Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1 by T.C. McCarthy Page B

down.
    It was slow. A plasma torch lay on the floor and I grabbed it, no clue how to turn it on, but guessing it involved the red button on its side, and while I fumbled, he aimed at the running Marines carefully. I heard the shots, like a spray bottle.
    The plasma torch hissed, nearly cutting my fingers off, and I saw the captain smile again as he swung the carbinetoward the noise. He didn’t even scream. The torch cut through his midsection. It cauterized everything, so there was no blood, but his two halves glared white on my infrared and then slowly faded as they cooled. He coughed once before the tunnel went quiet.
    Dan’s words ran through my head again.
How long do you think it’ll be before Popov makes his own genetics?
    I was so dead and knew it, but for some reason I ran after her, into the tunnel, when every part of me screamed,
Run the other way.
    They were way ahead. I sprinted for as long as I could, then stopped to button on my lid before hitting it again. Pops must have been jamming us. Static filled my coms, and with relays I should have been reading the Gs clear, even from the far end of the tunnel, but the girls didn’t click in until I’d moved almost a kilometer. The static cleared, replaced by her voice, but then again,
all
of them had her voice.
    “There will be a moment of reckoning,” one of them said, “and He will look down and judge, not our thoughts or words but our actions. Eternal life for the warrior, certain death for our enemies.”
    They all chanted then, low and reverent. “We were made in their image and we will die for their salvation.”
    The girls were somewhere up ahead. I heard one’s voice echo through the tunnel when she yelled,
“Fire, fire, fire,”
and then I saw them, crouching, stiff and tight with weapons pointed downrange. Not the ones I had kissed back at the train; these were different organisms, made of bone and ceramic that had been stitched tight so that whenthey blew the next tunnel plug, the group filed through a narrow gap, into Popov’s burrow, not even hesitating.
    “Bridgette!”
    One at the rear turned and straightened.
    “It’s a trap!”
    The gas bloom flashed, so brightly that even though I didn’t hear or feel it, its glare forced liquid crystals in my goggles to align—to frost over and keep me from getting flash burns. Plasma illuminated everything, like a tiny sun. The realization hit me at the same time the pressure wave did: the Russians had used artillery underground, probably manned by Popov’s Gs, and I wouldn’t feel a thing.
    By the time the overpressure hit, my goggles still hadn’t cleared, so I felt only the sensation of being lifted off my feet. Then something collided with me. Finally my goggles went transparent again, and I saw the tunnel walls whiz by, another body floating next to mine until we both hit the floor, sliding for a hundred feet.
    Her helmet had shattered and blood came from both nostrils, but she blinked. Alive.
    “Bridgette?”
    She nodded. “What happened?”
    “Popov has genetics. One of them infiltrated back in the tunnels, the captain. This whole thing was a trap. Pops cut off coms and arranged it so Third Marine
thought
they were communicating with the rear. They
wanted
you guys to come.”
    Bridgette blinked, then sat up. “I have to go back. My sisters.”
    “Are you nuts? You’re the only one left.”
    “It is not a choice,” she said. “I am at the end; it is
time.
”
    “Screw that.” I grabbed her wrist and pulled, putting her arm around my shoulders until she got steady. When I started leading her toward the rear, I had a guess why I did it—why I wanted to save her. The zip was out, gone for now, so everything was clear and made me realize that I didn’t have many friends. Not among the living. This wasn’t about my attraction to her. I didn’t care if she was a G or a dog; I couldn’t take any more, at least not now, didn’t want to inherit another ghost.
    The Russians shouted