Ragnarok

FORTY-ONE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

Queen tensed in the dark. As the door rattled from the other side, she prepared to lunge.

The door swung open easily and a woman in a lab coat with short spiky blonde hair stepped into the room, without any hint of caution. The woman simply stood in the darkened room as if she couldn’t remember why she had come in. Light streamed in from the outside with a pulsing electrical quality that made Queen certain that it came from something large, like a spotlight.

She had been in the room for what felt like hours. She was wedged between two walls of the room, in the corner up by the ceiling. Her feet were braced in the open air vent and her hands rested on the frame over the door. Between her hands, like a garrote, she clutched the wire from the lightbulb she had pulled down. The cord’s coarse black insulating rubber dug into her fingers. She was ready to kill, but she stayed her attack, even in the awkward position. The woman hadn’t noticed her, and she didn’t display any alarm at finding the light out or at finding the room empty.

She just stood there, looking into the empty space.

Then the woman casually turned and walked out of the doorway. The door began to swing shut after her, but Queen quickly allowed one end of her weapon to unravel from the hand that had been braced on the doorframe, balancing herself on one arm, over the door closer. Once the thick insulation was in the crack of the door, she let the door swing nearly shut, where the wire stopped it from closing entirely. She dropped to the floor, landing in a silent crouch.

She paused, straining to hear anything from outside the door, but heard nothing. She stood and cautiously peered around the door, and out the crack. The woman walked away along the high metal catwalk near the roof of the huge room where Queen had come in with Rook and Asya. But that had been hours ago. Only one of the overhead Klieg lights lit the giant room, leaving the huge space shadowed and dim. Whatever brightness had been making the gigantic space crackle before was gone now. As Queen watched, the woman in the lab coat continued along the metal of the catwalk, her footsteps clanging in the silence as she went. Her posture was weird. The woman looked like she didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. When she reached the top of the metal stairs leading down to the floor of the room and the intricate metal finger-like shape that filled it, she just stopped.

Queen ducked back into the room briefly, but when she heard no noise, she once again looked out the crack. The woman was simply standing and looking out across the massive room.

She’s acting like a robot.

Queen took a halting step out onto the catwalk. The woman remained inert. Queen took another soft step out of the room and fully onto the metal of the catwalk. At this section of the walkway, a solid plate sat on top of the grill that formed the catwalk around the room. She had noticed that there was a solid plate to stand on in front of every door around the walkway, when she explored earlier. The spiky-haired, frozen woman stood on a similar plate at the top of the stairs. Queen checked her surroundings and made sure she was alone with the woman. She couldn’t see the stairwell below, because of the plate’s placement, but she could see the rest of the room, down to the machinery at the bottom of the cavernous space and back along the walkway behind her. She noted the door that led to the tunnel through which they had entered the facility.

It was when she took a step off the metal plate and onto the see-through metal grating of the catwalk, that she sensed something was wrong. The small wispy white-blonde hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up. She tightened her hold on her makeshift garrote and froze in place, just like the lab-coated woman ahead of her. But nothing happened. Nothing in her line of sight was moving. The robot-like woman stood statue still.

What the hell?

Every sense she had told her to run, but she couldn’t detect danger from any direction. She turned and looked behind her again.

Nothing.

As her eyes scanned back toward her own position, she looked down at the grating. She could see through the grill and under the metal slab behind her.

The creature hung in a crouch, upside down, like a bat, from the underside of the catwalk, just under the metal plate. It was larger than the one she had killed, and its translucent domed head was bigger than her chest. Muscles bulged under its ghost-like skin. Its bulbous eyes, the size of grapefruits, regarded her. She could sense a silent countdown happening. Soon it would strike.

But Queen showed no fear. Instead, she returned the creature’s stare, imagining a hundred different ways she might be able to kill it. Size was an advantage, but as the only woman in Special Forces, she was accustomed to fighting larger adversaries and used her lower center of gravity, surprising strength and ruthless techniques to overcome them all. Of course, most of them didn’t have teeth and claws. Then again, some did.

The thing scrambled to the side rail of the catwalk and began to climb up over it. Queen rushed it with her homemade weapon, and as its head cleared the rail, she rammed the insulated cord across the beast’s throat and shoved hard. The monster’s white body was in an awkward position, its claws only barely holding on as it had tried to vault over the rail to attack her. The clear claws slid on the slick metal. She could hear a screeching noise as the last two nails lost traction. Then the creature shot away from her and down to the floor. The lack of resistance was so sudden that she nearly lost her own balance and went over after the thing.

She stayed leaning over the rail long enough to watch the white animal-looking thing hit the concrete at the bottom of the room, bursting into a thick oozing fluid that splattered the machinery all around it.

Good.

Then, as she shot her eyes back to robot-woman, she saw what had impeded her path. Three more of the bastards on the stairs, and now one crouched on the railing at the top, level with the woman, who stood stock-still. All three of them had their strange external eyes swiveled down to take in the sight of their fallen comrade. Then as one, they swiveled their eyes up to look at Queen.

Time to go.

She turned and sprinted for the door down the catwalk that led to the tunnel and the older, abandoned part of the lab. She could hear the claws scraping and skittering along the metal walkway behind her as she flung the door open and pitched herself into the darkness of the tunnel. Her headlamp was gone. She had no time to be careful. She just ran, remembering as she went the long brick tunnel and the secret room at the end.

But this tunnel brought back her memory of the other. She bashed her fist against the ceiling a few times, as she ran. It was so low that she could easily reach it, even though the walls were far apart. She felt the dust cascade down on her in the dark, but she didn’t know if it would be enough to slow the creatures. She couldn’t hear them behind her, but she knew they made it into the tunnel before the outer door swung closed, removing even a trace of light. Finally, she found a brick that was loose. She halted in the dark and took a step back, reaching her fingers up to find it again. She played her fingertips over the rough stone and the fractured mortar until she felt the wobble. Then she banged on it again, with the bottom of her fist. It lurched under her strike. She worked her fingers into the crack and tried to pry it out, but it wouldn’t come loose. It was like a marble inside someone’s hand-it spun freely, but wouldn’t come out of the grip.

In the dark behind her, she heard a scratching noise. Crap, she thought. Break the hand. She struck the ceiling again with her fist, and then again. She punched up at the stones and pounded them with the bottom of her fist. She heard one of the surrounding bricks crack and then she heard something else sliding in the dark behind her.

Something close.

She hit the brick above her again and felt something in her own hand break. It wasn’t the first time she had broken a bone in her hand. Probably the 5 ^th metacarpal. Boxer’s fracture. She recognized the sensation, but the urgency in her mind made her shut the pain out. She hit the ceiling again and the stones surrounding her target brick crumbled, raining debris down in the stygian tunnel. Now she attempted to pry the brick again, and it came loose in her broken hand. She swapped the insulated wire for the brick and now used her good hand to smash it into the ceiling and the gaping wound she had created by prying out the brick. She could feel more dirt cascading down around her wrist.

Then she got an idea and moved her body to the other side of the tiny spray of falling dirt. She wrapped the wire around her torso in the dark, and shoved the brick fragment between her knees. She then reached up and dug the fingers of both hands into the soil beyond the brick ceiling. When she had a good grip, she hung from the bricks and used her weight to swing forward. She kicked out in the dark and two things happened. The first was unexpected, but the second was just what she was hoping for.

Her feet connected with something solid before she had the chance to extend her legs fully. She had planted her feet on the chest of one of the creatures. She wasted no time in tugging hard with her upper body strength. Several of the bricks gave way under her weight, pulling a section of the ceiling down on top of the beast and onto her legs. The tunnel filled with choking dust, but she had been expecting it and held her breath.

With nothing to cling to anymore, she fell to the floor with the shattered ceiling. She quickly scrambled backward on her ass, shoving with her feet and clawing back with her hands. She lost her brick weapon, but there were plenty to choose from now. She checked and found the insulated wire still hanging from her waist. She wrapped it around her broken hand. Then she grabbed the first piece of rubble she could find-half a brick-with the other hand and raced deeper into the darkness of the tunnel.

As she ran, she got angrier at the creatures behind her in the dusty darkness. She took breaths as she ran and tasted dirt in the air, but it was nothing like the cloud of dust from the ceiling collapse. She kept one hand in front of her and waited for the impact with the secret spinning wall. It was farther down the tunnel than she remembered it, but when she hit it, she felt it move smoothly on its axis.

The room on the other side of the spinning wall was as dark as the tunnel, but she remembered the way well enough. She found the door and turned left, heading across the small room toward the first tunnel-the one that led her up and out. She got angrier at the thought of leaving Rook and the Russian woman behind her. But she knew she couldn’t fight the white creatures here in the dark, and they had been between her and the rest of the lab, back on the catwalk. She reached the tunnel just as she heard a door slam open behind her.

Crap, they’re close.

She used her fragment of rubble to smash along the wall as she made her way down the original tunnel to the metal ladder, sending small waves of sand and grit through the air in the dark behind her. She felt the dirt pelting the skin on her face as she ran. She misjudged the distance down this tunnel too, slamming her face into the metal of the ladder in the darkness. She reeled from the impact, dropping her brick fragment. She caught herself from falling backward by grabbing the ladder rung with her broken hand. A fresh wave of pain shot up her arm. She grunted, but most of the pain was drowned out by her rising fury.

Holding tightly to the insulated wire, she grabbed the rungs above her in the dark and climbed the ladder. When she reached the top, she forced her weight behind the flipping door that wore the fake bush like a feather-capped Royal attending Prince Harry’s wedding. It was heavy, but it closed quickly.

She launched herself out and into a newly fallen snowdrift. Snow poured down from the sky in tiny jagged clumps-not quite sleet, but not quite snow.

Queen rolled away from the hatch and into the snow, relishing the weather. The sun had gone down, but the moon must have been up somewhere. She couldn’t see it, but light was trapped between the two-foot layer of fresh snow on the ground and the low-lying clouds above her head. It reflected back and forth off the two surfaces making everything nearly as bright as day. She had seen a similar effect before, on a skiing trip in Flagstaff.

She couldn’t have asked for a better battleground.

She knew she should probably run. Get help. Call in the cavalry. But that could take hours. Maybe longer. If something happened to Rook…

Queen shook her head. Not an option.

“C’mon, you see-through assholes. I’m waiting,” she whispered, clutching the rubber-coated wire.