Ragnarok

SEVENTY

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0430 Hrs

Knight had a bird’s eye view of the entire conflict. He still didn’t feel like himself after his ordeal on the other side of the portal. His brain felt loose, his thoughts all erratic. He had a hard time remembering what had happened in all the time he was on the other side. But he and Bishop were able to agree that Knight must either have been on the other side for much longer-and they realized time worked differently on that side-or else his body had aged at an accelerated rate in the short span of time he was there. Either way, Knight was a few years older now.

Although strangely, Bishop wasn’t.

According to the big Iranian American, they had both been on the other side for about the same amount of time-Bishop having entered a portal on a rope like Tarzan just moments after Knight had been carried through the one on Westminster bridge. In the end they came to agree that time had worked differently for each of them, either because they had gone through different portals, or because Knight spent most of his time on the lower plane while Bishop entered the other world atop the cliff. Knight knew that time ran slower the further you got from Earth’s surface. You needed an atomic watch to see the difference, but the effect might be exaggerated in Fenrir’s dimension.

What Knight hadn’t told Bishop was that, when they met at the top of the cliff, Bishop had been covered in dried white dire wolf blood. It covered his armored chest and the side of his face. Bishop told him about his encounter with the dire wolf, that he’d hallucinated his worst fear-becoming a Regen once more, but Knight suspected the man had actually attacked, killed and eaten a dire wolf. Having personally survived Bishop as a Regen, it was a nightmare neither man wanted to think about, so Knight didn’t. He put the memory out of his mind with no intention of ever telling Bishop.

A burst of gunfire brought him back to the battle.

Knight focused on the chaos below him. Deep Blue fired on leaping dire wolves. Queen was back to her preferred method of up-close devastation with a wickedly curved blade, moving with a display of predatory violence that put the dire wolves to shame. Carrack, Beck and Rook were all near each other, unleashing a barrage of bullets at the giant creature’s sack-covered chest, which didn’t seem to hurt it as much as distract it.

In a perfect sniping position, he focused on the largest target, the behemoth. He considered the chest, but rupturing the hanging wombs wasn’t doing any real damage. Instead, he targeted the eyes, thinking if he couldn’t kill the gigantic animal, he could at least handicap it.

He lay on the metal catwalk and supported the FN-SCAR under the barrel and sighted one of the creature’s round eyes. The SCAR was a Belgian rifle with an effective range of about 1200 feet. He was less than a hundred feet from the beast. Of course, the monster was eighty feet tall; it would be an easy target from any distance.

He fired twice into the beast’s left eye and the creature roared, shaking the foundations of the underground lab. The metal catwalk rattled, shaking Knight to the point where he wondered if the whole catwalk system might come down.

The team continued their assault on Fenrir. It struck out wildly, unaware of where the bullet strike to its eye had originated. Its torso spun from side to side, swinging its arms and flailing the dangling sacks so hard that some burst open, dropping dire wolves sixty feet to their deaths. The giant snapped its tremendous jaws at the soldiers on the ground and pounded its feet, trying to crush them.

Knight waited until the creature turned again to snap toward Rook’s position. Rook ran out of the way and leapt over a pile of rock and sand, sliding down the other side. The beast’s head lunged at Rook, and then swung back to snarl at Anna Beck-Knight’s girlfriend-as she fired on the creature from behind, helping Bishop to his feet with her other hand. He was once again firing at the newly arriving dire wolves as they entered the fray through the portal.

The right eye stayed frustratingly out of Knight’s view, so he took a few more shots at the already damaged and closed-over left eye.

Then he heard a new kind of roar. This one was loud and higher pitched, more like a whine.

A mechanical whine.

When Knight looked to the hangar doors, he understood that he didn’t need to hit the creature’s right eye. King was back, and he was going to hit the eye-and everything else.