SIXTY-TWO

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0245 Hrs

Queen led the way into the main room of the lab and found pretty much what she had expected.

Mayhem.

The giant cage of metal fingers now held a hundred-foot diameter glowing sphere of light shooting random bolts of lightning, which arced back to electrocute the metal struts. A harsh metallic smell of electricity burns hung in the air.

Dire wolves-a lot of them-were arrayed around the room, running to the metal staircase, climbing up the stairs, scaling up the outside of the freestanding stairwell or running up the walls to the catwalk. Rook was three stories up, dangling from one arm with a dire wolf climbing up to him. Asya was close to the top of the stairs, slamming her foot into a dire wolf’s face as it tried to climb over the red metal railing.

She ran into the room heading for the first dire wolf closest to her, a big tall one, which stood at least a foot taller than the others. She held her broken hand in toward her body and raised the curved Kurkri knife.

Beck entered the room after her, armed with one of Black Six’s spare MP5s. She fired at the legs of the dire wolf attacking Asya. The bullets raked its legs and it dropped, falling down toward where Rook hung by one arm.

“Crap,” Beck shouted.

Rook let go as a dire wolf leapt at him. They crashed together in the air and began to fall together, grappling and struggling with each other.

Black Six stepped into the room after Beck and fired a shot that killed the falling dire wolf stories above Rook. He saw its trajectory would take it onto Rook’s head, and fired another burst, making the creature’s body spin and flip in the air until its head smacked the railing and its now punctured corpse ricocheted away from the stairwell as it continued its fall.

Rook pulled his legs up onto the chest of the dire wolf he fought, intending to use the body to cushion his fall. Instead, he stopped short of the floor, clutched in the grip of a dire wolf reaching out over the first floor railing, its claws digging into his sides.

But Rook had seen the dire wolf above him get shot. Someone was covering him. “Thanks for the catch, Deputy Dawg,” he said and leaned his head to the side. He heard the buzz of the bullet as it zipped past his ear and buried itself in the creature’s forehead. The talons slipped from his side.

Rook fell to the concrete, but the drop was manageable. He used the dead dire wolf below to soften his landing. The impact jarred him hard, but he turned the fall into a roll, converting the impact’s kinetic force into motion.

Queen saw Rook fall, but was too busy fighting the big one to help. It was cagey and knew to stay back from her slashing blade. She had no interest in continuing the standoff. “Black Zero! Crotch shot!”

She circled the big one again with the knife as Beck heard her request and fired at several nearby dire wolves, aiming at their groins. The third target’s crotch erupted with a spray of fluid, and the big dire wolf turned its head. That was all the distraction Queen needed. She leapt forward, slicing upward, and cut the thing from the middle of its huge sternum up to its throat. An arc of white blood sprayed outward from the beast, coating Queen in yet more fluid. The beast also defecated on the floor before it crumpled.

“That’s just wonderful,” Queen said, disgusted. Then she ran for the next living target.

Rook picked himself up off the floor, limping and holding his shoulder. He was injured.

“Rook!” Queen called to him. “Duck!”

Rook trusted Queen implicitly. He didn’t need to know why she’d told him to duck, only that she had. He dropped to the floor and rolled again, this time narrowly missing being shot as Black Six expertly targeted the dire wolf that had been coming up behind Rook. Its head and chest spasmed from the two shots, then it fell over backward. Rook got to his feet and approached Beck, who was firing on the last few beasts on the stairwell.

“Who are-Hopping crap on a pogo stick. You’re that Pawn that used to work for Ridley’s security goons, before joining our side in the fight against the Hydra.”

“Black Zero,” she said, handing him her Browning. “I’m with Endgame.”

Rook gladly took the weapon and aimed it at one of the last living wolves in the room. He squeezed the trigger twice, and the running creature-just getting up to its full speed in the confines of the lab-slumped over dead, its body skidding a few feet on the slick concrete.

“What’s Endgame?”

Beck killed the last dire wolf on the staircase, as it tried to leap upward on the exterior of the stairs. “Support crew for Chess Team.”

“We have a support crew? Nobody ever tells me these things.” Rook hung his head and held his shoulder with the Browning still in his hand. He grimaced.

Queen stepped over with Black Six. The man turned as he walked, checking all sides of the room, never lowering his weapon.

“Did you know we had a support crew?” Rook asked Queen.

“Nope. I’ve been running around Russia looking for you for the past few months. How would I know?”

Asya had run back down the stairs and leapt off the last few steps to the ground. She hurried over to where Rook stood and was about to ask him a question, but she stopped, her mouth hanging open. Then Black Six opened fire again and all heads turned toward the portal.

Dire wolves poured out of the pulsing energy portal. There were so many that they were actually climbing over each other to get out through the wall of light-a wall that stretched at its bottom to over twenty feet wide. Rook figured as many as fifty of them. They struggled and fought to push through the yellow brilliance, emerging to race across the slick concrete floor.

Black Six stopped taking single shots and began firing bursts. Beck opened fire as well.

Queen reached over to Black Six’s thigh and withdrew his Browning. She picked her shots and made them count. Body after body clogged the entrance of the portal.

Rook fired carefully, conserving the few shots of ammunition in the Browning.

Asya, unarmed now, raced behind everyone to the security room. Rook figured she was taking cover.

Even though the group had fired enough rounds of 9 mm ammunition to drop a herd of elephants, the creatures kept pouring into the room. They scampered over their dead, covering themselves in the blood of their fallen.

“This is not working,” Rook shouted. “We’re gonna get overrun here.”

Asya reappeared with two AR-15 assault rifles. She handed one to Rook and he handed her the Browning. He racked back the charging handle, and blasted another wave of the creatures. A puddle of white blood seeped out across the floor in front of the portal’s edge.

Black Six’s rifle stopped spitting its deadly hail of bullets and he shouted. “I’m out!”

Asya ran to him and gave him the second AR-15, then fired the last two rounds from the Browning, killing one of the dire wolves. Black Six opened up with the new weapon, dropping several more of the scrabbling creatures. When the weapon was empty, he retreated behind the rest of the group and out of sight. Rook kept firing until he was dry too.

“Too many,” Queen shouted. “Sons-a-bitches just keep coming!”

Dire wolf corpses littered the room now, and the pile at the entrance to the portal, a mound of arms and claws and bulging eyes, was at least four feet high. Seeing that the fight had nearly gone out of the group, the dire wolves slowed now as they stepped out of the light and into the cavernous room. Some squatted and sniffed the air. Others stepped forward slowly. More came through the glowing wall of energy. Rook watched as more and more came through and he lost track of the number.

They’re bleeding us dry, Queen thought, making us use all of our ammo. Fucking transdimensional rope-a-dope.

Rook turned to her. “We are going to need an escape plan before I run out of clean pairs of shorts today.”

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