From the belly of the "Mendeleev" came a low, muffled roar again. Not so much a sound as a tremor in the bones, as if some ancient beast had awakened deep within the complex, turned over in its sleep, and the stone walls had shuddered from its breath. The soldiers, their machine gun barrels and glassy eyes fixed on the impenetrable darkness of the lifeless labyrinth, felt their legs turn to jelly for a moment, and their hearts skip a beat. As if someone invisible had squeezed it in a fist. Cold sweat, sticky as a spiderweb, broke out on their fear-heated bodies, and goosebumps ran down their skin like thousands of tiny paws.
Someone nervously ran their fingers over the machine gun belt. The cartridges clinked briefly, metallic, like a bell around the neck of a calf lost in a dark forest. Next to the barricade of sacks, a private flinched, rustling his camouflage. Somewhere in the second line, someone exhaled too loudly, cursing this darkness, this eerie silence into which the "Argentum" squad had stepped.
"A girl from 'Pavlov' told me they have nineteen extra organs in their bodies..." a whisper echoed over the fortifications.
"I don't know how many organs they have, but I saw one of their women tear a goose apart on the 'thirty-four'... With her hands. You'd think twice about approaching such a creature!"
"If you're talking about the one who was here, then kill yourself on the doorframe immediately," a third stated authoritatively in the same whisper. "That's Plutonium's wife. He seems like a normal guy, a comedian maybe... but after he was wounded, he went crazy. You must have heard about the designers being arrested? He made quite a scene. He'd preemptively rip your balls off!"
"He's one of us. We defended the control unit of the 'Drills' at the very beginning. I thought it was the end. If it weren't for him and his wife..."
"Enough talk!" the commander couldn't stand it, and the same sticky tremor that had gripped the others shook his voice. "Three extra duty details. For each of you. You can chat there."
"Comrade commander..." the first protested.
"Four."
"Yes, four extra duty details!" the offenders shouted in unison, but there was no anger or annoyance in their voices. Only relief that at least someone had broken this oppressive silence for a few more moments.
Silence closed in again, thick as tar. It had been at most ten minutes since the squad disappeared into the darkness, but the soldiers felt as if they had just run a cross-country race in full gear, and in gas masks. Their boots squelched with sweat, their hands trembled slightly, and somewhere behind their sternum sat a black, inexplicable dread that crept from the depths of the "Mendeleev" and drained their strength better than any battle. Many were ready to swear: even in war, even in the darkest days of the epidemic, there had never been such a oppressive, such an... unnatural fear. The thought of going in there, stepping across the threshold of the complex, was out of the question.
There were no cowards here. Many had seen and done things where a civilian wouldn't have lasted a second, but they weren't as fearless as the "Argentum" operatives. They had been shown recordings from body cameras so that everyone had an idea of the horror that had seized the facility. Footage that impressed everyone. The soldiers simply couldn't understand how one could fight such things!
It was infuriating. Anger helped to shake off this sticky, thought-dragging obsession. Burning rage washed away fear, but it quickly burned out without a visible enemy. As soon as the embers cooled, the unnatural fear returned. And so it went in circles.
It wore out the soldiers along with the tension, but it stimulated their imagination. So ordinary people found a topic for gossip.
Everyone at the Enterprise had seen at least one test subject. About two years ago, the squad's operatives had even become famous. They were featured on posters and postcards. Movies were made about them! How could one not be curious if the facility was nearby?
They were ordinary people, and then they were connected to "Collective 2.0," and something changed in them. They seemed like the same people, but something had changed. The "Argentum" fighters spoke like people and looked like people, but their words now held not one, but multiple meanings. With one intonation, one hint, they could say more than an orator at a party meeting. And also... they became similar. Like relatives. Habits changed slightly, common phrases and gestures appeared. A synchronicity that was sometimes frightening, but more often mesmerizing.
People, looking at this, increasingly asked themselves: "Will we also become like this? And very soon?" The understanding that they saw nothing wrong with such unity shattered all their worldviews. The unknown should have been frightening, especially this. Only that wasn't the case. Everyone eagerly awaited the thirteenth.
Perhaps it was because the "Argentum" fighters were... one of their own? Military? Or had the efforts of many people borne fruit, creating a positive image of the "Collective"? The ordinary soldiers couldn't find answers to these questions, and they didn't search very hard...
A finger tightens on the trigger. A blinding orange beam rips through the abdomen of the reanimated dead. Intestines, spilling out, instantly ignite, bursting and exploding, splashing boiling white slime. But the terrible wound doesn't stop the monster.
With a roar that vibrates the bulletproof triplex of the spacesuit, it tries to jump at me again, dragging its burning insides behind it.
The energy buckshot scatters the dead body, tearing off the right arm with a piece of the torso, causing the rest of the organs to spill out. The monster merely swayed, not slowing down. Only my shot to the head, turning the creature's skull into foul-smelling steam, put an end to this confrontation.
A wicked crackle of electrified air. The darkness is momentarily dispelled by a bluish pulsating glow. Hissing, foul-smelling steam spreads through the room. Plasma projectiles pierce two bodies and explode, splashing across the corrosion-eaten wall, leaving glowing crimson scorch marks in the melted concrete.
Three robots first knock the reanimated horror to the ground with energy shields, then methodically beat it with clubs, alternating blows with powerful kicks.
The dead man in the torn chemical suit lifts the anthropomorphic mechanism over his head and tears it in half. Sparks rain down. With a deafening bang, the polymer battery explodes, further disfiguring the already dead face with tongues of flame.
Shotguns bark dully. Lemon-colored energy tears the monsters to shreds. Smoldering scraps of flesh and crude electronics, implanted into the bodies by an invisible sculptor, fly in all directions.
The buckshot tears off half of the former woman's face, but she continues to run, displaying the contents of her skull, where metal has won the war against flesh. The remaining part of her jaw bounces with each step, as does her exposed chest, visible through her disintegrating clothes.
The broad-shouldered corpse has its legs cut off at the knee. The dead man continues to crawl forward. His cloudy eyes, covered by a veil of death, flash with purple discharges – this is more terrifying than the reanimated flesh itself.
Dead children fall from the ceiling. The small monsters are stopped by telekinesis, unleashed by me and Litmus. I clench my fist – and the gravity fields grind the bodies to dust.
A severed head, mutilated by death and subsequent pseudo-life, falls and rolls at my feet. Only by the remnants of long hair can one assume it belonged to a girl...
The crimson laser of one of the robots diagonally slices the half-dead corpse of the woman. Dry flesh burns. Corpse meat scatters in gray rags. The contents of her abdomen spill onto the floor, glittering with metal.
Sergei freezes the monster stitched from two bodies with a jet of coolant. The grotesque figure freezes in the air, turning into a icicle. With a crystal chime, a shotgun blast shatters the ice sculpture that terrifies all living things. Chimes echoing around, pieces of thoroughly frozen flesh fly in all directions.
Two meager laser shots. The KGB lieutenant is still saving ammunition, not yet accustomed to energy weapons.
Plasma speaks. A swarm of ball lightning flies, hissing and spitting induced static forward, again tearing through the darkness, only to splash with blue bursts of explosion, wounding the reanimated. The robots are already irresistibly advancing to finish them off.
I throw a ball of transparent polymer to the side. The gelatinous substance, wrapping around the dead man like a living thing, pulls him to the wall with tentacles. I move on, without looking back, but my imagination, through the cacophony of gunfire, paints the crunch of bones as the mass compresses, crushing the body.
With a movement of my hand, I take the polymer under control again, sending a ball full of black blood, ground metal and bones into a short flight. The sphere knocks several creatures off their feet.
I don't let the sinister substance simply fall to the ground. A mental command – and the polymer manipulator takes on a new configuration.
The already deforming drop of polymer twitches back, thinning, turning into the cutting edge of a sickle. Two others help me, but in the heat of battle, I never managed to see who they were.
The razor-sharp plane cuts through bodies like a razor through paper, but it doesn't stop there. Shooting out tendrils into the floor and ceiling, it swings back. This terrible pendulum, cutting everything in its path, swings three more times, shredding the enemy before collapsing into a disgusting puddle.
I step on the head of the dead man crawling on his hands, crushing it. I push the headless body, oozing fluid, away with a kick of my steel-clad foot.
A new drop of polymer slams into the head of another creature. Litmus, Sergei, and I simultaneously affect the wonderful composition, and it obeys our will and rage. The transparent mass, as clear as a tear, shoots out spikes, binding the monsters and piercing their bodies. A discharge of current from three gloves, and the tangle of bodies is torn by discharges, spreading like snakes over the polymer. The creatures writhe, growl, and scream in helpless rage. The burning lump I carelessly threw ignites this gathering, making it even more terrifying.
Sergei catches a piece of concrete that slipped from his glove, dropping it from above onto the burning mass. The stone scatters bloody splashes, illuminating the corridor with ragged flames.
The enemy is finished, but it doesn't matter. We will move forward. The rage that splashed somewhere inside flared up again with anger at what could have done such a thing to people.
Nightmares and thoughts will come later. Now the world has narrowed down to the goal. I will dream of this slaughter for a long time.
"We're close," said Lieutenant Mordakoni, "two floors down and down the corridor."
"Then we'll cut through," Sergei stated.
Turning to me, my husband said,
"Mine the floor," he ordered.
I set up the explosives, ignoring the small foot in a child's boot. Though my heart clenched for a moment, my hand didn't waver.
I will cough up blood, burn, or crawl, but I will reach that creature, kill it again, even if I die in the process.
Having done my job, I nod to my husband, and we move away. The robots have retreated behind us.
"Fear me!" I say, pressing the detonator.
The explosion shook the complex. A wave of air, mixed with dust and concrete debris, hit us. A shard clinked against the glazing of my helmet.
The cybernetic escort squad jumped into the breach. Shifting to the side, I repeat the mining.
The blast wave shook again. There was more dust in the air.
We fall out onto the required level.
"Eleonora!" my AI signals.
"Starting!" the electronic entity replied briskly, but I felt its fear.
Through the ringing in my ears, the roar of battle broke through. The robots that remained in the complex rushed at the dead.
We run down the corridor, breaking ahead of the machines. We burst into the room before the AI's machine hall.
My heart skips a beat, only to start accelerating the blood boiling with rage, leaving my mind cold. My face twitched when my eyes saw this creature, and there were no more emotional displays after that. I will simply kill it again, here and now. Again.
Tearing through the dust, scattering our robots in all directions, monsters woven from several dozen bodies, twisted by an alien hand, rushed at us.
And our anger poured into gunfire. Energy tore through the dead, altered flesh. The monsters burned, but they disdained the mutilation of their bodies.
The bark of shotguns, the hiss of plasma, and the glints of lasers merged into one long, angry roar. Mollies, polymer, coolant, fire flew. Telekinetic hammers ripped entire chunks from the monsters.
The machines rushed at the dead spawn. They were swept away, but they got up. Mechanical arms and legs broke. This was not enough to stop the machines made in the USSR. They absorbed our stubbornness and rage, not yielding to the dead in their purposefulness. What would have killed a human only contorted their bodies.
Steel bent, but crushed flesh altered by alien will. The creation of cybernetics, at the cost of five or six units, could defeat any monster.
The squad wedged itself between the monsters and the mangled entrance to the machine hall, burning, maiming, and killing again the dead whose eternal sleep they had disturbed.
"Watch out!" Eleonora's voice boomed.
Her controlled "BUS-A" assembled into a colossus right before our eyes, which then rushed into the very epicenter of the battle of steel and dead bodies.
There she is! Larisa Filatova. The creature I had already killed once out of compassion, resurrected from the other world and trampling everything human. I don't know if anything human remained in this piece of dead flesh, but it no longer matters.
She had changed, becoming a complete monster, but she could still be recognized. The reconstruction had desiccated her body, erasing secondary sexual characteristics and discarding everything unnecessary. Instead of eyes were voids burning with purple, whose light could penetrate through all-consuming rage. In that moment, an ancient horror from dark times gazed at us.
A mind far removed from all human and living things looked at us with barely concealed condescension. Horror spread through our veins, seeking to break, enslave, and kill. Its power was so great that it didn't even perceive us as grains of sand.
We seemed to hit a concrete wall at full speed. The mental ram knocked us down and continued to press, instilling the futility of existence.
"Everything is predetermined," a foreign thought thundered in my head.
The Chekist next to me wheezed. Large hailstones of sweat streamed down his face. The officer's mind fought his hands, which were trying to aim the weapon at his own chin and pull the trigger.
The mind struggled in the grip of horror. All logic and reason were in panic.
Rage flared up in the depths of my soul, momentarily dispelling the approaching darkness. Anger! Illogical. Something a machine mind doesn't have! It is not subject to it!
Malice boiled. Anger reforged fear into rage. With difficulty, I got up from my knees.
I bite my cheek, tasting the salty tang of blood. My mind cleared even further. With a trembling hand, I aim the laser carbine. With difficulty, my finger pressed the trigger.
The unbearably bright beam only flashed across the monster, but the hit at its end changed everything!
My husband's shotgun roared. Sergei fired, crippling the creature's leg. Visual contact was broken, and the obsession dissipated.
And we opened fire indiscriminately. The energy storm literally tore the body apart...
Now the dead seemed to hit an invisible wall. The horror that had been pressing on the boundaries of their minds disappeared from them. The bodies, fused into single constructs, began to disintegrate.
The steel warriors swept them away in literally a couple of minutes without our help. We, meanwhile, were recovering.
I was literally shaking. All the emotions hit me at once. I'm not a robot...
My gaze caught on a small figure, listlessly staring at the ceiling. Staggering, I approach the body, fall to my knees, and gently close its eyes.
I fall beside it and stare at the ceiling myself.
There is no strength left. Dead faces stand before my eyes and are silent. Only the fact that I gave them peace allows me to look at this at all. This is how you learn the weight of duty...
Someday, when humanity rises to the stars, I will peer sharply into the darkness to find these creatures. There are no curses in any language that could fully express my anger, rage, and hatred. The utter repulsiveness of what they have done cannot be described.
"I swear..." I whispered hoarsely, lying on the floor of the devastated "Mendeleev" complex, knowing that not only I alone swore revenge at that moment...