pink gel, like something that had come out of a chrysalis or burst from some malignant egg. The eyes opened. They were sky blue, set in a blurred but unmistakably human face.
As he watched, another version of the airman took shape before him.
The boyâs smile returned. As if surprised, he blinked his eyes.
It was astonishing, but Flynn was not deceived. This was not a hallucination, and it was not the airman. It made an impossible leap back into the rafters. Flynn fired at it, but no blood returned.
He began hunting the thing, but the room was complex with shadows, the ceiling fifty feet overhead, and he soon recognized that the thing could hide up there for hours. So he decided to try another strategy.
He walked out into the middle of the space. Holding his pistol, he looked around the room. Then he took out his small LED flashlight and shone it into the rafters. Three girders down, a slight thickening of the shadow along its upper surface.
His target.
âShit,â he said into the roomâs echo. He holstered his gun and walked directly under the creature. Hands on hips, he shone his light into a dark area under the stairs that led down from the office level at the far end of the room, the same stairs the airman had come down.
Above him, he heard the slightest sound, a bare whisper.
He drew and fired into the biorobot as it dropped down on him.
The bullets blew its guts out, and it fell at his feet with a nasty splat.
He looked down at it, then at the actual remains of the boyâa husk, his youth destroyed in an instantâhis promise and the hopes of those who loved him, all gone. He choked back his heart and his hate, and the anger that gnawed his coreâif only heâd been quicker to see him coming, faster to react, this poor kid would still have his life.
Teeth bared, he sucked the blood-reeking air and, with it, sucked deep into himself the sorrow and the shame of his failure. He kicked the hell out of the dead alien, its incredible disguise already fading and melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.
He turned away from the mess and, walking with the excessive care of a man confronting the gallows, crossed the echoing concrete chamber to the black intercom hanging on the wall.
âYes, sir, do you need assistance?â
He said, âThereâs been an accident. You are to seal the building. I repeat, seal it. It is to be guarded. A team will be here tomorrow to restore it.â
âSir, yes, sir.â
âThere is a man down.â
âSir?â
âI repeat, there is a man down. He is dead. Our team will inform the authorities here of his identity after their inspection is complete.â
âOne of my men is in there?â
âThere was a man here. I donât know why and itâs not my issue. He is dead.â
âHe got shot?â
âNo, sir. He was killed in another manner. He died in the line of duty.â
Flynn replaced the receiver in its cradle. As he walked away, the intercom began ringing and kept ringing. He did not turn back.
How in hell had this happened? Somehow, the thing had survived. What had enabled it to do that was yet another question that could not be answered. The purpose was clear: he had observed the predator in the process of camouflaging itself as its prey, like an Indian covering himself with a buffalo hide in order to get close to a herd.
They had thrown away two of their lives and sent this third being on a suicide mission, because the real ambush was not intended to happen at the Miller house at all, but here, in this room, where Flynn would least expect it.
The place suddenly felt cold, freezing. The stink of the room, blood and cordite, was sickening. Moving fast, he snatched his duffel out of the car and dug out his cell phone.
He punched in the numbers that would take him to a scrambled signal, then called Diana.
âJesus God, what have you been doing for seven hours?â
âI pulled the
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