“Yessir. We’ve found some things that are concerning, but the only pressing news is that my two spotters are being hunted by one of those black creatures.” Jack explained to Command after getting a full explanation from Warren and Cecile. “They are taking refuge in a system of caves, but I would feel a whole lot better if they can be extracted.”

“That can be arranged. How about the search for the control room?” Lieutenant Hawkins replied after a few moments of silence to confer with the company commander. “I need an ETA on finding that control room Sergeant. The other teams are getting close to mission success.”

“We are moving floor by floor searching each and eliminating enemy threats as we go.”

“We? Are you moving as a single group?”

“Yessir.”

The comm went dead for several more moments, only returning after the Commander had been consulted.

“Divide into two fireteams. Again, we are getting too close to the wire for you to search every room as a group. Do you have any intel on the location of the control room?”

“Sir, we were able to restrain one of the Raak and force it to talk. There are two possible locations, but he wasn’t sure which room Alfson was referring too.”

“Sometimes I wish all of you Optics could pull Officer Mayers memory trick,” The Lieutenant sighed, “Well, make the best of your intel and secure that building. We will have your two squad mates here on the ship within the hour.”

Command disconnected the communication without waiting for another reply. Luckily, Warren and Cecile would soon be safe. Unluckily, they had just been ordered to do something that Jack was incredibly uncomfortable with.

“Command wants us to break up into two smaller fire teams.” Jack said to his squad, “On one group we will have myself, Alfson, and Hayward. In the other, Walker, West, Jenkins, and Morningwood –”

“Nope.” Thea interrupted, “We cant be on the same fireteam Jack, I wont have you worrying over me and not focusing on the fight.”

“But –”

“But nothing, you and I both know that it is more dangerous to the mission for us to work together. Sometimes we can’t help it, other times, we can. So, Nessa and I are going to switch, if you need healing, Candice can tie a tourniquet on anything your armor can patch up.” Thea said, putting a literal foot down before walking to stand next to Dave.

“Alright then. You guys go down one level, we will drop down two. We will hopscotch downward until we find the control room. If you happen to find prisoners, protect them until the extraction. We will bring them up to the ship and let Command decide what happens from there.”

“How are we supposed to take over the controls?” Dave threw out, “Without Alexander with us there is no way to control it.”

“Jenkins, can you control the interface to the ship?” Jack asked after a moment of thought.

“Yeah, but this is factory if you haven’t noticed.”

“I’m aware. Best case scenario, you can take command of the building and begin lockdown procedures. Worst case, we will have to make our way to you and connect Warren to the computer through me and let him play his part. Let’s move out.”

Minutes later, the two teams broke apart as Jack’s smaller squad continued down the stairwell. Upon reaching their intended floor, the group was met with another locked door that was quickly removed by Nessa with little effort.

Stepping out onto a catwalk, they finally saw proof of the buildings main purpose. On the floor below, massive vats of a semi-viscous liquid churned and boiled. With a horrific flash of memory, Jack watched as dozens of white egg-like objects were filled and sealed before being passed through one final machine.

He remembered being locked into one of these pods only to wake up hours later and be subjected to its ministrations for a second time. As wonderful a tool as the Serum was, it held nothing but terror to those who were forced to endure its power without having their memory wiped.

That is, if anyone else that dealt with it survived.

Summers told him the very next day that it was almost a common practice for the people that ran the Serum transformation to pick one soldier and try to hit them with a second dose. Most of the time the two Drill Sergeants were able to stop the experimentation before it began. When it came to Jack however, the experiments were completely unplanned.

When he noticed a strangely out of place structure, Jack knew that the mission’s primary objective was almost complete. A foreman’s station stood in the far corner of the room, its large windows looking darkly at the open production floor. The lack of lights customary for such a place did nothing but add an additional layer of reluctance to his willingness to enter.

“There it is.” He said, the need to hear someone – even himself – speak overwhelming his desire not to state the obvious.

Every step along the catwalk echoed with loud thuds, their thin soles of rubber only slightly muffling the approach. Trying the door, the group discovered that this factory had more than a slight penchant for locking every one they had.

“Nessa, would you mind?” He asked, nonchalant tone doing a poor job at hiding his nervousness.

He didn’t know why he was so worried. Ever since seeing the room he’d repeatedly quested through the Light spectrum in search for something. However, just because there was nothing in the room that he could see didn’t mean that there was nothing in the room.

Nessa drew one of her blades and formed it into a polearm from the ambient light around them. Driving the tip of the weapon through the door, she repeated her earlier performance of forcibly removing its lock. With a booted foot, the Breaker kicked and slammed the portal open, revealing the room inside.

“Odd, most of the rooms here light up as soon as we open the door.” Hayward remarked, activating a couple threads, and sending them inside the room to brighten it.

Seeing nothing other than the dull glow of computer screens, the group entered slowly with weapons drawn and senses alert. Last time they’d been caught off guard, a friend lost his life.

“Command, it looks like we’ve found the control room. Is Private Alexander there?” Jack said, walking up to the array of monitors that showed the status of nearly every aspect of the complex.

“He is, why?” Hawkins asked.

“I need him for something. Alexander, please sit down somewhere comfortable, I need your mind for a minute or two.”

“Got it Monroe.” Came an enthusiastic voice followed by a thump that must have meant the Possessor had chosen the very spot he was standing in as his resting place. “Take me there.”

Reaching across the thread of Light that connected Jack to the ship hanging in orbit above him, he found Warren and pulled. There was a trick to connecting minds together that went farther than simple communication. He wasn’t sure exactly which part of the brain he was touching, but the process involved connecting a thread to his target’s consciousness. With a thought, he was back in the control room as he extended the circuit into the array of nearby machines.

“Jack!” Nessa said, turning back to face the door they’d entered from. “I don’t know what your doing, but you need to be focused right the hell here!”

Breaking his connection with Warren and hoping the backlash wasn’t too strong, Jack spun to find a twisting mass rising from the ground. As it pulled itself together, it didn’t assume the now familiar shape of a Raak’Shee, but instead took on the appearance of a human in standard AHF armor.

“It doesn’t know what we actually look like.” Candice said, raising her rifle and firing shot after useless shot into the creature.

Knowing what came next, Jack dropped his vision into the spectrum of Light. Having faced one of these creatures before, he knew what he needed to do.

Instead of pulling a strand of Light from the targets vision, Jack forcibly pushed Light into its body. Instead of reacting with the same cold indifference that the first had faced him with, the creature screamed in pain and seemed to melt for a second before recomposing itself.

Taking a deep breath and preparing for the worst, he commanded the Light to come back to him and complete the circuit. Expecting the process to feel just as gargantuan as before, he was more than a little confused when the thread did not fight him as hard. Instead of feeling like he was fighting a black hole, it was nothing more than the resistance a large bungie cord would’ve provided.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jack tied the connection back into himself and yelled for the others to shoot. Raising his own weapon, he fired a near constant stream of Light into the creature as it lost its composure once again.

While not nearly as bad as the previous time, a sharp pain formed behind his eyes. He knew that the longer he held on to this connection, the worse it would get.

To his left, Nessa holstered her pistol and ran in with only one blade drawn. As she moved, her allies adjusted fire to let her pass while still laying heat on the target. No more than five feet away, she threw a small, glowing red disc at the enemy. Once it made impact, the thermal grenade exploded in a tightly controlled radius of five feet.

A sound like a thousand screams all overlapping one another ripped from the creature as it cried out in pain. The body it was trying so hard to form continuously losing cohesion from the repeated assault. Near the brink of death, the creature whipped out several tentacles, catching Nessa by the leg out of pure chance.

The Breaker screamed in pain when the appendages constricted, crunching through her armor as if it were nothing more than paper.

She screamed again when the teeth exposed themselves and tore through the leg with no effort.

She didn’t – couldn’t scream when two threads of Light pulled her unconscious body back to her allies.

“Is it dead?” Candice pleaded, falling to her knees, and opening the emergency release in Nessa’s armor.

The black lump of flesh that was once their enemy no longer tried to rise. Smoke rising from the body proving that there was at least one other way to harm these creatures. It’s final act before dying had been to try and cripple their primary attacker.

It worked.

Jack tried to sense the thread of Light tied to the creature but found nothing. If Light could no longer be tied to it, then there was a massive chance it was dead.

“I believe so.” He said, activating the command channel, “Sorry about that Command, we had a visitor stop by uninvited. Unfortunately, that visitor decided to take a friends leg with him into Hell.”

“A Raak caught you off guard like that? How, they move like a rock slide.” Hawkins asked incredulously.

“No sir, it was one of those black things. We killed it, and Hayward is dressing the wound now. Is Alexander still there?”

“Yes, he is. More importantly, can she walk well enough to get out?”

“Sir, she has nothing past about mid-thigh. Walking is out of the question, but we can get her home. Tell Alexander to get comfortable, I’m coming get him.”