Tikaya flattened herself against the wall, hoping she could dodge if those claws flashed. She thought the beast’s momentum would carry it past her, but it halted with amazing athleticism.
It whirled on her, claws raised. Rank breath washed over her. She ducked even as Rias yanked her out of reach. She almost lost the bow as he charged past, cutlass raised. She recovered and stepped back to nock another arrow. Rias ducked a swipe and darted in, but the muscled torso deflected his blade like armor. He nicked a vein, drawing blood. Claws gashed his arm before he could leap out of reach. Its speed was mesmerizing, but she forced herself to focus.
With the creature sparring with Rias, she could wait for a chance at a critical target. There. She fired, and the arrow plunged into its eye.
The beast staggered into a counter, gashing its own face as it clawed at the arrow. It stumbled, then pitched backward. Still.
Tikaya leaned a hand against the wall for support and let her bow droop. “Next time we attack a twelve- foot-tall monster, we probably don’t need to worry about me seeing over your head.”
“ Conceded.” Rias rotated his arm to check the slashes below his shoulder, but dismissed them. “One down. Let’s see if the other is still alive.”
A rifle cracked in the center of the lab.
“ I’m guessing so,” Tikaya said.
Rias jogged along the wall toward a cross-aisle where he could cut over. He paused when he reached the half-eaten man. It was wearing the black uniform of a Turgonian marine. Though the neck had been torn out, the chest smashed and ravaged, the face remained mostly intact.
“ That’s not one of ours, is it?” Tikaya asked.
“ No.”
“ Somebody from the fort?”
Multiple rifles fired.
“ Later,” Rias said, already disappearing around a corner.
A bestial screech reverberated through the lab, and men shouted orders. Tikaya raced after Rias, careening around the corner to face another melee. A second creature, larger and more muscled than the first, fought in the center. This one was male.
Marines attacked from both ends of the aisle, cutlasses and daggers struggling to pierce the resilient skin. The creature whirled, slashing forward, then back, its wild actions enraged, and Tikaya wondered if it knew its mate had fallen. Blood streamed from its sleek flesh, but it batted men away without faltering. As tall as the Turgonians were, they had little chance of reaching the neck or head with their blades.
Rias charged into the fray. Tikaya drew the bow, waiting to glimpse an eye, but the beast chose that moment to escape. It sloughed off its attackers and charged her direction. Her heart lurched. She loosed her arrow, but she lunged to the side too soon, and her shot only struck muscle.
She glanced at the cabinets on either side of her. There was no time to climb out of reach. She smashed herself to the side again, hoping this creature would run past. Though, even if it did, all it would have to do was rake her on the way past and-
Steel zipped through the air from the aisle behind her. A knife lodged in the creature’s eye.
It tripped and tumbled, skidding past her. The prone form crashed into a cabinet, jolting it. The door flung open, and trays of bones spilled out. Human bones, tagged and marked with colored dots. Smaller ones, fragile with age, shattered.
Tikaya found Rias’s eyes, thinking of his admonition not to break anything. Chest heaving, he stood amongst the other marines. He shook his head slowly.
“ Everyone back to the entrance,” he said.
Before following the men, Tikaya tossed a glance toward the back wall. Someone had thrown that knife, yet no marines filed in from that direction.
A clunk echoed through the lab.
“ Hurry,” Rias urged.
He led a sprint to the stairs where Bocrest twitched an eyebrow at Tikaya and said, “Nice shot.”
She did not answer. It had not been her attack that brought the second creature down.
“ Let’s go,” Rias said. “In the hall. We don’t want to be here when the cubes arrive.”
“ Cubes?” Bocrest asked.
Tikaya thought of the square vials from the rocket, but surely he could not mean those.
“ No time to explain.” Rias pushed past and into the corridor. Leaving the lab without exploring it seemed an abandoned opportunity, but Tikaya did not question him, not when such grimness haunted his face.
Before they took three steps down the tunnel, a door ahead of them slid open. A black one-foot-wide cube floated out at chest level. Tiny red and yellow lights flashed on its top, and a one-inch hole glowed red on its front. A few symbols ran along the sides, and she leaned forward, squinting.
“ Back,” Rias said. “Back into the lab.”
“ What does it-” Tikaya started, but the glowing hole brightened and a red beam lanced out. Rias yanked her to the side, and it caught the edge of her sleeve. The beam burned a hole through the material.
She half ran and was half dragged back into the lab. Marines crowded the landing, but Rias shoved his way to a panel on the wall. He waved his hand over a pale square. The door slid down from the top of the jamb.
Tikaya stared at smoke wafting from the hole in her sleeve and swallowed.
A beeping started, soft but audible throughout the lab. It came from the walls, the ceiling, everywhere.
“ Two more of those cubes coming from below,” Bocrest said.
“ If I can get close enough to read what’s on the sides, maybe I can figure out how to stop them,” Tikaya said.
“ If you get that close, you’ll be dead,” Rias said.
“ There’re two more in the back.” Agarik pointed. “Shooting, burning, er, incinerating the dead creatures.”
“ Yes.” Rias rummaged in his pack. “They do that to everything. And everyone. Also, I don’t know how to lock the doors. The one outside will be in soon.”
Tikaya bent to examine runes lighting the wall by the door. She recognized one that had indicated “up” on the rocket. When she pressed the symbol it indented, but nothing happened. She found she could rotate it. A soft thunk came from within the wall. “I think that may have-”
“ We’ve got to split up, or we’ll be surrounded,” Bocrest said.
“ Actually, I want them all in one spot.” Rias had opened his rucksack and knelt, mixing a liquid and something else into a bottle. Caustic fumes stung Tikaya’s eyes.
A red beam from below splashed against the wall on the landing. It adjusted, lowering, and marines ducked out of the way.
“ Forget that,” Bocrest said. “Karsus, get these men under cover, and shoot at anything that moves.”
“ Bocrest!” Rias barked.
The squads were already running off, Bocrest included this time, leaving only Tikaya and Rias on the landing. Below, a pair of cubes, which had been floating languidly toward the stairs, split and increased speed. One chased after each group of men. Before one of the squads reached cover, a beam shot out, taking the last man in the back.
He screamed. Tikaya gripped the railing, unable to take her eyes from the scene.
The rear two men from the squad shot and rifle balls clanged off metal. At the least, the force should have propelled the cube backward, but it never moved. The beam continued, piercing the marine’s body and coming out the other side as it incinerating flesh, muscle, and organs. Even when he dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, it stayed with him. It cauterized as it burned an ever-widening hole in his torso. The marine stopped moving, eyes glazed in death. The cube’s beam kept breaking down the body, even burning blood away.
Tikaya, thunderstruck by the ghastly scene, almost did not notice Rias racing down the stairs with nothing but a jar of orange liquid in his hands. At first, the automaton ignored him, busy finishing its incineration of the dead man. Rias kept sprinting, one hand gripping the jar, one on the lid. The cube abandoned its task and rotated toward him.
“ No!” Tikaya grabbed her bow, though she did not know what good she could do if rifles had not damaged
