“Fuuuuuuuuuck!” shouted Habib. He looked down at his calf, then at Aoife. “You shot me, you idiot!”
Wolf whined in distress and Noah’s blood ran ice-cold for a moment—but they weren’t shooting actual bullets. Only the sort that will put you to a deep, comatose sleep.
Habib collapsed onto the floor, groaning.
“Circle him!” Noah shouted.
“Noah? What’s going on down there?” said Vitt.
He could barely hear her over the commotion in the room. Luo was attempting to throw glass bottles of cider at the typeB’s head, but most missed the target, splattering sticky liquid all over the floor. Reaching the end of the bottle supply, Luo rummaged in a box beside him and started throwing, of all things, rolls of sticky labels at the creature.
Gritting his teeth, Noah said, “Bianco, down here now. Bates and Fleming, stay put. Keep your eyes trained on the hole in the roof. If there’s even a hint of movement, shout. That’s an order!”
He turned back to assess the scene. At least ten yellow darts lay useless on the floor. They didn’t have many more chances left. If they didn’t hit the target soon, he’d have to face a very embarrassing meeting with the captain.
The thin rags the typeB wore flapped in the air as it jumped, frog-like, eight feet across the room, towards Luo, who staggered back. Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw Vitt reaching the bottom step, rifle at the ready.
It’s no good.He raised his crossbow.I’m not risking anyone’s life over this.
The type raised its left claw, powerful biceps flexing as it—
A strangled cry of shock came out of its warped mouth. It turned around, a yellow dart embedded in its cheek. It tried to swipe it away, but couldn’t coordinate its movements. Already, it was swaying. Then it sank to the floor, howling softly, just a few steps away from Habib’s unmoving body. Finally, it stilled.
“Porca puttana!” whispered Vitt, running to Habib and grabbing his wrist. “He’s breathing and stable. Which one of you twits shot him?” Vitt pulled the dart out of his leg, looking up when nobody answered her.
“Not important right now,” said Noah. He turned to Meredith, chief medic and miracle worker. “Can we wake him up? There’s no way any of us can carry his weight.”
Luo and Aoife set about rolling the typeB into the black, multi-handled carry bag.
Meredith rummaged around in a med-kit. “The fact that he dropped down cold is not a good sign. They’re not calibrated for the human body. Let’s get Command on the line, pronto.”
Noah reached for his wristband, but paused when he heard an almighty crash coming from above them. Stomach lurching, he was at the bottom of the staircase within seconds, the sound of his squad’s footsteps following close behind. He emerged into the light of the ground floor to find Frankie and Zeke standing by a toppled over shelving unit, rifles trained on it. Wolf circled the metal structure and bared his teeth.
“Is there a type under there?” Noah asked. “Alive?”
“Yes, and unsure. We pushed it over,” replied Frankie.
Zeke turned to Noah. “Sorry. I panicked. I didn’t think about the noise.”
Noah and Luo pulled up the unit slightly, the strength of Luo’s bionic doing most of the work.
“Looks pretty dead to me,” Vitt said.
They let the unit drop back down.
“It came from the roof,” said Frankie, using her rifle to point to the gaping hole.
Noah squinted. There was the wire Vitt had described earlier, a tiny silver sliver, reaching up, out of the gap to… where? On instinct, he used the collapsed shelving unit as a springboard to jump onto the second-to-top shelf on another set of racks. He groaned as he pulled himself up onto the final level. Where was Habib when you needed him?
“Forrest?” Vitt shouted.
“Ring Command and request back up, now.”
He had to see, pronto, where the wire led, and how much danger they were about to be in. The jump to the edge of the caved in roof looked precarious, but he only hesitated for a second before leaping upwards, fingers scrambling for purchase on the slabs of slat.
For one horrible second, he slipped backwards, and imagined his bones breaking in all sorts of sickening ways before his other hand grasped onto a steel chimney tube. Pulling himself to his feet on the roof of the warehouse, his eyes traced the wire. Pulled taut by invisible weight, it geared off to the left, into a tree that brushed up against the building. The tangled branches easily hid it from them when they surveyed the perimeter earlier.
Noah lay flat on his stomach, lifting a branch and peering down. He could only track the fine silver thread for another few feet before it became lost in the foliage. He frowned. Was this strange set up the work of humans, potentially many years ago? Or typeBs? The latter idea made his skin crawl. What could it possibly be for?
