The back of the Williams ASC-02 is familiar, despite this being the first time he has ever actually been in one. It’s pretty damn similar to the C-130 he had spent a number of flight hours in back in the day, but this one is sleek, black, and bears that infamous Williams logo.

  Despite being nothing more than a gray “W” in a custom font with simple lines as a “flourish” on the tops of the two sides, it carries unparalleled confidence—a promise you are getting the best money could buy to the person using it. As for the people on the receiving end of that logo? Well, John doesn’t want to think about that.

  The Williams corporation doesn’t just have a monopoly on weapons technology, they have a monopoly on war itself. The United States and its allies are just lucky enough to have the money required to keep that logo pointed in the direction of its enemies. Evidently antitrust laws don’t matter when it comes to making sure the armored stealth carrier model two isn’t being used against you.

  How Blackwood managed to get his hands on one is beyond John. The fabricator, rifles, armor, and other very cool tech make sense for the price tag. Even the Specters are excusable given the stories he had been hearing about Blackwood's year of operation, but the ASC-02 is exceptionally crazy. It had to have cost nearly a quarter billion dollars...

  “Admiring the bird, yes?” Blackbeard smacks John on the back, jostling him free of his thoughts.

  “It’s a damn smooth ride. If the readout didn’t tell me we were 30,000 feet I would have thought we were parked on the tarmac.”

  “Blackwood spares no expense for us. We are his favorite.” Blackbeard smiles under his tangle of hair.

  “I can fuckin’ see that.” John stretches out his arms nodding around to the interior.

  “Did Spaz tell you about the Jump over Somalia?”

  “Only the interesting parts.”

  “So the whole story? Wonderful! This will be much the same I hope.”

  “As Interesting as Somalia?” Bella smirks, stalking up from behind Blackbeard. “I think this will be more interesting. I am curious to see what kind of jamming technology they got their hands on.”

  “I'm more interested in those circles and bodies.” Blackbeard notes.

  “I’m more interested to learn what fucked you up enough in life to make you think bodies on spikes is interesting.” Kane cackles and pats John on his shoulders before smacking the back of his helmet.

  “Well, it looks like we are about to find out.” John notes the green light flash above the doors to the back.

  “Masks on!” Blackbeard booms, and everyone gears up, grabbing their rifles from the walls and cinching them down tight to their bodies.

  With a groan of metal, the back door opens and the wind picks up to rush through the belly of the bird. Luckily, the integrated ear protection and coms unit protected his already heavily damaged ears from the whipping air.

  Kane pulls his gauntlets on, Blackbeard straps a massive hammer to his back, Bella locks her two custom handguns into her thigh holsters, and John checks for the familiar glint of brass in the chamber of his bog standard rifle, and cinches down the straps of his generic kit.

  For this op these three plus John would be Whisky Team, while Kid, Spaz, Bronco and Casper are Scotch. According to Casper, they almost always operated in two to three separate fireteams, and each combination would receive a temporary team name for the duration of the op. It was bad luck to use the same team name, which meant they were running low on themes.

  “We picked Whisky just for you!” Blackbeard had said. “Blackwood made us keep a hold on it— wanted to save it for a special occasion!”

  John didn’t like that Blackwood had said something like that, but dammit if the man wasn’t right again. He was nearly guaranteed to have joined up eventually, and it made for a nice inaugural team name.

  A second green light goes on, the interior of the bird flashes and hums with a familiar buzz, and John runs for the exit.

  His feet pound down the short runway, the vibrations rattling up his body until the tip of his boot crests into the open air.

  God he loves HALO’s

  John jumps, sending himself out of the back of the plane and into the sky with a sucking rush of wind.

  The feeling of falling exists for only a blink, before the ASC-02 turns into a spec, and he loses all sense of relative position other than the bodies falling next to him.

  “These helmets are damn good, Kid!” John says over coms, breathing in just as well as if he was back on the ground.

  “Thanks!” Kid gives a thumbs up from several dozen feet away, his body disappearing almost instantly as they pass through a cloud layer.

  Droplets of water slap against his helmet and clothes, visibility dropping to near zero. John has to rely on the pings on his HUD to track the position of the team, though it becomes progressively more unreliable as they drop lower and lower, beginning to reach the edge of the jammer range.

  “Maybe—if—lucky... get—some!” a voice comes in crackling over coms, it sounds like Spaz.

  “Fucking—Delta” Casper's voice comes in a little clearer.

  “Wanna know how—tell if someone—is a navy seal?” Spaz again.

  “Don’t say it!”

  “They won’t shut the—up about it!”

  “I’ll kick—! “

  “American—special force—” Bella’s voice is the last one he hears before the coms go fully dark.

  John pulls in even, steady breaths as he watches the radar blink out, leaving him blind as he continues to plummet downward.

  One of the problems of the jammer was that they couldn’t get reliable, real time data on the weather above the drop zone. They had local weather reports and could predict what would be in the blind spot, but it wasn’t totally accurate.

  Blind HALO’s are a dangerous game. A single cloud with just enough charge and a sense of humor could bring even the most badass operator to an early grave. They could have aborted and gone around. But everyone was itching to get boots on the ground, danger be damned.

  Was it needlessly reckless? Abso-fucking-lutely, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Even in spec-ops he had a great deal of operational authority with very little oversight. It was an unprecedented level of autonomy for the military to be handing out, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t without a handler. Out here in the private sector however? He had Blackwood’s gear, a team and a goal. Everything else was in service to that goal. No rules other than the mutual agreement that everyone on the team would follow each other's calls, depending on who the assigned leaders were.

  The assigned leaders wanted to party, which meant they would plunge through what ever the weather brought their way so they could fuckin’ party.

  On this particular mission. The leader of Whiskey Team is Blackbeard, and Casper is running Scotch. He trusts both men, their track records are stellar from the reports he read, both with a good deal of time in their respective branches. Casper was previously a Tier one operator—Navy Seal, with 15 years under his belt. Meanwhile Blackbeard was Spetsnaz, also 15 years.

  Both men were his senior by 10 years of age, but in terms of time spent in the shit, he was right up there alongside them.

  As much as John would have loved to join in the reaming of the ex-seal and ex-delta member, he would have to save it for the ground, assuming any of them even knew his black-ops unit existed.

  The cloud breaks, and John sees the ground, as well as the rest of the unit breaching through the sky like wrathful angels come to bring divine retribution to the mortal world.

  Or recon, this was a recon mission after all...

  Angels of death could do recon too. It might not be nearly as exciting but damnit did it look cool.

  Their chutes deploy low, the straps tugging on his thighs as his body is forced to move a hell of a lot slower. It was as uncomfortable as ever but it slowly eases itself out.

  He watches with a trace of concern as Bronco’s chute tangles. She tugs at it as she continues to plummet, trying to get the canopy to full extension but it isn’t budging, and has already entered a death spiral of which there was no recovery from, as the name implies.

  His eyes track her as she continues to fall, until she cuts the chute and deploys her reserve, which catches with no issue, letting her drift to the ground uninjured.

  John joins her quickly, the ground rushing up to meet him. He braces, hits, rolls, and brings himself into a tactical crouch, pulling security and watching the horizon, his rifle held tight to his shoulder in one arm while his other drags his chute in.

  The storm clouds and wind blew them off course but not by much. An easy recovery especially in this barren wasteland.

  The others land, chutes pulled and re-packed, eyes on the town only one click ahead until Casper and Blackbeard give the signal to press forward.

  Their approach is silent as they stalk across the desert, the first objective being two adjacent farm houses that split the difference between their current location and the town further ahead.

  The mud brick structure is unimpressive, brown like the rest of the surroundings, one story tall and surrounded by a strikingly small fence that keeps in a collection of starving animals that shift slightly as Whisky team makes contact with the building.

  John's body presses into the exterior wall. Himself and Kane... or rather Shellshock while they are in the field, take up position on the right, while Cat and Blackbeard take up position to the left.

  There is something about the town that has John’s hairs sticking up on end, and it isn’t just the sight of the human scarecrows that border the more central buildings. That is all the same brutality and gruesomeness he had seen before a thousand times. Sure this isn’t a pretty sight but the cartels in El Salvador did much worse by comparison.

  No, it’s something different. Something primordial. A clawing, scratching sensation that tugs at the root of John's consciousness as Blackbeard gives the signal to stack up on the door.

  John positions himself to hold the close angle, rifle raised, breath steady, he looks for the movement from Blackbeard, and then the adrenaline dumps.

  The door slams inward as they enter the room, John's eyes scanning for any threat. Their gun mounted lights bathe the space in even more brown. Brown walls, brown floor, brown ceiling, brown all the way until his eyes land on the object that has Blackbeard and Shellshocks attention.

  “What the fuck?”

  Against the back wall, a circle in blood covers the distance from floor to ceiling, with a number of complex runic symbols deeper inside the circle, with a collection of other overlapping circles that go deeper and deeper, getting progressively more complex as they reach the center.

  Jutting from the circle itself, are parts of something that was once human.

  Twisted flesh wraps tightly around broken and gnarled bone, like leather wrapped around the roots of a tree half dug from the earth.

  Something that resembles a hand extends outwards into the open air, clawing at a contorted woman's face locked in a perpetual scream as the fingers tug and rip at the mouth.

  It looks like the hand is trying to pull the woman into the very wall itself, and is succeeding.

  “The hell is this?” Shellshock asks, bringing his head up to the wall to see where the flesh meets the stone.

  “A very macabre piece of art?” Cat suggests as she walks to the other side of the wall. “There is nothing on this side.”

  Blackbeard scratches at the back of his head, though it contacts the helmet instead of his hair. “Very strange...”

  John has a hard time figuring out how this is even possible. He joins Shellshock in investigating the wall itself, only to find that the flesh and stone are perfectly fused. It doesn’t appear that one was placed in the other, or that someone built the wall around the bodies.

  No... the stone itself is a part of the flesh up until it reaches approximately a quarter inch out. From that point it's a transition into the leathery flesh.

  “The mouth looks fine too. Organs all the way down and through.” Shellshock notes, shining his weapon light into the gaping maw of the screaming woman.

  John puts himself beside Shellshock, confirming his findings as he sees her esophagus continue down. Though dry and nearly decomposing, it's clear that it isn’t mud brick.

  A faint bit of movement catching John's attention, slow and steady movement but movement, along with the sound of crackling and tearing.

  A raspy, dry croak rises from the mouth. John takes a weary step back, looking upwards to meet the eyes of the woman, who is now staring at him from the place in the wall.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” John clutches his rifle and nearly brings it up to the woman's head, but Blackbeard stops him, too transfixed on her slow, inhuman movements.

  “She…is alive,” Blackbeard whispers.

  “I wouldn’t call whatever this is, living....” Shellshock palms his handgun uncomfortably.

  “It isn’t possible.” Cat tries to correct, coming back out from the other side of the wall. “The wall is only eight inches thick. Given her position, she would be missing most of her brain, her lungs, most of her heart... she can’t be alive.”

  The rasp in the woman's voice rises, her eyes growing wider, her mouth more agape as the leathery, decaying flesh tears away at her cheeks to stitch a rotten smile up to her ears.

  “Blackbeard what the fuck do we do?” Shellshock asks, drawing his pistol as the woman's breath begins to build to a scream, a low, scratching thing like nails on a chalkboard.

  “We kill her.” Blackbeard says calmly, though holds a fist up before Shellshock can bring his gun level with her head.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The rasp rises to something like a scream, a siren, a steady animalistic growl as it rises louder and louder.

  “Knife, keep it quiet, quickly.” Blackbeard says.

  Kane holsters his gun and tries to grab at the knife on his shoulder but Cat is faster than him. Her own blade slipping into the woman's skull with a crunch of weak bone.

  The scream rises louder, not stopping. Instead the woman's eyes shift to Cat, and the twisted, broken arm that tears at her mouth releases, and lunges for Cat's arm.

  Its mangled hand locks tight around Cat's wrists, pulling her with an incredible amount of strength, enough to take her stumbling off her feet and towards the wall.

  Cat grunts and drops her knife, grabbing it with the other hand she brings it down on the hand that is grabbing her, carving it nearly in half with a single swipe.

  Its strength gives, allowing her to tear her arm away and stumble backwards as the scream continues to rise into something almost deafening. The integrated ear protection on the helmets being their only saving grace as the scream starts to vibrate the building itself, sending showers of mud brick onto them.

  “What—the—fuck” Shellshock brings his fist down on the wall, the gauntlets sending out a concussive blast that sends massive fissures through it, putting an end to the screaming as the circle of blood breaks at the ends.

  The bodies drop from the wall, all of the exposed pieces landing on the floor with soft, fleshy thuds.

  “You were right...” Blackbeard notes, using the barrel of his gun to turn the severed head of the woman around, the place where it had contacted the wall was a clean cut, revealing the front half of a brain. It was a near surgical cross section of the woman, though it doesn’t remain perfect for very long as the parts begin to fall away from the hole as the skin and bone is too weak to hold on to the structure.

  John can practically hear Cat wrinkle up her nose as she pulls the fingers away from the hand that still grabs at her wrist. Letting it fall to the ground.

  “Did Blackwood just send us to hell?” She asks, trying to brush the last bit of decaying flesh still clinging to her sleeve.

  “He fucking might have.” John shifts his attention outside, where he can see Scotch holding security outside their farm house.

  “We must move quickly, report this to Scotch.” Blackbeard nods, catching John’s line of sight.

  They clear the rest of the building quickly, though luckily the second story is abandoned and lacks any bodies fused to walls.

  After the farmhouse is clear, they press outward and signal to Scotch to keep moving.

  The impossible quiet was starting to get to John as they work through empty dirt roads and past human scarecrows stuck through on spikes. It isn’t until John and Whisky team finish clearing through the last of the outskirts buildings that he notices something else bothering him.

  There isn’t a single sound other than them in this place, them, and the occasional shifting of a corpse on a spike.

  No animals, no bugs, not a single fly or mosquito or scavenger comes to pick apart the bodies that line the roadways or swing gently from second story windows.

  “I don’t get it.” Shellshock shakes his head, his eyes locked to a body run through on a spike, its hollow eyes tracking his movements in slow motion.

  “At least these ones don’t scream.” Blackbeard offers.

  “Because there are stakes through their throats, I'm sure if they could, they would.” John shivers, unable to avoid the corpse's eyes on him any longer.

  They are all watching them. The bodies on spikes, the bodies hanging in windows, the parts and pieces that linger around in gutters or scattered through overgrown desert brush stare at them no matter where they move.

  John would have busted up the blood circles if he could, but there are so few, and the ones they do manage to break only stop a small handful of the bodies from watching them. The others still stare, no blood circles in sight to make it stop.

  “We still have inside of the main building, perhaps there is one big blood circle there?” Blackbeard offers, shifting his weight as he motions towards the building in the center of town.

  “Let’s hope there isn’t some big fucking corpse monster down there.” Shellshock offers, shivering as well.

  “Do not put that into the universe.” Cat slaps the back of Shell's helmet as she approaches one of the spiked corpses.

  “Ow.” Shell grumbles

  “Pussy.” She winks and returns to looking at the corpse. “Whatever this is, it isn’t science.”

  “So, what is it then? Magic?” John taps his index finger on the trigger guard.

  “What else could it be?” Cat shrugs. “It is medically impossible for them to be alive like this. The spike itself is going through their throats enough to fully lock their mouths open, it is wide enough to cut off the flow of oxygen, blood, everything - not to mention they have been here for weeks. Even if they miraculously survived the initial...” she gestures to the body. “They would have died from lack of food and water or bled out or succumbed to disease or any number of other factors...”

  “And that ignores the severed heads that watch us too.” Shellshock notes, throwing a thumb back towards one of the houses that features exactly that, a single severed head hanging from a meat hook in a butcher's shop that watches each and every one of them.

  “What else could it be, but magic?” Cat offers. “Stranger things have happened. We do hunt the anomalous after all. We once shot a man over seven hundred times and he healed from each one. These things are not impossible.”

  “We could have been right, this could be hell.” John offers, his eyes recalling the blood circles. “Devil worship or cult shit...”

  “Speculation does not get us our paycheck.” Blackbeard says with a grunt, bringing his rifle back to his shoulder. “We must move onward. Scotch will continue to pull security while we go inside. So, let us move.” Blackbeard takes the lead as he presses forward into the town's most central building, ordering the stack.

  With surgical precision they clear the building, which is to their surprise miraculously clean—so clean in fact it makes John a hell of a lot more uneasy than the corpse strewn buildings around them.

  Room by room they check for anything hostile, anything to attribute to this little pocket of hell, and room by room John's stomach sinks.

  There is nothing. Every room is spotless, neatly organized and untouched.

  Gathering back at the ground floor, Blackbeard waits near a hatch that leads downwards.

  “Last door, let us try and make this quick.” he offers, readying the stack again.

  Blackbeard opens the hatch, and two flashes are dropped down as he closes the door. A second later the distinct pop and crackle sounds for both, and the hatch is reopened as they jump inside.

  This room is not empty, though it doesn’t have anyone to shoot at either.

  As the last traces of smoke leave the room, they once again see blood circles along three interior walls, these ones far more complex than the others up until this point, each one with a crowded mass of twisted bodies stuck inside of it.

  Over a hundred bodies in each fifteen foot by fifteen foot wall, their flesh and bone pressed so hard into one another they split and fuse, the leather flesh having healed itself into its dozen neighbors. It writhes slowly, mangled hands reaching out for the four mercenaries in the room's center as a low moan begins to build.

  There is no fourth wall, instead it continues as a long hallway, more bodies pressed into the walls on either side as it extends far beyond the view of their flashlights.

  “Don’t tell me...”

  “I am telling you.” Blackbeard cuts Shellshock off, though it doesn’t sound as though he likes it much either.

  Cat scoots in a little closer to Shellshock, bringing her helmet to connect with his. “puss-y” she mouths dramatically, before turning to Blackbeard and John. “We go until we have more information, yes? I can lead.”

  “No, I think we should make Shell lead.” John offers, nudging his friend down the hall.

  “Hey hey hey! Fuck you! I am not taking point down the fucking flesh hall.”

  “I thought you loved exploring those.” Blackbeard thunders, slapping John on the back.

  “This one is too damn loose for my taste!” Shell counters, trying to shift backwards some more.

  “Cats right, you are a pussy.” John rolls his eyes

  Cat nods, and stalks over to John's side, slapping him on the ass and making him take point. “I’ll buy you a drink.” she offers

  “Drinks are free.” John scoffs.

  “Then I can buy you as many as you like!”

  “Smartass.” John shakes his head, and begins to move down the hall, Cat taking position behind him, followed by Shell and then Blackbeard at the back of the pack.

  “In your fight with Casper, who won?” Cat asks.

  “Casper, by a mile. I hit that man as hard as I could and he ate it up. The man is a monster.”

  “A ghost.” Cat corrects.

  “Ghosts are monsters.” Shell counters.

  “Does Shell always have your cock in his mouth?” Cat raises an eyebrow

  “Only when he is trying to save face. He knows we aren’t going to let him live this one down.”

  “Well fuckin’ forgive me for not being as macho as you. I’ll take a cock in the mouth over first place down the fuckin hell hole any day.” Shell rolls his eyes.

  “You have a strange choice in friends.” Cat purrs in John's ear.

  “You have a strange way of showing your own friendship.” John looks back at her.

  “I am French.” she slaps him on the ass again, pointing forward. “Eyes ahead.”

  John lets out a sigh and continues forward, noticing the shadows clinging to the mess of bodies in the walls around him.

  He doesn’t think the tunnel is getting any tighter but it sure as hell feels like it. It is almost as if the hands that twist and grab at them from the walls are catching the light and pulling it inside them as well.

  They have to be in fact, his flashlight is noticeably dimming now. Checking backwards, it looks as though they traveled well over 500 feet down the tunnel, more than enough for the already dark room to fade into the distance, but that doesn’t explain why his light is less effective directly in front of him.

  It isn’t as though the battery is dying or the light is going bad, it is still just as intense at the source but as it hits the walls, the walls almost seem to absorb it and drink it in, making it harder and harder to see any further than a few feet in front of them.

  “We should start heading back.” John calls out, his voice dampening as well, caught in the writhing mass of flesh and tucked away, making it sound muted and empty.

  “Oi!” Kane cackles. “Scared now huh? So much for being—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” John grumbles. “No, it’s not that. Our lights are being affected and we don’t have NVG’s. It will be dangerous to press on much further.”

  “I notice this as well. I agree.” Blackbeard starts, turning around to take point. “Let us move and reassess.”

  With a faint hand motion then make the return trip...

  Or rather, they try to.

  John’s heart begins to thud in his chest as they walk far longer than they should need to. They traveled nearly 500 feet into the corridor and by his estimations have so far walked nearly a full 1000 feet back, though still the small pin prick of ambient light that signified the “end” of the hall and the room they came from is no closer than when they started the return trip.

  “Blackbeard what the fuck is going on?” John calls out from the back.

  “I... I do not know.” he admits, taking a knee and rifling through his bag for a range finder. “But let us find out.”

  “It says we are 500 feet away still.” Blackbeard says softly, keeping the rangefinder to his eye as he takes a single step, then another, then three more.

  “It... it is always 500 feet...” Blackbeard lowers the range finder and hands it to Shellshock, who tosses it to Cat who hands it to John.

  He then checks the range... 500 feet. Turning around to look at the other end of the passageway, the rangefinder reads 50 feet.

  “Let me try something...” John takes a single step towards the closer end, and watches as the ranger finder adjusts, saying he is 47 feet now. He also watches as he gets visibly further from his team mates.

  Three more steps, the range finder readers 38 feet to the end of the hall, the end he couldn’t see. Turning back around, his teammates are as close to him as if he never moved at all.

  “Blackbeard! Face us, and walk backwards down the hall!” John shouts, his voice getting quieter and quieter now, as the lights around them get dimmer and dimmer.

  Blackbeard turns, and begins walking backwards away from them... never getting any smaller, never further away.

  John can see the ground move under his feet. Watch as each step takes him over the dirt to the next position, but once his light no longer reaches the ground, and the shadows swallow it up, Blackbeard's feet no longer progress, its as if the ground moves from under him like a treadmill, repeating itself every couple of steps, leaving him stuck in place.

  “The-the hell do we do?” Shell pulls his rifle tighter to his body.

  “We go the only way we can. Forward.” John nods to the pitch black end of the hall, rangefinder up.

  “You can’t be serious?” Cat whispers, the tension starting to get to her now.

  “It’s all we can hope to do...”

  “Or, I blow the fucking walls apart.” Shell offers, tapping his gauntlets together.

  “And collapse the tunnel on us? No, too dangerous.” Blackbeard counters.

  “What, and walking into the total darkness our lights can’t penetrate is safer?”

  “No, but it is a less assured death.”

  “Blackbeard's right, And besides, if all else fails we cave the tunnel in and hope Casper is fast enough to dig us out.”

  “I do not like this.” Cat mutters with a click of her tongue

  “Neither do I.” John stuffs the range finder away, brings his rifle up, and continues forward.

  His footfall absorbs into the ground, the sound of his breathing becomes nearly mute as his ears are unable to pick up even trace amounts of sound any more as the blackness in the hall becomes all consuming.

  The light from his gun no longer makes it beyond the source, and soon the source dies as well, swallowed whole by the nothingness.

  John feels the muzzle of his rifle make contact with something, something that opens when he presses.

  One step in front of the other, John eases forward beyond the threshold, until light penetrates the black and makes him wince from the impossible intensity of it.

  He steps into an open space, his feet sloshing into warm liquid, its splashing coating him up to the middle shin.

  Splashing, he can hear again, he can hear as the others enter the room with him, their faint groans echoing through the cavernous room as they too try to adjust to the light.

  It's nearly a full minute before his eyes are able to focus, and he wished they hadn’t.

  John stands in a foot and a half pool of blood, blood that leaks from the ceiling of the cave, down jagged rock and stone to drip into a stone altar at the caves center.

  Atop the altar, corpses are hacked and carved into pieces, stuck through on stakes and strung together with twine to create a large free standing circle, the body parts working their way inside, completing a number of intricate patterns that resemble the blood circles found on the walls.

  Each part of the circle, each separated mass of hair, bone, teeth, muscle, flesh, and nail tenses and tugs, pulling taught against one another to hold itself in place.

  The worst however, beyond even the twitching, undulating cuts of human meat, is what is at the circle's center.

  “Oh god...” John shines the body in its center

  “I don’t think god is here...” Cat whispers.

  A man sits in the circle’s center, or something that was once a man. Its tanned skin is carved away, deep gouges cut into the bone in intricate symbols. Its eyes have been pulled from its skull, skin so taught its nearly ripping.

  Its jaw hangs open, no tongue, though still it groans, its ears have been fully removed, leaving only little holes where they should be. It scratches at its open wounds with long, cracked nails.

  “It’s... it’s speaking.” Cat continues, moving closer. “It’s speaking Arabic.”

  “What's it saying?” Blackbeard demands, his rifle trained on it.

  “Come forth unto me those who are wicked... come forth unto me, lay bare the blood of thine soul so that he may rise, so that he may rise, so that he may-”

  “We get it.” John swallows the bile that rises in his throat.

  CRACK

  A gunshot echoes through the room as Blackbeard pulls the trigger, leaving a hole between the eyes of the whispering man.

  Blood and brains leak from the wound, but it doesn’t go very far.

  Taking a step backwards, John watches as the blood splashes into the altar, only to pool at his folded legs, and slither like liquid worms up his body, the hole in his head rebuilding itself just as quickly as it appeared.

  “No fucking way.” Shell nearly stumbles backwards.

  “He is saying we will be punished!” Cat cries out, bringing her own pistol up and pulling the trigger at the thing in the circle's center.

  Shell joins her, as does John, pumping the thing full of as much lead as they can muster until their mags run dry, resulting with dry clicks.

  Its body staggers, but continues to rebuild, its severed arm stitching itself back together, its open chest cavity sucking in blood from the floor like a whirlpool, mending muscle and bone, though the carved skin remains.

  “Movement!” Blackbeard shouts, his rifle pointed towards something that shifts under the surface of the blood as he drops his mag into the liquid and slams a new one home.

  As soon as John sees it, several more spots of movement become noticeable in the pool all rushing to gather in one spot, one splashing mass near the altar.

  The breath leaves him, as the surface tension of the blood breaks, revealing jagged bone along a visible spine, as muscle pulls taught against a back the size of a grizzly bear

  It rises higher, and higher, until shoulders breach the surface, giving way to a thick neck of muscle that attaches in stringy web-like bands of flesh to a conglomeration of human skulls.

  The skulls arrange themselves in a large circle, all of the jaws fusing together to make one large mouth the size of a man, rows and rows of teeth extending far back into a throat, and the open visible eyes in pure white sockets all shift to look at the mercenaries.

  And then, it screams.