He saw another beast coming up the lower landing and turned to sprint back up, but stopped in his tracks as another of the creatures finished climbing over the railing onto the steps several feet above him. Tricky bastard. He was trapped between them. He swiveled his head back and forth so see them both and took two steps toward the upper beast. Then he moved against the outer railing, still turning his gaze back and forth as quickly as he could. Neither creature moved. They tensed instead, both about to pounce. He placed his hands on the railing behind him. They sprang for him, the lower creature diving for his legs and the upper creature coming for his torso.
Rook pulled his legs up and stamped his boots onto the railing, then lunged upward, using his legs like springs. He shot up and grabbed the metal side of the flight of stairs above him, his legs swinging widely out over the 25-foot drop to the floor. The two dire wolves crashed into each other, rolling down to the metal landing below. A loud cracking noise punctuated the creature on top smashing its head against the metal railing. The one under it was unhurt from the crash, but it was pinned under the weight of the heavier creature on top.
Rook pulled hard and moved a leg up, climbing the side rails on the outside of the stairwell like monkey bars. He flipped over the top rail and onto the steps. Below him on the other side of the stairs, he saw two more of the dire wolves climbing and leaping up the outside of the stairs as he had just done. Beyond them, he saw another one racing up the wall of the room, now several flights higher than him. They were circling around to get to Asya.
He ran higher and stopped above the two dire wolves climbing up the outside of the railings. He grabbed the rail and flipped over it, to the outside of the stairs, landing feet first on the head of the first of the two dire wolves. The impact thrust the creature off the stairs and it fell to the floor. The other creature saw what was happening and shimmied to the side.
With Rook dangling by one hand from a railing thirty feet above the floor, the creature scrambled up and across the metal steps and rails to reach him.
Rook tried to pull himself up with his one injured arm-the shoulder he had injured first in the incident with Edmund Kiss, and then again in the fight at Peder’s farm and most recently when the hybrid poked four fresh holes in it. No good. Between those injuries and the similar stunt he had just pulled on the other side of the stairs, he was lucky his arm could hang on preventing him from falling.
The dire wolf leapt to dislodge him, its body flying upward through the air. Rook did the only thing he could think of.
He let go.
SIXTY-TWO
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0245 Hrs
Queen led the way into the main room of the lab and found pretty much what she had expected.
Mayhem.
The giant cage of metal fingers now held a hundred-foot diameter glowing sphere of light shooting random bolts of lightning, which arced back to electrocute the metal struts. A harsh metallic smell of electricity burns hung in the air.
Dire wolves-a lot of them-were arrayed around the room, running to the metal staircase, climbing up the stairs, scaling up the outside of the freestanding stairwell or running up the walls to the catwalk. Rook was three stories up, dangling from one arm with a dire wolf climbing up to him. Asya was close to the top of the stairs, slamming her foot into a dire wolf’s face as it tried to climb over the red metal railing.
She ran into the room heading for the first dire wolf closest to her, a big tall one, which stood at least a foot taller than the others. She held her broken hand in toward her body and raised the curved Kurkri knife.
Beck entered the room after her, armed with one of Black Six’s spare MP5s. She fired at the legs of the dire wolf attacking Asya. The bullets raked its legs and it dropped, falling down toward where Rook hung by one arm.
“Crap,” Beck shouted.
Rook let go as a dire wolf leapt at him. They crashed together in the air and began to fall together, grappling and struggling with each other.
Black Six stepped into the room after Beck and fired a shot that killed the falling dire wolf stories above Rook. He saw its trajectory would take it onto Rook’s head, and fired another burst, making the creature’s body spin and flip in the air until its head smacked the railing and its now punctured corpse ricocheted away from the stairwell as it continued its fall.
Rook pulled his legs up onto the chest of the dire wolf he fought, intending to use the body to cushion his fall. Instead, he stopped short of the floor, clutched in the grip of a dire wolf reaching out over the first floor railing, its claws digging into his sides.
But Rook had seen the dire wolf above him get shot. Someone was covering him. “Thanks for the catch, Deputy Dawg,” he said and leaned his head to the side. He heard the buzz of the bullet as it zipped past his ear and buried itself in the creature’s forehead. The talons slipped from his side.
Rook fell to the concrete, but the drop was manageable. He used the dead dire wolf below to soften his landing. The impact jarred him hard, but he turned the fall into a roll, converting the impact’s kinetic force into motion.
Queen saw Rook fall, but was too busy fighting the big one to help. It was cagey and knew to stay back from her slashing blade. She had no interest in continuing the standoff. “Black Zero! Crotch shot!”
She circled the big one again with the knife as Beck heard her request and fired at several nearby dire wolves, aiming at their groins. The third target’s crotch erupted with a spray of fluid, and the big dire wolf turned its head. That was all the distraction Queen needed. She leapt forward, slicing upward, and cut the thing from the middle of its huge sternum up to its throat. An arc of white blood sprayed outward from the beast, coating Queen in yet more fluid. The beast also defecated on the floor before it crumpled.
“That’s just wonderful,” Queen said, disgusted. Then she ran for the next living target.
Rook picked himself up off the floor, limping and holding his shoulder. He was injured.
“Rook!” Queen called to him. “Duck!”
Rook trusted Queen implicitly. He didn’t need to know why she’d told him to duck, only that she had. He dropped to the floor and rolled again, this time narrowly missing being shot as Black Six expertly targeted the dire wolf that had been coming up behind Rook. Its head and chest spasmed from the two shots, then it fell over backward. Rook got to his feet and approached Beck, who was firing on the last few beasts on the stairwell.
“Who are-Hopping crap on a pogo stick. You’re that Pawn that used to work for Ridley’s security goons, before joining our side in the fight against the Hydra.”
“Black Zero,” she said, handing him her Browning. “I’m with Endgame.”
Rook gladly took the weapon and aimed it at one of the last living wolves in the room. He squeezed the trigger twice, and the running creature-just getting up to its full speed in the confines of the lab-slumped over dead, its body skidding a few feet on the slick concrete.
“What’s Endgame?”
Beck killed the last dire wolf on the staircase, as it tried to leap upward on the exterior of the stairs. “Support crew for Chess Team.”
“We have a support crew? Nobody ever tells me these things.” Rook hung his head and held his shoulder with the Browning still in his hand. He grimaced.
Queen stepped over with Black Six. The man turned as he walked, checking all sides of the room, never lowering his weapon.
“Did you know we had a support crew?” Rook asked Queen.
“Nope. I’ve been running around Russia looking for you for the past few months. How would I know?”
Asya had run back down the stairs and leapt off the last few steps to the ground. She hurried over to where Rook stood and was about to ask him a question, but she stopped, her mouth hanging open. Then Black Six opened fire again and all heads turned toward the portal.