Ch. 71 | Disaster 2

Marcus greeted her with a wide grin.

“Welcome to our humble little team. If enemies won’t kill you, your teammates sure will.” He said, grinning ear to ear.

Aaand just like that, he got elbowed to the side yet again.

“Marcusss.” Maya hissed.

Okay, that wasn’t necessary, but I have to admit it was funny- well, a bit less funny when I realized that I was technically part of the joke, but still… Not very appropriate given the circumstances.

Janis shot him a death glare and said:

“Speak to me like that again, and I’ll break your fucking nose.”

Marcus clicked his tongue.

“Now, now, is that any way to speak with your beloved teammates ?“

Janis just grunted something Illegible and stepped into the back of the line.

Marcus’s grin widened.

“Oh, I just love watching the team come together. It’s enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.”

Maya slapped the back of his head without even looking at him.

That was the last joke anyone made for a while.

Beneth and the lanky boy went with Oba. Johan joined us, earning another irritated look from Janis.

“Man, I sure thought you were gonna go with them,” Marcus said, rubbing the back of his head.

Johan shrugged. “Better survival odds here. Nothing personal.” He said it deadpan, completely missing the point.

Janis gave him a flat look and scoffed. “Based on what? All I see is Miss goody-two-shoes, the psychopath, the clown, and the nerd.” She scoffed again. “We are gonna get killed off by the first obstacle we encounter on our way.”

I take it I was the psychopath. But hey, beats being called the clown or the nerd. I will take any little win I can get my hands on, I thought to myself, oddly satisfied with the turn of events.

“Don’t forget the invalid.” Marcus quickly added. “Wouldn’t want to leave anybody out of our little cohort of undesirables, would we ?“

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. Marcus. My man. I found him a bit annoying at first, and I still do. But damn, the dude WAS funny, very much so. And hey, I could always use a good laugh. On the other hand, the death glare that Janis shot him made me seriously doubt the foundations of our team. We were about to head out into what I would assume was a life-threatening danger with visible animosity in the air. Which did not inspire much confidence in our chances of making it out in one piece.

“So, are we going or are we waiting for something ?“ Marcus said nonchalantly, with his hands casually tucked behind her head.

Maya looked thoughtful for a few seconds before turning to Oba.

“You ready ?“

Oba nods.

Maya gave him a brief smile and said:

“Good luck. I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Oba didn’t reply as he turned away and headed for the door, his little cohort following right after him.

“I guess we’re next.” I muttered under my breath.

Maya nodded.

“We are."

We lingered for a second longer, watching the last people from Oba’s squad disappear behind the door before heading out ourselves.

Moments later, we were already navigating the darkened corridors, now washed in pulsing red emergency light.

All around us, people were hurrying past in the opposite direction, some in uniform, others in white coats from God knows what departments. Somewhere deeper in the building, an alarm pulsed at regular intervals, surprisingly, the sound in the hallway was muted to the point where it sounded dull rather than deafening, like in Uden's office.

Maya took the lead while Johan hurried after her at a brisk pace, carefully taking in every detail of the surroundings. Marcus and Janis followed a good distance behind, walking on opposite sides of each other, clearly still at odds, at a time like this no less, which was not a good sign for things to come.

I was, of course, trailing behind the rest of the team. Not because I was some kind of loner or anything. I was just covering the rear. A very important job that had to be done by someone, might as well be me.

I doubted anyone felt any safer because of it, especially judging by the suspicious looks Janis kept shooting me over her shoulder every few minutes. My social sacrifice was clearly not earning me any brownie points. That’s fine, next time one of the asshats can watch the rear, I can walk in front for all I care.

I was so lost in thought that I almost walked into Marcus.

“What the hell, dude? Why are you just standing around here ?’’ I asked him, both confused and annoyed.

He smiled sheepishly and asked.

“You okay ?”

I raised my brow in confusion.

“You do look distracted. I don’t want to overstep, but from personal experience, getting distracted is the fastest way to get yourself killed during a mission.”

I didn’t want to argue, and he was most likely right, so I just hummed in agreement.

I couldn’t help but be lost in thought, though, ever since I blacked out at the captain's office, I’ve had this strange feeling at the back of my head. I couldn’t recall as to what had exactly happened back then, but I could have sworn that I heard some strange voice speaking to me from inside of my own head.

Before turning to walk away, he shot me another look and said.

“Beware of everything at all times, pay close attention to even the most minuscule details. I promise you’ll thank me for that later.”

I nodded, and we resumed our walk in silence.

Whatever it was, whether it was my imagination or something else, there was nothing that I could do about it.

The entire corridor was burning.

Flames crawled along the walls and ceiling in uneven waves, swallowing every doorway Seventh Squad might have used to retreat. The emergency lights continued flashing through the smoke, staining everything in alternating stretches of darkness and red. Heat pressed against his face hard enough to make every breath hurt, and somewhere behind him one of his officers was coughing so violently he could barely stay standing.

There were six of them left.

Six out of eleven.

He tried not to think about the other five. Their ends weren’t the pretty kind, and calling them brutal would have been an understatement.

“Anything?” he asked, his voice shaky.

The youngest member of the squad stood a few steps behind him, one hand pressed against his temple. He couldn't have been older than nineteen, and at the moment he looked even younger than that. His black vest hung loosely from his shoulders, the white number seven printed across the chest almost completely obscured by soot.

The boy shook his head.

“I can't reach anyone. There's too much interference.”

Meyan somehow wasn’t too surprised by that. In situations like this, things rarely tended to work out too well, and this time was not an exception.

He looked back toward the raging flames. The corridor behind them was completely blocked. The junction to their left had collapsed less than a minute ago, and the fire was spreading much too quickly to be natural. There had been no response from the other patrols, no response from command, and no response from Ninth despite Seventh trying every possible channel.

It had finally sunk in to him that none of them might be making it out of this alive.

Beyond the flames, Meyan saw a flicker of movement. His brow rose.

“Sir–“

His hand shot up.

“Quiet.”

The others fell silent almost immediately.

At first he thought he had imagined it. The smoke was thick enough to turn everything beyond a few meters into shifting black shapes, and the fire kept distorting the air in front of them.

Then something stepped through it.

A woman emerged from the burning corridor, and the flames parted before her as she walked, curling away from the hem of her dress without ever touching it, leaving a clear path in her wake.

A smooth white mask covered her entire face, broken only by two narrow openings where her eyes should have been. Long black hair hung loosely around it, strands dragging across the mask and over the shoulders of a heavy dress that covered almost every inch of her body. The hem hung just an inch above the floor. Her heels struck the ground with soft, deliberate clicks.

Someone behind Meyan inhaled sharply as yet another figure stepped out of the flames. Unlike the woman, this one walked straight through the fire as if it couldn't burn them. For a moment, Meyan could almost have mistaken it for some kind of cold flame—right until another wave of heat rolled across his face.

Then the emergency lights flashed red again, briefly lighting up the hooded figure. To Meyans horror, the thing walking towards them barely looked human.

Bluish skin showed beneath patches of thin white fur. His arms were too long, his shoulders slightly hunched, and where his face should have been hung a shifting mass of fleshy tendrils lined with small, pointy-looking things. He couldn't get a better look. The red light vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, and the flames cast too little light for him to make out anything beyond the figure's rough shape.

Meyan had been with security forces for a good few years already, and yet he didn't recognize either of them. Which was both horrifying and somewhat reassuring at the same time. They were intruders, that much was sure, yet during the years he had spent with the Security Force, he had come to know the faces of all the most prominent and dangerous criminals as they were circulated internally and plastered all over the place. To his relief, he could not recall ever seeing these two specifically.

And yet, something kept nagging at the back of his mind. Five of his teammates were already dead. He didn’t even get a good look at what had happened, out of nowhere, their flesh contorted and exploded, and one after the other they dropped to the ground, only to get consumed by flames immediately after. Under these circumstances, dismissing anything unusual now would be stupid, especially two suspicious-looking strangers walking out of the fire.

The masked woman paused several feet away from them.

Nobody moved a muscle. Every eye remained fixed on her, waiting for the slightest twitch of a hand or shift in her stance, but she did nothing. She simply stood there and watched them.

In the silence that followed, Meyan could hear the fire popping behind her as it slowly consumed the surroundings.

“Security Forces squad seven, first officer Meyan,” he called, surprised by how steady his voice sounded. “Stay where you are and identify yourselves.”

The hooded creature beside her tilted its head. The woman didn't react at all, just continued standing there, looking right at them.

One of his agents shifted behind him, boots scraping against the floor.

The woman's head turned slightly toward the sound.

He saw her raise one hand.

Her fingers slowly curled inward.

And just like that, the Third Officer's head contorted and exploded.

For an instant, his brain refused to register what he was seeing. One moment the man had been standing beside him, breathing heavily through his mouth. The next, there was a wet crack and a burst of blood across the wall, the body remaining upright for a fraction of a second before collapsing between them.

The horrified screams of his squadmates filled the burning corridor.

At that moment, Meyan couldn’t help but curse the day he jumped out of joy when he received a notice that he was being recruited for the security forces.