“Start setting the C4,” he said.
Dohi and Tanaka placed the charges on the outside of the walls and then gathered back behind Fitz.
The hallway ended at another door. He shone his beam at the steel frame and the white bars lining a glass panel window. Approaching slowly, Fitz examined the exterior. The paint had been peeled away, revealing a Swastika. Another chill raced through his body.
He stood, grabbed the handle and jerked his helmet at Rico. She took up position behind him with Apollo next to her. Tanaka and Dohi hung back, watching their rear guard.
Fitz twisted the knob. It clicked. Unlocked. He opened the door for Rico. She moved into another hallway, Fitz and Apollo right behind her.
Team Ghost slowly worked the passage with peeling paint and concrete walls. The Nazis had built this place to withstand a bombing run by the Allied Forces that never happened. It had survived all these years, buried and unknown to most of the world.
Fitz made it a quarter way down before he stopped to take a closer look through more glass windows. He directed his light inside the one on his left — a small room furnished with a metal bench, toilet, and sink. Metal bars served as a barrier between the cell and the windows. But where was the entrance?
He flicked his light toward the ceiling where a trap door was sealed shut. What in the hell?
Fitz continued to the next window. The next two rooms were the same holding cells with ceiling entrances.
Rico checked the windows across the hall and then looked back at Fitz, her eyes wide. She didn’t need to say anything. Fitz could see she was spooked.
They pressed on, nearing the halfway mark of the passage where the first sign of a battle emerged. Bullet holes dotted the ceiling and walls. Carmine stains caked the walls where the soldiers from Greenland and the EUF had perished.
“I thought this was a lab,” Rico whispered. “Looks more like an insane asylum.”
“Makes you wonder what type of weapon they were working on to kill the Juveniles,” Tanaka said. He placed more C4 charges on the walls and the windows.
At the end of the hallway lay another open door. Fitz had a feeling they were about to find the answer to Tanaka’s question. He gripped his M4 tighter, and gestured for Apollo to get behind him.
With the wave of his hand, Fitz ordered Team Ghost forward into a large space the size of a gymnasium. At the center of the room was a pit that could have been a very deep swimming pool drained of water. A metal fence with razor wire surrounded the opening. Thirty feet above, a metal platform with a balcony overlooked the room. There were several steel doors on the wall, all sealed shut. It was some sort of observation post, but to observe what?
Fitz strode into the room, sweeping his rifle back and forth. Nothing stirred in the massive place.
“Clear,” he said. He motioned for his team to spread out. Apollo suddenly stopped and growled at the fence. Fitz moved his finger from the outside of his trigger guard to the trigger and focused his light on the thick chain-link fence. As he approached, a drop of liquid plummeted in front of his weapon and plopped to the ground in front of his blades.
Fitz slowly tilted his head toward the domed ceiling and angled his light. Three human bodies were suspended by their feet.
“Stevenson,” Rico said.
Fitz raked his light over the bodies. His heart hammered in his chest when he saw she was right. Stevenson dangled from the middle of the ceiling like a chandelier, a cord wrapped around his feet. The other two men were from Fox Team. From his vantage, Fitz couldn’t tell if they were alive. He put his finger to his lips to keep Rico quiet, but she didn’t get the message.
“We have to cut them down.”
Fitz cursed under his breath, glared at her, and then flashed hand signals to Dohi and Tanaka. They were already looking for a way up.
Apollo stalked toward the fence surrounding the pit, continuing his low growl. Fitz approached cautiously and peered through the chain links into a pit thirty feet deep. Metal spikes the size of buck knives lined the walls like barbed cobwebs.
He directed his light toward the bottom. On the floor next to a metal bench rested a bowl and a bucket. He glanced back up at Stevenson and the other two soldiers hanging from the ceiling. Why not keep them in one of the rooms or even the pit if they were prisoners? Why hang them up there?
Nothing made sense, why would… Fitz shook the questions away as Tanaka climbed a ladder to the balcony. Dohi had frozen on the floor beneath the balcony.
“Back!” he shouted just as the doors on the top level swung open. They disgorged furry figures onto the platform; joints popping like the branches back in the frozen woods.
A thud behind him made Fitz’s heart leap again. The exit to the room had been slammed shut. He twisted and yelled, “Ghost, on me!”
They came together in the center of the room as the platform filled with the creatures that had killed every soldier that had set foot in this cursed place.
Fitz focused on the silhouette of a thick man that stood in front of Team Ghost’s exit door. In his right hand he held a long spear, and in his left he gripped a shield made from a Juvenile torso. More of the rigged armor lined his extremities, chest, and genitals.
“I killed you…” Fitz whispered, a memory of the Bone Collector Alpha rising in his mind. “I blew your fucking head off.”
The creature strode into the light of Rico’s rifle giving Fitz his first glance at the monster. This beast was not the Bone Collector — this was something far worse. Body parts hung from a tangled beard. It flexed barreled chest muscles and snorted at Fitz as it studied him with a yellow slotted eye and one blue one.
This wasn’t a lab. This was a prison where the scientists had used some sort of weapon to infect the local Inuits, turning them into monsters that hunted Juveniles and, apparently, humans.
But for some reason they weren’t attacking. The dozen creatures on the balcony remained in the shadows, staring down and holding weapons: knives, spears, even a bow and arrow. All of the blades were angled at Team Ghost.
“Hold your fire,” Fitz ordered his team.
“What?” Rico muttered. “You crazy, sir?”
“We’re surrounded,” Fitz said. “There’s no fighting out of this one. Maybe we can reason with these things.”
“That sounds like a bad idea, sir. Variants, don’t reason.” Rico stepped in front of Fitz, but he pulled her back. Tanaka and Dohi flanked them as the Alpha lumbered forward, snorting again and scanning Fitz and his men. It pounded its chest and raised the spear, but didn’t throw it.
“Finally,” the beast said with a snort. His voice was almost human, but the voice box seemed atrophied, like the man had smoked cigars his entire life.
“I’ve been watching you. Watching you all.”
Fitz swallowed hard, and said, “What do you want?”
The beast pointed the spear at Fitz and grinned with yellow, jagged teeth.
“Finally I have a worthy opponent. Even if you are just half a man.”
Fitz almost raised his rifle to shoot the beast, but gritted his teeth instead.
“Sir, I highly recommend…” Rico began to say, but Fitz raised his hand to silence her and took a step forward. Apollo barred his teeth, snarling at the creature, but Fitz would not be deterred.
“You win, and you get to leave with your friends,” the creature said. “I win, and… we eat you.”
Fitz glanced up at the balcony. More of the hybrid monsters had emerged. They weren’t just hunters looking for prey. They were cannibals, too.
“Let us fight,” Dohi whispered.
“We can take ‘em, sir,” Tanaka added.
“I agree,” Rico said.