He stepped inside. He scanned it again. Two red signatures. Norah trailed in behind him.
“I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Is there a basement?” He sensed nothing but packed dirt and cement below but he could be wrong. There could be something... and he had been surprised before.
“No.”
Stryker looked around, his flashlight back on. The room had the look of rough, crooked edges. One open mattress, half-soaked, with thick bulgy spots that showed where it was damp with water and where it had dried.
“There’s nothing here,” he gritted as he scanned it again. He stepped forward and stood right above one signature, outlined as a humanoid body. He waved his hand through the area. Nothing.
Nothing is error.
“But you–is something on your radar?” Norah looked at the floor with him.
His head snapped up. “No,” he lied. “I was wrong. Let’s keep moving.” Something was off and he didn’t think it was his coding.
Error is wrong. Imperfection.The skin under his mask tightened as his jaw ticked. He heated up his internal tech to evaporate the remaining water on him.
The silence that fell between him and Norah coiled in his gut. He dropped his bag and pulled out a new cloth and handed it to her. “Dry off as much as you can.”
He didn’t like the water anymore.
And he had always loved water. His beast rattled from within.
Stryker rushed to the other areas with his night vision on, and found nothing. Norah saw nothing. Nothing but blaring color in a spectrum only he could see. They ended up at the front of the facility.
The scientist coughed behind him, her steps faltered as his silence wore on.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
The rain beat at the double doors like bullets. Stryker turned around and lifted her poncho hood back over her dripping spirals of hair. “Nothing.”Is my tech corrupted?
“There were no bodies,” she said what was on his mind. “There was no blood.”
“There were also no immediate signs of a struggle.”
“They were taken?” Then quickly added, “I’m not making this up.”
“I don’t think you are, it didn’t even cross my mind. If the bodies were taken, there would be a trail...something to suggest a path, but there’s nothing, nothing but water.” And he hated himself for it. Stryker rested his hand back on her shoulder. “We need to–”
An ear-splitting shriek rose up from where they had just vacated. Norah jerked and he pulled her behind him.
The screech increased and the water from outside began to flood the hallway, the shadows thickening at an alarming rate. It rose in pitch until the wires inside his head strummed.
Stryker turned and held Norah up as he broke open the front doors and entered the downpour.
They ran into the thick tree-line. The muck of the alien jungle sucked at their steps, and the wails faded within the drums of thunder.
He put an arm around Norah and pushed her through the sludge, while her palms pressed into her ears and her nails dug into her scalp. A shroud of mist enveloped them.
Stryker connected with his ship, his eyes forward, ignoring the branches and vines that snapped at his frame and the wind that whistled in his ears. He programmed the flyer to start but his connection deadened until it went away entirely. He didn’t like that.
“Stryker, there’s a terra vehicle,” Norah yelled over the wind, her hands still over her ears. She tripped over a branch but he held her up and they kept moving.
“No time, babe.” The creatures that jumbled his wiring were pursuing them. He picked up speed despite the rising water level.
“But the others?” Her poncho sealed against her clothes, her hand now over her eyes. Stryker pulled her closer into his protective embrace and propped her up as her feet began to catch in the muck. Her body molded into his side.
