“Hey.”
Andrew looked up to find a familiar face in an unfamiliar uniform. Well, he was familiar with the uniform, but he had never seen her dressed as a cop. “Hey,” Andrew replied. “Glad to see you’re having some fun housesitting.”
Gwen stood there with a standard issue helmet, vest, and dark-blue uniform. She looked Andrew up and down. “I heard about what happened with your teammate. I mean it when I say I’m sorry.”
Oh yeah, Andrew almost forgot, Smith was dead. It was hard to remove the image of a hole in that man’s chest, and even harder trying to remove the report from his mind. Part of him still lingered on the false hope that he’d just magically reappear after this was over.
He wouldn’t.
“What are you sorry for?” Andrew asked. “You didn’t do anything.”
“That’s exactly why I’m sorry. Why we’re sorry,” Gwen said. To Andrew’s surprise, she also started looking around—making sure nobody was listening in. “If it were up to us, we’d be charging in with you guys. But something’s going wrong with the comms.”
“What, is the Captain–”
“Captain Jacobs is on sick leave.”
Andrew paused. “What did you say?”
Still anxious, Gwen took a deep breath. “We’re taking orders from someone we don’t even know. I don’t even know what their rank or title is; I just know that we aren’t allowed to disobey. They really hammered on that. You remember Sergeant Manning? He wanted to join in with you guys.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and they threatened to pull his badge,” she quickly replied. “He still considered going, but had to remember that his wife and kid needed food on the table. In any case, we’re in a tough spot.”
Gutierrez chuckled as he stumbled onto the scene. “Damn, five minutes in and you’re already fraternizing with the enemy,” he joked. “Make sure the Sar’nt doesn’t catch you pullin’ anything. Anyway, we’re about to pack up and kill some more pendejos. You got that?”
Andrew looked at Gwen, who was already making her leave. “Yeah… I got it…”
***
Everyone looked like shit. That was the simple way of putting it. This was already one of their longer missions, as it was essentially the length of three smashed into one. The Sergeant had run out of energy drinks, Singh was down to her last dips, and Gutierrez was running out of jokes.
Kang, with eyebags the size of quarters, clasped his hands to the side. “Our father who art in heaven…”
Meanwhile, the Sergeant was meeting with the rest of the CDRs, and the remainder of CDR-4 was stuck with cleaning their equipment. As usual, they quadruple-checked their APEs for any possible deficiency. There seemed to be none.
Singh sighed as she cleared her machinegun of carbon-gunk. “Man, all of this shooting has made me do a lot of thinking,” she said. “In my time in the CDRs, I never called my parents a single time.”
Gutierrez chuckled with a snort. “Chica, I call my wife and kids three times a week. It helps that my woman is a la toxica, but it’s always nice to see their faces every once in a while. What about you, Cheng? Eighteen-nineteen year old fresh from home, you call your folks?”
To his own dismay, Andrew shook his head. As strange as it was, he hadn’t really spoken much to them ever since he got here. “I think I talked to them during the boot camp phone call, and they visited my graduation, but I haven't seen them since. As weird as it sounds, I didn’t want them to miss me if I… you know…”
That was a collective feeling they all silently understood. Death was always on their minds, even if it wasn’t. Especially when they knew that their lives were just stones on a larger footpath that nobody ever thanked. “Yeah,” Singh said. “I know.”
The Sergeant finally returned with her same calm face. She also looked exhausted, but Andrew was so used to seeing her like this that it felt no different. Kind of reassuring, that was. “Final floor is going to be brutal,” she quickly said. “Comms are down, since we’re too underground to reach the surface.”
“Too underground?” Singh asked. “It should be fine, no?”
The Sergeant looked at her. Then looked away. No answer was an answer in itself, since she simply had none to give. “The casualty report is: CDR-1 with 1 killed and 1 injured, CDR-2 with 2 injured, and CDR-3 with 1 killed. Would anyone like me to list the names?”
Nobody in CDR-4 said anything. Losing Smith was already enough; they didn’t need to be reminded of any friends that died in the other squads. “Very well,” the Sergeant continued, sounding like she expected that kind of answer, “we’ll move out in ten minutes. Make sure everything is squared away. Good to go?”
“Aye, Sar’nt,” Gutierrez yawned.
***
The descent to the final floor was quiet. Like their initial entrance, the only resistance were the skittering mice that must have been undisturbed for the greater part of a century. With APE suits squishing their tiny bodies, CDR-4 pushed forward into the darkness.
Kang was the first to speak. “I hadn’t felt it before, but this place feels evil.”
“Evil?” Singh asked.
Kang’s APE crushed something as he kept moving—it was probably an old skull from a time long ago. “Evil,” he repeated, “like we’re in a place we don’t belong. Technology, religion, and man-made defenses are nothing here.”
Gutierrez audibly scoffed on their shared comms. “You’re tired.”
“Don’t act like you don’t feel it either.”
“Fine,” Gutierrez resigned, “I fucking feel like I’m in a sweaty suit, surrounded by my favorite people. I will admit that there’s something off about this place, in general, but I won’t pretend like we’re in anything different than before.”
They kept moving deeper into the level, as if on a descent into hell. Admittedly, Andrew felt that same presence that Kang was speaking of. It was as if he’d look at the next corner and see something he wasn’t supposed to see. Simply put, he had a very bad feeling about this.
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“Sergeant,” he finally asked, “you said the comms weren’t working?”
The Sergeant kept her weapon raised. “Yes. I said that. Why do you ask?”
Andrew paused, as he made sure his last-second theory actually made sense in his own head. “Well, this random cop I was talking to was telling me about how they don’t know who’s giving commands from higher up right now.”
There was a pause. It was loud. “What do you mean? Is Captain Jacobs not giving orders right now?”
“No. He’s on sick leave.”
Gutierrez audibly sighed as he chuckled, “And you’re damn sure that girl was telling the truth? Come on, she’s a cop you only recognize from a nightclub, why do you think she’s–”
“Hey.” That was enough for the Sergeant to hear. She raised her fist and ordered everyone to halt. “Something nasty is happening. We’re pulling everyone back now. Let me see if I can get in contact with the other team leaders.”
They hunkered down at their position, with Gutierrez and Kang still holding onto their makeshift shields. Singh patted the back of Andrew’s APE. “Bullshit or not, you’re giving us an excuse to live another day. Got any more cool theories?”
Andrew shrugged as he kept his weapon aimed into the darkness. He made sure to zoom in—not even enough warmth for a concealed position. “I dunno. I just remember hearing some things here and here from friends here and there.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“Well, I remember talking with Hannah from the labs,” Andrew recalled. “She said stuff about how the APEs were always hackable, or something like that. I’m not sure how someone would hack it though, since these things don’t exactly have bluetooth or–”
“Jamming,” Kang interrupted.
Everyone looked at him for a second. “Excuse me?” Andrew asked.
“Ever hear of phreaking? It was a phenomenon in the 1970s, where hackers would play signals into phones. It hasn’t been used in a long time, but that’s the way someone might do it,” Kang coldly said.
“But our comms are down,” Andrew said.
“Down?” Kang asked. “Or jammed?”
Finally, the Sergeant was able to get some signal from someone. Everyone in CDR-4 could hear the garbled words, “CDR-4, th-this is c-command…” It was the recognizable voice of Lieutenant Bates, someone they hadn’t heard from in a while. “I… you… out of… there…”
They heard a deep growl from deeper within the level. It was the kind that penetrated through your flesh and shook your bones where they were. The kind that made you freeze, as something unnatural touched your neck. “Command, this is CDR-4, what’s going on?”
There was a pause. Then there was a new voice.
“Vessels of flesh. You are already dead.”
A series of buzzing and cracks echoed within each APE. It was loud, high-pitched, and could make your ears bleed if you listened to it long enough. Andrew could hardly move. His suit was stuck.
“Everyone out of the APEs!” the Sergeant yelled aloud.
“Now?!” Singh screamed. “But there’s fucking demons coming–”
“Do it!”
Andrew struggled out of his suit as he jumped out from behind. He was glad to be free of the high-pitched sound, but watched as his suit started folding in on itself. It looked almost possessed, as it took on a life of its own. “What in the hell…”
“Cheng!” Singh yelled, outside of her own APE. “It’s Kang! He’s stuck!”
The rest of the team tried unlocking the suit from the outside, but the mechanisms just didn’t budge. “Good Christ!” Gutierrez screamed. “The poor fucker is gonna be crushed like a goddamned soda can!” No matter how hard they pulled, the mechanisms just didn’t seem to budge.
“Move,” the Sergeant coldly ordered. She used her metal arm to pull the door right off and pull most of Kang right out. Most, because the mechanisms around his legs were still tightly wrung like a beartrap.
“Fuck! Get this off me!”
The Sergeant ripped the suit apart and finally pulled Kang out. To everyone’s horror, his legs looked like bent straws that went left, right, and even more right. It was only thanks to the emergency tourniquet that his legs didn’t just bleed out right there.
“Dios mio…” Gutierrez muttered.
Kang’s adrenaline slightly dimmed as he finally realized that he wasn’t going to die—not yet anyway. “Sergeant… you really saved me in… in there…” he muttered. “God… I really should’ve prayed harder, don’t you think? Or maybe my parents were right, and he doesn’t love freaks like me.”
“Don’t say that,” Singh said. “And if God doesn’t love you, we do.”
Before they could savor the moment, the distant growl had grown into a collective roar. Now out of their APEs, the team felt naked and powerless. After all, what worth was a knight without their armor?
“Everyone!” the Sergeant yelled. “Get your guns! We’re gonna have to fight nice and dirty!”
Gutierrez laughed like a madman as he pulled the gun from his suit’s stiff hands.
Writhing on the ground, Kang motioned for his weapon. “My machinegun,” he moaned to Andrew. Even though his legs were still roaring with pain, Kang managed to find the strength to keep moving. “Get me my gun… I don’t want to die like a dog…”
Andrew pulled Kang’s weapon from his APE and placed it on the ground with the bipod. “You know,” Andrew said with a smile, “you were always the most handsome one out of all of us.”
Kang smiled as he cocked back the bolt. “I know.”
***
Winged demons swooped from all about like a congregation of bats. Though human at one point, any resemblance ended at their sharp talons, knife-long teeth, and inhuman groans that sounded more like animals stuffed into grinders. The only thing human about them was the red blood that spilled with every bullethole.
CDR-4, without their APEs, resorted to using their machineguns with the help of bipods. The only one who could stand and shoot such heavy weaponry was the Sergeant, with the help of her artificial arm. “Keep up the fire! I want each team to use alternating fire! Kang and Cheng will be team one! Singh and Gutierrez will be team two!”
In each pair, one shot while the other reloaded. Although Kang’s legs were all levels of fucked up, his shooting was still as accurate as ever. “Even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” he muttered, “for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
It was as if Kang was using some kind of biblical strength to keep him going. His words became nonsensical, while his actions remained lethal. “My parents told me that God abandoned me because of who I was. I never told them what I personally thought.”
Bullets streamed out of his gun, piercing right through another swathe of flying demons. They plummeted to the ground and splattered all over. “If I had a second chance, I would’ve told them that God forsakes no man, woman, or child. That, just like the prodigal son, God shall always welcome anyone back to the flock.”
He kept firing burst after burst. As soon as his gun needed reloading, Andrew would switch the weapons and start reloading. That way, Kang was a constant killing machine. “I’m not in this world for long, but I have the fortune of finding peace prior to my death. I hope the same shall be for you, Andrew.”
It was weird hearing Kang use Andrew’s first name, but he didn’t mind. If Kang could lose his legs but still fight like this, then Andrew could let him do anything. “You won’t die here,” Andrew tried to promise. “I’ll make sure you–”
A bat suddenly flew from the side and clasped its claw around Kang’s head. Andrew could only watch as the skull crushed and the fragments flew like shrapnel. A chunk even grazed his cheek.
“Kang!” the Sergeant yelled. She turned and blasted holes into the bat’s chest. Even though her professionalism remained true in such a horrible moment, Andrew could sense the emotional pain that permeated through her soul. “Cheng! To your left!”
A demon stabbed its talons into Andrew’s arms like barbs. He felt the horrid sensation of the ground no longer underneath his feet as he was flown into the air. The rest of the team tried firing at the bat, but they couldn’t shoot without hitting Andrew. “Cheng!”
Andrew tried wriggling himself from the sharp talons. But as soon as he felt some looseness, his head struck against stone. One moment he was conscious. The next, he was not.
***
Name: Peter Kang.
Former Designation: CDR-4.
Time of death: 0446.
Cause of death: Cranial crush injury (airborne demon threat) sustained in the line of duty.
Remarks: Casualty already sustained crush injuries to the legs, as a result of APE malfunction. Casualty died during subsequent demon engagement. Instantaneous fatality confirmed.