It started with a twitch in Lina's fingers.
Then her breathing quickened. Her eyes darted to the wall, then the floor, then nothing at all.
Rivas noticed it first. "Lina? What is it?"
Lina gripped her skull with both hands.
"They're here," she whispered. "They're… coming."
Koji rose. "How many?"
"I don't know!" Her voice cracked. "I don't know! It's loud! inside it's screaming!"
She stumbled backward, knees buckling, slamming into the wall.
"Too many too fast"
Toma swung his rifle around. "Everyone up. Defensive formation, now!"
A tremor ran through the walls a soft vibration that grew, the distant sound of shifting debris and guttural howls echoing from the collapsed corridors. Elen checked her thermal scope. "They're moving under us. Left flank. No wait right too!" Rivas grabbed Lina and pulled her behind the overturned gurney.
"Keep her down!" she ordered.
Then the first one emerged all fangs and folded limbs, its face split with twitching mandibles and sunken eyes. A slick carapace of bone and muscle twitched as it hissed and lunged. Rivas dropped it with a burst of automatic fire to the throat.
Another screeched through a vent shaft and pounced Toma met it mid-air with a roundhouse kick and three controlled shots to the spine.
Then the hallway caved in.
They came from everywhere.
The team became a storm of motion.
Elen dropped to a crouch, launching grenades into tight corridors and fragging clusters of creatures before they emerged.
Koji's drone deployed mid-air, spraying suppressive fire and throwing decoy flashes across the chamber.
Toma backpedaled, slicing one's head clean off with a combat knife after it dodged his rounds at close range.
"Fall back to the east tunnel!" Rivas yelled. "Extraction point's ten blocks from here move!"
Behind them, Lina's cries had turned into silence. She knelt in the corner, hands shaking, eyes wild locked in place by the storm in her head.
Then she saw one.
A mutant crawling low toward Rivas, jaws open, limbs twitching.
Lina stood.
Her scream wasn't human.
It was rage.
She launched forward, snatching Elen's backup blade from a thigh holster as she passed. Rivas turned just in time to see Lina leap onto the mutant.
One, two, six, twelve slashes in less than three seconds each cut precise, brutal, carving deep grooves into flesh and tendon.
The mutant collapsed in a heap, twitching.
But Lina didn't stop. Another lunged at her from the side.
She spun low, ducking under its swipe, and drove the knife up through its chin, slicing deep into the base of its skull. Before the body hit the ground, she ripped the blade free and hurled herself toward a third creature sprinting toward Koji's blind side.
Her feet barely touched the floor.
She vaulted off a broken slab of concrete, landing hard on the mutant's back, stabbing down again and again, each blow exploding with a wet crunch of ruptured flesh and snapping bone.
Three dead.
Breathing hard, covered in blood, Lina turned eyes wide, unblinking. The last creature in the hallway something hulking with clawed hooves and two faces froze.
Even the mutants… paused.
The swarm faltered, the instinctual network behind them briefly confused by what they'd just seen. Lina stood in the middle of it all, panting, her blade dripping.
Her arms trembled, not with fear… but restraint.
She looked toward the team.
No one moved.
Even the air felt afraid.
"She's…" Toma started. "That was-"
"We don't have time," Rivas snapped, pulling her gaze from Lina and turning to the horde. "They're coming back."
"MOVE!" she barked.
The squad resumed fire, laying down a corridor of bullets and flame as they pushed toward the extraction zone. Toma scooped Lina into his arms she didn't resist. Her limbs trembled from the aftershock of her outburst. Her knife clattered to the floor. Mutants poured from every angle some spliced with insect limbs, others bulging with overlapping flesh and gaping mouths where eyes should be.
The team fought as they moved, rounds running dry, armor dented and slashed. Elen tossed her last incendiary behind them the blast lit up the tunnel with a roar.
When they finally burst into the open broken sky, ash-covered street, gunship engines whining in the distance they were bloodied, breathless, but alive.
The ramp dropped.
They climbed aboard.
As the hatch sealed shut and the gunship rose, Lina sat curled in a corner, staring at her hands.
No one spoke for a long time.
Finally, Koji muttered:
"She killed three of them… in seconds."
"She's not like us," Rivas said quietly. "Not anymore."