Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (16 page)

The major pointed one black rubber glove at the hole. “There’s your containment unit.”

“Shit.”

“What?” Franks asked.

If the dream had been prophetic, sent by Mordechai or Bubba or whoever, then at the bottom of that shaft would be scratched the symbol I’d been terrified to finally find in real life…the mark that belonged to a being that would bring about the destruction of mankind. The mark that would end my father’s life. “Nothing.”

I didn’t need to see his face behind the mirrored visor to know that he didn’t believe me. Franks waited.

“I’ve seen this place in my dreams.”

“You didn’t mention precognition.” Franks sounded accusatory. “You’re a terrible psychic.”

“Uh, well…” the major coughed. “I didn’t hear that at all. I’m going to go wait by the fence.” He waddled off.

“I can’t go down there, Franks. It’s dangerous.” Franks reached for his side instinctively, then realized he couldn’t reach his pistol through his suit. “No. I think the danger’s gone. I just can’t. I can’t see…Look, if the dream was right, there’s a mark down there. It’ll kill—I can’t explain…My father…It’s complicated.”

The faceless suit watched me.

“It’s not like that, Franks. I can’t go down there.”

“Hunters make everything complicated.”

The story came spilling out. “My dad was supposed to have died a long time ago, but he was kept alive by, I don’t even really know by who…all to prepare me for the end of the world. He warned me about a mark, and when I see it, then I know it means the end is here. He’s supposed to deliver a last message to me, but then he’ll die. I saw that mark in my dreams last night, scratched into whatever is at the bottom of that ladder. If I go down there, I’ll know it’s started. I’ll have no choice. I’ll have to hear him out. When his mission is over, his borrowed time is up and he dies. I can’t kill my father, Franks.”

Franks was puzzled. “Will the world end anyway?”

“I…”
Probably.
Dad certainly thought so. The war was coming, no matter what. “I just can’t.”

Franks looked at me, then the hole, then me again. It would have been easier if he’d called me a coward, but he simply went over to the hole, found the ladder, and began climbing down without me. Franks’ headlamp disappeared, then I was alone, standing in the blighted circle as the cold gradually leeched through my suit.

Dad was mad at me. He’d accepted his death, and couldn’t understand how come I couldn’t too. He had been preparing for it his entire life. I had only been kicked in the face with it recently. Finding out that I was the one who was supposed to fulfill his life’s work had been a relief for him, a burden lifted. The selfish old bastard had been glad to dump it all on me, and now he couldn’t grasp how come I wasn’t eager to simply hear his message and end his life.

The hole taunted me.

I had seen too many things to doubt his story. I’d faced alien gods and ancient horrors. I’d swam through another reality and been inside the blank gray hell of a mind torn to pieces by a demon. If Dad said he’d been given his life back and sent on a mission to help me head off the apocalypse, then I believed him.

The decision would have been an easy one if his life hadn’t hung in the balance. I was sick and tired of being manipulated by forces beyond my understanding. It was even more obnoxious to discover that they’d been manipulating my family long before I’d even been born. I’d dealt with the other threats on my own terms and I’d made things work out. Just because Dad was convinced he had to do it the way these mysterious Others wanted and throw his life away in the process didn’t mean that was our only option. Screw the Others, whatever they were. I’d do this my own way. Maybe I could handle this and not involve him?

The dream had been a clue. Someone had wanted me to find this place. The stories from the other Hunters about the pattern…Could it be this mysterious foe that Dad had been sent back to warn us about? If so, then me not fulfilling my duty would only make things worse. This was bigger than me, bigger than my father. I had to face this. I had to know.

That still didn’t make it easy.

“Damn it, Dad.” I went over and aimed my headlamp down the hole.

The ladder was narrow and rusty. In reality, I could only smell rubbery, recycled air, but I could’ve sworn that an odd scent came up the shaft, dust and age. Franks’ light was moving around at the base, about twenty feet down. I swore again and started down carefully, the ladder creaking and shedding red. At least if I slipped, I’d have the honor of taking Franks with me.

The walls were dirt, shored up with rotting wooden beams. There should have been cobwebs or bugs, roots, some sign of life, but the shaft seemed unusually sterile. The shaft opened up in the last bit, enough that I could squeeze in next to Franks. He didn’t even bother to greet me. The floor under my squishy booties was metal.

The air was heavy. I was having such a hard time breathing that I thought my respirator had malfunctioned. I forced myself to look down. Sure enough, just like the dream, there was a hatch.

But there were no scratches. There was no mark from my father’s mysterious antagonist. The metal was covered in dust, only recently disturbed by footprints, but undamaged. I began to breathe again. The dream had shown me this place, but it had also showed me the mark, glowing in the darkness.

What did it mean?

The hatch was open just a crack. Franks reached out and touched the rusty wheel, but it turned freely, having been broken loose recently. I shuffled out of the way as he lifted it. Hinges screeched in protest and the lid thudded into the wall. Another ladder led down.

“You first,” Franks ordered.

“Why?”

“I’m important.”

“Screw you, Franks. You’re the one with replaceable feet. You go first.” I got tired of looking at my own reflection. “Fine. Jackass.”

I started down. The metal shell was several inches thick. My headlamp illuminated the far wall only a few feet away, with each rung of the ladder casting huge black shadows. This ladder was far more sturdy and the trip much shorter. I reached the floor quickly.

It was a circular space, like standing at the bottom of a metal water tank. I estimated that it was the exact same diameter as the dead spot of desert above. I moved aside as Franks dropped down the last few feet.

Between our two sets of headlamps, the entire room was illuminated. “Cozy.”

There wasn’t much inside. Only a stainless-steel operating table off to one side, bolted to the floor, with some tall metal boxes behind it. I began to shiver uncontrollably. The room wasn’t refrigerated. There seemed to be no power supply. So why did I suddenly feel incredibly cold?

The construction of the boxes seemed old-fashioned, with big plates held together with strips of sheet metal and rivets. One side was open, and the interior was packed with copper wires and glass tubes, the contents of which had long since evaporated. There had been batteries at the bottom, but they had melted into a greenish-white acidic sludge. There were no signs or labels on the machine, but there were a few obvious spots, discolored and free of dust, where nameplates had been torn free and taken away very recently. There was a dusting of brass shavings on the floor, gleaming and new compared to everything around it.

“Looks like your Unicorn pals did some cleaning.”

“They’re not
pals
,” Franks muttered.

A bundle of wires led from the machine, and I followed it back to the table, where it split apart into dozens of individual strands, each of them terminating in two long needles. They were spread haphazardly around the floor, but it
felt
like they had all been jammed into a body at one point, from one end of the table to the other. I picked up one wire and examined the end. The tip of the prongs was stained with a dry, black substance. I dropped it, not wanting to find out if it was the sort of thing that would eat through a chemical suit.

The table wasn’t shaped at all like the kind of thing you would tie a giant spider to. Rather, it was man-sized and man-shaped. There was far more going on than some simple arachnid. Leather straps hung from the edges of the table. Franks picked up one strap, and it was so dried with age that it cracked in his hand. A very long time ago, someone or something had been strapped down to this table and stuck full of needles leading back to a machine that did who knew what, then buried and forgotten.

My teeth were chattering. “What’s the deal, Franks?”

“You getting anything?”

“Angry.” I gestured at the machine. “What does the MCB know about this?”

He shrugged.
Nothing.

“Yeah, well, Stricken sure knows more than he’s telling. Maybe I should go ask him.”

“Your funeral.” Franks went back to examining the table.

“Who is this Stricken guy supposed to be that even you’re afraid of him?”

“I’m scared of no man…”

“What’s Nemesis then?”

Franks paused. That word seemed to make him angrier. “Getting anything yet?”

“I’m not a supernatural Geiger counter, Franks. It doesn’t work like that.”

He mumbled something to himself about useless Hunters and continued looking for clues. I went back to the machine, but its function was beyond me. Whatever it did, judging from the condition of the batteries, it had run out of juice decades ago, but the thing on the table hadn’t moved until recently.
Why?

I looked to the ceiling for the first time. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was
wrong.
The top of the space was the same seamless metal as the floor, but there was an odd pattern of discoloration around the hatch. “Franks…” I reached up and found the switch for my headlamp. “Kill the lights.” It went dark. The glass lamps in our helmets faded slowly orange. Then the tank was pitch black. I stood there, respirator laboring, skin burning with cold, and waited.

The light was faint at first, so weak that I thought I’d imagined it, but then it began to grow, glowing with the muted color of aged bone. The light took on a sick green tint, and then I could see it clearly.

It was the symbol.

The mark had been placed above. It had seeped through the metal of the tank until its malevolence could be felt inside. It had been placed there to wake up whatever had been strapped to that table. Somehow I knew what it had been like here, asleep, waiting, between worlds. When suddenly the sick light had intruded, forcing itself into the safety of the tank. And
it
had awoken.

Suddenly weak, my knees buckled. In the darkness I floundered, panicking, until I struck the ladder and held on. The sweat running down my body turned to ice.

“Is that it?”

I couldn’t respond. The feeling of terror that clenched my insides was more than just my own. It was a residue, a shadow of the fear left behind by the occupant of the tank. I tried to move, but it was as if I was frozen to the ladder, and if I let go the darkness would swallow me. The tank was closing in on me. I had to get out.

Something inhuman screeched in my ear.

I flinched away from the noise as there was an impact against my suit. The rubber squeaked as I was shoved against the ladder. Off balance, I landed on my back, the air tank clanging loudly against the metal floor. “Help!” Another hit bounced off my face shield hard enough to drive the back of my head against the ground. I got my hands up in front of me, but through the clumsy gloves I could only feel
cold.
“Get it off!”

The light from Franks’ helmet was sudden, searing, and I was looking up into the emaciated face of something hideous, blue, and dead. It screeched again, opening a mouth full of rotten, broken teeth. Ice crystals fell and stuck to my face shield. Then just as suddenly, it was gone and Franks was standing over me.

The thing slammed into the far wall with a bone-jarring crunch. The light flashed wildly as Franks went after it, and I caught a brief glimpse of a skeletal form, with skin like parchment stretched over bones, and a wild mane of white hair. Then the light swung the other way as it came off the wall and launched itself at Franks.

The unnatural terror that had felled me was gone. I could move again. I fumbled for my own headlamp as I rolled over and stood up.

Franks had caught the screaming thing, used its momentum against it, spun it over one shoulder and hurled it against the steel table. It didn’t seem to feel a thing as it pushed itself off, but I intercepted it and kicked one leg out from under it. Freezing cold burned through the rubber booty and into my foot.

It felt no pain and got right back up. I planted one big rubber fist into the side of its head. It stumbled a bit, but then Franks was on the other side and he slugged it back toward me. Fists aching with cold, I hit it, then he hit it, the skinny thing rebounding back and forth between us as we played undead tetherball. We were both clumsy in the suits, but we were both really good at beating things to death. It screeched again, then Franks knocked its jaw clean off. My next hit sent it spinning over the table where it fell to the floor on the other side.

Two headlamps bounced as we both went after it, ready to stomp the unlife out of the horrid thing. There was nothing there. “What!” The floor was nothing but a tangle of stained copper wires. Breathing hard, I whipped my head around, searching…“Where—”

Franks was scanning too. “It’s gone.”

Gone?
“What the hell?” It hadn’t gone up the ladder. We were in a solid metal tank with only one exit. The burning cold in my extremities began to subside, replaced by the hot flush of adrenalin. “Let’s get out of here.”

For once, Franks didn’t disagree.

The desert night that had seemed so bitterly cold before seemed welcoming after the unnatural chill of the tank.

“Where did that thing come from?” The two of us were in the dead circle, scanning the desert with our headlamps. “What was that?”

“Ice ghoul,” Franks said. “Mummified undead.”

“They common around here or something?”

“Only in polar latitudes.”

Dugway, Utah, wasn’t pleasant by any means, but it certainly wasn’t the arctic. “They teleport?”