I followed Conor's point lead beyond the junction. She had pretty decent noise discipline, but my rubber soles and rip-stop cotton blend gave me the edge as I tucked the butt of the C8 tight into my shoulder to prevent it from accidentally clipping the walls and giving us away.

She paused occasionally, listening. We were nearly beyond the limits of the faint light of Conor's lantern, our eyes adjusting rapidly to the gloom. She didn't seem to have much trouble picking out the shape of the tunnel ahead of us. For my part, this was situation normal. Like I say: creeping through the darkness in unfamiliar territory to inflict death upon someone who, given the opportunity, would inflict the same on me? Comfort zone. In fact, that my target in this case wasn't human just made it easier.

All of my operational deployments had been in the sniper role, but I'd had a life before that. In fact, as a Colour Sergeant, I should've been past that part of my career. I'd been pulled out of my regular job by Starling to do the work on the ASVK as a trusted authority. Day to day, this was what I was supposed to be doing. I just hadn't had the chance to do it... live, as it were.

There was a noise ahead of us: scraping and snuffling that definitely sounded like an animal. I rested my hand on the woman's shoulder and moved my lips to right beside her ear.

'Is that it?' I asked in a voice closer to a breath than a whisper.

She nodded, and I patted her shoulder again, moving past her.

My vision was limited, but there was just enough ambient light to make out the gross, sinuous form filling the space just a few metres from where I stood. I slowly squatted down, allowing me to rest my elbows on the insides of my knees and lined up the carbine against my cheek.

'Now,' I whispered, loud enough for my chaperone to hear me and, at that signal, she unshuttered her lamp just the tiniest fraction. To our dark-enhanced eyes it might as well have been full daylight and the creature in the tunnel was instantly revealed to me.

It was, perhaps, five or six feet long from nose to snout, with a whipping, grey tail curled up around it and, as the light broke, it instantly turned its head towards me, white eyes as wide open as its yawning jaws as it shrieked hissing, angry defiance, revealing a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth crawling with rot and filth.

I just gave it time for its muscles to bunch for a lunging attack before I shot it through the brain-pan. At this range, it was a casually easy shot that passed through the middle of its top incisors, shearing them off as it impacted through the roof of its mouth. At this point, any deflection would be irrelevant to the outcome as the shards off its own skull that were blown upwards by the impact would shred it's brain but, as it was, the 5.56x45mm round exploded from the back of its skull anyway, its tumbling trajectory ripping a fist-sized wound in the back of its head.

Twenty-eight.

I had a short suppressor on the end of the barrel, but the pop of the shot was still enough to send a ringing report along the tunnel that was answered by the same hissing shriek as we'd heard from the now-dead first one. No. Two hissing shrieks. Sure enough, Thenum's intelligence had been on the ball.

In the meagre light, I saw a dark shape exit a side tunnel just a little way past where the first creature had fallen. It moved with alarming speed! It was already scrambling over the corpse of its sibling, its front claws weirdly reminiscent of human hands, and before the echo of my first shot had died, I added a second with similar effect.

Twenty-seven.

But as the second rat-thing recoiled from the shot that punched out its right eye and a good chunk of the side of its head in a wound that I could only hope would be fatal, the third of them was almost in my face and I swung the carbine with all of my might, driving the flat of the rifle butt into the side of its head and hurling myself backwards, away from its attack, in the split second it slowed its assault.

As I landed, I lifted the carbine again, only to swear as the thief woman lurched past me, swinging a long knife in a slashing blow that opened up the rat-thing's cheek in a flash of bright red. Safety on, I scrambled to my feet, slinging the C8 behind my back. The few rounds I had were too precious to risk wasting one - especially if I might end up wasting one in the body of an ally. Instead, sensing that the monster was on the back foot, I piled in beside her, kicking it in the chin as I yanked the shorter of Marlinya's two blades from out of my belt (the longer one had stayed with Thenum, strapped to my bergen - partly because it didn't seem like the weapon for close quarters sewer fighting, but also because I sensed there was more to wielding it than "pointy bit towards the enemy"). And as the rat-monster, outnumbered and wounded, tried to flee, I stamped on its flailing tail and drove the blade deep into its back, just as the thief did the same into its flank.

It should've died. But, instead, it somehow found a surge of animalistic strength, yanked its tail free and vanished back down the tunnel, taking the thief's knife with it. I had managed to hold onto Marlinya's bloody weapon even as the beast had to ripped itself off the blade.

We watched it go, hearts pounding.

'Think... dead?' I asked, without the presence of mind to remember the grammar lessons.

'Don't know,' she admitted, then pointed at the other two. 'Those, though... Those are definitely dead.'