a "Fuuuuck!" followed by a series of shelling. Then he shouted. "Goddamn it! Phoenix, if I had recieved any don't you think I'd have fucking said so?"

"What about the frequencies which the Ark transceiver receives?"

"What transceiver? I don't fucking know about any transceiver."

Phoenix cursed under her breath and then looked up "POET?"

"I'd love to find out if the damn ark would stop teleporting these freaks!"

"I'll do it!" Sam was heard on the comm.

"Goddamn it!" John said as he reloaded.

"What?"

"This is my last magazine."

"MOTHERFUCKER! WHEN IS THIS GOING TO STOP!" Genghis yelled. "That thing's spitting out more and more!"

"Phoenix, there's a high signal pulse signal that's being received by the Ark."

"What signal?" Smith said.

"How high?" Phoenix said.

"I don't believe it!" They heard her gasp.

"WHAT?" Everyone yelled simultaneously.

"It's well over the gamma spectrum! It's undetectable by our transceivers"

"What?" John said.

"It's so high we can't even calculate it. Over ten raised to thirty hertz."

"Huh?" John looked at Phoenix, for an explanation.

"We can't detect it, but the ark can." She said, just before blowing up the head of an attacking imp.

"So how does this help us?" John said.

"We can block it!" Poet shouted.

"What?" Phoenix seemed to be so surprised she actually looked up "How?"

"Phoenix, do you know how to construct a low-pass filter?"

"Maybe."

"Well I can't do it, or the core will fry the eyes you try so hard to protect!"

"Spare me the sarcasm, Poet!"

John didn't understand a word of what Poet said to her after that. It sounded like a whole lot of physics jargon.

"The stuff you'll need is in my kit."

"Where's that?"

"Under the control console."

John slammed his head back in frustration. The control console was on the other side of the room.

"Hey Reaper!"

John looked up. Poet threw down a weapon. John looked at it for two minutes, not believing his eyes. "Where the fuck did you get this?"

"I bought it from the souvenir shop." Poet said sarcastically as John activated the weapon. "Where the fuck do you think Reaper? Borrowed it from the armory of course! Kept it for an emergency. This would qualify to be one."

A message flashed. Identify.

"John Grimm. ID 964456. Rangers Special Ops."

ID rejected. Identify.

John looked up at Poet. Poet shrugged. "Lucky for me you're the first to try it."

"These things are four years old, aren't they?" Phoenix said.

"Wouldn't matter if they were new, we're out of…!"

"Reaper," Phoenix sighed, cutting him off and then aimed at a monster and shot. "They're four years old. They're probably programmed to the previous databases."

Was she stupid? John made a face and said. "So?"

"So, use your bloody RRTS ID, you prat!"

John frowned and said. "John Grimm ID 445682. RRTS Special Ops."

ID Accepted.

"RRTS Special Ops, clearance verified. Handle ID: Reaper."

John couldn't help grinning as he charged the rifle and fired.

Zap!

John eliminated four demons in one go. He nodded at Phoenix who followed him as they made their way around to the control console.

"I need to keep a distance!" John said as he aimed at new incomings.

"Just keep them off my arse and you can keep whatever distance you want!" she said, blowing an imp to pieces.

Stupid arse!...

John shook the memory out of his head as he ducked a monster. Phoenix ducked to the ground when she came closer to the table, pushing away corpses and reached for Poet's kit.

"Fuck! Hobbit!" John screamed as a bullet zipped past his shirt, causing a tear. "WATCH IT! Quinn, how much time will you fucking take?" John yelled.

Phoenix emerged from under the table, panting heavily. "Oh yeah? Why don't you try and get a capacitor from out of the mouth of a goddamn whatever these things are!"

"Just do what you have to!" John said, irritated.

"You do what you're supposed to!" Phoenix snapped as they made their way to the core. The whole ark floor was flooded with monster death. Phoenix kicked away a dead imp and sank to the floor. "I'm going to reach the core, just keep them off of me. And whatever you do, don't aim at the teleportation bubble!"

"We don't have all day, sweetheart." John yelled.

"Just give me my time, love" she drawled and crawled towards the core plates, ducking her head at each formation of the teleportation bubble.

We don't have all day sweetheart!...

Just give me my time, love…

Something seemed to set off in his head. If only he knew what it was. He made a mental note to think over it later. The five minutes she took seemed to be the longest five minutes in the world. John was shot, ducked, rolled, rammed every goddamn demon that emerged out. It was quite a task given the whizzing bullets from the other marines.

"PHOENIX! There's no time!" Genghis yelled.

"Just a minute!"

"THERE'S NO FUCKING TIME!"

Phoenix gave a victorious groan as she slithered out, pushing away the dead creatures in her way. John zapped a pinky that had just leaped onto her and it disintegrated over her head, its pieces mingling with her hair.

She gave a cry of relief as soon as she reached his boots. Then she turned around on her back and John felt her grabbing his pants.

"What the -?"

It happened too fast. Before he could complete, she yanked him down, simultaneously using the shotgun to fire at a point he could not see since he fell unceremoniously on his bottom. John didn't know how to react as she crawled on top of him and forced him to turn onto his front, crawling on top his body and she forced her hand against the back of his head, forcing him to press his face against the bloody floor, as her own face hit his cheek and sank into the back of the crook of his shoulder as something exploded near them. It wasn't a big explosion – but they were too close to the core for it not to affect them if they had not ducked.

There was a growl and a roar and something fell over their heads. John didn't see it, but he knew what it was. It was some part of the demon that was in the middle of transit. From his pressed face, the only thing he saw was the scar on Phoenix's head.

Maybe I did die…

Maybe you did…guess you rose up from the ashes. Like a phoenix…

John squeezed his eyes and tried hard to remember. It was no use. Both the voices in his memory were too faint, too distant. He closed his eyes as sparks fell by his side.

It worked.

Phoenix panted as she heard Genghis say those words. There was no screaming, no more firing, no more roaring.

Neither did she hear the men's hoots of victory or Poet's commendation. She only heard his breathing. Phoenix raised her head from John's back, her heart thumping more out of the proximity to him than the adrenaline rush of their hour long battle.

She removed her hand from Reaper's head, unobtrusively allowing her fingers thread through his hair – but she didn't lever off of him, allowing herself to feel his back rise and fall with his breathing against her own laboured respiration. The only thing going on in her head was that he was alive and okay. When he raised his head, she decided that she had given herself too much liberty.

She rolled off him, and sat up and watched as he scrambled up. Her plans to scoot away from him were stopped by him suddenly grabbing her shoulder and then her face, turning it around to check for any injuries, wiping off the blood to see if it was hers or something elses.

"Looks okay."

She jerked her head out of his hand and tried to get up. Her legs wouldn't move.

"Shit!" she whispered, looking at her knees. For a minute she wondered if she had lost her limbs. She couldn't feel them.

"What?" John pressed his hand against her thighs.

She wanted to flinch her thighs, but they didn't cooperate.

"I - I can't move them."

She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut as Reaper squeezed her thighs, her knees and calves to check them.

"Does anything hurt?"

She shook her head furiously.

"Can you feel me touching you?"

She could have cried when he said those words. She bit her lip enough to draw blood and nodded. She could cry because his gentleness was too familiar.

"Hey! Hey!" She heard him whisper. "Give it a few seconds." His hand came on her shoulder. "It's probably because you were closer to the blast. You shouldn't have been shielding me, you know. It should have been the other way around."

When she opened her eyes, they were dry and devoid of any emotion, she snorted. "Because you're the guy, you get to be on top?"

He gave her that blasted cocky grin. The one that had sent her knees to water then, the one that didn't seem to help now, either. The only reason she didn't kill him for doing that to her again was probably because she knew he hadn't smiled that way in years.

"Hey," he said, softly. "You could nurse my ego, just a little bit!"

"Phoenix!" Genghis rushed to her side and put his arm around her shoulder. She allowed herself to lean into him for support, and for keeping away from John's hands. "You okay, girl? You did a fine job! What's the matter? What's wrong?"

Phoenix gave a small smile and folded her legs, when she was able to.

"Nothing, Sarge, just a bit of aftershock"

"Aftershock is a something I'd never like to see you use as an excuse, baby." Genghis said. He took her arm around his shoulder and hoisted her up.

She tried to push Genghis away saying, "I'm fine, really."

"Yeah right, and Gryffin's just got a boo-boo."

"What?" she turned around and saw Gamgee support his brother whose neck had a wound.

She heard Reaper curse and then start off towards the o'Rileys. Phoenix frowned and looked at Genghis and then touched face. There was an angry wound on his forehead. "You got a boo-boo, yourself, sergeant."

Genghis smiled at her. "Come on."

---

"He's okay, he's clean." Dr. Grimm said as she analyzed Gryffin's blood.

"I won't turn, right?" Gryffin said, holding the dressing tightly against his wound. Gamgee was wiping the blood off his face.

"No." She said, giving him an assuring smile. Phoenix silently sighed with relief.

Genghis pressed the dressing on his head and Bazooka lay on the bed next to her, wincing as Reaper injected him with an antibiotic. He had a bad head wound. Hobbit more shaken than hurt. Smith, too had minor wounds, and had already left for the Hub, to replace Poet who had just come into the infirmary. Sandman was the one with a badly dislocated shoulder. Phoenix frowned when she saw Reaper, who had been part of the crossfire more than anyone else had miraculously been spared of any sizeable wound.

She hissed suddenly, flinching when Poet applied an antiseptic pack on the scratches of her arms. He hadn't said a word to her. She wasn't about to start any conversations. She had pissed him off, she knew it. But she had done it for his own bloody good.

Poet scowled at her as he went to get the injection. Reaper came up to her and said, quietly "You saved my life."

"I get paid for it." She said, nonchalantly.

"Why did you give me your ammo?"

She looked up at him. His eyes she saw was a unique hazel green. Funny – she had always thought them to be brown. Maybe it was because she always saw them in the dark.

"You needed it."

"You knew you had your last set of rounds in your gun."

Because I didn't want you to die, you stupid fool! She wanted to say. "Didn't seem to strike me, then." She said, instead.

Poet came with the antibiotic, and grabbed her arm a little forcefully; she winced painfully as he jabbed the injection. She saw Reaper's surprise at his actions, but he said nothing. She allowed him to be a little rough; it would help him get his annoyance out.

"Okay," Genghis said, all of a sudden, alerting their attention. "Somebody tell me what the fuck just happened?"