Chapter Eighteen
The Baron of the Night
Kyle sometimes wondered when it had become a habit for him to hold other people's lives in his hands. Specifically, when had a professional obligation (an exchange of money for his boots on the ground) had turned so ingrained, he barely gave it all a second thought anymore?
Harran? Brecken's Tower?
The beginning of the Fall, when too many people had looked to him anytime something had as much as smelled wrong?
Anyway— none of that mattered tonight. Tonight wasn't routine. Tonight, the life he carried around with him was the very same life he'd been fighting to protect ever since the first time he'd almost lost it for her. It didn't matter how much ground they'd covered since or how often she'd told him she'd forgiven him. Kyle was never— ever—going to forget the day he'd come to her door with a pair of handcuffs on his belt and guilt eating him alive.
It'd been his plan to bring her to Rais.
His fuckup.
His mistake to fix.
Just as every single shitty turn her life had taken because of that one choice, all the way down to how she'd ended up in Villedor. No way in hell he'd let her pay for that, too.
Pay any more than she already has, you mean.
His face drawn into a scowl, Kyle stepped up to the edge of the overpass. He snatched up the rope, swung himself off the ledge, and slid down to follow the shadows as they began to gobble up the land below. The descent was quiet; just him, the wind whistling by softly, and his thoughts. Thoughts he fought hard to keep steady.
On his mission.
On the target.
His soles touched the ground. Gravel crunched under him as he took a step, and Kyle stood motionless, one hand on the rope and holding it taut while his filter got to work, snatching up his vicinity with tried precision.
Except there was jack all to see, was there.
A meshed fence stood about three meters ahead of him. Vines had been tearing it down over the years, ripping the links open and bowing it towards the ground. They'd have no trouble getting over it. From there on it'd be a steady downwards angle along a hillside full of solar panels.
His eyes cut left, then right.
The path he'd come down on was some sort of maintenance road, now blocked ever so often by rubble from the overpass when the bombs had taken a pass. It was clean though. Vibrant, even, full of weeds choking out every inch they could get a foothold on.
Something moved; a small, furry thing, which scurried from one cover to the next, diving into a bushel of grass. But the mouse, slash, rat, slash little-gerbil-dude mattered about as much as the two Biters loitering nearby did. The slouching leftovers were too far away to ping as genuine trouble.
No. Trouble would start once they'd gone down the hill.
The rope in Kyle's hand jostled. He stepped to the side, two seconds before Aiden touched down next to him. Hakon followed.
Now that they were all assembled—
His voice low, Kyle turned to Hakon and said, "Remember, two clicks means we're in position. Three means we go. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah. What is it you Americans used to say? This isn't my first rodeo?" Readjusting his grip on his pack, Hakon offered Kyle a tense smile. "You can count on me, Crane."
"Mhm."
"But you know what wouldn't hurt?" Hakon added in a tone that was the dictionary definition of forced cheer. " A bit of encouragement. An I believe in you? You've got this? Good luck?" Hakon frowned. "Anything?"
"Just get it done, Hakon."
"You got it, boss. Getting it done. I'll see you in the morning." And with that, Hakon was off, carrying a key component to tonight's plan on his back.
"You sure this'll work? Not cause us more grief?" Aiden murmured quietly. His scepticism was understandable, but Kyle didn't have the time for it.
"Stick around and find out, or climb back up and remain forever clueless," he told him before he pointed to the fallen fence. "You remember our route?"
Aiden nodded. "Down the slope, straight to the military convoy. Cross it, then hold at the tank until we signal Hakon. After that it's through the concours, then a hard left. We pass on the first door and go for the stairs at the side instead, then take them up to the second floor. If something's on us, I drop this up on the platform—" He tapped one of the two UV flares fastened to his harness. "—and then we go in."
"Okay. You remember. Now, if we get separated at any point—whether that's down the hill, at the convoy, doesn't matter—you have five minutes after the signal to catch up with me. Miss it and I go in alone. Do not try and find me."
Aiden had been keeping his eyes on the swivel, but at that note they jumped right to Kyle. "You know I don't have a watch…?"
. . .
"Right. Just— try not to get lost."
"I won't."
Kyle grunted. "Eyes up," he said, grabbing his mask and yanking it back over his nose and mouth. "And stay close."
Night Hunter had been one of many labels Harran's survivors had taken with them after the Quarantine had been broken. Theo and Matheo had been their actual names — and to be perfectly fair, they'd been children. They'd earned the name when they'd terrorized Old Town, sure, but at the end of the day, they looked kinda wimpy in comparison to what'd followed in their footsteps.
And because not everyone subscribed to the Encyclopaedia that'd come out of Harran, those Night Hunters had all earned themselves different names all across Europe. And the world, Kyle always presumed, right before he'd aggressively avoid thinking about the other side of the Atlantic. That way lay uncontrollable sobbing.
Most names were born out of legends, rather than any real close encounters (something about the eviscerated not being very chatty), but even so it was real damn easy to figure out what they'd been coined for.
A few his favorites included highlights such as Night's Thane, the Greenish Goblin, Krampus, Krampus's dad, and the Baron of the Night.
The last one fit pretty damn well all across the board, because wherever one of those fuckers decided to settle, the night always seemed to organize itself around one singular purpose: the Baron's whim. And since each Baron came with its own murderous kinks, you never quite knew what you'd be in for until it was too late.
So Kyle walked into tonight with an open mind, ready for everything and anything, only to immediately regret just how open he'd left the damn thing.
They hadn't made it halfway down the hill when he felt it: a touch of pressure swelling up against him; almost as if he'd waded out across an invisible threshold. One which had separated plain air and simple thoughts from a prickle of static and a wet blanket being thrown over his mind.
Or like he'd stepped into fog. Literal, tangible, brain fog. Except this fog came with a sense of purpose. An intent. Like a placating inwards pull.
It freaked him the fuck out, but what was he supposed to do?
Freeze?
No, Kyle allowed himself no more than two missed steps before he resumed his forward momentum, which carried him all the way to the bottom of the hill and over a bent section of yet another wire fence.
Kyle stopped by the fence, pushed it down some to give Aiden a chance to climb over (the kid carried more gear, it felt like the right thing to do), and then they both ended up crouched at the edge of the parking lot, thick bushels of grass tickling at their chins and a cool breeze rolling against their backs.
All while the fog in Kyle's head condensed. Grew into a presence of its own. Insistent.
Sure, after what'd happened at the Night's Concord he'd kind of expected this. And now came the part where he dealt with it and ignored it just as aggressively as he'd ignored the Lady Séraphine.
Teeth ground together, Kyle took a look around. Nothing had seen them yet and Kyle intended to keep it that way. Staying low, he left the weedy cover and aimed for the military convoy that'd been left to rust under a coating of rancid (and poisonous) gunk. From there on it was a matter of remembering the path he'd mapped out from above, navigating through the vehicles, one sharp turn after the other. They passed police cars. Armored people carriers.
And guess-the-fuck-what; the stupid-ass fog remained, distantly annoying and ever present, but strangely enough not at all hostile.
Or loud.
Or particularly intrusive.
There was no comparing it to what Kyle had felt at the Night's Concord, and even though he came permanently equipped with a headache these days, the thing rummaging around in his brainpan right now wasn't responsible for it. If anything, the pain dulled, like some sort of valve had been popped open, releasing a portion of the tension headache that wouldn't leave him the fuck alone.
He continued to freak out in silence, and when they reached the literal tank they'd been aiming for, Kyle signalled Aiden to stop before he gave the kid a good long look.
"You still good?" he asked, which earned him a quick sideways glance from Aiden and what amounted to a confused bob of his head.
"No second thoughts about going in? No voices in your head?"
"No, I'm—" Aiden's eyes above his mask narrowed. "What?"
"Never mind." Grimacing, Kyle set a hand around his radio and pressed his thumb down twice.
Then came the waiting game, which he spent breathing shallowly through his mask, not at all eager to suck down the fumes saturating the air. But even breathing carefully as he was and with a decent mask, it didn't take long before his lungs burnt (and not to mention his eyes, which he'd been squeezing tears out of at the regular since they'd stepped foot into the convoy) — but fuck it, right? The gunk kept the Volatiles away and that was really all he needed.
"C'mon Hakon," he whispered, "don't prove everyone who's told me you're a shit-stained chicken right."
"What do we do if he does?"
"We go in anyway, that's what." Easier said than done that'd be, especially with the night shift having arrived. They appeared as soon as the threat of sunlight fell low enough, and while most moved away from the area, a not to be sneezed at amount adapted a movement pattern that kept them close.
He counted them.
Two patrolled the concourse they'd have to cross, coming and going as they walked out of sight on one end. One walked up and down the roof of the showroom to their right, while yet another loitered on the office building's roof to the left.
Overall, not that many. Less than he'd feared for sure, and with only one truly worrying him: the fucker up on the office roof.
Forget the Biters in their path, which'd turned into lumps of shadows in the gloom. They couldn't see any better at night than Aiden did, and as long as the kid didn't shine his flashlight straight at them they'd be none the wiser. And forget the occasional amber glow smeared against the dark where other Infected shuffled or darted to wherever they were headed, too. They could be avoided.
No, this one particular asshole worried him because it hadn't moved once since it'd taken up position. It was a lookout. An honest to god dedicated spotter with a decent sightline and actual patience. There would be no slipping past it unless they went the long way around, meaning they'd either have to climb over a debris field on one side or push through a tightly fenced off military staging area on the other.
Both sucked.
But if push came to a violent shove, then—
His radio clicked twice, pulling Kyle's attention away from cobbling together an alternative plan.
"Fucking finally— get ready," he whispered and gave his radio's transmit button three quick taps before counting his way through the silence. Or what passed for silence anyway; with all those night time bugs having to compete with the moans and groans and snuffing of every single complication between here and Kyle's goal.
At the count of fifteen, the silence was shredded.
Fireworks took to the skies, their whistles, pops, and cracks forming a wall of noise and light originating from three positions beyond the parking lot off to the left.
Their locations hadn't been chosen at random, but picked with as much precision as Kyle could manage without first having had the chance to walk the area himself. Had it been too close to where they were, it might have reached too far and ended up drawing more Infected towards them than they needed, which would clog up their path with stragglers and make their approach more difficult, rather than easier.
But find the right distance; the perfect spot that'd give the impression the hunters could get there before their prey bolted, and you'd catch just the right kind of attention.
"Hold," he whispered.
Calls for a chase echoed from factory wall to factory wall and every Volatile in sight quit what it was doing in favor of aiming straight for the fireworks. Including the lookout.
"Hold," Kyle repeated, getting ready. The second there was a pause in the rush, giving them an opening, he'd—
—the fog swirling through his mind grew tight and a sensation not unlike a net dragging through water passed over him.
Off on the left, some of the Volatiles that'd been thudding towards the fireworks stopped. It was an ambling, gradual halt. Cautious. Alert. Because what else had he expected? That the Night Hunter was just going to let Kyle mess with his buddies?
Of course not. That'd have been too damn easy.
But what he hadn't expected was that he'd have to grapple with the same suggestion that'd just made the Volatiles (quite literally) heel. Kyle ground his teeth together. No. Kyle wasn't going to heel. Fuck that shit. He took one hard look at the concourse, then snapped his hand down on Aiden's shoulder, and rose to sprint straight ahead.
His timing was sloppy, but it worked.
Well.
Kinda.
Disaster waited—patiently—until they'd cleared the open space and gone left, with their next objective (the stairs) no more than six meters from him. Six long, long meters.
Aiden's flashlight—which'd been bouncing around Kyle during the mad dash—suddenly cut away. "Crane! Watch out!"
Kyle's head snapped around.
A shadow leap from the adjacent building onto their target hall. It was more compact than a Volatile and moved with quick, jerky motions as it darted for the ledge of the roof. There, it turned over in a sideways vault and practically slid down the horizontal wall, its claws raking at concrete. Halfway down, it pushed off with a hard shove.
And where was it headed? Straight for Kyle.
In a second between Kyle diving out of the way and the Night Hunter hitting the ground, Kyle managed to get a good enough look at it.
It had a wide, stocky torso built for tackling, and thick, long limbed arms. Whatever clothes it'd once worn had been reduced to a singular belt, its leather fused into meaty hips. Spurs rode the ridge of its shoulders. More of them crowned its head.
The Night Hunter hooked clawed fingers into the asphalt, stopping its slide. When it turned, its eyes snapped to Kyle. They were lidless, round, and glowed with the same firefly amber as the web of arteries pulsing at its neck.
But glowing or not, they were strikingly human still. Much as its scaled and lumpy face.
The Hunter screamed at him; a furious, throaty rattle of a scream that came with hooks snagging at Kyle's thoughts, tearing at him. Like he was a thing to be yanked out. To be discarded. To leave and never return.
Kyle ignored the sensation. Vigorously.
The Hunter darted forward, quick as a bullet, and almost caught itself on Kyle's machete being swung in a warding arc. A feint. It dropped its shoulder, ducked away from the blade, and made the mistake of trying to catch Kyle off guard.
Its arm thrust forward, and with a sound not unlike a squelching whip crack, it shot one of those stupid-ass tentacle things at Kyle's flank.
An old trick.
Almost as old as the fireworks.
Kyle's machete chopped through the attack.
The scream that followed was one part pain and one part overwhelming fury, but Kyle didn't stick around to figure out which half won. He followed Aiden (who'd done exactly as he'd been told to: keep going no matter what) up the stairs.
There'd been two reasons why Kyle had wanted to go in through the emergency exit hanging off the side of the building: one, quicker access to the floor they needed to go into; two, rather than sporting a railing, these stairs had been fully encased in a cage. The cage had a gate at the bottom which hadn't yet come off its hinges, and Kyle prayed to his lucky dice it'd stay this way as he grabbed the gate and pulled it closed behind him.
Not that he had to pull too hard. The Hunter threw itself at him without a heartbeat to spare, slamming the gate shut for him. Kyle flipped down the locking bolt (it was flimsy by today's standards, it wasn't gonna hold) and went up taking anywhere between two to four steps at a time, swinging around the corners like his ass was on fire.
The Hunter didn't bother with stairs. Or with the gate. It climbed straight up, following Kyle's every step, leap after leap. The whole structure groaned and rattled under the misuse. Metal shrieked and snapped. Maybe that was the sound of the whole fixture coming down— or maybe it was the Hunter tearing through the cage— or maybe it didn't matter, and the fog, slash, net in Kyle's head was going to fuck him over long before the chase did.
He couldn't ignore it anymore. Couldn't shove it to the back of his mind, not with how it'd coiled itself into a rope made from anger. A rope which lashed at Kyle every moment he was near the damn thing biting at the cage.
Then—from one beat to the next—the lashing stopped and the Hunter recoiled, thrown off by a sudden burst of UV light scorching it.
Kyle winced as the dense light got him in the face. Sharp pain sunk in deep. But he'd cope. Pain was far familiar territory and much preferred to having his mind lashed.
"Door," he wheezed, even before he'd hit the platform. Aiden, still doggedly on target, had already wedged the crowbar behind the wooden plank bolted across the door. The plank flew off before Kyle could catch his breath. They moved forward together, yanked the door open, and pushed on through, the UV light pouring in around them.
Kyle tore his mask off, gulping down air. His eyes cut left. Then right. Time to get his bearings.
They were exactly where the blueprints said they'd be: on an overhead walkway running above a service hall packed with heavy machinery and equipment left behind by the military and their GRE buddies.
He looked up.
Lights? Yeah. Lights. Heavy duty UV lamps had been spaced out along the ceiling. They weren't going to do him and Aiden any good, but they'd be crucial for tomorrow.
Outside, the Hunter's screeches turned to stuttering calls. The noise—along with the net that'd come back to drag at Kyle's thoughts—moved away from him.
How was that for another freaky sensation? You weren't supposed to hear or feel shit in your head literally plod off into the distance like footfalls.
Kyle's teeth resumed clenching.
A second ticked by. Glass shattered. Somewhere. The noise echoed through the hall, followed by the clink of shards hitting metal and concrete. Next to that, things were deathly quiet.
The fireworks had stopped already.
"Where is it?" Aiden whispered. His voice was no longer muffled by his mask, but came up shaky.
"Ground level. But it won't be for long. Move."
Aiden didn't need to be asked twice. He peeled out of the UV light's bubble (he'd stayed in it, while Kyle had avoided it), and headed off to the right and into a murky gloom.
While the flare didn't illuminate much, it gave enough shape to the world that if they moved carefully, Aiden wouldn't need his flashlight. Meaning, theoretically, they'd manage to sneak into the control room before the Hunter or any of its friends found them.
That'd been the plan, at any rate. Except then Kyle felt icy, malicious glee take a bite out of his spine and the plan fell apart. Metal clanked below. A chain clinked. A second after that, two stuttering clicks bounced into the silence, calling at each other from across the wide hall.
Taunts.
The Hunter knew exactly where he was, didn't it?
It didn't have to guess; to hear their footsteps or smell him or Aiden creep along the walkway.
It knew.
Kyle picked up the pace. He grabbed Aiden's shoulder. "Run," he hissed, and with his hand still fastened tight, pushed the kid forward, into the dark. Dark for Aiden, anyway. Kyle saw just fine.
The overseer's office wasn't far. It stood at the end of the walkway, surrounded by two layers of metal fences and gates, all heavily secured with caged UV bulbs.
All the gates were open. The fences shredded. It was the only sign of destruction he'd seen so far and it continued on once he'd shoved Aiden through it all and they reached the overseer's office.
The place had been turned upside down and inside out. There were upended chairs. A splintered table. Dirt (and long ago dried blood) caked the floor, and what was left of an undeterminable count of people littered the corners. Scraps, really. Bone and cloth and tattered gear.
At the backs stood a reinforced wall. It'd been draped in thick GRE tarp at some point, but the tarp had been torn off. Scorch marks ran along the bared wall and down a wiggly line along the solidly sealed door. Someone'd tried to— what? Weld their way through?
Tried and failed, obviously.
Kyle's chin snapped up and his eyes cut away from the wall. The office had a wide window up front, the glass shattered and reduced to blood-tipped teeth. Beyond those teeth and faintly illuminated of what was left of the UV flare's glow, a stocky shape leapt from a parked cargo lift and hit the second floor walkway. Two more followed it. They were leaner. Taller.
The Hunter had brought friends.
Kyle made a choice.
Not taking his eyes off the Hunter and the two Volatiles as they approached, he yanked the GRE key from his satchel. "Aiden. Take it."
"What?"
"The key. Get in there, call Alberto, and have him walk you through getting this place back online."
" What?" Aiden snapped back. "And what are you going to do? Fight them off by yourself?"
"I'll manage." Distantly, his sense of self preservation lit itself on fire. "Now take the damn thing."
The key vanished from Kyle's hand and Kyle stalked forward. He didn't turn around. He didn't even think (much) about what'd happen if the door's lock had depleted its battery or if Aiden couldn't figure out the key.
He thought very little about anything but his constant forward momentum.
Kyle kicked the office door outwards. It slammed back with a crack. The impact echoed through the hall, harsh and sudden. Loud. And it was instantly met by a delighted call. Up ahead, where the walkway turned a corner, the Hunter perched on a railing, its friends just behind it.
Pushing through the derelict fences, Kyle kept his momentum up. He grabbed the one singular UV flare contraption he'd brought, flicked it on, and dropped it. But before the light could do more than briefly annoy him, he'd left the fences behind, grabbed the railing on his left, and snapped his knees over it in a sideways vault.
The Hunter shrieked and followed him.
Aiden had spent every second of today following someone else's lead and driving his fear ahead of him. He'd almost thought he'd never catch up with it; not until Crane handed him the key.
Let's be honest; keys shouldn't be this heavy.
Aiden backed towards the sealed door, his heels scooting over dirt and debris. A burst of UV light bloomed where Crane dropped his only light, and then the man vanished, snapping his legs over the guardrails and vanishing into the dark.
And from one moment to the next, Aiden had no one to follow anymore, leaving him pinched between two impulses.
Run the other way.
Or help.
The first one was reasonable. He might be able to use the distraction to slip out.
The second, less so. But it was the strongest.
The third option, to stand his ground and do as he'd been asked to, was almost an afterthought; an afterthought which won. Aiden turned around, and with his back aching from anticipation (any second now and something would crash into him), he jammed the (too heavy) GRE key into the locking panel.
It didn't fit.
He choked. Whimpered (miserably). Fumbled— and realised with his stomach dropping how he'd held it wrong. A slight turn left and suddenly it fit.
The panel lit. A muffled CLACK followed, almost impossible to hear over a series of loud crashes from downstairs and a bellow of, "Nice try!"
Shrieks answered.
He counted three of them and then the door was open and Aiden shouldered through.
It was pitch black beyond the office. There were no windows. The UV light from beyond didn't reach—no, wait, it had, now it didn't anymore. It must have gone out, Aiden thought.
Both of them?
The new one, too?
Frantic, Aiden stepped into the dark, where all he saw were blocky shapes and a line of red as he grabbed the door, pushing it closed. The lights came from his wrist.
He'd gone halfway into the red. If he didn't hurry—
Anxiety clamped around his throat and Aiden abandoned the door. He clicked his flashlight on with one hand, let the cone jerk through the room, then grabbed the Antizin inhaler with the other.
Except that hand still had the key in it, his fingers clutching it so tight he might as well be having a cramp. Aiden, his mind shorting out, didn't know what to do.
He needed more hands. Why'd he only have two hands?
He had to get his radio.
He had to call Alberto.
He had to find— his eyes skipped through the room. There was a table in the middle. With chairs around. A large whiteboard on wheels stood off to the right, and the walls to his left and ahead of him were stacked with consoles and overhead screens.
There were too many buttons.
Too many screens.
"Shit— shit— shit—" Aiden dropped the flashlight on the table. It spun erratically, its cone bouncing from wall to wall. "Okay. Call Alberto," he whispered to himself, jammed the key into his belt, and got the radio up against his ear while his other hand resumed its search for the inhaler.
Too few hands. Too much to do.
"Alberto?" he asked, then added, "Can you hear me?" without much pause. "Lawan? Anyone? I'm in the control room and I could really use some help figuring this thing out."
"We're here." Lawan's voice was tinny coming through the speakers. "Where's Crane?"
"Otherwise engaged," was all Aiden could think of telling her. "What do I do?"
"Alberto needs to know what you're seeing, and we'll take it from there."
"Right. I see— uh—" He backed up until his ass hit the table, all while his eyes scanned left and right.
A Volatile.
That was what he saw.
A Volatile slowly nudging the door open. The very same door Aiden had forgotten to secure properly because he'd been too busy worrying about his Biomarker. The Volatile's jaw peeled open, parting for a rattling, hungry call that made the grasping ribs on its chest quiver.
And before Aiden had a chance to tell the world how fucking stupid this all was, it rushed him.
Kyle landed in a practiced roll. A painful, practiced roll, but, hey. He didn't break anything, and managed to be back on his feet before the Hunter and its pack hit the ground floor.
Thump. Thump. Thump, they went. Three impacts. Three ugly-ass motherfuckers hyper-focused on Kyle, driven at him by whatever had led the Hunter to him in the first place.
You know damn well what. It thinks you're competition. It wants to drive you out. The realization had come to him earlier, but he hadn't wanted to think about it, not with how it might end up sending him into a tailspin.
And he had no time for tailspins.
One of the Volatiles charged him the second it had straightened up.
It didn't give Kyle much of a chance to get a good look around, but his filter had snatched up a few things: car lifts (one with people mover still on it), a leftover mobile lab waiting for service, wheeled tool cabinets, and any number of heavy machinery and scattered equipment he was too busy to bother identifying.
Plus the Hunter and its second buddy. Circling him.
The Volatile was almost on him.
Kyle settled back on his heels. Time to work; to come off his leash and push just a little too hard and a little too far. A deceptive calm settled in him, distilled out of the ringing in his ears and the hard thud of his heart. Every ache he'd collected faded. Every whirlwind thought of tomorrow fell away.
Then the calm shattered, and Kyle tore out from under his own restraint.
He allowed the first Volatile to come at him. Gave it a chance to think it had him. To leap. But once you were in the air, there was no dodging. No stopping. And with a distressed bre-e-ep of his Biomarker telling him what he already knew, Kyle swung the climbing pick he'd brought along, sidestepped the leap, and sunk its pointed tip into the Volatile's head.
Its momentum carried it forward, the pick embedded in its skull. A row of cabinets finally stopped it. They came down with a loud crash.
"Nice try!" Kyle taunted, his hand snapping to his machete, ready to catch the second idiot making a play at him. It did without missing a beat, but when Kyle prepared himself to cut it open, the Volatile jerked back.
The motion was quick and came before Kyle had a chance to telegraph his attack, but just in time for the net in his thoughts to squeeze. Like a hand tightening on the leash Kyle had just snapped.
Not cool.
What sort of freak puppet show—
A promise of pain to come pinched Kyle's shoulder blades. Instinct? Maybe. Or maybe the puppet show worked both ways. Kyle sidestepped the Hunter before it managed to tear him down.
And that'd be the next few seconds of his life: playing hard to get with the Hunter and the Volatile as they took turns trying to get their claws into him. Around and around they went, stepping under the suspended car, hopping over grooves in the floor and around lift struts. They covered half the damn hall before Kyle finally thought he had an opening.
It was right about then when the Hunter's net flared with a burst of glee and the fucking thing revealed to Kyle just how quick it was and how little it cared for a machete's bite.
The Hunter tackled him.
Kyle's vision exploded in a burst of red light. The world tipped sideways. And he went flying.
The Volatile diving at Aiden was all wire and bone. Thick plates covered one side of its head and spines tipped its left elbow; all of which Aiden noticed because he took enough time to stare before he finally snapped into action.
He picked up a chair.
"Always keep a Volatile at an arm's length." Or so Crane had told him while Aiden had stood out in the hot sun, his hands on his knees and sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. They'd moved from disarming practice to pretending Crane was a Volatile. It'd been distressing.
"And don't move in unless you got it off-centre and you can be absolutely sure your next attack will put it down. If you go toe to toe with it while it has both its feet planted, you're dead. Unless you got a gun to stick in its mouth, but hey we work with what we got."
So. Arm's. Length.
Long-ass arms, as it turned out, because even as Aiden shoved the chair at the Volatile like a shield, its claws managed to catch on his forearms, tearing at his jacket. Its head kept darting forward. Its teeth snapped together. And Aiden pushed. He pushed with everything he had, all his weight, all his strength, until his muscles screamed and he screamed, his voice raw and desperate.
It worked. He threw the Volatile off balance with a twist of the chair. It slammed against the table. The impact made the table slide across the room and knocked the flashlight off, leaving Aiden's only light to spin on the floor. Disorienting shadows splashed against the walls.
By the time the Volatile regained its footing, Aiden had managed to get the spear off his back. He also had his heart in his throat though and his stomach felt like it was taking bites out of itself, but for now all that mattered was getting a firm grip on the spear and keeping his distance.
Except how'd you keep your distance in a room that small? The walls were too close. The table, the chairs, and the white board were in the way. And it didn't matter how wiry the Volatile was, it was too damn tall.
It ambled forward, pushing two chairs out of its way with almost lazy swipes of its warms. What now? Frantic, Aiden thrust the spear at it. He was quick. Decisive. And just as quick at pulling the weapon back when the Volatile made a grabbing motion for it.
No. He couldn't fight it in here. No way.
Maybe he could manoeuvre it to the door? Push it out? Then shut himself in properly?
"Aiden?" Lawan's tinny voice crackled out into the dark. He'd dropped his radio. And he had no fucking idea where the GRE key was, but that'd be a problem for later (if there was a later). "What's going on?"
The Volatile clicked and hissed, its head snapping towards the voice, and Aiden took the sudden chance. Leaning all his weight forward, Aiden rushed the spear at its chest.
An uneven, hard surface met Kyle's back. Pain tap-danced all over him. Struck his side. His chest. His spine. His leg (Which one? Undetermined). He ground his teeth together, threw his arm up, and caught the Hunter's snapping jaw on his forearm.
It'd have torn his throat out otherwise.
Where was his machete?
Why, embedded in the Hunter's shoulder, the blade wedged between thick plates. He couldn't reach it. Couldn't do shit.
The Hunter crushed forward. Metal screeched over concrete, pushing Kyle and whatever he'd been thrown against backwards, while his lungs ran out of air and his ears rang with the rattle of chains.
Literal chains.
Kyle's eyes snapped right.
Metal links swayed in the dark, waiting for a job to do. Maybe towing. Maybe lifting. Or—hear him out—for grabbing onto, wrapping around his hand with one hard twist, and slugging into the Hunter in the side of its head with enough force it sent pain leaping from Kyle's knuckles all the way to his core.
The Hunter's snarl-screech-growl choked off and it fell away.
Great, now all he had to—
The motion of the Hunter's weight lifting tore at Kyle's leg. First, Kyle had no idea what was happening, until he saw the fucker's sharp-tipped tentacle pop out of his thigh. No time to moan about the hole though. Or worry about whether or not it'd nicked or even severed something important. He had to get to his feet.
(If he couldn't, he'd know soon enough.)
Rising, Kyle yanked the chain from its hook. A few rolls of his shoulder later and he had it swinging, driving the chain between him and the Volatile trying to get in a lick. With a snarl, it tried diving under a swing, but Kyle yanked the chain down at the last second.
It connected with its head on a downward arc. The impact rattled it enough to stun it—or at least trip it—and the Volatile keeled forward. Before it had a chance to recover, Kyle crossed the distance, raised his still good leg, and stepped on its neck.
Hard.
There was a crunch.
Two down. One to go.
Oh god, how was he supposed to kill this thing?!
Aiden had—somehow—managed to lodge the spear between the Volatile's ribs. So far, so disaster? All that'd accomplished was force him to grapple with the spear's shaft while the Volatile jerked and screeched on the other end. It took every ounce of Aiden's strength to hold himself on his feet, let alone keep the Volatile from tearing the spear out of his hands.
Okay. Okay.
He'd had a plan.
Push it out.
His arms shaking from the effort and feet threatening to slide out from under him, Aiden made to turn the Volatile towards the door. He managed, barely, and then he began to push.
The second he did, the spear slid forward. Towards the Volatile. Towards its snapping jaws and raking claws. And it kept fucking sliding as the Volatile leaned into the motion, impaling itself deeper and deeper and not giving a fuck because at the end of the spear was a succulent Pilgrim to snack on.
"No? What— that's not fucking fair," Aiden blurted.
No way he'd get it to the door in time, let alone stall it long enough to get his axe out and get in a single swing. So what did he have time for?
The flare.
He had one more damn flare. How'd he forget?
Aiden couched the spear against his shoulder and grabbed for the flare sticking the harness. He wrapped his gloved fingers around it, pulled it free, and got maybe one more desperate thought in before the Volatile yanked to the side.
The spear flew from Aiden's grip.
It knocked into his hand. The flare went flying, still dark. Then the spear smacked Aiden in the chin and Aiden reeled back, avoiding the Volatile crashing forward with not an inch to spare. Spear-less and flare-less, Aiden fumbled for the next best thing. He yanked the Inhibitor from his harness before the Volatile could turn to him and tear his throat out, tore the cap off the injector, and jammed it into the thing's wiry shoulder.
It depressed with a soft hiss.
And worked.
Maybe not as well as Aiden hoped, but rather than shred him to ribbons, the Volatile gave off a burst of pained shrieks and staggered to the side as if it was trying to get away from its own shoulder.
Off-balance enough?
Yeah.
Aiden unhooked his hatchet, grabbed it in both hands, and went straight for the Volatile's head.
Kyle rotated the chain ahead of him. It cut the air with a steady whoosh—whoosh—whoosh, its rhythm folding in well with the distressed warble of his Biomarker. The only other notable noise came from upstairs.
Aiden had company.
Nothing he could do about that though.
Not yet.
All he had to offer was to buy Aiden as much time as he could and hope the kid held his own.
Kyle let the chain dip low. It struck concrete. Sparks flew. And still the Night Hunter wouldn't move. It stared at him with its lidless, glowing eyes, its shoulders rising and falling and its lungs rattling with air.
"C'mon buddy," he said, his voice coarse. "What you waiting for? An invitation?" Kyle took a step towards it. "More of your friends?"
The Night Hunter's hands twitched. Drops of blood squeezed from its clawed fingers; the same blood currently soaking Kyle's pants, wet and warm.
Then, without warning, an impression was pushed into Kyle's mind. He felt as if he'd walked into a ruined building; a ruined home, its bones brittle and weary from holding up the echo of a roof.
There was hunger deep within that home. Hunger that never ceased. Hunger for a memory far beyond its reach. Yearning.
And chasing all of that came the notion of walking. Walking far, far away. Walking and never coming back.
"Sorry, bud. Can't do that."
The impression was gone as quick as it'd come, replaced by a surge of anger. The Hunter charged.
With the radio squeezed between his cheek and ear, Aiden paced along the control panel. "I am looking for a— a what?"
"A flap. A cover. Alberto says it's supposed to be just below a display screen with a row of four flip switches above it."
"I'm not seeing a— No, wait. Got it." He stepped over the dead Volatile to get to panel on the other wall. "Four flip switches. Screen. There." Aiden pried the metal cover beneath the screen open and whooped quietly at the socket he'd exposed.
"Next?"
"Insert key and twist twice, he says." A pause, followed by distant stammering and Vincenzo's calm voice. "Alright, alright— thanks V. Still there, Aiden?"
"Sure."
"Okay. after the twist, wait five seconds and then flip all four switches. Go from the left to the ri— no, right to left."
"Insert key," Aiden echoed and did just that. "Twist. Wait. One. Two. Three." The screen flickered. A dull, orange light began to blink in its bottom right corner. "Four. Five." The light went green just as Aiden began to flip the switches, one after the other.
"Now what?"
"Wait and hope it works?"
"Oh. Great. My favourite—" Without warning, every screen and lamp in the room lit up. "—thing to do," he added, all sarcasm forgotten.
The light was bright. So damn bright, in fact, Aiden had to squeeze his eyes shut, only to immediately duck when a series of loud pops sounded from the ceiling.
"Does this count for working?" he muttered into the radio.
Then the lights flickered out — just as quick as they'd come on.
Tonight wasn't the first time Kyle had been thrown around, but as he landed in a heap (again), his shoulder cracking into the concrete and his skull bouncing off with a dull thud, he figured it might be the last.
Unless he ended this. Now. Quickly. Every second he gave the Night Hunter, was a second closer to something giving out on him. His leg. His arm. His momentum.
He. Himself.
He didn't need the Biomarker screaming at him to know. Or to see himself in the mirror. He'd pushed and he'd pushed and now here he was, the signs impossible to ignore.
Frayed colors. Difficult to manage thoughts. A forward drive stoked by fury.
Not long now…
Especially if you stay on the fucking floor, you dipshit—
Kyle scrambled to get to his feet. He dragged the chain with him, looped it around his forearm with a few twists, and raised it just in time for the Hunter to snap its teeth shut into it.
It gnawed on the links and snarled, all in an effort to keep Kyle's attention while its hand swiped at his gut. Kyle narrowly avoided getting disemboweled, yanked his arm down, and followed up with yet another box to the Hunter's head. Not that it mattered how often he rang the fucking thing's skull. It just kept on coming, like it was Kyle's personal and perpetual rockslide.
Then the lights came on.
Out of nowhere, the hall lit up, filling up with a bright glare and scorching Kyle with a blast of UV light. We-eell. Not only him. Getting the same dose of UV as Kyle, the Night Hunter buckled, its body curling inwards to protect itself. Cracks of angry red bloomed between its hardened skin plates, sizzling like meat falling on a grill and filling Kyle's nostrils with the stench of burnt rot.
It hurt Kyle, too. Badly. Shit, one of his knees gave out and he practically howled, but he was used to this. Used to stepping out into the light. To turn back time. That familiarity allowed him to think through the pain.
To act, rather than turn into a twitching mess.
So while the Hunter withered, Kyle shook his arm out and let the chain fall away, extending it. Then he stepped around the convulsing creature—this apex predator and Baron of the Night—and looped the clinking chain around its neck.
The lights blew. They went out with a clunk and a shower of sparks, but Kyle had made up his mind. He was not letting go. He was not getting off this Baron's back, no matter how much it thrashed.
All the anger he'd felt before—the anger that wasn't his, anyway—turned to a frantic, directionless scramble. Panic. Then to a dragging motion, hurried and maybe a bit aimless. A summons.
The Night Hunter was finally calling for more help.
Tried to, anyway. One more yank of the chain and the summons vanished. The fog (or net, or whatever) went with it. The Hunter stopped moving.
Kyle couldn't feel his arms anymore. They'd turned into useless lumps of bone and muscle hanging from his shoulders; lumps he could barely lift when he got up and tried to steady himself.
He wasn't done yet though.
He had to—
—Kyle stood at the bottom of the stairs. A constant, pitched warbling had followed him and wouldn't leave him alone. It grated at his ears. Made him want to bite his own hand off. Bre-ep-bre-ep-bre-ep, the thing went, even as he took the first stumbling step upwards.
He wasn't done yet.
There was—
—Startled, and with his heart pounding in his ears and his breathing a ragged mess, Kyle's head snapped up. He was inside the overseer's office. His forehead rested against a door, the metal cold as a sheet of frost.
Somewhere beyond his shoulder, heavy footsteps rattled the nearby walkway. Curious clicks drew closer. And closer.
Their curiousity hooked into his stomach like brambles, demanding he gave them attention. Acknowledge them.
He wasn't done—
Aiden paced inside the small room. He went from the control panel to the door, one hand on his hatchet, the other meekly grabbing for the door handle whenever he reached it. Then his fingers curled into a fist and he stepped away, pacing again.
He had to get out there. Right?
He had to help Crane.
But what about this? What if they needed him in here? What if—
Before he could reset his spiral (he'd been thinking in literal circles), the GRE door shuddered.
Had that been a knock?
A very hard knock?
Aiden hurried back to it, and as he drew near, a muffled noise filtered through the thick seal. It sounded like a—"Crap."—Biomarker. A very in the red Biomarker.
Aiden's stomach flattened.
The door shuddered again. This was a knock, wasn't it? And with the Biomarker going off, that had to mean it was Crane.
But what if—
What if.
He didn't dare complete the thought. Swallowing hard, Aiden pressed an ear against the door, one hand on the handle and the other scratching at the hilt of his hatchet.
"Crane?"
. . .
What was he supposed to do?
Just fling the door open?
"Crane, that's you, right?"
Another thump hit the door. Harder, this time, and Aiden could swear he heard a voice from the other side. It might have said Letmethefuckin. Or araraglhs.
How was he supposed to know?
God, if he didn't open the door and Crane got killed because of it he'd never forgive himself. But if he opened the door and Crane killed him, he'd— well. Wouldn't anything, period.
His teeth clenched tight, Aiden unlatched the lock. He owed the man that much, he thought, and carefully pried the seal open just enough to squint through. Not that he got a chance to before the door flew open, cracking into Aiden's nose.
That hurt. A lot.
Crane lurched inside. "Door," he croaked on his way past Aiden, and even though Aiden could barely see through the tears in his eyes after he'd gotten a heavy door slammed into his face, he gathered up enough sense to push that same door closed and latch it back up.
By the time he turned around, Crane had made it all the way to the table, knocked into it hard enough it collided with a console, and collapsed on top of it. There, he fumbled at his shirt, all while groaning through clenched teeth and sometimes squeezing out a nonsensical "Inni— Inni— Innhi—" on a perpetual loop.
"Inhibitor!" Aiden translated in a hurry. He bounced over to the table, practically crawled up on it, and tore at the satchel on Crane's chest. "Where is it— where is it— Where'd you— Got it."
Gloves did not make for quick, nimble fingers. And neither did frayed nerves, of which Aiden currently had plenty. But he managed. He pulled out the Inhibitor, pried the cap off just as he'd done with the first, then yelped in surprise when Crane snatched him by the collar.
His grab was painful.
It pressed through Aiden's jacket, all the way to his skin. Like he wanted to dig right down to his bones. Tear them out. No. Not like. It was exactly what he was trying to do.
Crane lunged upwards, suddenly no longer content to lie groaning on his back. He'd changed, Aiden realised in that moment. His eyes most of all. They wore the same bright amber glow he'd seen in Zofia's eyes when they'd headed into the GRE lab, but they'd also grown a web of thin, faintly glowing amber blood vessels grasping for his cheeks.
More of them peeked out from under Crane's collar, worming their way up his neck.
The Biomarker kept screaming.
Aiden screamed along with it.
When Crane lunged, Aiden pulled away. The sudden lack of resistance made Crane's strength throw them both backwards. They tumbled off the table, limb over limb, and hit the ground in a tangle. Momentarily unsure which way was up and which way was down, Aiden kicked wildly, his foot connecting with the nearest wall. He shoved hard, spinning himself out of Crane's immediate reach, and just about made it under the table before Crane regained whatever passed for his senses right then and there.
He didn't see him.
Breathing in ragged, quick pulls, Crane rose to his feet. Undetected, Aiden covered under the table, his heart hammering against his throat and not a single useful thought crossing his mind.
He was dead.
He was so, so dead.
Crane took one step left. One step right. He made an odd, wheezing noise that might have been a word, then BAM slammed his fist down on the tabletop. Aiden—having long ago learned when not to make a noise—bit down on his tongue.
Or maybe he had made a noise; some tiny, impossible to avoid whimper, because the next thing he knew, Crane grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it like it was made of cardboard.
He came at Aiden with one, long step— and the second he was within reach, Aiden caught one of Crane's moving legs between his, twisted his hip, and sent Crane back to the floor.
Crane had barely hit the ground before Aiden snapped forward, the Inhibitor still clutched in his fist, and yanked Crane's jacket and shirt up just far enough to bare enough skin he could drive the Inhibitor into.
Crane liked the injection about as much as the Volatile. His head snapped back. His fingers twisted into contorted fists. A breathless scream—a thing tearing from the depth of an agonised soul—followed. Once it tapered off and finally fell away, a laugh moved in. Equally breathless. Equally agonised.
An honest to God laugh.
Aiden stared.
The Infected (at large) did not laugh. Did they?
Still, the moment Crane's arm blindly groped off to the side and found Aiden's leg, Aiden made an unflattering noise and tried to pull away. Except Crane had already grabbed a fistful of his pant leg and wouldn't let go.
"You did it," was the next thing Aiden heard. The hand released him and instead gave him a few aimless swats. "You got— got the lights on."
"You just almost killed me!" Aiden wheezed.
"I did?" Crane's voice was thready. Hoarse. But there weren't anymore glowing veins crawling around on his bobbing throat. "Oh. Sorry, but— ah—" He coughed up another agony-flavoured laugh. "That makes us even, right? Kinda."
An unnecessarily long pause followed. Aiden, not sure what to do with it, just half sat there, holding still.
"Hey, kid?"
Swat the hand went again, smacking Aiden's shoe. This time, Aiden didn't flinch. Not because it hadn't startled him, but because he'd grown too tired to do just about anything.
". . . yeah?"
"Great job," Crane croaked. "You did real good. Couldn't have— ah, shit. You know what? I think I'm gonna pass out now if you don't mind. But, uh— leg, my leg—" He gestured (though not at his leg, his arm pointed in the entirely wrong direction. "—make sure I don't bleed out. That'd be— you know what that'd be— a— hoo boy. A bummer."
Aiden exhaled slowly. Steadily. And with every bit of air he squeezed out, he fell backwards until he, too, lay flat on his back. His flashlight was somewhere off to the right, filling the room with dusty light. His head was spinning. His knees felt like they'd been replaced by sponges. But he was still alive to feel all of it.
Including the hysterical laughter bubbling in his chest and a hint of overwhelming gratitude.
He'd done it.
They'd done it.
Now all that was left was to make it count come tomorrow.
(And to figure out why he'd begun to cry.)
Taffer Notes: Look, you have no idea how much self-restraint it took me to not throw in an unleashing the beast line post-trailer release. Please be proud of me.