"Is he hearing things?" The yuki-onna asked, moving to hover over Hicks. "For how long? How long have you been in the area?"
"What's causing it?" Raya asked, crossing her arms. "There's nothing out here."
"Not that you can see." She turned to Alleane. "You were with him on the lake. Did he go under at any point?"
"No…why?" Alleane just looked confused.
"Anything strange at all?"
"He did keep looking at the ice, like he saw something underneath. Made us lose you, actually." She made a face. "What's that got to do with-"
"There's something in the lake," Barrett said. "Powerful enough to influence minds. It leads them to his cave. Why?"
"I do not know," the snow woman said plainly.
"But you do know something," Raya added. "Otherwise you wouldn't be leaving a trail of bodies. What happens when they enter the cave?"
The pale lady was quiet for a while, averting her dark eyes in pondering, before meeting Raya's. "The…area of influence was not always this large. It has grown with every human I could not stop. I do not know what will happen, but it cannot be good. How do you humans say…I have a gut feeling."
"Whoa, whoa, hold up." Alleane put her hands up. "I was on that lake too. I looked down where Hicks was staring at. Why is he hearing voices and I'm not?"
"It varies from person to person, but the closer you are, the more likely it will take you. Your friend has not been here long. He may yet survive."
Hicks was mumbling something under his breath, completely unintelligible to the rest of them. His eyes seemed glazed over, though he kept turning towards the gaping cave entrance.
"She's right," Barrett said suddenly. "The three of you need to get out of here, away from the lake. Regroup with Walker and wait for me."
"Wait for-" Raya snapped around to look at him. "You're not fucking serious. You can't go in there!"
"We cannot be sure if your god-touched nature makes you resistant or immune to this voice. But my fortifications likely are, and even if they aren't, then I still have the training to survive this. Don't throw your life away. Take them back to the pub and I will join you shortly."
Raya decided against objecting, but looked to the yuki-onna, who was now leering at Barrett.
"I warned you." She glided towards Barrett, freezing mist rolling off of her form, making Raya flinch away from the biting cold. "You will not feed it."
As soon as she was within arm's reach, one of Barrett's hands emerged from his coat with a red plastic tube, its cap already loosened, and in single motion he pushed it off, catching it with his other hand and swiftly running the end of the tube against an abrasive pad on the cap.
Raya recoiled as the road flare exploded into life directly in the yuki-onna's face, drenching the forest in an eerie red glow and causing her to let out an inhuman shriek as the heat threatened to compromise her body structure. He held it close to his own body as he waves it around her, avoiding her flailing at the tool - had it been any other person, it would have surely burnt them too as the chemical flare sputtered violently in his hand.
But Barrett was hardly any ordinary man.
"Go!" he shouted to Raya, before flicking the flare at the snow woman's feet and making a run for the cave entrance.
Raya took the opportunity to scoop Hicks up, motioning for Alleane to help her with or, and began dragging the delirious officer away from the cave. Behind her, she heard another furious sound escape the yuki-onna, and turned back just in time to see both her and Barrett vanish into the darkness of the cave mouth, looking more like a liquid blackness that rippled as they entered than just simply shadow. The mountain itself then groaned, the rocks shifting under their feet as they raced away with Hicks in between them, and the cave mouth was gone again in between the trees.
The trio emerged onto the lakeside once more, placing Hicks against a rock as they caught their breath. Raya produced her phone and tried dialing the Foxhole once more, to no avail and her growing frustration. In her annoyance she looked up, only to be met with a terrible sight: the dark clouds they had seen growing now covered the entire sky, rumbling with distant thunder, and on the horizon, curved downwards in a most unnatural manner to form an opaque wall of roaring, high-speed gales that cut off part of the landscape. As she turned to follow the shape of the storm wall with her phone's camera, she found that it went in a wide circle all around them, passing behind the mountain Barrett had vanished into, and reappearing on the far side.
Whether it was a coincidence, which was highly unlikely, or whatever eldritch power that infested the region had just closed in on them, and their chance to get the hell out had just elapsed.
"Michael!" Alleane suddenly called out.
Raya looked down to see that Hicks had vanished from the rock they had laid him on, and was now crawling along the ice on the lake, searching for something below him. Alleane ran out from the shore towards him, to pull him back as Raya understood it, but before she could shout out a warning, a massive shadow under the ice made her choke on whatever it was she could say. She knew then, it was over.
The claw of a massive crustacean, dark blue and covered in kelp, exploded through the ice, the resulting shower of water from beneath obscuring both Alleane and Hicks, and Raya fell back on her haunches, crawling away from the shoreline. She watched as the hulk of the beast under the lake retreated beneath the surface, which returned to an eerie calm, seemingly still and untouched except the few wisps of blood carried by the waves in the aftermath.
She got to her feet and took off running, taking the long way around.
NOW
The deafening pop of Rutherford's lever-action gun made Keel jump, his attention having been squarely on the video on the screen of his phone.
"A few made it down to the beach," he reported. "They'll be outside soon. I can't get an angle from here."
"Can you handle them?" Keel asked
"I can certainly try." He moved away from the edge of the broken window as a round pinged off the frame. "But I expect they'll be trying to get over the car again soon."
"Stay up here. I'll pick them off as they come up the stairs." He got to his feet, and carefully got back onto the top of the rickety ladder back down to the warehouse floor. As he was climbing down, the phone in his hand buzzed.
"Not fucking cool," he muttered to himself, hopping off the ladder jogging towards the heavy sliding door in the side of the building, pressing himself against the wall next to it, before pushing it open an inch so he could peek out.
The first mercenary had just reached the top of the stairs, and immediately dashed for the corner outside to get away from Rutherford's sightline. Two more followed stacking up along the wall, facing towards where Keel was.
Keel put his phone away and pushed the slide forward again to charge up the accelerator coil of his pistol, before repositioning behind the door itself. The metal was definitely too thick to shoot through reliably, so he was going to have to be fast. He held his breath, watching the silhouettes of the men outside in the sunlight coming through the bottom of the door, and took aim.
As soon as the door opened, the first mercenary got an accelerated round at point blank range that punched the plate in his vest directly into his abdomen, scrambling his insides and killing him instantly. Keel grabbed the top of the vest and turned him around the edge of the door, using the dead man's shoulder to prop up his aim and put two rounds - one in the throat, one straight through a cheek - in the next man, and fired again at the third…who sidestepped his aim, and pulled the trigger on their SMG.
Keel ejected himself backwards from the door as rapid gunfire tore through the thin metal wall next to the door and the late mercenary, and let off a few of his own shots out of the doorway as he scrambled to his feet. "One more!" he shouted up to the catwalk, and ran underneath it.
The last mercenary who entered the warehouse immediately had his head blown off by Rutherford, who cocked his gun and fired another shot out the window. "Oh dear."
"What?" Keel asked, breathing heavily, still holding onto one of the catwalk supports.
"There's a pair behind the car, and more are going down towards the beach."
"That trick's not going to work a second time." He checked his magazine, counting seven more rounds. "You think I can get one of the ones at the car before the others get up the steps?"
"Perhaps not without getting shot. I would advise you stay in-"
Rutherford was cut off by the growing sound of turbines approaching them from the direction of the ocean, passing over them. It was shortly followed by the rapid, almost monotonous drone of a gatling gun and the sound of its rounds tearing through the mercenaries' convoy on the opposite side of the bridge.
Keel peeked through a bullet hole in the corrugated metal wall, and saw the whole cavalcade of SUV reduced to wreckages shrouded in smoke, as the tilt-rotor wing-body aircraft lowered itself to the street and offloaded half a dozen operators in heavy armour who began marching towards the bridge, fanning out to cover as many survivors as possible.
Rutherford hopped down from the ladder. "Well that's a relief."
"About time." Keel kept watching as the surviving mercenaries attempted to shoot at the rescue team, only to have their bullets bounce uselessly off their gear and be gunned down in return in an almost orderly fashion. It took no time at all for them to sweep across the bridge, firing down at the beach, and reach the door in the side of the warehouse.
The Division One rescue commander, whose patch read "Van Buren" entered first to find Keel and Rutherford with their hands behind their heads and weapons at their feet. He paused for a moment, observing Keel, and then clicked his heels and saluted. "Minister."
"Impeccable timing," Keel said dryly, lowering his hands and picking his gun back up.
As the rest of the soldiers went out to scour the area around the warehouse, Van Buren pulled off his goggles, revealing his bright green eyes behind his tactical balaclava. "Sorry sir. We were waiting to confirm civilians had cleared out."
He held out his phone, displaying a code. "Make it up to me this way: find out what you can about these guys and send it to my analyst here."
Van Buren scanned it with the device on his wrist. "Anything else, sir?"
"Well…" Keel stepped outside, stretched in the sun and turned to look over the bridge, at the tilt-rotor. "I'm running late for a meeting so…gimme a ride?"
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