Next, Knight twisted his torso, lunging his head and knocking the dire wolf in the back of its head with his armored helmet. The creature loosened its grip for just a second. Enough for Knight to slide his right hand up to his sheathed knife on his chest. The dire wolf tightened its crushing grip again and Knight’s hand was trapped against his chest on the handle of the knife.
Bastard.
He struggled and peered around again to see that they were nearly at the portal, and many of the other dire wolves had retreated into it. He began frantically kicking his knee toward the dire wolf’s chest and once again, the creature loosened its grasp for just a second. But this time Knight was ready for the short respite. He ripped his arm outward, pulling the knife and driving it deeply into the back of the creature’s neck. He was surprised that the beast didn’t drop from the blow, so he tore the blade out and began stabbing at the creature’s back repeatedly, aiming for the heart-if it was where a human heart would be-and the back of the head and neck as much as he could.
The creature faltered and slowed. He could feel the descent in velocity as the dire wolf staggered. Then it began to fall forward, pulling Knight’s body with it. Knight pulled his legs up hoping to spring off the creature before the weight of it pinned him to the ground, but he was too late.
The dire wolf collapsed right through the wall of the glowing energy portal, and just as it hit the ground, the energy portal closed with a sucking sound and a strong gust of wind. The portal left a crater in its wake.
And a pair of feet.
The dire wolf’s.
There was no sign of Knight.
THIRTY-SIX
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
Asya screamed as she fell.
She had made her way to the lower level of the lab and stared up at the giant cage of metal that dominated the space before exploring the doors and tunnels that led off from the cavernous room. Many of the doors were locked, but she found old crumbling tunnels that burrowed into the earth, leading off each wall of the giant room. She had ventured into one just a few feet past the point where the lights from the main room offered any illumination.
She was about to turn back when she heard a tiny sound from deeper in the tunnel. It might have been a pebble scraping along the stone floor. Or maybe a small animal. It was impossible to tell. The tunnel, which was wide but low, was pitch dark. Asya felt along the brick walls with her hands and moved deeper into the space. She smelled dust and something wet, which surprised her, because thus far everything in the lab had been very dry.
It was when, for the second time, she was about to give up exploring and go back to look for a flashlight that she stepped forward into nothing and toppled over in the gloom. She screamed as she fell, the sounds of her voice echoing through the tunnel. She landed on something that was soft mixed with tiny sharp pokey spines. She felt the surface under her in the dark and the sensation on her fingertips was like spongy rubber with toothpicks sticking out of it. She touched one of the sharp things and applied a gentle pressure to its side. The thing snapped, just like a toothpick would. She ran her fingers over the break and felt the tiny barbs, but they were more jagged than the fibers from a snapped toothpick-more solid too.
“Bozhe moi. What is this?” She whispered in the dark, afraid suddenly of what else might be in this pit with her. She struggled to find footing on the squishy surface and instead walked on her knees with one hand on the mushy uneven ground for balance and the other reaching out in the dark for a wall. She felt the barbs poking her knees as she moved forward, but her splayed out fingertips soon grazed brick. She ran her hand over the bricks and they felt similar to the ones that formed the tunnel up above-smaller than normal bricks today. She ran her hand left and right along the wall looking for anything different than a flat wall surface. A door or a ladder. Or a light switch.
The smell in this new space was wetter than up in the tunnel, but the squishing surface that made up the ground was dry to the touch. She tried again to stand but quickly gave up. It was like standing on top of a ball pit. What she had thought was solid-if rubbery-ground was actually a pile of something. Several small somethings.
Stupid! Asya suddenly remembered that she had a small LED light in a survival kit that she wore on her waist in a tiny fanny pack. She had picked it up at the store in Olderdalen when Stanislav- no, Rook, she corrected herself-was buying his new coat. The kit would have some wooden matches as well, but the LED keychain light would be easier to find in the dark.
She unzipped the pouch and carefully slipped her fingers inside the scratchy nylon, so she didn’t disgorge the contents into the pile of mystery things on which she kneeled. Her fingers found the plastic casing of the tiny flashlight. She pulled it out. Before lighting it, she zipped the pouch again, and slipped a finger through the ring on the end of the light. She didn’t want to lose it.
Then she depressed the spring-loaded button, illuminating the small room around her with a garish blast of blue-tinged white light.
She wished she hadn’t.
Against her will, a second scream rose up in her. This one far longer and far more distressed than the yelp she had let out when she fell.
She was in a graveyard. She was on a graveyard. A grave mound. And it was heaped with the tiny corpses of small white creatures unlike any she had ever seen. There were hundreds-maybe thousands-of the little things, their rib bones poking though the desiccated chests of the small white puppy-like creatures. They had miniscule clear claws on each paw but strange small pinpricks of eyes on the sides of their heads. They were not puppies, nor wolves. She could see their musculature under their whitish skin. They were not any animal she had ever seen or heard of.
They were something else.
Something unnatural.
Hideous.
Asya’s breath caught in her chest. The mound of tiny bodies moved.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Endgame Headquarters, White Mountains, NH
3 November, 1000 Hrs
Sara Fogg walked with Anna Beck into the large aircraft hanger that housed the last airborne vehicle belonging to Endgame. The Black Hawk sat on the concrete floor of the hangar and Black Six, the suave young spy, stood next to it in a black flight suit. Beck wore a black flight suit herself.
“You get to ride with the hunk, huh?” Fogg joked. “I bet Knight won’t like that.”
“He’ll get over it. Besides, Six can pilot a Black Hawk-I can’t. He’ll come with me to the Pease Air National Guard Base in Portsmouth where we’ll wait around to rendezvous with a Blackbird out of Hanscom Air Force Base and haul ass to Norway. Half the pilots are in Europe with Bishop and Knight and the other two are in New York with King and Deep Blue.”