Mari:

  Their group went completely still.

  What they hadn’t heard over the sound of the air system running behind them was the footsteps of the thing that had killed the worker they’d just seen.

  They instead saw it right after Kris’ warning.

  Easily two and a half meters tall, hulking with mottled green lizard-like skin. Mari felt that it was the lizard equivalent of a bear. Or, it had been, once. It stood on hind legs, and the forelegs were peeled back to reveal nasty bone spikes that dripped fresh blood.

  It knelt down, and a long, grotesque thing that served as a tongue emerged from the toothy maw to glide across the red goop that formed the pool.

  [Affliction: 97%]

  Mari could only stare as it lapped at the bloody coolant puddle. Vilke didn’t move a muscle either, and Relkur was as silent as ever, but he was visibly trembling.

  Kris had her weapon trained on it, but her finger wasn’t on the trigger yet.

  They all waited, shaken to their cores by the sight of a powerful predator.

  It finished drinking—or whatever it was doing—and turned away. They all relaxed slightly.

  And then a droplet landed on the creature’s back.

  It turned, looking up at the ceiling, then reared fully to a three meter height, slamming its nose into the spot where the liquid had come from. The ceiling cracked from the impact, which gave them all second thoughts about a confrontation.

  Bullets from a rifle like Vilke’s hadn’t scuffed or gouged the stonework of Elitheen’s buildings. And yet, the monster before them had cracked the ceiling with a forceful lunge.

  “Shaaaaaa!” A sudden sound came from behind them, and Mari whipped around to see the corpse from moments prior had found a way to crawl around the machine and spot them.

  All hell broke loose as the hulking behemoth behind them let loose a growl and snapped its jaws closed on the air.

  “Fuck.” Mari sidestepped from the hallway, then aimed her gun at the corpse. She should’ve known better than to leave it be. While her radius cleansed loose blood, it only seemed to exsanguinate the dead bodies of afflicted creatures. The fact that the ‘corpse’ from earlier hadn’t done so meant it hadn’t actually been fully dead. Even with all the flesh of its face torn away.

  Vilke aimed with his rifle, snapping off a few shots at the behemoth.

  Kris had Relkur by the arm and dragged him towards Karin’s team down the far hallway.

  Mari pulled the trigger, and her Remera roared in response.

  The crawling creature was twitching erratically, making the bobbing of its movements hard to follow as one arm dragged limply.

  The first round cracked the ground below the corpse’s jaw and skipped up on a low trajectory, ripping into the torso.

  Mari wanted to fire again, but the behemoth had gotten close and followed the sound of her Remera. She barely threw herself to the side as the bone appendage whistled through the air, then took a chunk out of the nearest wall. The bone didn’t even fracture from the impact.

  She paled as she saw the devastating force.

  “Bullets aren’t getting through the hide of that thing!” Vilke had stopped firing with Mari at risk of being hit by a ricochet, but he was rapidly repositioning himself.

  A quick glance was all she could spare, but she saw Kris pushing Relkur towards Alynne and turning on her heel to head back to them.

  Another savage bone spike speared downwards at Mari, and she rolled. Directly towards the crawling half-corpse.

  The former maintenance worker took zero notice of her, instead choosing to crawl over her exposed midriff on a path to reach Vilke.

  She suppressed a disgusted noise as flayed flesh ran over her skin, and instead pressed her Remera to the underside of its head, tugging the trigger and splattering brains and bone upwards in a disgusting fountain that rained back down. Sadly, the nanites only consumed blood, not brainmatter or bone.

  Mari squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, then instinctively rolled away as the sound of parting air whipped through where she had just been laying.

  She was alive. Grossed out and probably with brainmatter in her hair, but she was alive.

  Vilke grabbed her left hand and dragged her bodily towards the far wall, and when she spared a glance, he had his finger over his mouth.

  Mari gave that a few thoughts.

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  Afflicted creatures generally knew their own. The zombie thing had ignored her. The behemoth had attacked her a few times, but only after identifying her position by sound.

  It was a blind creature. It didn’t have whatever method other Afflicted used to identify her.

  She could theorize later.

  The behemoth floundered, head whipping in different directions as it growled again.

  Then Kris skidded to a stop at the doorway, and it spun towards her.

  Mari instinctively fired her Remera. Bones cracked audibly, but no blood sprayed. The bullet had pressed into a dent in the tough hide, but did nothing noticeable enough to slow it.

  What it did do was bring its attention back to Mari. The bones cut through the air, and she danced backwards, only to spot a followup thrust from the other arm. She nearly lost her nerve, but the fear vanished before it could set in.

  Mari twisted, just barely reducing the impaling attack to a graze that stung her left side, just beneath the ribs.

  “Mari!” Kris cried out in fear and anger, but Vilke’s rifle cut off the sound and moved the attention to himself.

  She flashed a quick, slightly pained thumbs up to Kris to show she was alright, then started to strategize. “Who’s played the table game?”

  “Good plan.” Vilke didn’t need the extra explanation. He baited the creature in one direction, interposing the massive machine in the middle of the room.

  Mari moved in the opposite direction, towards Kris, only pausing to kneel and take aim with her Remera. The behemoth lumbered around constantly, and never remained still enough for a clear shot. Still, she steadied her trembling hands and leveled the weapon towards the maw.

  Hopefully, it’ll hit something important in there.

  She waited, and Vilke deftly ducked under a sideways swing, only to predict the incoming thrust and turn aside.

  Mari took her moment, just as the creature drew back from the missed attacks, and fired two more times, pacing each shot to get her aim back in line.

  Both times, the weapon numbed her hands, but the first shot shattered a tooth before sinking into the mouth beyond, while the second bored into the hollow eyesocket she hadn’t noticed amongst the mottled greens and browns of the reptilian skin.

  The creature didn’t waver or express pain in any manner.

  Instead, it turned to face them, and dashed straight for her.

  Mari ducked behind the machine, ready to bait it in a circle around the room.

  Three clear holes opened up in the torso of the behemoth.

  She glanced over and saw Kris, kneeling in the corner of the hallway entrance with her magic gun raised. A growl came from the creature, and Vilke stepped back out just long enough to fire his rifle three more times, each pinging harmlessly off the tough hide.

  Mari lined up a shot, made sure Vilke wasn’t at risk, and then fired three more times into the head of the creature. Afterwards, she immediately ducked into cover.

  “Reloading!” She hollered as she released the cylinder, ejected the spent rounds, and then slotted a speed loader into place.

  “Still on you!” Vilke warned just in time for Mari to look up and feel the blood drain from her face.

  It was right over her, dripping saliva from its broken gaps between various teeth she had hit.

  She rolled, but it was expecting her to escape and didn’t swing as it pursued her, instead ramming its snout forward towards her.

  It connected, and the motion scooped her bodily off the ground and threw her into the far wall, jarring her brain in her skull and blasting all the air from her lungs.

  She tried to wheeze out expletives through the pain, but her chest refused to expand to let in air. Her vision had gone a little blurry, and everything had become aching pain.

  She heard rifle rounds going off into the ceiling across the room, but nothing seemed to get the attention of the creature.

  Then there was a flash of pink before the lumbering greenish form in her vision became riddled with more holes, each devoid of blood. Something vital must’ve been pierced, though. The behemoth lost its footing and crumpled.

  Mari’s vision began to clear as she finally dragged in another breath, only to see the huge creature dragging itself on the bone tips of its arms, seeming to have lost all motion in the lower half of its body.

  She drew her sword, having lost her grip on her Remera at some point, and spat out a broken tooth that had come loose upon impacting the wall.

  She slowly approached the hampered creature, gradually regaining her faculties.

  Then she noticed that it was close to the cracked floor where her earlier shot had missed the not-quite-corpse. Mari motioned for Vilke and Kris to stop shooting it.

  She approached just as it slid over the cracked ground and stabbed her sword downward from above, aimed for one of the holes Kris had made with her magic gun, driving the tip into the cracks in the floor, functionally pinning the behemoth to the spot.

  Kris circled around it and unloaded repeated shots into the head of the creature, through the eye and into where the brain would be. After it finally stopped moving, Mari retrieved her Remera and finished reloading it.

  “What the actual fuck.” Vilke leaned against a nearby wall, breathing heavily from the adrenaline.

  “Are you all right, Mari?” Kris began checking her over, fussing constantly.

  “Gonna need a new molar, but otherwise, I’ll live.” Mari went over to the creature and jerked her chin at it. “Not dead. They’ll lose all their blood to my nanites if they’re really dead. My mistake on the maintenance guy earlier.”

  “What the hell was that thing, anyway?” Vilke was breathing more steadily, in the process of socketing a new magazine into his rifle.

  “I’m calling those things behemoths. Speaking of, how about that for the name of your magic gun, Kris?”

  “No. I already have ideas for a better model, so I won’t be keeping this one long enough to warrant a name.” Kris shook her head as she followed Vilke’s example in ejecting a small, dull-grey sphere from her weapon.

  Finally, Mari removed her sword from the creature and used the holes Kris had pierced into it to stab at different angles until it finally deflated like a balloon, all the blood within it turning into red haze.

  “We need to figure out more weapons that can injure these things. Suggestions?” Mari looked at her companions as Karin and her team caught up to them.

  As she spoke and ideas began to go around, Mari checked her HUD for a status update for herself.

  [Vitals: Severe blunt force trauma to several internal organs]

  [Affliction: 1%]

  [Location: Citadel, Sublevel Four]

  [Mental Condition: Minor mental trauma]

  [Sidearm: 8 rounds]

  She heaved a sigh as she checked a full injury spreadsheet that highlighted her torso in yellow. A single red spot marked the place where she’d been sliced open by the bone spike earlier. She leaned against the wall and set to work figuring out a first aid option to bandage herself up.

  [Mission progress updated: 15 weeds remain]

  Mari sighed in resignation.

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