"Check for casualties! Move quickly! Don't stop!"
Calista did not spare the Black Fire mutant corpses on the floor another glance. Her attention was already fixed on the passage ahead, alert for another attack.
The team quickly checked themselves. No one was injured, and their protective suits were intact.
Bossie's equipment had taken a minor hit during the evasive maneuver, but the damage was negligible.
"Comm... Commander, you..." Honeywell stammered, still overwhelmed by what he had just witnessed.
"Keep up!" Calista cut him off as she started forward again. "This is only the beginning. Watch the dark areas. These things are faster than ordinary walkers."
The team continued onward, but the mood had changed. Seeing their leader personally cut down the enemy had greatly boosted their morale and dispelled some of their fear of the unknown creatures.
Following the markers, they passed through a maze of pipes and several smaller workshops.
Along the way, two more Claw mutants attacked them. The crystalline growths covering their bodies appeared thicker, but the team was prepared now, and their morale was high. Both creatures were quickly eliminated.
Calista, however, grew increasingly uneasy.
Had Leah and the others encountered this many Black Fire mutants too?
Or had the noise from the Spearhead Task Force's earlier battles drawn all these damned things out from deeper within the facility?
At last, they passed through a severely warped door and entered a relatively spacious junction.
The signs of battle here were far more intense.
The walls were riddled with bullet holes, but even more striking were the broad splashes of thick, semifluid residue. It had dried into a hard yellow-green crust, and the acrid odor lingering in the air was even harder to describe than the smell of the corrosive fluid alone.
An astonishing number of shell casings littered the floor, along with several crushed empty magazines.
"This is it! They fought a hard battle here!" Bossie said, crouching to examine the traces.
In one corner, Ethan found a splattered fluorescent marker. Its color was brighter than the previous ones, and the arrow pointed toward a metal maintenance ladder leading up to the reactor workshop's upper level.
Beside the arrow, however, was a complex symbol hastily drawn in fluorescent paint.
It meant "urgent assistance required."
"Someone was injured, or their equipment was damaged." Calista's eyes narrowed. "They may have been forced to split up."
"There are drag marks here too!" Jenson said, pointing at the floor.
Three drag marks crossed the area. They were wider and deeper than the one they had found at the previous junction, and they were streaked with the crystallized slime characteristic of Black Fire mutants.
Disordered human footprints were scattered along both sides of the trails.
Calista crouched and carefully swept her flashlight over them.
The footprints were chaotic and pointed in different directions. Some moved forward, while others retreated. There were even several deep marks where someone had slipped to their knees. The edges of the prints were stained with the same black residue and small amounts of crystallized slime.
"There was a close-quarters fight here after they split up, or they were ambushed," Bossie said tensely. "Our people fought whatever dragged away the Black Fire mutant corpses."
The drag marks continued in the direction indicated by Leah's marker, while the footprints led toward a concealed dead end off to the front and side, enclosed by a partially collapsed pipe and an abandoned control console.
Something seemed to be moving faintly within it.
Bossie signaled to the others and aimed his weapon at the corner.
Calista raised her gun and approached slowly, sweeping the beam of her flashlight across the area inch by inch.
A figure was curled up in the corner.
He wore an orange hazmat suit, but its upper half had been almost completely torn apart. Beneath it, his chest was a bloody ruin with an unnatural purplish-black discoloration. Fine crystals had formed across the surface, and the makeshift bandages were already soaked through with dark red fluid.
His breathing was faint. Every inhale produced a wet, rattling sound from the fluid filling his lungs.
It was Anderson.
"Anderson!" Ethan rushed over first and opened his backpack.
Anderson's clouded eyes shifted. With tremendous effort, he managed to focus on Ethan's face before turning toward Calista.
His lips moved, but only a hoarse, leaking wheeze came out.
"Hah... hah..."
Frothy blood poured from the corner of his mouth.
"Don't move! Hold on!" Ethan quickly examined him.
His face turned deathly pale, and he gave Calista a grim shake of his head.
Anderson's injuries were not merely lacerations. Some highly corrosive virus had already invaded his internal organs.
The fact that he had survived this long was a miracle.
Calista felt her heart sink.
She knelt beside Anderson and grasped his cold, trembling hand.
"Anderson, it's Calista. Where... where are the others?"
"Comm... Commander..." Anderson's voice sounded as though it were being forced through a broken bellows. His gaze wandered, and his words came out disjointed.
"They... went inside... control room... reactor... They went... to find the source of the contamination... My suit was torn... Leah said... couldn't... couldn't risk it..."
With great difficulty, he turned his head toward the direction where the most chaotic footprints and drag marks disappeared.
"Fr... Frank... Wilson..."
Tears mixed with blood ran down Anderson's face as his body began to convulse uncontrollably.
"That thing came... from the pipes overhead... a black shadow... so fast... Frank pushed me away... and then... hah... hah..."
His breathing suddenly quickened. His eyes filled with absolute terror, as though he were witnessing the scene all over again.
"It... it didn't eat us... It took Frank... dragged him away... like... like garbage... No... no..."
Anderson suddenly clamped his fingers around Calista's wrist with astonishing strength.
Gathering the last of his strength, his voice rose into a shrill cry filled with incomprehensible horror.
"That thing... it eats them! It eats those monsters! I saw it... It tore apart... the ones we killed earlier... and ate them! It isn't... it isn't Black Fire... it isn't..."
His words stopped abruptly.
Anderson's eyes remained wide open. Reflected in their depths seemed to be the outline of something lurking deep within the darkness.
His grip on Calista's wrist went slack.
After one final violent convulsion, his body collapsed completely. The purplish-black wound on his chest continued to rise and fall faintly for a few moments, then even that movement ceased.
Silence.
Calista gently closed Anderson's eyes and rose without a word.
Leah and most of the team had entered the central control room and might have continued toward the reactor workshop closer to the core.
Anderson's hazmat suit had been damaged, so he and Frank Wilson had been left behind. Leah and the others had probably assumed that the route behind them was already safe.
But something had attacked them.
It had taken Frank, and it fed on Black Fire mutants.
Calista closed her eyes heavily.
Anderson had been a young, quick-witted guard assigned to Lorenzo's weapons production line.
She remembered Frank Wilson as well. He was one of the National Guard soldiers they had rescued from Lorenzo's basement at the very beginning. He had performed well in the Defense Force and served as the deputy leader of Gavin's group.
Both men had been selected for this mission because of their outstanding performance during training.
...
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