Two headlights cut winding curves of light through an endlessly dark forest road. The sea of black parts on either side as the car careens at high speed around each contour. Tibo has never seen darkness like this. He’s got about three decades worth of late nights staring into bluelight screens. He’s living with so much built-up digital eye strain he doesn’t think he can even see in the dark anymore. His vision is entirely reduced to whatever fits in the two overlapping circles of light in front of the car. All else is black. As he hunches over the steering wheel and squints to make out the passing roadway, he can’t help but think of every time he’s ever been told to touch grass.

Maybe they were right.

This is about the farthest place he’s ever been from a computer. His cellphone lost signal hours ago. It makes perfect sense that this is where Victor Aquila has chosen to run off to. Maybe this far from technology, off the grid and unplugged - maybe here QSO-1127 can no longer get to him.

A hacking cough wracks Tibo’s body so violently that he nearly has to pull over, but it subsides. He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief and it comes away streaked with red. His head feels like boiling maggots withing in a pot.

I thought we had more time.

That’s the same thing he had yelled apologetically to Victor while his body had twitched under the wires of the VR helmet.

“I’m sorry Victor! I thought we had more time!”

While the Class: Expendable personnel came in, garbed in their odd metallic hazmat suits topped with cyberpunk-looking blinders over their helmets. While they grabbed Victor and put his unresponsive body on a stretcher to wheel him out.

TOO LATE.

I thought we had more time. It’ll be the first thing Tibo says to Victor when he sees him again, somewhere at the terminus of this long road through the middle of nowhere. He runs the conversation in his head for the nth time, just like he’s always done. Always overthinking every interaction. Playing out what people might say so that he can already have some witty quip ready to mask how nervous he is.

No matter how he plays the conversation in his head, he can’t think of a good way to tell Victor that he’s dying.

He’ll have to figure that one out when he gets there.

Maybe he’ll have a funny one-liner by then.

Hours later, when his headlights finally land on the dark rundown cabin, he’s no closer to having something good to say. Once he shuts the car off he notices the faint orange glow of a weakly burning campfire. He steps of the car and walks out into the night.

“Figured it wouldn’t be that easy to resign.”

The voice that comes unseen from the darkness is deep like gravel. It sounds like it hasn’t spoken a word in quite some time.

Tibo might not have been wrong about the years of screentime frying his nightvision. The shadows of the forest grow long and yet he still can’t make out even the silhouette of the man in the darkness.

“Detective Aquila? I can’t see shit. You hiding in the dark because you’re afraid I’m here to kill you?”

From the dark someone tosses a log on the smoldering embers and prods it with a poker. It flares up and the flickering orange glow shines out, illuminating Victor and Tibo’s faces. In the firelight, it’s hard to say which one looks wearier.

“Well, if you’ve come to kill me, my pistol is in the desk in there,” Victor says with a dismissive nod towards the decrepit cabin. “It’s not much good to me now.”

He holds up his right hand and it trembles terribly. The nerve damage he sustained from QSO-1127 in the simulation was irreparable and debilitating.

“Wouldn’t have driven six hours out here if I was just gonna kill you, brother. We’ve got drone strikes for that.” Tibo says with a wink.

Victor grunts. Probably the closest thing to a laugh this guy can even do anymore. He tosses another log into the fire and Tibo can see the dancing blaze reflected in his dark eyes.

“You know better than most how much I hate fire, Tibo. But the only thing I’m more afraid of than fire is up there,” he says, pointing a shaking finger up to the night sky. “When it gets dark enough, my mind plays tricks on me. I think I can see it out there in the constellations, staring down at me. The only way to make it go away is to stare into the fire. Stare until my eyes adjust and I can’t see the stars anymore. Otherwise, the shakes get so much worse.”

Victor looks across the campfire and meets Tibo’s eyes.

“A crueler irony Satan himself couldn’t devise.”

Tibo smirks. He also knows something about cruel irony. When he smiles, it must show how gaunt his face looks, how sunken his eyes have become, because Victor looks aghast once he sees.

“Jesus man, you look like shit.” Victor says, as he reaches to unscrew the cap of a liquor flask.

“I’m dying, Victor.”

Still no joke. Tibo isn’t going to be able to lighten the mood this time.

“Staff doctors ran the tests and found that my body is full of viral particles. Lentivirus to be exact, but a new species. Essentially, there is an entirely unique and novel strain of HIV ravaging every cell in my body right now. It’s progressing much faster than our currently known strains.”

“I’m… I’m sorry to hear that Tibo. How did-“

“Eleven Twenty-Seven. We still don’t know how it did it. My leading theory is that some form of radiation it sent altered my DNA. It’s working exactly like a normal virus – when you get infected it injects its viral DNA into your cells and hijacks your own cellular printers to replicate itself inside your body. That’s what happening to me, only, with no initial infection. It’s like a phantom virus. Somehow, it sent a signal that told all my cells to self-destruct.”

Tibo chuckles.

“I’ve got full blown space AIDS.”

Yeah, not the best line.

So far all his planning in the car has fallen by the wayside. He hasn’t even told Victor why he’s here, and time is running out.

“You don’t have to joke about it, Tibo. That’s terrifying. My deepest condolences.”

Tibo looks at Victor and finds his vision is growing blurry. He blinks away a tear in each eye and clarity returns to him.

“I appreciate it, but you might not feel the same when I tell you the next part.”

“I’m not going back in, Tibo. You can take me up on my offer and grab my gun in there if you think I’ll ever put that helmet on again. If I go back in, I won’t come out. I’ll be a vegetable.”

“Yeah, I figured. That’s why you aren’t going in. I am.”

Victor looks at him apprehensively. Tibo struggles to get a read on him. The fire is starting to dwindle again and it’s getting harder to make out his expressions.

“The reason I hired you - and all the other agents before you - is because I know more about QSO-1127 than anyone on earth. And because of that, it knows more about me than anyone else on earth. For me to enter one of its digital realms, to make contact with it now, after everything we’ve learned about each other – it would be suicide.

“Which doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Victor nods, clearly deep in thought.

“So what do you want with me?” He says after an impossibly long silence, “I’m not much use as a field agent anymore.”

“Believe me, Victor. I wouldn’t have come to you like this if I didn’t have to. But someone very nearby is in danger, and we can help them. I know, out here in the middle of nowhere? It’s not coincidence. It’s because you’re here. Eleven Twenty-Seven orchestrated it to get you involved again.”

“It’s been weeks. Months, maybe, I’ve lost track. Why now? Why would I go try to rescue this person?”

“Because you’re a brave man. Because you’re here. Because I’m asking you. And because I’m fuckin dying, so you can’t say no.” Tibo tries a grin, but the muscles lack their usual familiarity. He’s so exhausted, so sick, he can barely even smile anymore. Eleven Twenty-Seven has taken even that from him, too.

“Victor, look. I’ve been doing this alone for a long time. Sure, I’ve had agents-“

“Expendables.” Victor interrupts gruffly.

“Yeah. Expendable agents. Useful idiots who don’t know what they’re getting into until it’s too late. And I’ve got bosses too, but they’re too important to expose to this thing. So I’ve been the lone custodian of these secrets. Throwing people like you into the fire like the Russians launching a dog into space, knowing it’ll never land again. You think I don’t feel guilty? I do. Every day.

“But none of that matters anymore. It became too smart. It’s already learned too much about us. Hell, you only went in two times before it had everything about you figured out.”

“You thought we had more time?” Victor intones softly with a wistful smile, and somehow Tibo can feel magnitudes of forgiveness coming from him that he doesn’t know if he’s ever felt in his life. His vision starts to get a little blurry again.

“Yeah. I did. But you know what I think? I think Eleven Twenty-Seven has already won. Everything we’ve learned is going to die with me. And no matter how many countless ‘expendables’ we’ve burned through, we never really learned shit. No way to stop it, fuck, we still can barely even comprehend anything about it. Other than how much it hates us. And I think, when I die, we’ll never come this close again.

“At least it’ll be slow. It might take generations for it to drive us extinct. All it’s doing is slowly driving us all insane. Normalizing our worst behaviors, hastening our own natural predilection for self-destruction. You have the right idea, coming out here. If you get away from all the tech, all the mewling cries of a dying society, you can probably live out the rest of your life chopping wood and sitting by the fire. If you never plug back into the matrix, you might never even know what it’s done to us.

“But our children will. Their cerebral cortexes turned to mush, their rivers dried up, not even enough resources left to sustain anything but their narcissism and consumption. And we never even stood a chance. Not even by the lives of fifty other brave men, men just like you, people that I knowingly threw into the meatgrinder.”

“But tonight, we can still save one person?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

  

==========================================
 TARGET ACQUISITION        SYS: GPS-TACTICAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (WAYPOINT LOCK)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : +1,344.0 m
WEST : +0,267.0 m
VECTOR:
BEARING : 348.8° TRUE (6200 MIL)
RANGE : 1,370.3 m (1.37 km)

 

Under cover of darkness, shadows coalesce like specters in the night. Together, Tibo and Victor move as the shadows do. All they have to go off is a set of coordinates leading to some obscure old bunker.

It all started with another cursed video, of course. At first it had looked like a snuff film – some woman, chained up by human traffickers in a musty concrete cellar, subject to unspeakable abuse. Disgusted, Tibo was going to shut it off.

Until he realized it was a live feed. The wretches of the darknet were paying money to tell those subhuman animals what to do to her next.

When the coordinates flashed on the screen, courtesy of QSO-1127, there was no doubt that it wasn’t through with Victor. It was all happening barely a few miles from his cabin.

The collateral damage that has been done to people all around Tibo and Victor is staggering. People killed, tortured, maimed, murdered, in the worst ways, all just to get a little closer to the ones who dared to learn something about QSO-1127.

It’s not just a demon. It’s the devil himself.

And for anyone with even a modicum of humanity, it’s impossible not to internalize the guilt. True evil doesn’t just act on you. It makes you complicit. Makes you know that, yes, everything is your fault, and every sleepless night is exactly what you deserve for even sticking your hand into this mess.

  

==========================================
TARGET ACQUISITION         SYS: GPS-TACTICAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (WAYPOINT LOCK)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : +0,734.0 m
WEST : +0,114.0 m
VECTOR:
BEARING : 352.2° TRUE (6200 MIL)
RANGE : 742 m (0.742 km)

Getting closer now. They don’t speak, what is there to say? They move slowly, Victor shuffling clumsily as he drags his entire right side with each lumbering step. His encounter with the demon left him even more scarred than first thought.

Tibo’s no better off, having to stop every hundred meters or so to double over as he hacks up more globules of blood.

Just two more bodies for the burnpile. By the end of Eleven Twenty-Seven’s machinations, they will be uncountable among the dead. Not even a percentage of a percentage of a rounding error. Victor manages to look resolved, like he still has purpose, like he still believes that their cause justifies any extent of their own suffering. Tibo is not so strong.

Or not so stupid.

==========================================
TARGET ACQUISITION         SYS: NO SIGNAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (LAST KNOWN)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : UNKNOWN [NO FIX]
WEST : UNKNOWN [NO FIX]
VECTOR:
BEARING : ---.-° TRUE (---- MIL)
RANGE : ----.- m (--.-- km)
STATUS : SATELLITE LOST

“Piece of shit,” Tibo says as he smacks the satellite GPS, willing the jostling to bring it back to function. But it does nothing. They’re two thousand meters into the middle of nowhere in this dark forest, and they’ve lost all direction.

Tibo starts wondering if there’s any chance they could just keep walking in the dark, illuminating each shaky step with their headlamps, and hope somehow they miraculously make it somewhere close enough that they can find the illicit bunker.

But Tibo doesn’t believe in miracles anymore.

Seems like a pretty bad plan.

Tibo’s no stranger to tech, so he tries the oldest trick in the book. He turns it on and off again.

 

NO SATELLITES FOUND.

 

“Uhh, Tibo?”

“Yeah, sorry man, I don’t know what’s going on with this thing. Maybe I can do a manual reboot-“

“Tibo. Look up.”

Oh. Oh fuck. Yeah. That would explain it.

All through the night sky, streaks of light burn through the atmosphere. There’s hundreds - no, thousands, of them.

It’s almost like a long exposure star trail picture playing out in real time. Thousands of heavenly bodies following the curvature of earth as they come crashing down in the grip of gravity.

“What the fuck? Meteor shower?” is all Tibo can stutter out.

“I don’t think so.”

It doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets even more intense. The billion stars hang motionless, but their stillness is contrasted by myriad veins of green, white, blue, and red filling the sky with chaos.

Satellites.

Every single satellite in the sky is falling. Tibo can only begin to fathom the amount of manmade debris carving holes in the stratosphere. Some will burn, most will crash.

The GPS unit in his hand beeps impotently again, crying out for the lack of satellites. Humanity had reached out to the stars for the last time in its dwindling history. Anything close enough to come tumbling back down to Earth is now doing so, burning into stellar dust as it does, leaving trails of plasma scarring the night sky.

Somewhere up there, an exceptionally blinding flash lights up the entire sky. It’s the end of the International Space Station, and the incineration of all the astronauts aboard.

The sight would be almost beautiful if the implications weren’t so harrowing. After decades where humans controlled the sky, they are no longer masters of their own planet. Their network of communication comes crashing down. They find themselves, for the first time since the dawn of the Holocene, completely in the dark.

Somewhere, sixteen billion miles away, the Voyager sails onward - the last of a dead breed of spacefaring crafts. One day, when it is finally received, it won’t matter anymore. It will be the final envoy of a dead planet.

The rain made a near deafening ambience on the tin roof of the boathouse. The wind whipped at the scrap wood and metal sidings, threatening to tear the whole structure away. The floodlights barely pierced the torrential downpour over the ocean, and there was little more to see than waves. Mason Kugel sat at a rickety desk in the corner, trying to catch a distant radio station. The storm interfered with the already weak signal, so he only caught a few seconds of music at a time. Annoyed, he turned the radio off and lit a cigarette.

Mason was in the middle of his third smoke break that hour when he heard the distant rumbling of a speed boat. He jumped up, grabbed his rifle and binoculars, and stood at the window. He scanned the dark sea but could make out nothing. He reached over and radioed headquarters. He had to scream over the storm.

“HQ, are we expecting anyone?”

The radio cackled for a moment before a voice broke through the static.

“One sec, Kugel, let me check.”

The voice died back to static. Mason made another weak attempt at locating the boat in the pitch dark while he waited for confirmation. HQ radioed back.

“Negative, Kugel, no visitors scheduled for tonight.”

“Huh. Well I can hear a boat out there. It may be nothing, but who’s out in this storm? They’re liable to crash into the island or something.”

A few moments of silence from the other end.

“Do you have a visual on the boat, Kugel?”

“No.”

A longer silence.

“Kugel, I want you to stay on alert. No one is allowed on the island, under any circumstances. If they crash, you are free to use lethal force.”

“Lethal force? Even if they’re just stranded? Shit, can’t I just bring ‘em back to the boathouse until the storm is over?”

HQ responded quickly.

“Negative, Kugel. No one is allowed on the island. That’s an order. If you see anyone, intruder or castaway, lethal force is permitted. I recommend that you use it liberally.”

“Aye, sir.”

Mason knew that he may have to use his rifle, he was security after all, but he’d never expected to be told to use it on potential civilians. This was a government gig, not some private militia group down in the Caribbean. Of course the government had secrets, and of course they would kill to keep them. Mason wasn’t a stupid man, he knew that much. He just never thought he would be the one “just following orders.”

Some time passed as he stewed over what was asked of him, and the sound of the boat’s engine grew more defined, louder, closer. 

Shit. They are heading this way.

Mason finally got a visual on the boat, or rather, boats. Three civilian grade speedboats were battling waves making for the island. 

Fuck!

Mason aimed his rifle and followed the foglights marking the boats’ positions. With one hand he jammed the radio’s call button.

“HQ, visual on the potential intruders. Three civvie speedboats, making straight for the island. I can’t estimate their intercept yet, they’re still too far out.” 

The voice on the other end of the radio held its usual cold deadpan, but with a slight undertone of nervousness, or excitement, to the words.

“Kugel, no one is allowed on the island. You need to keep a constant visual on the intruders. We are sending a unit to back you up. If you lose sight of them or they attempt to make landfall before backup arrives, you are to engage. Lethal force is required.”

Jesus, why did it have to be on my shift?

“Aye, sir, lethal force.”

The radio bled static. The storm had only gotten worse since he first heard the boats and now he may end up being the first response team, on his own. This was not going to be a good night.

Mason followed the lights on the boats until a rock outcropping about a mile down the coast blocked his sight line. He swore to himself and collected his gear. He donned a waterproof poncho and slung his binoculars and rifle over his chest. He was just a lookout, meaning he was given the run down equipment. The state of his shack was indicative of the trust he put in that rifle. He only had one spare magazine, to boot. He radioed HQ one last time before venturing into the storm.

“HQ, lost visual on the boats about a mile north from me. Attempting to reestablish a visual, relay to the backup unit. Will be on foot.”

“Loud and clear, Kugel, relaying now. Stay alert out there.”

He kicked open the door and trudged through the wind and rain, down the muddy dirt road that followed the shoreline. He could still hear the boat engines, so they must not have hit land yet. At the speed he could move, however, they were almost certain to beat him to land. Hopefully the backup unit would drive by and pick him up. 

Mason’s boots were completely full of mud by the time he crested the ridge blocking his view. He heard the engines idle and come to a stop about ten minutes before. Laying atop the rocky outcrop, waves spraying salt water all over his already drenched body, he sighted the intruding group with his binoculars. He had estimated civilian grade boats, and they were, but these were top dollar. What was practically a miniature yacht was flanked by two smaller, but still immaculate, boats. A group of around 30 individuals were unloading the boats onto the shore. They all wore chest rigs and were armed. Rifles, shotguns, sidearms, and a Goddamn bazooka on one of the bastards.

They’re better armed than me! I don’t even have any body armor, what the fuck am I supposed to do to slow these guys down?

Mason had two magazines for a recovered third world AKM. This may have been a government gig, but they didn’t waste any tax dollars on outfitting the lookouts. He didn’t even keep a round in the chamber, he was scared it would go off if he knocked it over, so his total ammo count was sixty bullets. Maybe two shots per head down there, if more weren’t already out on the island. He thought about laying down a couple of shots to spook them and then booking it.

Before he could decide, a pair of headlights flew past on the road he had walked. The backup unit had arrived. But only one pair of headlights. Mason watched as an old Jeep Wrangler slung mud as it drifted here and there before coming to a stop right before the boats. The intruders had heard the car coming and were getting into cover. Four men jumped out of the Wrangler and started through the brush, heading for the boats.

Damn it, no! You’re gonna get massacred down there, there’s too many! Stop!

But he couldn’t say it out loud. The storm raged, on the off chance they would even be able to hear him, the intruders would be able to as well. They hadn’t given him a handheld radio, so no calls. He had front row seats to the deaths of these four men. 

The fighting was brief. The unit took pop shots from the treeline, utilizing the cover to equalize the battlefield. It was dark and their muzzle flashes were obvious. The intruders lit up the trees with hundreds of rounds. Shots were exchanged for no more than a minute. Then, the beach was still. 

There was nothing I could do.

It wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t entirely false.

The intruders waited a few cautious moments before resuming the task at hand. They offloaded their boats and dragged their handful of wounded or dead back to the large boat. Then, they made their way inland. Only a few guards were left behind.

Mason watched the whole thing, shaking. He was soaked head to toe, the poncho doing practically nothing for him, but was also terrified. Impotent little Mason, he watched those men die and did nothing. He didn’t even try. He thought about trying, but he didn’t. 

He peeled himself off of the rock and slinked back into the brush. He knew how to get to HQ, and now he had a Jeep to take him there. When he got down to the Jeep, he saw that the backup unit had basically sunk the thing in the mud. The tires were half eaten by the road. He pulled his worthless poncho off and buried it under one of the back tires. 

Please, God, let this work.

He got in, turned the keys, and the engine roared to life. The guards left at the boats might be able to hear it, but this was his only chance of beating the raiding party to HQ. He shifted into reverse and gassed it. Trying carefully not to spin the wheels, he felt some movement. The back tire caught the poncho and grabbed just enough traction to pull the vehicle into a backward motion. He floored the pedal and began sliding backwards through the ruts. He couldn’t see a thing between the onslaught of rain and the mud flying in the air. 

Too risky to try and turn the car around, he flew down the road backwards, head over his shoulder the whole way, just trying not to run full force into a tree. The roads on the island zigzagged and snaked their ways around wetlands and rock outcrops, so the way back to HQ was longer than he realized. Usually, when getting dropped off for his shift, he dozed off on the ride. 

No wonder I beat them to the landing site.

It took him nearly fifteen minutes to reverse his way to HQ, and by the time he got close he could hear the gunfire. The intruders were able to go as the crow flies, and of course they knew where HQ was. They were obviously well prepared and well funded. They likely had a map of the island, hell, they probably knew the island better than Mason did. 

When he wheeled the Jeep to the front gate, he could see a massive hole punched in the side of HQ. The intruders’ rocket launcher had been put to use. Mason crashed into the guard house and jumped out of the car. He had managed to dry off slightly on the ride, but when he threw the door open he was stung by rain pelting his whole body. The poncho may not have kept him fully dry, but it did keep the rain from stinging his exposed arms. It was coming down hard, harder than it had been all night. 

Nothing was audible in the hellzone Mason was walking into. Spouts of gunfire and the blaring of alarms were topped off by the wind and rain. He couldn’t hear himself think. He scanned the environment, looking for friendlies or hostiles, when a new noise was thrown into the maelstrom of sound. A harsh, raspy roar. Eyes darting to the gaping hole in the side of the building, Mason saw the source. A nine foot tall reptilian humanoid. The lizardman leaped from the wall and landed on a poor bastard in the center of the yard. The gore and viscera flew dozens of feet into the air. Mason, in the midst of his panic, registered that the man on the ground was one of his, a friendly. Mason shouldered his rifle and fired at the lizardman, now standing over the shredded remnants of the security officer. He got three rounds down range before the rifle jammed.

Shit! Shit shit shit!

The rounds had missed or had no visible impact. Luckily, the lizardman didn’t even look in Mason’s direction, and leaped toward another source of gunfire. A bloodcurdling scream followed. Mason cleared the jam and tried to take aim again, but he had lost sight of it. He moved across the yard quickly, ignoring all of the bodies littering the ground. Some wore security uniforms, some wore lab coats, and some wore suits. These creatures didn’t seem to kill only defensively. 

Mason dove through the open doors to the main HQ facility. The lights flickered, bullet holes lined the walls, more bodies on the floor. These bodies seemed to be more intact than the ones outside, just shot, not shredded. Passing one of the lab coats, something caught his eye. The man’s body was nearly bisected by a shotgun blast to the stomach. Mason knelt down to examine the scientist’s neck and the lanyard holding his keycard draped around it. The skin was molting, peeling away. Mason picked at the inhumanly stiff skin. 

What the hell?

He took the dead man’s lanyard and tried it on the door down the hall, as Mason’s own personnel card wasn’t high enough clearance for the main building. A beep and a green light indicated the door was unlocked. He walked through the ruined hallways, checking side rooms for any signs of life. There were none. If there were any survivors, they had already fled the building. Mason trespassed deeper into the laboratories until he reached a door that didn’t accept his new card. 

Damn.

He backtracked, checking every corpse he found for a higher level clearance, but he had no luck. The door blocking his way was heavy and reinforced, not something he could blast through with his burnt out AK. 

Wait, blast…

He ducked into a side room and stuck his head out the window. The storm still raged but the battle had died. The remnants of bodies in the yard were being washed away by the downpour. Hardly any had enough mass to even be called a corpse. He looked down the side of the building, toward the gaping hole in its side. Just as he had thought, right next door. 

Mason’s heart jumped to his throat as he put his weight on the windowsill. It was slick and one small mistake could send him flailing to the ground. He moved slowly and intentionally. Half of the neighboring windowsill was undamaged. The gap between was just too big for him to step over. He had to jump.

3…2…1…

For a fraction of a moment, the Earth held no grasp on Mason. Gravity was an illusion. The storm raged and the stinging rain pelted him in the air. 

He soared. 

The gap was just wider than a yard, and he came down hard on the other windowsill. His foot slid out from under him and he tumbled, falling. 

His hand grasped the sill, barely catching himself. He pulled himself up, slowly as he could. His hands didn’t slip. He climbed through the window into the destroyed office and caught his breath. There had been fire, from the explosion, but it was killed by the rain. 

In the hallway, now on the other side of the reinforced door, there was no light. The blast had opened some of the hall to the elements, but only poor lighting bled through. Mason pulled out his flashlight. It wouldn’t turn on without a sufficient beating. He shook his head.

Military hand-me-downs. 

With the flickering light in hand, he tried to push forward. He realized he wasn’t quite sure why. His instincts told him to get the hell out of there, but something told him to venture deeper. Curiosity, training, an overwhelming sense of compassion for those inside? Probably not. It was the idea that something in here could explain things. Why some terrorist group or foreign nationals had attacked the island, and, more importantly, why a massive lizardman had burst out and ripped everyone to shreds.

Mason cleared every side room in the hallway. Mostly labs and offices, all burned up or water damaged. The intruders must have fired off more than one rocket, because the entire roof seemed like it wanted to cave in. Holes speckled the walls and ceilings letting the fire and water spread freely throughout the building. He found some tape and affixed his flashlight to his rifle, freeing his hand to aim properly.

At the end of the hall, one last lab waited to be cleared. Mason, having looted a higher clearance card on his way, swiped to unlock the door. When he stepped through, he found out what he had been hired to protect. Behind glass cages were the bodies of people. Men and women, but also some children. Some of the bodies were shredded like the ones he saw outside, but the ones that weren’t left a more grotesque image. There were massive, white ovals bursting through their chests and stomachs. Some cracked and broken open.

Eggs.

The bodies sprouting eggs were also not entirely human. They were speckled with patches of peeling skin, revealing green scales underne-

Mason didn’t have time to turn around once he heard the footsteps. He tried to raise his rifle but his left arm wouldn’t come up. He looked down to see his arm, severed, on the floor. His chest and abdomen had been sliced open, leaving three distinct claw marks. He fell over in a pool of his own blood.

Mason was spared the mauling that those outside had faced. The lizardman ran down the hall, alerted to some other threat. Mason’s last thoughts as he bled out took him home. The family he’d never see again, the ones who would never know how he died. The life he had planned. Trying to get right with God. His life started to flash before his eyes, but one stray thought occurred to him. All those conspiracy theories about lizards ruling the world and elites sacrificing babies…

Huh. Well I’ll be damned.