Murmansk-13

Then they were all upon him. Their collective weight forcing him back, hard against the reactor casing. He could feel the frenzied core, vibrating through hot tungsten in its final throes. The giant heart of the station was arresting.

Nielsen heard his scream muffle against the press of decayed bodies. As countless needful teeth clamped round his arms, his thighs, he sank into a foetal ball. His final thoughts were of his girls, safe because of him. They would probably never come to know what had transpired, why he’d been forced to leave them. It had to be enough that he knew.

He didn’t want to go.

As the relentless infected rent flesh from his body, jagged teeth scrapped bone and stripped muscle from tendons, Nielsen could feel himself departing his body. He closed his eyes and could see an Autumn sun, setting golden over the fjord. Then the agonies were gone, with a great roiling hiss the chamber was in one instance obscured with steam and then plunged into unseeing whiteness.

Senseless with pain, Nielsen barely registered as the foam entered his throat. Suffocating him as it expanded and hardened – tearing open his lungs. All around him the infected became entombed in a chemical shroud. For those infected who survived the crushing force of the failsafe, their suffering would go on.

And on.

☣☭☠

Tala tried to blink away the pernicious retinal scars that strobed against the blackness of Central Command. Her eyeballs were seared after days in the blinding whiteness of the cells. Now the ubiquitous gloom of Murmansk-13, became an impenetrable veil. She sank into the shadow of the walkway above and held her hand up in a gesture of pause to those following behind, Katja closest with Diego shepherding the Captain at the rear. It would serve little purpose to move forward with haste, only to be recaptured stumbling blind in the dark. It was safe to assume the others needed time to adjust their vision.

The entranceway to the security module was flanked on either side by two stairwells that led to the walkway above. There was a similar arrangement at the primary – and now barricaded – entrance that bisected the encircling platform into two crescents.

In front, the backside of the giant video screen provided a disconcerting obstruction. The huge featureless grey wall masking any approach of further yellow suited mercenaries, or Dr. Smith, looking for the team lying dead or unconscious in the cells. Smith would be quieter, Tala couldn’t decide if that was a comforting supposition or not.

Above, the walkway was clear as far as the video screen allowed to see. It was also exposed to the atrium below and decked with sonorous aluminium. The chequer plate stairwell led upwards into shadow.

Tala spun and indicated for everyone to be quiet. She’d decided against suiting up until they reached the outer ring and grimaced as Diego and Tor’s suits emitted quiet squeaks. Diego was trying valiantly to keep the blank faced Captain upright. Both were wearing heavy mag boots that would diminish their stealth. And then there was the small matter of the Captain’s mindset.

“Wait here,” Tala whispered, catching Katja and Diego’s eye, satisfied her vision was sufficient for what she intended.

Cradling the 9mm Colt SMG, Tala sidled up to the video screen and covertly rekkied the atrium beyond.

Pallid, flickering blue-white cathode light diffused across the rows of pine veneered cabinets casting dark elongated shadows that reached out to the perimeters of the circular chamber. Three figures conversed, left of the central corridor, their features blanched by the fluorescing screen. Tala could make out Dr. Smith talking casually with a tall man in a hazmat suit, his hood removed, hair clipped into an army flattop. The short rotund figure beside was assumedly Ildar, standing castrate and silent, his arms crossed.

Tala flattened her back against the video screen as the soldier looked up, her companions were crouched in a darkened nook, their glittering eyes focused on her. She crept to the opposite end of the screen where the light of the wall would mask her surveillance and tried to plot an escape route that was both direct and discreet.

She’d decided the walkway was a no-go. The noise of the mag boots and the paucity of cover would be suicide. The thickest shadows lay against the curve of the bulkhead, beneath the walkway. But like the walkway, the far walls were bereft of cover. The most favourable course seemed to be skirting the outer edge of the control consoles, keeping to the heavy darkness that gathered in their lee.

Of course, the rows of disused consoles terminated ten meters from the opposing stairwell that led to the only non-barricaded exit. Aside from the fact there was nowhere to hide beyond the consoles, the door to the employees corridor was also the singular access point for Smith’s armed minions.