It only takes three rounds to know that his gun is functionally useless here. As the monster roars, John puts three more directly into its open mouth for good measure, and watches as the monster before him barely notices their impact.

  Damage is done, its muscle and bone shattered and sprayed out over the pool of blood but it heals itself just as quickly.

  “The circle!” John calls out spinning to aim at what he thinks is likely responsible, only to have the gun torn from his hands as soon as he has it raised.

  A flash of bone and meat carves a path in front of him as a three clawed hand turns the metal of his rifle into ribbons in a single pass, and now the second hand comes for him.

  John lets his weight drop entirely, sending him hard to the ground.

  His ears ring, as one of the claws cuts through his helmet, right next to his eyes.

  Rolling backwards, John becomes saturated in blood, it splashes into his helmet, his eyes, his back, his pants, everywhere.

  John tries to stand, but slips in the slop just as another clawed hand slams down next to him. The force sends a shockwave through his body, picking him up off the ground that sends him flying through the pool to skid to a stop against the far wall with a crunch.

  He tries to breathe, tries to will his lungs to inhale but his mouth fills with the copper tang of blood instead.

  John doesn’t have time to cough or clear his eyes as he hears the sound of the monster's mass charging him. Instead, he braces and waits for the end to come.

  BOOM

  The earth rumbles, and his ears nearly explode as the helmet's automatic dampening fails.

  A shockwave of blood showers down on John, and a hand grabs him by the plate carrier and hauls him to his feet.

  He grabs at the arm, feeling Shell's gauntlets tugging at him.

  John wipes his eyes just in time to see pressurized air accelerate Blackbeard's hammer into the monster's chest with a sickening crunch.

  Its muscles ripple, pulse, and then its back explodes, showering Cat in the viscera as she climbs up on the altar to tear at the circle.

  The pool of blood shifts, the monster reforming just as quickly as it's destroyed, though that isn't the worst of it.

  Cat grunts and screams as the disjointed limbs of the circle claw at her, tearing through the clothes, ripping apart the armor on her chest as she fights to tear at it, to break it.

  “Blackbeard!” John shouts, sprinting through the blood as the newly formed monster bares its jaws down at the man.

  He is almost too late to move, but John tackles him out of the way just in time, the rows and rows of teeth carve ravines down his back, sending him screaming into the ground.

  Blackbeard grunts, hauling John off of him as he activates his hammer, a rush of pressure firing out of its back, lifting Blackbeard off the ground and sending the weapon crashing down against the circle holding Cat.

  Another shower of blood, and part of the circle explodes, its grip loosening on Cat just enough to cut herself free with the knife attachments at the end of her guns.

  The monster staggers, roars, and wheels on Blackbeard, but Shellshock is already there, his punch connecting to the back of the monster's legs, tearing it off its body and sending it to the ground.

  Blackbeard swings his hammer at the circle again, though this time the glowing hands grab at the weapon, stopping it from making its full arc. The monster roars, and pulls Blackbeard forward into the circle itself with his own hammer.

  “Shit!” Cat shouts, running to Blackbeard's back to pull at him, anchoring her feet to the altar as she tries to leverage him away from the clawing hands.

  Shellshock punches the monster five more times, one after the other, shredding apart its arms, so it can’t grab at Blackbeard or Cat.

  John positions himself with Cat, trying to rip Blackbeard away as the hands drag him closer and closer.

  Blackbeard screams, as one of the hands digs into his own, its fingers penetrating the flesh, snapping bone and locking him in place as it works its way up his arm.

  “Gauntlet!” John screams, holding out a hand as Shell looks up from his onslaught.

  “Heard!” Shellshock strips a gauntlet, and tosses it to John who grabs it from the air, slots it on, and brings his fist down as hard as he can onto the circle.

  The pressure wave sends all of them flying away and against the wall.

  Blackbeard continues to scream, holding onto a mangled mess of flesh that was once an arm.

  John staggers to his feet, hauling Cat up with him while Cat helps Blackbeard.

  Shellshock stumbles, trying to stand as well as the circle slowly reforms.

  “We need to move!” John shouts, holding Cat with Blackbeard, watching in horror as the monster rebuilds itself.

  Shell scrambles towards John, slapping him on the shoulder as he passes.

  “One, two...” John and Cat get Blackbeard up fully, and sprint with him to the cave's entrance.

  “How the fuck do we get back!” Shell asks, turning around from the passage entrance to look at the circle.

  “Fuck...” Shell’s right, they can’t return, not with whatever anomaly is preventing their progress, they need to fully destroy this circle, or destroy it enough to buy them time to get back.

  “Whenever the circle is healing, the monster stops, I'm betting the other anomaly will stop too!” John calls out, setting Blackbeard down next to Cat. “Shell, on me, let's go!”

  The two men charge back into the cave as the monster screams once again, the sound of the rows of teeth clattering around one another in its throat like a death rattle

  It digs its feet into the blood, and launches itself forward. John ducks the blow and throws a punch up, the shockwave ripping it through and sending it off course while Shell punches again with a follow up, sending it further into the air.

  They don’t need to win, they need time, and keeping that thing airborne means keeping it away from them.

  John slides through the blood to the altar as the hands grab at him, the circle bent from their previous blows, the amalgamation of meat trying to tear through the men as it tore through Blackbeard.

  Shellshock is the first to strike the circle, stopping short to prevent the hands from grabbing him.

  The shockwave rips through it, and John follows up with one of his own, tearing it asunder.

  They don’t let up, delivering blow after blow until nothing remains, not even the man chanting at its center.

  “It’s still moving!” Shell calls, watching the blood and meat collect to reform at the altar, rebuilding itself.

  “We have time, go go go!” John calls, signaling for them to go down the hall.

  They don’t need any other sign, Shell grabs Blackbeard as he passes in front, helping Cat while John grabs two grenades from his carrier and pulls the pin, tossing it back at the altar.

  The partially reformed circle detonates, shredding it apart once again. He pulls the pin on the second one, and waits until he is nearly out of his own throwing range before letting loose.

  Another detonation, and light returns to the hallway.

  His feet pound against the floor, the writhing of the walls stops for a moment, before it continues again.

  Pulling the range finder, John lets out a huge breath of air, concluding that they are in fact getting closer and closer to the exit, though their progress is slowing.

  “Come on!” John shouts, each step feeling shorter than the last as he can visibly see their progress slow.

  Blood thunders in his ears, his body aches from the effort as he sprints as fast as he possibly can, the light of the room getting brighter and brighter.

  Cat, Shell, and Blackbeard make it to room, John only a foot behind them when his progress halts entirely.

  “Help me!” John brings out his hand, feeling the world slip away from, feeling the hall begin to expand out.

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  Cat and Shell drop Blackbeard, turning, and each bringing a hand out for him to grab onto.

  They lock around him, and pull with all of their strength as John watches the hallway slip away, pulling at him, sending shadows grabbing at the edges of his clothes.

  John disables the dampeners in his gauntlet, and punches at the air behind him, pressing down with his fingers to activate the shockwave.

  His arm shatters, turning every bone up to his shoulder into splinters in a sack of wet meat as his body is launched through the air and into Cat and Shell, nearly sending them both into the wall of grabbing hands.

  John's vision goes black, his stomach lurches and vomit spews from his mouth and into his helmet, saturating his face as it fills nearly to the eye holes.

  Cat strips the helmet from him, while Shell hauls him away from the grabbing walls.

  Once his mouth is free of the sick, he sucks in a breath of air and wills himself not to pass out. The pain is like a red hot iron rod being driven through his flesh every single inch.

  “Cut it off!” John screams, his good arm bringing itself up to grab at his shoulder, but he stops as even those bones are a ruin. “Cut the fucking arm off!” John begs, his voice leaving him as his body nearly passes out again.

  “We can fix it up! We have stims after exfil!” Cat tries to reassure him, but his screaming doesn’t stop.

  “Come on, come on I know it hurts, I know! I did the same thing once, we will get you fixed but we need to get the fuck out of here.” Shell calls out, helping Blackbeard stand while Cat takes John under his good arm.

  Getting up the ladder is hell, it takes Cat and Shell both on a stagger to get John up halfway and then to haul him to the ground inside, with Blackbeard to follow.

  John is no longer on the verge of passing out, but still his vision loses its periphery and his legs shake violently from the cocktail of shock and adrenaline.

  They practically throw themselves from the building, landing into the line of sight of Scotch Team who rushes to their position without a moment of hesitation.

  “What the fuck happened down there?!” Casper asks, trying to place the wounds.

  “We need cas-evac now!” Cat shouts, trying to tie off Blackbeard's wound. “He will bleed out soon, and John will be too if we don’t move!”

  “Coms are still down, we can’t signal them to extract from the road, we need to make the hike west.” Casper scowls.

  “We won’t be able to make it that far.” Shell confirms.

  “I got it...” John grunts, struggling to bring his vision back, but it doesn’t obey him no matter how hard he tries.

  “You do not. The more you move the more you bleed, your arm is hanging on by a fucking thread,” Cat counters, looking around. “We go to the road, steal a vehicle, fuck the locals, they need medical attention yesterday.” Cat hisses.

  “Heard. You and Shell stay here with Bronco and Kid, Spaz and I will make east for the road.”

  “Go!” Cat shouts, and Casper does, grabbing Spaz and charging off from the town.

  “Come on, stay with me.” Cat’s tone drops as she notices John’s eyes begin to flicker. “Lay down.” She demands, guiding John to the ground, looking upwards at the sky just a single drop of rain splashes against his cheek.

  “I’m not going anywhere, just... need to rest for a second,” John whispers, parting his mouth to wash the taste of blood from the inside of his mouth.

  “Like hell you are, John, eyes on me.” She continues, jostling his face around until his eyes meet hers.

  “You’d look better with long hair.” John cracks a smile.

  “Fuck you,” She smiles, brushing her quickly wetting hair from her face as the rain continues to come down in sporadic drops. “Stay awake, keep your eyes on me until help arrives, or else I won’t buy you a drink.”

  “Going back on the deal? Can’t change the rules like that.” a lance of pain shoots through his arm then, sending stars into his vision and bile up into his stomach again.

  “I am a mercenary, we are a crooked sort no?” Cat winks with her trademark feline smile.

  “Guess so...” John steadies his breathing. He wants to close his eyes and sleep but he doesn’t want Cat up his ass about it. Drinks are free of course but who could say no when a woman like her offers?

  A pang of guilt rises through his chest then, a different kind of fiery lance that burns into his heart for having a thought like that.

  He shouldn’t think like that, it’s his shock and adrenaline ridden body making shit up for him, even if for a moment he thought he saw something sparkle in those cat like eyes.

  John ignores it, he needs to ignore it, so instead he breathes, fighting against the cold that now soaks his throat, a cold that quickly grows worse as the rain picks up.

  The sky above swirls, the clouds making a strange spinning pattern above him, he notices.

  “I’m seein’ shit Cat.” John coughs, working the water through his lips.

  “No... you ain’t. I’m seeing it too.” Shell calls out, his eyes also turned up.

  “It’s a circle...” Cat breaths, watching as a streak of red lighting illuminates the perfectly circular cloud that begins to descend on them.

  “Inside!” Shell demands, and Cat spares no time in grabbing John by the good arm and leg, rolling over top of him and using the momentum to pick him up over her shoulders in a fireman's carry as she charges into a new building.

  The door slams open, and then just as quickly slams shut. The sound of the rain pattering on the mud brick outside becomes a dizzying underwater sound as John's head rings from the movement.

  A flash of light tears through the room, saturating everyone in a blood red glow, followed by the violent roll of thunder in the split second after.

  John can feel the electricity course through his body, through his skin and bone to rattle his teeth and singe his nose with the smell of ozone.

  showering debris rushes past them as the windows are forced open and the door is blown from its hinges, letting the torrential downpour inside.

  John's heart pounds in his chest, beating against his ribs like a drum, as a shadow is cast against the doorway, the shadow of a man.

  No one can speak, not a word escapes anyone's lips, as a tall, elegant figure stands in the rain, it's back to them, facing the building that houses the tunnel below it.

  The Man is tall, slender, with broad shoulders. He lingers on the roadway, the sand turned to glass underneath his feet from where the lightning made contact with the earth.

  His skin is a near perfect black, with long dreadlocks that flow to his middle back in a massive bundle. Black leathery wings like a bat’s fold inward, as he shakes off the rain, assisted by a tail that swipes at the droplets as he walks into the building Whisky team nearly died trying to escape from.

  “This has to be hell...” Cat whispers, her eyes unable to leave the doorway the man vanishes into. “Because that had to be the devil...”

  As soon as the rain began, it eases up into a gentle patter before vanishing entirely.

  The air hangs with the tension of what they just saw, every person too afraid to move.

  “That car... the car will draw its attention, we need to move,” Kid urges.

  “We can’t get far with these two like this.” Cat nods to John’s and Blackbeard's arms.

  “We can, we have to. It’s either we try and fail or the actual fucking devil comes back to finish the job personally.”

  Cat grimaces, and then nods, helping John to his feet, while Shell helps Blackbeard.

  “Let's go.” Kid slaps Bronco on the back, who hasn’t stopped praying under her breath since the lighting strike.

  As quietly as they can, they push from the building and out into the fresh mud around them.

  It takes everything in his power to stay conscious, as each step sends fire through John's arm, that is until Bronco takes Blackbeard onto her back to carry him like a baby, and Shell and Cat both assist in keeping John off his feet as they pass beyond the town's boundary.

  It's a full 5 minutes before they see the rising dirt of a vehicle approach them. John nearly weeps with joy as Casper skids to a stop and whips the truck around to load John and Blackbeard into the bed.

  Bronco takes the back seat, Kid scoots in next to her while Casper drives and Spaz takes passenger.

  Cat and Shell both sit in the back with John and Blackbeard. Shell slaps the back of the truck and Casper floors it through the dirt roads and onto the primary paved highway in a record time.

  “Cat...” Shell asks, looking out over the road.

  “I know...” She confirms.

  “What is it? Secrets aren’t good for team building, you know,” John grunts, the pain refusing to let go of him.

  “No cars on the road.” Shell says softly, turning his attention back and forth from the north to the south.

  “And the number of bodies we saw in the town, it was too many. More people than would have ever lived there.” Cat adds.

  John lets his head slap against the bed of the truck, his world is spinning again and the fire in his arm nears an impossible peak.

  “Just... like Abu Gahr.” he mutters, and watches as Shell nods his agreement.

  “Whatever is happening here...” Shell lets the words linger, or maybe John just doesn’t hear them as his mind begins to drift away.

  He doesn’t drift for long though, not as Cat taps him on the cheek.

  His senses open up to the world around him, the near silent rotor wash of the Williams Specters alerting him that they are at evac.

  Before he knows it, he is being hauled inside the helo, his clothes being cut away, and a man with surgical gloves on begins to put a tube into his shoulder.

  John's hand lashes out and grabs hold of the doc with an iron grip. “What the fuck are you doing.” he growls the words, much more threatening than he intends on account of the adrenaline.

  “Relax John, it’s a stim, the medical tech you used to get in the special forces no?”

  “That... wasn’t a tube...” John grunts, releasing his grip on the doctor's wrist as Cat brushes her fingers along his arm.

  “They’ve had a lot of advancements in the past years,” The doc explains, sticking the needle end into John's shoulder, as he carefully administers a select dosage manually.

  John's whole body begins to itch as he watches the muscle stretch out to make contact with its torn partners, stitching itself back together at an alarming rate.

  “What the fuck.” John nearly jumps from his spot on the helicopter's gurney, but Cat presses her hands into his shoulders to keep him in place.

  “The stuff you were used to was a cocktail of stem cells, saline, and microbes. You’d heal at ten times the normal rate.” The doc explains, removing the needle slowly, and holding the epi-pen sized device up to the light. “This little vial right here is version three of that cocktail. You get over one hundred times the healing now.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t ask me, I’m just the one who administers the stuff, though my educated guess would be much the same, Arch conjured up some real smart cells in there. It won’t heal you perfectly, the bones are still a little out of place but it’s saving your life... rumor has it, they are getting a self administering one made up soon for field use and emergency response. Maybe in a couple of years you’ll have ‘em in your kits or waiting around in emergency rooms”

  “What kind of science fiction bullshit.” John grumbles, but can’t hold onto the frustration at not understanding for very long, the relief is almost instant as his body mends itself.

  John lets his head fall back into the pillow and stares up at Cat's eyes, who continues to watch him from above.

  “Take a picture Cat, it will last longer,” John teases with a smile.

  “Hmmpp.” Cat, or rather, Bella now that they are off mission, lets the corners of her lips curl up into that feline grin of hers, as John drifts off to sleep.