Chapter 3

The Lykanstrata Theatre was cordoned off when they arrived, but the crowds pressed against the barrier were restive and unhappy. Soldiers were escorting struggling teenagers out of the building. The woman, Agent Brea, as Cross had been told by a smirking virus, walked straight towards the cordon and the busy-looking officer giving orders.

"Captain Oakes? Report." He took one look and came straight to attention, poorly disguising the relief on his face.

"Part of the barrier collapsed. Estimate fifty civilians still inside. The band are inciting the rest to storm the barriers and join them."

"Dammit, didn't they hear about the bomb threat?"

"They're ignoring it, ma'am." He looked at Cross, then back at Brea. "Reinforcements?"

"Blackwatch," she replied.

"With all due respect, sir, we're trying to avoid civilian casualties." Cross bridled silently at the comment, but he couldn't say it wasn't unearned. It was curious that she'd name Blackwatch, but more that a rank and file soldier knew the name and reputation of a top secret unit. He wanted some answers. Worse, he knew Mercer already had them and wasn't saying.

"They're here because they've worked with our new ally before." She gestured at Mercer. Oakes' expression was unreadable.

"Then get to the inner cordon. Keep your ally safe-" That was when the screaming started. The teens struggling with the troops were suddenly fighting to get out, to get away from something inside the building. The troops went immediately from forcing them out, to trying to turn the panicked flight into an ordered evacuation as the people clawed at each other in their haste to escape.

Brea pushed through the cordon, the troops clearing a way for her, but the force of the crowd began to push her back. Mercer took two steps and jumped, landing on the markee board above the entrance. One hand hooked over the edge and he dropped out of sight, parkouring across the wall and into the entrance, over the heads of the crowds. Cross swore, jumping the barricade and pushing in front of Agent Brea as she fought forward through the press of bodies. He began to force a path for her.

"Get her to the building!" Oakes bellowed over the pandemonium. Cross yelled an acknowledgement as his men formed up, a linked escort pushing their way through the crowd. He glanced for Captain Oakes, saw the man up on the barricade co-ordinating the evacuation. Good. Someone had to.

A teenager blundered into him, trapped between Cross and the crowd behind, lost his footing and fell. Cross lifted his leg, tried to step over the boy, felt something break under his foot as the throng pushed him back. He kept moving, smacked another to the side with his rifle-butt to get them out of the way. He had orders, to get Brea to the theatre. Whatever the enemy was, it was in there and must not get out. The line was the door. Blackwatch held the line. That was all that mattered.

He heard Winder curse to his left, pushing a group aside by main force. Two hands, linked, crossed his chest like a barrier. When the pair would not move to one side or the other, pressed into him by the crowd, he forced the hands apart, saw them lose their grip as fingers broke, and pushed forward through the gap. The door lay just ahead, the crowd frenzied and clawing at each other in their haste to escape.

Then he saw what lay through the entrance, and only training kept him moving forward. From blue-grey clouds hovering below the raised ceiling, scaled green tentacles reached, roving over the crowd. With voracious speed they struck, snatching up victims and pulling them back into the clouds, portals, he guessed. Then a shower of gore and viscera shot forth, sprayed the crowd, joined the red mess that coated the floor and the screams redoubled as the tentacle returned for more prey. This was wrong, in a way that even Hope, Idaho had not been, but he narrowed his focus. Target ahead. It needed to die.

A tentacle as thick as a Redlight Hydra snatched up a brown-haired girl from the stragglers still struggling to get out of the door. He shouldered his rifle, fired a three-round burst into the thick scales. It did nothing, hell, he hadn't expected it to, but he'd shot Zeus with more effect. As it pulled her back, her ribs smashed in its crushing grasp, he shifted his aim and shot her through the head. She slumped just as her body was pulled through the portal. Another tentacle swept out, aiming for a soldier, and a black blade lashed out from the ceiling, carving a little off it before it skidded and struck sparks across the scales. What good were his weapons, if Mercer couldn't fucking damage it? Didnt matter. This was the line. He would hold it here. The MIST troops were evacuating the last of the civilians, throwing them bodily towards the entrance and others firing into it -

- there! Moving too fast to be human, a twisted pale shape darted into the crowd, tearing and ripping with teeth that did not belong in its oddly feline face. He aimed, held his fire. There were too many civilians in the way for the bullets to strike it, he'd just be wasting ammo.

"Forget the creature. Shoot the NMCs, the second you get a shot," Brea ordered, crouching beside him. She'd drawn a handgun, aiming and firing at something on the ground, and he saw one of the pale shapes go down as its ankle smashed.

"Got it." He looked for somewhere to get height above the crowd, dismissed the idea as a tentacle smashed the soundbooth above him. Mercer could have the roof. God knows the virus would be right at home among the tentacles.

"Shoot the NMCs - the pale things. Evacuate the civvies," he ordered over the radio, knowing his men would follow.

"Hold the line here," Agent Brea ordered - and who exactly was this woman anyway? - and jumped the row of seats in front of him. Was she really trying to get closer to it? She fired again, and immediately the tentacles' wild flailing stopped. They struck with deadly purpose, straight towards her as she rolled into cover further down the rows. A single guiding intelligence controlled each movement, Cross saw, but it had less grasp of tactics than Elizabeth Green. He hoped it had less raw power, picking off another NMC as it closed on Brea.

The smaller creatures seemed to be gathering from around the hall, ignoring the tentacles that smashed them as casually as the building. The last of the civilians were nearly clear, the crowd thin enough to snipe the creatures among them. As he shot a third, Brea diving behind an aisle stand, the tactical part of his mind noted that the NMCs had been hampering the evacuation. Now they were trying to block the doors, attacking from behind the ranks to force troops into the killing ground of the portals. Maxwell had ducked into the ticket office, using the counter for height to snipe the creatures as Detweiler secured the way in. He picked off another NMC heading for Brea's cover, hoping their heavy weapons support would get here soon.

Cross saw a flash of white on one of the tentacles, Mercer running the length of it, blade trailing to part the scales, and if the treetrunk-like limb wasn't badly damaged it was still trying to throw him off, twisting on its length to grip him as he dodged, and then inevitably, there was a scream. Brea, struggling, kicking, was lifted from the floor. To Cross' utter shock, the MIST soldier beside him tore off his helmet, standing up in clear view as the agent's head turned, her gaze meeting the soldier's and then the stands exploded and he was thrown back as consciousness fled.

###

"Aya!" Without thinking she turned her head towards the new voice, broke eye contact with the soldier as the tentacle pulled her towards the portal. Her eyes locked on a different gaze, ice-blue in a shifting mass of tentacles that dropped from the ceiling, obliterating the stands by Blackwatch.

...overdive...

And time stopped for an instant. She staggered, her genetics adapting as the DNA she'd replaced tried to change, to die, to remain something else, and then her new body stood. A writhing mass of black and red was pulled back through the portal, clawed edges grating on the green scales. She was firing even as the last of the biomass vanished. A hand - Mercer's, how? never mind - pushed her clear as the lights above rocked, torn apart as a new tentacle like a tree-trunk speared back through the hole. His hand was burning up as he pulled it back. Mercer reeled, staggered towards the wall.

"Infect," he was muttering, his arm up against the wall, his head leaned against it, hiding his face. "Infect, consume..." The scream that echoed in her mind was nothing human, and abruptly the twisted tentacles went insane. Flailing blindly and untargeted, they slammed into walls, shattered chairs, cracked the walls to show daylight as something pulled itself forward from the clouds. Something dark green and red and black, all mouth and teeth and eyes between the teeth, and red-black tendrils tearing it apart from inside...

"Cover him," she yelled to the nearest troops, running forward, ducking under a flailing tentacle. A red-black tumour bulged from the green scales, exploded from it above her head as a red-black tendril erupted, struck toothily downwards at its still conjoined parent like a snake. A spatter of fluid showered her as she rolled aside, felt her body heat up burning out the infection before it could get a grip. Hurdling a shattered chair back, she slid into the blood-soaked aisle, regaining her balance before her feet could go from under her, and then she was running again. Jump the rafter as it came down, duck as a tentacle smashed the chairs to matchwood, keep a hand up to shield her eyes as the splinters tore her cheek open. It's mouth was gaping, reeking, the eyes between its teeth twisting and popping as diseased flesh rose and twisted. She fired, the automatic utterly ineffective against the thing even if she could hit something vital while running. She didn't need to. It rotated in the nest of tentacles, gaped at her, baring teeth like knives as the eyes between them focused. Made you look...

...overdive...

Time was hers, something wrong with the borrowed flesh she moved to as there always was, but a twist of will and she burned it clear to DNA she could use. The extra mass folded, tore, decayed to give it the shape she needed, the shape she would live in. Caught in a body too small, the creature tried to expand, tore itself apart as the mitochondria rejected it utterly. Something lived, and something died.

Eve stood up in the middle of the ruin of something that had once been a nightclub, and something else that should never have been, and drew her second first breath of that day. No time to think. She reached out to the NMCs, paused them with a thought now another will could not fight hers.

"Mercer?" The virus creature was still leaning against the wall, head bowed, red and black tendrils coiling up and down his arms. "Mercer!" The hooded head came up with a growl, and she took a step back as the blue eyes locked on her, ravenous. The NMCs padded up behind her and sat. Her will suppressed the mitochondria, cooled them, told them not to fight. Better them than the troops under that predatory gaze. "Food?" What passed her was barely human, tendrils digging into patchwork flesh and feathers as the once-human things melted and screamed as they were subsumed. It was not pleasant. It was fast.

"Blackwatch, deploy viral scanners. Burn any Blacklight that's not him." And now that was done, she was back to the script she'd said so many times.

"Lieutenant Reeve, casualties to the tent, triage outside. Sergeant Hill, liaise with perimeter. Keep the press out. Sergeant Waddon, structural detail - shore it up, make it safe and start recovery for anyone trapped."

"Director? Where should I detail Captain Oakes?" She stopped at Hill's confused enquiry. Oakes was alive? Hope quickly bubbled and she quashed it. "To me. I want his tactical assessment ASAP." Oakes should have been the first casualty. The lights came down, Oakes was pinned, and she spoke at the funeral, forever and ever, for always, until now.

"Get viral detectors to the triage tent. Let Blackwatch handle matters on disposal of infected matter, they've got the experience." She ignored the mass of tentacles slowly turning back into a human form behind her. The NMCs would have had to be shot anyway. She hoped fourteen would be enough. No sense stopping a twisted NMC only to unleash a hungry Blacklight.

"Agent Brea?" Captain Oakes reported.

"Status of the inner barrier?"

"Never breached." Never happened in all her memories.

"Captain, co-ordinate with Specialist Cross. Check that the civilians are clear of the virus or NMC infection and start releasing them. Then I want a full strategy meeting at HQ. Call Captain Saddler up to take over clear-up here."

"Ma'am, Captain Saddler notified me that he is still onsite at the last mission." She frowned.

"Blackwatch should have been there three hours ago. Have there been complications?"

"Ma'am, Blackwatch rejected Captain Cross' request. They state that Captain Cross was seconded for the duration of the mission, and has no command authority."

"Really?" she said flatly, looked across at the Blackwatch Captain, pulled out from under the rubble and now directing his troops while a medic tried to stitch his head wound.

"Madigan relayed that, as the mission is complete, General Kherber is demanding the return of the Captain and the Blacklight entity to Blackwatch custody." She did not need her powers to see where that would go.

"Not happening. Blackwatch H.Q. is impractical. Ask Director Fury if the helicarrier could intercept."

"Yes, ma'am." There was a pause "What reason should I give?"

"Because if I want to call out a General who's not doing his job, I'm not doing it on that General's own base!" Her voice cracked with the effort of not swearing, and she reminded herself to keep it calm. She was the officer, she was in charge. Oates stepped away, had the discussion quietly over the radio as she focused on the theatre. No more NMCs, no twisted DNA. The few areas she couldn't see were shrivellling, reducing to a single humanoid form. Good.

"Captain?" she asked, impatiently.

"Director Fury says always a pleasure ma'am."