Crysis Escalation

Archaeology





St. Petersburg, 2024

Amanda looked down into the darkness. It was total. The complete absence of light. Intellectually she knew there was light down there, somewhere, but it felt like she would descend into blackness forever. It was still, cold, and there was little air movement. The lights attached to the steel frame of the elevator illuminated the smooth rock wall of the shaft. The rock looked natural, but according to her briefing the shaft had been cut by the Ceph aeons ago.

Hundreds of feet above her was the Hermitage and the freezing temperature and thick snow of a St. Petersburg winter. The opulent decadence of an imperial culture was on display for all to see. It was a strange contrast with the darkness, the minimalist rock and what they had found here so deep below the Earth’s surface. She was starting to see a faint glow below her now.

The elevator carried her into the main site. The roughly hemispherical cavern was lit with portable lights. Amanda could hear the steady diesel throb of the generators. It was freezing down here, despite the freestanding heaters. Amanda wrapped her long coat around herself. The rock floor of the cave was a series of gentle rolling rises and indents that looked like they had been caused by water, and a number of small streams ran through the cavern.

The main cavern – or Site A – was a hive of activity. All across the rock floor men and women, clothed in layers and layers of threadbare clothing, chipped away at the rock with a variety of hand and power tools. As the elevator got closer to the cavern floor she could see seams of metal running through the rock. The seams didn’t look natural. They looked like they formed particular defined shapes. The best way that Amanda could think of describing it was that it looked like someone had fused circuitry with the rock. That, however, did not do the alienness of the tech in the ground justice. It was technology that had been there a long time before there had even been a humanity. Having lived through the crisis in New York, Amanda had a healthy respect and fear for the Ceph and their tech. Amanda could understand the need for Hargreave-Rasch to research the Ceph technology caches they were finding, but after her experiences in New York the alien technology made her very uncomfortable indeed.

The entire site was being watched over by CELL gunmen. There were two waiting for her as the elevator came to a halt and she stepped out into the cave.

‘Alan, Mikey, how’s it going?’ Amanda asked, her strong New York accent unmistakeable. She was genuinely pleased to see the two contractors she’d worked with for three years, up until she had been demoted and left out in the cold by her employer.

‘Good to see you, Cross,’ Alan said, smiling. The well-built American with the brown eyes and the short, cropped dark hair and the flat face went all the way back to SRT with her. She had talked him into joining CELL when he’d left the military police. She regretted that now.

‘Boss,’ Mikey said and hugged her. It wouldn’t have been so long ago that she would never have tolerated such a thing. Now, frankly, she couldn’t give a shit. Things had not been going terribly well career-wise since she’d left the army.

They exchanged news but it was the casual stuff, nothing about the current situation. Amanda knew them well enough to know that they were hiding something.

‘So what’s the boss like, this Walters?’ she asked. Mikey and Alan exchanged a look.

‘Asher wants to see you.’ Mikey told her. The Afro-Caribbean Brit wouldn’t meet her eyes. Security was supposed to be run by John Walters. He had a reputation as a competent, if unimaginative and overly rigid, commander. He’d inherited Amanda’s team after she’d been demoted. She had spent the last eighteen months as little more than a mall cop.

It was bad news, however, if Dr Asher, the dig’s overseer, was trying to control security as well. Security was supposed to create a physically safe work environment, but under an independent command, as security matters had to sometimes override the day-to-day running of the operation they were protecting.

Also, Amanda knew Asher’s reputation. He’d been a high flyer before the New York crisis but something had happened with a subordinate of his, a Nathan Gould, which had meant Asher had fallen from favour. Amanda had also heard mutterings that before he had fallen from grace his security detail had had to cover up some of his more unsavoury activities more than once.

‘I’d rather meet Walters first, if I’m going to be his two IC,’ Amanda told them. Again there was the exchange of looks. ‘What the f*ck’s going on?’ Amanda demanded. Since New York she hadn’t really cared about her career. This was the first break she’d had since her demotion. She was looking forward to working with her old team again, because she felt that she’d taken the time to train them up into something better than the rest of the grunts and toy soldiers that CELL employed. Largely, however, she just wanted to coast until she could cobble together some kind of retirement plan. Though with the constant changes to the terms and conditions of what could laughingly be called her contract, retirement seemed to be getting further and further away.

‘Seriously Amanda, Asher makes things difficult for people who don’t do as he says, could you just talk to him first?’ Alan said. Amanda didn’t like the tone of his voice. He sounded beaten.

‘Is everyone alright?’ Amanda asked as she shouldered both her kit bags. Another look was exchanged. ‘Okay, tell me right now.’

‘It’s Sam,’ Mikey said. Mikey was a tough guy. He had been a military police officer in the British army, a close protection specialist, but he sounded upset. Sam had been the youngest member of her team. She had been forever playing catch-up. Unlike most of them she had come straight from civvie street. What she had lacked in competence she had more than made up for with being likeable, and she had been improving. At the time that Amanda had been removed from command of the team Sam had been showing a great deal of promise and had acquitted herself well, or as well as any of them had, in New York. Amanda felt her stomach drop. She wasn’t going to cry – she had learned long ago to never show weakness in front of others. When she got the chance she’d kill a bottle of vodka on her own and cry then. It was easier that way.

‘What happened?’ she asked controlling her emotions. Mikey and Alan said nothing. The other two contractors would not meet her eyes. ‘Was it down here?’

‘You need to speak to Asher.’ Alan said. ‘He’s . . . er . . . well, he’s dealing with this morning’s situation.’ Amanda looked between the two of them. She felt her blood run cold.

‘Are there active Ceph down here?’ she demanded. There was no answer. She slumped against the metal cage of the elevator. The nightmare visions of New York that she had tried to ignore returned stronger than ever. Contractors from other teams blowing away those affected by the Rapture, the Manhattan Virus. Seeing her brother, infected. Half her team dead, torn apart by armoured aliens, and somehow this had all happened in her home town.

She wanted to tell them to get everyone out. Fill the caves with CELL spec ops teams or, better yet, flush the tunnels with fire. She knew from bitter experience that Hargreave-Rasch Biomedical, the parent company of Crynet Enforcement and Local Logistics, invested an awful lot more in its interest in the Ceph technology than it did in its personnel.

Dr Herman Asher found himself appalled at the appearance of the new head of security for the dig. The wiry-looking African-American woman’s hair had been shaved into some kind of Mohawk that had then been braided. Both ears were extensively pierced and she had a plug in the left. Her nose had a stud in it. She had on combat boots and bloused fatigue trousers and her CELL issue body armour, but the body armour was hanging open and he could see a white t-shirt. The t-shirt had the words London Calling and the Clash written on it, along with a picture of a man smashing a guitar on the ground. She had a tatty old long coat over the top of her body armour.

‘Miss Cross, what is the meaning of your appearance?’ Asher demanded.

‘Punk rock,’ Amanda told the bespectacled, grossly fat, piggy-looking dig supervisor. She had been thirteen years old when she had snuck into CBGBs on the Bowery in the Lower East Side for the club’s final ever gig. After New York, once she had realised that her career was over and she didn’t much care, she’d decided to go back to her old style. It reminded her that she had a personality outside of CELL. Right now, however, Amanda was more concerned with the twisted body of Lieutenant Commander John Walters that was lying on the floor of Site D.

Walters’ head had been twisted around a full hundred and eighty degrees. His chest cavity was a ruin. It looked like something had punched him in the rib cage, very hard. She reached into one of her holdalls and found a pair of surgical gloves and a pen. She inspected Walters’ chest wound and confirmed what she had expected.

‘He would have died from the blow to the chest but he was killed when his head was twisted around. Mikey, check the Grendel.’

Mikey pulled off his standard-issue gloves, which could leave fibrous trace on the assault rifle lying close to Walters, and pulled on the surgical gloves that Amanda handed him. He checked the magazine.

‘We’ve got six rounds missing,’ Mikey told her. It tallied with the spent casings on the ground. Amanda had a look around the small cave. There were at least three tunnels coming into it. Much of the cave floor had been chipped away and they were standing in trenches embedded with the alien technology.

Amanda looked at how the body had fallen and then around the cave. She pointed towards one of the tunnel entrances.

‘Alan, check around there, see if you can find the impacts.’ Alan switched on the flashlight attached to the mounting rail on the side of his Grendel assault rifle and went over to check the area Amanda had indicated.

‘I expect you to conform to basic CELL grooming standards at the very least,’ Dr Asher told her.

‘So?’ Amanda asked distractedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dr Asher asked, feeling himself getting angry. Amanda sighed and looked up at the scientist. She didn’t think she was going to like the man. She had always wondered about people like him. Why would they try and make life difficult for people who were more than capable of beating the shit out of them? The piggy little scientist was flanked by two more of the security detail. One of them was Safiya, who’d worked with Amanda before. Safiya was third generation French/Algerian. She had been a police officer in Marseilles. The other guard was a weedy-looking buck toothed guy she didn’t recognise.

‘I’m going to assume for a moment that you’re not a complete idiot,’ Amanda told Asher. ‘That the body of your head of security lying right here hasn’t escaped your notice. And that this is the second corpse on your watch . . .’

‘On Sub-commander Walters’ watch . . .’ Asher began. Pass that buck, Amanda thought.

‘You don’t give a f*ck about how I’m dressed. It’s a power play. It’s about establishing control. Let’s just skip it. You do your job, I do mine and we both try to piss each other off as little as possible.’

Asher stared at the woman. Once again he was at a loss trying to work out why these semi-literate grunts would even bother speaking, when all that was required of them was to do as their intellectual superiors told them to.

‘Oh dear,’ Dr Asher said, with mock sadness. ‘There seems to be some confusion. I will try and explain the situation in as simple terms as I can manage. You do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it, and you do it without question.’

Amanda looked up at him. There was no anger in her expression, just weariness.

‘No,’ she told him simply. Asher started turning a funny red colour. Amanda guessed that he wasn’t used to being told no by his subordinates. ‘Look, I tried the career thing in this f*cked-up job, it didn’t work out for me. You’ve got nothing to threaten me with. You don’t like me? Send me packing, or even better have me fired, you pathetic little pig of a man.’ The bucktoothed member of Asher’s security detail endeared himself to Amanda by trying to suppress a grin. Asher was turning puce now, but he managed to get control of himself.

‘You have family in New York, don’t you, Miss Cross?’ Asher said, smiling.

‘I did until CELL had them evicted for whatever it is they’re doing there. Imagine how popular that will make me at Thanksgiving.’ Amanda didn’t like how this was going. She could not for the life of her understand why Congress had handed control of the ruined city over to CELL after the mess they had made during the quarantine.

‘I believe that they are in a refugee camp just outside of Sleepy Hollow. I can make life very difficult for them, as well as for the members of your team.’

Amanda stared at him. She felt the same cold rage that she always felt when someone threatened people that she cared about. Don’t blow, she told herself, bide your time.

‘Boss,’ Alan said returning. Amanda was grateful for the interruption. She’d been worried that she was going to say or do something really dumb and possibly quite violent. ‘I’ve got three bullets imbedded in the wall. They were tightly grouped. The other two rounds I can’t account for. I reckon they got shot down the tunnel deeper into the cave complex. I can go look for them.’ Amanda was already shaking her head.

‘No way. We go out, we go mob-handed.’ Alan looked relieved. ‘You said two.’ Alan held something up. ‘Seriously, what did I tell you about handling the evidence?’ Amanda asked, pained. Mikey was grinning. Alan looked embarrassed. Amanda took the object off him and examined it.

‘Impacted six-point-eight millimetre full metal jacket from the Grendel. Standard issue because CELL doesn’t know enough to issue low-impact rounds to the half-trained f*ckwits they employ as grunts. It hit the cave wall,’ but even as she said it she knew something wasn’t right.

‘Thing is, boss, I found it right in the middle of the tunnel entrance,’ Alan told her.

‘Walters the kind of guy to panic?’ Amanda asked.

‘No, he was solid,’ Safiya said in English. Her accent was a mix of French and Algerian. ‘He wasn’t in New York but he’d helped clear out a few Ceph nests and he’d been on the sharp end in Sri Lanka with your 10th Infantry.’

‘Which ties with the tight grouping. So why didn’t he hit what he was aiming at?’ She pointed at the tunnel entrance. ‘So something comes at him. He gets off two three-round bursts. He hits it but no blood?’ she looked at Alan. Alan shook his head. ‘It closes in the face of automatic weapon fire and not only overpowers a trained ex-soldier but twists his head round.’

‘So Ceph, right?’ the bucktoothed guy said.

Amanda glanced at Asher.

‘Anything you want to share, doctor?’ Amanda asked. Asher had a good poker face.

‘You thinking Stalker?’ Mikey asked.

‘No plasma burns, no shard wounds. Stalker would be my guess.’ She stood up. ‘Alan, how many of the detail down here?’

‘Now? Ten, including you.’

‘And from the old team, other than the three of you here?’

‘Daniels, Schmidt and Okobe. O’Donnel got crippled in a bar fight in northern Finland . . .’

‘Yeah, I heard about that, shame, good people when she could control her temper.’

‘Marceau got fired after that shit in Manchester. Couldn’t get work, couldn’t get welfare, he ate his own gun . . .’

‘Shit. I didn’t know about that. And Harrison bought it in Nigeria?’ Alan nodded. ‘Then three new guys?’

‘Including this bucktoothed motherf*cker here,’ Alan said nodding at the fourth member of the security detail present.

‘Hello, bucktoothed motherf*cker,’ Amanda said to him warmly. New Guy smiled and nodded. ‘I like him, particularly the way he just won’t shut up.’

‘Everyone calls me Hank, ma’am,’ the bucktoothed contractor told her.

‘Alabama?’ Amanda asked.

‘Hell no! Southern Georgia.’

‘You got problems with us coloured folks?’ Amanda asked.

‘Ignoring your racial profiling of me as poor whisky tango, only in front of friends and family back home.’

Amanda had to smile at this.

‘You in off the street or did you serve?’ Amanda asked, standing up and brushing herself down.

‘1st Marine. Caught the tail end of Sri Lanka. We were in New York trying to evacuate civilians. Under Colonel Barclay.’

‘He’s good people,’ Mikey assured her.

‘Miss Cross,’ Asher began irritably. ‘My time is very valuable and you have work to do.’

‘Okay, I’m through playing detective. Standard operating procedure is you pull everyone out of here and you call in spec ops. They hunt and kill this thing and then you can go back to work.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Dr Asher said.

‘It’s the SOP,’ Amanda said, feeling her heart drop. Asher wouldn’t want to shut down the operation and call in spec ops because it would mean a loss of productivity and a loss of control. In short, it wouldn’t help him crawl back up to the corporate trough.

‘There’s ten of you and one of these things . . .’

‘And we have to keep the dig secure and hunt this thing and possibly sleep as well. There are hundreds of miles of tunnel down here, not to mention that this could be the tip of the iceberg. My experience is that if there’s one, there’s probably more.’

‘I’ve read your record. Military police Special Response Team and then you transferred to the Defence Criminal Investigation Service. You have the skills to deal with this situation. In fact, you were a very promising young CELL officer until you disgraced yourself by disobeying direct orders and abandoning your post in New York.’

Amanda clenched her jaw but did not rise to the provocation.

‘Fine. Shut down sites B through E . . .’

‘No. In fact, as soon as we’re finished here have the body cleared away, because I’m bringing another team in. The fact that it killed here suggests that this site may be more important than we initially thought. Just find this thing and kill it.’

‘We can’t protect everyone at all five sites. People are going to die.’ Amanda said through gritted teeth.

‘And with the death of Walters and your presence here, we have proof that dead people can be replaced. Are there any other simple concepts that you would like explained to you before you get on with your job?’ Asher asked.

Asher turned to leave. Safiya and Hank stayed put. Asher turned back to them, clearly furious.

‘You two with me, now!’ he snapped.

‘You’re going to keep two of my detail with you?!’ Amanda said, incredulously. Asher just looked at her as if she was a moron. ‘Doctor, I need at least one of them with me.’

‘Already your incompetence is annoying me. It only takes a phone call . . .’ He left the rest of the threat about her cousin and their family in the upstate New York refugee camp unsaid.

‘You need to be careful that you don’t push so hard that the other person feels that they’ve got nothing left to lose,’ Amanda told him. Asher started going red again, furious.

‘You, inbreed,’ he finally said to Hank. ‘Stay with her.’

‘Yes sir,’ Hank said mildly.

Amanda would have preferred Safiya, and she didn’t like the way that Asher was looking at the attractive French/Algerian contractor. She did, however, have perfect confidence in Safiya’s ability to look after herself.

Asher left.

‘So, he seems nice,’ Amanda muttered. Mikey laughed, Alan and Hank smiled.

She had gathered them all in site A. They were sat just behind one of the light rigs, in a circle. Okobe, Daniels and Schmidt had all greeted her warmly. Genuinely pleased that she was with them again.

‘You’re supposed to be like plod, aye?’ Kearney asked. He was a wiry, thuggish-looking kid from somewhere called Wolverhampton in Britain. Apparently he’d ended up in CELL due to the UK’s Penal Conscription Act. Amanda found this a little strange. She had thought that conscripts under the act were supposed to end up in Britain’s actual military, not as corporate military contractors.

Amanda narrowed her eyes at Kearney and just shook her head in bewilderment. His accent was almost impossible to understand.

She’d secured her body armour and was wearing a holstered Hammer II automatic pistol on her hip. She was in the process of reassembling and checking her Alpha Jackal combat shotgun. She had just attached the fore grip to the mounting rails under the barrel and was in the process of attaching a flashlight to the mounting rails on the side of the weapon.

‘He wants to know if you’re police,’ Daniels translated for her. He was another Brit, who’d served with the Royal Engineers. He was a middle-aged man going to seed. If CELL had any sense he would have been working for them servicing vehicles and weapons, but in a very military show of logic he’d ended up carrying a Grendel in a security detail.

‘I used to be an MP,’ Amanda told Kearney.

‘So you gonna’ investigate this?’

‘It’s not an investigation, it’s a hunt. It doesn’t matter who or what did this or why, we just need to find it and kill it. And I’ve got some bad news for you, kid.’ Kearney narrowed his eyes. ‘Go and relieve Safiya and send her back here.’

The young British kid opened his mouth to protest but Daniels looked over at him and just shook his head. The kid remained quiet and headed over to where the doctor was looking over some findings.

‘We going into the caves?’ Coyle asked, sounding worried. Coyle was another of the new guys. An American who had served in a tank regiment. He had the look of a soldier who’d stopped caring about himself, or anything else for that matter.

‘We’d just get lost unless we’ve got solid intel as to its whereabouts.’

‘Do you know what this place is?’ Alan asked Amanda. Amanda laughed.

‘I got put on a transport flight from Lagos. I wasn’t even told I was going to St. Petersburg.’ There was some laughter from around the circle.

‘Asher talks openly in front of us. He thinks anyone carrying a gun is a mental sub-normal who wouldn’t understand what he’s talking about.’

‘Yeah, he’s a charmer alright,’ Amanda said. ‘So?’

‘He thinks this is part of a birthing chamber. Somewhere below here are Ceph, or things that will become Ceph, or at the very least some of their tech, just like New York.’

‘Nice. So if one of them is awake . . .’ Amanda asked as she slid the extended magazine into the Jackal.

‘Then they’re probably trying to find a way to wake the others.’

‘And we end up with another New York right here in St. Petersburg.’

‘Which won’t matter to us,’ Daniels said. ‘Because we’ll be overwhelmed immediately.’ He had been with them in New York. He’d seen what the Ceph could do.

‘I just want some payback for Sam,’ Okobe muttered. There were nods from Mikey and Schmidt as well. Okobe was ex-Nigerian army. He was tall, rake thin but somehow still powerful looking. Normally quiet but he had been close to Sam and it looked like her death had hit him hard. Amanda reached out and grabbed the Nigerian’s arm. She had liked Sam as well.

A harried-looking Safiya joined them.

‘I’ve only got a little while, he’s less than pleased at the swap,’ she told them. There were some angry mutterings.

‘Okay, ideas?’ Amanda said.

‘Claymores?’ Daniels suggested.

‘Do you have any?’ Amanda asked. Daniels shook his head. ‘Probably for the best. We can’t have some junior xeno-archaeologist spread themselves all over the local area.’

‘It might catch Asher,’ Schmidt suggested. There was more laughter. Schmidt had been a tank gunner in the German army. The German looked after himself. His flattop blonde hair and blue eyes made him look like the Aryan ideal. His appearance was at odds with his apparently generous and friendly nature.

‘We’ve got five caverns to cover, not to mention intervening tunnels, and Asher wants all the sites up and running. Even one person per cavern, we’re going to struggle if we want to sleep and someone’s going to have to stay with Asher and hold his hand,’ Mikey pointed out. Amanda was already shaking her head.

‘We rotate whomever’s on that fat f*ck so Safiya’s skin doesn’t crawl off on its own.’ There were a few more chuckles. Safiya’s laughter seemed forced. ‘Six on, three off, staggered sixteen hour shifts,’ Now there were groans. ‘The three off sleep here in the main cavern. The other six work in two patrols of three, working round all five sites. None of us go anywhere unless we have two others with us, clear?’ There were nods from the others.

‘That’s still pretty thin,’ Alan pointed out.

‘Give me an option. I’m guessing that Sam and Walters were both on their own?’ There were nods from around the circle. ‘What are comms like?’

‘They’ve got transceivers attached to the walls of the tunnels. Basically you’ve got good coverage at the five sites and the tunnels directly between, but get off the beaten track and it’s for shit,’ Hank told her.

‘You thinking cameras?’ Daniels asked. Amanda nodded.

‘And I want the cameras streaming to phones carried by each patrol. Can you do that?’

Daniels was nodding.

‘I should be able to sort something, though I can’t promise total coverage.’

Amanda knew it was busy work. She was just giving them something to do. They were glad that someone was here making decisions, and that that person could do a good impression of competence.

The cameras might help but she was of the opinion that it would be the Stalker, or whatever Ceph monstrosity that was down there with them, that would set the tempo of their hunt. Unless they could divine a purpose and work out its whereabouts, or when it was going to strike, they were just going to be reacting.

Amanda was of the opinion that she might be able to do something if Asher would pull everyone back into Site A in the main cavern. With them spread out like this, people were going to die.

The light started to shake. Everyone looked up. Amanda realised that it was the ground shaking. The lights toppled over and smashed. Around the cavern similar things were happening as the dig personnel staggered around. Some of them were grabbing lights and other pieces of equipment trying to steady them.

There were explosions of rock all around the cavern. There were cries of pain as sharp fragments of flying rock hit people. It looked like the seams of metal in the stone had come to life. The organic, almost bone-like metal was pushing through the stone like the tips of claws. It was glowing with some kind of internal light.

This is it, Amanda thought, they’re waking up. We’re dead. She felt the same terror she’d felt in New York grab her. Then, as quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped. Amanda could hear the moaning and whimpering of frightened and, in some cases, wounded people in the main cave.

They were all looking to her now. She was desperately trying to hide her fear.

‘Mikey, Schmidt, stay here with Coyle. You do not help these people, even the wounded, you stick together and work the perimeter. Alan, you take Okobe and Safiya, check sites B and C. Daniels, you and Hank are with me.’

She ignored cries for help. She ignored Asher shouting at her as she headed for the tunnel, the Jackal held tight into her shoulder. As Amanda scanned left and right she noticed that the internal light from the metal was going out. It was as if it had become inert.

‘Where’s Kearney?’ she asked. Nobody had an answer.

Amanda swallowed hard. This wasn’t what she had expected. The lights had gone out in site E. Like site D it was a much smaller, irregularly shaped cavern worked smooth by water over its millennia of existence. The floor of the cavern was a series of rough, narrow trenches chipped out of the stone. As in the main cavern, it looked as though the segmented, bone-like Ceph tech had momentarily come to life and fused together, breaking through the rock. Also like the main cavern, the process seemed to have been interrupted. Unlike the main cavern there looked like there was something wrong with the visible protrusions of the Ceph tech. It looked sick somehow, or perhaps even dead.

Kearney’s corpse lay on the floor but she didn’t have time to check it yet. First they had to secure the site as best they could.

The beam from the flashlight attached to the barrel of her combat shotgun shook as she searched for the alien killer in the pitch darkness of the cavern, over a mile beneath the surface of the Earth.

They had found nothing. After the chaos and the panic things had calmed down enough for them to get light back on in Site E. After significant reassurances that it was as safe as it was going to get, a very angry Dr Asher had joined them. He assured Amanda that she would be held responsible for her incompetence in allowing the site to get damaged. He didn’t say anything about the corpse lying on the floor. Amanda had to stop Daniels from tearing into Asher.

‘So what do you think happened here, doctor?’ Amanda asked once Asher had finished admonishing her.

‘Isn’t it obvious? A Ceph bioform, probably a Stalker, came in and killed your man.’

‘Weird damn way to kill him,’ Hank said.

‘You do know what the word alien means, don’t you?’ Asher asked scathingly.

‘He was killed with what looks like a bladed weapon through the base of the skull and up into the brain . . .’

‘A Stalker bone spur . . .’

‘Maybe, but with a full investigative team here I might be able to find out more . . .’

‘What more do you need to know? You have a Stalker . . .’

‘Stalkers don’t kill like that,’ Daniels told him from his position, where he was watching one of the dark tunnels. Asher looked like he’d been slapped.

‘Keep your men under control!’ he spat, genuinely offended.

One day we need to examine the basis for your apparent superiority, Amanda thought.

‘He’s right, they slash, like with a sword,’ she told him.

‘You need to stop thinking so narrowly. This species isn’t like us, they adapt reactively between generations. Given time, and they don’t need that much, they develop the tools they need.’

‘So we could be dealing with something new here?’ Amanda asked.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Does it have anything to do with the Ceph-tech initiating?’ Hank asked. Asher looked angry that the bucktoothed southerner had dared speak to him.

‘Perhaps, or perhaps it was just reacting to the presence of a Ceph-bioform. Now as much fun as trying to teach monkeys algebra is, I have work to do.’ Asher turned to leave, motioning Safiya to join him.

‘What’s wrong with the Ceph tech in here, Asher?’ Amanda asked. She watched him swallow hard.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he finally said.

And that’s a f*cking lie, Amanda thought, but that’s all I’m going to get out of you, isn’t it?

‘Okay doc, thank you, we’ll call if we think you can help any more,’ Amanda told the piggy-looking scientist. Asher opened his mouth to protest being dismissed by a subordinate, but Amanda had already moved on. ‘Mikey, get your people’s heads down, try and get as much sleep as you can because you’re on again at 1600 zulu,’ she said over the tac radio, pausing for an affirmative. ‘Alan, I want your people doing sweeps, leave the main cavern, it’s going to hit us where we’re lightest. Concentrate on sites B through D, I think it’s finished with E.’ Amanda glanced up at Asher, looking for a reaction. He looked angry at his dismissal but he turned and left Site E. Safiya followed him.

‘Poor kid,’ Daniels said looking down at Kearney. ‘He was a little shit but you could see something worthwhile in him trying to get out.’

I didn’t even get a chance to know him, Amanda thought. She couldn’t muster up much feeling. She’d seen young lives wasted before. It was clear that Daniels had liked the kid, however.

‘What do you think?’ Daniels asked looking away from Kearney’s body.

‘I don’t think it’s a Stalker,’ Amanda said. The British engineer was nodding in agreement.

‘You even think it’s Ceph?’ he asked.

‘Has to be,’ she said sounding not entirely sure.

‘The tech’s initiating for a reason.’ She pointed at the trenches full of inert Ceph tech fused with the rock. ‘No reason to do that unless it’s Ceph. If it isn’t because of this killer then we’ve got bigger problems.’

‘What, then?’ Hank asked.

‘I think it’s something higher up the squiddies’ evolutionary chain and that makes me nervous,’ she told the Georgian. He nodded and then looked troubled. ‘Spit it out.’

‘I don’t mean to offend you none . . .’

‘Something that’s almost always said before someone offends me.’

‘I’ve come to terms with how CELL left us in the shit in New York. That wasn’t you people’s call but I heard stories about you. Abandoning your post, deserting your people.’

Amanda glanced over at Daniels. He shrugged.

‘We told him to talk to you about it,’ the Brit told her.

‘Look, you seem cool and everything, but I just want to know who I’m working with.’

‘Fair enough. That’s exactly what I did in New York,’ she told him evenly. Hank just watched her, saying nothing. ‘I had family in New York. The whole place was crawling with Ceph, there was the virus and there were CELL units brutalising and executing refugees and people suffering from the virus. I left my people to go and try and get my family out. Same thing was to happen, I’d do it all over again.’

Hank nodded.

‘We would have gone with her,’ Daniels told him. ‘We were all going to desert but Amanda knew it’d sink our careers, such as they are. She slipped away when we weren’t paying attention.’

Hank was nodding.

‘If it’s kin I guess I can understand.’

‘If I’d still been in the army it might have been difficult but frankly, f*ck CELL . All they are to me is a rapidly shrinking monthly pay packet. In fact if you were in New York under Barclay I’m surprised you joined up with CELL .’

Hank shrugged.

‘Times is tough. I got kin as well.’

Daniels and Amanda nodded in agreement.

‘Let’s get these cameras up and running,’ Amanda said. She glanced down at the corpse. It would be sent up in the elevator like Walters had been, to be disposed of in the most cost-effective way possible. Until that happened it would be stored in one of the caves, one that wasn’t imbedded with Ceph tech, close to the main cavern. His next of kin would be notified via text over the Macronet, maybe. ‘Poor kid,’ Amanda echoed Daniels.

C site was a long thin cavern. The floor was crisscrossed with trenches, like all the other sites. One of the light rigs had been broken when the ground had shook and as result the end of the cavern opposite the exit was in darkness. The eight workers in here were staying close to the light and the exit that led to the tunnel, which in turn led to the main cavern.

Amanda didn’t know much about archaeology or recovering ancient alien tech that fused with rock, but the workers chipping away here didn’t look like they were doing a particularly good job. Several of them either were or had been crying. A number of them were still shaking badly and all of them kept looking into the darkness at the end of the cave.

The workers looked like poor locals who had been given minimal training and less pay. They slept down here on floor mats and in sleeping bags, huddled around the heaters in the main cavern. They looked at Amanda, Daniels and Hank like they were their prison guards.

We’re not the enemy, kids, Amanda thought as she and Daniels moved past, weapons at the ready, the flashlights attached to the barrels of the weapons stabbing into the thick, inky, seemingly total darkness. Hank covered them from further back.

‘Clear,’ Amanda said as they finished checking the cavern. The word felt like a lie. There were so many caves and so much darkness down here that whatever was killing people didn’t have to be very far away from them for it to be impossible to find.

Asher didn’t seem to understand that the dig workers were not going to be very productive just because he had told them to be and because it was their poorly paid job to be so. He didn’t understand why people couldn’t or wouldn’t just do what he told them to. He couldn’t understand that the fear, exacerbated by the dead bodies that they had all seen dumped just outside the main cavern, was going to impact on productivity. Asher couldn’t understand that in the long run he was more likely to achieve what he wanted by rolling up the operation, having the threat dealt with and then coming back. In other words, it didn’t matter how much of a martinet Asher was, they were always going to be more scared of the alien creature killing them silently than they were of him.

One of the workers had, in broken English, accused Amanda of using them as bait. If she’d had her way she would have evacuated everyone, and as de facto security chief it was her call under CELL operating guidelines, but the reality of the situation had prevented that. So she had to work with what she had. If she was honest, the worker hadn’t been wrong. Her best chance of finding the thing was when it was in the act of either killing people or trying to initiate the Ceph tech.

As she exited site C she glanced down at one of the workers. She was gaunt, haggard and probably not even out of her teens. The look the worker gave her back was resentful to the point of hatred.

It’s not me, she wanted to tell them, but she knew she was part of the problem now.

‘Boss?’ Daniels said, out in the tunnel leading back to the main cavern. Amanda didn’t like the frightened tone in the Brit’s voice. She looked around to see what was bothering him. The tunnel wall was glowing with shifting symbols made of neon light. It looked like the walls were alive with some sort of circuitry, clearly Ceph tech.

‘Another activation?’ Hank asked. He was covering one way up the tunnel. The tunnel lights, the ones put there by humans, started flickering. The three of them switched on their flashlights, though there was a lot of light coming from the alien-tech in the tunnel walls.

‘Mikey, where are your people, over?’ she said into the tac radio. Alan, Okobe and Safiya were getting some rest. Amanda was exhausted, she had managed to get some sleep on the flight from Lagos but she was nearing the end of sixteen hours on. Between a long shift and the nervous tension, she knew she was too fatigued to be thinking clearly. Amanda didn’t want to start on the amphetamines as she would never get to sleep when her shift ended and she didn’t want to go there again, at least not unless she had to.

‘Cross, what the hell is going on?!’ Asher demanded over the radio.

‘Doctor, get the f*ck off this frequency! Mikey, report, over.’

‘We’re coming into . . . contact!’

Gunfire echoed through the tunnels. Two short bursts, then a longer less disciplined one. Then the gunfire stopped. Daniels was up and starting to move.

‘Wait!’ Amanda ordered. Daniels did as he was told. The beam on his flashlight was shaking badly as he covered the tunnel. Hank was covering behind them. Amanda let the Jackal drop on its sling as she grabbed the phone from her coat and switched it on. They had set the cameras to stream to the phone, but the cameras on B site were down. ‘B site. Now.’

The light illuminated the smoke from the cordite swirling in the air. There were spent shell casings on the ground and a lot of blood. The lights had been smashed as well. The beams from their flashlights and the glowing alien symbols in the rock were the only illumination. Amanda stared in horror. She wanted to be sick.

She had seen death before. She had seen a lot of it in New York, the horrors of the Manhattan Virus and the violence of the Ceph and in some cases her CELL colleagues. She had lost people before, but this assault had just seemed so easy for the Ceph bioform. Despite the weapons, the armour, the training and the experience, something had just snuffed out Mikey, Schmidt and Coyle like it was standing on bugs. Perhaps, to the Ceph, that was exactly what it was doing.

‘It’s gotta still be in here,’ Daniels said. The fat, middle-aged British ex-soldier was breathing hard, staring at Mikey. Daniels had always pretended not to like Mikey as the other Brit had been an ex-military police officer, like Amanda, and there was little love lost between enlisted men and MPs, but in truth the two had been close. The front of Mikey’s neck was a gaping red mess. The Ceph killer had nearly sawn his head off.

Amanda swallowed hard and tried to control the shaking, she just needed to cope long enough to give orders that wouldn’t get any more people killed. Her flashlight played across Schmidt’s body. He was laying half in and half out of one of the shallow trenches glowing with alien technology. His back had been broken. The angle that he was lying at looked horribly unnatural, to the point of obscene. Amanda could still make out the look of surprise on the German’s face.

‘H. . . help . . .’ The voice was weak. Amanda and Daniel’s flashlights played all across the floor of the cave. Only Hank remained calm, using his flashlight to search the back of the site. Daniels found him. It was Coyle. He was frothing up blood.

‘Daniels . . .’ Amanda started to warn the other contractor, but it was too late. Daniels had moved to Coyle and knelt down in the trench next to him.

Amanda shifted into the position where Daniels had been standing, trying to control herself. She had the feeling that there was something else in there with them. She felt a mounting terror that there was something just out of view, avoiding the light.

‘S’okay mate, we’re going to get you out of here. You’ll be fine.’

‘There’s nothing there . . .’ Coyle managed, his voice sounding wet, like he was trying to talk through a mouthful of liquid. Coyle started to shake uncontrollably. Daniels tried to hold him. The American contractor was vomiting up frothy blood, then he lay still.

‘Cross, report!’ Asher demanded over the tac radio. ‘Get the rest of your men back to the main cave right now!’

‘Doctor, shut the f*ck up!’ Amanda demanded. She could hear boots running through the tunnel towards them.

Daniels was staring down at Coyle. The blood on his hands looked black in the light of the flashlights. Coyle’s abdomen was little more than a red ruin.

‘Boss,’ Hank said quietly. He was just about able to keep the tremor out of his voice. ‘I think there’s something in here with us.’

Amanda felt her blood run cold. It felt like she followed the beam of Hank’s flashlight in slow motion. It was aimed just past Daniels, who was shaking like a leaf. Amanda saw nothing for a moment. Just the rock and the glowing neon figures of the alien symbols imbedded in it. The symbols didn’t look right. It was as if they were refracting off or through something. Amanda froze.

Daniels was frantically trying to get something he was holding in his hand to work. The emergency flare sputtered into life. It almost blinded Amanda and Hank with its phosphorescent, flickering glare. There was something wrong with the light from the flare. Just behind where Daniels was knelt over Coyle the flickering light was not behaving as it should. The misbehaving light moved. Daniels started screaming. He was lifted up into the air. There was more movement in the light and Daniel started spraying blood all over the cave.

‘Don’t you do it!’ Amanda was screaming. Amanda threw herself to the side as Daniels was flung at her.

Hank started firing. The staccato hammering of the Mk 60 medium machine gun in the enclosed space was deafening. The muzzle flash from the MMG created a strobing effect in the near darkness.

Amanda started firing as well, the recoil of the automatic shotgun hammering into her shoulder. In the confusion of flares, glowing alien symbols and muzzle flashes she had no idea what she was shooting at but she wanted a wall of fire between her and that thing.

Alan was suddenly next to her, his Grendel assault rifle at the ready. He was searching through the tech scope for a target but finding nothing. There was a popping noise as Okobe fired the underslung grenade launcher attached to his Grendel. The flare grenade exploded deep in the other tunnel that exited B site.

Amanda’s shotgun ran dry. Hank had already stopped firing. The air was thick with choking cordite smoke now. Their ears were ringing. Both the flares bathed them in flickering light. Okobe was reloading his grenade launcher. At the back of her mind some old training instinct was telling her that she should reload the shotgun. She ejected the magazine, stowed it and slid another home. She was just numbly going through the motions.

‘Boss?’ Alan asked. Amanda ignored him. She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Amanda?’ Her head shot round to look at him.

‘It’s got a cloak,’ she said. Alan looked confused for a moment. ‘A cloaking device. We can’t f*cking see it.’

They had returned to the main site. Amanda was still shaking. She was almost spilling the coffee over herself. She didn’t want to watch the footage but she was forcing herself to. The shitty holo-projector was building the three-dimensional image from 2D footage, the final result was grainy and incomplete, but it showed them what they needed to see.

The dig workers had fled the moment the Ceph-tech had come to life. There was about fifty seconds of footage of the empty cave and then Coyle, Schmidt and Mikey had entered the cave cautiously, weapons at the ready. The beams of the flashlights on their weapons had caused the camera to flare. Despite his caution Mikey hadn’t even been aware of what had happened to him. It looked like some old horror film about demonic possession. Mikey’s head was yanked back. Then his throat had seemed to open of its own accord. Amanda paused the image and looked closely enough to see grainy imprints on Mikey’s face where the killer’s invisible fingers had gripped the head.

The camera flared again from the muzzle flashes from the Grendels, then an apparently invisible force picked up Schmidt and flung him into the camera.

That was the end of the footage. There was silence.

‘Did it know about the cameras?’ Alan finally asked.

‘I think we have to assume so,’ Amanda said.

‘How?’ Okobe asked.

‘What if it’s got our comms?’ Amanda asked.

There was silence. People looked around the diminished circle. Safiya had joined the surviving members of the security detail now. Asher was, after all, in sight of the entire team.

‘Would it even understand us?’ Alan asked.

‘They’re clearly intelligent,’ Amanda pointed out.

The few remaining workers in the sites outside the main cavern had refused to continue work. Amanda couldn’t blame them, either. The remaining security detail had escorted them back to the main cavern. Asher had spent some time screaming at them to get the workers back to work and how much they had failed. Nobody had shot him.

‘I’ve seen a cloak before,’ Hank told them. Eight eyes turned to look at him. ‘In New York we’d been trying to get the refugees out. We were working with elements of 4th Marine Recon. One of their guys, a fella by the name of Alcatraz, apparently got hisself some kind of experimental armour. It had a cloak but he was on our side. That marine was hell on wheels in a fight. Best weapon we had against those things.’ Alan and Amanda shared knowing glances. ‘What?’ Hank asked.

‘Tinman,’ Alan said. Okobe looked up at him. It got Safiya’s attention as well.

‘What’s Tinman?’ Hank asked.

‘Someone in some kind of experimental armour killed a f*ck load of CELL contractors and Spec Ops guys. You heard of Dominic Lockhart?’

‘The guy who used to run the military side of CELL? The guy who f*cked up the New York operation?’ Hank asked.

‘The guy who got blamed for f*cking up the New York operation,’ Alan said. Amanda held her peace. She had her own opinion on Dominic Lockhart. ‘Well, this Tinman was supposed to be the one who killed him during an attack on a CELL complex. We’re right in the middle of an alien invasion and this Tinman turns on the very people who’re trying to do something about it.’

‘Look, Alan, I don’t want to get up in your face about this or anything, but CELL did things in New York . . .’

‘That the liberal media . . .’ Alan began.

‘Enough,’ Amanda said. ‘Hank, what’s your point?’

‘Whatever this Alcatraz or Tinman was about, he was about fighting Ceph. Asher said they’re reactive. They evolve from generation to generation in response to their environment. If they’d seen this cloak in action in New York then maybe their next generation will all pack a cloak.’

‘Some of the Ceph had cloaks in New York,’ Amanda said quietly. The others looked at her in horror.

‘There’s something else,’ Safiya said. ‘I overheard Asher speaking with one of the technicians. We were in site E. Asher had some kind of weird device that he hooked up to the Ceph tech fused into the rock itself. It was weird. The thing looked like their technology.’ Amanda thought back to how she had realised the Ceph tech imbedded in the rock had looked strange after the murders. ‘Asher said that it was all dead. That it had been infected by some variant of the Tunguska strain.’

‘So this thing is harming the Ceph tech?’ Okobe asked. His deep rumbling voice often made people think he was slow. Amanda knew that the quiet Nigerian just preferred to think long and hard about things. He was not infected with the westerners’ love of hearing their own voices.

‘So it could be the Tinman, then?’ Alan said.

‘How?’ Hank asked. ‘This Alcatraz was a Jarine, another throwback with a gun, just like me. He was hell on wheels in a fight when he was in the armour and he could kill swift, silent and deadly with the best of them, but he sure as hell wasn’t no Apex-Predator, invisible serial killer.’

‘Tell that to Dominic Lockhart and his men. He murdered f*cking hundreds of CELL contractors. People just like you and me . . .’ Alan said angrily.

‘Look buddy, I’m no fan of New York but what those CELL guys were doing . . .’

‘Enough,’ Amanda told them. ‘Forget about New York.’ She wished she could. ‘The fact is, it’s murdering our people. I don’t care whose side it thinks it’s on or what it may or may not have done in the past. It’s no friend to us. In the unlikely event we see it, we light it up.’

‘What do you want to do, boss?’ Safiya asked. Amanda could hear the fear in the other woman’s voice.

‘We bug out,’ Amanda said. ‘This is way above our pay grade. Even if we had K-Volts and Mikes, I wouldn’t want to f*ck with this thing.’

‘Asher?’ Alan asked.

‘His career’s in the pan. He doesn’t want it to look like he’s f*cking up this dig and he wants the glory if we catch or kill whatever this thing is. Hopefully he’s realised that this is beyond our collective capabilities, if not . . .’

‘I’ll handle the creepy fat f*ck,’ Safiya said. The look of disgust overcame her obvious fear. ‘Anyone else noticed he smells of sour milk?’

‘If it comes down to a bullet I do it, you understand me? Nobody else, just me.’ There were grumblings around the circle. Nobody would meet her eyes. ‘I said just me. Understand?’ There were muttered assents. ‘Okay, let’s go and speak to him.’ Amanda made as if to get up. ‘No comms, understand me?’ she asked. They nodded and stood up. Amanda switched the magazine on her Jackal combat shotgun. Replacing the clip with the volt rounds she had been issued in New York. Each cartridge contained electrostatically-charged ball-bearings. She hadn’t used them. She was grateful for that now.

They were moving past the cave where they had stored the bodies when they heard the noise.

Alan had point, followed by Okobe, Amanda and Safiya, and Hank had the tail. They kept the flashlights off and moved as quietly as they could. They were relying on the light bleed from the main cavern for illumination. Amanda would have killed for even one pair of night vision goggles about now. The cave was wide and low. There were natural columns where stalactites and stalagmites had joined together.

Backlit by the lights of the main cave, they threw long shadows across the floor. Amanda cursed and switched on the flashlight attached to the side of her shotgun. The beam sliced through the darkness. The others were taking their cue from her and doing the same.

They moved to the side of the entrance, forming a line against the rock wall. Using the flashlight beams to check all around them.

Amanda played her flashlight over Daniels’ body. There was muttered cursing from the others.

‘Quiet,’ Amanda hissed. She noticed the beam of her flashlight was shaking again. She played the light over Coyle. Schmidt. Mikey. He had been her oldest friend on the team after Alan.

The crunching noise had probably been quite quiet. To Amanda it sounded deafening. She watched Mikey’s body jerk as if it had been nudged by someone trying to get past. It knows we’re here and it doesn’t give a shit, she thought.

It was almost an automatic response. Her finger curled around the shotgun’s trigger. She squeezed. Four rounds. The hammer hitting the cartridge. The charge in the cartridge exploding. The powder propelling electrostatically-charged ball-bearing down the barrel. A long tongue of flame from the barrel of the shotgun lit up the cave. The spent cartridge was expended from the weapon. The same thing happened three more times.

The electrostatically-charged ball-bearings filled the air over Mikey’s corpse. Amanda was tangentially aware of the ball-bearings blowing bits out of the body.

Lightning arced around a massive, powerfully built but human-shaped figure, standing over Mikey’s body. The illusion cloaking him flickered and then failed in sparks of electricity.

The figure was wearing a suit that, to Amanda, looked like it had been made from muscle-like metallic cables in an armoured exoskeleton. Its face was covered by mask and visor. The figure was looking between them, taking its time. Unhurried. Unworried.

‘Light it up!’ Alan shouted and started firing burst after burst from his Grendel assault rifle. Safiya and Okobe started firing as well. The multiple bullet impacts wreathed the armoured figure in sparks. Hank hesitated but opened fire with the Mk 60. He was firing the MMG from his shoulder. Tracers and armour piercing rounds impacted into the figure. Staggering it. The tracers were bouncing off the armour and arcing into the darkness of the cavern.

Darkness started to envelope the figure once more as it stood up. Amanda realised that it was trying to use the cloak again. She fired the three remaining volt rounds, dressing the figure in lightning and dropping the cloak.

There was a load popping noise as Okobe fired his grenade launcher. The grenade hit the figure, staggering it, and then exploded. The overpressure rammed them all into the wall. Amanda’s head was ringing as she staggered to her feet. She shouted that she was reloading, but couldn’t hear herself. She tried to pull herself together enough to eject the mag from the shotgun. The shotgun’s empty magazine fell to the ground while she clutched at her webbing for another one.

It came stalking out of the darkness, all pretence at stealth gone. Smoke pouring off it. The armour had changed. Flattened, somehow, into overlapping plates. It strode straight past her, ignoring her. Only Okobe had the presence of mind to fire. Amanda cried out as a ricochet from one of the Nigerian’s rounds caught her in the shoulder, spinning her around.

Amanda spun back just in time to see the armoured figure push a knife through Okobe’s body armour and then lift the tall Nigerian off the floor. The screaming stopped. Okobe went limp as he slid down the knife until the figure had his lower arm inside Okobe’s torso.

Her hearing returned. It took a moment for her to realise that the screaming in her ears was Asher demanding to know what was going on. Shaking fingers finally managed to ram a fresh magazine into the combat shotgun.

An enraged Alan jumped on the armoured figure’s back. The figure cast Okobe’s body aside casually, grabbed Alan easily from his back and threw him into the cave wall. Even through the ringing in her ears and Asher’s incessant babble, Amanda could hear the cracking noise and Alan’s scream.

Hank fired a long burst at nearly point-blank range. Sparks and ricocheting tracers lit up the cave. Safiya went down as one of the ricochets caught her.

‘Wait! Cease fire! Cease fire, goddamnit! Stop f*cking shooting!’ Amanda screamed.

Hank ceased firing but rapidly backed away from the figure, which had turned to face him. Safiya, on the floor, scrambled away from the armoured figure as well. The French/Algerian woman grabbed her Grendel as she did so. Alan was groaning. That was good, Amanda thought, it meant he was alive.

‘Please! I know you can hear me,’ she shouted into the tac radio. ‘We’ll leave you the f*ck alone, just please stop killing my people,’ she begged.

It turned to look at her. She found herself facing an expressionless armoured mask.

‘Is it here?’ the figure demanded. It had a low bass voice. There was something emotionless and cold in it.

‘I don’t know what “it’ is, but this is a really f*cking unimportant facility.’ The figure just stared at her. ‘Look, you just tell me what it’s going to take for you to stop killing my people and we’ll do it, okay?’

‘Alcatraz, man?’ Hank tried. She could hear the terror in the ex-marine’s voice. The figure turned around to look at Hank.

‘I know that name. I am not him,’ he/it said.

‘What do you want?’ Amanda asked.

‘Access,’ the figure said.

‘We’re just going to leave, okay?’

The armoured figure said nothing but it didn’t make a move to kill them all, which Amanda put in the win column.

‘What the f*ck are you doing?!’ Asher’s voice went very high pitched when he screamed, Amanda noticed. Amanda suddenly realised that the voice wasn’t just in her ear now, but in the cave as well. Both she and the armoured figure turned around to look at the piggy scientist. Amanda was surprised that the fat scientist was brave enough to get this close to the thing-in-armour. ‘What are you f*cking talking to it for, you stupid bitch? Shoot it!’

‘F*ck that!’ Amanda said emphatically. ‘We are oscar mike.’

She turned and headed over to Alan, hoping that he was well enough to move. Hank was helping Safiya to her feet.

‘Shoot him! Shoot him!’ Asher was screaming. The armoured figure was just staring at the two of them.

Amanda didn’t think that Alan’s back was broken. Not that it mattered, she didn’t think that she had any choice but to try and move him.

‘I’ll see you dead for this! I’ll have your family f*cking murdered!’ Asher screamed at Amanda. A shot rang out. Asher collapsed to the ground, holding his stomach. He started crying and letting out little squeals of pain. Amanda looked at the smoking Hammer II heavy automatic in her hand.

‘What did I tell you, Asher? You’ve got to leave people with something to lose.’ She threw the Hammer to the thing-in-armour. ‘Looks like you disarmed me and shot Dr Asher here,’ she told him/it. The figure nodded. ‘Use him for whatever you want, we’re taking our dead.’ The figure considered this and nodded again.

Amanda and Hank helped Alan up. He was moaning, fading in and out of consciousness. They headed back to the main cave. She glanced over her shoulder. Her last view of the Tinman was him advancing on the squealing gut-shot Dr Asher.

Her face hardened into a mask of hatred.

You killed my people, she thought, this isn’t over, motherf*cker.