Helmets came down, plates sealed, weapons drawn. Genesis strapped on a compact breacher shotgun. The sergeant thumbed an SMG into place. Heavy slung a box-fed machine gun across his shoulder. The sniper checked a long, cold barrel and loaded a pistol into her thigh holster. Backpacks clinked with spare mags and mission kits.
Loading his shotgun, Genesis heard the sergeant say, "Good choice for tight work. I like to keep my distance from those things' blades."
Genesis gave a short nod. The sniper sniffed. "And I'm supposed to do what with this inside the base?"
"You'll figure it," the sergeant said, steady. "I have faith."
Heavy clapped the sniper's shoulder. "Stay behind me. I'll eat them. You've got a pistol—plenty."
Another chime. "T-minus one minute."
The sergeant's face hardened. He drew them in close, voice low and simple. "Mission brief, last time. Harvester main fleet is bearing on Earth. Our orbital platforms will buy time, but we need a trump card. Command's been developing a—well, a weapon that could change everything. One hour ago the research outpost went dark. We're the nearest team. We go in, find out what happened, secure the device, and call Command for extraction. Reinforcements are inbound, but not fast enough. Clock's tight. The Harvesters in space won't wait while we sort this out."
The Harpy's belly thrummed as the pilot counted down. "T-minus zero. Touching down now. Good luck—and may God be with you."
They sealed helmets. The ramp cycled. Rain hit the hull like thrown gravel. The world narrowed to wet metal, breathing armor, and the road that led into whatever had gone dark.
The Harpy's ramp dropped into rain and black rock. Wind shoved sheets of water across an arid grassland, the ground slick and shining in the floodlights' spill. It was pitch-dark beyond. Four figures stepped out, visors ghosting to low-light as their HUDs bloomed green.
They fanned into a square, covering all arcs, while the Harpy spooled power and lifted away. When the engine thunder faded, only rain ticked on armor.
"Radar's clear," Heavy murmured. "No movement."
Genesis rose from his crouch. "Move. We're on the clock."
They fell in behind him, single file across the sodden flats. Far ahead, a silhouette shouldered out of the night: a fortified tower complex ringed by a sixteen-meter wall, a few beacons winking from the crown like tired eyes.
At the gate there were no sentries. No patrols. Just rain and quiet.
The sergeant slid a keycard across the access pad. Locks thudded. Pistons sighed. Metal groaned as the gate split and rolled. The three troopers brought weapons to shoulder; the sniper watched their six.
"I've got a bad feeling," Heavy said.
"Eyes sharp," the sergeant warned. "Corners, shadows. If your tracker pings anything that isn't us, call it."
The gate finished grinding open. A short two-lane road led to the inner yard—and two security uniforms lay face-down across the asphalt, bodies torn wide, blood thinning in the rain.
Heavy exhaled through his teeth. "Make that a really bad feeling."
Genesis stepped forward. "Form on me. I take point."
They moved, boots clicking on wet paint, into a courtyard packed with employee sedans and a single corporate heli on a standby pad. Some vehicles had passengers slumped behind glass, throats opened. Others were empty, doors ajar, bodies sprawled nearby with spines ripped through jackets. The escape routes all pointed the same direction—away from the main doors.
Genesis's shotgun came up by reflex. He swept low to high, left to right, reading angles, vents, gutters.
"What is it?" the sniper whispered, mirroring his scan.
"Infiltrators," Genesis said. "Harvester vanguard strain. Climbers—any surface. Adaptive skin—can ghost against most backgrounds. Area looks clear. Move."
"So… chameleons," the sniper muttered.
"Chameleons with four bladed arms," the sergeant said, dry. "And a mouth that chews metal. Don't get close."
A shiver ran through the sniper's voice. "Lucky me. I brought a rifle."
They reached the building: a glass-fronted lobby rising two stories under the tower's overhang. Genesis tested the handle—locked.
"Panel," he said.
The sergeant slid to the wall unit. A handprint icon glowed on the screen; beneath it, an old-fashioned card slot. He fed the badge. Progress dots ticked. The display washed green: ACCESS GRANTED. Locks clacked.
Genesis pulled the door and stepped into a dim lobby that smelled of copper and wet carpet. Bodies lay where they'd fallen. Pocked walls showed return fire; behind the reception desk a guard still gripped a pistol in a dead hand. Overhead, a ceiling grate hung twisted—vents breached.
The lights flickered, strobing their low-light into useless grain.
"Switching off night vision," Genesis said. "Helmet lamps on."
White cones snapped open across the floor, carving the shadows into hard edges.
All four helmets clicked over to flashlight mode, beams cutting through the dim haze. The white light caught motes of dust and mist as it swept across the lobby walls.
Heavy's lamp fixed on a bank of elevators and two branching corridors. "Where to then?" he asked.
Genesis turned toward the right passage. "Follow me. We'll head right. Third floor—there should be a hall with a hidden access door."
They moved, lights slashing through the gloom, boots echoing on tile. The short hallway opened into the main office sector—a wide atrium that split the building in two.
In the center ran a narrow indoor garden: a decorative line of soil plots and sculpted shrubs, a dead fountain choked with rainwater and leaves. Overhead, a single window stretched the entire length of the ceiling to the far wall, moonlight leaking through it in a thin silver stripe. The offices flanked both sides, climbing eight floors into the dark.
Bodies littered the garden and walkways, slumped over desks or sprawled near overturned benches. Bullet holes pocked the glass partitions; whole panels were blown out. The fight here had been short and savage.
Then came the sound no one wanted to hear—a sharp pinging from Heavy's wrist radar.
He froze, lowering his voice. "Right side. Right side."
The sniper shifted left, her rifle already up, barrel tracking the dark. "Which floor?"
Heavy studied the blinking dot, brow furrowed. "Just one contact. No vertical reading."
Genesis watched the radar a moment longer. The signal held steady, not moving closer.
"Then we move," he said.
They advanced into the central aisle, weapons raised. The door to the right-side office stood half-open; as they neared, the sensor light flickered weakly and the panels parted with a mechanical hiss.
Inside was a sprawl of white cubicles, scattered papers, and the acrid tang of ozone. To their right, a stairwell spiraled upward through the open structure, its railing streaked with dried blood.
They filed in—Genesis first, then the sergeant, Heavy, and finally the sniper. Their lights swept corners and ceilings as they ascended.
On the second floor, Genesis stopped and pressed his shoulder to the wall. He leaned just far enough to scan the office beyond. Flickering lights made the shadows twitch and crawl. Desks overturned. Chairs shattered.
Bodies again—some torn down the spine, others crushed under their own furniture. Some had tried to run. Others had hidden. None had made it.
Through the windows on his left, he could see the mirror image across the atrium: the left-side offices looked the same. The same carnage. The same silence.
Genesis ducked back behind cover, his hand tightening on the shotgun grip. The building felt like it was holding its breath.
With no movement on sensors, Genesis motioned upward and started toward the third floor. The others followed close behind, weapons angled and ready.
At the next landing, he paused and leaned just far enough around the corner to listen.
A sound drifted down the corridor—faint but sharp. Metal on metal.
Something was scraping along the building's white alloy walls, slow and deliberate, like a blade testing the edge.
Genesis raised a hand, signaling silence. The four of them began advancing, boots careful over blood-slick flooring. The smell of iron and ozone hung thick as they stepped over bodies and moved past shattered cubicles. Their lights swept corners, desks, vents—every shadow a potential shape.
The sound came again, somewhere deeper in the building.
At the far end of the office sector, the sergeant pressed a door control. The panels slid apart with a low hiss, revealing the central break room.
The air inside was stale and humid. Half the overhead lights flickered, painting the room in intermittent flashes. Bodies slumped against tables and vending machines. A large wall-screen buzzed with static, washing the space in a dull gray glow.
They crossed it quickly, weapons up, then reached the final door on the opposite side. As Genesis touched the control, Heavy glanced down at his wrist display.
"Radar's gone quiet," he muttered. The steady ping had stopped. Nothing but a blank sweep.
Unmoved, Genesis opened the door.
The last office section looked much the same—rows of cubicles, overturned chairs, the scattered debris of a sudden flight. But on the far side, the architecture changed. A dark hallway curved away to the right, vanishing beyond the reach of their lights.
The wall beside it was scarred—long, gouging claw marks torn deep into the metal.
The sergeant came up beside him, voice low. "Never seen that hall on any of the blueprints. That has to be the entrance to the hidden section, right?"
Genesis lifted a hand, palm flat. Silence.
For a long moment, none of them moved. The only sound was the steady patter of rain on the glass ceiling far above, and the faint drip of water somewhere in the dark ahead.
A rustle to their right. Then a brittle crunch—like someone stepping on scattered chips.
Genesis's wrist radar chirped once.
He moved before the second ping. A blur of speed—cheetah and bull together—he drove through the cubicle field, armor smashing particleboard into a white squall. Pens, paper, keyboards, splinters—everything erupted around him as he blasted through two partitions. At the third he planted, dived, and burst through with the shotgun already up.
Time slowed. Wood peeled past his visor. Beyond the spray, an Infiltrator stared back—bone-white flesh under cobalt plates, eyes wide.
Genesis fired midair. The breacher roared, the shell slamming into razored teeth and blooming into a swarm of burning shot. Beads ricocheted through the maw; three punched brain-deep. The creature folded before it could finish its hiss.
He hit it chest-to-chest. Both bodies crashed through a glass wall and tumbled into a conference room. He rolled, came up on a knee, muzzle on target—unneeded. The thing lay still.
He looked back. The others stared, speechless.
Then the radar sang.
"Ping-ping-ping-ping" not one contact but a field of them. Ten. Twenty. Thirty, at least. The building answered with a chorus of deep, wet roars. Coffee cups shivered in saucers.
Genesis sprinted back and rejoined the line. The three Drop Shock troopers turned in frantic arcs, barrels searching angles.
"What do we do, Genesis?" the sergeant asked, voice tight. "Hold here?"
"No," Genesis said. "Fall to the secret hall. Funnel them."
They moved. An Infiltrator dropped from a torn vent on their right, hitting tile in a crouch.
Genesis had a grenade in hand before it landed. The blast took its legs; debris and meat lifted in a dirty wave.
Glass burst behind them. More Infiltrators poured through, scissoring the air with blade-arms.
Heavy spun and planted. "Die, you fucks—die!" The machine gun hammered, turning the first ranks to shredded plates and purple spray.
Glass shattered again. One hurled itself straight at Heavy—midair, teeth bared. A shotgun blast from the flank hit it hard and kicked it past him into a cubicle in a tumble of limbs.
Heavy fell back, walking the gun, brass pouring off his feed tray. Then: click click click. "Oh, shit." He turned and ran, the others covering.
The sniper's rounds punched clean holes through carapace, dropping two. The sergeant knifed shots into knees and ankles, slowing the pack. Genesis fired twice, then palmed another frag into the choke.
"Elevator!" Heavy shouted. "Calling it!"
"Copy," the sergeant answered. "We're coming."
They curved into the dark hall. At the bend, the three emptied the last of their magazines to buy space, then pounded six meters to where Heavy waited by the panel.
"Fuck, this sucks," the sergeant panted, slamming a fresh mag. "My SMG can't punch through."
The sniper rammed a new strip into her long rifle. "Cheer up, Sarge. I've got six per mag, and it's a broomstick at this range. Maybe three down."
They waited behind the corner—ten seconds. Twenty. No rush, no claws, only gutteral growls and soft, wounded keening in the corridor beyond.
"Did we scare them off?" the sergeant whispered.
"No," Genesis said.
A voice answered from the dark, deep and mocking, each word broken by the wrong kind of mouth. "F–frag–g o–out! Ja ha ha ha!"
Three grenades flicked around the corner in a lazy arc, bounced twice, and skittered toward them.
Genesis flashed forward. The others froze—then scrambled back.
"They can use grenades?" the sniper blurted.
The first grenade kissed the wall, rebounded. Genesis stepped into its line and soccer-kicked it, driving the cylinder left so it would bank back around the corner.
He spun on the momentum and roundhoused the second. It caromed off metal and vanished the way it had come.
The third flew high. He brought the shotgun up like a bat and cracked it midair, redirecting it with a clean, ugly thud.
In the pause after, the Drop Shock troopers just stared—wide-eyed behind their visors.
The first grenade went off around the corner: a white flash, a cone of shrapnel snapping back into the bend.
The second detonated a breath later. The third, jolted by the shock wave, bounced back toward them, skittered, and popped at Genesis's feet.
He didn't move. A green honeycomb flared across his armor—lamellar gel shield catching the shards and dropping them harmlessly to the tile.
Behind them, the elevator dinged.
"Move," the sergeant snapped. "Before they throw more."
They piled into the car. Genesis came last. As the doors drew together, an Infiltrator lunged into view, all four hands clutching stolen rifles, triggers about to break.
Two shots boomed from inside the elevator. The creature stumbled, a smoking crater in its carapace where Genesis's buckshot hit—and then its head snapped back as a high, clean crack punched through its eye. The sniper lowered her barrel, breathing hard.
"Close," she said, almost laughing.
"Good work," the sergeant told her, clapping her shoulder. "Fast."
Heavy nodded. "Saved our asses. Well—" he glanced at Genesis—"most of them."
The sniper ejected a spent magazine, slammed a new one home. "Just doing my job."
Genesis faced the doors, feeding fresh shells into the tube with quiet clicks.
The elevator shuddered, then settled with a heavy clunk. Doors parted onto a long, dim corridor littered with brass and pocked with small-arms scars. Their helmet lamps cut lines through the haze.
No bodies. Just smeared dark red stains. Ahead, two armored doors had been ripped open from the center. Massive claw tracks chewed the metal like soft bark.
Genesis killed his lamp. The others followed, stepping soft.
Beyond: a three-way junction. Left, right, and dead ahead, each hall painted with blood and broken by the remains of a fight. The straight path bore the worst of it—walls cratered, floors gouged, piles of torn lab coats and shattered equipment.
They moved in silence, slow and low, as if quiet could keep the thing that lived here from sensing them. Behind Genesis, the sergeant whispered, "What is it? What could do this?"
Genesis lifted his left hand, palm open. Stop.
He tilted his helmet, listening, then gestured them forward with two fingers. They slid two meters and tucked behind another set of riven blast doors.
He leaned out and finally saw their target.
A control room spread before them, banks of dead consoles and a long launch tunnel windowed with armored glass. Beyond the pane, a ship waited in a cradle. Inside the room lay more bodies—scientists and techs—strewn like dark punctuation.
To the right, it worked at the door controls.
Three meters tall, four arms, red-chitin mass stacked with corded muscle: an Infiltrator Lord. It jammed a dead scientist's face against an eye scanner, trying to fake the lock. A pile of ruined bodies nearby said it had been trying this awhile.
The door and glass were scored with claws and cratered by blows. Whatever the lab had used here—walls, viewport, blast door—it was tougher than anything else in the complex. It had held.
Genesis eased back into cover and checked his kit by touch. Two frags. Forty-six shells. Eighteen pistol rounds. Moonsteel knife.
He drew the blade for a heartbeat—gray metal with a soft inner sheen, edge still perfect despite too many alien necks. Moonsteel: mined from deep near-lunar veins, rarer than virtue.
The sergeant's whisper tugged him back. "What is it, Number Four? What'd you see?"
He slid the knife into its hip sheath and looked at them. "Infiltrator Lord. Stay behind me. Keep your distance."
He turned for the doorway.
"You've fought one before?" the sergeant asked.
"No," Genesis said, and stepped into the room.