Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

Two days later, Kira stood at the breached door to Level 4. The plan was folded in her pack. Now she had to walk it. Captain Hills waited beside her with his soldiers, their rifles up. He was an orange and white tabby in desert fatigues and a green beret. He had lost two men at the security station. His face was still. "My team takes the lead," he said. "We clear, you follow." Kira nodded. She trusted the dead he had already buried more than any speech. Logan sent the eyebot in first. The dented machine drifted through the doorway, its single lens sweeping the dark. Its video fed to the screen on Logan's wrist. "Movement," he said. "Right side. Six, maybe more." He gripped the forest-camo grenade launcher, drum loaded. Kira read the blueprint again. West wall. The ghouls clustered right, away from the safe line. "Take them," she said. Logan stepped in and fired. The first frag round cracked the right corridor open. Two ghouls fell. He fired again. Four more dropped in a spray of grit. "Four down the right," he said, flat. Kira moved her team along the west wall, behind Hills's rifles. The eyebot pushed ahead and lit a second cluster. Eight ghouls, stumbling from a storage bay. Kira's team opened up. The ghouls folded one after another, dropped before they reached the line. Smoke drifted off the walls. Then the floor shook. A wet, heavy sound came from the reactor side. Something huge pulled itself through a service hatch. It was an octopus the size of a truck, its skin grey and green and yellow, four eyes glaring. Eight tentacles dripped a green slime that steamed on the metal. It swung one arm. A soldier dove clear. "Mutant," Hills barked. "Hold the wall!" "Logan, now," Kira said. "Save two, remember?" Logan swung the launcher up and fired his last frag rounds into the thing's body. The blasts tore two tentacles loose. The creature screamed and lunged. Hills's team poured fire into its eyes. One eye burst. It thrashed, slamming a wall, then sagged. Kira put three rounds through its skull herself. It went still, the slime pooling under it. One of Hills's soldiers had taken slime across his arm. The skin was already blistering. Kira dragged him back to the sealed storage room. She cracked a stimpak, seal intact, and pressed it to the burn. "Fever watch," she said. "Twelve hours." The team pulled into the room and held. Outside, nothing else moved. Kira caught her breath. Level 4 was clear. The sealed medical lockers sat just past the control station, down the west line. She had the room. She had the gear in reach. But the soldier's arm was swelling fast, and the slime had eaten clean through his sleeve. Whatever that toxin was, no stimpak she knew would stop it alone. Kira sent the wounded back, secured the room and looked at the remaining computers still working and thought Donovan should see these. The plan now is hold here for 3 days to salvage files & records while waiting for resupply and reinforcements to arrive.