Scott Warren (books)

Chapter 109 – Maritime Mayhem.

Lot of glossary terms in this one.

SOCOM - Special Operations Command

JSOC - Joint Special Operations Command (subservice within SOCOM)

AWG - Asymmetric Warfare Group - An Army organization tasked with identifying new adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures and identifying shortfalls in readiness

MARSOC - Marine Special Operations Command

Group - Shorthand for members of Army special operations teams, such as the 10th Special Forces Group. Saying someone is 'group' is saying that they belong to one of the special forces teams.

Chapter 109 – Maritime Mayhem.

Cole hadn’t had much time for boats, historically. He could swim and he could work an outboard motor, sure. But fishing in Georgia was best left for the bank or the beach with a cooler of frosty beverages. Not bobbing in the middle of a lake in an aluminum bucket.

That was before he learned the Navy’s tactical river boats that went seventy-plus kilometers per hour were a thing.

Cross-training with boat crews for rapid shallow-water combat saw the whole squad in the tributaries of Virginia, and rather than Cole leaving early, this time he was there for the whole soaked-to-the-bone experience. Not only that, but it would be unattuned crews actually operating boats on Hexighast to insert them inside the cities. Brave sons of bitches.

The chief petty officer at the helm hit the speed retarding jets, and the boat roared as it kicked up a ten-foot wall of water. As soon as the prow hit the shore, Cole swung over the side, struggling up the slippery bank to the tree line. The deafening covering fire of the pintle-mounted sim-round LMG shredded the foliage overhead.

Howie was first up the bank. The Marine might not have been a mid-distance runner like Cole, but he was a hell of a sprinter. He lifted the grenade launcher in his hand and fired two grenades that arced toward the plywood village. The pop hiss of phosphor smoke grenades cut off a clatter of return fire from the village.

Roxy and Besson pushed up next, with Nona bringing up the rear. Her conditioning was improving, but she still couldn’t keep up with the active military members of the team in a non-enhanced environment. Two grueling weeks of this amphibious assault training was starting to show in her face.

“Besson, Howie, move up to the ridgeline three hundred meters on our right. Make sure they can’t flank us from that angle and pin down the village.”

“Movin’,” said Howie, tagging Besson on the shoulder.

“Roxy, Nona, on me.”

With the cover of the smoke grenades billowing white clouds, Cole advanced up, rifle at the ready. He spotted movement at a shack and fired several rounds from behind Roxy’s ballistic shield. Gunfire from the ridge where he’d sent Besson and Howie began to echo down into the plywood village. Cole closed the distance to the nearest structure, eyes peeled for any sign of movement. A trio of masked figures stood from behind a barricade but lowered their rifles almost immediately as their interlinks went dead from the support fire.

“Fuck!” shouted one of them. They stood, watching as Cole, Roxy, and Nona vaulted into the dugout with them and moved through the trench to a two-story structure. Roxy pulled the pin on a grenade and shoved it through a gap in the window covering.

“Grenade!” someone called from within, along with the sounds of scrabbling against wooden floors. A moment later, the pop and flash rattled the structure and Cole kicked the door in so that Roxy could push inside. Her pistol barked as she pivoted left, so Cole swung right and fired at a pair of soldiers tucked into the corner and then focused on a blind corner that led deeper in the structure while Nona pulled in behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He moved up to the corner and angled his rifle around.

“Two doors left, one right,” he whispered. They moved up, arranging themselves on either side of the first door. Cole held the hallway while Nona and Roxy breached, then repeated the process with the other two rooms, eliminating threats as they went.

The CQB drill continued up to the second floor, where a sim frag from Cole took out three more of the red team soldiers. Each of the soldiers sat in place. But pushing into the room, fire from underneath a table hit Cole’s vest, activating his sim interlink and killing his weapon.

“Shit,” said Roxy, taking a knee to finish off the lurking soldier. “Nona, on that right corner!”

Nona got her gun up just in time for a duo to lean around the corner. She was faster, but their gunfire killed her interlink first. At the same time, two soldiers came up the stairs and tagged Roxy from behind with a grenade from the first floor that also killed their two friendlies in the room.

Cole pulled a radio from a pouch on his plate carrier. “Cease exercise, cease exercise,” called Cole. He looked at Nona. “Nona, your leg okay?”

“Landed bad off the boat,” she said. It had been subtle, but she’d favored her left foot during the drill and been a bit slow on the advance. “It’s fine. We can go again.”

Cole shook his head. “Not worth pushing it into an actual injury.”

“Even if we do, we can just…” Nona looked at the soldiers, the very much uncleared soldiers, who watched them with interest. She stopped short of saying we can just heal it. “Fine,” she said, instead, glowering.

Cole keyed the radio again. “Endex, endex.”

The hostile soldiers in the room sighed with relief and started unclasping helmets and slinging rifles.

“Thank fucking god,” one of them muttered.

“Sorry about your ankle,” another one offered to Nona. The woman just looked away.

“Fuckin’ fine, then,”

Roxy patted the guy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, she’s like that with us, too.”

“Cut the chatter, Emmerson,” one of the soldiers warned. He had master sergeant’s stripes—someone who would have outranked Cole in the Army. The senior NCO turned to him. “Anything else you need here, sir?”

Cole shook his head. “Negative. Thanks for all your help today.”

“How about a ride, at least?”

Cole kicked one of his legs absently. There was still water in his boot, and he didn’t much care for the idea of climbing back into the jet boats. He keyed his radio, instead. “Chief, we’re hitching a ride back to the upper base. Ya’ll are good to RTB.

“Aye, aye,” came the reply. “After action?”

“If you want to attend, it’ll be at—” Cole checked his watch. “—1800 hours. I’ve got no notes for you on the landings. I think we’ve got that locked down.”

Cole slung his rifle.

Roxy checked her own watch and looked back at him. “We should make it back in time for chow, this time,” she said.

Besson and Howie met them in the center of the village. The defending training unit had several tactical vehicles, but also several pickups, and they piled into the back of one for the forty-minute drive back to civilization. Gear return, showers, and uniform changes let Cole feel actually human again, and he had the dark grey DOR fatigues on by the time he met Roxy and the others.

“Food here sucks,” said Howie as they sat down at one of the tables. The only one missing was Besson, who typically got something from one of the fast-food joints on post so that he could eat alone.

“Yeah. Got the nutritional value of cardboard,” said Roxy, lifting a spoonful of rice pilaf.

Nona said nothing. But she usually didn’t, when it came to food. The way she always ate her own without comment or complaint made Cole think she probably grew up with worse. Earthlings were apparently pretty spoiled in the food department if even Army chow was a step up from what she was used to. She seemed extra moody, since he’d called endex.

“Nona,” said Cole. She looked away, but he could see her eyes flick to him. “We were hitting diminishing returns,” he said. “That was going to be the last iteration regardless. Don’t think we stopped for you.”

She softened somewhat. Cole relaxed, too. It was tougher reading her on Earth where the Soul Schism locked parts of her personality away. But he was starting to pick up some of the nuances.

A laughing, jostling group with trays came by. Cole heard a quiet “Oh, shit,” and then a throat clear. He looked up, recognizing several of the soldiers from the red team now changed into PT gear. “Mind if we sit with ya’ll?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” said Cole.

The group pulled out chairs and dropped plates onto the table. “How do you like the food? Peter, by the way.”

“Cole,” said Cole. “And, uh, better than Bragg. But it’s close.”

Peter grinned. “Right?” he leaned in. “So, hey. We’ve got some bets going on. Trying to figure out who you guys are. I know you were Army. But this training exercise is so weird. We’ve trained with Delta and we’ve trained with SEALs, and we’re pretty sure you’re neither of those. If one of us guessed right, will you confirm?”

“Sure,” said Cole.

Peter scooted his chair in, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “Alright, first off, do ya’ll fall under SOCOM?” he asked.

“Negative,” said Howie.

Several of the soldiers tsked or grumbled at that. Peter just chuckled. “They were thinking JSOC, MARSOC, and Group. But there’s no way. There’d be at least twenty of you on those boats. So are you private?”

Cole shook his head. “Working for good ol’ Uncle Sam.”

Another couple members of their group groaned. Peter’s smile got wider. “Knew that, too. Gotta be a three-letter agency.”

Cole considered.

“If you’re thinking that long about it, it’s gotta be money. CIA? FBI? NSA?”

“Nope, nope, and nope,” said Cole.

“AWG? PMG? Secret service? Homeland security?”

Howie leaned in. “What’s PMG?

“Post Master General,” said one of the other soldiers.

Roxie snorted.

“They don’t fuck around!” the guy protested. One of the others threw a military-grade bread roll at him.

Cole chuckled. “Sorry,” he said.

Peter huffed, taking a bite of his food. “It’s just weird. There’s only a couple of you. You’re infiltrating compounds to disable equipment or penetrate through a defensive line and reach the other end. You’re super outnumbered, you can’t call for fire or air support. And on top of that, you gotta hit us each four times to take us out of action and it still takes a dozen of us to slow you down.”

“You’re right,” said Howie “It is weird.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “We’re SHIELD agents,” he confided.

One of the other soldiers snorted.

“Oh yeah? Tell Scarjo and Nick Fury I said hi,” said Peter, laughing.

Nona looked at Cole. “What team are they on?”

“What? No, it’s a… never mind. I’ll backfill you later.”

Howie laughed and tapped Roxy on the shoulder. “Marvel marathon at Cole’s place.”

Cole snickered and leaned back. It was… weird, how much he missed this. How much he missed sitting in an Army chow hall shooting the shit with regular soldiers. He couldn’t even tell them what they were really red teaming for. That their OPFOR toughness represented automaton monster robots, and that Cole’s team’s lack of fire support was a result of an operation completely off-world.

Maybe a movie marathon was just the thing to regain some sense of normalcy. Even just these last weeks of being on-post training with guys in uniform with standard-issue carbines, grueling as it had been, was a release. Too much of the bat-shit insane otherworld drama would crack anyone.

Occasionally they needed a reminder that they were still supposed to be human, too.

DOR Chapter 108 – Anomylous Properties

Glossary terms: S2 Shop - An Army term for an intelligence center typically tasked with collecting and compiling raw information into actionable intelligence.

Chapter 108 – Anomylous Properties

The rifle barked in his hands. At the other end of the range, a chunk of one of the concrete targets tore away. A small puff of smoke and brass shavings vented out the right side of his gun. Well, at least it shot. What was more, the gun sent another ping of satisfaction into his mind.

“Uh, I think it likes being shot,” said Cole. As if to confirm, a small tendril dropped down from the receiver and prodded his trigger finger. “Stop,” Cole chided, flicking it away with his thumb. He lined up his target again and fired three more shots. As he did, the optic self-adjusted, and each shot was closer to his point of aim than the previous. Self-zeroing. Not bad. But each squeeze of the trigger was a single shot, and he didn’t see any kind of fire control switch to switch the gun to full auto.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, steam vented from the joints of the rifle. The foregrip in his left hand expanded and slid back towards him as the gun’s center of gravity shifted. He pulled the muzzle back, staring at what now looked like three barrels milled out of the same piece of black metal. Are you kidding me? he thought. He squared up again, and once more the tentacles against his shoulder went rigid. This time, when he squeezed the trigger, the gun fired a rapid staccato of shots.

Not bad, thought Cole. The gun sent a pang of amusement at that. Cole wasn’t sure he liked that this thing could interpret his brainwaves, even at whatever surface level thoughts made it shift and morph to his desires. But he had to admit, it was pretty cool.

What if I have to make a long-distance shot?

The gun sighed in his hands, as though he were asking too much of it. But it expelled more steam and shifted again. The barrel and receiver elongated, merging once again into a single bore even longer and thinner than it had started. Another pair of tentacles wrapped around his shoulder for further stability, and as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the bench, three more glossy membranes rose in sequence along the top of the gun, each one adding a layer of magnification until he could pick out the surface details on the most distant target on the range. He squeezed the trigger and buried a slug in what would have been the center of a target’s forehead. He fired three more times before the rifle went dead. The recoil was substantially higher for his precision shots, more than just the increased velocity from a longer barrel would suggest. It was almost as if his chamber pressure had increased or he was firing a round bigger than 7.62 NATO.

Another pang of satisfaction. No, almost satisfaction, but not quite. That one was more like… pride. Cole pulled back and eyed the weapon in his hands. Nonstandard ammo consumption. So it wasn’t just the gun morphing. It somehow digested the ammunition and altered that as well. Little tendrils emerged from the magazine well towards the magazines on his chest rig, curling in on themselves in almost a gimme, gimme, gesture.

“Tap it with the analyzer once you’re finished,” said Jefferson. “It might be able to pull more training data for the Termlink model to crunch now that it’s been shot in a Lewis field.”

Cole glanced over his shoulder at Jefferson. “Does more shooting equal more data?” he asked.

Jefferson grinned through the glass. “Probably not. But do you care?”

Not one bit. Cole pulled another magazine from his vest and handed it off to the eager little tendrils. Time to see what else this thing could do.

                          *

“It’s a tough call,” said Cole, putting the rifle away in its case. “It’s a clear upgrade, that much is certain. But, between this and the patient hunter rifle, at least I know what that one does. It’s just a gun. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t make choices. What if the ravenous gun gets moody and stops shooting? What if it takes a chunk out of my hand?”

Jefferson teased at his beard. “Past time you were upgrading from a Curahee drop. I know you got that snakebite rifle, too, but you need the versatility of an assault rifle with your style.” He tapped the open case. “This one’s got versatility in spades. And you can use Tinker with it.” Jefferson lowered his voice as if the gun could hear him. “And if it don’t play nice, you can always Field Strip it.”

“It would probably feel like cleaning a fish,” said Cole. If Howie were here, he could imagine the Marine asking Jefferson if any part of otherworld armaments were edible. He closed the case. “You’re right, though. My Curahee rifle is starting to show its age. I just wish I knew what those unidentified affixes were. Would make me feel better.”

“Give Termlink a little time to crunch,” said Jeff. “You don’t gotta decide right away. You even got another mission lined up?”

Cole shook his head. “I’m meeting with Sophie and the others after lunch to get that sorted out.”

They shook hands and Cole headed out. Roxy caught him on his way to the billet and dragged him to the chow hall. By the time they finished, Sophie had already set up in the downstairs conference room in Lewis Hall and everyone but Besson had arrived early.

“Mr. Colton, good to see you alive and well after what happened at Oak Ridge,” said Sophie. “I’d ask if you wouldn’t like a few more days to recover from that, but I’m guessing you’re the type to process by doing.”

“You a psychologist, now?” asked Cole, taking his seat.

Sophie smiled. “Just known a lot of Kickers. Mr. Besson is on his way, but we can get set up.”

Howie leaned across the table as Sophie tapped on her tablet and synced it to the screen. “Who knew this job would have so many PowerPoint presentations? How about something exciting?”

Cole rolled his eyes. “Did you forget about crossover event that just happened?”

“I thought the ocean was exciting,” said Nona to no one in particular.

Roxy nudged Cole. “Especially when these two frat idiots tried to hit on Nona on the boardwalk. One of them touched her shoulder for a second. The way he yelped I thought she’d broken every bone in his hand.” She shrugged. “Of course, if she hadn’t I was about to. You don’t touch a woman who already told you to fuck off. Doesn’t matter how cute her one-piece is.”

“I saw crabs. How big do crabs get?” asked Nona.

“Big enough to eat,” said Cole.

Howie chimed in. “I’m having a hard time picturing Nona in a swim suit.”

“Good!” growled Roxy. Howie raised his hands in surrender.

Besson opened the door to the conference room. “Who’s got crabs?” he asked.

“The ocean,” said Nona.

Besson paused, then snorted as he sat down. “Technically true.”

Cole cleared his throat to forestall any more almost-actionable jokes, then nodded over to Sophie. “You almost ready, ma’am?”

“Just craving crab cakes, now,” said Sophie. “You expressed an interested in Hexighast last time. Are you still interested?”

“Sure,” said Cole. “What’s developed?”

Sophie pulled up a set of aerial photos of a waterlogged city crisscrossed by causeways and islands. Ruined domes and half-built skyscrapers dotted the islands, some of which still smoldered and smoked. Makeshift bridges and gondolas traversed between towers.

“The mapping and surveying of Hexighast has progressed, so you wouldn’t be babysitting drone operators, this time. We now think several remaining human factions have gone to ground in what’s left of the cities. We’re making radio contact—slowly—and they’re unusually amenable to offworlders.”

“Tired of robots,” said Howie.

 “Could be,” said Sophie. “But we still haven’t made contact with the cell that actually performed the summoning. This is a world where magic and machines meet. The Lewis Field itself was hijacked by a super-computer who is also unusually amenable to Earth Humans.

Roxy scrunched up her face. “Weird. But better than him trying to drown us in lava, like the last one,” she admitted.

“What’s our angle?” asked Cole.

“DOR needs a team that can operate behind the line and make contact with the correct insurgency. If you can perform the extraction discretely, great. If not, we at least want to get comms to open a dialogue and negotiate.”

Besson grunted. “More sketch guys in tunnels,” he said.

“At least they’re human, this time,” Howie pointed out.

Cole crossed his arms. “Their tech level is what?”

Sophie scanned a few slides down to examples of bulky cars and a drone thermal video of soldiers shooting at robots with what were clearly automatic weapons. “Circa 1955, give or take a decade. They made a computer with a sentient AI logic core capable of mass-producing automaton monsters.”

“Nukes?” asked Howie.

“Expended or destroyed in the early days of Hextant’s war, they think.” said Sophie. “There’s detectable radiation in the air but not at harmful levels. S2 shop figures It didn’t want the locals ruining its fun with a few megatons dropped on its data processors.”

Roxy leaned forward. “So basically… we’re running a phone line,” she said. “First contact with locals. Is Bricker sure he wants people like us making Earth’s first impression?”

That was a valid concern, considering their track record and chaos left in their wake. But Sophie waved it off. “The city is under siege from all sides. We need someone who can punch through, handle themselves when isolated, and self-extract at a moment’s notice if things turn south or if the rescue becomes a target of opportunity. Secondary objective for this mission is to secure Hexton’s code base. If my opinion counts, I think you’re excellently suited to this assignment.”

“Oh, good,” said Howie, throwing his hands up. “Bring Skynet back to Earth. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Can you not do it?” asked Roxy.

Howie put his hands down. “I mean, it’s lines of code on a computer. As long as there’s a data port and a compatible communication protocol we can pull the bits out and create a virtual environment here.”

Roxy held her palm up toward Howie. “Right, forget I asked.”

Cole looked around the room. “Any hard passes? Last time people complained about getting their feet wet.” He took an extra moment to glare at Howie, who withered under the attention.

“Ah, well they got wet at Oak Ridge already. And wet is a lot better than seared off by lava, so no, I’m good.”

Cole looked back to Sophie. “Do we have other options?”

“We do,” she said. “But I don’t think you’ll like any of them more than Hexighast.”

Cole rested his elbows on the table. “So, robots, then. Might be we know someone with some experience in that area. Sophie, I’d like you to reach out to Alexa, if you could.”

“Already have the message drafted and ready to send,” she replied.

Cole shook his head. “I don’t know what I did in my last life to deserve you, but I must have been a fucking saint.”

DOR Chapter 107 – Cthulhu Calibers

About time Cole got an upgrade. While the patient hunter rifle was fun, Curahee armaments are starting to be ineffective against some of the bigger threats.

Chapter 107 – Cthulhu Calibers

“Airborne, a word,” said Hard Tone as Cole pushed himself up from his chair. The rest of the team looked at him.

“Go ahead without me,” he said. “I got nothing planned for us today, so if you don’t got shit to do, go home. Tomorrow we’re picking our next assignment.”

The rest of the team nodded and let themselves out of the room. Hard Tone waited for Wes to pack up and leave, as well, before she leaned back on the table.

“This might be early, but what are your plans for your path as a Kicker?”

Cole raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Come on,” said Hard Tone. “It’s obvious you’re punching above your weight class, here. You’ve got a team of black sheep and you’re working miracles with them. But if you didn’t spend half your missions wrangling them, you could easily pull scout for a more senior team. Better rewards, better loot, faster leveling. You get what I’m saying?”

Ah, a sales pitch. Cole shook his head. “It’s not me working miracles, Tone. You’re not giving my guys enough credit. Yeah, they might not be as effective without me calling the shots, but that’s all the more reason to stay with ‘em.”

A noncommittal grunt from Hard Tone told him all how much she agreed with that. “It can be hard to give up command of a team. But you also gotta think about what’s best for Airborne and best for the department.”

“That’s a distant bridge. We’ll cross it in course,” said Cole. “Need anything else?”

Hard Tone shook her head. “Thanks for the launcher, by the way. It came in clutch.” She pushed off the table. “You ever need anything, reach out to Wes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Cole.

They made their way to the elevator and parted ways, Hard Tone heading to the Termlink lab and Cole continuing down for a visit to the armory. He badged himself in, already hearing voices from behind the service window. Cole continued through the security door, as well.

Jefferson was on the main level, arguing with Norn and Bjorn over an open hard case that Cole recognized as the one containing the otherworld rifle from Oak Ridge.

“What’s all the fuss?” he asked. It was rare to see the twins outside of the chilly underground lab beneath the armory. “Still haven’t logged it?”

Jefferson looked up. “Cole, c’mere right quick.”

Curious, Cole joined the trio. Norn reached down and picked up the rifle. The limp tentacles swung down beneath the receiver and the entire gun seemed to droop a bit, as though it had lost the will to stay rigid. Norn shook the gun, and it wobbled visibly. “Is squishy for gun, no? How useful, this?”

Jefferson huffed. “Now I seen some weird guns pulled from off world. Guns with fur, guns that bled like that shotgun Roxy’s got. But I ain’t ever laid eyes on one like this. Take a look here.”

He handed Cole an LF Analyzer, and Cole scanned the entry, brow knitting as he read. “What the…?”

<LF Armament detected, analyzing…

Error//114: Analysis incomplete, anomalous properties detected. No name logged.

Quality level: above average

Increase damage and recoil by 13%-25%

Properties:

Sympathetic: This weapon receives a portion of the user’s enhancements. Abilities and items which affect companions and minions affect this weapon.

??? Error//221: analysis failed

??? Error//221: analysis failed

Ravenous: This weapon has non-standard ammunition consumption properties. Further analysis required.>

“What are these errors?” asked Cole.

“It means Termlink is detecting affixes it can’t identify. Either because it’s never seen ‘em, or because the manifestations themselves are so anomalous they might as well be completely new. We used to get those two-two-one codes a lot in the early days of Termlink when the model was still being trained. Nowadays not so much. The short of it is, the analyzer has no idea what special sauce your gun has because it plays by different rules than other armaments.”

Cole took the rifle from the dwarf and hefted it. “Wild. Saying it gets a portion of my enhancement metrics is weird, too. Sounds like the thing Besson has with Nutmeg.”

Jefferson dug a hand through his red beard. “If you ask me, you oughta melt it right down. I talked to Howitzer, and he ya’ll were fighting some Cthulhu-lookin sons of bitches at Oak Ridge. Eldritch armaments are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Maybe,” said Cole. “But this is a world we’ll be going to, eventually. Wouldn’t it be best to learn more about what we’re going to face there?”

“You ain’t lyin’.” Jeff considered for a moment, worrying his beard so much he’d probably rub himself a bald spot. “Tell you what. Grab your PPE. We’ll take this thing inside the LF range and put some rounds through it before you decide what to do. I’ll get the field warmed up.”

Cole grabbed his kit from his locker and pulled on his plate carrier and helmet. He was damned curious what it was about this gun that had Termlink so flummoxed. He went back to the case where the twins were still poking and prodding at the rifle as if it might come alive.

“Not going to join me on the range?” he asked.

“Is three inches of glass between us, here,” said Norn (or maybe Bjorn). “Have fun. Don’t die.”

Cole looked over at Jefferson sitting at the terminal that controlled the artificial field in the armory. “You too?”

“What he said,” said Jefferson. “What’s your poison?”

Cole shook his head and picked up the rifle. “7.62 NATO is what I’m running off-world. But this magazine well… is, well…” he looked at the slot, which drooped about as much as the rest of the gun. He sighed and opened up the ammunition locker and slotted a few magazines of bladed rounds into his vest pouches and then fitted his ear protection. “Alright, I’m heading in,” he said.

Jefferson unlocked the double set of doors to the LF range and Cole let himself through the first set of doors, waiting for them to close fully before opening the next set. There was no one else on the range, but good safety protocols had been drilled into him since before he ever went to boot camp. In the antechamber, his enhancements started to come online and the inky black surface of the accretion wraps crawled across his hands.

In his arms, the gun itself began to stir and stiffen, as though hydraulics were filling out the smooth surface and giving it rigidity. The tentacles, once limp, began to quest toward his arm. A faint steam began to rise from the joints in the receiver. He resisted the impulse to drop the gun on the ground, instead proceeding to the inner range and deeper into the LF field.

A muffled, distorted electronic drone buzzed at the edge of his hearing. Cole reached up and hit his ear-pro’s pass-thru button.

“Check, check,” said Jefferson over the intercom from the armory.

“Lima charlie,” called Cole.

“How’s it lookin?”

Cole glanced down at the gun. The tentacles had worked themselves into a loose loop around his right shoulder and left armpit, creating a sort of one-point sling. Cole released the weapon, surprised to find it held fast to his front. A much smaller tendril from the receiver looped around one of his mag pouches. Gingerly, he peeled the gun away from his plate carrier. A flash of annoyance shot through the back of his mind.

“This may sound weird,” said Cole. “But I think my gun is… I don’t know, cranky, maybe? Do LF armaments get cranky? Is that a thing?”

Jefferson laughed from the armory. “Believe it or not, yeah. When a powerful item’s key passes through a lot of people, it can start to take on traits from its owners and even speak and activate abilities. When that happens, they sort of become both lock and key, transcending the usual LF key limitations. But we’re talking about generational heirlooms passing through dozens of owners. I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. If it’s getting your stats, my best guess is it’s aware in some way, and the LF key gives you a mental bond with it.”

Cole hefted the rifle. “This one feels like it’s got a Sunday morning hangover.”

“Maybe because the artificial field is so low-power.”

“Maybe. Alright, I’m proceeding.”

“Good copy.”

Cole pulled out one of the magazines and looked at what he thought must be the magazine well. But when he pressed the aluminum magazine to the side of the gun, a mouth opened, with little sharp teeth crunching into the metal as two small tendrils looped around and pulled it in.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” shouted Cole, pulling back his fingers that very nearly got a bite taken out of them in his gun’s haste.

“What happened?” called Jefferson.

“The gun just fucking ate my mag!” said Cole.

“What? Like a dollar in a bad vending machine?”

Turning the rifle in profile, Cole held the gun up so that Jefferson could see the last of the gunmetal grey magazine disappear into the receiver. A receiver that was absolutely not wide enough to hide a twenty-round magazine of 7.62 NATO rounds.

“Huh. So… does that mean its loaded?”

Cole turned his rifle this way and that, looking for any change. “I… I have no idea.” A pang of satisfaction twitched in the back of his mind. Cole pinched the bridge of his nose. The gun had no obvious charging handle or ejection port, either. “Ok. Let’s just… assume that it is.”

He put his left hand on the black shell of the barrel’s heat shroud, which protruded slightly at his touch and gained a slight stippling texture to make a more comfortable hold. As soon as he pointed the muzzle away from himself, the tentacles looping around his shoulder became rigid and created a solid anchor point. The top of the receiver was smooth, lacking even a front bead. An optic, or even basic iron sights would be nice. But that wouldn’t really matter for this.

As Cole lamented the lack of optics, a V shaped pair of spines rose from the the receiver with a thin membrane stretched between, glowing so softly that Cole didn’t even think he would have noticed it without heightened Acuity. He sighted down the organic optic. Sure enough, a tiny, bioluminescent dot was being projected onto the membrane from a small bump just aft along the receiver. It even had proper parallax when he moved his head to either side.

“Here goes nothing,” said Cole. He lined up the first target and squeezed the trigger.

DOR Chapter 106 – Babel Debrief

Chapter 106 – Babel Debrief

“I’m just saying, it’s wild,” said Howie. The elevator doors closed and Cole leaned against the wall as his team rode up towards the third floor. Hard Tone was conducting individual team debriefs, and theirs was the last of the day. Howie continued. “Like, four scientists and two soldiers dead, more people injured from an experiment at a government laboratory. Not a peep. Any other organization this would be a national disaster.”

“This is one of the most secretive programs in the history of the country,” Roxy pointed out.

“That we know of,” Howie replied.

Cole huffed. “What could they possibly have hidden away that is a bigger secret than a multiverse of magic worlds with a bad habit of kidnapping Earth teenagers?”

“Ark of the Covenant?” asked Roxy.

“Aliens among us,” said Besson.

They all glanced at Nona, who said nothing and stared at the wall.

“Still part of this secret, technically,” said Howie. “Still, it’s hard to believe such a huge operation with so many moving parts and a sky-high budget priority is happening right in DC’s back yard. A ramshackle, barely-regulated government agency mounting expeditions to other worlds. Para-military black ops combat actions with monsters and magic and super-powers. What if it ever went public?”

The doors slid open and Cole pushed off the wall. “If otherworld knowledge goes public, DOR is the safety net,” he said.

“How do you figure?” asked Howie, raising an eyebrow.

Cole shrugged. “When we asked why we didn’t send aid packages to Curahee, Bricker suggested the backing behind DOR’s specific mandate was political.”

Howie’s eyes widened. “It’s top level CYA. Imagine the unholy shitstorm if people found out their kids were being spirited away to other worlds, and the government not only knew about it, but wasn’t already doing everything in their power to get them back.”

“That’s true,” said Roxy. “I mean, they’re fucked either way. But this way whoever is in charge can be like look, yeah we kept this from you. But we’ve spent fifteen years keeping your kids safe.”

“All above our paygrade,” said Cole.

Howie chuckled. “Have you seen your paygrade lately?”

Cole had nothing to say to that.

Hard Tone was already waiting in the conference room with her squire. She looked up as Cole badged in and checked her watch.

“Airborne, you’re early,” she said.

“If you’re not early, you’re late,” said Cole.

Hard Tone rolled her eyes. “You can take the soldier out of the Army,” she teased. Then she shook her head. “I’ve been over your team’s helmet cams from Babel. And I heard about Oak Ridge. What a fucking trip. You guys are a trouble-magnet.”

Howie slid into the chair opposite the high-level Kicker. “Not exactly our smoothest op,” he admitted. “Maybe we’ll get a milk run next time. Babysit some drone pilots or something.”

“Good luck with that,” said Hard Tone. “You’re too high level, now. Too valuable to waste on portal duty.”

Cole took his own chair. “We’re not even enhancement level twenty, yet,” he said. “Aren’t you and Deadlight around level fifty?”

Hard Tone glanced at him. “I’m level fifty-four. Deadlight is fifty-six. And he doesn’t ever let me forget it. But most Kickers take a year or two to reach their twenties and usually retire or get injured before level—or age—thirty. Sometimes they come back and support ops again, but us high-level lifers are the minorities.”

Howie started to lean forward, but Cole pushed his shoulder back. “If you ask her age you’re probably leaving on a stretcher,” he whispered.

“Good call,” said Howie.

“Very good call,” said Hard Tone. She glanced to her squire. “Ok, Wes. Load up the fifth-floor stuff.”

Her squire connected his laptop to the projector and brought up a series of short clips from their time at the peak of the volcanic mountain, when Cole saw the swarm of apes being driven by the Beast Cult mages.

“Seems like the tower has had quite a shakeup. These guys aren’t usually seen in numbers like this until the tenth floor or higher. The locals have their own name for them, but we call them trogledorks.  Dallemonte must be getting bored with the safe settlements if he’s letting them down that low. Didn’t help those masked assholes whipping them into such a frenzy. But it’s likely all our current intel on the fourth through sixth floors is about to get turned on its head. Good work locating Black. She’s certainly…” Hard Tone searched for a word. “Let’s just call her a handful.”

“Kid thought she was dead and in hell,” said Cole. “That’s a lot to unpack.”

“Yeah, well, whatever impression you made on her must have stuck firm. I think she’ll be jumping to become a Kicker herself once she’s an adult. But she’s got a lot of trauma to work through first, from the tower and even before she was taken. Bricker looked into her home life, and it’s extremely rare for him to not immediately contact next-of-kin during repatriation. Her future is uncertain for now. But if she wants to be a Kicker she’s going to need to hammer out a few of those issues, first. Namely, that attitude of hers, and her suspicion of anyone in a position of authority over her.”

“Nothing a few good drill sergeants wouldn’t correct quick, fast, and in a hurry at Basic.”

Besson, Cole’s fellow Army grunt, added a hmmph of agreement.

Beth wasn’t the only one. Cole shot a glance back at Nona, who was studying a patch of the carpet. Now back on Earth with her access to much of her own soul cut off, she was back to being the distant, recalcitrant stand-offish woman. Those two had caused sparks on Babel. Too alike, and neither liked what they saw of themselves reflected in the other.

Cole looked back at Hard Tone. “If my take is worth anything, I think she’ll make a great Kicker. She’s got the guts, she’s got the skills. But she’s going to need a strong hand keeping her steady.”

Hard Tone nodded. “That’s my read as well. Hopefully she can learn to take orders better than some meat-heads in the department I could mention.”

Roxy cleared her throat. “She mentioned emancipation and possibly being settled here in Virginia with a basic housing allowance from the department until she finishes school. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t mind checking in on her from time to time. Making sure she’s not getting into too much trouble, you know?” Roxy shrugged when Hard Tone looked at her. “She’s a good kid. Like you said, just needs a little support.”

“I’ll make a note of that in her file,” said Hard Tone. “Your endorsement will go a long way with the Director. You spent the most time with her and it’s pretty obvious she likes you. But that’s admin bullshit. Let’s move on.”

She leaned over the laptop and switched to the lava-veined underground city, and still images of the statue and genie populated the main screen.

“The monkeys we’ve seen, but this shit?” she shook her head. “I don’t know where Dallemonte collected this thing. But it’s a critical hazard from a floor that hasn’t yet been fully charted since Dallemonte’s last renovation. It sucks that you got caught up in it, but this intel is going to save Kicker lives in the future. So, thank you for capturing so much detail. If I were you, I’d look at making sure you have a teammate with an ability that resists psychic influence. Either recruit one of the free agents in the department or find a class ev that can do it. That becomes more common in higher risk-index fields. Gotta have your bases covered.”

“Noted,” said Cole. “Any recommendations?”

“Morgan says the next training push shows potential. Check with her. Already heard you volunteered to help proctor Curahee. That’ll give you a leg up.”

Howie looked over, one eyebrow raised. “Seriously?”

Cole nodded.

“You want to go back? To that mushroom-infested zombie-filled wasteland?”

“Told her I’d help if she needed it,” said Cole.

Howie chewed his lip for a moment. “I mean, if she needs extra hands, I could be available.”

Hard Tone leered down. “Uh oh, someone’s got a crush on mean mamma Morganstern.”

Howie’s ears started to turn red. “Look, it’s not like I want her to crush me with that hammer or anything,” he said.

“Gross,” said Roxy. Cole coughed into his hand to head off his own laughter.

“It’s just that my mom was a violent psycho, so according to Freud, now I’m only attracted to women who could kill me.”

“Not better, my guy,” said Besson, practically shaking and turning a bit red himself.

Hard Tone looked Cole dead in the eyes. “Airborne, how is Blink not the weirdest person on your team?”

“She’s not even top three,” said Cole, failing to keep his voice from cracking.

“Hey!” said Roxy, who then realized what she’d said, and gave a quiet, “Shit!” which got the rest of them going. Hard Tone just rolled her eyes.

Cole imagined his drills screaming in his face, his sure-fire tactic for killing any trace of humor in the forefront of his mind. “Anyway.”

“Anyway,” said Hard Tone, “We managed to extract Black pretty smoothly thanks to your intel. Clean smash and grab. Keep it up.”

“Roger that,” said Cole, giving a quick half salute. “How’d the rest of the teams fare?”

Hardtone nodded to Wes, who flipped over a couple more slides. “Smooth. A few tourist lolly-gaggers when they figured out Beth wasn’t in their range. The last of the teams reported back in late last night. Since Babel Bucks are pooled at the end of every mission in prep for the next one, you’ll all be getting a flat bonus to your next pay stub from DOR, and a second bounty for locating Black. So it might be a little more than you’ve seen so far. Any other questions?”

The rest of Cole’s team shook their heads—except Nona, who simply pushed back her chair in anticipation of leaving.

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Hard Tone.

DOR Chapter 105 – Reunion

Chapter 105 – Reunion

Cole gave his account to Bricker, who nodded along and occasionally asked the unremarkable clarifying question. But it wasn’t until the end of the debrief that Bricker asked Howie to leave the room to speak to Cole alone.

The director stood up, pacing to the back of the office and running his fingers across the case that held his arquebus and sword from Curahee. “Cole, I have no intention to stop pulling at the thread of this world—the March, you called it?”

“Yes sir, that’s the name the local we met in Babel gave us,” said Bricker.

“Doctor Sukesh mentioned in our chat that the chances are extremely high that the March has performed summoning magic in the past targeting Earth. Which means we may have one or more people over there. We will figure out whether or not that’s true, even if it means increased safety measures involving that world or conducting all research, testing, and contact tests here where we have attuned individuals on standby and lots, and lots of guns. But I’m getting off topic. I have a hypothetical for you, Cole.”

Cole tilted his head. “Sir?”

“Say, hypothetically, we are able to create a stable portal to the March, and we are able to insert a team, and we are able to extract any Earth-natives from there. If your brother is among them, what’s next for you? Will you stay with the department? Or will you give this up?”

The answer came to Cole immediately. “Sir, I’m all-in. I saw what these kids are going through in Vael. I can’t sit by knowing I could’ve done something. If I somehow manage to bring Ryan home, hell, he won’t be my last extract if that’s what your worried about.”

“I was, admittedly,” said Bricker. He returned to his desk. “However, if it comes to it, you won’t be the one leading a team into the March.”

“Excuse me, sir?” asked Cole.

“Leaving aside the fact that it’s either RI-4 or RI-5 which your team is not yet qualified or ready to handle, the stakes are too personal for you. Sending you sends the risk assessment through the roof. Mrs. Doukas admitted to me that she nearly dug her transponder from her arm with a knife to stay in Babel. And she wasn’t even a blood relative of Beth Black.”

Cole shifted in his seat. “Blood relation could also give us an edge,” he said. “If what Artian said was true, my brother might be a person of renown over there. We might be able to work something diplomatically if I’m involved.”

Bricker raised an eyebrow. “You really believe that?” he asked.

Cole looked away. “No. They were press-ganging criminals to the front line to fight those demons. They’re probably as desperate as they’ve ever been.”

Bricker huffed a laugh. “Probably. Sounded good, though. I’ll give you that, son. It’s all academic for now. Cracking the March isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight. Our one-hundred-meter target is still getting your team leveled up and getting more extractions under your belt. If you’re of appropriate level once we figure out this world, we’ll revisit this conversation. Continue being a level-headed leader and bringing your team and our kids home and it’ll go a long way towards telling me you can keep a cool head and be an asset, not a hinderance, if we find out Ryan is alive.”

“Yes sir,” said Cole.

Bricker drummed his thick fingers on his desk. “It says a lot that you and Howie held your own during the casualty. Dr. Sukesh had nothing but praise. I’ll admit, I’m impressed. Keep it up, but don’t get cocky.”

“I won’t,” said Cole. If anything, nearly getting devoured and barbed by a giant armored snake demon was humbling to the extreme. If he’d been feeling cocky after taking on the Beast Cult in Babel and squeezing out a win, being helpless against high risk-index monsters brought his feet right back down to Earth.

Cole stood and left Bricker’s office, already thinking about the next assignment. More extractions, higher levels, higher risk, higher rewards. The unconventional war that DOR was constantly fighting would always have too few soldiers. He had no intention of leaving the Department even more short-handed.

He made his way out of Lewis Hall and headed for the billets to shower and change uniforms. He made it about as far as the smoke pit before a familiar voice called up from the second floor terrace of the apartments.

“Hey! Brave Sir Robin!”

Up above, leaning over the balcony, Beth Black leered down at him with a wide, shit-eating grin. She waved, then disappeared. Cole heard the tromp of boots on the stairs, and the teen girl appeared and launched herself at him, much to the amusement of two other Kickers taking a smoke break. One whistled at him, while the other gave an exaggerated ooh-la-la.

Now, without her enhancements, she was back to being as strong as a ninety-pound teenage girl ought to, and she practically bounced off him.

“Welcome back,” she said.

“I ought to be the one saying that,” said Cole, prying Beth’s hands away. “I take it you didn’t reach the ninth floor.”

“Naw, dude. Hard Tone and her goons came and swept me up like it was nothing. King Cuck was on their ass the whole time, throwing monsters and disasters at us, but they just plowed right through. How come your team’s not that badass?”

“Give it time. How’s it feel to be back on Earth?”

She shrugged. “Weird. Weak. But at least nothing has tried to kill me in a whole day. I told them I didn’t want to come back. Hard Tone didn’t give me a choice. And honestly, I’m not sure it was even true anymore after that genie thing. But that Bricker dude said I’m legally dead, here. My mom had a funeral and everything. Probably just so she could collect the life insurance. Since I’m in legal limbo I might not have to go back home. I could get emancipated. New identity, like witness protection or something.”

“Roxy know you’re back, yet?” he asked.

Beth grinned. “Aww, your girl worried about me? Dunno. She’s not here and I don’t have a way to contact her. I want to thank her. Howie, too. And Besson and Nutmeg.”

Cole noticed his own name was very conspicuously absent from that list, and from the sly smirk on Beth’s face, it had been one-hundred percent intentional. He pulled out his phone and called Roxy’s number before handing the phone over to Beth.

After the disaster in Tennessee, listening to Beth Black tease Roxy over the phone helped ground him. All the danger and death was ultimately to help kids like her. And they were worth the risk. After a few minutes, Beth said her goodbyes and handed the phone back. She looked a little saddened as she did.

“I wish I could call my friends, you know? Let them know I’m okay. I know I can’t, cause of the whole legally dead thing. But even if I could, I don’t even have their numbers anymore. They were in my phone and I lost that on the second floor. Wild how I never even bothered to learn them, right?” She scratched her cheek. “You think they’ll let me have a new phone?”

“If they do,” said Cole, “I’ll drive you off post myself to get it.”

Beth leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Can we go to a vape shop, too? No one here will share.”

Cole laughed. “Sure. We can get you something. I think you’ve earned it. We’ll get some real food, too. What’s your favorite?”

“Ramen,” Beth said, instantly. “I want some tonkatsu ramen with miso broth. And some mochi and fried ice cream. And some matcha green tea.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” said Cole. “Isn’t ramen just those little bags of square noodles? I think they have those in the shopette.”

Beth wrinkled her nose. “That isn’t real ramen, boomer. I will teach you. Gimme your phone again.”

Cole handed the phone back and waited while Beth started looking for a ramen restaurant in Fredericksburg. “What about Artian? Did he go on?”

Beth’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, he did! We split that bag of blue marks you gave me. He got pretty strong, but he still couldn’t keep up with Hard Tone and the others. I think he’ll be strong enough to make it home if he doesn’t get himself in more trouble. But he’s wily. Like me. Said to find him if you ever found a way to his world.”

Cole leaned back. That was good. With Artian home, they had at least one friendly contact in the March. Once DOR decided to crack that nut, they were going to need all the help they could get. And as much as it pained him to admit it, there was a Kicker he knew that had critical HUMINT skills. He might have to bury the hatchet with Moriarty in order to get those skills in his corner. But Cole wasn’t looking forward to it. Still, one thing at a time. A few weeks to rest, train, work, and then it would be another mission. Sophie would already have options lined up, he was sure.

Beth turned the phone around and showed him a picture of a steaming bowl stacked with what looked like pork, corn, noodles, and a few other ingredients he couldn’t identify. But it looked amazing. “That is ramen,” said Beth.

Cole took the phone back. On the map, it was only a couple blocks over from Howie’s townhouse. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if Howie ate there on the regular. Might as well invite his mage bombard along. Cole sent a quick text to Bricker for authorization to take Beth into town for food and a phone, and received almost immediate approval—with the caveat that she not contact her mother or friends yet. He stood up from the smoke pit table. He also had a pending text from a number that turned out to be Hard Tone (speak of the devil) with details on the after action for Babel the next day. He shot Howie a text as well, to see if he wanted to meet them in town.

“Alright, we’re good to go,” said Cole. “Director Bricker cleared you for a new phone. Let me shower and change and we’ll go off-post.”

“Hell yeah!” said Beth.

DOR Chapter 104 – Unknown Depths

Chapter 104 – Unknown Depths

“Hey Cole, security detail brought up a present for you,” said Howie. He held up what looked like an otherworld assault rifle, grinning ear to ear. “The lab got trashed, but at least those guys dropped loot. I don’t know what it does. But those things were tough as nails, so I bet it’s pretty good.”

Back in the trace lab, Cole held out his hands and caught the rifle as Howie pitched it over. It was certainly the strangest-looking otherworld armament he’d seen. All black carapace and overlapping, segmented plates. A magazine well flared out from the left side, connected to some sort of rotating chamber mechanism and rather than an ejection port, the right side had a series of vents that looked like… gills, maybe? The stock, instead of being solid, was a set of drooping tentacles. If he had to guess, it had come from the massive serpent that had chased him across the sublevel.

Howie lifted one of the limp tentacles. “When a field is active I bet they come alive. I think they wrap around your shoulder for support.”

“Gross,” said Cole. “Almost as gross as Roxy’s weeping shotgun.”

Howie shrugged. “No one ever said otherworld guns wouldn’t be weird AF. You shoulda’ seen some of the freaks that tried to come through into the trace lab. Portal sliced apart this kraken thing with like a hundred tentacles when the field switched. Instant sushi.”

“That’s great. Seen Doc Sukesh?”

“Here, Mr. Colton,” called Sukesh, coming into the lab along with the QRF lieutenant. He was mopping off his brow with a cloth with one hand and extended the other. “Well done with the generators. George told me you took on great risk to give us the energy we needed to flush out the foreign Lewis Field.”

Cole shook his hand. “Didn’t see as we had a choice, Doc. What’s the damage?”

Sukesh bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment. “four killed, a dozen injured, I’m afraid. A steep cost that would have been higher yet were it not for yourself and Mr. Hoyle. I shudder to think what would have happened if we’d attempted to run those tests without a pair of Kickers in the facility.

“Doc, I’m the one that brought that dagger here. From where I’m standing, this is on me,”

“No!” said Sukesh, more forcefully than Cole would have thought the guy capable of. “This is not your fault, Mr. Colton. The business of otherworlds is inherently a dangerous one. We do what we can to mitigate the risk. But we can never fully eradicate the danger because we can never fully understand the depths that we need plunge ourselves into. Yet, we must take that dive all the same.” He straightened his glasses, which had slid down his nose from the sweat. “That being said, we will need to revisit protocols. Another world saturating ours with its own native Lewis Field at the barest touch is a troubling prospect. This will need to be approached with heightened caution and decidedly more security. But we have the tools and knowledge, and a mountain of collected data to sift through.”

Dr. Sukesh looked around the lab. “But in the immediate, we have more pressing needs. I must see to the families of those hurt and contact Director Bricker. A casualty of this magnitude will need a compelling explanation.”

Cole nodded. “Anything we can help with, Doc?”

Sukesh shook his head. “I’m afraid not. We’re in no position to continue testing, for the immediate future. It would be best for you to return to your own duties. But if we do further testing with this world, we will do so only with Kicker support. I would be grateful to have your presence again, when such a time comes.”

“You got it, Doc,” said Cole. “I’ll call my squire and have our flights moved up.”

Cole waved over Howie and gave him the details as they left the facility. A quick call to Sophia and their flights were moved up to the next day. Which seemed to arrive almost instantly when Cole’s head hit his hotel pillow. He awoke to his cell phone alarm buzzing on the pelican case that contained the otherworld assault rifle. Several missed texts and two calls showed that Roxy and Director Bricker had both reached out. He texted Roxy that he was fine and then called Bricker back directly.

Bricker picked up almost instantly. “Cole, Doctor Sukesh briefed me on the high side. Don’t say anything classified on this line. You’re coming back today?”

“Yes sir,” said Cole. “Sophie’s got us on the 1100 out of Knocksville. We’ll be back to the compopund by 1400.”

“Good. Come and see me pronto. I want to get your account of events as well.”

Cole rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Done deal. Should I bring Howie with me? He understood what the eggheads were doing better than I did.”

There was a pause. “If you think he’ll have valuable insight, then yes.”

“Alright. We’ll see you in a few hours, sir.”

“Safe flight. And good work. Dr. Sukesh told me there would have been a lot more carnage had the two of you not acted as quickly and effectively as you did.”

Cole still had his misgivings about that. It wasn’t the first time he’d had people die on his watch. But it was the first time they’d been American civilians—the people he swore to protect. And in US territory. For most civilians, war was a foreign thing that happened in other countries. But the most distant war of all had almost established a beachhead in the middle of Eastern Tennessee.

With a notification from Sophie that she’d moved their flight up, Cole returned to the hotel for a night of fitful, restless sleep.

Collecting Howie, Cole headed to the airport with a brief stopover at a Waffle House for breakfast and several cups of coffee.

“You still exhausted?” asked Howie over the food. “I feel like I coulda’ slept another eighteen hours.”

“Yeah,” said Cole. He sighed. “Wasn’t expecting otherworld combat. I’m always wiped when we leave the Lewis Field.”

Howie nodded. “I think it’s the amount of energy we’re burning with our enhancements. It all stacks up and comes calling, you know?” he looked out the window. “Shame what happened. And that we gotta go back early. I wouldn’t have minded staying and helping out at the lab. Learn more about how all that stuff works from the guys who discovered it.”

Cole finished off his second cup of coffee. “Is that something you want? Doc Sukesh said he’d ask for more Kicker support. You could probably get assigned there full-time if you wanted.”

Howie thought about it for a minute. Then shook his head. “Naw. Give up active missions to babysit nerds?”

“Pot, meet kettle,” said Cole, grinning.

Howie chuckled back. “Fair. But no. I want to keep exploring the multiverse. And I can’t have you, Roxy, and Besson outleveling me. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“You’re right, you wouldn’t,” said Cole. He pulled a couple bills out of his wallet and dropped them on the table. “Let’s go.”

Howie checked his watch. “Eager to sit at the gate for an hour and a half?” he asked.

“Just worried the alien squid gun in the trunk might give us a hiccup going through security. Diplomatic passports and paperwork or no.”

“Ah, yeah,” said Howie. “There’s that.”

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DOR Chapter 103 – Ballistic Realignment

Chapter 103 – Ballistic Realignment

“You gotta be kidding me,” Cole muttered. He held it up to his eye and switched it round the first way again, just in case. Maybe it was like one of those thumb drives that were always wrong until you actually looked at the fuckin’ thing. But no such luck. His chest started to feel tighter. Holding his breath, he wrapped his fingers around the padlock, braced against the valve, and pulled. The lock scraped across the valve, but didn’t pop free, didn’t even bend. Even being several times stronger than an unenhanced human, a solid steel lock was still too much.

He gasped and let go, shaking his fingers out. Another loud crack sounded from across the space from another of the serpent’s attempts to breach the control room.

Ah, to hell with it.

Cole put the muzzle of his M4 up to the lock, flipped it from safe to semi and pulled the trigger. The enhanced bullet tore through the lock like it was made of tin, illuminating his little corner of the sublevel and announcing his presence to every monster in the place. He quickly cleared the remains of the lock and put his weight into the valve. It resisted at first, but once it started to move, it quickly slid to the flow position and Cole heard a pumping noise from within the generator. The indicator panel flashed.

It was up to George and the rest of the engineers, now. Howls and shrieks from across the bay warned Cole that his percussive locksmithing had not gone unnoticed. And if they were heading here, there was a good chance they could trash the LF generator trying to get him. With one final look at the screen and a short prayer that the smart people could get this thing under control, he sprinted away from the generator and let out a shrill whistle.

“Hey mother fuckers, come get some!” he shouted. He switched on his weapon light as he ran, drawing the unwanted attention away from the critical generators. Formless, tentacled masses of eyes and razor-lined maws recoiled from the light but dragged themselves on regardless. Cole burned another charge to mark the sea of enemies and fired into the pack, watching his enhanced bullets tearing through the first rank, ricocheting between enemies like a laser split from a prism.

And yet, a disturbing amount of the shambling creatures just didn’t care. These things were from a rough neighborhood, one that would give even a high-level Kicker pause. Limbs were severed, eyes were blown out of sockets, bones cracked and splintered. But they kept coming, including the massive, armored snake creature that coiled between the generators and reared up like a cobra.

Cole dodged out of the way as a hail of barbs sparked off aluminum housings and the steel safety rails beside him. He ducked behind a support column and angled his rifle around, firing up at the armored head of the gargantuan monster. The interior of the sub-level was the height of an aircraft hangar, and this thing was scratching the superstructure as it embedded a dozen more barbs in the pillar. Several of Cole’s shots struck it, each one a starburst of sparks as it met impenetrable plates of hardened chitin.

Well, Cole didn’t have to beat it, just outrun it long enough for the eggheads to do their thing. They would reverse the polarity of the tachyon emitters, or whatever sci-fi bullshit DOR’s researchers did. Just as long as it worked, he could outrun a snake. Even a fuckin’ big one.

The serpentine monster smashed its head into the deck, shearing open the floating aluminum gantry of the generator service mezzanine and pulling its bulk out of sight below the deck plates. Cole stared. Well, that was fucked. He took off at a run as the sound of chitin against metal and concrete scratched its way towards him. The deck shuddered under his boots.

Just before the active portion of his Meteoric Leap faded, he used it to vault up to the catwalk circling the room. The armored serpent smashed up through the grating he’d just stood on, snapping down with the bite force of a hydraulic press and warping the metal in its jaws as though it were tin foil. Cole fired point blank at its face, hoping for a lucky hit in its eye—until  he saw that it had about twelve of them arranged without any hint of order or symmetry.

All of them were fixed on him. Cole ran down the length of the catwalk, pelted by stone chips as barbs buried themselves in the concrete around him. Half a mezzanine deck plate smashed into the catwalk ahead of him, and Cole slid to a stop before bolting the way he’d just come. Tentacled things were already climbing their way up the support struts to the catwalk, pulling themselves by barbed tentacles that reached towards him as he passed. Ahead, the snake clamped down on another section of the catwalk and tore it free of the wall, cutting off Cole’s retreat. He slid to a stop, almost slipping on the metal grating.

“Fuck you!” Cole shouted at the snake, burning one of his last remaining charges and preparing to jump somewhere, anywhere, away from this fuckin’ snake.

The snake opened its mouth as if to shout back, but what came out was a high, ear-piercing call that shook the room and forced Cole down to his knees. It wasn’t just sonic energy, either, it carried the feeling of LF power with it. The active ability charge Cole had been about to use, hell,  all his ability charges, just drained away, leaving him completely zeroed out. As though the siren call had just blown every bit of stored energy out of his soul. Cole staggered to his feet. With shaking hands, he dropped the mag and slotted a new one. He shouted back at the thing, a wordless cry of limitless fury and disgust.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say those dozen eyes were gloating at him. The muscles behind its jaw tensed up, and it opened wide to reveal dozens of poisoned barbs ready to impale him.

A quality in the air changed, shifting like the cabin pressure of an airplane popping. The snake flinched, pulling back and shaking its head as though it were in pain. Cole looked to the control room, barely able to see the engineer slamming his palm against the already cracked glass. From the roof of the control room, several rifles opened up. All the remaining soldiers were shooting down into the creatures, now fumbling as if confused. Their rifles didn’t harm the snake, but they certainly made a hell of a racket that drew its attention.

It staggered toward the light, noise, and painful bullets, slithering drunkenly across the deck. A moment later, Cole felt his enhancements wither and vanish, leaving nothing but an exhausted, unpowered human. He grunted and fell to the deck again, leaning against the remaining railing of the catwalk. Below, the creatures that had been climbing up to reach him fell away, shrieking like unlubricated timing belts. The enormous serpent thrashed, crushing one of the generators in its panic with a fountain of sparks and a cloud of steam.

Through the thrashing, black flecks started to ablate off the creature. It dissolved as it writhed and twisted; melting to an onyx skeleton that clattered to the deck before it, too, started to melt away into black flecks. It couldn’t survive without a Lewis Field. Couldn’t even exist.

Well, not like he could have killed it on his own. Not with an Army-issue M4 carbine. Maybe if he had his whole squad and they had their otherworld armaments. Maybe. Cole slid down with his back against the cold cement wall and took a deep breath. At least he was alive. And as long as he was alive, he could grow stronger.

Cheering echoed from the other end of the sub-level. The soldiers were coming out of the control room, hooting and celebrating still being alive. With a sigh, Cole eased himself up and climbed down from the catwalk, dropping into the water that was slowly being pumped out of the generator room. He made his way over to the rest of the lab’s QRF team.

Rodriguez grinned as he saw him, jogging up and clapping him on the shoulder. “Man, that was some Superman shit. I never seen someone just take off like that. Good job.”

“Thanks,” said Cole.

Rodriguez turned and whistled at his squad. “Listen up! This ain’t done ‘til the facility is clear. We’re still Search and Rescue. Lab personnel might need help down here. We sweep the lower level for casualties, then move up. Hooah?”

A chorus of “Ayes,” and “Hooah’s” came back.

Cole checked his magazine and fell in with the others.

The work wasn’t done until it was done.

DOR Chapter 102 – Flush Them Out

Chapter 102 – Flush Them Out

Rodriguez stared at Cole like he’d just walked on water, but the senior engineer managed to stay on task.

“Colton, right? Tony said you were coming.” He looked over his shoulder to a woman with a phone pressed to her ear. “Tina, tell Tony help just got here. Though,” he glanced out the window at the darkened generator room. “Not sure how much longer here is gonna last.”

“George, yeah?” asked Cole. The middle-aged engineer nodded and offered his hand. Cole took it. “If you’re on the line with Tony and Doc Sukesh, I’m guessing you guys got some sort of plan working, right?”

“Yes we do. The trace lab is almost secure, and your buddy is breaking the containment system as we speak. We’re gonna flood this facility with conflicting Lewis Fields, try and make an environment these bastards can’t survive in. Unfortunately, we’re FUBAR down here. Those things trashed two of the generators.”

“Great, how can do we unfuck it?”

George shook his head. “With gens five and six down, we’re gonna need to use the old LF prototype generator to make up the difference. It’s all remote except for the LF residue supply valve that has to operated by hand, and that’s locked.” The man dug around in a handful of drawers and finally pulled out a key on a chain. “Also, it’s on the other side of the mezzanine, so… yeah. We got the worst of it down here. I don’t think you can get one of my guys over there.”

Cole held out his hand for the key. “Probably not. But I can turn a valve. Describe it to me.”

George handed over the key and walked to one of the workstations. “I’ll do you one better. Look here.”

On the screen, a security feed was pointed at a set of pipes connected to a machine Cole didn’t recognize that had dozens of cables running from the top to a scaffolding in the ceiling. “That’s the generator?”

“Yep. Northeast corner of the sublevel.” He pointed a finger out the front window just as a half-dozen barbs smashed into the reinforced glass, penetrating an inch or so. “Jesus!” shouted George, nearly jumping out of his skin. Outside, a massive, armored face drew into the meager light of the control room’s window, angling one silvery eye the size of a dinner plate to look through the glass. Several of the soldiers raised rifles but Rodriguez called for them to hold fire.

“George, the valve,” Cole reminded the engineer, who was staring in shock at the monster. He clapped his hands in front of George’s face, tearing his attention away from the window.

“Right! Ok, here,” he said. He pushed his shaking finger against the monitor, “Left side, where the piping comes in. You can’t miss it, it’s the only valve with a padlocked hard stop. Take the lock off, then turn the position from shut to flow, and I’ll take care of the rest. Can you make it over there?”

Cole put the key around his neck and swapped a fresh magazine into his carbine. “Yeah. I can get past the things over here. Getting back, though… not so much. I’ll just have to keep moving. Tell me this plan is going to work.”

George looked over at his coworker. “Tina?”

“Tony says sixty-six, thirty-three,”

“Two-to-one odds in favor,” offered George.

Cole grit his teeth and sighed. It would have to be enough. But there was still a matter of getting out. The control room had two doors, and both of them currently had black tentacles trying to poke through the gaps and slapping against the glass windows. He looked up at the ceiling, spotting an access to the roof of the control room. “Rodriguez, give me a hand,” he said.

“Yeah, boss, whatever you need,”

Cole thrust his chin up at the trap door and the squad leader immediately got his meaning. He whistled, and two of his soldiers who were too stupid to be in shock like sensible people came over and moved a desk underneath the hatch. Cole hopped up on the desk and reached above to unlatch the access. “Re-lock this behind me,” he said. “Don’t need anything getting in here from above.”

A heavy impact smashed against the front window as the barb-shooting snake tried to force its way through the thick, wired glass. The thing must be immensely strong, if these things really were coming from an RI four or five world. Cole was cleared for risk index two. Maybe three. Still, at least he wasn’t as helpless as during the crossover event in Syria. He never would be again.

“Gotta be honest with you, jefe, it ain’t the roof I’m worried about,” said Rodriguez.

Cole slapped him on the shoulder. “Just keep this room secure, man.”

“Alright, good luck, brother.”

Cole pushed up the trap door as quietly as he could, scanning around the roof of the control room for any of the creatures. Artian had called them March Demons, but they seemed more like deep-sea abominations birthed from a particularly unfriendly Lewis Field. Was this what Ryan was fighting on the daily?

With the roof clear, Cole slid his carbine out first and then levered himself up against the weight of the hatch on his back until his legs found purchase. He low-crawled forward, and the two soldiers below held the hatch up to keep it from slamming, slowly lowering it back into place and securing the latch. Cole pushed himself up to a crouch and slung his rifle before taking a deep breath. He burned another charge of his ability, took two steps forward until his boot hit the edge, and then leapt out across the dark expanse of the generator room. Wind whipped through his hair and his uniform, and he kept the rifle tight against his chest to keep anything from rattling as he sped over the heads (did most of them even have heads?) of the otherworld monsters.

The place was massive, like the size of a football field underground, broken only by a few support columns looming in the dark and the raised mezzanine around six huge, humming turbine generators. At least, four of them were humming. The two distant ones were so much twisted scrap leaking hissing steam. One of them was split almost in half by one of the dimensional tears. And the other looked as though that giant armored sea snake had tried to see if it was edible.

Most of the red from his leap was concentrated around the half of the room with the control station, where a small sea of outlines milled below with a few who had navigated the stairs to the control room and of course the serpent, whose outline coiled and thrust itself at the glass again. That window wouldn’t hold long. There wasn’t reinforced glass anywhere in the world tough enough to stop a creature like that.

The floor rushed up at him, and at the last moment, Cole fed his momentum into his carbine He stopped dead in the air, just a few feet off the ground, and touched down with the barest ripple while all his kinetic energy hummed in the weapon and the magazine.

Not willing to risk his light drawing attention, he trusted his ears and his nose to help him avoid the otherworld horrors still lurking in the dark. They all had a fetid, decaying smell like old stagnant pond water filled with rotting meat. Though the water still dripping from dimensional tears didn’t smell much better.

He thought about Doc Sukesh’s hallway metaphor as he moved to the generator. This door opens itself and the locals barge in if you so much as knock. And good luck getting it shut, again. Whatever this world was, it was bad news for Earth. Even an idiot like him could figure that much out. If a bridge between meant foreign Lewis Field spilling across, able to sustain the creatures that came with it, DOR wasn’t going to want to touch it with a ten mile pole. And he didn’t know that he could blame them.

The generator was right where George the Engineer said it would be. A misshapen collection of disparate couplings connecting parts that were absolutely never designed to go together. But a light and a status window blinked on the front panel. In the Army, their generators had a startup sequence that was easy to get wrong. Luckily, George would be handling all that remotely from the control room, and Cole’s job was as simple as could be. He fished the chain with the lock from around his neck and found the flow control valve. There was barely enough light to see the keyhole, but he got the key lined up and tried to push it in. It didn’t marry up.

He turned the key around and tried again. It wouldn’t go in the lock. Wrong fit. Wrong key.

DOR Chapter 101 – Generating Solutions

Hey all! Had an amazing trip seeing friends I haven't seen in 5-10 years and a couple that I hadn't yet met in person. Thanks for your patience in getting the chapters up this week.

The update schedule is also changing for now, to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Chapter 101 – Generating Solutions

“This shit is wild,” said Rodriguez beside him. “There hasn’t been real a casualty since I got stationed here. I thought the guys I replaced were making it up.”

“Lucky me,” Cole muttered. Rodriguez went to the right of the door and nodded to Cole. Cole opened it, and the staff sergeant ducked through and to the left. Cole followed, swinging his own muzzle to the opposite side.

“Clear left,”

“Clear right,”

Cole held his angle as the rest of the squad came through.

“Last man,” someone muttered.

“Alright, Rodriguez. This is your house, where are the generators?”

“Straight down that corridor ahead of you,” said Rodriguez. “Hook left, it’ll open up to the HVAC area. Tayes, Nguyen, stay here and hold this stairwell.”

“Sure, Sarge,” said one of Rodriguez’s soldiers.”

Cole started heading down the passageway, holding just short of the corner until he felt a tap on his shoulder, at which point he started to rotate around, wary of threats. As Rodriguez had promised, the tight corridor opened up into a wide, dark space filled with the droning hum of air pumping through ductwork. Flickering motes of light suffused the air, and beyond the white noise of the HVAC equipment and sump pumps, something else stirred.

“Be ready,” said Cole. “Whatever happened started happening down here first. Might be worse than up top.”

A thin layer of water covered the floor, slowly running towards a drainage grate. Cole sloshed through it, clearing behind each massive air unit. Near one corner, a tear like the ones in the lab gushed black water, spurting a stream of nasty-smelling fluid. Questing tentacles protruded, running hooked appendages across the aluminum housing of the equipment. Some sort of black web stayed behind in its passing. Luckily, the wound in reality seemed to be too narrow for anything to actually come through. For now.

“What the fuck is going on?” Asked Rodriguez. “I thought those things couldn’t exist here.”

“They must have brought their own Lewis field with them,” said Cole. “My enhancements are active, too. Stay clear of that thing.”

A flash of movement caught Cole’s eye on the opposite side of the room. Ripples from disturbed water sloshed out from behind the furthest air pump. Cole held up a hand and gestured to the unit. Just barely beneath the drone of the equipment, Cole could hear… chewing. The grinding of teeth on bone.

“Hostile, right side,” Cole whispered. “Possible friendly, too.”

Rodriguez held up two-fingers and pointed to the right. Two soldiers split off to circle around from the other angle. Cole took a breath and swung around the unit, squeezing the pressure switch for his lamp.

Three reptilian creatures flinched at the sudden brightness. They looked half-melted, as though parts of them had turned to sludge, leaving them with uneven limbs and warped mouths. They backed away from a partially eaten form on the floor. Cole Fired at the first as Rodriguez opened up on the second. The third fled in the opposite direction, only to find the rifles of the other soldiers waiting. The bladed rounds tore off huge chunks of the monsters, but the largest of the three vaulted up to the top of the HVAC unit and then pounced down toward the squad leader, webbed claws and mouth spread wide.

Rodriguez threw himself down to the ground, and the reptilian grabbed only air to shove in its disgusting malformed mouth. It hit the deck amid the rest of the squad, darting through, between and around legs in an effort to escape. One soldier went down, and as soon as the reptile was clear of the squad, three more rifles opened up. But the creature was too nimble, and most shots hit only concrete or HVAC equipment. The reptile found a gap to the substructure and squeezed down beneath a set of pipes.

Cole pulled Rodriguez back to his feet, where the soldier wretched out fetid water.

Behind, one of the soldiers was on the ground, clutching their leg. The medic moved up, pulling out shears to get a look at a wound. Cole moved to assist, shining light down. The reptile had left three ragged tears in the meat of the soldier’s calf.

This would be a great time to have Roxy, thought Cole as the medic wrapped a sterilizing bandage around the wound. “Can you stand?” He asked.

“Ain’t nothin’, sir,” the soldier said as two of his squad mates pulled him up, but the soldier was clearly favoring the leg, practically hopping on one foot.

Rodriguez shook his head. “Head back to the stairs. Rest of you, let’s go. There’s gonna be more of those things. Generator room is up ahead.”

Cole traded his half-spent mag for a fresh one and kept moving. Against the far wall, a double steel door had the words Trace Lab Generator – Authorized Access Only stenciled on and a wire window showing glowing motes drifting beyond.

Rodriguez moved up and shined his weapon light through the window. “Looks like the water is a little higher on that side. It’ll be a real bitch to get this door open.”

“No other choice,” said Cole. And probably no sweat if Besson were here. The big dog handler was strong as an ox, even without his Lewis Field enhancements. Strength was one of Cole’s worst enhancement metrics, but bathed in LF energy, he was still the strongest soldier here by a wide margin.

The badge-reader was still lit, so Cole held his prox card up, and the door unlocked. Kickers apparently had facility-wide access. It took all his strength to push open the door against the flow. How could just an inch or two of water weigh so much? Dirty water gushed out as he set his shoulders and wedged the gap open wide enough to get people through.

A pair of tentacles quested through the opening, one of them brushing around Cole’s leg. He grit his teeth as the tentacle tightened, pulling him off his feet and through the door where another of the amorphous mouthed blobs waited.

“The door!” Someone shouted.

Behind him, a heavy thud hit the door as the other soldiers slammed into it, trying to keep it open long enough to get themselves through.

“Fuck this is heavy! Help me!”

“Shoot that fucker!” Shouted Rodriguez. A rifle opened up behind Cole.

The creature pulling him was much larger than the one on the ground floor and eyed him with clear hunger. More appendages emerged from its body and formed thick plates, intercepting the gunfire. Cole angled his rifle between his knees and fired into it, shooting it directly through the glassy alien eye and the soft interior of its gaping mouth. The creature shrieked and contorted, pulling back and away. But it was gushing blood, and the pseudo-limbs holding up its shields went slack—as did the tentacle around Cole’s leg. The rest of the squad shredded it. But its death rattle was answered by several others creatures echoing in the massive space. A tear in reality stretched open several meters away, and more of the things plopped out amidst a spray of water.

“Contact right!” Shouted one of the soldiers.

Rodriguez helped Cole up to his feet as the squad angled their fire.

“Control room!” Cole shouted over the gunfire.

Rodriguez pointed—thankfully in the opposite direction of the tear where a set of switchback steel stairs led to a second level catwalk and an enclosed structure. The squad began to withdraw towards the stairs, burning through ammo to staunch the tide of black, oily monsters. Something loomed up in the darkness. Cole heard a whistle past his ear, and a soldier behind him went down. Sharp barbs stuck from the woman’s neck, and the site of the puncture swelled like a water balloon.

One of the other squad mates reached down, swearing under his breath.

“Stop!” shouted Cole.

It was too late. The soldier yanked out the barbs, taking an alarming amount of the downed woman’s throat with them as though the flesh had been softened like clay. She gave a final gurgle and went limp.

“Fuck!” shouted Rodriguez, firing at the shadow. His lamp illuminated a long, snake-like body and a nightmarish head like some deep-sea creature mixed with a horned beetle. Cole saw its neck muscles tense up as it opened its mouth to reveal dozens more barbs waiting within, but the bright weapon light made it flinch, and the barbs whistled past to strike the bulkhead behind.

“Up to the control room!” said Cole.

The remaining soldiers pounded up the stairs and hammered on the door to the control room, shouting for the operators within. Cole stayed on ground level, swapped his magazine, and burned a charge of his ability. The floor or the room flooded with red, including the tears connecting Earth to some sort of watery nightmare realm. But having enemies marked also engaged his kinetic redirection ability. The effectiveness of his bullets went crazy. Each round that pierced the soft flesh an enemy spiked to a nearby target, and dozens of monsters fell to his bladed bullets. The cold wash of a level-up swept over him, and he kept firing throughout. But it still wasn’t enough.

“Cole!” shouted Rodriguez.

Cole looked up. The squad leader was leaning out the door to the control room with a middle-aged guy in glasses and a shirt stained with brackish water. In his hands, his bolt locked back on an empty magazine, and Cole didn’t bother with a swap. He leapt up, easily vaulting over the catwalk railing and landing with only a slight crater in the metal.

“Holy shit!” said Rodriguez, stumbling back. Cole pushed him through the door and pulled it shut behind him. He took a minute to look around the control room. A half-dozen engineers were in various states of panic, and the remaining soldiers weren’t much better. The one who had pulled the barbs from his squad-mate was vomiting in the corner, and another had shoved himself against the far wall with his head between his knees.

Cole looked between Rodriguez and the engineers.

Well, they’d made it to the generator room. Now it was time to figure out step 2.  

DOR Chapter 100 – Hello From the Other Side

Show of hands, who thought this was going to be a between-missions downtime arc?

Surprise early chapter! I'll be traveling this weekend, so tomorrow's chapter is getting posted today and Monday's chapter will probably be a bit later in the week. Enjoy, happy New Year, and have a great weekend!

Chapter 100 – Hello From the Other Side

A few feet away, Howie froze. Not in the sense that he locked up out of surprise or fear, but in that a layer of ice raced across his skin, cracking and sloughing off, replaced by shimmering blue flames. His hands started to shake and glow.

“What the fuck?!” shouted Tony, pushing back his chair.

Cole looked at his own hands, where the black and gold stain of the accretion wraps crawled across his flesh. The distressed shriek of twisting metal drew his attention back down to the test area, where a vertical slice of inky blackness stretching up at least five meters had split the sensor array, causing several of the measuring devices to crash down to the floor of the pit as it widened. Dark, stinking liquid poured out onto the concrete. A large, bloodshot eye stared out, then slid away to reveal an uneven mouth full of shark-like teeth. Tendrils of dripping black flesh reached through, testing the air as an oily snout started to push through the tear, contorting like an octopus squeezing through a narrow-throated bottle.

Cole pushed away the discomfort and ran toward the corner of the room, where the soldier on the catwalk stared in abject horror.

“Hey! HEY!” Cole shouted up. The soldier looked down at him, eyes wide. Cole pointed to the tear. “Shoot that fuckin’ thing!”

The soldier, seeming to remember for the first time that the gun in his hands wasn’t for decoration, racked the bolt back and swung the muzzle to the tear in reality. The SAW began to thunder as brass casings rained from the catwalk.

The monster, demon, whatever it was, let out a pained roar so loud it almost drove Cole to his knees. Its tentacles wrapped around the gantry over the pit, crunching it as though it were made of paper and not aluminum. Scientists and engineers scattered, some running for the door, some just trying to get as far away as they could by pressing themselves into corners. About ten feet away from the tear, another black streak began to open. An alarm began to blare along with an automated call to evacuate the building.

Howie regained his senses and vaulted down to the lower tier. He raised his hands and a freezing mist spilled out, coating the questing tentacles and causing one to break off entirely and shatter on the floor. Cole didn’t have any abilities that could help unless he wanted to start throwing computer screens, so he ran back to Tony and Dr. Sukesh, crossing his hands in an X. “Doc! Shut it down!”

“It’s not us!” shouted Tony. He raised a shaking finger at his screen. “It’s them! It’s their Lewis Field signature, look!”

As if I understand any of that shit, he thought. Something bulbous and black rolled out of the second tear and splashed in the fetid water pooling in the test pit. Time to get the civvies out of here. He grabbed the pair of scientists and pushed them toward the exit. “Never mind that! How do we stop it?” he asked. He risked a look back, where two spheroid creatures were pulling themselves across the tiers of equipment toward the staff who had panicked and run away from the exit. The gunner on the opposite side hammered them, popping them like over-ripe fruit and pulverizing the furniture and equipment, as well. Chair stuffing and electrical smoke clouded the air.

Tony’s eyes darted back and forth as he thought furiously. “Uh… uh…. hell. We drown it out, maybe. Flush the facility with another Lewis Field at max strength.”

“The auxiliary control room,” said Dr. Sukesh, pointing up to the small glass window. “The third floor. We can do it from there. But we need every generator running. Cole,” he grabbed Cole’s uniform sleeve. “If this is happening here, it might be happening in the sub-level facilities as well. The fireflies.”

Cole looked down at the level below him. “Howie!”

“I’ll hold ‘til the QRF gets here,” Howie shouted back. “Get ‘em out of here!”

They joined the press pushing out the exit, where red running lights raced along the floor of the hall. The rest of the staff in the building were evacuating, but most simply looked confused, or even annoyed by the interruptions. That changed as soon as engineers from the test room started bolting through the halls at full speed.

“Doc, where’s the QRF?” asked Cole.

Sukesh pointed down the passageway. “Around the corner. End of the corridor, red door.”

“Okay Get to the aux control room.” He started to push against the crowd and shouted back. “I’ll get you your generators!”

Cole ran down the passageway, clawing his way upstream against the flow of bodies. At the end of the corridor, he spotted a red door and tried the handle. It was locked, but it had a prox card reader, so he tried his badge and the metallic clack of the latch retracting rewarded him. He pulled open the door.

Inside, a dozen soldiers in forest camo were pulling on PPE and putting magazines in their belly pouches. One of them with the silver bar of a first lieutenant looked up at Cole. Her eyes shifted down to the charcoal DOR uniform and the glowing accretion wraps on his forearms. Her face paled.

“This isn’t an unannounced drill…” she trailed off. Overhead, the fluorescent lights flickered and died, replaced with dim red emergency lighting.

“It’s real,” said Cole. He pointed to her M4, “I need one of those, and so will my partner. And I hope you’ve got bladed rounds.”

“Locker,” said the lieutenant, pointing. She raised her voice. “Hurry the fuck up! You heard the Kicker! Go, go! Casualty response!” Cole moved past her, grabbing a plate carrier and pulling it on over his head before grabbing a carbine from the rack and a half-dozen magazines to fill out his cummerbund pouches. His hands must have looked like a blur to the un-enhanced soldiers, and despite arriving last, he found himself to be the one waiting on the rest of them to square themselves away.

Rather than waste time watching, he raised his voice. “We’ve got hostiles crossing over in the trace lab, and maybe in the sub-level. I need a squad with me to head down and show me where to find the generators and crew.”

The lieutenant scanned the thirty or so assembled soldiers. “Rodriguez, with the Kicker. Everyone else on me at the trace lab.”

“Aye, ma’am,” said a smaller guy with a Spanish accent. He pursed his lips and let out a shrill whistle. “Taye, Barnes, let’s go!”

Cole chambered a round in his rifle and pushed open the door.

Outside, the passageway was empty, but black water sloshed on the floor, dripping from several smaller tears no larger than his hand. Cole could hear something splashing and, for lack of better term, splatting, further up around the bend.

He moved forward, with the squad leader just off his shoulder.

They turned the corner and he heard Rodriguez gasp behind him.

“Yo, what the fuck?” he asked.

Not all of the staff had made it out, and a black, sludgy creature had caught an engineer who apparently hadn’t been quick enough. Barbed tentacles were pulling the limp form into a massive, misshapen mouth. The creature’s whole body undulated as it swallowed the body whole. One of its eyes slid to Cole, and two thin whip-like tentacles snaked directly from its side towards their legs.

Cole opened up with his rifle on the creature before it could reach them. It shrieked in a high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard cry as Cole fired several times.

“Contact front!” shouted Rodriguez and added his own fire. The bladed rounds tore enormous chunks of flesh from the stinking creature. Black blood sprayed against the walls, and the tentacles contracted. The creature tried to move away, but half-way through eating a two-hundred pound human, it was far from nimble. It wretched up the poor bastard, minus the parts its razor-like teeth had managed to sever, and managed to roll a few paces through the fetid water before it keeled over.

“Keep moving,” said Cole, pulling Rodriguez along. “Gawk later.”

Despite his advice, the staff sergeant couldn’t help looking down at both bodies as they passed, and Cole heard more than one holy fuck from the column behind him. One of the medics stopped to crack a chem-light and drop it on the body.

“Yo, what do we call you?” asked Rodriguez.

“Cole, or Airborne,” said Cole.

“Alright Cole, stairwell on your right, twenty feet up the P-way will take us down to the sublevel.”

“Got it,” said Cole. He moved up the widening hallway, letting the lieutenant draw abreast.

“We’ll secure the trace lab,” she said. “You said there’s another Kicker in there?”

“Yeah,” said Cole. He swallowed. “Hopefully still alive. Keep him that way.”

Cole pushed open the stairway door, sweeping his gun first up the stairs on the right, then down on the left.

“Clear,” he said. He began descending the stairs. There was more than enough light for him to see with just his enhancements, but the soldiers behind him clicked on weapon lights as they descended. The stairway looped back around to the sub level. A thin layer of water was spilling out through the crack under the door on the bottom landing. Cole grimaced. Looked like Sukesh was right about the sub-level being affected.

DOR Chapter 99 - Resonance

Chapter 99 - Resonance

“Potentially?” scoffed Tony. “With elasticity response this strong, It’s a good bet they already know we’re here.”

“While that’s statistically likely, I prefer not to jump to conclusions,” said Dr. Sukesh. “Do you have the data you need for the extrapolator?”

“It’ll take a lot of compute time to crunch it, but yeah,” said Tony. He tapped his thumb on the desk. “We can run the sympathetic resonance test now.”

“What’s that?” asked Howie.

“Well, it’s a test to see if that bridge has already been built. If this world has touched us before, there will be evidence. Like if they snatched a kid, we’re sniffing for the exhaust fumes of their getaway car.”

“I’m pretty sure they did,” said Cole.

“Based on what evidence?” asked Dr. Sukesh.

“Based on the owner of the dagger called me by my brother’s name before he died. My brother that went missing over a decade ago.”

Dr. Sukesh and Tony looked at each other briefly, and then to Cole.

“And you’re attuned, so… Damn,” said Tony. “That’s… huh.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Dr. Sukesh. He cleared his throat. “This test will try to find the scars of that any previous event and attempt a minute connection. If there was prior contact, we can learn quite a bit just from how they touched us.”

“Like a portal?” asked Cole.

Sukesh wiggled his hand in a sort-of gesture. “If opening a door and walking through is creating a portal, this is more like tapping morse code across a string tied between two tin cans. Did you ever make a tin can phone as a child?”

Cole answered yes at the exact same time Howie said no.

Howie looked over at him in surprise, then pushed his shoulder. “Nerd!” he said. He looked back at the screen. “Still, a connection’s a connection. Isn’t that risky?”

“Naw,” said Tony. “We’re barely at enough power to even send EM radiation, let alone a stable two-way gate capable of matter transfer. That Lewis Field down there isn’t even at a risk index one strength. More like risk index point two-five.”

“Famous last words?” asked Howie.

“Wait in the hall if you’re scared,” said Tony. “Starting the test… now.”

Cole remained firmly where he was standing, eyes glued to a screen he had no idea how to interpret. Thank God there were people smart enough to actually do this kind of thing, because if it were up to him they’d never reach another world.

“Looks like we’re getting a response,” said Tony.

Cole felt the hairs on the back of his arms start to stand up. The room had somehow become slightly louder. He looked across the pit at the pair of engineers laughing at a whispered joke between them. Their voices itched at his ears, just outside of hearing—despite being at least fifty feet away and standing behind equipment with fans running.

“Did you increase the Lewis Field strength?” asked Cole.

Tony gave him a side-eyed glance. “No, why?”

“My enhancements are active.”

Doctor Sukesh looked at Cole and then squinted at the monitor. “The sensors are reporting as normal, and the composition of the field in the containment area hasn’t fluctuated.”

“Howie?” asked Cole.

The Marine shrugged. “I don’t feel any different.” He squeezed his eyes and held out his hand. “Can’t access any charges.”

Cole tried activating his target marking through Meteoric Leap. But it, too, failed. He shook his head. “Must be getting paranoid. Sorry, Doc.”

“Please, don’t apologize!” said Sukesh. “You are attuned, and perhaps something in that attunement resonates with even a contained field—but you must be extremely perceptive with your senses. I’ve hypothesized this was possible but not encountered it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind conducting a few experiments while I have you in Tennessee.”

“Sure,” said Cole. He leaned back, resting his knuckles on the railing separating the next tier of workstations. “So what comes next?”

Tony cleared his throat. “Next we pluck at that string connecting the two tin cans, to borrow Doctor Sukesh’s metaphor. I’ll be running through a wide set of modulations based on recorded patterns to see if we get a something in the neighborhood.”

His screen began to cycle through through a list. Below it was a series of vertical bars that looked to Cole like an audio mixer. As the computer searched, a few of them jumped up just outside of the green range but never stayed there for long, until one bar jumped solidly into the midrange of the yellow area and stayed there.”

“Gotcha,” muttered Tony. “They’ve definitely touched us before. Full matter transient event.”

Howie looked at Cole. “That probably means they took someone.”

“Got it in one, Howie,” said Tony. He squinted at one of his screens. “Hmm… but it’s not a world we have catalogued. Powerful Lewis Field, too. I’m thinkin’ risk index four. Maybe five. Let me narrow the search band.”

A glimmer of reflected light caught Cole’s eye from across the pit where Doctor Daniels, the woman he’d briefly met, was sipping on a cup of coffee at her workstation. The glimmer had come from a ring on her left ring finger. And he could almost make out… he blinked, shaking his head. The woman was thirty feet away.

“Is Doctor Daniels’ husband’s name Henry?” asked Cole.

Dr. Sukesh looked up, startled, and raised his glasses to his forehead. “Yes, it is. How did you learn that?”

“I just read the inscription on her ring.”

Tony and Sukesh looked at him. “When she took the armament?” asked Sukesh.

“No, Doc, from here. Just now. I’m telling you, something is going on with the Lewis Field.”

Tony pshhed again. “Not possible. With only two generators running, the field isn’t even strong enough to reach all the way up here, even without containment.”

Dr. Sukesh pursed his lips. He looked between Cole and the computer. “Tony, stop the test. Shut down the field.”

Tony swung his chair around. “You sure, Doc? We’re pretty close to locking down the initial XDIM coordinate. You said it yourself, he’s probably just hypersensitive.”

“All the more reason. Disperse the field and have George shut down the generators,”

Tony looked like he wanted to argue for a moment, but he blew out a breath and turned back to his workstation. “Yeah, Doctor Sukesh. Shutting it down.” He tapped a few keys and confirmed a pop-up box that appeared. “Alright, field dispersed. Lemme call—”

The phone on his desk rang. Tony picked it up and pressed it to his ear. “Heya George. Just about to call you—what? No. We just shut the field off. No, routine armament analysis, no charged experiments. What? You know that can’t happen. Hold on.” Tony pressed the receiver to his shoulder. “Doc, he says his guys are reporting fireflies in the sub-level.”

“Fireflies?” asked Cole. He shook his head. Something felt like a buzzing in his ear, and it wasn’t his tinnitus.

“Brief light artifacts,” Sukesh supplied. “We get them sometimes during high-saturation experiments simulating stronger Lewis fields. We suspect they might be the source of the popular ghost orb myth among paranormal enthusiasts.”

“Uh, guys?” asked Howie. “Is this supposed to be doing that?” He pointed to the screen showing the LF field strength in the containment area. Sure enough, the containment dome was now blank as the field was shut down. But outside of it, flashes of yellow were starting to appear. Barely long enough for the screen to register their presence. In the message log, a series of errors flooded the screen.

Cole staggered as his senses overwhelmed him. A flood of sounds and visual information bombarded his brain. Every voice in the room, every fan, even the electrical hum of the overhead lights felt like it had been amped up to max volume. He squeezed the rail behind them so hard that it began to deform under his grip. One sound began to cut through the rest. Screaming, coming from the phone receiver pressed to Tony’s shoulder. He looked back at the screen. The motes of LF saturation were growing on the field strength measurement screen, and all the bars under the resonance test were maxed out.

Tribe Apollo

The wife got me a new drawing tablet for Christmas, so please enjoy this (very) rough sketch of Tribe Apollo.

(I forgot Rufus)

DOR Chapter 98 - Locksmiths

Chapter 98 - Locksmiths

Cole wasn’t sure what to expect from the lab. Big tanks of freaky mutants or velociraptors, maybe. Banks of switches and dials and arcane sigils in the floor. Maybe even a tiny star held in captivity, like the ones he saw when he walked the path in his mind to evolve his class.

The reality turned out to be somehow both more mundane and more fantastic. No specimen tanks or archaic control panels. Instead, the concrete room was a series of manned computer workstations arranged around a depression in the floor outlined in yellow paint—much like the portal pit at the compound. Except that this one had a dizzying array of sensors pointed at it from every angle, miles of cable snaking across the floor, and only a pair of bored soldiers with 7.62 machine guns shooting the shit on the catwalk with more non-military men and women in slacks and button-down shirts or dresses. Scientists or engineers or whatever, doing whatever scientists and engineers did.

“Wow,” said Howie. “This place kicks ass!”

Cole was more interested in the security, or lack thereof. Two soldiers at ease with automatic weapons. “You open portals here?” he asked. Suddenly his hip felt very bare without a sidearm holstered there. It wasn’t as if he could bring his concealed carry into a national laboratory.

“Once, but no longer. This was the original location where we learned how to open them. And the site of the first missions to other worlds,” said Dr. Sukesh. “Now Oak Ridge is research and development of techniques to find exploitable vectors into other worlds. Sgt. Craine and Corporal Lorne are here because protocol dictates any generation of a Lewis Field powerful enough to sustain contact with another world must have armed response personnel present. Department of Energy, which this laboratory falls under, also has guidelines for protection where fissile material is present. But really, their job is to be bored all day.”

“Yeah, I don’t envy them,” said Cole, more at ease.

“Did you say fissile material?” asked Howie.

“Very finite amounts of Tritium, Cobalt, and Uranium.” Dr. Sukesh handed the dagger off to a woman with glasses. “Standard trace procession test please, Doctor Daniels.”

“Sure thing, Doctor Sukesh.”

Howie nudged Cole. “Doctor, doctor,”

Cole stifled a laugh, then elbowed Howie back. “Doctor,”

“Doctor.”

“Doctors,” said Sukesh eye twinkling, “If you please.” He gestured to one of the dozen work stations, that particular one being operated by a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard long enough to brush the top of his potbelly. He grinned a wide white smile through the shag carpet on his face as they approached.

“Hey guys! Tony,” he said, holding out his hand.

Cole clasped it. “Cole,” he said, and nodded to Howie. “That’s Howie.”

“Nice to meetcha,” he said. “I’ll try and remember, but two names is already pushing it.”

“Mr. Craine here is one of our LF engineers. He has a knack for getting us places where we don’t belong,” said Sukesh.

Cole glanced up at the soldier on the catwalk.

“No relation,” said Tony. “What’s the plan, Doc?”

“The dagger is still keyed to its late owner, so let’s begin with a soul-key elasticity test and see if it wants to go home, and then a sympathetic resonance comparison, I think.”

“You got it.”

Tony tapped a few commands into his workstation. Cole looked up at the five separate screens while he worked. “That’s a lot of monitors.”

“Well we’ve got a lot going on,” said Tony. “You should see the sub-level where the actual generators are. Plus I can watch Tennessee eat Auburn’s lunch. You like College ball?”

“Go Bulldogs,” said Cole.

“PSHH!” said Tony, picking up the phone on his desk and dialing an extension. “Banned for life!” He leaned forward. “Heya George. Yep. Confirmed, bring up one and two.”

A red warning light began rotating on the far wall. The soldiers on the catwalk looked up at it. Their relaxed posture vanished, and they split off to a pair of fortified positions at the corners of the room. Down below, Dr. Sukesh’s other colleague stepped out of a marked area on the ground. “Clear!” she shouted up. A vibration began to mount in the metal grating beneath Cole’s feet.

Tony pushed the phone into his should to muffle it as he raised his voice. “Confirmed clear!” he called back, then lowered it again. “It takes a lot of juice to make a Lewis field without LF Residue.”

“Woah,” said Howie, looking at the array of screens, most of which were covered in fluctuating bars, waterfall data displays, and one with what looked like a pulsing heartbeat. If Howie understood any of that, Cole would buy him lunch for a week. “I never thought about it before. But you can’t get LF Residue to establish an LF field without first establishing a field to go get LF Residue. How did you open the first portal without it?

“Folklore, tritium, and an abduction even that luckily coincided with a cellular spectrum survey in Astoria, Oregon. Oh, and about five-million volts.” He raised the phone again. “Uh-huh, thanks George. Buh-bye,” he said before hanging up the receiver.

Howie whistled.

Tony pointed to one of his screens that had a diagram of what looked like the area down in the pit. “Watch this screen. You’ll be able to see the field establish.”

Dr Sukesh leaned forward and pressed a button attached to a microphone, causing his voice to echo out of several speakers mounted throughout the room and presumably throughout the building. “Lewis Field coming online in ten seconds. All personnel remain at minimum safe standoff distances. QRF stand by.”

Cole watched on the screen as a blue mass expanded from the center of the pit area, about a meter off the deck. As it expanded, the core of it shifted from blue to green to yellow. The mass stopped abruptly as a pair of dotted lines on the screen, forming a layered box. Or, as Cole glanced down to the pit, more likely a cylinder.

“We make sure to keep the field contained and carefully control its strength,” said Tony. “If you were to walk down there right now, you’d start to get your enhancements back. Where’d you find that armament, anyway?”

“Babel,” said Cole.

“Hrmm,” said Tony. “That could be tricky. Could be that both worlds connect to Babel, but they can’t touch each other.”

“Well, we’ll try our best,” said Dr. Sukesh. He turned to Cole and Howie. “For all the few worlds we know about, the vast, vast majority are completely unknown. And the vaster portion of those simply cannot ever connect to Earth. As for whether there are other worlds like Earth without Lewis Fields, well, we simply have no way to know whether they exist or not. But we certainly seem like a very popular target.”

“It’s an infinite multiverse though, right?” asked Howie.

“Doesn’t seem that way, thankfully,” said Dr. Sukesh. “If it were truly infinite, then an infinite number of worlds would be targeting us for abduction and an infinite number of them would succeed. Earth does not have infinite children to take.”

“Ah, yeah, there’s that,” said Howie.

Tony tapped on his keyboard and clicked several toggle boxes on one of his screens. “Okay… we’re at acceptible strength to begin the elasticity test. Starting the program… now.”

A new window popped up on the screen with several super-imposed colored line charts fluctuating over each other. Tony continued talking as he worked. “We’re saturating the armament with minute changes in the Lewis field structure, seeing if we can find a configuration that lets it ‘phone home’, as it were. It stands a better chance of working since its soul key died with the owner, so the only connection it has is to its original Lewis Field and… there we go.”

One of the colors on the chart spiked while the others stayed zeroed out. Tony pointed up at it. “We’ve got elasticity, Doc. I’ll try and clean it up.”

“What does the elasticity mean?” asked Cole.

Sukesh answered him, stroking his chin as he looked at the numbers. “It means that there’s a potential for our world and the world of origin for this armament have the potential for a direct corridor.” He glanced at Cole. “Think back to our hallway metaphor. It means that the door which fits this dagger is likely at least in our hallway. Not in another apartment off in Singapore, say.”

“Translated, it means we might be in luck,” said Tony, adjusting some of the parameters in his program. Two more of the colored bars spiked. “Bingo. It’ll take some crunching by the super computer, but with this strong a response, it’s a high probability that we can locate a potential XDIM coordinate.”

“XDIM?” asked Cole.

“Extra-dimensional. Sympathetic latitude and longitude, but think of our universe as one axis and theirs as another, but also separated on the Z-axis and—”

“Doc, you’re losing me,” said Cole.

Dr. Sukesh smiled. “Forgive me. Two points across dimensions that could potentially be bridged. It’s a best-case scenario.”

DOR Chapter 97 – The Good Doctor

Did it again, got the chapter set up and forgot to hit Publish. Sorry for the late chapter, everyone.

Chapter 97 – The Good Doctor

“Are you kidding me?” muttered Howie. “The next trailer over?”

Cole had to keep himself from laughing at Howie’s consternation. Dr. Sukesh had been less than ten meters away while the receptionist tried to stonewall them.

“You know,” said Cole, “You work with people like Sophie, Bricker, and Jefferson too long and you start to forget what government employees are actually like,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” said Howie.

Dr. Sukesh chuckled ahead of them. “You think it’s bad here, you should try overseas bureaucracy. Get a work exchange visa through the New Dheli Consulate and you will certainly cut the laboratory staff some slack, I think.”

He badged through the door and brough them into an office that smelled like fresh coffee and old carpet. The walls were lined with white binders and textbooks, a small mess had a coffee pot, sink, and a softly humming fridge. Sukesh had to clear off a stack of papers from one of the spare chairs for Cole and Howie to both have somewhere to sit. Howie remained standing, looking at the spines of a few of the books on the shelf.

“Do you have the transfer paperwork?” he asked.

Cole produced the form Jefferson had given him. Dr Sukesh took it and dropped a pair of spectacles from his forehead to over his eyes as he looked down.

“Two men to deliver a dagger,” he said. “Either it must be very important, or they’re not giving Kickers enough to do these days, eh?” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “If only that were the case. It would be a day I would celebrate the rest of my life.” He pulled a pen from a mug on his desk and scrawled his name across the signature block below Cole’s before feeding it through the copy section of his printer. He handed the original back to Cole. “Signed and delivered. Let’s see what we’re dealing with, eh?”

“Sure thing, doc,” said Cole. He passed over the pelican case and the key. Dr. Sukesh unlocked the case and withdrew the dagger from the foam cut out.

“Hmm… Not a particularly impressive piece, is it? Dull luster, slightly chipped. This inlay looks like fish scales. I’m guessing… grade three, perhaps four? Ah, that would be average or above average, in Kicker parlance.”

“No idea,” said Cole. “The key didn’t transfer when the owner died. But we want to find the world it came from.”

“Ah… We’ve found the needle. Now we must find the haystack it fits, eh? No small task.”

“But it’s possible?” asked Cole.

Dr. Sukesh pursed his lips. “We have managed it in the past, but every world is different. I will not tell you outright that it is always possible, but I will say we have gotten quite good at it.”

“I don’t follow, Doc,” said Cole. He thumbed Howie, behind him. “I brought an interpreter if I’m too dumb for this stuff.”

“It’s my sole purpose on the team,” said Howie, thumbing through one of the books that had caught his eye.

Dr. Sukesh laughed, slapping both his knees. “Ah, my boy, I have had to explain this to politicians. I promise you will understand more quickly. Picture a hallway full of locked doors.”

Cole raised an eyebrow, but Dr. Sukesh raised both his own and waited expectantly. Cole took a deep breath and closed his eyes, picturing a long egg-shell corridor lit by yellowing fluorescent bulbs. A series of beige steel doors with cipher locks lined both walls and stretched out into the distance.

“Now, behind each door is a world. But each one has a different procedure to open it.”

“Right, like a different key or combination,” said Cole.

“Not quite,” said Dr. Sukesh. “The first door, you can only open by flattening yourself and sliding underneath it. The second door you must force open. The next door, perhaps it only opens on every third Tuesday. The next door kills anyone who is seen opening the door by someone inside. The next door can only be opened if the previous door is open. The next door must be fallen backwards through, or else it takes you outside the building entirely.”

“Ok, so it’s not about locks and keys,” said Cole. “Each world’s got different qualifiers for entry.”

“Yes, yes! Good! Now, imagine that corridor again, but the walls are bare and unbroken. The doors are still there, but you cannot tell what is a door, what is a wall, and what separates the two. And your whole life every professor, scientist, parent, and peer-reviewed study told you there were no doors at all.”

Cole pursed his lips. “Ok, I’m imagining it. Why?”

“Because it will help you appreciate just how hard my job is and how impressive I am,” said Dr. Sukesh, chuckling. Cole opened his eyes just so that Dr. Sukesh could see him rolling them, which only made the old scientist smile wider. But he cleared his throat and continued. “This dagger is a key, yes. And it will fit a certain lock. But we must find that lock, and the lock does not open the door itself. It might connect Earth to that door. My job is to find a way through each of those doors, and it has been a constant work in progress for the last fifteen years of my life. Come, let’s head over to the LF lab. We can at least see if this fits any lock we already know of.”

He slowly pushed himself off his chair with a groan. “My knees are not what they once were. Forgive an old man his pace, eh?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Doc,” said Howie, replacing the book. “I’m sure we’ll both be getting cortisol shots in our knees by the time we’re thirty.”

If they made it to thirty. Cole left that bit unsaid.

Dr. Sukesh shook his finger at the Marine but smiled as he spoke. “My daughter said the same. But after Lewis Field exposure, now I’m certain she’ll live to be a hundred and still fit.”

Cole followed the doctor out of the trailer, waiting for Howie to catch up.

“I’m not so sure about this guy,” said Cole.

“I think we’re in good hands,” said Howie. “Did you see those books?”

Cole snorted. “You impressed by books?”

“I am when he wrote most of them,” said Howie.

Cole paused. “Ok, yeah, that’s fair.”

He hustled his pace and caught up with Sukesh as he badged open yet another gate to the large concrete building. “Your daughter is attuned?”

“Oh yes,” said Sukesh. He waved to the soldier providing security and badged open the steel door, as well. The soldier checked all three of their cards, even Sukesh’s.

“Go ahead, sir.”

“Thank you, Henry,” said Dr. Sukesh. He pointed to a row of cubbies. “Phones and smart watches in there, if you have them. And yes, my daughter was taken when she was fifteen. Swept away to another world before my very eyes—one of red seas and mushrooms the size of skyscrapers. I thought I’d gone mad. Everyone I tried to tell thought it, as well. A renowned applied physicist at the forefront of his field, raving about portals and other worlds and strange beings. The police, they thought I killed her. No one would believe. Until Director Bricker found me. No coincidence, as he had people combing news sources around the world specifically for stories like mine.”

“So you’ve been with DOR ever since?” asked Cole.

Dr. Sukesh nodded. “There were already other scientists and researchers on the project. But they were the fringe, what others would have called crackpots—what I would have called crackpots. True believers that there were forces beyond the physics we understand. But I? I was someone who could turn ideas into applications. And armed with the knowledge that a whole new branch of science was waiting for me, and that my little girl was on the other end of it, I worked like a man possessed. It took three years before we could establish a stable gateway in an artificial Lewis Field, and another year after that before Director Bricker walked back to Earth with Surah beside him. No longer a child, but a woman grown. Powerful, capable. But still my little girl.”

Dr. Sukesh paused and took a breath, removing his glasses for a moment to wipe his eyes. He smiled again. “I don’t think I slept more than two or three hours a night that entire time. A year later, Surah was using her gifts to help other children. And I was using mine to find them for her. She retired from the teams after five years and too many injuries to count. I am glad that others carry her legacy.”

Several people passed them in the corridor, each of them greeting Dr. Sukesh as they passed. Cole looked around, somewhat non-plussed that the hall they stood in resembled the endless corridor he’d just been imagining in the trailer. But these doors opened in the normal way, and Dr Sukesh badged them into one labeled EC-1 TRACE SPEC LAB.

“Here, gentlemen, is where we look for the locks.”

DOR Chapter 96 – Beyond the Compound

Chapter 96 – Beyond the Compound

The full Babel debrief wouldn’t be until after the rest of the climbing teams and the hornet teams made it back to Earth—only about half of which had returned so far. Babel excursions could consume weeks of active otherworld deployment time, and it was only their immediate urgency and external threat that shoved Cole and his team through two floors in less than a week. With the otherworld dagger in tow, Cole had Sophie book tickets for he and Howie to visit the lab side of the house in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and co-opted Roxy to drive them to Dulles International.

“I get that Roxy is giving you a ride,” said Howie, “But why am I going?”

Cole looked over his shoulder into the back of Roxy’s pickup. “Because I’m going to be talking to smart people, and I’m going to need someone to translate. Besides, I figured you’d want to go.”

Howie shrugged. “I mean, yeah, I do. Oak Ridge was a big part of the Manhattan project, you know? First nuclear bombs, cold fusion, alien autopsies in the basement. It’s probably pretty cool.”

“It’s probably a bunch of boring guys in white coats with clipboards,”  said Roxy. “If that sounded cool, I’d have just been a nurse.”

Howie leaned forward, grinning. “Your mental image of scientists comes entirely from cartoons, doesn’t it? Admit it, when you picture a scientist in your head, they’re either animated or in black and white throwing huge switches, aren’t they?”

Roxy said nothing, but the tips of her ears started to turn red.

Cole couldn’t help chuckling. The old black and white Frankenstein playing on his grandfather’s TV was exactly what he’d been picturing.

Howie leaned back, satisfied.

“Well, while you two idiots are slack-jawed at science, I’m going to Virginia Beach. With Nona,” said Roxy. She stuck out her tongue.

“No way,” said Howie. “I don’t believe it.”

“That is a sentence I didn’t ever expect to hear,” said Cole. He shook his head. “I can’t even picture her in a bathing suit.”

“You better not be trying to,” said Roxy, shooting him a death glare.

“Fair,” said Cole. “Still.”

Roxy’s expression softened. “I know what you mean. I think it took everything she had just to ask me to show her the ocean. She’s never seen it, and if we’re going to Hexighast, she wants to get used to water.”

“So what’s in it for you?” asked Howie.

“Sun, stores, girl-time, and no monsters for a few days,” said Roxy. “I love being a Kicker, but I don’t live to work. I want some five-star treatment, and after the last two missions, my bank account can handle it. You two need some time off, too so your brains don’t fry.” She paused, then grinned. “Actually I think it’s already too late for that.”

Cole huffed a laugh. “You ain’t lying.” He turned back to Howie. “We’ll check out Knocksville, have some fun.”

“Hell yeah!” said Howie.

Roxy dropped the pair of them at the airport, and being in DOR still carried all the perks of traveling in the military, and beyond that, Sophie had booked them first-class tickets, which Cole didn’t learn until they’d already waited through the normal check-in line. It certainly beat getting crammed into the back of a C-130 and sitting sideways with earplugs in. Cole ordered himself a complimentary Jack and Coke, passed out before takeoff, and slept through the entire flight.

Picking up the rental car at Knocksville, the pair made the short drive to Oak Ridge. Surrounded by the tall trees of Eastern Tennessee, Cole felt much more at home than he did in Virginia. Hell, just a couple hours drive south would see him in Georgia. There was a certain something to the genuine South that even states like Virginia lacked.

Pulling up to the guard station at the national laboratory. They handed over their CACs. “Here for the Combat Network Integration Program,” said Cole, giving the cover name for DOR’s Oak Ridge presence.

The gate guard was contractor, rather than military, armed with a vest and sidearm. Three STANAG magazines in his vest also spoke to an M4 or M16 somewhere out of sight. He scanned both IDs with a portable scanner and then compared them to a list on a clipboard. “More CNI boys, eh? You’ll need to swing by the security office to get your badges. Combat Network Integration is inside a secondary security area. Take the main road, turn left after the Cobalt Reactor sign. They’ll verify your clearances and issue your proximity cards and give you directions from there.”

“Thanks,” said Cole.

Getting the badges was a simple—if tedious—process. Despite the fantastic, otherworldly secrets lurking in the secondary secured area, you could always count on a government badging office to be in no rush and impressed by nothing with at least three people out for their second two-hour lunch and the system to randomly collapse under the weight of its own inefficiencies at least twice before you were helped. Some truths were just universal. But glacially, they processed through and got their proximity badges to access the secondary area, only to find that the ECP was also manned and the guard swiped his own badge to open the automated rolling gate anyway.

“Sometimes I hate the government,” grumbled Howie.

Cole just chuckled. “You don’t have hurry up and wait in the Marines?”

Howie sucked at his teeth and sighed. “Fair point. Not sure why I thought joining DOR meant never having to sit in a DEERS office again.”

The secondary security area for the DOR labs was much fresher than the rest of the well-maintained laboratory campus. Spots of wild Tennessee undergrowth pressed in on the road and past a one-lane section of contractors with reflective vests and paving equipment, the asphalt quickly transitioned to gravel. Another half-klick beyond that, the path opened up to a single permanent structure and a dozen portable trailers inside a fenced area. Cole parked the rental in a gravel lot that was already too small for the vehicles it accommodated by driving up onto a berm. He retrieved the secure Pelican case with the dagger, and with Howie in tow, they walked through gate for the fenced area.

The first portable on their left had an Admin sign bolted above the door, so Cole took them through and moved up to the receptionist.

“Where can we find Dr. Sukesh?” he asked.

The receptionist looked them up and down. “Names?”

Both their names were clearly visible on their badges, but Cole had been through this song and dance a thousand times.

“Amos Colton and Howie Hoyle. He’s expecting us.”

The receptionist tapped a few keystrokes into her computer. “I don’t have any mention of you in the daily visitor roster.”

“Do you need one?”

She looked at him over the rim of her glasses as though he’d suggested she eat her own head. How dare. But Cole had seen a lot worse than middle-aged Karens in his Army tenure. In his threat metric, she was somewhere between a legless fungal zombie and a teenaged Syrian loyalist.

“You’ll have to contact your security office and have them send over your visitor requests, clearances, and itinerary.”

“No we won’t,” said Cole. “Call Dr. Sukesh.”

The woman pursed her lips.

“Please,” added Cole, managing to not roll his eyes.

With the reluctance of a hibernating bear, she spun the phone towards her and dialed an extension. She exchanged a few words and then hung up. “He’ll be here shortly.”

Shortly apparently meant imminently, because the man appeared not thirty seconds later. He was short, balding, and spectacled He wore slacks and a checkered button-down with no white coat in sight. A bristly mustache with as much white as black wiggled as he grinned and took Cole’s hand. It was the first smile he’d seen since landing in Knoxville. This might be the only person in Oak Ridge happy to be there.

“Ah, Mr. Colton, Mr. Hoyle, welcome to Oak Ridge!”

Cole couldn’t quite place his accent. It didn’t sound quite like any he’d heard on his deployments. Indian or Pakistani, maybe.

“Cole’s fine, Doc,” said Cole, shaking his hand. He gave Howie’s a quick pump as well, then put his hand on Cole’s shoulder and held his other palm toward the door.

“I’m glad you could make it. Come, we’ll speak in my office.”

“Lead the way.”

DOR Chapter 95 – All’s Well

Hey everyone! Just a quick note, next week will be updates Monday and Wednesday, so have a nice weekend and enjoy your Christmas!

Chapter 95 – All’s Well

Eighteen hours down post off-world mission. That was the Kicker Convention, spelled out in the SOP in no uncertain terms. Yet, after checking in his gear at the armory, Cole went straight up to Lewis Hall, still in his dusty, charred uniform. The otherworld dagger he’d taken off Artian’s retainer was burning a hole in his pocket, just as his questions were burning in the back of his mind. He couldn’t put this off.

Badging into Lewis Hall, he rode the elevator up to the third floor and stepped into Bricker’s outer office where Mrs. Mary was sorting through files on her desk with a classified stamp in her hand. She looked up as he entered.

“Mr. Colton, I only just received word that you’d returned from Babel.”

“Is the Director in?” he asked.

Mrs. Mary nodded to the door. Cole walked to the inner office, knocked twice, and then opened it. Bricker sat within, desk phone couched between his shoulder and ear as he typed into his workstation. He spotted Cole and held up a finger. Cole nodded and closed the door.

“Still on his call?” She asked.

Cole nodded. “Looked important.”

Mary chuckled. “Well, you don’t call the Director of Otherworld Rescue at 0200 hours to arrange nine holes.”

“Shit!” said Cole, checking his watch, then “Excuse my language, Ma’am. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

Ms. Mary yawned. “Oh, don’t remind me. The director doesn’t get much sleep during Babel missions. Neither do I, for that matter. It’s a bit like squiring for him during field work, again.”

Cole tilted his head. “You were Director Bricker’s squire?”

“Of course.” Ms. Mary put down her stamp and couched her chin in her hand for a moment. “The director and I go way back. I was his civilian administrative lead when he was in the Army almost twenty years ago. That was long before I knew where he’d been and what he’d been through.” She shook her head. “To think, he used to tease me for reading Anne McCaffrey novels.”

“Is that the vampire lady?” asked Cole.

Ms. Mary giggled. “Not quite. Those early days were something of the wild west. You’ll have to ask him how he got the Department off the ground, some time.”

The inner door opened and Director Bricker looked at Ms. Mary. “Uh oh,” he said. “What’s she been telling you?”

Cole grinned. “All your dirty secrets.”

Bricker waved Cole into the office. Cole followed him and took a seat.

“Welcome home, Cole. Well done on getting your team through and locating Ms. Black. That was the Director of the JIRF I just got off the phone with—err, the Japanese Isekai Retrieval Force. Their version of us. Looks like their Babel mission isn’t going as well. They’ve lost two team members and they’ve requested our assistance locating a national that was taken to the tower. But that’s neither here nor there. What do you need?”

Cole pulled the sheathed knife from his pocket and put it on the desk. “I got that from a dying man on the fifth floor.

Bricker pulled the pearlescent blade from its sheath and looked at the curved weapon and etched inlay. “Pretty. What’s it do?”

“No idea, I didn’t kill him so I’m not soul-keyed to it. But the man came from a world in the midst of a demonic invasion. Apparently, he served a Lord Ryan. He mistook me for him, in fact.”

Bricker’s hand froze as his eyes slid to Cole. “Lord Ryan?”

Cole nodded.

Bricker resheathed the dagger and ran a hand over his chin. “It’s a big multiverse. I don’t want to give you false hope or having you chasing after a wild goose, Cole.”

“A survivor gave some details that suggested their Ryan might not be from around his parts. The conversation is on the helmet cams.” Said Cole. He shook his head. “I know the odds must be astronomical. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to plead my case.”

“Well, the worlds do have links that draw people together sometimes, Cole. Siblings can share a connection, one a Lewis Field somehow acknowledges. Fate isn’t quite such an ambiguous concept in other worlds.” Bricker drummed his thick fingers on the top of his desk in thought, then sniffed and leaned forward. “You truly believe this intel is credible? And the man who gave it to you?”

“He was a con man and a huckster too clever for his own good,” said Cole, “And his survival depended on being in our good graces.”

Bricker Roared leaned back and roared with laughter. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the laughter petered off. “Met my fair share of those. The problem is, they do know things, and they do know people. Friends are in short supply out there. Hmm…” He looked at the dagger again. “I know I told you to let your brother lie. But I also pulled the files on his disappearance. I don’t want to give you false hope, Cole. But I’m also not going to dismiss you. Between Curahee and Vael, I think I’ve seen enough of how you operate to know you’re on the level and focused on the mission. If that trend continued with the review of Babel, I think I can extend some latitude. Did this huckster give you a name for this world?”

“He just called it The March. But, after Curahee, Morganstern implied we have a lab that can trace otherworld armaments back to their home worlds. She took Ram-head’s Axe for that reason, and I want to do the same with this dagger.”

Bricker nodded. “Not surprised you put that together. But I want to dispel the notion that it’s a surefire thing. To wit, the axe didn’t give us the Beast Cult’s home world. We don’t know if that’s because the soul-key transferred to your team, or because that knight got his armament somewhere else, or if it just fizzled for an unknown reason. Otherworld armaments are fickle like that.” Bricker held the sheathed knife out to Cole. “You say you didn’t kill him. Know what did?”

“An ape monster,” said Cole.

“That’s good,” said Bricker. “If his soul-key died with him, and if this armament is from his home world—which I think is likely, as this holster looks well-loved, then there might be a chance.”

“So you’ll follow up on it?” said Cole.

“No, but you will.” Bricker pushed his desk back and drummed his fingers on his desk as he considered. “Good chance for you to visit Knocksville and see some of our other facilities. But for now, take this back to Jefferson and get some rest. I’m running on caffeine and fumes, so I know you must be practically dead on your feet.”

Cole took the dagger and stood, turning. But the director’s voice stopped him.

“If this is your brother, Cole. He’s been alive in this otherworld for as long as he was alive on Earth. He might not consider this his home anymore. Be cognizant of that possibility as we pull at this thread.”

Cole looked back over his shoulder. “I understand, sir.”

He left, saying goodnight to Mrs. Mary before returning the dagger to the armory with a brief explanation for Jefferson.

Not inclined to make the forty-minute drive to his house, he decided to crash at his on-post billet for the night where he had toiletries and spare clothes stashed.

He was surprised to see Roxy out in front of the billets, sitting at the smoke pit table, staring off into the distance.

“Rox?” he asked, taking a seat across from her.

She startled, only just realizing that he was across from her. “Cole!” she said.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, realizing as he sat down that she hadn’t showered, hadn’t even changed clothes.

“No, I just wanted a smoke,” she shrugged and laughed. “But I gave them to Beth.”

With her singed hair and soot-smeared face, she looked like she’d had enough smoke. But he pulled his vape pen from his shirt pocket and handed it over. “I know it’s not the same.”

Roxy looked at it. Her face started to scrunch up, and Cole reached across the table and took her hands. “Hey, hey, she’s in good hands, Roxy. They’re going to pull her out. And if they don’t, it’s cause she’s squirrely enough to give a team of high-level Kickers the slip in which case there’s nothing in that tower that could pin her down.”

Roxy laughed, and then huffed and sniffed, staving off the tears for the moment. She took the pen and took a drag, blowing out the vapor. “You’re right. It’s not the same.” She breathed out and held her thumb and forfinger an inch apart. “I was this close, you know. To pulling out my own fucking knife and digging out that transponder.” She shook her head. “Leaving her alone was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“What’s the first rule of treating a mass casualty on the battlefield, Roxy?”

“I know, I know. Don’t become part of the casualty. Don’t make more work for the rescue personnel.” She sighed.

“Not to mention Dallemonte was on our ass there at the end,” said Cole. “If you’d stayed, you’d be dead. And probably Beth with you.”

“Stop being logical and let me vent!” she said. Then chuckled. “You’re right. But you’re an asshole.” She took another draw of the vape pen. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“I feel that,” said Cole. “But I might have a lead on my brother.”

“The dagger?”

“The dagger.”

Roxy nodded. She rubbed her thumb on the back of his fingers as she squeezed his hand. “I really hope it works out for you, Cole. If your brother is anything like you, he could definitely survive being spirited away. If it ever comes time to go pull him out, I’ll be right there beside you.”

“More like in front of me, with that big-ass shield so I don’t get shot at.”

Roxy laughed. “Asshole.”

“We all have our strengths, right?”

DOR Chapter 94 – Unwelcome Guests

Chapter 94 – Unwelcome Guests

Even the winged creatures that infested the city attacked the airborne mage. As though affronted that anyone would dare assume the right of entering their skies, leathery bat-like creatures with fangs and claws swarmed in a vortex above the Beast Cult mage. The spellcaster fended off bullets from below as well as diving swipes from above. Ammunition was dwindling fast, and they could hardly stop to unpack spare magazines from their kit. Not only that, but the firefight and bloodshed was bringing in monsters from further afield following the sounds and scent of slaughter in the plaza.

“Get ready,” said Cole. “Once we do this, there’s no telling what’s going to happen.”

“We’re ready, Cole,” called Nona.

“Roxy, you’re up!”

Roxy broke cover, moving up behind her shield and angling her shotgun up at the mage. White glyphs appeared where she shot, blocking the bladed buckshot and sizzling with heat. But the mage knew she wasn’t the real threat. It scanned around, so Cole gave it something else to chase.

Burning a charge of Meteoric Leap, Cole took to the sky, flying over the mage and through the vortex of winged creatures. He extended his spear, shouting a battle cry. The last surviving Beast Cult took the bait, twisting upward. It might not have known what the spear was, but it must have figured it had some sort of barrier or armor piercing property—which, to be fair, it did. Not that Cole thought it would work against the high-level mage who seemingly never ran out of spells or stamina.

Cole reached the apex of his jump and started to come down as the mage worked a spell to knock him clean out of the air. But before he could finish, the black mote of Beth’s ability flashed below, and the mage reached out to snatch the girl again. But this time, it wasn’t Beth that he grabbed. Beth was holding onto Nona. The mage’s fingers wrapped around Nona’s throat, and the woman kicked her feet in the air.

“Nona, do it!” said Cole.

Nona gripped the sleeve of the mage, digging in her own fingers. And then, as if melting away from reality, the mage vanished from sight. It was just Nona and Beth hanging in midair for a moment, alone, before they started to fall. Beth caught them with another charge of her shadowstep and returned them to the ground, just as Cole landed nearby and blasted a wave of dust and debris across the plaza.

Beth looked up to where the mage had vanished in midair. There were still remnants of his presence, white motes of power and glyphs of protection already dissolving into the ether once more. “What the fuck? What just happened?” she demanded.

“I sent him home,” rasped Nona. She rubbed her throat. “It’s my ability.”

“We could have done that this whole time?!”

“It was a risk,” said Cole. “We couldn’t know for sure they had broken into the tower like us. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise. And there will be consequences.”

“Like what?”

Cole looked over to where Roxy, Howie, Artian, and Besson were jogging up to their position, only to see them stop mid-stride, staring past them with wide eyes and slack jaws. Cole twisted his own head and a shock ran through his veins.

Outside the kaleidoscopic walls of the tower, six gigantic eyes of flame fixed on their position, pressed against the barrier like a kid peering into his ant farm. Only, Cole and his team were the ants. Every inch of his skin crawled under that gaze, and the ground under their feet started to rumble.

UNWELCOME!

GET OUT OF MY TOWER!

The voice boomed in his mind, drowning out all thought and reason and stabbing like an icepick behind his eyes. Cole clamped his hands over his head and clenched his teeth until the echoes in his skull faded. “Like that!” he gasped, struggling to keep his feet. The rest of his team was recovering as well. Even Nugmeg howled with pain. The only ones unaffected were Beth and Artian.

Beth looked from him to the wall and her jaw dropped. Cole pulled her along, barely able to focus his eyes. Above him, the flock of winged monsters shrieked and fled in every direction. What a moment ago was a circling swarm quickly cleared. Far above, several blisters on the ceiling began to form, glowing from dark red, to orange, to bright yellow.

“Move, move! To the arena!” Cole shouted.

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!

Cole put a hand to his head against the pain and grunted with effort. The blisters on the ceiling erupted, and magma poured down, splashing over the ruins around them. Rivers of molten rock fell on the ruined city. It would bury the ruins, but first it would course through the streets, funneled by the structures in a flash flood so hot that no magic potion could ever protect someone from it.

“Holy shit!” shouted Howie. “I can hear him in my teeth.”

“Let’s go!” shouted Roxy. A new stream of lava burst from overhead, cascading down over the temple east of the arena. The temple’s tower melted under the Viscous, glowing rock splashed over the structure. A wall of lava gushed out of the alleys, filling the street and creeping toward the arena gates. All the while, the eyes of Dallemonte were fixed on them.

The arena itself was slightly elevated, which came as a blessing as Cole and the others dashed up the stairs, only to fall to their knees again at the top as the voice of an angry god whited out their minds.

LEAVE MY REALM!

“We’re trying, you fucking asshole!” screamed Roxy. Cole pulled her to her feet, and they staggered into the arena. A section in the center of the ring had been hollowed out, like a cylinder had been pulled from the ground.

“There!” shouted Besson.

Cracks formed in the walls of the arena as the ground shook. Parts of the walls began to tumble down. Dallemonte was destroying his own preserved city in an effort to burn them out of his tower. Fissures opened in the sand of the arena. More magma began to seep up, spilling out onto the sands with a hiss and crackle, smoking and spreading noxious fumes. Cole gasped, vaulting over a stream of molten rock and then dodging as a geyser of super-heated steam vented just a few feet away from him.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” said Cole. The hollow hole led down, and over the lip, Cole could see a swirling vortex of mist.

“That’s the door to the safe room!” shouted Beth. She prepared to jump in, but Roxy grabbed her.

“Wait!” she said. Roxy looked over at Cole, screaming over the rumbling. “Cole, I can’t leave her!”

“We’ve got no choice,” said Cole. He glanced back. A three-foot wall of lava burst through the arena gates, flooding towards them. Cole grabbed Artian. “Stay with her! Keep her safe until our people find her!”

Artian nodded. “I owe you that much and more, Lord Cole. I will guard her with my life.” His expression grew thoughtful. “And if I should chance to reach home, shall I carry with me a message from your lordship?”

Cole hesitated, then grit his teeth. “Find Ryan. Tell him I’m out there, and I won’t stop until I find a way to reach him. Expect me.”

Artian nodded. Beth hugged Roxy, and then surprised Cole by also hugging Nona, who stiffened up, looking a bit like a cat that hadn’t wanted to be picked up. Beth let go and turned to Cole, biting her lip.

“I guess this is it,” she said. “You guys weren’t total assholes, sort of.”

Cole unzipped his admin pack, pulling out the pouch of Babel bucks. He stuffed it into her hands. “Use these. Get stronger. Survive, until our extraction team can pull you out, and come find us when you make it out.”

She took the pouch, then stepped off the edge with Artian close behind.

“Can we fucking go?” asked Howie.

Cole waved them on. Besson, Howie, Nutmeg, and Nona all jumped. Roxy hesitated, looking at the portal, then at Cole. She took a breath, and her expression smoothed. She nodded, reaching out her hand. Cole took it, and together, they stepped off the edge into the mist.

The vortex swallowed them, and then there was a sensation of being jerked sideways. Cole tried to hold on to Roxy, but they were pulled apart and he was thrown end over end, tumbling through a colorless grey storm with no discernible direction and a muffled roar in his ears like he was underwater. Only the sensation that he was moving, fast. He continued to tumble until the mist around him glowed brighter and brighter. It became almost painfully bright, and he clenched his eyes shut against it, for all the good it did. Then, with a final flash, the bright light winked out and he hit a cold cement floor.

Cole gasped, opening his eyes to the yellow painted markings below him. Authorized teams and medical personnel only beyond this point. He pushed his head up, head still swimming, and looked around at the pit room of the DOR compound. The fifty-cals were on station, pointing down at them. And every member of his squad was accounted for, sprawling on the floor in various states of hating life. It took every ounce of willpower to climb to his knees, and that was so shaky there was no way he’d be able to stand without help. He raised his right hand.

Medics rushed forward, along with a bearded Kicker that Cole recognized as the leader of one of the higher-level teams. He was at least level 40, more than twice Cole’s level.

“Welcome back, Airborne. Anything?”

“We just took Beth Black through the gate to the seventh floor safe room. But you better fucking hurry. She doesn’t want to be rescued.”

The Kicker sprinted up the ramp out of the pit, raising his voice to be heard over the siren and hustle of medical personnel. “Seventh floor! Black is seventh floor! Prep for invasive entry! Clear the pit!”

Two medics helped Cole to his feet and out of the pit.

DOR Chapter 93 – Bring the House Down

Chapter 93 – Bring the House Down

Cole got a clear view of the battlefield as he climbed above it—including the wolf-like knight, bounding from façade to façade directly below him like gravity didn’t apply. Each leap carried it closer to the party in the plaza pushing desperately toward the Arena. The top half of the knight’s armor was drenched in multi-colored monster blood and steam billowed from the cracks in his armor. His claws dug into hard volcanic stone as if it were putty.

In the square below, the rest of his squad fought their way across, cutting down what few monsters hadn’t swarmed the Beast Cult position. Roxy and Besson cut a path, while Beth swung her bone sword at any monsters coming up from behind. Nona had swapped her carbine for a spear, which she used to pin approaching reptiles for Beth to finish off. Howie and Artian fought from the middle of the pack, spraying slowing ice and firing precise arrows. But the monsters weren’t their biggest problem.

The Beast Cult mage drifted in the air, working a spell as he looked down at Cole’s team.

“Howie, three o’clock high!” called Cole. He sighted his rifle on the floating figure, feeding his momentum into his magazine, and fired five quick rounds as he stopped dead in the air. Two of them went wide, skipping off the mage’s shield at shallow angles. But three struck dead-on and the spell flickered. Howie angled his launcher up, firing a shell that left a blue trail of frost. When the mage struck it down with almost contemptuous ease, it burst into a wide cloud of frozen fog that continued to drift, obscuring the squad from the mage’s view. He could sense the Beast Cult mage’s frustration in his body language as he shredded the cloud with giant claws of white energy—only for the fog to fill back in.

Cole started to fall again, and burned the ability in his Dartwing cuffs, shunting himself forward into a glide and building up further speed. A sensation enveloped him, letting his already enhanced Acuity feel the air currents like never before. The cuffs felt like an enormous bird’s wings had erupted from his back and given him total control of his descent. He leaned into it, sweeping out over the wide street and angling back toward the Beast Cult knight on the wall below.

The lupine knight clinging to the wall tensed for another jump that would bring him only a few pounces away from Nona and Beth. Cole angled himself, imagining those ephemeral wings tucking in for a stoop like a falcon. The air around him started to shriek like a Stukka siren.

I am the projectile. I am the meteor.

The wraps on his wrists burned as he increased his falling speed beyond what the LF analyzer had told him was possible. He flared off at the last second, turning his falling speed into horizontal airspeed and slammed into the wall just above Wolf-head. Stone rippled out from his point of impact, as though the volcanic building had melted from his strike. The shockwave hit Wolf-head full on, who dug in his claws and tried to weather the impact. But the stone under the hybrid knight’s fingertips broke away, and it was driven down to the streets with incredible force. Cole tumbled down the façade as well, feeling as though every jutting mantle and window hanging managed to find something soft on the way down. He hit the ground on his back, looking up from an odd angle at the side of the ruin. He’d left a crater in the side of the already unstable structure, and cracks were beginning to spread.

“Oh, fuck!” he shouted.

The first slabs of stone spilled outward, crumbling and crashing as the entire face of the ruin bowed out and began to slide free in a cacophony of crashing, crushing stone. Cole pushed himself over and up to his feet, desperate to get out of the way as chunks of stone that would crush him to a pulp smashed into the ground around him. A chunk bounced off his helmet, almost dropping him. Without his kevlar, it would have split his skull like a melon, he was sure of it. Cole staggered on as more and more of the structure bombarded the road around him.

Movement out of the corner of his eye dragged his attention over to where the Beast Cult knight was climbing to his own feet, shaking off the impact of the meteoric shockwave too late, as a half-ton of black stone dropped straight on his back, driving the foul creature to the ground. It howled and thrashed, pinned to ground by a slab of the ruin. Its helmet had been pulled away, and the snarling creature underneath looked even less human than Ram-head had with its elongated snout bound by thick cables and single, hate-filled red eye burning in its forehead.

On seeing Cole, the thing reached out, snarling through muzzled jaws and scratching against the ground with metal claws. But there was no hope of pulling its way free. Cole lifted his rifle and fired the remainder of his magazine into the wretched beast. But it wasn’t until the building finished collapsing on the creature that it finally died. The cold rush of a level-up washed over him. Cole gasped at the sudden and brief burst of ice flowing through his veins—the only sense of cold he’d felt since coming to the fifth floor of the tower. It forced him to his knees as he grit his teeth. Around him, the rumbling of the collapse finally quieted as the rubble came to rest, with only a few loose stones tumbling down the slope on top of the knight’s obsidian grave.

No marker for the Beast cult. Cole planted his rifle stock on the ground and levered himself to his feet. Every muscle in his body felt like it had been battered to its limit. Meteoric Leap might negate the kinetic impact of smashing into the front face of the ruin, but not the fall after. He’d be covered in bruises for weeks and probably also dead were it not for his enhanced Resilience. His chest heaved and he spit a mouth full of sticky dust, trying to expel the grit from his mouth.

“The helmet is down,” he gasped into his radio. “Repeat, Beast Cult knight is out of play.”

He stumbled out into the square, where the rest of his squad still dueled with the midair mage, to no apparent effect. Watching the red and white robed mage fend off automatic weapons fire, spells, and even a shadow-step sword slash from Beth, he was struck once more how badly the Beast Cult outclassed his team. Maybe if he had Deadlight or Hard Tone to put the hurt on them, things would look less one sided. But if he hadn’t managed to take out that mage on Curahee, if he hadn’t managed to pierce the first mage’s shield here, and then bury the knight under a building… well, they’d be toast, and that’s all there was to it. They weren’t winning through strength. It was planning, execution, and a double-helping of luck.

Even defending against everything his team could throw at him, the mage responded with flashes of white ephemeral claws that churned deep furrows in the ground and left man-sized claw marks across the faces of the buildings. Roxy caught one on her shield, and it flashed as she took the hit, but the edge of it scored across her arm in a spray of blood. Cole swore, reloaded his rifle, and added his own fire.

A burning glyph appeared between his fire and the mage, scattering the meteoric rounds as the mage’s mask snapped down in his direction. He dove behind a short wall just as three jagged white slashes tore fissures in the wall above him and the street behind.

“Bingo charges!” called Howie.

“Same!” called Roxy.

Besson’s machine gun had cut off, too. Cole could hear the stunted barks of a service pistol—for all the good that would do against the bastard.

Cole pushed up from his hiding spot and threw himself to the side just as the wall was pulverized with another spell and a cascade of ephemeral shards rained down like flechettes. But the mage was forced to guard himself from above as a black mote shot up, and an angry Beth swept her sword in an overhand swing as she fell. The Beast cult mage manifested a smaller version of its claws, barely deflecting the heavy greatsword enhanced by Beth’s ability. She vanished back into her mote form as the mage grabbed her right out of the air, slipping between his fingers and darting back toward the ground. He sent another ephemeral slash across the ground an instant too late as Beth darted Roxy’s shield.

“Cole, what’s our play?” demanded Roxy. “We’re getting hammered out here!”

Nothing they had could get through that shield at range. The only thing that could get close at all was Beth. Cole grit his teeth. He hadn’t wanted to put this weight on her. Hadn’t wanted to be forced to rely on the girl they’d come to rescue. Even now, he wanted to tell her to make a break for the stairs, that the Beast Cult was probably after his team, not her. But the truth was, no one knew their true intentions. Even if Cole sacrificed his entire team, there was no guarantee the Beast Cult bastard wouldn’t chase Beth through the entire tower just to get his hands on an attuned Earth hero and take her back to his world to be a soldier slave in whatever landed had spawned these animal-human hybrid monsters.

But there was one play left. Nona gave them access to one trump card even this mage wouldn’t see coming. But she couldn’t do it alone.

“Roxy,” said Cole. “I need you to pass these instructions to Beth,” he said as he reloaded. “She wanted to see what it was like to fight as a team, have others rely on her. This is her chance.”

“Send it,” said Roxy.

DOR Chapter 92 – A Beastly Enemy

Chapter 92 – A Beastly Enemy

“Howie, eyes on three BC pacs, two robes one helmet, north corner rooftop of five-story structure four-hundred meters east of your position, caved in west corner. Confirm you have structure in sight.”

“That’s more than one structure from my station. NODs are on, lasso it for me.”

Cole swapped back to his patient hunter rifle for a moment, using the pressure pad on the handguard to sweep an infrared laser in a tight circle on the structure while silently thanking Norn and Bjorn for the accessory rail. Hopefully, none of those Beast Cult hybrid freaks could see into the infrared spectrum.

“Ok, confirmed. Standing by for indirect.”

They didn’t have the luxury of dozens of other challengers here who wouldn’t take kindly to the assholes who whipped up a horde of monsters into a frenzy. They didn’t have enough time or water to make it to another staircase—which might also be guarded. It was them, and the three Beast Cult members that Cole could see moving on the rooftop before him. There was no avoiding this. They were going to have to fight. And if these ones were as tough as Ram-Head, only surprise, planning, and overwhelming aggression were going to let them come out the other side. With two mages and one of the armored knights,

“Standby until Nona regroups with you.”

“She’s already here, reported her side clear.”

“Perfect. Be ready to move. BC activity looks like they aren’t aware of our presence, but they’ve got tripwires up around their position, and probably at the entrance to the arena. So we’re going to hit them first. What’s your highest lethality munition?”

“Hellfire-lightning fusion. Bypasses metal armor, perfect for those animal-headed assholes. Whenever you’re ready.”

“That’s good, because I’m staring at a wolf-helmet knight right now, and the backs of two mages. Besson, be ready to support by fire when they break cover. Keep Artian with you. Roxy, with Beth. Keep her from jumping in sword-first.”

“Got it,” whispered Roxy.

“Nona, stick close to Roxy and Beth. We get a clean opening, we go for the stairs and get Beth to the next safe zone.”

“I will,” said Nona.

Cole settled in and lined up his snake-bite rifle. “Send it, Howie.”

“On the way!”

The whump of Howie’s mortar was barely audible above the crackling of the magma and noise of the creatures in the city, but the Wolf-Headed knight’s helmet immediately snapped to the general direction it came from. He dropped to all fours like an animal and pulled himself across the rooftop toward the source of the sound, angling his head to try and pinpoint the next instance not realizing that the threat was climbing up above him. The other two Beast Cult mages picked up on his behavior immediately, each turning to the west, and turning their backs to Cole.

Not smart when he had a rifle with twelve seconds of silent operation. Cole burned the snake-bite rifle’s ability and marked all three enemies, lined up his sights on the closest mage, and began to fire. Even though the bolt-action otherworld armament slammed into his shoulder like a thrown brick, the rifle made no noise—not even a scrape as its barrel dragged across the irregular surface of the stone statue. The side-by-side rounds raced out, twin comets spurred on by his accretion wraps. He racked the bolt and fired again before the first rounds even reached his target.

When the first rounds struck, a half-dome of blue energy crackled a meter back from the mage. He barely had time to flinch before the shield shattered, and the second pair of rounds burst through his back, turned a neat ninety degrees, and slammed into Wolf-head from the side. While they failed to penetrate, they knocked the enormous figure to the side. Cole fired again, directly at Wolf-head this time. And then the rooftop erupted in a flash of dazzling, red-tinged lightning. Under no illusions that would be enough, Cole racked the bolt again and waited for the light to dim enough for him to see his target.

The wolf-helmed knight stood with his back arched, contorted from what Cole initially took to be pain or the paralysis toxin from his snake-bite rifle. But as he watched, the knight’s body twisted, elongated, and started to shift as overlapping plates of his armor telescoped to allow for the knight’s body to extend into a more canine shape.

“The fuck…?” Cole muttered to himself, too shocked to even fire. Above, Howie’s second mortar exploded mid-air as the surviving mage launched a bolt of white lightning up to intercept it. But creatures on the ground had started to take notice of the commotion on the rooftop, and multiple monsters were converging on the source of the light and noise.

“Hold indirect,” whispered Cole. “The mage has defenses up, and they’re about to have company. This could be our chance to slip their net.”

Serpentine forms snaked their way out of the magma canals, while savage reptiles started scrabbling at the walls of the smoking structure. Even several of the winged bat-things, roused by the shockwave of Howie’s mortar, began to circle. As Cole watched, the first of the dinosaur-like monsters crested the roof, ready to swarm and devour the Beast Cult.

Until the knight finished his transformation, dropping to all fours and roaring through the visor of his helmet. The creatures flinched away, and Wolf-head dashed forward, whirling in a flash of elongated claws and blood. That explained why the knight hadn’t carried a weapon like Ram-head. He was the weapon. Behind him, the mage lashed out with whips or squeezed his fist and caused monsters to simply crumble mid-stride in a mass of shattered limbs.

Cole called the rest of him team while he stowed his snake-bite rifle. “One robe down, others busy. Go, now!”

Now, with his suppressed rifle, he continued to fire on the Beast Cult position from the twin statues. Even without the marks assisting his aim, the accretion wraps sped his bullets such that he didn’t even have to account for the drop across the intervening distance. Unfortunately, whatever active defense the sorcerer had wasn’t limited to swatting mortars out of the sky. Bright white motes shot out from the mage, intercepting his meteoric bullets before they could reach his body.

With the rooftop quickly becoming overwhelmed with monsters, the mage simply lifted into the air, hovering on a swirling cloud of glassy dust. The monsters below jumped at him, snapping jaws inches away from his heels. But the mage paid them no heed. He twisted his hands, then swept them overhead as an expanding ring of white light shot out from his position.

As it passed over Cole, he felt a jolt of panic, as though he’d been caught out, despite his cover. The Beast Cult mage spun, facing his exact direction, and worked another spell.

“Oh, shit!” said Cole. He pushed off the statue’s head instants before it exploded underneath him in a dazzling white burst. Shrapnel peppered his vest and stung him through his thick uniform. Hoping he wasn’t bleeding too badly, he slowed his fall as much as he could, clipping the edge of a rooftop and rebounding off the side of it. The ground rushed up at him, and he landed awkwardly in a fall that would have killed an un-enhanced human. For him, it merely hurt like hell. But he hadn’t broken anything.

He pushed to his feet, dashing through the alley toward the arena with his head down as more ethereal explosions detonated around him. Ahead, two monsters cut across his path, headed for the fight. One of them skid to a stop when it noticed him, scrabbling against the black stone street and hissing. It launched at him with hunger in its eyes. It looked like a monitor lizard, except it had jet black scales and was about the size of a horse. Cole cut left through a narrow opening in the building and pushed through a series of tight rooms, with the giant reptile wrecking its way through the building behind him.

Finally, Cole found a window too tight for the creature to squeeze through and vaulted through it, rolling out the other side and pressing himself against the opposite structure. The creature tried to jam its way through, scrabbling at him with six-inch toes tipped with gleaming black talons. It swiped at him, close enough that he could hear the air whistling off its talons, before pulling itself back to look for another path.

Disinclined to wait for it to find one, Cole kept moving, approaching a set of exterior stairs to hopefully get a look at the rest of the squad’s situation. The Beast Cult mage’s attention seemed to shift elsewhere, and Cole lost the over-exposed sensation. Was that some sort of Soul-sight ability like Nona was always so worried about? If so, he could see why she hated it

“Sitrep,” he called as he ascended.

“Half-way across the plaza,” called Roxy. Cole could hear her shotgun barking over the radio, along with Nutmeg’s ferocious barks and snarls. “No sign of—shit! Contact right! 200 meter—is that a fucking werewolf?!”

Cole pushed on. Somewhere behind him, a wall or door burst, and he heard the hiss and snuffle of the lizard monster looking for his trail. But he wasn’t planning on sticking around. He burned a meteoric leap charge before he even hit the roof. The rooftop to his east was a sea of red splotches, like a film climbing up from below even as it swirled above in the flocks of avian monsters. The mage looked like a one-man lightning storm, scouring the air, the rooftop, and the ground for fifty meters in every direction with jagged arcs of electricity that sounded like a constantly cracking bullwhip, even over the long distance between them.

And Wolf-head, where was Wolf-head? Cole scanned, finally seeing one red dot moving against the flow, bounding from rooftop to rooftop—straight toward the one patch of blue making its way across the plaza toward the entrance to the arena.

“Keep moving!” shouted Cole. “I’m on my way.”

Power burning in his legs, he launched himself into the air.

They’d executed a perfect ambush. But they’d also poked the bear. It was time to see how far his squad had come since Curahee.

DOR Chapter 91 – Hunters of Hunters

Author note: Not sure how it happened without my noticing, but we're a bit desynced from how far ahead the Patreon ought to be from the Royal Road version. There will be daily updates this week to get back to the proper amount of advance chapters.

Chapter 91 – Hunters of Hunters

“There it is,” said Cole, sighting through his rifle at a narrow gap between two massive, obsidian statues several kilometers away. Above it, the prismatic marker for the staircase wavered in the air. Another day of slinking through the sprawling, labyrinthian ruins and avoiding what monsters they could had brought them within sight of a grand, circular structure that reminded him of the Colosseum in Rome. If the building had been ten stories of black obsidian and ringed with statues of dragons.

“Where the hell did the big guy find that?” asked Howie, peering through a pair of binoculars. “Looks like an arena for kaiju battles.”

It very well might have been, but the absence of a mist gate similar to the one on the previous floor suggested that whatever guardian typically lurked in the black colosseum currently wasn’t at home. Which was good, because they’d barely survived the last one and there was no local lord with a team of over-leveled goons coming to clear this one out.

Cole lowered his rifle and turned around. The rest of his team was arrayed behind him on the roof of a building. Ideally, he’d wait a few more hours to keep an eye on the place. Beth was eager to keep climbing, which he didn’t give a shit about. But their heat resistance potions were starting to wear off. And that, he very much cared about. He was starting to drip sweat as the heat went from Texas to Arizona to Syria to Kuwait. Heat he could handle. Heat while being out of water was another matter. Their surveillance was going to have to get active.

“Nona,” said Cole, waving her over. She approached at a crouch, careful not to expose herself over the structure’s crenelations. Cole made a knife-hand to the north. “You take the left-side. I’ll take right. Half-klick in each direction, then we come back. If you lose radio, come back sooner. No one stays out of contact from here to the stairs.”

Nona nodded and scrambled back toward the collapsed edge of the ruin so that she could slide down and sneak off.

“Just the two of you?” asked Artian.

Cole tightened his prismatic apeskin cloak. “We’re best suited to staying stealthy. The rest of you wait here with Beth until we get back.”

Beth scoffed and gestured out. “It’s right there. We can see it’s only got a few monsters. Let’s just go.”

Roxy put a hand on her shoulder, but Cole sidled over. “Yeah. We’ve got a great view of it,” he said. He pointed out a tower to the south. “So does the balcony of that tower. So does the roof of the building five-hundred meters past it. So does that temple’s bell-tower. And that genie put us down for hours. Other challengers, or worse, could have stolen a march while we were asleep. Anyone watching is going to see us once we break cover and enter the plaza outside the arena. And if anyone in any of those positions has something that can hit us at range, we’re toast before we hit the gates.”

“Lady Black,” said Artian, “Believe me, no one is more eager to leave these blistering streets than I. But my companions were, to a man, killed by enemies clever enough to wait until their guard had dropped. One cannot fight enemies both fore and aft.”

Cole had seen that, himself. Impatient soldiers from another squad ready to move up and secure a compound, not realizing Glefa was in structures outside the perimeter with eyes on the entry control points. Fire from the front and rear resulted in six injuries and three pine boxes before Cole’s squad could gain fire superiority and maneuver to assist.

Beth still didn’t look happy. Being on her own, not integrating into any group beyond the absolute periphery hadn’t yet cemented her lack of foresight’s potential to cause her comrades harm. In her head, she was still the hero clawing her way through hell and it would take more than one genie to unfuck that mindset. He met Roxy’s eyes, briefly, and she nodded. The squad’s resident mama bear didn’t need to be told to keep an eye on Beth. She hadn’t been more than three meters from the girl in the last day.

Brushing past the pair of them, Cole nodded to Howie and Besson, who would hold this position. A break in the crenelations let him drop down, and from there, he dashed across a narrow street and scrambled up the side of an adjacent structure thanks to enhanced strength and his meteoric middle finger to the concept of gravity. A covered sky bridge led south, across a canal of magma where serpentine forms swam through the molten rock. The heat coming up made his breath catch in his throat—more intense than anything he’d felt since they downed those potions. How long before the air itself became harmful to their health?

On the other side of the bridge, Cole ascended a squat wall and crouched in the corner of a tower, angling his rifle across at the balcony of the spire he’d pointed out to Beth. The deep shadows of the recessed interior were laid bare thanks to his Acuity, and he spotted movement that caused him to tense up. But a few moments later, a group of several leather-winged creatures the size of eagles took flight from the spire, heading further south, away from him. He let out a breath, dropped down to the south side of the wall, and moved on.

“Spire clear, continuing,” he mumbled into his radio.

“Good copy,” came Roxy’s voice. “Nona reports her side clear so far.”

For good measure, he kept an eye on the looming tower as he crossed through its shadow. The second location he’d pointed out was another half-klick around the perimeter. What might have been a mansion or a banquet hall sloped where the interior had likely crumbled in, looking as though a giant had stepped on the foyer. But the rooftop nearest the arena looked like it was at least in decent shape, and had a stone arcade giving it cover from above as well as a solid vantage point.

Cole vaulted from one roof to another, over the top of what looked like a person-sized dinosaur, as it clawed at the ground below. He held his breath as his boot skid on loose sand ground down from the stone of the structure, listening to the creature start to sniff the air on the street below.

While the ambient noise in the city was fairly high, thanks to the hiss and crackle of baking air and the rumble of churning magma, using even his quieter pistol with the silenced barrel would carry at least a couple-hundred meters. But the creature, healthy sense of paranoia of its own, took off down the street and vaulted a magma canal closer to the central plaza before disappearing down an alley.

Cole relaxed and started to move across the rooftop—but stopped. Something buzzed against his senses. Barely perceptible, but unmistakably there. Like a tripwire that felt like the building potential of an ability being used as he approached the threshold. Every bone in his body was telling him not to take another step further. He moved laterally across the rooftop, skirting the edge of the sensation, never passing over its vague promise of threat. Whatever this thing was, he didn’t know if it was tied to this rooftop, creating a perimeter, or spanning half the city. And he had no way to know.

Or did he?

This thing is junk, he remembered Beth saying about his LF analyzer. That’s not how my abilities work at all.

Cole’s enemy marking let him see their presence not through vision alone, but also through a Lewis Field connection. Well, whatever this thing was, it had to be connected to someone or some thing through the Lewis Field. Could he adjust his ability to detect something hostile other than enemies themselves?

“I’ve encountered some sort of boundary spell,” said Cole. “Unclear who set it up or why. Investigating.”

“Be careful,” whispered Roxy, as though whoever was on the other end could hear her through his headset.

He crept along to a more covered corner, then thought, conceptualizing his intent before burning his ability. Don’t show me who—show me what. What is hostile to me, here?”

At first, nothing happened. But slowly, a red haze began to spread out from him in the direction he moved. It became an expanding crescent moon that filled in a large circle of wavering light visible only to him. The area itself gave off a feel of vigilance and anticipation, like a dead-fall trap waiting for an animal to wander in and set it off.

“Definitely something here,” said Cole. He skirted the edge of the boundary of the tripwire. Monsters snuffling below weren’t setting off whatever this spell was, so he had to assume it was tuned for humans, specifically. Moving another hundred meters showed him enough of the curvature of the area to figure out where the epicenter probably lay, and it lined up with the rooftop arcade vantage point. Cole looked around for high ground to the east and spotted a worn statue. He descended from the roof and scrambled across the ground until he reached it, climbing up as his cloak took on a black, glassy appearance to keep him hidden from onlookers.

The statue, what he took for two leaders embracing, had a depression in one of the crowns that he settled into, taking his snakebite rifle off his pack and peering through the aperture sight. The rooftop arcade seemed to swim closer through the pinhole, filling his entire field of view.

Time to see who was trying to set a trap. And maybe see about turning it on its head.

DOR Chapter 90 – Marching Orders

Chapter 90 – Marching Orders

“Three friendly coming in,” Cole said into his radio before he turned the corner to the base of the spire. A few moments later, Nutmeg came running out to greet them and solicit chin scritches before leading them back to a ruined building near the spire where the rest of the team had staked out on the second floor to wait for him and the others.

Beth immediately ran over to Roxy and launched into a hug before telling her about their bad-ass escape from the genie.

“Though,” she said, finger tapping her chin and shit-eating grin spreading across her face. “You guys do a lot of running away. Maybe your team’s name should be Brave Sir Robin,”

Howie’s eyes lit up, “Dude!” he said, “I know, right?”

Cole rolled his eyes as he doffed his pack and rifle for the moment. “We’re an extraction team. Our job is to get you out of danger, Beth—”

“And what a bang-up job you’re doing,” she mocked.

“That generally means moving from where there is danger to where there isn’t,” Cole said, giving Howie a pointed look. “It’s not running away if it’s completing your primary OPORD.”

Besson grunted in agreement at that. Cole looked over, but the dog handler didn’t feel like offering any additional support and turned his attention to Nutmeg.

“She raises a good point that we don’t have a team name, yet,” said Roxy.

“Who’s low on water?” asked Cole, changing the subject.

Roxy raised her hand, and after a moment, so did Besson, nodding down to Nutmeg, who whined. Being front-line fighters was more physically demanding and burned through more fluids. Artian also eyed the water-skins and licked his lips but looked more resigned than greedy. The heat resistance potions made thirst feel twice as bad, but he probably felt that he’d asked enough charity of them. And it could have been worse. He could have fallen in with the team that came behind them and now be genie food or a third corpse waiting to be reclaimed by the stone circle.

Cole pulled the two water skins he’d taken off the bodies and tossed them over, and also handed the axe over to Besson, who confirmed that the soul-key transfer had extended to him. “Hydrate,” Cole told them. That’s probably the last we’ll find before we hit the stairs.”

“Speaking of stairs,” said Howie. He glanced out the window, where two of the ever-present markers shined in the air like prisms. “How do we avoid any more of those killer genies?”

Cole shook his head. “I can’t imagine more of them being trapped like that. Seemed like a pretty bespoke solution to a psychic soul-devouring problem.” He glanced at Nona for confirmation, who shrugged. Cole pursed his lips. So helpful. “There are still monsters, in our path, but we’ve got a small group and there are no more teams near us. Our biggest concern is the BC operators.”

Beth raised her hand. “Who the fuck are the BC?”

“Beast Cult,” supplied Howie. “Anti-Earth world-jumpers. Human-animal hybrid guys looking to kill DOR Kickers and grab more Earth kids to fight for them. They helped whip those apes into a frenzy and got a lot of uninvolved challengers killed.”

“They’re bad news,” said Roxy. “Killed a friend of mine in another world. But we made sure they paid for it. I knocked one through a stone pillar.”

“Bad ass,” said Beth. She turned to Cole. “More running away, then?”

“If we can avoid them, we will,” said Cole. “Standing orders are to not engage. If they force the issue or I get a good shot, that’s one thing. But… yeah, we’ll do whatever we can to break contact and get you to the next floor. The good news is that they don’t know where we are, so they probably split up to search the area. And they’re not exactly subtle.”

“We’re stronger than in Curahee,” added Besson. He hefted the dwarf’s axe. “Not as helpless.”

“But not invincible. And still exhausted,” said Cole. The genie’s whisperings had mostly worked because it was right. “I’ll take first watch. Get some rack time while you can. Roxy, I’ll wake you up in a couple hours for the next watch.”

“I’m not sure I can sleep after what almost happened last time,” she said, but immediately yawned.

Cole ducked out the window and pulled himself up to the roof. While the floor wasn’t dark, the only light source was the reflection of the glowing magma on the ceiling of the cave above. Despite that, it still seemed like it had dimmed some, as though Dallemonte still enforced a day-night cycle, even in this entirely underground labyrinth. It offered only a murky, red-orange twilight that surrounded the ruins with a dark murk. He settled back against the remains of what probably used to be the wall of a third story that had long-since collapsed and looked out over the crenelations. Pulling off his gloves, he fished out a small container and dropped a pair of caffeine pills into his hand, which he managed to swallow without water.

A puff of air blew past him, barely perceptible. He turned his head to see Beth leaning against the wall as well, startled to see that he’d noticed her using her ability to join him on the roof.

“Your eyes are glowing like a cat’s,” she said.

“So I’m told,” said Cole, turning back to the city and pulling out his vape pen. Caffeine and nicotine: the classic soldier’s cocktail for staying awake while exhausted. “You shouldn’t be wasting ability charges like that.”

Beth grunted, not denial or affirmation—just acknowledgement that she’d heard him. A silence stretched between them for several seconds before she spoke.

“So, I’ll admit,” said Beth. “I’d probably be dead now if it weren’t for you and Roxy and the others.” She shuddered. “That fucking statue trap. I’d have kept slashing until every single one was busted open. I owe you guys.”

Cole exhaled. “You don’t owe us anything, Beth. We’re here to help you.”

“That’s kind of cool, I guess.” She shifted, arms wrapped around her knees. “They all listen to you and trust you. You guys get to go to other worlds. And you help other people that are like me?”

Cole nodded. “Kids who get taken.”

“And everyone on your team was like that once?”

Sort of. A few people on his team were special circumstances, like Nona and himself. And admittedly, he’d never asked Besson’s deal, and the man wasn’t likely to volunteer his life story to anyone but Nutmeg. But there was a good chance his story aligned. “Pretty much.”

“You guys get paid?”

Cole grinned. “Oh yeah. Six figures, easy. But we work our asses off for it.” He waved his hand out over their general environment. “There’s only about fifty or sixty people kicking for DOR right now. More Kickers on hiatus or retired. Maybe another hundred attuned people in non-team roles within the agency. Very, very few people can do what we can do, Beth. Even with the ones who have the capacity, most don’t have the capability.”

Beth looked out, staring at nothing in particular. “I wouldn’t mind getting paid to help people. Maybe once I’m done with this place I’ll come back to Earth and help you guys. But not until I’m eighteen. I won’t go back to Earth if I have to go back home.”

“I think you could do a lot of good,” said Cole, earnestly. “You’ve got an attitude problem. But you’re driven, smart, and know how to survive. With some actual training and some friends to cover you, hell, who knows?”

“I think I’d like that.”

It was hard not to. Even with the insane amounts of danger and a casualty rate that would never fly in any of the official armed services, Cole didn’t know if he could ever go back to the Army. DOR wasn’t without its problems. He could already see issues inherent to the organization—the secrecy, the infighting and drama between teams and individuals. Powerful people butting heads, and a director who was a little too used to being king in his own castle. But, all that aside, he was exploring new worlds, using powers beyond any capabilities Earth’s technology could give him, and getting paid like an officer. And they weren’t just trading fire with what felt like infinite identical dickheads from Glefa, though Beast Cult could give them a run for their money in the Asshole Olympics.

“I can’t stop the extraction team from coming after you,” said Cole. “But I will make sure my boss knows your wishes. And that you’d make a good Kicker once we sand down those sharp edges.”

“Fuck your sanding,” said Beth.

Cole just grinned and chuckled to himself.

Yeah. In a few years, he could see her cleaving through a horde of monsters to pull Little Timmy out of an otherworld. Beth had a rotten childhood. Abusive mom, creep for a father figure. But it hadn’t broken her. It had forged her like the heat of a crucible and tempered her. Made her tough. But it hadn’t stripped away her heart, and for all her cynicism about her own circumstances, Beth was obviously someone who cared deeply for others.

Just the kind of person DOR needed more of.

DOR Chapter 89 - Spoils

Chapter 89 - Spoils

“That’s dark,” said Beth.

Cole glanced at the dyed-black hair and soot-smeared eyes of the teenage goth and declined to comment. At the two bodies, the ring of stone statues was spreading, slowly, inch by inch, as the genie trapped within reset its net. Another half hour, maybe, and the body of the dwarf and lizard-man would be back inside the ring and the formless horror could do whatever it wished with them. But their water and weapons now belonged to Cole.

“I’m… just gonna wait back here,” said Beth, less than eager to approach the two face-down figures.

“That’s fine, keep an eye out,” said Cole. He searched the dwarf first, since it felt somehow closer to searching a human. Rifling through the pockets of an anthropomorphic reptile was still a little too weird for him. Somehow, even after all the madness of the Lewis Field worlds, that insignificant distinction still bothered him on a deep, deep level.

The dwarf’s axe he pulled aside and scanned.

<Average weighted axe of giant-culling

Damage increased by 9%-12%

Attacks with this weapon are resistant to being blocked or parried

Damage against enemies larger than the user are increased by a further 9-12%>

Made sense for a dwarf to carry. Almost every humanoid it encountered would be bigger. Most monsters, too. Cole hefted the axe, which was heavy enough that he couldn’t properly wield it. But Besson had high strength and favored an axe he found on Curahee. He was a big guy, but there were plenty of things bigger yet. Like the lizard man. After Cole pulled out a satchel of field supplies and a half-empty canteen, he turned the dwarf face up. His round had left a hole high on the left side of the dwarf’s breastplate. He tapped the analyzer against the armor, but apparently his round had let out the magic smoke, as Jefferson had phrased it. It was dull as dishwater, and if it had previously been an otherworld armament, didn’t trigger the analyzer.

The lizard man’s firearm was next to the body, and Cole picked it up, feeling the weight of it. The axe had been heavy, but the rifle was on a whole other level. Almost as long as Cole was tall, it must have weighed twenty kilograms.  It used a hammer mechanism, and what he’d taken as a single, large blunderbuss barrel was actually six separate barrels in a hexagonal pattern with a break-action. All six barrels faced the same direction, unlike Howie’s pistol that he was so proud of. He tapped the analyzer against it.

<Above average self-loading volley-gun of blood-gorging>

Increase damage and recoil by 13%-20%

Dealing damage with this rifle has a 20% chance of adding a spirit shell to the first available empty chamber.

Dealing lethal damage with this weapon further increases the damage and recoil by 10% for a number of seconds equal to the user’s intelligence times 2. This effect can apply multiple times.>

Nasty piece of work. Cole concentrated and activated Field Strip, melting it down into component parts. Everything but the barrel assembly, the fire control group, and the hammer mechanism melted away. Cole checked all three, discarding the six welded-together barrels that had inherited neither affix and stowed the hammer assembly with now minor self-loading. That would be great for someone like Ken, who used revolvers, and the fire control group with below-average blood-gorging, which Cole was keeping for himself. Having a stacking damage bonus on an automatic rifle with kinetic redirection bullets was something he could see Howie going nuts over, which probably meant it would be a crime against humanity to use in combat. But with his patient hunter rifle already so heavily modified that it was practically popping at the seams, it would have to wait until he found another otherworld assault rifle or carbine.

There was always the snakebite rifle. But a timed stacking effect with, if his math was right, just shy of ten seconds duration, would go a lot further on a rifle firing six-fifty rounds per minute than on a clip-fed bolt action rifle. Cole went through the rest of the challenger’s belongings, finding a nearly-empty waterskin and a pouch full of dead mice—or some other rodent, dehydrated to preserve the carcasses. Cole glanced down at the small, sharp teeth lining the lizard-man’s mouth. Snacks. The genie could have them.

Beyond that, he’d ruined this one’s breastplate as well. But the lizard had a pair of armlets that looked like Aztec stone carvings of a winged serpent. Two gold rings on each had alternating red and blue feathers about the length of his pinky. Cole scanned them, smiled, and pulled them off the lizard-man’s arms and onto his own.

<Average Dartwing Coils

Allows the user to glide for 11 seconds. The first melee attack or thrown weapon attack within 15 seconds of activating this armament will deal 50% increased damage. This armament recharges every 4.5 hours.>

Almost custom tailored to his abilities. He considered for a moment. Did the impact from his Meteoric leap count as a melee attack? Cole looked down at the lizard who had carried a rifle and had items that let him glide. How close was your class to mine? he mused as he continued to search. How high a level had he been? Not high enough for Cole to level up. But Cole was close. Finding little else of value remaining on the lizard man (and no food that he would trust after seeing the rat-pack), he left the bodies to be reclaimed by the ruins.

Beth Black waited in the shadow of a stone awning, smoking one of Roxy’s cigarettes. She eyed Cole as he came up, raising an eyebrow at his new feathered accessories. “Were they out of tuxedo cuffs and collars?”

Back to her usual self. All that fear and anxiety and the trauma of seeing one person kill another must have been pushed to the back of her brain and walled off for the time being. She’d have to find a way to cope, eventually. Bad jokes and bravado could only get a girl so far. All that stuff mounted up and created a debt that would come calling. Cole had seen soldiers crack from combat often enough. More often the Glefa mercs than his Airborne brothers. But a constant barrage of Uncle Sam’s Easter eggs on top of your bunker will do that.

The spire to the east where they were set to rendezvous with the others loomed high above the surrounding ruins. Almost as tall as a terrestrial skyscraper, the top nearly brushed the roof of the canyon above. Cole led the way, with Beth now wary enough to follow stealthily behind rather than stomping around like she owned the entire tower.

A klick out from the spire, Cole got the feeling a familiar and friendly presence had joined them. A few minutes later, Nona shifted into existence beside Cole so smoothly that he didn’t even flinch. Had he felt her schismed soul walking beside him? His Acuity was incredibly high, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have soul-sight, or whatever Nona called it, that would let him detect the missing pieces of her soul. But then, he could also feel people using their ability charges, and no one else had mentioned being able to do the same.

Beth yelped in surprise behind them “Jesus Christ!” she said.

Nona turned her flat stare back for a moment, looking at Beth, who squirmed under the regard.

“What do you want, creep queen?” asked Beth.

Cole’s otherworld teammate raised an eyebrow at Cole.

“Stragglers,” he said. “Other challengers that were hiding in our shadow. They’re dealt with.” Cole glanced back at Beth before returning his eyes ahead. “She’s not handling it super well.”

“Good. Her light has dimmed, somewhat,” said Nona.

Beth crossed her arms. “Uh… Firstly, fuck you. Second, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? My light has dimmed.”

“It means your soul is no longer blazing like a forge fire. You’ll be less of a lodestone to every other monster and deific caster.” Nona sniffed. “Less likely to get us killed by the Beast Cult.”

Beth scoffed. “Last I checked, I was stronger than any of you,” she said.

“Not in the ways that matter,” said Nona. “You’re a child of Earth, and so you’ve had it easy.”

Beth sneered. “You have no idea what I came from,” she said.

“A world where monsters existed only in children’s tales,” Nona countered. “And now you’ve been given great power by the circumstance of your birth, and you wield it blindly.”

“I lived with a monster,” said Beth. “He might not have had claws or fangs, but I’d take a hundred dragons over going back to that house. You don’t know me. And I don’t like you.”

Nona shrugged. “I’m not Roxy,” she said. “I don’t care if people like me.”

“That’s enough,” said Cole. “I don’t give a shit if you like each other, but I’m not going to listen to bickering.”

He glared at each of them in turn. When he’d become a sergeant, one of his first lessons was that some people just had caustic personalities that reacted poorly when mixed with someone too similar. People saw the all the aspects of themselves that they refused to face reflected back at them. Left to their own devices, Nona and Beth might start competing in the whose-childhood-was-shittier contest without ever realizing they had more in common than they’d ever admit.

DOR Chapter 88 – Just Desserts

Chapter 88 – Just Desserts

There’s a certain sense of humility that comes with not being able to solve a problem by applying more firepower. In the Army, a lack of fire superiority was something that happened to other countries and support by indirect was just a radio away. A psychic monster trapping them in the jaws of their own insecurity was not something he’d been trained for.

Not since emptying his M4 into the heart-eater demon during the Kevlesh crossover had Cole felt so helpless. What if Nona hadn’t been around to snap them out of it? Soul-sight and deific magic was far outside his expertise as an infantryman. Monsters not made of flesh and blood? Immunity to even otherworld armaments and ammunition? Hell, an entity that required a multi-square-kilometer seal to contain?

It made him wonder, what other threats were coming that his team wasn’t prepared for? It would only take one to be the end of them. While their levels were climbing, they were still one of the less experienced teams in the Departmen of Otherworld Rescue. It didn’t help that most of the intel reporting for this place wasn’t any better than the Army’s, in that half of it was flat-out wrong or came to mutually exclusive conclusions.

Cole thought about it for a minute while he watched the genie batter powerlessly against the bounds of its prison.

“What’s going to happen to it now that it’s loose?” asked Beth. “Is it going to find some way out?”

Cole shook his head. “I think if it could, it would have. I’d bet that sealing device is self-correcting. This city is practically dust, but those statues look like they were carved last week. But what was it even doing here?”

Beth pointed her sword upwards. “The big guy is a collector. That’s what Artian told me. Maybe he was telling the truth. He takes things he likes and adds them to this tower. People, places, creatures.”

Babel was a construct of crossover events, it sounded like. Not just from Earth, but across many realms. And all for one God’s sick amusement. Cole looked at the kaleidoscopic far walls, shimmering through the heat haze. Was he watching, even now? Only vaguely aware of whatever didn’t hold his immediate focus? Or was he keenly aware that Cole and his entire team had almost died to a twisted, city-sized trap?

The genie stopped pounding on the barrier and twisted its head backwards to look further back into the ruined city. With an almost contemptuous disregard for Cole and Beth, it collapsed back into a viscous, black fluid and flowed away from the barrier.

“What’s going on?” asked Beth. “Is it coming back?”

“I don’t think so,” said Cole. He thought about his initial anxiety upon seeing the rings of stone statues outside the window. Not all of the fear had been the genie piping garbage into his brain. The fact that the formation of statues put their team at the center of a bullseye was a real danger because it would draw hostile groups directly to them.

“Come on,” said Cole. A few hundred meters down the way was a three-story building with a collapsed face that made it easy to scramble up to what remained of the rooftop, where he took a prone position and rested his rifle barrel over the lip of the roof, surveilling until, almost twenty minutes later, he saw a hint of movement.

Please be Beast Cult getting eaten, he thought to himself.

No such luck. A figure cut across the main street, swift, but not so much so that Cole’s enhanced Acuity couldn’t pick up the dull, grey armor and faded, blue cloak. No laquered armor, no red and white robes, and no animalistic designs. Not Beast Cult, but the survivors of the party who had been following them. Within a minute, Cole picked out the other members one by one. A woman on a rooftop with a crossbow, a reptilian humanoid vaulting a short wall, and six more with weapons, armor, and intent to kill. All positioning themselves to surround and assault the building where Cole and Beth had been bivouacked only a few minutes before. Only this time, dozens of the stone seals were already broken, and the monster was loose in the city. A black wave rose up behind the woman on the rooftop, sweeping across and carrying her off its heights.

Even from several kilometers away, Cole could hear the screams as the pursuing party met their end at the hands of an ageless creature. Beth chewed her nails and flinched when the screaming started, sitting with her back to the crenelation and wrapping an arm around her knees. She was a tough kid, but there’s tough, and then there’s… well, whatever this was.

“Cole, can we go?” asked Beth. “The others are gonna be waiting.”

“Not quite yet,” he said. “Have to make sure.”

“Sure of what?” asked Beth.

Cole burned half of his last charge to mark the members of the pursuing party. “That none of them are able to keep following us.”

A few minutes later, a pair of figures stumbled through the streets toward their position—the lizard-man with a primitive firearm clutched in his claws, and a person the size of Norn and Bjorn next to them. So their world’s equivalent of a dwarf, most likely. The squat figure looked backward, frantically, unaware that Cole was drawing them into his crosshairs. About three-hundred yards out, how much did the accretion wraps on his hands throw off the muzzle velocity calculations of a rifle zeroed for thirty-six yards? Cole put his center marking directly on the lizard-man’s center of mass.

The survivors made their way outside the stone ring, doubling over and leaning on his long musket to catch his breath. He’d probably drawn the same conclusion as Cole, believing that outside the ring of statues meant safety.

Cole waited for the ambush bonus of his patient hunter rifle to kick in and squeezed the trigger. Three hundred yards away, the bullet struck the lizard-man and then changed angle almost ninety degrees and redirected itself through the chest of the dwarf. With two small puffs of aerosolized blood, the figures collapsed. The arquebus remained stiff a moment longer before it, too, clattered to the street, and the marks winked out.

That was all it took. This capable, confident, aggressive party that had survived every floor of Babel so far, facing who knew what challenges, monsters, and other groups of challengers. And within the span of a few minutes, they’d been snuffed out to a man.

He scanned the middle of the genie’s prison a moment longer, not seeing any more red silhouettes—not even a vague red haze over the city where the creature itself lurked. Cole pulled his rifle back and slung it. Beth stared at him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“You killed them,” she said.

Cole nodded.

“Have you done that before?”

Cole considered before answering. “Yes. I was in the Army before I joined DOR. Airborne in Syria. It was war, Beth.”

“I get that,” she said. “I’m not judging you, dude. It’s just…” she swallowed. “I’ve never… like, you know… monsters, sure. And I saw other people get killed. But I don’t think I could have used my sword on other challengers.”

Cole walked over and offered his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet along with the bone sword. “Hopefully you won’t have to,” he said. “But I’m betting the later floors only get more cut-throat. And the only people who can hack it will be the ones who won’t hesitate.”

“M-maybe,” said Beth. The quiver in her voice suggested that maybe her confidence in her ability to continue climbing had just been dealt a serious blow. Between the same shock of a problem that couldn’t be solved with her sword any more than Cole could solve it with his gun, and the reality that she might have to turn that sword on other people… well, it probably wouldn’t stop her. But the girl was facing a harsh reality check.

Hopping down from the roof, Cole slowed his fall speed and landed as though he’d just jumped down from the running board of an Oshkosh. Rather than heading to the rendezvous, he started walking back toward the ring of statues.

“Wait, where are you going?” asked Beth.

“They were following us for our supplies because they’re tight on this floor,” said Cole. “We can’t afford to let theirs go to waste.”

DOR Chapter 87 – The Greater Predator

Chapter 87 – The Greater Predator

“Stop! STOP!” shouted Nona. “Stop destroying the statues!”

Cole froze, finger squeezing his trigger all the way to the wall. Three meters ahead of him, a twenty-foot statue of a dragon towered over them, slowly descending to block the road and prevent their escape. But it was slow. He spun in a circle. There wasn’t a statue within arms reach of himself. Yet, each one loomed as though he was inches from death. Something was fucking with his head, elevating his sense of danger. The same way they’d elevated his sense of safety before.

Cole keyed his radio. “Cease fire, hold position.”

“Are you serious?” called Roxy. But the sounds of her shotgun cut off. Shortly after, so did Howie’s cannon.

Beth spun in a circle with her sword, eyes wide. “What’s going on? Why’d we stop?”

“Nona?” asked Cole.

Nona weaved her way between the stone statues until she stood before Cole. She put a hand on his top rail and pushed the muzzle down. He let her. Behind her, the statues shifted closer, closing in. His eyes flicked from target to target.

Destroy them all.

Nona grabbed his face, forcing it down so that he had to make eye contact with her. She looked supremely uncomfortable with the contact, face messed up, and barely able to hold his own eyes. But she held long enough.

He blinked.

“The statues aren’t the monster,” said Nona. “The monster is beyond the veil. The statues are a sealing it. Every time we break one, more of it comes across.”

Don’t listen.

Your team is dying.

Cole flinched away, but Nona tightened her grip.

“It’s trying to make us free it!” she shouted in his face. “Just look!”

She let go of him and walked between two of the statues. She held out her hands and brushed each of them. Each of them began to move toward her, reaching out. But so slowly that she wasn’t in any real risk.

Panic, confusion, that was the risk. Expending all their ammunition on bits of carved marble, leaving them defenseless. That was the risk.

Releasing whatever the statues held back…

God, they’d almost given it exactly what it wanted. Maybe they already had. Behind them, at the square where they’d first landed after jumping from the second story and cleaved through a dozen or more of the statues, the bubbling, black discharge was collecting, coalescing into the form of massive human torso as black as a cloudy midnight atop a roiling spiral of pitch. It already stood higher than the building they’d bivouacked inside.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Roxy.

“I think your world calls it a djinn,” said Nona.

“A what?” asked Howie.

“A genie,” Cole realized. Of all the things to remember from English lit class.

“The only genies I know are blue, sing and grant wishes,” said Howie.

“This one rends flesh and devours souls,” said Nona. “We can’t fight it. Not with the weapons we have.”

“Can you banish it?” asked Cole.

Nona scrunched her face up. “Maybe. But that’s a deific ability.” She looked over at the kaleidoscopic wall. “It’s a direct connection to He Who Watches through the Lewis Field,” she said. “And we’re not exactly welcome here.”

“Then we go with the original plan,” said Cole. “We get away from it—we get Beth away from it.” He raised his voice and pointed down a black stone road. “Fan out! Howie, Besson, southwest. Nona, Roxy, Artian, due east. Beth, you’re with me. Rally at the shorter spire east-southeast of us, three klicks out. And don’t break any more statues, Hooah?”

A chorus of aye, roger, why not, and run awaaaay answered him. Beth looked up at Cole. “What about us?” she asked.

Grabbing her cloak to keep her close, Cole began to jog between the statues, keeping one eye on his path and one on the towering figure that needed an entire constellation of seals to contain. If his original instinct had been right, before that thing whispered in his ear, then the Venus fly-trap analogy wasn’t too far off. It would have an outer limit. They could get away. But the slower members of the party needed time, distance, and a diversion.

“We’re all soul-snacks to this thing,” said Cole. “But apparently you’re a soul-feast, so we’re going to play a high-stakes game of keep-away, and then I’m going to show you my party trick.”

Beth pried his hand off—Christ, the girl was strong—and increased her pace to run beside him where space between the statues permitted.

The genie, or evil spirit fucker, or whatever it was, must have coalesced enough, because it pushed itself up on arms that extended like pavilion poles, fully ten meters long, at least, and swung its featureless head between the parts of their group fleeing in different directions. It finally fixed its formless black face on them, and started pulling itself along, massive hands digging holes in the walls of stone buildings in its pursuit.

Cole turned and raised his rifle, squeezing off a half-dozen shots that punched holes through the genie as though it were made of smoke—caring less even than his initial brush with a heart-eater demon. It continued clawing its way towards them, gaining quickly. He lowered his rifle and continued on. Worth a try. They turned a corner, facing a veritable wall of the stone statues. Meant to seal the genie, it must have found some way to exert a level of control over them in the time it had been trapped here. No way through.

“When you do your spark teleport, can you take people with you?”

“It’s not a teleport, and I have no idea! I’ve never tried!” said Beth.

“Try it now,” said Cole. “Burn extra charges if you have to.” He pointed to the roof of a long, narrow building running parallel to their street. “Up there.”

Beth grabbed his arm and grimaced as she concentrated. Cole felt the pop of an ability being charged before it felt like he’d been jerked by his chest through a stretched out version of the world, then pulled along a wire at super-sonic speed. He landed on the roof, tumbling, disoriented, before he was able to get his bearings. Beth pulled him to his feet.

“Shake it off,” she said. “What now?”

The genie smashed down into the street where they’d stood only a few seconds before. It howled, inside his head, like someone dragging nails across the world’s biggest chalkboard. Cole winced, and looked out over the city, seeing both other teams making their way out. From this high up, he could see the perimeter of the statues, forming a rough ring through the ruined streets a klick further. The genie reconstituted itself and started to pull its way toward them again.

Give her to me.

“I was a track and field legend,” said Cole, breaking into a run down the narrow roof. “Cross country, javelin, long-jump. Think you can keep up?”

“Nerd,” teased Beth, pouring on the speed beside him. Cole pumped his legs, focusing on his breathing as he squeezed out every ounce of alacrity the Lewis Field in Babel lent to him. Beth kept pace, but her breathing lacked the trained rhythm he’d built up over the years. She was fast, but she wouldn’t be able to hold a sprint. Even an enhanced body had limits. On the street below, the genie pulled itself along, parallel to them, carefully avoiding the statues as it dug its claws into the road to bound along.

Ahead, the edge of the roof loomed. Cole felt Beth hesitate next to him, but he reached out and put his arm on the back of her shoulder, keeping her moving. The Genie still outpaced the both of them, getting ready to cut sharply across their path. His enhanced Acuity could see the tension building in its form, the change in its posture, the tightening of tar-textured muscles under its stretched, pitch flesh.

Keeping them asleep for so long to prepare its trap had given Cole time for his expended ability charges to refresh. Bright stars burned at the back of his mind, latent pools of power waiting to be harnessed. He activated his sword’s speed boost first, putting on such a sudden burst of acceleration that Beth almost stumbled as he pulled her along. Then he burned two charges of his Meteoric Leap ability and launched them both from the rooftop just as the genie crashed through the building in front of them, tearing through stone and tile. It snatched at them as they rocketed up and over.

“WHOOOO!” screamed Beth, beside him. Her raven hair whipped around her face, and she laughed, eyes wide, as though she was on the world’s best roller coaster. “You can fly?”

“Nope,” said Cole. He gauged the distance, fine tuning his falling speed as he looked ahead in their path.

Beth’s smile melted away as they reached the apex and started to drop back down toward the ruins, angled perfectly to fall onto a squat, square structure. Beth held her hands out in front of her as she started to scream. The ground rushed up to meet them. Cole braced as well, making sure Beth didn’t wriggle out of his grip.

They hit the roof of the ruined building, and the entire top half of the structure blew out, dropping them down another three meters, where they fell hard having already lost the fall-protection when they impacted the roof. Through the choking dust from the pulverized building, Cole pulled Beth up, pointing toward a narrow slit window. Beth nodded, coughing, and spark-stepped them through an opening no wider than his hand. No wonder she’d been able to hide from that steam dragon long enough for Cole and his team to get there. The girl could slip through tight spaces like a hamster. Back on street level, surrounded by a double layer of statues, they got another 200 meters or so before the Genie crashed through onto the stone road behind them.

Beside him, Beth was flagging—not used to running all out at such a frenetic pace and now coughing dust and debris out of her already-stressed lungs. She could barely get one foot in front of the other.

“Almost there, Beth, stay with me,” said Cole. “One more jump, you ready?”

She squeaked out a strained “Fuck yeah,” between coughs and flashed him the horns with her left hand while grabbing onto his battle rattle with her right. With less time and space to get a running leap this time, Cole burned two more charges anyway and pushed them as fast as he could. They left the street, wind whistling as they arced over a street clogged with statues, and then suddenly the street below them was clear. They landed among detritus and debris, but no statues. What’s more, the howling, pervasive mind-fogging shriek of the genie and the dark whispers in his mind went silent.

The genie, hot on their heels, reached the perimeter of statues, and splashed against a crackling red barrier, tar flowing out along a solid wall in all directions. It quickly pulled itself back together and began to rake the wall with claws the length of fence posts, slamming itself against the barrier.

Beth sat up, dazed, covered in, ashen debris, and coughing. Cole pulled her upright. “Come on, Black. We’re still in Hell, remember?”

She nodded, letting herself be pulled.

They were out of the frying pan, but still in the fire.

DOR Chapter 86 – Fixation

Chapter 86 – Fixation

Cole shot awake, reaching for his sidearm before his eyes fixed on the members of his team. Nona slumped next to him, while Roxy and Beth leaned against each other on the opposite wall. Howie curled up in the corner, and Nutmeg was splayed across Besson’s lap, who had his head tilted back and snored softly. Something had startled him awake, and he couldn’t put his finger on what. But there was no immediate danger.

Cole relaxed for an instant before he realized something was wrong. He did a quick headcount. Roxy, Howie, Besson, Nutmeg, Nona, Beth, Artian. They were all asleep.

Who was on watch?

He whistled, high and sharp, pushing himself to his feet and checking his equipment. The others started to stir, looking around in confusion. Like Cole, they probably didn’t even remember nodding off.

“Get up,” he said. He dropped his magazine and took a look to make sure it was loaded before replacing it and checking the chamber on his rifle. A quick look at his pack told him that it, likewise, hadn’t been touched. The door was still barred from the inside, so—

“Cole,” said Roxy, looking down at an angle through the window. Her face was ashen, despite the heat of the floor. “What the fuck is that?”

Cole sidled over to the side of the window and peered down, careful not to silhouette himself in the frame. The streets of the city were packed with the stone statues—dozens, if not hundreds of them, placed in the street and all oriented to face their bolt-hole. Statues of all shapes and sizes. Monsters, humans, and animals. One pack of humans in particular caught his eye.

“Howie, get over here,”

His mage bombard came across the room, taking position on the opposite side of the window. Cole nodded down.

“Eleven o’clock, forty meters. Those look like the guys that were following us?”

“Nope,” said Howie, not even looking down and just maintaining eye contact with Cole. His eyes were wide, and his hands shook. “Cole, we got to get the fuck out of here.”

“Agreed, be ready to move in five mikes,” he said. And not just because some otherworld entity had somehow knocked them all out and dragged hundreds of tons of stone around in the—he checked his watch—three hours they’d all been asleep, but because it didn’t take a genius to look at a field of stone statues and realize they were all pointed inward at something. All those statues made it pretty damn clear that something was in the center of them, and they didn’t have a proper perimeter. They might as well have painted the building fire engine red and put a flashing beacon on the roof.

“Nona,” said Cole. “We need eyes out there,”

She swallowed and nodded. She vanished from sight, but reappeared only a few seconds later, eyes wide and breathing hard. “There’s something else out there soul schismed,” she said. “Something huge. And it’s dangerous.”

“Shit,” said Cole. “Which way?”

“Every way. We’re already inside it. It’s bubbling up from the ruins like a miasma.”

Besson swung his pack around. “Then we get out of it.”

“Who says it’s going to let us leave?” asked Howie.

Beth turned her nose up. “Who says we’re going to let it leave?” she asked.

“Beth,” said Roxy, reaching out a hand. But Beth was already moving. The teenager grabbed her enormous sword, put her foot on the windowsill, and launched herself out so hard that the stone cracked under her foot.

“Beth!” said Roxy. “God damn it. Cole!”

Dashing to the window, Cole grabbed Roxy and dropped his fall speed. She followed him out, hanging off him like a tandem skydiver. Whatever the bubbling tar Nona had seen in her soul-swapped mode, it wasn’t manifesting physically. But the feeling of being watched had intensified tenfold, and some extra sensory information was like nails on a chalkboard to his enhanced Acuity.

On the street, Beth turned around, weaving in the paths left between the statues, looking for a straightforward enemy to fight. But Cole was beginning to suspect this wasn’t the sort of fight guns would win. He called out. “Hey, Beth! Don’t run off!”

He lost sight of the girl momentarily and then heard her scream. Roxy charged ahead, and Cole was close behind, gun at the ready. When they found Beth, she’d managed to get caught on one of the statues.

No…

One of the statues, an enormous goat-headed humanoid held her in its grip, one hand locked around her wrist, and the other gripping a handful of her clothing. And its mouth was open wide as it inched, almost imperceptibly slowly, closer to Beth’s throat.

The realization that the statue itself was moving was all the warning he had when a statue Roxy brushed past began to close its grip. He yanked her to the side, out of its reach as the fingers of a robe-wearing mage, rendered in stone, closed its fingers.

“Stay away from the statues!” Cole shouted into the radio.

“Easier said than done,” called Howie.

Roxy made it to Beth as the teeth were almost brushing Beth’s throat, sword arm pulled straight and bruising under the relentless grip of stone fingers. Gritting her teeth, Roxy reeled back with her shield, and then slammed the rim on the wrist of the goat-man statue, cracking through the stone. A thick, black, viscous fluid flowed from the stump, and the hand still holding Beth’s arm cracked and crumbled.

Her arm free, it gave Beth the leverage she needed to tear herself away, leaving behind a scrap of her cloak. She turned, looked at the fluid bubbling out of the statue, screamed again, and brought her sword around in a wide arc that bisected the statue. The top half dropped away. Black sludge fountained from the cleanly cut stone, hissing as it hit the hot stone ground of the city. Beth ran to Roxy.

“I got you kid, I got you!” said Roxy, running her hand over Beth’s head. Behind them, a statue of a winged ape loomed, clawed hands reaching toward the pair.

“Roxy, your nine!”

Roxy turned, shoving Beth behind her and lifting her shield and shotgun on its sling. She blasted the statue in the chest, carving a grape-fruit sized chunk of rock, through which boiling pitch bubbled. The next shot took its head off, and by then she had backed out of its reach. The pressure against Cole’s senses increased, and he put a hand to his head as a wave of pain washed over him.

“This whole place is a fucking trap!” Cole snarled. Now he could hear them, the slow, low grinding of rock against rock. The thing, or entity, or whatever it was haunting this city was like a flytrap fixated on Beth, and the statues were its teeth. And they’d walked her right into the middle. Other monsters knew to avoid it.

But they’d been so tired…

You’re still so tired…

Lay down…

Cole shook his head. That thought hadn’t come from him. Glancing behind him, he saw Besson slow, and Nutmeg stop entirely. Howie stumbled for a moment next to him, looking confused, as though he’d just forgotten what he was doing.

Sleep.

He focused on the low grinding—the noise that had undoubtedly triggered some primal fear and awakened him from the unnatural sleep.

“SNAP OUT OF IT!” he shouted into his radio, earning him winces from the team. “Some sort of psychic Venus Fly-trap monster or something is trying to make us stop moving so these slow-ass statues can get close. Don’t let it.”

Beth, who had been standing between Cole and Roxy, close enough to hear his radio call, growled and hefted her sword. “Well if the stone statues are trying to kill us, then we just kill them first,” said Beth. She swung, cleaving another two statues into multiple parts. Black pitch bubbled from both, flowing out and dripping onto the obsidian floor.

For once, Cole found himself in agreement with Beth. He pointed down the street. “Towards that spire, go, go!” He raised his rifle and emptied half of his magazine on statues in their path, accretion affix whipping his rounds with the force of miniature meteors that ground down three more statues in their path.

This is a waste of ammo, he thought, vaulting the black sludge seeping out of the remains.

This is necessary to survive.

Cole reloaded and aimed ahead again, trying to ignore a strange buzzing in his ear. On his flank, Besson was spraying the statues slowly closing in on them with his assault rifle as Nutmeg snarled, hackles raised. Howie lobbed shells ahead of them from his cannon, clearing the path further afield. Artian had his bow, but his arrows did very little.

Nona was…

Don’t worry about Nona. Focus on survival.

He didn’t have time to—no, fuck that. That wasn’t how he thought. That wasn’t who he was. Nona was part of his team. He shook his head, trying to break free from a fog that seemed to envelope it, like carthorse blinders on his brain. The buzzing in his ear intensified, changed in pitch.

And became Nona’s voice.

DOR Chapter 85 – Stone Cold

Chapter 85 – Stone Cold

Of the sounds Cole expected when he got down into the ruins where Roxy had shot, laughter was pretty far down on the list. He ducked through a partially collapsed archway, rifle raised. But he lowered it once he got a look at the scene.

Beth laughed so hard she was clutching her sides, and Roxy standing over the remains of what looked like a stone statue with smoking barrels and a red face.

“What happened?” asked Cole.

Beth pointed at the overturned statue that was still glowing from Roxy’s afterburn affix. “Big scary statue startled ya girl, there,” she said.

Roxy stared daggers at the teenager, then shot an abashed look at Cole. “I thought I saw it move,” she admitted. “Out of the corner of my eye.”

“Great reflexes, though!” said Beth. She mimed shooting a gun from the hip, “It was like Blam! Blam!”

Cole relaxed somewhat but didn’t drop his guard. He moved over to the statue, which resembled some of the flying creatures they’d seen on the previous floor. He nudged it with his foot. Nutmeg sniffed at it.

Howie caught up, assessing the situation. “Hostile statues?” he asked.

“Stone-cold killers,” said Beth, cackling.

Howie shrugged. “Maybe it’s like a Weeping Angels thing?”

Cole had never seen Roxy with such a genuine look of terror in her face when she glared at Howie. “Don’t even fucking joke about that!” she said.

“What’s that?” asked Cole.

“It’s from a TV show,” Beth supplied helpfully.

Besson leaned down to inspect the figure next to Nutmeg. “If it was a monster, it would be ablating, right?”

“If it were actually dead,” said Howie. That made Besson back up and recall Nutmeg with a whistle. But still, the statue remained on its side.

Beth looked around. “Oh, come on, you’re all acting like this place is haunted!” she said.

“I’m not going to rule anything out,” said Cole, looking around. “Let’s keep moving.”

The ruins themselves were strange to Cole. On Earth, ruins had a logical explanation. Here? Was there really once a city, a civilization, even, in this desolate volcanic hellscape? Or was it a regular area before some upheaval in the ant farm saw it transformed into a lava-lit labyrinth? And who had made the statues? Had anyone made them? Hell, they could be Dallemonte’s equivalent to a diver and treasure chest in a fishbowl—just window dressing to spruce up his pet project. Greebles to make the tower feel lived-in and not just suffered through.

The stone halls and paths led vaguely downward in the same vein that the previous floor had led up. Dallemonte had cleverly layered his maze. Chambers led out onto grand arches that passed over lava flowing through deep canals where glowing serpents bathed in the molten rock, and between spires of black, glassy stone that scratched at the ceiling—but didn’t quite reach. Even more concerning, the roof of the cavern didn’t seem to be connected to anything. The distant walls still had the strange, kaleidoscopic colors shifting and swirling in the heat-haze of the baked air, letting the god look inside at whatever drama he wanted to witness. But how close was his attention, anyway?

Cole felt the constant prickle of vague attention on the back of his neck. That wasn’t helped by the occasional bones of a long-left party, often squished into a corner where they’d either been trapped or decided to make their last stand. There were enemies here. Monsters, or worse. As soon as one of his charges recovered enough to mark enemies, he burned it. But nothing appeared looming in the halls of the city—at least nothing close enough to be of concern. Winged creatures haunted the upper reaches, and they slipped past occasional lumbering monsters headed back toward the concentration of climbers they’d left in their wake. That suited Cole fine, as their goal was to get Beth Black to the next safe area alive and well. But the lack of confrontation felt… unnatural.

Dallemonte wanted champions. But he wanted them through trials of blood. Artian spoke to that. “Each of these trials is less hospitable than the one that came before,” said Artian, talking absent-mindedly to fill the silence. “And thus, fewer strive to challenge them. Yet less succeed. The ninth floor had a room of reward and the chance to leave this accursed demesne. To think, only a few weeks effort could see many freed from the shackle of these halls. But few enough are brave enough to seize that chance and few more are willing to aid them.”

“Present company excluded, of course,” said Cole.

Artian shot him a nervous smile. “Ah, well the safety of city walls never called to me, as it were. Too much like a cell—not that I’ve ever seen the inside of one, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Cole agreed.

“I also had little choice. We were bound to the retainer by a soul link, you see. Until his death freed us.”

“Well I don’t plan to bail out,” said Beth, strutting through the black stone streets as if she owned them. “I’m seeing the top of this bitch. And then, maybe when I’m rich and more powerful than God? Maybe I’ll find a new world. Become their queen or something. Artian, your country in the market for a warrior queen?”

“Alas, you’ll find the March little more comfortable than this tower, I fear.”

They passed through a large building with a façade of stone figures along a promenade. Cole again got the feeling of eyes on him and glanced behind them. He froze. One of the stone statues was facing his direction, which wouldn’t have been remarkable, if the rest weren’t staring straight ahead.

He called a halt and approached the stone figure. The winged didn’t return his gaze, just continued staring sightlessly ahead.

“What’s up?” said Roxy.

“This statue is facing a different direction from the others,” he said.

Roxy looked up at it. “Oh, yeah. I noticed that when we came in. Thought it was strange.”

Had it been? Cole rubbed his eyes. He was slipping. They needed a rest. They all needed to rest.

Howie came up on his other side. “Maybe it’s a puzzle. Looks like it’s like its pointing at something. Maybe it leads to treasure?”

Cole considered that for about half a second. Maybe it was leading them to treasure. Maybe it was leading them to certain death. Maybe it was just someone’s idea of a joke and was just pointing at a random fucking wall. “We didn’t come here for treasure. Beth?”

The teenager rushed past him, swinging her dragonbone sword in a wide arc that cleaved through the statue at the midsection. The torso and wings slid to the ground and shattered with a sharp crack that echoed through the hall, and a set of faint glyphs carved across its surface flashed. Wisps of smoke rose from the bottom half of the statue. The others stared at Cole.

“I’m not taking anything for granted,” he said.

“What did the brief say about the monsters on this level?” asked Howie. “Stone gargoyle monsters or lava demons in the ruins, or something?”

Cole adjusted his rifle sling and turned away. “It didn’t even mention the fucking ruins. Let’s go.”

There was no sun on this level, and no occlusion—therefore, no reprieve from the oppression of the ever-present heat and the dim orange glow of the magma flowing from the walls. Cole called a rest at a raised plaza with a two-story, defensible structure where they bivouacked. Howie had a class evolution to work through after the dragon, and everyone needed time to take and suffer through their second heat protection potion.

Cole settled back, watching across the space of the open floor to where Beth sat with Roxy, occasionally looking up at the shield maiden as they chatted. Hopefully Roxy was bringing her around, so that by the time the actual rescue team arrived, Beth would be less resistant to being hauled out of Babel.

A whisper of wind blew across him. Without his enhanced Acuity, he might never have felt it. He turned, reaching for his sidearm, only to encounter Nona, startled by his sudden movement. He relaxed. She dropped on the floor next to him and pulled out a canteen, drinking half the contents before reporting.

“I was with two of the teams. One turned back after Howie’s demonstration. But two of them kept on into the city. Until one of the parties turned on the other, that is. Both of them thought I was with the other team, so I had to get out.”

Cole grimaced. “Out of water?”

Nona nodded. “Survivors took their water-skins and their equipment. Threw the bodies in the magma canals. I lost them after that. But the water won’t last them. They’ll be coming for ours.”

Cole looked out through the window at the ruins below. This sprawling city could have held hundreds of thousands of people. For all he knew, there were less than a couple dozen people on this entire floor. How inhospitable were the floors Morganstern were climbing? Or hell, what about Hard Tone’s team? Had Moriarty’s team made it to this floor through a different route?

“Alright, good work,” said Cole.

“That’s not all,” said Nona. “The monsters in the ruins are avoiding us.”

Cole tilted his head. “Actively? I thought we were just giving them the slip.”

Nona nodded. “That girl,” she said, nodding over to Beth, “Shines brighter than a fire on a moonless night. Probably why He Who Watches chose her. Monsters should be charging us from all directions. Those monsters in the caldera on the last floor weren’t just chasing after the congregation of challengers. She was drawing them in like a moth to her flame.”

Cole followed that thought to the natural conclusion. “So why aren’t they doing the same thing, here?” he asked.

Nona shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re after easier prey?”

“Or they can sense a superior predator in the area,” Cole said. “And I don’t mean us. Your old world have any legends about this floor?”

Nona looked over at him. “Not specifically. But this whole area feels… off when I Soul Schism. Like a malaise. Cities don’t empty for no reason.”

“A lack of drinking water is a reason,” said Cole.

“Only if you’re mortal,” said Nona. She looked out the window, just as Cole had. “Some things never thirst for water.”

That was an issue for after a few hours rest. He’d been driving them hard. Too hard, and in harsh conditions. His team was exhausted and they weren’t going to last much longer without a change to rest and get their strength back up.

Besson would take first watch, then wake him up. Cole put his head back against the wall, closing his eyes.

Just a little rest.

DOR Chapter 84 – Climbing Lead

Chapter 84 – Climbing Lead

“Sixteen on foot, two animals.”

“Beast Cult?” asked Cole.

“Negative. Challengers. Survivors from the last floor.”

Cole backtracked a few dozen yards and pulled himself up a small rise to peek at their trail. Sure enough, there was a group of about twenty people following a few hundred meters above, still making their way down the switchbacks and making no effort to disguise themselves. All of them were armed, all of them were dangerous. But that didn’t make them enemies. He clicked his tongue. At least in Syria it had been easy to tell who was a threat—generally if they spoke Russian or wore a Glefa uniform, they were safe to shoot at. Here, it wasn’t so clear. If they weren’t being dodgy, their intentions probably weren’t overtly hostile. But that didn’t mean they’d stay that way. This floor was a molten hell-scape devoid of resources. It wouldn’t take long to drive the under-equipped to theft or worse in the name of self-preservation.

Beth leapt up beside him. Cole grabbed her and dragged her down to his level. “Stay out of sight,” he said.

Beth rolled her eyes. “They just want to stick close to the team that took out the floor boss, dude. Loosen up your asshole before you pop out a diamond.”

“Maybe,” said Cole. “Or maybe they want the gear and weapons that let the team take out the floor boss in the first place. Or our other supplies. Or they want to blame us for the apes that killed their friends.”

“Mr. Positive, over here,” she replied, but her levity was starting to sound forced to Cole.

Cole slid back  and dropped back down to the path. “Nona, Howie,” he called.

Howie jogged over and Nona was close behind. “‘Sup?” asked Howie.

“You got any charges back?”

“Yeah, got a couple. What do you need?”

Cole glanced back over his shoulder. “Rig something up. Not dangerous, but bright, loud, and flashy, to let them know that we know we’re being followed and don’t appreciate it.”

“Got just the thing,” said Howie. He turned to Besson. “Cover my six?”

Besson nodded, hefting his rifle and walking off to provide overwatch for the team’s mage as he set his trap.

“What about me?” asked Nona.

“See if you can get into that group and figure out if they’re planning to follow us, kill us, or what.”

She nodded. Cole turned ahead and raised his voice.

“Roxy?”

His shield maiden glanced back at him. “What is it?”

“Take point and let’s get into those ruins. That place is a sprawl, and I’m sure it’s crawling with shit that wants to eat us. I won’t have any charges for a couple hours, so if we get jumped, I want whatever it was to regret it immediately.”

Roxy grinned and hefted her shield. “Oh, I’ll make sure of that. Rally?”

Cole scanned the valley below, pointing out a structure. “That monolith there.”

Artian fingered his bow. “And what of me, Lord Cole?” he asked.

Beth snickered beside him. “Lord Cole,” she mocked.

“Go with her,” said Cole, nodding toward Roxy. “Watch her back. I’ll be right behind once Howie catches up.”

Artian bowed and trailed after Roxy.

Beth glanced up at him, curious. “They all just listen to you? Even that weird quiet one? You got some sort of magic power that makes everyone do what you tell them?” she asked.

Cole pulled his rifle up and peered through the scope at the city below, looking for any sign of movement lurking in the shadows. “Yeah, it’s called trust. I’ve shown they can trust me to be the one making the calls, putting them where they’re most useful and keeping everyone covered. A good team is greater than the sum of its parts.”

“Ooh, the power of friendship,” she mocked. “Naw. Even Artian’s dangling on your line, and he hates being told what to do. Gotta be magic.”

He looked over at her, then looked away.

“What?” she demanded. “You looked like you were going to say something.”

“And you looked like you were going to say something sarcastic back, so I didn’t bother.”

Beth hmphed, fair cheeks turning rosy, and stomped ahead. “I’m going to walk with Roxy,” she declared, leaving Cole on his own. He smiled to himself. Beth might be rough around the edges. But she was a good kid. Clearly handled pressure and shitty situations well. Forced to grow up too quickly, even before Dallemonte had nabbed her for his tower. But it had kept her alive here, and she was obviously fearless. Hell, sand down the attitude, and she’d have made a great soldier in a few more years.

Cole lowered the rifle and considered. Beth didn’t want to be rescued. Ultimately, she didn’t have a say in the matter. She was a minor, abducted from her legal parent and thrust into a death game. They’d be ordered to help retrieve her. Cole had long since learned the difference between interpreting orders and following them blindly, but he’d never encountered a situation like this, where the person being rescued didn’t want to be saved. He knew how to deal with hostiles and enemies. Less so with belligerent children. As a teenager, fist-fights had settled those issues, but he wasn’t sure he could knock sense into Beth even if he’d wanted to. The girl had been fighting constantly for weeks and been rewarded for it with power that she was too young to understand. She didn’t yet realize what that power could do to other people.

Or to herself.

Howie joined him after a few more minutes, finished and grinning with pride. “We’re set. Besson’s taking rear guard to make sure no one’s brave enough to keep pushing after us despite the warning. And look!” he said, holding up a handful of red plant matter before shoving it in his mouth. “I found lichen!”

“Better than mushrooms, I guess,” said Cole. “Let’s keep moving. They continued making their way down, seeing Roxy, Beth and Artian on the levels below as the switchbacks carried them closer to the ruins. Somewhere above, a bright light flashed against the upper walls of the cavern, and shrill whistles and crackles reached them a moment later.

“Guess they found it,” cackled Howie.

“Let’s hope they got the message,” said Cole. He couldn’t see the group of survivors, but the thick cloud of smoke choking the path would dissuade anyone from continuing.

“Gotta be some treasure down there,” said Howie. “What’s a ruin without treasure, you know? But monsters, too. I’m thinking ghosts and goblins and maybe a fire dragon, this time.”

“Because steam wasn’t bad enough,” said Cole, shaking his head.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Howie, pulling his pack around. He pulled out a small sack of what looked like blue leather, and a full magazine of rounds. “Dragon nymph scales and more ammo. Also some steam rounds for my cannon and we scooped up some residue and Babel Bucks. We didn’t get a chance to see if the big one dropped anything else.” He looked ahead. “How’s the kid?”

Cole didn’t point out that Beth was only a couple of years younger than Howie himself. Mostly because Cole was only a few years older. “She’s tough. But she’s had it rough. Doesn’t want to go home. She wants to stay here where she’s got powers and magic and all her problems can be solved by swinging a sword.”

Howie barked a laugh. “Yeah, there’s something to the simplicity. I’m glad it’s not our job to be the ones to force her, you know? We just gotta tell the extraction team where she is. But Roxy’s the one I’m worried about.”

Cole glanced over. “What do you mean?”

Howie raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean what do I mean? That kid is like Roxy Junior. You think all those mamma bear hormones go away in a Lewis Field? We’re out of this tower at the next portal. How do you think Roxy’s going to take leaving Beth to fend for herself again?”

Cole hadn’t even considered that. “Shit,” he said. One more thing to worry about.

But the sound of Roxy’s shotgun discharging below knocked him out of his thoughts.

“Contact front!” called Roxy over the radio.

DOR Chapter 83 - The Sixth Floor

Chapter 83 - The Sixth Floor

The tunnel slanted, turning from a plummet to a high-speed slide down a smooth, stone chute. Other groups slid around them, some screaming, some cheering, some simply sobbing from the teammates they’d had to leave behind. Cole just tried to keep Howie from choking him.

The already hot temperature shot up even higher as they descended, feeling as though they were being taken out of a sauna and dropped into an oven. This was the hot, dry hellish heat that had greeted him every summer morning in Syria—but turned up to eleven. Magma dripped from the walls on both sides, forming running rivulets to either side. There were so many challengers crowding the slide that more than one collision saw one or more people knocked into the molten rock, flailing and screaming as their clothes burst into flame.

A large, armored man tumbled past, knocking Cole and Howie dangerously close to one of the lava channels, and Howie thrust out his hands to spray a jet of icy mist that cooled the molten rock in their path into a solid—painfully bumpy—descent. Cole managed to kick off a stalagmite and get them back on track. After another thirty seconds of spinning, rolling, and sliding, the lava chute leveled out and dumped them onto a black, glassy surface.

Every part of Cole hurt in a different way. He groaned as he climbed to his feet. A massive cavern had opened around them, hotter than he thought even Hell ought to be. Lava dripped from the ceilings and ran in rivers, suffusing the entire area with an orange glow as bright motes danced in the blistering air. The brief said this floor was supposed to be hotter than the last. It hadn’t mentioned it was inside a fucking volcano.

“Oh, that wasn’t so bad,” said Howie, standing up on wobbly legs and tugging at his uniform collar. He had to leap out of the way as another pair of climbers tumbled past. A few seconds later, the cascade of humans and non-human otherworlders ceased. It seemed like everyone who would make it, had made it. As for the Beast Cult? Well, the gate wouldn’t keep them out. But he doubted they would try and push in against ten-plus teams of combat-capable challengers. Just because the other challengers hadn’t wanted to be the ones to risk death against the dragon didn’t mean they couldn’t hold their own if threatened.

Cole stared at the crowd. Less than half of the challengers he’d seen on the plateau waiting for the fog gate to drop were here. All were soot-covered and ashen. Many were in shock. Even the seasoned adventurers among them had probably never seen dozens of people torn apart by ravenous apes the size of grizzlies. But there were still at least sixty or seventy survivors. Most of them were moving slow or not at all, withdrawing while their other companions tried to snap them out of it. Several of the solo challengers were simply pressed to the walls of the tunnel, staring around as if waiting for attack from any angle.

Others were struggling to cope with the stifling heat, skin red and flushed as they sweated out buckets of moisture that didn’t look to be easily replaceable. And they still had the same problem. The congregation would bring monsters in numbers the group couldn’t handle. Cole didn’t want to be here when either the monsters came to answer the dinner bell, or when people started to realize the only source of fresh water on this floor might well be other challengers.

“Come on,” he said. He and Howie moved off, joining up with Roxy and the others. Beth sat on a rock in the middle of a lava flow, smoking one of Roxy’s donated cigarettes and looking out over a vast, sprawling ruin below. Clearly the heat didn’t bother her. Far beyond the descent, there were more pillars of light in the distance, shining down over massive structures that looked like something out of ancient Greece or Babylon. Cole whistled and waved her over. She jumped down, stomping through ankle-high lava and still dripping it as she made her way back onto the main piece of the rock and stretched as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Let’s get moving,” he said. “We don’t want to stick around a big group like this.”

“Yes sir, whatever you say, sir,” Beth said with a sardonic salute before breaking into giggles. But she matched their pace, enormous bone sword resting across her shoulders. “What was with those monkeys? Haven’t seen so many monsters in one place like that before.”

“Large groups attract large groups of nasties,” said Cole. “Hundreds of people huddled together must look like a beacon in a Lewis Field.”

Beth quirked her head. “Lewis who?”

Cole waved his finger around. “It’s the ambient energy field that lets us use abilities and get stronger. It’s like background energy that some people can pull from. It links stuff together, feels everyone’s thoughts and souls and shit. Every world’s got one, except Earth,” he said.

The sixteen year old girl took a pull of her cigarette and blew the smoke to the side. “So, it’s the Force?”

Howie’s face lit up.

“No,” said Cole, cutting him off. “But, I mean…” he strained, trying to think of a better analogy. He settled for taking out his LF analyzer and passing it over. “Here, touch the back of that. It’ll analyze it, tell you what your powers do. And it won’t say you’re a Jedi.”

She took it and swiped through the data, nose wrinkling. “This thing’s junk. That’s not how my spells work at all. And it says I’m something called a level 21 Hellblade-Striker ephemeral whats-it.”

“Christ almighty,” muttered Howie. “She’s higher level than we are,”

And apparently her Acuity was high enough to pick up that remark, because Beth grinned from ear to ear. “Don’t worry, sport, I’ll keep baby safe.” She laughed as Cole shot the blushing Howie a withering glare. He held out his hand for the analyzer, and Beth high-fived it instead. He winced. It felt like his hand had been hit with a brick. But he kept his hand out, and eventually she sighed and dropped the analyzer into it. They continued on their way.

As they walked, the natural cavern gave way to masoned stone, and they reached a switch-backing path down that looked out over the black stone walls of a ruined city, where lava drifted through old canals. A blazing updraft carried the heat of the molten stone up to them, and Artian seemed to reach his limit from the intense heat on the floor. Cole gave the man one of their heat resistance potions that Nona had stolen from the settlement. The man guzzled it, and nearly wretched the whole thing up while Beth cackled maniacally. Cole offered her one as well, but she waved him off.

“Heat doesn’t bother me,” she said. "Only government spooks and creeps do. And meth dealers, and my mom’s boyfriend, and coin boys, and country music, and skibidi memes.”

“Suit yourself,” Cole said. Soon enough, the rest of them would each have to take their second potion, soon. But he wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. They started the climb down, along a path that spiraled an enormous pillar, one of several that branched off from the upper platform.

“So you guys do this a lot?” Beth asked. “Following kids home—I mean, to other worlds?” She gave him a shit eating grin.

“The department does,” said Cole. “The last kid we pulled out couldn’t do what you’ve done. He just wanted to go home.”

Beth looked away. “I wonder what that’s like…” she mused.

Cole couldn’t help asking. “You don’t miss it at all?”

“What?”

“Earth. I know your family situation sucks. But didn’t you have friends? A boyfriend or something?”

Beth’s mask cracked just a little at that. “Yeah, I had Gale and Autumn. They’re my ride-or-die bitches. And Adam. He was kind of a fuckboy, but not a total creep.” She frowned. “They all probably think I’m dead. Did I have a funeral?”

Cole dropped down from a ledge with his reduced falling speed and offered his hand up to help the others, but Beth just ignored it and dropped down next to him, obsidian floor cracking into two spiderwebs where her feet struck. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “The briefing didn’t cover anything about the aftermath of your disappearance.”

“Autumn will be fine. She’s a bad bitch. But Gale… well, she doesn’t do too well on her own. Gets taken advantage of real easy by guys, you know? They promise her the moon, and she always falls for them. But they’re just trying to get in her pants.” Beth got a far-away look in her eyes. “It’s weird thinking that I used to really worry about stuff like that.”

“Friends aren’t ever trivial,” said Cole. He nodded to the others. “I never would have got this far without them watching my back. Sounds like yours could really use you.”

Beth snapped out of it. “Nice try, Mr. GI,” she said with a smirk. “I’m still climbing this god-damn tower.”

Besson appeared with Nutmeg, both of whom had been ranging out on their flanks. His face was flushed with exertion, though the potion prevented him from sweating.

“Cole, we’ve got tails.”

DOR Chapter 82 – The Black Lady

Chapter 82 – The Black Lady

Strong hands grabbed Cole and pulled him back. He looked up to see Roxy focused on him, and not the gigantic, man-eating dragon preparing to pounce. As soon as he was back on his feet, he turned and burned the last charge of his ability to wrap his arms around Roxy and launch them both back as the dragon pounced, slamming into the pool where they’d stood less than a second before.

“Ohholyfuckshit!” shouted Roxy, completely unprepared to suddenly be thirty feet in the air.

Cole twisted his neck, looking at the dragon tracking them through the air and stretching out its wings to take flight. It surged, directly over Besson, despite the man hammering it with his machine gun, and despite Nutmeg clamping her jaws on its tail so hard it ripped the back three feet of the appendage completely off.

The dragon’s jaws gaped, unhinged like a snake as if to swallow the both of them part and parcel.

A swirling mote of purple energy appeared in the air near the dragon. Before Cole could even register what it was, it resolved into the shape of a hooded and cloaked person, who shot directly over the airborne dragon and swung a massive sword in an uppercut arc as they passed, only to turn back into a black mote and shoot back toward the ground.

The dragon continued flying toward them on sheer momentum for a few seconds. But it had stopped flapping, and when it fell, the head fell separately from its body. A cold rush passed over Cole, and Roxy, too, apparently, as she gasped in his arms. And then they hit the pools, kicking up a wall of water all around them.

“Did you see that shit?” asked Howie.

Much closer than I would have liked, thought Cole. He climbed to his feet, helping Roxy up and then seating a fresh magazine. He was completely soaked through from head to toe, bruised, and bleeding from where the smaller dragon’s claws had shredded the sleeves of his uniform and cut into the flesh beneath.

Standing next to the dragon on the ground, the figure who had dealt it the fatal slash used her over-sized sword to slice apart the dragon, hastening its ablation. The hood fell back, revealing raven-black hair that was beginning to go strawberry blonde at the roots. Cole approached.

“Beth Black?” He asked.

The figure flinched as if struck. She looked back to reveal a teenage face with dark, sleepless bags under her eyes, but who otherwise perfectly matched the picture—aside from the ragged, torn clothing (and not in the chic metal concert way), the spiky armor, and the giant fucking sword. She brought said instrument of death around, holding it between them. The tip pointed at Cole despite the thing’s massive size, it didn’t waver a milimeter.

“How the fuck do you know my name?” she demanded through grit teeth.

“I’m Amos Colton, US Department of Otherworld Rescue. We’ve been sent to find you.”

The tip dropped by a hair. “For real?” she said, scrunching her face. “That’s a thing?”

“It is,” said Roxy, stepping up on his side. “I’ve been where you’re standing. I know how hard you’ve had it. We all do. We’re here to help you out of here,” she said.

“Out of here?” she asked, looking around. “Isn’t this Hell? I always figured I’d go here when I died.”

“You’re very much alive, and a victim of a supernatural abduction,” said Cole. “But we’re here to help get you back home.”

Beth turned back to the ablating dragon, planting the sword in the ground as she reached inside the creature. “Fuck that,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere, except to the next floor.”

Howie came up on Roxy’s other side, along with Besson. “She’s gone native,” he muttered.

“No she hasn’t!” hissed Roxy.

Cole didn’t need a field guide to know what that meant. Beth had apparently integrated with Babel. Thinking herself dead and in Hell, she’d coped by throwing herself at it, deciding she belonged to be here. “You don’t want to go back to your family?” he asked.

Beth ripped an enormous sword of what looked like bone out of the dragon, hefting it. She glanced back at her old sword, planted in the ground, and karate-kicked it over before tossing a glare at Cole. “Back to what, my meth-head Mom stealing my tips to get high and her pervert boyfriend trying to climb in the shower with me?” she shook her head, scoffing. “The best part of this place was they weren’t in it. Yet. Nah. No fuckin’ thanks. But if you’ve got any cigarettes… God damn, I’d kill for a cigarette.”

Cole wasn’t sure what to say. His Grandfather was a hard son-of-a-bitch sometimes. But he’d never taken a thing from Cole, except his pound of flesh when Cole was being a little shit and very much deserved it.

Roxy shot Cole a pained look and then fished under her breastplate and produced a half-full pack. Beth’s eyes lit up like Christmas as Roxy tossed it over, along with a cheap lighter.

“Oh, at least one of you is cool,” she said, pulling one out and lighting it. “What’s your name, big sis?”

“Roxy.”

“Don’t you mean Riot?” asked Howie, elbowing her. He grinned. “I’m Howitzer, that’s Tyson, the pooch is Fury, and our fearless leader is Airborne.”

“Cause you’re diseased?” asked Beth, sucking on the cigarette like she had a grudge against it.

“There’s also Blink, but you probably won’t see much of her.”

Nona’s voice crackled on the radio. “Cole, the mist gate is starting to come down.”

“Alright, bring it in,” he said. He pulled his spear out of the ablating dragon, then stowed it and turned to Roxy. “We don’t have time for this. If she won’t come with us, we’ll go with her. Maybe you can talk her down.”

“Good luck with that,” said Beth. “But you can tag along, if you can keep up. The last losers… well,” she looked at the ablating dragon. “I’m pretty sure I had to dig through them to get to this sword.”

“Nona and Artian joined them. “Ah, Lady Black! You’re looking hale,”

Beth looked over and grinned. “Artian! You’re still alive.” She looked around. “Where’s your asshole retainer?”

“Late,” said Artian. He glanced back toward the gate. “As we might be, should we dawdle here overlong.”

“I didn’t plan on camping out here,” said Beth. “I was just waiting for my spell charges to come back, then I was going to kill the dragon.” She glanced at Cole and the others. “At least you guys distracted it.”

Shouts and cries of alarm mounted in the distance. Cole looked back to see a flood of people charging through the dissolving mist, many of them bloody or burned. They fled from the sounds of combat, ringing steel, and the screeches of the great apes grew louder, as well.

Silhouettes began appearing at the top of the walls of the caldera to either side of the gate. A familiar ape with a staff made of wood, bone, and human skulls looked down at them, roaring and waving its staff at them. The spellcaster they’d fought before, back with more friends. Way more.

Beth saw them as well. “Ooh, more free loot.”

“There’s more than even you can handle,” said Cole. Howie and Nona were collecting loot from the fallen nymphs and sucking up residue. He whistled for their attention, but they had already seen the apes too and were shoving the last of the otherworld gifts into packs. Cole turned to Beth. “There’s a massive swarm coming. Get to the next floor. We’ll be right behind you.”

Beth watched as more and more of the apes crested the cliff face and began descending the sheer wall. Dozens became hundreds, and she got slightly pale and backed up a few steps. “You know what? Yeah. Maybe there are a few too many.” She turned and started jogging away. “Come on, I found the next level while I was trying to avoid the dragon, but it was blocked like the exit.”

Cole started to follow her, leaving behind the remains of the dragon that dissolved into a small fortune of the ephemeral marks. No wonder the Tallorax boss comes and has his guys clear this thing when it spawns. Other challengers had already pushed in, and several were stopping to sweep up the precious resources even with the monsters hot on their trail.

Beth looked at the pile. “Don’t we have time for…?”

“No,” insisted Cole.

“What the fuck are they doing?” asked Roxy. She made to turn around, but Cole grabbed her. “We can’t save everyone. Focus on the ones we can help,” he said. Then he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Faces of the other climbers turned toward him.

“Next floor is this way!” he shouted, waving them on behind him. Many of the groups shifted course. For some it was too late, and the apes that had reached the pools started to encircle and cut the laggards off from retreat. Cole fired his rifle into the tide as he backpedaled. Roxy guided him, only turning herself to deflect a fire spell with her shield.

Nona and Howie moved alongside them, watching their flanks while Nutmeg moved back and forth, snarling and barking at the monsters that drew too close. They closed ranks as more started to push in. Other groups offered resistance, slinging spells of their own, slicing with swords, or even firing otherworld firearms—though the most advanced one Cole saw was a revolver from a team in dusters and tall caps. But it was a losing battle. These monsters were in a frenzy, drawn by the congestion of powerful climbers and whipped into even further frenzy by the Beast Cult mages.

Beth stopped before a yawning pit, almost perfectly circular and glowing with ominous, orange light. “This is it!” shouted Beth.

“Doesn’t that go down?” asked Roxy. “I thought we were going to the next floor up.”

“You don’t climb up in Hell,” said Beth. “You descend to its deepest, darkest pits.”

Without another word, she stepped off the edge and disappeared into the chasm.

“Shit!” swore Roxy. Before Cole could say anything, she leapt after Beth.

Well, if Cole had been feeling any trepidation about stepping off into an abyss as an escape, seeing Roxy swallowed up by the portal to the next floor shoved that doubt aside. Around him, other challengers were running and jumping in, though a few hesitated at the rim. Others were pushed in by the crowd—which had already dwindled noticeably just as the population of monsters in the caldera had steadily increased.

Howie was, of course, one of the ones hesitating, even as Nona, Besson, Nutmeg, and Artian jumped down. So, Cole became one of the ones pushing, grabbing the man and taking them both over the edge as Howie screeched out of more fear of the fall than the apes that would have torn him limb from limb.

Cole just hoped they were right about the monsters not being able to chase them between floors.