If buildings could have moods, this one had gone from "vaguely threatening" to "actively homicidal" in the span of my brief outdoor sabbatical.
The air hit different now. Colder, yeah, but also thicker. My flashlight beam looked pathetic, this anemic little finger of light that barely penetrated three feet before the darkness just... ate it.
And the sounds.
Oh god, the sounds.
That earlier silence had been creepy in a "this is fine, everything is fine" sort of way. This new audio landscape was a whole different flavor of nightmare. Something wet dragged across concrete somewhere above me. Metal groaned under stress it wasn't designed to handle. And underneath it all, these whispers. Not words exactly. More like the memory of words, skittering at the edge of my hearing like cockroaches fleeing a light.
The shadow things on the walls had gotten the memo about the party relocating. They writhed against the concrete and rusted metal like they were trying to escape their two-dimensional prison, all moving in the same direction. Deeper into the building. Toward something.
They ignored me completely.
I should've felt relieved. Instead, I felt like the only person not invited to the apocalypse.
Okay, Rome. You wanted back in. Here you are. In. What's the plan?
The plan, such as it was, involved not dying and maybe finding Jake. Preferably in that order, but I was flexible on the sequencing if the universe decided to be a dick about it.
The freezer units. That's where Chloe had taken her group. That's where Jake's voice had come from over the walkie before everything went sideways.
I headed that way, my boots crunching on debris that I tried very hard not to examine too closely. Every shadow looked like it might grow teeth. Every distant sound could've been rescue or another horror show waiting to ruin my night further.
That's when I saw her.
Them.
Two of them.
My brain did that thing where it tries to process information it doesn't have the software for. Like trying to run Crysis on a calculator.
Up on the second-floor catwalk, the girl from before fought something that looked like a fever dream designed by a serial killer. Down on the ground floor directly below her, another version of her danced around the same nightmare with the same katana and the same raven hair.
"Oh good," I muttered. "Twins."
The thing they were fighting made the earlier monster look like a warm-up act.
Imagine if someone gave a pile of scrap metal from a horror movie severe psychological problems and way too much demonic energy. It stood maybe seven feet tall, a roughly humanoid shape constructed from meat hooks, chains, and jagged pieces of machinery that absolutely should not have been moving on their own. The whole nightmare held together by this pulsing core of black energy in its chest.
Chains whipped out from its body like tentacles on crack. One slammed into a concrete support pillar hard enough to crater it. Another tore a chunk out of the catwalk railing, the screech of tortured metal loud enough to make my teeth hurt.
The ground-floor version of the girl moved like water. Her katana bit into the chains anchoring the thing to the floor, trying to limit its mobility. Above her, the catwalk version deflected incoming attacks and looked for openings to strike that glowing chest-heart.
It was coordinated. Tactical. Two bodies moving with one mind in perfect sync.
It was also failing.
The thing was too strong, too relentless. Every chain they severed grew back. Every wound they carved into its metal flesh sealed itself with fresh hooks pulled from god-knows-where. The girls were getting tired. I could see it in the way their movements had lost that earlier crispness, becoming more defensive.
Blood soaked through the sleeve of the catwalk girl's left arm. The ground-floor version moved with a slight hitch in her step.
They're losing.
The monster reared back, chains consolidating into this writhing mass. It lashed out at the ground-floor girl with coordinated strikes from three directions at once. She parried two, rolled under the third.
The fourth one, hidden in the shadow of the others, wrapped around her ankle like a steel python.
The chain snapped taut, yanking her off her feet. She slammed into the ground with a sound that wasn't just meat on concrete; it was the wet crunch of bone giving way. My stomach tried to climb out of my throat.
The girl on the catwalk froze, her eyes locked on her fallen twin for a fatal second. It was all the opening the monster needed.
The monster turned its full attention to the woman still looking at her dead sister. The black energy in its chest brightened, going from dull ember to miniature sun. Chains retracted into its body as it charged something big. The air around it shimmered with heat distortion.
The girl on the catwalk couldn't dodge. I could see it in her posture, the way her injured arm hung useless at her side. She brought her sword up anyway, bracing for impact she knew wouldn't help.
My body moved before my brain caught up to the suicide I was committing.
I exploded from behind the pillar I'd been hiding behind, legs pumping, arms outstretched. Some distant part of my mind that still functioned noted I was screaming. Wordless and raw and probably not doing great things for my tough-guy image.
Seventeen years of scrappy street fights and construction-site brawls condensed into one desperate flying tackle.
The impact jarred every bone in my body. The thing was solid, way more solid than something held together by demonic energy should've been. But physics is physics, and mass times velocity equals "surprise, motherfucker."
The blast fired.
Not at the girl.
At the ceiling.
A chunk of concrete the size of a refrigerator detonated, raining debris everywhere.
And then we were falling.
The railing I'd pushed us against gave way with a screech of protest. Twenty feet of empty air opened up beneath us. The monster and I tumbled through space in this weird, almost peaceful moment of freefall.
My stomach relocated to somewhere near my throat. The world spun. Metal and flesh tangled together.
This is going to hurt.
The concrete floor rose up to meet us with the enthusiasm of a long-lost relative at Thanksgiving.
I hit.
The world became pain.
Specifically, my ribs became pain. My back became pain. My everything became a very pointed argument about why gravity is a harsh mistress who should really reconsider her life choices.
The monster landed beside me with a clatter of scattering parts, its cohesion temporarily disrupted.
I couldn't breathe. My lungs had forgotten how. They just sort of... seized, these useless meat bags that refused to inflate no matter how hard I tried to make them.
Somewhere above me, a voice cut through the ringing in my ears.
"Revert!"
Red light exploded across my peripheral vision. The ensnared ground-floor version of the girl dissolved into particles that streamed upward like a fountain running in reverse.
Footsteps on metal stairs. Fast at first, then slower. Limping.
She appeared in my flickering vision, standing over me where I lay gasping like a fish on dry land. Ruby eyes stared down, wide with something that might've been shock if her face was capable of processing that emotion.
"You're an idiot."
She hauled me to my feet with surprising strength for someone actively bleeding from multiple wounds. Up close, I could see the damage. Her left arm hung at a wrong angle. Blood soaked through her dark clothes in places I tried not to stare at. Her breathing came shallow and controlled, like she was rationing each inhale.
"Your sister..." I managed through gasps. "I'm so..."
"Clone." She cut me off, her grip on my hand tightening for just a second before releasing. "Part of my technique. Now move."
Behind us, metal scraped against concrete. The scattered pieces of the monster pulling themselves back together with the inexorable patience of a jigsaw puzzle solving itself.
"That thing will reform in twenty seconds," she said, already turning toward what I hoped was an exit.
"Can we kill it?" I asked, falling into step beside her. Well, more like a stumbling lurch beside her limp.
"Not like this." She clutched her damaged arm against her ribs. "We need to get outside the Curtain."
"The what?"
"A barrier. It's what's trapping us in here, hiding this from the outside world. No signals in or out. We cross the threshold, I can call for backup."
Backup sounded amazing. Backup sounded like the best idea anyone had ever had in the history of ideas. We limped toward the main entrance, two wounded disasters trying to outrace a monster made of literally the worst parts of a hardware store.
The door came into view. That beautiful, wonderful rectangle of potential escape.
Hope, that stupid, fragile thing, flickered to life in my chest.
A roar tore through the warehouse.
Not the metallic screech of the reassembling monster behind us. This was different. Deeper. Organic in a way that made every primitive part of my brain scream at me to find a cave and hide until the apex predator moved on.
The sound vibrated through the concrete. Dust shook loose from the ceiling in small cascades. Somewhere in my chest cavity, my organs rearranged themselves in protest.
It was followed by footsteps.
THUMP.
The entire building shook.
THUMP.
A support beam groaned.
THUMP.
Whatever was making those sounds moved through the upper level with the subtlety of a wrecking ball convention. Fast. Too fast for something that heavy. The physics didn't work, which meant physics had apparently taken the night off.
The girl beside me froze. For the first time since I'd met her, something other than irritation or focus crossed her face.
Fear.
Genuine, bone-deep, oh-god-we're-fucked fear.
"No." The word came out as a whisper. "That's not a D-Rank."
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Faster now. Moving with purpose toward the stairs.
"That's the reason I was sent here."
The main entrance suddenly seemed a lot farther away than it had five seconds ago.