the side of the building toward Knight’s position.
“Ah, shit.” Knight bolted away from the low wall and quickly glanced around. At the speed the creature was climbing the building, it would be here in seconds. Without the EXACTO, he had only his KA-BAR knife and a grenade on him. “Bishop, if you’re out there, I could use some help! I’m bugging out of my hide.” He was still filled with the panic from earlier, although visions of his grandmother had faded and he no longer had the feeling Bishop had reverted to his Regen state. Where had that come from anyway? Wait…the roar. It started with the howl that one creature made.
There was no other escape beside the rusted access door from the stairs he had used to reach the balcony. Knight raced to the door and at the last second, pulled the grenade from his belt pouch. A standard-issue M67 fragmentation grenade, Knight didn’t know how effective it might be on the beast, but it was all he had. He removed the safety clip, then positioned himself at the top of the stairs, inside the stairwell, holding the door ajar, with one outstretched hand. Using his thumb to remove the pin, Knight held the spoon on the side of the grenade for a second longer, his watchful eyes never leaving the edge of the wall where he expected to see the creature at any time.
But instead of one clawed hand reaching over the edge of the parapet, the beast leapt straight up into the air, clearing the edge of the wall by a good several feet, before landing on the top of it in a crouch. Knight could just see the clear claws extending from the tips of its white toes dig firmly into the concrete just below the lip of the wall.
Knight let the spoon fly and gently rolled the grenade out, before letting the door swing shut. He leapt over the side railing on the stairs, and dropped eight feet to the middle of the next flight of stairs in a crouch. In one fluid movement, he leapt forward headfirst and reached his hands out side to side to grab the railings on either side of the stairs. With about a third of the flight of steps remaining, he swung his legs up to his chest and pivoted on his arms. Then he lunged down the rest of the flight of stairs feet first, releasing his grip on the rails and flying down to land on the painted blue concrete landing in another crouch. He took two steps and lunged down the next flight of stairs, repeating the maneuver, pinioning on his arms over the side rails halfway down the flight and landing on the next landing. As he crouched on that landing, he heard the rusted door above him creak open and then the grenade detonated, slamming the door shut with a booming sound that echoed down the staircase. Still, the fire door muted the explosion considerably.
Knight wasted no time wondering if the grenade had done its job. He vaulted down the next few flights of stair and then out onto the lower balcony level, searching for the rifle. He quickly found the glass door leading out to the balcony, but he could see before he went through it that the rifle was damaged-the long barrel bent at an unusual angle. He left it and raced back to the stairs.
As he reached them, he heard the fire door at the top of the stairwell slam open. He glanced over the railing and down the space between the flights of stairs. The ground floor had a large room at the foot of the stairs, beyond the blue domed ceiling of the main hall. Above the base of the stairs hung a chandelier that was suspended by a cable running up the center of the stairwell to the 5 ^th floor, where it was secured to the steps by a horizontal bar of concrete that was no doubt reinforced with rebar.
Knight repeated his entire-flight-of-steps lunging technique for the next few flights, listening nervously as he did, to the scrambling, scrabbling noises of translucent claws scraping across painted blue concrete from above. The lower flights of stairs were covered in a rich carpet, but in typical communist Chinese architectural style, after the good impression of the first few floors, the remaining floors were a utilitarian concrete.
When Knight reached the cross-struts for the chandelier on the 5 ^th floor, he was running out of time. He could hear the lumbering beast hurtling down each flight nearly as fast as Knight, though he couldn’t yet glimpse the creature when he looked up. Knight ran down a few steps lower than the cross-struts, so he could see the underside where the electric cable and the metal support cable attached. He didn’t know if the cable would support him, but at that second, he checked nervously again up the stairs and finally saw the thing. It was injured certainly. Its movements were awkward, where before it had been all grace and power and speed. It was bleeding white fluid in places too, and it dragged one of its arms-or were they front paws-as if the limb was completely limp and nonfunctional. The creature stopped and regarded him with one of its swiveling orb eyes, then opened its maw of glassy sharp teeth in what Knight thought could only be a snarl.
Knight brought his gaze back to the cables as the beast began to move again. No time to consider, he leapt out into the open space and grabbed the cables. They easily held his weight, and he swung precariously in space for a moment. The beast rounded the landing above him and was almost to the position from which he had jumped, when Knight wrapped his legs around the cables and hooked one forearm around them, then let go with his other hand and snatched a hold of his wrist. He began to descend the cables, with the sleeve of his BDU jacket on his left arm taking the brunt of the friction. He knew he could outrun the beast with gravity, but he had no idea how he would break his fall before he hit the chandelier below him, which was racing up toward his crotch.
He heard the beast frantically flinging itself down flight after flight of stairs trying to catch him. Knight tried pulling the wrist of his left arm closer to him in an attempt to brake his fall, but the tension of the crook of his elbow had no effect. He could feel the heat from the friction building up against his arm, even through the garment.
Ah no, this is going to hurt.
Knight slammed his feet into the chandelier on the end of the cables and the jolt ripped the cables loose from their mooring up at the 5 ^th floor of the building. To Knight it felt like a slight hiccup in the rate of his descent, and then he was sailing toward the marble floor twenty-five feet below. The long cables chased him toward the floor.
He tumbled backward, the loose cable no longer keeping him upright. As he fell through the open space of the great room that served as a proper lobby after the decorative front hall, he noticed the creature come spilling off the carpet of the main staircase and scrabbling across the slippery marble floor. It slid and slipped, then came to a stop beneath him. The creature tilted its head-staring up-just in time to see a 300-pound crystal chandelier, followed by a 150-pound Knight with an extended middle finger and 60 feet of whipping steel and electrical cables all about to smash it into paste.
NINETEEN
Fenris Kystby, Norway
Rook opened the double doors below the window just a crack, making sure they were still covered by soil on the outside, as they had been on his last visit to the lab. He didn’t need to open the doors far. He could see a wall of light brown dirt. A small spray of dust and dirt tinkled down to the floor. He shoved the doors closed again.
“Must be another entrance,” Queen said. She hadn’t holstered the M9, and Rook could tell the place was spooking her, even though she would never admit it. “Wouldn’t be the first covert lab in history to have a secret entrance hidden in plain sight.”
Rook stiffened and drew a sharp breath. “Holy-you’re right.” Rook raced out of the room and back into the offices.
“Not sure why that’s a surprise,” Queen said as she gave chase.
Asya followed her back into the offices, where Rook was approaching the door to the empty biohazard room. He turned slightly as he opened the door, to look back at them. “Only two rooms in this place with nothing in them- the closet off the first room we entered and this one. But the door frame to the closet was narrower. No way you could get a sofa in there. But this room? Must be a secret door somewhere.”
Rook stepped into the room and the others came in behind him. Queen’s halogen headlamp illuminated the space as if it were daytime. “I never even stepped into the room the last time. Because it was empty.” He smiled at Queen.
“Just like me a minute ago. Even though you told me it was empty, I looked, but I didn’t go in.”
“Sure. Why would you?” Rook walked back past her and Asya to the wall near the door and felt around the doorframe they had all just come through.
“You are searching for secret switch or something like that?” Asya asked.
“Yup.”
Queen kept the lamp on the doorframe as Rook worked his fingers along the top of it slowly, feeling for any
