My inventory had been going nuts as the cash and weapons of the fallen soldiers were absorbed throughout the fight. Checking through them, I had enough guns and ammunition to stage a coup in a small South American country. Their tactical gear all went in too, almost stripping the bodies to their tighty-whiteys. They were all unenchanted armour sets, which was a shame as it would’ve helped my companion’s survivability. Sun was taking charge of the corpses, manhandling them into a pile in one of the bed-less bedrooms. I heard my achievements ping.

Achievement Unlocked – Little pig, little pig, let me in!

Description – They said not by the hairs on their chinny chin chins. You huffed and you puffed, and you blew their house in. Literally. With magical pulses of holy, kinetic energy. Even the big bad wolf only had abnormally strong lungs and a foe with minimal construction knowledge.

Reward – Tattoo – Wolf Claws

I checked the effect and exclaimed. “Whoa.”

“Anything good?” asked Cris.

“I think so,” I replied, activating the item. I could feel the heat bloom on my chest, and whipped off my armour to check. Sure enough, a fucking great snarling wolf was inking itself all over my pecs and upper abs. As bad ass as it looked, I was becoming a canvas for our alien invaders.

“Looks cool,” said Cris, her eyes lingering.

“My eyes are up here, thank you very much!” I said, putting my suit back on.

She grinned mischievously. “Sorry. Just admiring the view.”

“I’m not a piece of meat, young lady!”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she fired back with a wink.

I shook my head and looked over my new toy.

Item – Tattoo – Wolf Claws (epic)

Type – Body modification

Description – Bequeathed by Kira, the wolf goddess. She ordains those who show unwavering bravery with her mark. Praise the moon!

User Requirements – Having skin

Effect – The Wolf Claw tattoo is for the times when one must fight to the death, tearing at their foe eye to eye in melee combat.

Misc – None

“Don’t freak out, but this might get a bit… hairy.” I almost slapped myself for the awful pun as I activated the skill. The transformation began below my wrist bone. My hand itself grew in size, widening and thickening as dark grey fur sprouted from newly formed follicles all over. In seconds, my fingers had grown to almost twice their normal length, ending with razor sharp claws.

“Don’t think you’re putting those mitts on me, mister,” said Cris, her voice filled with awe.

“Only those I want to maim,” I promised, gazing at the paws. I didn’t know how I felt about the ghastly appendages. They were bound to come in useful, but my head was doing cartwheels of crazy in trying to appreciate I was now partly something else. The guy who’d played Kessler in American Werewolf in London had acted the scene perfectly as the moon called forth the beast. My eagle form was similar, all encompassing, though not as jarring because I was completely different, not an amalgam of two species. I changed back, grateful to have nails instead of wicked, yellow claws. “Did you get anything?”

Cris studied her HUD with a flicker of eyes. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“We’ll have a word with Bart later. That’s not fair.”

The stink of gunsmoke and death was thick enough to taste, and I moved to the armoured shutters of several windows to peel them back. The muffled chaos following the fake fire and very real battle was fully unleashed as civilians argued nervously with the burgeoning number of gangsters below. If they didn’t have us to contend with, I had no doubt the treatment of the poor residents would’ve been far harsher. As it was, they were all looking up at our position and shouting at each other. We’d managed to take out the CID black-site, but that didn’t seem to bother them. When I made an estimate of their number, I could see why. In my brief snatch of vision, I must’ve counted over twenty new vehicles and at least eighty Disciples. Each fresh shriek of tyre rubber announced another arrival, until I just stopped counting.

Just before I walked away, I caught sight of stealthy movement in the dark apartment that faced us. Backlit by the dim hallway light, I saw a group of men aggressively bundle the owner out of his own home.

“Stink it is then,” I said, resealing the windows.

“If they have the right guns, the brickwork won’t stop the bullets,” Cody warned from the doorway.

“Then we just have to hope they’re nervous about who we are and want to talk. Has the last fella woken up yet?” I asked.

“Sun moved him into their control room. She’s trying to bring him round.”

“Good.” I followed Cody back into what would ordinarily pass as the lounge. I couldn’t remember the name for the style of dwelling, but it was all high ceilings and bare brick walls. There was furniture, but most of the room was given over to a vast array of monitors and computer equipment. I was taken back to Liza’s mobile lab with its banks of screens and buzzing servers. Checking the room for cameras, I found none, which surprised me.

“Wouldn’t they have surveillance in here too?” I asked Cody.

“It could be an oversight, or more likely they haven’t ever felt the need. If you somehow get past the cameras outside, then the reinforced door, you still have to face a group of trained killers.”

“By the looks of it, they’re still logged in on their system,” said Cris, approaching the nearest keyboard. Her words acted as an invocation, and whoever was on the other end had worked out something was wrong. Almost as if someone was pouring water inside the casing, there was a loud fizzle-crackle and the entire system died. Black smoke started to rise from the servers, smelling of charred plastic and fried circuitry. She tapped at the keyboard and huffed. “Shit. That would’ve been too easy.”

“I didn’t know you were a hacker,” I teased.

“I know a thing or two. I’m not just a gamer and a pretty face, you know.”

I wasn’t sure if she was serious, but another idea had occurred to me. “It’s a shame you couldn’t get in and call down a nuke on Milley’s base. That would teach the fucker.”

“What’s a nuke?” asked Cody, and both Cris and I turned to him.

“Are you being serious?” I asked. His blank expression told me he was. “Nukes? Nuclear bombs? Big boom? Mushroom cloud?”

“Nope, never heard of them,” he said, joining Sun at our bound prisoner’s side.

I looked at Cris in disbelief. “They haven’t discovered nuclear power?”

“Maybe that’s why, as bad as this world is, they’re not on the chopping block?” she surmised, ferreting in between the dead equipment to see if there was anything she could do.

Her point was fair, and I wondered if that awful discovery signalled our descent into the realms of the genocidal. On the other hand, what would the outcome of the war have looked like if we didn’t have that technology? I heard some squaddies mention over a few pints that the one group of warriors they would never want to face were the Japanese of World War II. They were single-minded in their goal, fearless, fanatical, and utterly merciless. It was all moot, as we had discovered it, and we had committed evil acts on the civilians of that nation that brought the war to an end. Historians would go back and forth about the morality of killing to end killing. It was far beyond my ability to weigh the act in terms of righteousness, so I left it alone.

“It’s dead,” Cris huffed, kicking the machine.

“I’m guessing there was one of those periodical password things. I saw it in a film. The guy had to enter a code every five minutes or whatever.”

She stood up and moved to the hallway door, listening at the muffled agitation coming from outside. “What now? I think the natives are getting restless.”

“We get the code from our friend, save Liza, and then we figure out a way to get out of here,” I replied.

“He wakens,” said Sun, backing away from the groaning figure.

It hadn’t worked on the roof, and I was no less hopeful in the apartment. The subtle difference was we absolutely needed the information that was in his head to be able to get into the locked room. The question was; would I be willing to be the world’s worst hypocrite and extract the information with torture. Now that I faced the dilemma, I was shocked to find myself considering the possibility. Given time and equipment, we may have been able to force our way in, but we had neither. While he struggled up from unconsciousness, I checked his tab and found his name. He looked around groggily, head lolling. I wanted to hurry the proceedings, so I grabbed a nearby glass of water and tossed it in his face. The half melted ice cubes clattered on the floor as he spluttered in shock.

“Good afternoon, Blake,” I said, squatting down in front of him. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and before you get all tight-lipped and tell me to go fuck myself, you’re going to meet another friend of mine.”

I could see the hardening of his resolve as he glared at us. I summoned Spidey behind his back, and my huge spider languidly walked into view. The way Blake’s eyes bugged when spotting the hairy foreleg told me all I needed to know.

“What the fuck is that thing?” he whimpered, trying to get away while only succeeding in tightening the already firm knots.

Ignoring his question, I spoke directly to my companion. “Wrap him tight, ready for eating, but leave his head exposed so he can watch you while you do.”

Spidey picked him up with his front legs, chair and all. Blake shrieked in terror as he began to spin, the silky web binding him. Around and around he went, the gossamer strands covering his legs, then waist, and finally his arms and chest.

“That’s enough,” I said, ordering my arachnid to tether him like one of the tutorial cocoons. Blake swung gently in the air, turning slowly until I held him firmly in place. I ordered Spidey to hover at my shoulder, keeping him in full view for added effect. “Now that you’re nice and snug, I’m only going to ask you once, and then I’m going to leave you with my friend.” I moved in close enough so I could feel Blake’s breath on my face. “He takes his time, too. You’ll feel yourself melting from the inside, but you won’t even be able to scream because of the poison. It lasts days. I know, because the last man who hurt people I care about, felt his sting too. There wasn’t much left when I finally put him down. He was mostly rotted away.” My voice had tapered off to barely a whisper by the time I’d finished dredging up the ghastly recollection of a partly devoured Finneus. My own horror impressed itself onto the soldier, so much so that he was weeping freely.

“I’ll tell you anything! Just get it away from me!”

“Firstly, I want the code to the locked room.”

“954810,” he blubbed, instantly.

Cody moved at once and keyed it in, yanking the door even as the lock beeped and released. I couldn’t see who or what was within, but the defeated sag of his shoulders told me it wasn’t Liza.

“Where’s the doctor?” I demanded, moving Spidey’s venom dripping fangs right up to Blake.

Trussed as he was, he couldn’t retreat and started to babble instead. “He’s in there! Are you nuts?”

“He?” I took a few steps back and peeked inside.

An old man was bound to a chair, sporting a black hood. I could tell the rough age by the wrinkles on his pale hands. Cody moved in and yanked the hood off. His head cocked quizzically in recognition. “Dr Jessop?”

“You know him?” I asked.

“He’s head of the research faculty at the uni. He’s Liza’s boss.”

The man tried to speak through the gag, only managing to grunt a few hmer fners. Cody moved behind the figure and loosened the cloth. He worked his jaw and licked at dried lips. “Oh, thank the lord you’re here. I was about ready to suffocate from that confounded thing.”

Cody began working on the arm straps. “Have you seen my sister?”

The doctor shook his head. “Not since she and the army attachment left to investigate the happenings at the tribal camp in the Thimasa Jungle a few days ago.”

Cody sighed and glanced back at me. “Looks like it’s the other site. We had a fifty-fifty and missed.”

“Is Liza in danger? Is she a part of all this?”

“In a manner of speaking, she is,” I replied. “It wasn’t an army attachment that you sent along with her. It was CID. While we were in the jungle, we took samples from mutated scorpions, She was going to analyse them back at the lab. The experiments you’ve been running are nothing compared to what was out there. We were worried the nest we found might be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s happening globally. We were about to come back to you, until this fucker’s friends turned up and snatched her.”

Blake was still stricken with terror and started to spill his guts. “You’re looking for the young lady doctor? She was at the other site, but they’ve moved her on a few hours ago. We were waiting for a team to collect Dr Jessop, and then we were due to pull out too.”

“Moved her on to where?” I snapped, furious that we had wasted our time on the doomed endeavour. Spidey sensed my angst and moved to within an inch of Blake’s face, mandibles quivering.

“I don’t know!” he cried. “Our job was to snatch Jessop and hold him until the other team collected him.”

“Why snatch him at all? What’s the purpose behind it?”

“I’m only a foot soldier. All I know is that we’ve picked up their entire staff, and a load of other people are getting taken by our teams across the country.”

A small bulb started to glow in my head. “What other people are you talking about?”

“Scientists. Ones that deal with genetics and shit, that kind of thing. I heard it was nearly a hundred of them.”

The low wattage filament began to shine more brightly. “Were they all involved in investigating the changes in insects and animals?”

Blake pulled a face that told me he wanted to provide an answer, but he just didn’t know. His arachnophobia had been dialled up to one hundred, utterly breaking him. I felt a glimmer of pity, and swiftly crushed it underfoot.

“Taking out the competition?” suggested Cris, picking up on my train of thought.

“Or at least taking them. But where?” I returned my attention to Blake. “When are the team arriving to collect Jessop?”

“They won’t be now. They’ve purged this site,” he replied, nodding at the smoking computers.

“Will they send men to take it back?”

“I’m not one of the brass. If I were to guess, I’d say they’ll scrub it from our books and leave it to the Disciples. There’s a hundred other places they can use around here.”

“What about you?”

Blake scoffed. “They won’t waste manpower on me. They’ll assume we were all killed.”

Jessop and Cody left the holding cell. To my surprise, the doctor only gave a small start at the sight of my eight-legged friend, before walking over and sinking into the only soft chair with a groan. I needed to pick his brains, but first I had to know about the deal that allowed the CID to operate in the gang’s turf. It might hold a clue about how we could extricate ourselves without a full on gang war. “How come they never bothered you up here? You’re a form of authority, right? I swear I saw them babysitting your cars downstairs as we drove past.”

“They’re in business to make money. We funnel them some of the finest powder the world has to offer. In return, we get a little extra protection and they keep the hell out of our way.”

That made perfect sense when I thought about it. If they were anything like the three letter agencies of my world, the CID would have their fingers in every corrupt pie in every country across the known world. Making deals with drug lords to allow a certain percentage through as long as they could be seen to be doing something with a few select seizures was nothing new.

There was just one problem.

We didn’t have a few hundred kilos of cocaine or heroin to bribe our way to safety.