My brain whirred into overdrive. Blood on the ceiling, walls, no bodies. Assimilators had been down here, probably during the invasion. Reasonable to assume that I’d missed other signs of a fight as well. Potentially. That late at night, would’ve been less than fifty people here, give or take. Guards, janitors, scientists –

Getting sidetracked. Focus. Were there Assimilators still in the building? Very possible. None on this floor, the sweep had confirmed that, but there were hundreds of floors above that might have them. Sounds heard earlier was most likely Assimilator. Why haven’t they attacked yet? Possibilities: Didn’t notice us, ignored us, or waiting. Option three likely, considering earlier sound ruled out one and two. Waiting for what? Unknown. Reinforcements, potentially, though no-

I felt something grab my shoulder, shot to the side, rolling and bringing my gun to firing position. Aaron was standing with his hand extended outwards, frozen in place.

“What the hell, Sam!?” yelled Rebecca, “What are you doing?”

“Yeah, first you go unresponsive, then you point a gun at us. The fuck are you on about?” Allie sounded more confused than angry.

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts, “Sorry. Really sorry, but I noticed something, and the shock threw me. Turn on your night vision. Assimilators were down here, and I’m guessing they’re still in the building.”

There were a series of muttered curses, but Mary was the first to react. She stood up and fluidly walked to the security door, leaning against wall and poking her weapon out the open door.

“Clear in the hall,” she said.

Aaron spoke next, “Remote camera didn’t pick anything up coming down the stairs.”

Okay. That was good. But I needed to get back under control, I needed to start leading again. My first major test, and I’d fucked it up pretty damn badly by zoning out like that.

“Jackson, cover the door. Allie, support him and keep an eye on the remote camera feed. Rebecca, pull up the building schematics, see if there’s an optional route out of the bottom floors, I don’t want to be walking into an ambush. Mary, Aaron, you’re with me, we’ve got to figure out our next move.”

There was a half-second’s hesitation, then everyone started to break apart into their designated roles. I breathed an internal sigh of relief. Back on track.

The moment Mary and Aaron gathered around me, I began speaking, “Alright, what does this change?”

Mary responded immediately, “Worms have been here before, definitely. Means it’s more likely that they’re here now as well. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve noticed us, but we need to assume they have.”

I nodded, “I doubt the noise we heard earlier was a rat, but I still don’t understand why they haven’t attacked us.”

“I’m curious too,” Aaron said, “but for now we need to focus on how to get out of here.”

“I don’t think we should leave the way we came. The stairs to the lab put us too far away from the main staircase up to the roof,” I responded.

Rebecca cut in, “That’s where I come in: there’s a freight elevator that stops at each lab, and it goes back to the lobby. A maintenance ladder runs up the shaft, goes all the way to the second floor.”

“That’s a great option, well done. Now, let’s decide if-“

“Noise coming over the feed, something’s coming down!” yelled Allie.

Well, that made the decision for us then. I shared a glance with Mary, then I jumped to my feet. “Mary, you’re in front, I’m covering the back. Elevator shaft marked on the CAS, move!”

We funneled out the door, moving around the circular hallway at a fast clip, and I switched off night vision so that I could see. My eyes were trained on the video feed in my HUD, and after half a minute, it flickered out and died, but nothing had touched it.

“Fuck!” swore Mary over the coms, “They’ve got a mechanoid jammer!”

My heart spiked in fear. Mechanoids were the Assimilators’ answer to our technology. They were usually support units, without much in the way of attack power.

“Doesn’t matter, keep moving. Our coms are hardened against jamming, we’ll be fine if we stick close together,” I said, trying to keep the team calm.

They didn’t respond, but we kept up our pace. The elevator was on the opposite side of the lab from the stairs. We had a lead on them, and we were almost there, but the question was what happened after that. I forced one half of my mind to focus on what was going on around me as the other went through plan after plan, flipping through them as fast as it could. By the time we arrived at the freight elevator doors, I’d settled on rough but workable one.

The doors were closed, so I told Jackson and Rebecca to get them open via the console next to it, while the rest of us formed a firing line down the corridor. There weren’t any other angles to approach us from, other than the ceiling, but that was solid concrete, and we’d notice if something was trying to dig through it. Still, I stayed aware of it.

After half a minute or so of listening to them struggle, I looked back, “What’s the hold up?”

“Damn thing’s malfunctioning,” grunted Jackson, “only opens a few inches.”

I was about to respond when I heard something echo softly out of the deathly silence of the hallway. I couldn’t see anything down there yet, but there was no time to waste talking. I stood up and strode to the elevator doors, forcing my hands into the crack between them. I pulled, hard, the muscles in my arms and back tightening and screaming in protest. With a fiendishly loud shriek they began to split apart inch by inch, revealing the empty shaft. I wedged myself between the doors, pushing them the rest of the way open with my back and my legs, a growl escaping my mouth as I did. They were doing their best to close back up though, moving slowly but exerting an incredible amount of force. There was a row of long metal pegs on the inside edge of each door, used to magnetically hold them together when the power was on. I could feel them pressing on my back, squeezing the air out of my lungs. My head was going white and my legs felt like they were cracking from the inside.

I barely noticed it as the squad stepped around me, one by one. Someone, Rebecca maybe, passed through last, giving me a pat on the shoulder as they got clear. I slid through the doors and almost fell on my face down into the shaft. It was indented a few feet into the ground to make room for the elevator, but there was a lip over it for the door. I teetered on the edge of the lip and found my balance, gasping for breath. I looked over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of shadows creeping into the deep red light, before the doors closed, cutting them off.

The rest of the team was standing on the floor of the shaft looking at me, but I had to take a minute and blink the white out of my head. Those doors were fucking heavy. My arms were shaking from when I first pulled them open, and I closed my fist to try to get them to stop, taking deep, slow breaths. My back was sore as hell too; I was damn lucky my armor dispersed most of the pressure from the pegs.

I forced myself to hop down from the ledge, and through sheer effort of will kept myself from stumbling as I landed. My legs felt like pool noodles, but that wasn’t important right now. Getting everyone out was.

“Everyone all right?” I asked, using a cough to cover up the quaver in my voice. I got a chorus of affirmative noises back, but they sounded a bit hushed. Not surprising, considering how close we just got to being in a fire fight back there. I took some time to take stock of our current location. I was standing with my back to where the door was. The elevator shaft was probably about sixteen feet wide and twelve feet deep. I tilted back my head to look up, switching on my night vision again. There weren’t any emergency lights in here, which was a relief, but it looked like the freight elevator was three floors above us. I spotted the maintenance ladder, set into a nook in the side of the elevator shaft, directly to my right. I moaned internally. I was going to have to pull myself up seven stories with arms that felt like they’d been stuck under a steam roller.

“Should we take a breather?” volunteered Rebecca quietly.

I thought about it for a second. Much as I wanted to, and as much as I was sure everyone else did too, we had to get top side as soon as possible to figure out what was going on. Besides, nothing leading up to this had been very strenuous, so nobody should’ve been that tired.

I shook my head, “Sorry, we’ve got to keep moving, but we’ll take a break at the fourth floor. We can sit on top of the elevator, it’ll be safer.”

“I wasn’t asking for me. You look like you’re about to pass out. I looked up the specs for those doors when we were trying to open them. You were holding back somewhere in the ballpark of a ton and a half of force.” The was both worry and awe in Rebecca's voice.

I flapped a flippant hand at her, “Pshh, you worry too much. Superhuman stims, remember?” I doubt anybody really bought it, but I forged ahead anyway, “I’m going to head up first, then Rebecca, Mary, Allie, Jackson, and Aaron. Don’t stick too close, and let us know the second anything feels off. We can always cut back through the labs if we need to, though I’d prefer to avoid it.”

“Are you sure you are okay, Sam?” Adelaide asked me, into just my channel.

“Honestly, I’m not,” I responded, walking towards the ladder, “But we don’t have time for me to recoup. Besides, this is nothing compared to getting shish-kebabbed by a Hive Lord.”

“Please be careful Sam. You aren’t invincible.”

“Nah, I’m not. But they don’t have to know that.” I grabbed the first metal rung of the ladder, and looked up again. There was a long way to go. I took a breath, and started the climb.

For a while, the only noise was the clank of boots on metal rungs and the sound of my own breath. My gloves gave me a good grip on the rungs, and I pulled myself up at a moderately fast pace. I didn’t want the rest of the squad to get too exhausted. The climb was shitty, but bearable. The GIDS procedure was more or less keeping me together, the advanced healing preventing further muscle deterioration. I’d need a long rest and a stint in the medical pod to be back to 100%, but it would do in the meanwhile.

But by the time we finally reached the freight elevator, my limbs were threatening to walk out in protest of my cruel and unusual treatment of them. I had a brief moment of claustrophobia as I was sandwiched between the elevator and the ladder – the notch in the wall left just enough room to squeeze past. I stepped onto the wide metal surface with a sigh of relief. I made sure that one was kept off the coms though, and I took a quick glance around the top of the elevator. There wasn’t anything there, which was good, because if I saw another body or bloodstain or red glint I was going to lose my fucking mind.

I looked for a place to take a seat. While I was enough of a moron to hide my obvious pain and discomfort in a show of manly machismo, I wasn’t enough of one to try and keep going without rest. I settled on a slightly raised edge of metal, but before I went to it I turned around. Aaron had just finished climbing the ladder, so the squad was all here.

“Well, that was unpleasant,” I said brightly, “But we’re about halfway up. We’ve got another hour and a half before the drones run out of power, so we’re okay as far as that goes. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a while until we can be this secure again, so we’ll take five. Stay alert though. We’re still not alone in here.”

There weren’t any objections, thankfully, so everyone sank down where they stood. Mary sat next to the ladder. She caught my glance and gave me a little nod. I’m pretty sure it meant that I could leave sentry duty to her. But maybe I was just reading too much into it. Either way, I was going to sit my ass down on that cozy little patch of metal and take have a wee bit of a bre-

The rumbling started then, a low tremor that started deep in the ground and shook the walls. I nearly lost my balance, but caught myself in time. Allie wasn’t so lucky, and she fell flat on her ass with a small squeak. Dust and dirt fell from the walls, and the elevator’s cables swayed for a moment, and then everything went still again. Aaron helped Allie to her feet as I stared blankly at the ground. I’d grown up in the Bay area. I knew an earthquake when I felt it. There was just one problem.

“There aren’t any earthquakes in Denver,” said Jackson, “So what the hell was that?”

Rebecca shook her head, “I have no idea. I’ve been in Colorado since I was a kid, never felt anything like that.”

There was a moment of confused silence, and I made up my mind, “Well whatever the reason, I’m not keen on being down here if that happens again. Break’s cancelled, let’s keep moving. Mary, switch with Aaron. I want you keeping an eye out below. And hold on tight, I don’t want anybody getting thrown off.”

I moved myself towards the ladder, casting a longing glance at my metal seat. I stepped onto the closest rung, and began my ascent again. Forcing my unhappy muscles into climbing wasn’t easy, but the adrenaline helped things a lot. The earthquake, or whatever it was, had given even more desperation to the climb. I really, really didn’t like earthquakes.

We passed the entrance to the third floor, and I started attempting to contact Camille, but all I got was static.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“What now?” said Jackson, a note of panic in his voice.

Mary replied for him, her voice grim, “Jammers. We can’t reach Adelaide.”

Rebecca sighed, “Oh joy. What the hell else could go wrong?”

“Oh you did not just say tha-“ I started, then my voice died in my throat, because a deep red light was shining into the elevator shaft from the door that had just been wrenched open with a horrific grating noise. I stood frozen on the ladder, looking directly into the bright red eyes of an Bison-headed Assimilator less than five feet to my right.

And it did nothing.

It was so close that I could see the tendrils that made it up wriggling up to the surface and falling back down, tightening and relaxing from moment to moment, even though the monster didn’t seem to draw breath. They were woven so tightly on its horns and eyes that they almost looked smooth. It was hunched over in the hallway on all fours, dinner plate sized racoon-hands curled over the lip of the landing, claws digging into the concrete. It stared at me, but for reasons I couldn’t comprehend, there was no hostility emanating from it. Its massive, horrific eyes, composed out of what looked like hundreds of thousands of squirming threads, were locked on to me.

But it did nothing, and behind it, the dozens of Assimilators packed into the hall did nothing either, except for stare at me with blank red eyes.

My arms were burning on the ladder. There was only one option here. “The Assimilators know exactly where we are, and one is looking at me right now. It isn’t attacking. Don’t panic. Keep climbing,” I murmured into the coms. I head the gasps of fear from the squad, and kept speaking in a slow, calm voice, “Keep moving past them. If they attack we’re dead, so just keep moving past.”

It was easier said than done. It took everything I had in me to turn my eyes away from the monster that lurked so close to me. I looked up the shaft, and put one hand on the rung above me. I let out a breath, and started to climb.

It did nothing.

“I don’t fucking understand,” said Aaron, and I caught the first trace of panic I’d heard from him, “I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s completely ignoring the rest of us, it just craned its head out to look up at you.”

That froze the blood in my veins, and I couldn’t help myself but look down. The massive head of the Worm was sticking out, turned upwards at an impossible angle. Staring at me.

I wrenched my gaze away. “It doesn’t matter. We just have to keep moving.” I tried to keep the fear out of my voice.

Above me, I saw the deep red light spill into the elevator shaft again, muted by the night vision, but I could imagine it perfectly. My heart began to hammer in my chest. I didn’t want to climb past that door. What if they decided to snap as I moved past them? They would just have to reach out with their claws, just five feet, and they could snatch me from the ladder. So easy. One movement, and I’d be gone. I heard the noise of a boot land on a rung below me. I closed my eyes for a second, and pulled myself up again, one hand at a time.

There was a huddle of panther-spiders waiting for me. Their eight long, spindly legs ended in three hooked claws that balanced on the floor, and eight glowing feline eyes pierced into mine. Their muzzles flowed out the bottom of their faces, where the fangs of a spider should be. I was used to seeing their teeth bared in a snarl; these ones had their jaws relaxed, and stood as if statues. Except for their eyes, those were fixed on me, and tracked me slowly as I moved.

They still did nothing, and I climbed past them as well.

I was almost at the first floor now, and there was still no word from Camille. I was worried about her. She was safe, but she hadn’t heard from us in a long time. I could only imagine how she was feeling right now. But there wasn’t much I could do about that now; I had more life-threatening things occupying me. I dreaded what I would find through the doors that lead to the lobby. When I passed them, I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw the massive blast shields that had shut over them. Apparently, the lockdown had extended to the freight elevator. Made sense. It opened to the outside for loading.

My relief came a moment too soon, because we were hit with another earthquake, bigger this time. I clung to the ladder for dear life, my fingers tightening around the rungs, pressing my helmeted forehead to the metal with my eyes closed. It passed after a few torturous moments, and I let out a breath, then checked in to make sure nobody had fallen off.

The last few feet to the maintenance hatch were a bit of a blur. In a rare stroke of luck it was unlocked, so I pushed through it, almost forgetting to check the room it lead to before I jumped out. I peeked my head up like a prairie dog, and scanned around. It was just a normal little maintenance room, filled with tools and equipment. No windows. I pulled myself up and out, stifling a groan as I did, but I still reached back to help Rebecca up. She flopped to the ground as I grabbed the outstretched hand of each person in the team, one by one. Once Mary was up, I resealed the hatch, and locked it tight. Then I lay down flat on my back, eyes closed, breathing heavily. That had taken a lot out of me.

I couldn’t take too much time. There was a lot to do still. More importantly, I needed to make a new plan with everyone. Things were changing a little too rapidly for my tastes. I opened my eyes to see Mary’s hand extended in front of my face. I stared at it in confusion until I realized she was trying to help me stand. I took it gratefully, and clambered to my feet, facing the rest of the squad. They were in various states of being slumped over. I could see that they were teetering on the brink of panic, and I couldn’t blame them. We’d just had to put our lives in the hands of our greatest enemy. The fact that we’d survived didn’t do much to mitigate that.

I opened my mouth to give some sort of inspirational speech, but then another tremor shook the building, causing me to stagger, my exhausted body barely able to keep upright.

I shared a glance with Mary, made a snap decision, then addressed the room, “We have to keep going. I don’t know what these earthquakes are and I’m not planning to stick around and find out. We’re going to leave this building the same way we came in. I’d rather take my chances out there. Objections?” I looked around, “Good. Now, let’s-“

A loud bang rang clear in the room. I looked back at the maintenance hatch in horror. There was a large dent in the metal.

“Oh fuck,” whispered Allie.

“Mary in the lead, I’ve got the back. Go!”

I trained my SMG on the hatch and backed my way towards the door out of the room. Mary and the others funneled into the hallway, making sure it was clear. Another bang, and another dent appeared, bowing the metal outward.

“We’re clear,” Mary said into the coms. I ducked out of the room, closing the door behind me and feeling absurd as I did so. We were just short of jogging as we moved through the halls, guns up. It wasn’t far to the room, we just had to turn the corner and go up one of the auxiliary staircases.

I heard the rapping of claws coming from ahead of us. Mary skidded to a halt, then motioned at us frantically to turn around. I stood and kept my gun leveled down the corridor as the rest moved past me, so that I could stay in the rear.

“Where’re we going?” asked Jackson, his voice cracking.

“Main staircase. We’ll head up from there,” Mary was trying to sound calm, but it felt hollow. We burst out onto the balcony overlooking the lobby, and I saw something that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

A mass of undulating black and red blanketed the floor of the lobby. I couldn’t tell where one Assimilator started and the other ended. As one, a thousand glowing red eyes swiveled up to meet me. It was suffocating, I could almost feel them boring into me. Every instinct I had told me to run, run as fast as I could, anywhere but here.

“Sam,” said Adelaide quietly, “You have to lead.”

She was right. I composed myself. “Up the stairs,” I murmured, “same order. Everyone but myself and Mary, keep an eye out for the jammer.”

As we started to move I restricted my voice to just my helmet, “Adelaide, can you get through to Camelot or the Merlin at all?”

“No,” came the hesitant answer, “I cannot. But it is very bizarre. I can feel that the connection is there. It is as if there is a thick film between myself and the satellites.”

“That’s… odd. Keep me posted.”

I switched my focus back to the lobby. The Assimilators were still unmoving. How had they gotten in here? It didn’t make sense; we would’ve seen that many, and Camille would’ve spotted them through the windows if they were on the top floors. I refused to believe that they were everywhere in the basement but the seventh lab. As far as the lobby goes, the lockdown doors should’ve prevented them from getting inside, they were too strong for anything but a Hive Lord to get through, and I didn’t see one of those down there, thank god.

I figured it out when we were in between the second and third floor. It was idiotically simple, actually. They hadn’t gone through the lockdown doors; they’d just gone through the hardened concrete around it. There were holes gouged out in the walls of the first floor, that definitely hadn’t been there when we’d walked through before. Best guess was that just a small group of Worms had entered during the invasion, maybe through the same entrance we came in from. Once they’d killed everyone inside, they went dormant. We woke them up, and they called for backup. Idiotic. So simple, and so idiotic of me not to think of it before.

“Change of plans everyone,” I said into the coms, “The Worms got into the lobby from outside, so there’s a good chance it’ll be swarming with them. We’re going to keep moving up, get to the roof. Hopefully, we'll be out of jammer range by then.”

It was a shot in the dark. A complete gamble, but I didn’t know what else to do at this point. The Assimilators were still unmoving, still waiting for something. I didn’t know what, but it was the only thing keeping us alive.

We passed the third flour, then the fourth, and still they didn’t move. When we passed the sixth, I noticed that the landings on the second, third and fourth had been occupied by Worms as well. It was like they were all trying to get a look at me as best they could. It sent shivers down my spine.

“Sam,” said Adelaide, “I think I can get through to the Merlin.”

I almost stumbled on the steps. “How? Is the jammer weaker up here?” I asked excitedly.

“No, but I think I can punch through the ‘film’ I was talking about. I’ve probed it once or twice, and I believe that if I force it, it will give way. Be prepared, I do not know how the Assimilators will react.”

I hesitated, “If we set them off, I don’t know if we’ll be able to outrun them to the roof.”

“I do not believe we have the time to reach the roof as it stands. Those holes on the bottom floor have destabilized this building. If a strong earthquake were to hit, it might collapse,” Shit fuck damn. Adelaide continued, “I do have a plan, however. It requires you to get to the fortieth floor.”

I listened carefully. It could work. Slightly insane, but it could work. We didn’t have to change what we were doing much, thankfully. And it wouldn’t reveal that Adelaide had been with us this whole time. It was simple too. I had to give Adelaide credit. It was a good plan.

But my nerves were still completely shot after twenty floors of climbing. No amount of planning in the world would stop that. I’d been on a knife’s edge for almost an hour now. It wasn’t so much that I was in the same building as thousands of raging Assimilators. It was the unknown. The fact that I had no idea why they weren’t attacking. That at any moment, a switch could flip that I couldn’t anticipate. I knew the Assimilators – they were easy to anticipate, straightforward in their attacks. They were threatening, but I knew them, and I knew how to kill them. When they were like this, when they were unknown, that was when I started to fear them.

And I hurt. All over, I hurt. No matter how good I was at ignoring pain, it was wearing on me, like water wears on a rock. It wasn’t the sharp, sudden stab of a knife or a broken bone. It was omnipresent, grinding away at me inch by inch, and it wasn’t just fraying on my mind. I’d had to consciously stop myself from slipping on the stairs a couple times as my body failed to follow my commands. It didn’t help that I was walking backwards either.

Then, it finally happened. It wasn’t preceded by another tremor. All I heard was a horrible cracking sound, and the building shifted, just a little bit. My eyes went wide with fear.

“Adelaide, do it.”

“Okay, Sam.”

I let my SMG dangle from my shoulder and unclipped three grenades from my pack. I looked at the frozen squad.

“Start running.”

As we started our sprint up the stairway, my vision became a little less sharp. The navigation on the HUD sprung back to life, and the position of the drones appeared again. Adelaide had broken through. I set the grenades’ timers to five seconds, fifteen seconds, and twenty-five seconds, and dropped them down the stairs.

An instant later, everything went straight to hell.

A cacophony of horrible screams, unlike anything I’d heard before, echoed up from the lobby. Thousands of Assimilators screeching in pure rage and hatred all at once, all directed at us. Then there was another tremor, incredibly strong. I fell, catching myself on the railing, as the building shook back and forth. There was another deafening series of cracks, and another shift, larger this time.

The Worms started streaming up the main staircase, an unbroken horde of red and black, flowing like water up towards us. I ignored them, running with the rest of the squad. I had to get clear of what was coming next.

There was a roar as the first grenade detonated twenty feet behind me, right at the head of the advancing Assimilators. It wasn’t a fragmentation grenade; it was a simple high explosive used for making holes in things. It did its job phenomenally, wrecking the stairway that spiraled upwards, sending it crashing downward in a hail of rubble and glass. The second buckled further down, and the explosion rippled through the air. I had just passed the landing to the twenty-fourth floor when the last went off, and as I cast a glance over my shoulder I saw a gap in the staircase that not even an Assimilator could jump. I smiled to myself.

Across the way, on the other half of the double helix, the stream of Assimilators continued unhindered. But the squad had caught on to my plan. Allie whipped her hand cannon out, and fired every explosive bullet in the magazine at the opposing side. Jackson and Rebecca followed suit, and the staircase crumbled under their concentrated fire, sending dozens of Worms plummeting to their deaths. There were a few Assimilators still behind us that my grenades hadn’t killed, all M-1s. Aaron and I peppered them with automatic gunfire as they advanced, and they fell quickly. Mary kept her eyes up front, watching for any threats that might have been coming down to us.

As we ran, I addressed them, “I’m not sure how, but I’m back in contact with Adelaide. She’s meeting us on the east side of the fortieth floor for pickup, we just have to get there!”

“There’s no place for her to land there!” Rebecca yelled back in confusion.

I grinned, “Not yet there isn’t.”

Our conversation was cut short by the appearance of a dozen gorilladillos bursting out on to a landing three floors above us. Their eyes were twisted in a familiar expression of hate as they sprinted down the staircase. The stair descended in such a gentle curve that we had plenty of time to bring the Worms down with a hail of automatic weapons fire. But their presence didn’t bode well – if some were already up this far, there were bound to more as well.

My fears were realized as more began to pour out onto the staircase from above and below. Not many from each floor, between five and ten, but they added up quick. I told the squad to focus their attention upwards, because the ones below were easy pickings. A well-placed grenade would wipe them out. I only had so many of those, so the timing would be tricky. Wait long enough to get as many as possible, without letting them get too close.

We were doing well. Better than I thought we would be. I hadn’t really seen the 4th scouting team fight up until this point. They were deadly efficient, firing accurate bursts into the heads of the oncoming Worms. Their communication was phenomenal. Aaron had taken over their management, and I was happy to let him do so, because he was coordinating their reloads so that there wouldn’t be a slack in gunfire. Mary was acting as a safety, eliminating any that made it through the team’s barrage. There was a rhythm developing, one that was keeping the enemy at a manageable level while keeping us moving at a steady pace up the spiral stairs.

Then there was another huge tremor, larger than everything up to this point combined. I saw Jackson get thrown off his feet up ahead, and I managed to grab him by the arm before he fell all the way down. I gasped in pain at the strain, but pulled him up anyway. He gave me a wordless nod of thanks, and he might’ve meant to say something afterwards but there was a giant lurch as I felt the ground start to shift underneath.

I set my coms to address everyone, “Go to the thirty-sixth floor, just one above us. We don’t have time to get higher!” I received a series of acknowledgements and winced. It was a definite risk. That low would put Adelaide directly in range of an R-2 Assimilator. But given the way the building was moving, it wasn’t going to be standing much longer.

We reached the landing, and made a hard left. The next part was going to be rough. The stairs were one thing – they were wide open, and we’d had plenty of space to pick them off. But now we’d have to be moving through a tight series of hallways, in close quarters. There’d be no hiding from the swarm either. Once one knew where we were, the rest would follow shortly. Our only advantage was that not many had made it this high yet. They only had the narrow auxiliary staircases to go up after all.

As we entered into the hallways, a series of targets started to light up on my CAS. Camille had begun spotting for us again. She must’ve been maneuvering a drone or two through the halls, threading the needle expertly. It was handy for sure, but we couldn’t rely on her targets. In such a tight area, finding everything was impossible.

As if to prove my point, a turtlebear burst out of the wall to my right, lunging straight at Allie. I put a burst of SMG fire into its head, and it crashed helplessly to the ground. I ignored Allie’s long stream of surprised expletives and kept us moving. The front of the squad was starting to slow down; it was too risky to be rushing here. The problem is, caution was just as bad. I could feel the building tipping, excruciatingly slowly but surely. Once it really started to go, it would fall in a blink of an eye.

Suddenly, Camille screamed into my communicator. I saw the incoming fist out of the corner of my eye, and my exhausted body moved a little too slow to duck it completely. It caught me in the shoulder, sending me crashing into a wall. As my head rang white I barely managed to block the next swing with both my arms, gasping at the force of the impact. The gorilladillo drew back its fist again, but was suddenly torn apart by round of bullets. I shook off the haze and gave a thankful nod to Jackson, who stood over the Worm’s corpse.

We started moving again, catching up to the rest of the team. They were currently engaging a pair of panther-spiders, who were weaving in and out of rooms, ducking their gunfire. They were just harassing us, trying to slow us down until the other Worms caught up. With Jackson and myself back with the group, we were able to move while keeping them at bay. I found myself next to Mary; it was difficult to keep the team in a cohesive order in such a hectic engagement.

Just as we were approaching our target location, I saw one of the panther-spiders skid out of an office in front of me and lunge at Mary. It bowled her over, and she managed to block its fangs with one arm before they closed on her throat. I couldn’t risk shooting her, so I let my SMG hang at my side and threw myself at the Worm while drawing my knife. My flying tackle sent the Assimilator sprawling, and I grappled with its flailing legs with one arm and stuck my knife deep into its head with another. It twitched for a moment and went still. I hauled myself off of the corpse and sheathed my knife, stumbling a little into the wall next to where I stood.

Someone else, not sure who, had handled the other panther-spider while I was busy wrestling mine. Rebecca was helping Mary up, but Mary’s arm was torn up pretty badly. The hallway went quiet for a moment, long enough for us to get in position. We had our backs up against the door to an expansive conference room, a hundred feet long and wide. One that had windows that faced the east. On major corridor extended in front of us, and there was one to our right, and one to our left. Everyone took the chance to reload, then we set ourselves up in a tight formation, covering all the approaches.

“Adelaide, we’re in position,” I said into the coms, trying to keep my breathing under control.

“Okay Sam. I am attempting to avoid anti-aircraft fire, hold out just a few seconds longer.”

“I don’t think we have a few seconds,” I told her. I could hear the shrieks and cries of Assimilators, so many more than before, echoing in the hallways. My CAS was lighting up with red dots that Camille was targeting for us. The balance of the building continuing to shift as well, leaning us slightly to the north.

The Worms rounded the three corners at the same time. Dozens of red eyes lit up the dark corridors, and we opened fire, our bullets flashing down the hallways. They fell fast, but they were endless, and the Assimilators inched nearer and nearer as the seconds ticked past. I picked off two more turtlebears with a pair of bursts and realized my automatic ammunition was out. Sweat dripped down my face as I loaded in a large-caliber single fire magazine. We weren’t going to last long at this rate.

Then I heard Adelaide yell at us to brace ourselves, and the world erupted in deafening roars and I shook as a dozen anti-matter rockets ripped open the east side of the thirty-sixth floor of the Greenwood Building. The wall separating us from the conference room was all that shielded us from the blast, but we still felt the shockwave clearly. I recovered first, shouldering my way through the door. The Merlin directly in front the new hole torn into the wall, facing away from us with the ramp open. The bright blue engines were flared, and I could see the telltale burst of lasers from its wings telling me that the point defense was in full use.

Behind it, I saw the reason for the earthquakes, and a deep surge or fear came through me.

I snapped out of it, and held the door for the squad as they sprinted past me. The Worms had been thrown off by the explosions, but they recovered quickly. I didn’t bother to stop and deal with them; I was hot on the heels of the team. We just had to make it to the Merlin, we just had to make the last twenty feet, and we were safe.

My CAS told me that an Assimilator had entered the room. I didn’t spare a glance over my shoulder. The Merlin was right in front of me. There was no time to waste seeing what was behind. Allie, Aaron, Jackson and Mary jumped aboard, and turned to face the rest of us, bringing their SMGs up. A second too late, I heard their warnings, and I watched as a spike smashed into the gap between Rebecca’s shoulder and upper back, flung from the tail of a ranged Assimilator. She stumbled but kept moving, the spike lodged deep.

I whirled, and I saw the Assimilator. My adrenaline made the scene move in slow motion. The Worm was a scorpion and deer hybrid. It had a furred tail that arced over its back and ended in a series of wicked spikes. One of them was missing, and it was preparing to fire another. I hefted my gun, trying to kill it before it got to shoot. But I knew. I knew that I was moving too slow. My body was too broken to do what I knew it could. I watched helplessly as the spike flew out, I watched as it spun through the air towards Rebecca.

I was too late.

But two feet before it hit her, the spike erupted in a shower of sparks and seemed to stop in midair. The stealth drone flickered into visibility a moment after and crashed into the ground, impaled through. My gunfire, a little too late, still ripped the R-1 Assimilator apart, and without losing a beat I kept moving towards the Merlin. I grabbed Rebecca, who had started to slump over, and leapt into the gunship.