FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

James stirred as equipment in the cargo plane's hangar bay jostled with turbulence. Dawn's orange light had begun to cast patches through the small port windows. Briefly he surveyed the rest of his teammates. Even the huge bear, Boris, was still trying to get some shuteye.

An hour of half-sleep went by before the huge plane set down on tarmac, and James and the rest of the multi-squad platoon loaded up into deceivingly plain vans various shades and age before they split off from one another. Walker sat beside Boris in a van, looking comically child sized compared to the mountain sized brute.

Walker had canid heritage, but there was a reason she was the captain of his squad. Lithe and wiry in comparison to Boris, she was easily meaner than the oddly placid grizzly unless he was enraged. Her blue eyes found James's sternly from across the other side of the back of the van.

"Spit it out James."

"Cap, you know where we are?"

She chewed on her gum briefly, rolling it around in her mouth. "I'd say somewhere in the Dakotas. Utah maybe. Why's it matter?"

He shook his head. "Just wondering. We haven't been briefed at all."

Boris shifted, speaking Russian before correcting himself to English. "We briefed at destination."

James persisted. "Cap, you've run ops like this before. What can we expect?"

She placed her hands at her hips and stretched her legs out. "You ask way too many fuckin' questions for this job James. Short notice like this? We're walking into serious shit, probably delicate. I only know we're one of maybe fifteen or more teams being called in."

Boris shifted his weight to look down at Walker with thick furrowed brows. Walker ran a hand through the only thing that wasn't dark black on her, short cropped blonde hair tied back. "Yeah, my suggestion for everybody is to buckle the fuck up because it's going to be a long day."

Boris's amber eyes found Rabbit, who had been sitting next to James quietly the entire time and reading from a book with letters in a language that wasn't standard anywhere out in the world. "You quiet, Rabbit."

The greying shaggy rat nodded sternly. "Waste of breath until we get to the drop off. Thinking about shit we don't know we're getting into won't help us."

Walker snapped her fingers and pointed. "Amen to that. James, kindly stow questions for the power point presentation."

He held up his hands in defeat. "Yes ma'am."

Boris nodded, his thick features creased with a smile. "James can buy us time for donut and coffee at presentation with all his questions."

Walker stretched her arms briefly. "Boris, we get through this day and I'll get you a dump truck filled with doughnuts."

The van would roll through early morning traffic for another hour of relative silence before it arrived at its destination. When the back doors opened James and the rest of the squad were greeted with a surreal sight in the parking lot of a large national chain hotel.

Scaffolding was in the process of being constructed around the entirety of the building and thick plastic tarp was being overlayed on the outside walls as if the building were being fumigated. A plain dressed man beneath a hazmat suit approached, waving the squad down.

"You must be Captain Walker's squad. Proceed into the lobby and wait until the other units arrive. You'll be briefed and then given time assemble your gear."

No sooner had the man given his hurried explanation before he disappeared into a swath of workers who looked identical in their yellow and orange suits. Walker led her crew forwards, pausing briefly.

"Rabbit, Boris, you know the deal. James, you're still new in my book. You read anything about an op like this?"

"No ma'am."

Her eyes pointed out the workers and scaffolding. "It's a front. It looks like the building's undergoing renovations or fumigation for pest control. Good chance they set up a wide perimeter of cognitive blockers and other fancy gear. This is going to be a sweep op."

James protested. "Cap, you already know my profile-"

Walker turned on James, her slender facial features like stone. "Whatever you've run in the past will look like paintgun shootouts to whatever shit we've got to kill in there."

Walker motioned to Boris and Rabbit, who both nodded silently and pressed onwards past the hotel doors into the lobby. Although like the others, Walker was dressed in casual clothing, unremarkable top and jeans, she unclipped a handgun from a holster on her thigh.

A magazine slid from the gun to reveal the glint of chambered rounds before sliding back into the gun. Walker held the gun out to him. Her expression was cold. "Take it and shoot me. Dead center between the eyes. Three seconds."

James didn't have much time to think. He remembered advice given to him when he was assigned to Walker's squad. The why's forcefully disappeared as the gun found itself in his hand and the trigger pulled. Nothing happened, not even the clink of a hammer. He let go of baited breath, staring at Walker as her expression remained the same, except for her blue eyes. She nodded at him.

"You'll need to be that fast in there. There's going to be civilians. You do what I say, when I say it. You do what any of the others tell you if they've got the lead, understood?"

James silently nodded. Walker's hand found his, asking for the handgun still leveled at her. Largely identical to his, five fingers and all, short fur rather than hairs across her skin. A unique smoothness he'd never felt before now. He let the pistol slip into her grip. She pressed past him, rapping a clenched fist on his shoulder.

"Good job. Come on."

He watched her press onwards past him before his daze broke and the wider world entered his vision. Not a single one of the hazmat suited workers working on the outside of the building batted an eye to the disturbance in the parking lot.

---

While the exterior of the hotel presented a facade, its interior was anything but. There was evidence of hastily cleaned pools of blood where somebody had been attacked, but the spatters on the walls or across the furniture remained present. Large spotlights had been wheeled into the lobby and where focused on the elevator and stairwell, and every exit and room had a minimum of two heavily armored soldiers in black body exoskeleton armor with no identifying features or insignias.

What might have been a large business conference room had been converted into a briefing room set with rows and rows of foldout chairs, and other sections of the main floor had been converted into rooms with padded white panels and red tape, loaded up with racks of equipment.

Boris's huge frame clung to a corner of the briefing room as James and Walker entered, the grizzly nodding at James with an easy going smile.

"You pass Capitan test. Good feeling about you."

James looked over to where Walker had taken a seat next to Rabbit amongst other gathering soldiers. "What, you or the captain?"

Boris chuckled in a thick Russian accent. "Boy, Capitan is all business."

James blinked. "I- that's not what I meant."

Boris raised a massive hand, thick clawed finger pointing from his eyes to James. "Not what you mean but.... see what you think. Can see soul through eyes, they say."

"I've only been with you guys for two weeks."

Boris laughed once more. "We do ops, deal with occult and magic, but you do not believe old poems?"

Boris pushed off the wall, patting James on the shoulder with what felt like getting hit by a slow moving truck. "Do not believe, then listen. Job has no room for attachment. Capitan know this. Why she always business. We are soldiers. We live and die as we breathe."

James nodded, raising both hands. "Fine. Say I believe that. Doesn't that make us removed from what we're fighting for?"

Boris chuckled. "Capitan is right. Too many questions. But good. We complete today, you and I discuss over coffee."

Boris lumbered off closer to where Walker and Rabbit had sat, standing next to them with his arms crossed. More soldiers had filed into the room and it was now full either with those standing or sitting. A short woman in a white lab coat had worked her way through the crowds and set something on the ground at the far wall, which sprung to life and projected detailed images and views of the hotel across the wall. The room went silent as the woman addressed it mechanically.

"At approximately four thirty AM our agency intercepted a call from hotel staff at this present location and sent a reactionary dispatch, who then confirmed what we know at present. We suspect terrorist activity, although no demands have been made. There are two hundred and eleven guests present and thirty three staff members.

At some point, Vampirus Rabidus was likely released into air ventillation systems. The timing of this release is suspect. Those infected cannot currently leave this building, but the situation will become risky by nightfall. We have twelve hours to contain and neutralize all threats within this building. Questions?"

The briefing room broke out into murmers, but Walker's hand shot up immediately. The white coated woman pointed with an outstretched arm to her.

"This is a blow op. We can't possibly be looking for survivors. Floor by floor, room by room?"

The woman nodded shyly. "Yes, umm, it is. It is unlikely that there are any civilian survivors who are non-infected. The layout of the hotel is here on the holocam, and you will have access to whatever tapped surveilence footage we do. Are there any more questions?"

James raised his hand and suddenly felt all eyes in the room on him.

"If this was released into the vents, our suspected terrorist either turned feral with the rest, they were already immune, or they bugged out before it went off. What are we expecting to find? What if we meet whoever set these bombs off?"

"An apt question. You should be prepared for dealing with an individual or group who may be a higher strain, still cognitive and fully in control. There may be nobody at all."

Another soldier in the room raised their hand. "What do the heatmaps show of the building?"

"Typical heat clusters of individuals undergoing the transformation process. But there are abnormally cold sections within. We have no current data as to why."

The questioning continued, but Walker stood up, Rabbit following along with Boris. The grizzly motioned with his head to James amongst the crowd to follow as they entered one of the white paneled equipment rooms nearby. Walker issued a few quick orders.

"Boris, heavy gear, you're our breacher. Rabbit, get all the shit you think you need, then get some more. James... trivia time. You've got thirty seconds on my watch to list every major weakness of the Rabidus strain starting now."

Walker spun a dial on an out of date wrist watch, watching him sharply.

"Uh, Vampiric in origin, strong ultraviolet light, type C. Fatally allergic to silver in high enough doses, highly resistant to trauma and other damage but can be taken down with enough sustained firepower. Fire can soften them up, and a mixture of black widow and rattlesnake venom coating bullets or blades can coagulate their blood and slow them down to normal speeds."

Walker stopped her watch with an approving nod. "Very good James. Textbook. But there's a reason the venom serum is low on the list that everybody in the squad doesn't consider it a major weakness. Rabbit?"

The scrawny rat commented from elsewhere among the room's supplies as he was loading up a large rucksack.

"Venom coating's a last resort and a shit one because some of these things can dodge bullets and knives faster than you can react. It's the seven step rule all over again. If these things get within that range, you're fucked. You won't have time to slow them down. A dust that they can inhale is more effective. Toss in a laced smoker right before you engage and you'll have better chances."

Walker nodded, returning her gaze back to James. "But you've never actually engaged these things before have you? Maybe saw some archive footage, but this is new, right?"

James conceded and nodded. "Yeah."

"So what are you going to pick to fight them with out of all this shit?"

James took stock of all the equipment in the room, mainly the racks of firearms, since he couldn't tell what Rabbit was inspecting and Boris could carry things none of them could. "Close quarters, but they're fast. I need something that's hard to miss with. Anything with buckshot, I'm thinking."

"If you get swarmed the reload time will kill you, specially if you fumble the fuckin' shells like Boris does."

Somewhere Boris chuckled. "Not my fault weapon is small."

James thought about it. "Large mag but easy reload. I need a bullet hose."

"Can you carry all the mags you'll need for a long haul? Rabbit's bag won't have room for your shit. One more try."

"It's not a gun, is it?"

Walker's eyes smiled at him through their blue hues. "Good man. It doesn't matter what you're packing. They're faster, and you always run out. But they aren't faster than light, and UV puts the fear of god in them so you can use whatever the fuck you want. Your mags may as well be batteries, James."

James nodded. Walker's eyes pierced his, studying him. "Spit it out, James."

"Cap, I don't like the cold spots on those heat maps."

Somewhere in the room Rabbit spoke up. "He's got a nose for that stuff Cap. Remember our first run with him?"

Arms crossed, Walker edged a bit closer to him now, "So tell me what you're thinking."

He tried putting it together, but couldn't explain the distant connections. He fumbled with his hands like he was trying to build an imaginary building. "I need to see the heatmaps again."

Walker patted him on the shoulder. "Right, we're in the briefing room. Rabbit, Boris, be ready in five."

Walker strode forwards like a bulldozer through the gathered crowds of soldiers back in the lobby, parting the way for James as they neared the front of the crowd where the woman was still taking questions. Walker cut through her timid voice like paper.

"Pull up the heat maps again."

The woman paused, stammering. "I..."

"Just do it."

The entire lobby froze in silence as the woman brought the maps up onto the wall with the projector. Walker looked over to him sternly. "Go ahead James."

He pushed the feeling of all eyes on him away as he looked at the three dimensional projection of the building floating in the air, dark blue hues spread at random on every floor. The projection spun ghostly silent as he stared at it unnerved.

He looked over to the lab tech woman. "Can you remove the heat projections?"

The woman typed something into a device on her wrist and the orange blotches disappeared. "Remove the infastructure...just leave the cold spots."

The projection withered so that all that remained were blue clustered blotches. By now Walker and some of the other soldiers started to see it too. Her hand found his shoulder as she rapped on it. "Fuck me, James. You sure you didn't register at all on psionic testing?"

He looked at the woman in control of the hologram. "You see it? Draw lines between the big spots....it's a tessaract. But rotate it....there's more. Move the projection so we're looking at it from the top, and flatten it into one layer."

Another moment passed and the ghostly half shape of a cube folding in on itself endlessly disappeared into a flat projection. Flattened into one layer, the dark blue blotches formed an unmistakable pentagram while the cube rested in the middle of it.

Walker spoke for James. "It's a ritual. Those spots are probably corpses piled as offerings."

A soldier in the crowd spoke up now. "For what?"

For a moment the woman in the lab tech was in her element. "It's a gateway. It's a ritual to open a gateway to a higher dimension than ours. We'd detect the activity eventually and intercept. The Rabidus infection is just there to slow us down...."

Walker moved quickly, grabbing James's arm. Other soldiers, other fireteam captains began issuing orders as the briefing room exploded in a cacophony of noise and boots moving.

There wasn't any time for thank you's or cheers, whether or not James had either added critical life saving intel to the mission or a doomsday clock. Everybody knew now was the time to gear up.

Rabbit cracked the barest smile as the two returned and Walker issued new orders. Boris nodded approvingly. James felt unease about the situation, about what he was walking into, like trading a bathtub for the ocean. But it was the short moment of quiet as he and Walker picked their gear and fit themselves with kevlar and plating that set him at ease as her blue eyes crossed his for a second.

---

As soon as they had gathered all their equipment, command dropped new orders and a generalized plan of approach to the situation. The assembled fireteams would each be responsible for sweeping a single floor, one advance team sweeping, with one team following behind to guarantee that nothing was left alive or as an active threat.

Due to the unknown factor of what or who was responsible for the attack, heavier specialist teams were being routed in leu of James's discovery. But the issue of the winding down clock was still present. It would be the role of Walker and other fireteam captains to advance ahead with their squads and if possible, eliminate the primary threat before the specialists arrived. If they failed, hopefully they bought time for the specialists to finish the job.

It was a grim objective, but the silence in the elevator amongst Walker and her crew only added to the oppressive weight James could feel in his chest. It was Walker who finally broke the silence as the elevator rose slowly towards its destination. Floor ten.

"Rabbit, you got anything back from the advance team ahead of us?"

The slinky rat shook his head, letting a cigarette fall to the floor before stamping it out with his boot. "Nothing. Not a good sign. You want me to set anything up yet?"

Walker's piercing blues scanned the room and her crew, lingering for a second on James. "Not yet. Save the tricks for what we know or when you think we need them."

She pointed to the mammoth sized Boris who looked comically hunched inside the elevator amongst three other people. "Boris, you and me on front. James and Rabbit on our six. We do a hallway check, advance room to room until we get to the end of the hall. Everybody clear?"

Everyone in the elevator nodded, checking over their gear one last time. "The advance team probably got everything on the first pass, but I don't want anybody fucking around. Take no chances. And James?"

She turned to face him directly now. "Yeah Cap?"

"Remember the parking lot. If anything moves that's not ours, you call it and shoot on sight."

"Got it Cap."

"I want flashlights off for only two seconds when these doors open. Everyone ready?"

The countdown to floor levels chimed as the elevator hit the tenth floor followed by four guns being checked over one last time. Boris hunkered to the side of the doors as did Walker, leaving a clear line for Rabbit and James.

The doors slid open to reveal the hallway ahead. The hall lights were dimly fluttering, casting dark down the entire corridor. This time there was no cleaned pools of blood on the floor. It sat in congealed pools that showed evidence of activity in them, slips and bodies having smeared it across the floor and walls. Everyone in the elevator froze except for Walker, who tapped against the elevator doors with her rifle.

Something metal clanged to the floor in the distance as one of the lights flickered down the hallway and heavy footsteps could be heard on carpet. Rabbit shouted, "Contact!" before his flashlight beam lit up the darkened hallway.

James caught a blur of black body armor and humanoid motion before he began unloading with the rest of the squad. Bullets impacted on kevlar and slowed it down, but even as their flashlights lit it up and it began to smoke where skin was visible, the creature was dead silent.

It had come down the hallway full sprint, the combined fire slowing it and finally puncturing the body armor until the soldier dropped to the floor with one rasping breath, ten paces from the elevator doors. Boris and Walker pushed forward, scanning ahead down the hall. Boris put three rounds into the head of the fallen creature.

James and Rabbit followed behind, the elevator doors closing behind them with an unnerving finality. James only caught a glimpse as he pushed ahead with Rabbit. It was an agency soldier, part of the advance team, in the process of mutating.

Whatever fur he'd had was falling off, skin as white as an albino with sickly veins, and freakishly elongated arms and fingers in the process of being forcefully reshaped and stretched, tearing through his strapped armor padding. What was left of his head showed elongated bony features and the beginning of what would become large jagged ear lobes that could pick up a pin dropping in a hurricane.

Walker and Boris pushed into the first room on the left, James and Rabbit taking positions and scanning the hallway under the flickering lights. It was a silent unnerving minute before "Clear!" was shouted from inside the first room.

It was roughly ten minutes of the same dead silence for the process of checking through every guest room. James never saw the entirety of each room, just glimpses of individual stories playing out in each one as the infection spread like wildfire. Luggage barricade here. Teddy bear there. Spattered blood and body parts, shell casings left behind from the advance team.

At the final room at the end of the hall, Walker's boots thudded on the carpet in quick but clearly distressed strides alongside the lumbering of Boris as they exited on the final "clear." Her blues scanned the hallway fiercely and found Rabbit poised at the doorway with James.

"Two things. Where the fuck is the advance team, and where are all the bodies? This entire floor was fully booked, thirty, fourty people. I want a line on the radio to home. James and Boris, check the body back where we started, trace what happened. Stay sharp, you hear me?"

Boris lumbered on ahead and James followed, gun lowered but ready as they traveled down the silent hall until out of earshot of Rabbit's radio scanning and Walker's chatter. The soldier's body laid where it had fallen just beyond the elevator doors up ahead.

"What do you think Boris?"

"Hmm. Not enough bodies for blood. Something wrong, very wrong. Check soldier bodycam."

They hadn't gotten all the way to the body yet but James had the feeling he knew what they'd find. Sure enough, the combined hellfire of lead had shattered the bodycam's lens and punctured what they'd needed inside of it. James stood over the body with Boris in the gloom as the radio static in the hallway found no line to base, no matter what channel.

"Hey Boris.... the body is still changing..."

The grizzly looked down briefly, returning to scanning the hallway. "Is natural. Infection lives longer than host. Is not a threat unless you be stupid and consume blood. We need Rabbit to fix camera."

Boris grabbed and fumbled in his hands for a childlike sized walkie stowed on his vest, trying to sort through channels but found nothing but static. He grumbled with a sigh, peering down the hallway to Walker and Rabbit.

"Interference. I will get Rabbit. You stay, cover elevator doorway."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"There is nothing here James. Would have tried to kill us moment we made noise."

"But something's wrong here, what if it's some kind of trap...or something?"

"Then we have already sprung it. Keep flashlight on, you will be safe, or feel safe, whichever comes first."

Boris had taken one heavy padded step ahead on the carpet floor when the elevator chimed. The hairs stood up on the back of James's neck as he turned at full speed with his rifle raised to see the impossible. The elevator was coming down from above. Floor 15, 14, 13, 12......

"Contact!" was all he could muster as he back peddled and Boris responded in tune, pulling something from his vest with a clink to send it rolling down the hall towards the silver sliding doors. The grenade detonated with a puff of air as it spread a cloud of invisible fumes laced with coagulants.

Boots hammered in the background as the elevator doors chimed with an ominous friendly ring as they parted, and what was inside spilled out in the form of ten or more bodies. Boris and James unloaded for only a few seconds before Boris realized the problem. Bullets ripped through them and there was no reaction other than a steady march forwards as the recently dead corpses moved with an iron will to reach one goal.

Boris's pull on the shoulder nearly toppled James as he began to retreat. "Move James! Walkers! Gun no use!"

They began a back peddle as the corpses moved with alarming speed just under par with a slow jog, their relentless march forwards threatening to box them in at the end of the hall. Boris shouted down the hall to the incoming Rabbit and Walker.

"Barricade now! Walkers!" Rabbit was the closest to them, yelling down the hall at full sprint. "What type!?"

Boris landed a headshot on one of the shambling incoming bodies, exploding its mauled face like a melon. It kept walking forwards.

"Animated magic!"

"First room on your 3'o clock!" Walker had caught up, and the group filed into the guest room quickly as the advancing wall of bodies was catching up. Boris moved at full speed as he slung his gun and proceeded to drag the room's guest bed like a toy and ram it against the shut door, putting the brunt of his weight against it as the tide of bodies walked into and gripped mindlessly at the door.

James went for a nearby dresser and was joined by Walker as they dragged it hurriedly to the doorway before Boris let them pass. Dead hands hammered and slammed like drunken ones against the door as Boris sat on the dresser, partially relaxing as his added weight was enough to hold the barrier.

Walker paced with her arms crossed and Rabbit unshouldered his rucksack, bending down to open it up as he lit up a cigarette. Walker raised a finger to him for a second, "What did I tell you about smoking on the job!"

The rat shrugged. "Don't do it, blow us up one day." He scanned the room briefly, looking at everyone in it. James had finally settled somewhere, standing against a wall with his gun slung low but ready. He felt like dead weight in the middle of this. Rabbit lit up and puffed a long drag as he looked inside the contents of his pack.

"We geared up for Rabidus. You nail any of the bodies in the head for sure?"

James spoke up. "Boris got one. Nothing left up top."

"Kept coming?"

"Yeah."

Rabbit chewed on his smoke. "Trouble then. We're dealing with very high powered magic of some kind. The only way to shut those bodies off is to hack them apart until they can't move, or kill what's channeling the power to them."

Walker leaned against the wall next to James, arms still crossed. "That's not even a guarantee. If they've got power being channeled into them, what are the odds they can rebuild?"

Rabbit chuckled. "High. We're dealing with somebody way above our pay grade. We're talking blink and we're all dead levels of magic."

Boris kept an eye on the barricade he rested against as he spoke. "Trap sprung. Elevator came down from levels that don't exist."

Rabbit kept chewing his smoke, his scrawny features looking sunken as he looked over to James. James nodded silently back.

"Right. Now we're fucked."

James was the first to speak. "How?"

"If I'm right, the elevator shaft was something like a one way valve. We flow through, up, into an overlayed pocket dimension that's a copy of the hotel, but we can't move back down to the original. That's why I can't get home base on the radio."

James looked over to the covered window of the room they were in, but Walker spoke for Rabbit as she looked at James, nodding.

"Poke through it, if you can James. There's a reason we can fire a nuke off in here if we wanted and it would never leave a trace. Those buffer panels absorb everything on one side."

Rabbit nodded. "So we got played by somebody that wanted us to be here. Used our own tactics against us. Even if we found some bullshit way to get through those panels, there's probably darkspace out there."

James was going to say something in response to what twisted in his gut before Walker spoke for him. "Yeah. The only way out of here is up."

The short pause in the room was interrupted by a loud thump against the barricaded door as one of the guests pushed with increased force. Walker turned to Boris. "Can you hold it?"

The Grizzly nodded back calmly. She scanned the room, sighing. "Everybody take five. Eat if you need to, piss, whatever. I want ideas for how we're getting out of this room, and how we're all going home at the end of today."

Rabbit let out a snort. "There's always in bodybags, Cap."

"You can either smoke or make shitty jokes. Pick one and get to work."

Rabbit lethargically saluted. "Got it Cap."

Walker turned her sharp blues at James, her tone more subdued. She looked as impassive and hard as ever, but even in that for a second he felt something in his heartrate change. "You should eat something now while we have the chance, James. You've got the fastest metabolism out of all of us. We all need to be at full strength for this."

He shook his head. "Not hungry, Cap."

Her eyes narrowed at him. She did a quick check over to Rabbit and Boris. "You two got this? Gimme a minute."

Walker's grip on his shoulder urged him along with her into the room's bathroom where she gently closed the door, paying no mind to whatever was left in the room from the previous tenants as she pointed to the toilet and spoke sternly.

"Sit. You've been running ops with us for two weeks now. You did one tour in the East and served five solid years on the force after being discharged from the army. You've handled the last two weeks like a professional. So right now what is it that's not working in your head?"

James froze momentarily. "I..never killed one of my own before."

Walker's blue eyes bore holes into him and she shook her head. "Wasn't one of ours anymore, James. Don't bullshit me. If you're not up for telling me, you've got to get your head in the game because now it's fuckin' serious. EAT something."

James inhaled slowly, closing his eyes for a moment, shutting out Walker's blues and that slender soft furred face of hers. "Cap. What happens if any of us go down?" He opened his eyes again, standing back up slowly. Walker's gaze was iron.

"You finish the mission, James."

"And if we all don't make it?"

"Then that's the way it is. The advance team is coming but we can't count on them, and we can't count on time being on our side."

"What are our odds, Cap?"

Walker furrowed her brows. "Not impossible."

James had slid a step closer slowly. "Cap...in the parking lot."

Her blues held his gaze, their shade of colour seeming to deepen. "Jamming tech around the perimeter. The gun never would have gone off, James."

His hands fumbled with a tension that overwhelmed him, and he wanted to snap it. "It's not that....Cap...."

It all froze when when her outstretched hand stopped on his breastplate like a wall. Her sharp eyes cut through him but pulled him closer. "James, stop."

Her eyes held steady and cold, but it was that half second divert that caused him to edge just a bit closer until the pushback from her was firm. Her tone shot down to a whisper.

"If you do that again I'm dropping you from my squad when we're done here. Eat something, that's an order."

There was a long gap of silence and only their breathing. Walker snapped back to it, turning around to open the door and stride back outside in quick steps. James followed. Walker strode towards Rabbit, holding her hand out. "Gimme one."

The wiry aging rat leered up at her from the floor where he was kneeling with a small canister torch. "What, a high five?"

"Smoke." Rabbit blinked up at her, dumbfounded. Boris shifted his weight on the blockade, looking over to Walker in surprise, then briefly to James as he moved towards a wall on the outskirts of everything. Walker lit up and handed everything back to Rabbit.

"I've got a plan."

Something snapped back to normal as Rabbit tapped the torch on the floor. "I've got a better plan."

Walker leaned up against a nearby wall, arms crossed as she exhaled smoke slowly. "Let's hear it."

"I'm going to cut through the floor. We get one of two outcomes. A lower floor we can get to, or a hole into darkspace. Either one works."

Boris nodded with some enthusiasm, understanding. Walker puffed out smoke as James tore open a nutrient bar awkwardly. She nodded. "Do it. Boris, get ready to let the barricade go."

A brief pause as she turned to James with a gesture. "You and me, on that wall by the corner. We need an exit."

Rabbit slid goggles over his eyes as his torch lit up. Walker's hand traced the drywall of the wall, tapping her fingers briefly before she sent her armored fist through the material between support beams. She pointed to James before she moved onwards to make another hole and start on it.

Boris spoke calmly as the barricaded furniture occasionally shifted. "Didn't know you smoke, Capitan."

Walker tore away drywall and insulation mechanically. "I quit a long time ago Boris."

James worked silently, following Walker's lead as he ripped through material to begin exposing the wall on the other side that would lead to the other room. There was a second where he accidentally brushed against Walker's hand as they worked on the hole. It was the longest second he'd felt for a long time.

---

James was expecting a sound. Of floor boards or maybe iron and steel girders hitting the floor below. When Rabbit's rough shaped hole in the floor finished its circuit, the floor fell away with a creak and then an unnerving silence into a black void.

James saw it fall into the shadow, a feeling of vertigo and loss of the ability to perceive distance unsteadying him, as if the hole wasn't one at all, but more like on overlapping sticker with solid black spray paint. Rabbit whistled at his work, Walker nodded, and Boris pointed to James.

"You understand plan James? See what happened to floor?"

Before he could say anything, Rabbit lit another smoke with his torch before putting it out and stowing it in his bag, rising to his feet near the hole in a controlled motion as he spoke.

"Its molecular bonds broke down. Anything from our dimension, sound included, breaks apart in darkspace. It's a higher or lower dimension. We don't know. Good for killing our problem though."

Walker sighed, tossing her spent smoke into the black pit on the floor, watching as it ceased to exist in an eyeblink. "I hate having you on the team sometimes, always fucking right...."

The rat shrugged, shouldering his rifle. "We game time or are you going to bitch some more?"

Walker scanned the room, nodding. "Us three, behind the hole. Cover Boris when he lets the barricade down. Let them come and fall in. Boris, you ready? Don't fuck up your jump."

James readied his rifle with Rabbit and Walker as the grizzly shifted his weight off the barricade, nodding. "Now!" Unbeffiting of his size, Boris acted liked he'd rehearsed the whole thing. Tossing the dresser past the hole in the floor like a child's toy, and moving with steady steps until his boots brought him just to the edge of that dark abyss cut into the floor, where he threw his weight forwards with a vault, clearing the hole to stride over next to James and take up position.

No sooner had he managed his graceful act and the door to the room shifted with more force until the wall of persistent bodies forced it open with their weight. Walker's hand stayed raised with a clenched fist, their guns at the ready as the first of the guests barreled into the room.

James felt trapped for a second, looking at the morbidity of the scene as the battered and bloodied guests marched forwards, falling into the hole and sometimes banging their bodies against the edges of the ring, the only sound to be made before they fell farther into the breach and simply...ceased.

He counted thirteen bodies. All had marched forward with weighted thumps and the occasional gasp of displaced air in their lungs, right into the hole. Walker's hand opened after thirty seconds, a span of time that felt much longer in waiting until they confirmed the all clear.

With the coast clear, James turned to the hole in the wall he'd partially made, joined by Walker as they bashed their way through to the other side of the room, followed through the holes shortly after by Rabbit, and with some effort, Boris.

Walker took the lead, opening the door to the hallway outside with a quick check, striding quickly down the hall towards the elevator at the end of it. She spoke as she went, rifle raised at the ready.

"Rabbit, get prepped what you think we'll need for going up. Boris, you're breaching as we go up. I want to take this thing up past the shit to the top floor if we can, skip the traps, and put a bullet in whoever set this up."

The team advanced forwards quickly, but James spoke up. "Cap, what if we can only go floor by floor?"

Walker pushed ahead as Rabbit chimed in. "He's right. This seems like an endurance run. No way whoever set this up will let us ride right to the top. They want us boxed in and slowed down."

The elevator was only a couple rooms away now, doors still closed. James and Boris had their weapons leveled at the door, both of their eyes on that sign that had read impossible levels previously. Everything was as still and motionless as when they had entered the hallway. The body of the agency soldier lay where it had fallen, partially moved after having been trampled over.

The team reached the doorway, and Walker hammered on the open button. The elevator chimed with its ominous friendliness, doors sliding open slowly to reveal its spotless interior. Something twisted deep in James's gut. The cleanliness of the interior screamed something wrong to him.

Although their weapons were at the ready, James reached out instinctively to find Walker's shoulder as she was in the process of advancing. "Cap wait....."

They all froze. Walker's aim was square and unflinching. Boris hunkered and hunched low, eyeing up the clean space, snapping to James with raised thick brows, then back to the elevator. Rabbit inhaled his smoke, tensing up, but slowly crouching down onto one knee as he stayed looking at the contents of the elevator.

"What do you see James?"

He kept staring at the clean carpet, remembering the disheveled appearance of the guests. Grime and sweat and blood, cold dead bodies that should have left some trace of their passage. He stuttered. "I...I..don't know. It's too clean."

Rabbit stayed crouched, his ears flattening as he pulled on his whiskers as he tilted his head and studied the doorway. He closed one eye for a moment before nodding and speaking calmly. "Back off slow. It's a perception filter. We can't see them, they can't see us. They might be able to hear us."

Rabbit kept his rifle leveled at the doorway as the other three stepped back slowly. Walker retreated in tandem with James as she patted his hand, acknowledgement or request for removal, he couldn't tell. She kept it curt and controlled.

"Boris, get the tripod and the big gun out. Silver rounds. Twenty meters back. How many you catch Rabbit?"

"A lot. Maybe all of them. They'll have to funnel to get through. Elevator doorway's a chokepoint."

Boris thudded further back and James heard the sounds of him setting up shop. Walker turned her face to his. "Scope out a fallback just like the first room we used. If we lose the doorway we need somewhere better than the end of the hall."

James nodded, halted as Walker put a hand on his shoulder. "Take some of the heavy duty lights from Boris and set them up where you pick. Eyes peeled." She rapped on his shoulder plate and he could only nod back at her as he set off as she turned her attention to Rabbit.

"I'll cover you. Cut a trench into the floor and get started on bringing the filter down. Do what you think we'll need."

Rabbit nodded, already moving to get his torch out. "It'll take some time for a cut that big. It's a mixup past the door, Walkers and Rabidus. Spotted a big figure in the crowd, might be one of the guests that was Boris sized."

"Hole'll thin them out so we can focus on the problems. You see any of ours in there?" Rabbit nodded back as he lit up his torch. "Yep. Every elevator exit on each floor might have dumped most of them on that side of the filter. They probably walked into a slaughter pit."

"So what saved us? Did you do anything?"

Rabbit chuckled for a second. "James never registered any type of paranormal readings at all. He's either got uncanny luck or a sense we can't detect. I've been in this game a long time, and I missed the tessaract pattern."

Walker shifted her weight for a moment. "You think it was him? Like what, some kind of barrier?"

"No, building dimensional pockets like this takes math you'll never understand. But all math is subject to probability. Whatever thing James has might make him a walking coin flip. Just enough of a nudge to cause ripples in other systems."

Walker recalled their first run with James and her own read through his file. A police team stumbled into an event before agency teams could get to the site. James was the only survivor. A natural pick for the agency.

Rabbit's torch burned through the floor but he spoke up with a rare genuine laugh, catching her gaze and attention. "Seems like you've met your match. All those years I tutored you and you never had a weak stomach for anything."

Walker tensed up, scanning the halls around her. "I'm still in charge here Rabbit."

The rat's tail flicked. "I don't doubt that. But you can't control everything. Take some advice from an old man. If you get through today, roll with it. Trying to fight it will throw you off eventually."

Walker shook her head. "I can't. This isn't the kind of job that lets you have that."

Rabbit nodded, flame cutting away floor as his goggles reflected light and sparks. "There's always a choice, Walker. It's whether or not you've got the balls to take it."

Walker sighed, stealing a glance back down the hallway.

---

James found Boris at his machine gun setting out his crates of rounds to funnel into the gun. The Grizzly chuckled at him openly, speaking quietly. "Never seen anybody fluster Capitan like that. Impressive. She likes you. I cannot see why when a man of civility such as myself is present." Boris pumped one of his massive tree like arms in jest.

James inhaled sharply. "I just need lamps Boris."

Boris motioned with his head to the opened rucksack behind him. "Is there, take them. You want advice, James?"

James glanced back momentarily at Walker's frame further down the hall before he spoke subdued. "What can you say that already hasn't been said?"

Boris closed the lid on the rounds fed into his gun with a sharp clap. "Heart always wants things now. There will be time, later."

"If we make it."

Boris patted his machine gun with a grin and said nothing, leaving James to tend to his task. Two heavy lamps found themselves in his hands as he traveled a little further down the hall as he scoped out rooms. They'd all be the same anyway, but he needed one without bodies and clear space to work with.

He found his winning ticket, a room with little clutter and disturbance to it, and he set down the lights a few feet from the door, peddles ready to be hit when they needed it. A quick check of them both to test them, and that should have been the end of it.

But there was that feeling again. Something he couldn't place. His rifle found itself raised as he scanned the dim room. It had been cleared for certain and he didn't doubt Walker and Rabbit's expertise. He scanned the main room slowly, then the empty bathroom further in as he pushed forwards cautiously, and found nothing.

It was his ears that cued him into it. His breathing was steadied and measured. Somebody else's breath in the room was frantic and uneven. That moment of realization that he wasn't alone was all he got before something moved on him from behind with dead silence except for the footfalls as the body dropped from the ceiling.

Something impacted at his back and sent him sprawling with a shout, his composure broken as his finger slipped on the trigger and hammered out a burst of rounds as he rolled to the floor. He scrambled for a target but what jumped him was just too fast, swatting his gun from his grip like a toy before setting on him in the darkness.

He thrashed and found the combat knife at his belt and stabbed into something solid, the infected body on top of him barely reacting as a blow from it sent stars into his eyes and knocked his helmet off. An animalistic snarl came from the monster before the room rang with gunfire and splashes of light.

His ears rung and he stared up into dark for a period that felt long before it became the ceiling under a flashlight beam, and he was pulled along on the floor into the main hall. Walker's blues appeared in his vision and he felt her hand on the side of his face urgently as the world came back in better detail.

Rabbit appeared on the other side of his vision as did Boris before something jabbed into his arm painfully, scraping off bone. His heartrate slowed and his breathing steadied, and he was able to focus from that far away gaze, down to the side of his arm were inch long claws had shredded through his padding and plate and elongated teeth belonging to a mutated powerful jaw punctured his skin like paper.

He closed his eyes for a moment with a resignation, finding Rabbit crouched at his side with the empty syringe in his hand. He spoke, "Thirsty....water....how long?"

Rabbit's voice cut through the distance like a fine blade, finally snapping him back. "That'll buy you until the end of the day, maybe a bit more. It's going to slow your heart and clot your blood a bit, stall the infection's speed on your cognitive abilities."

James felt pain somewhere now with a wince on his face. "How bad?"

The rat's features had turned to stone. "She got through your back plates, got most of your upper left arm. You need painkillers?"

James blinked, finding Walker's eyes on him as he looked up from his slump against the hallway wall. "I'll be fine. Wha- what happened? Where'd it come from? Elevator?"

The three standing above him all had no answers for him until Walker moved. Her presence was still there, but her tone was flat, a kind of gentleness to it he couldn't describe.

"Rabbit, back to it. Boris, cover him. I'll patch him up."

Rabbit nodded with no sarcasm or hint of anything, and Boris leered down at James for a few moments, blinking with no expression before Walker motioned at him, snapping him back to it. James leaned his head back against the wall and let a long breath out as Walker knelt down beside him, pulling bandages and a bottle of something that'd burn on the wounds out of Rabbit's things.

She couldn't look him directly in the eyes as she prepped the disinfectant and the sealer. "Not your fault James, you didn't do anything wrong. It was a Chameleon, figuratively, literally. Should have kept our eyes open when we read the guest list. My fault."

James slipped into some kind of calmness as he watched her work. "What happens at the end?"

Walker kept her eyes averted, shaking her head. "Up to you James. Bullet before you slip too far, or you want to gamble that we get out of here and can get you into the freezer in time. If it was me, I'd rather be dead than frozen forever. Cure for this thing might never be found."

Now her blues found his eyes as she held up her left hand to him. It wasn't obvious at first, but the thinner padding and plating at her hand had been punctured easily by a bite somewhere in the engagement. It was the first time she smiled in a way that he might call sweetly.

"You think Rabbit could sprint with all his shit or Boris could move his ass and slow it down with finesse to get into the doorway in time?"

James let out a chuckle, cut short with a wince of pain as the disinfectant soaked cloth hit his skin and burned for a solid minute. Walker handed a water bottle to him with her good hand. He took it and drank quickly as she started wrapping bandages and sealant over what she could.

"You going to tell them Cap?"

Her voice was low. "Only at the end. Everybody needs to be playing their A game now. We've got one advantage. We're not far enough along into the infection to get a free pass, but our smell will confuse them. If we're on point for Rabbit and Boris, we can buy them time."

James breathed in deeply, resting his head on the wall and looking up to the ceiling for a moment. "Huh, it's really it, isn't it?"

One of Walker's hands found the side of his face. Although mostly armored, the intentional softness of that touch was unmistakable. Her face pushed in close to his, piercing eyes focused on his. "Look at me. We're not done. It isn't finished until it's finished."

It was a long moment that he spent looking into her eyes, what he thought he could see in them. But it was Walker who closed the gap for a second. Just the bare edges of her black lips to his, a moment of feeling her breathe on top of him, and the moment of hesitation and delay as it took a mountain of willpower to stop herself from going any further.

She eased off slowly, but it wasn't a recoil or deflective. James didn't push after her. The moment spanned a thousand words and what-ifs, erasing all of them down to one that he knew deep down was true now. That was all he needed.

He inhaled slowly, speaking softly. "What about the injection, for you? You can't do it out here in front of them."

Her brows furrowed sharply and her lips creased with disgust. "I hate needles."

At any other time he might have laughed. After all this time she had a weakness. It only drove him to act and think and get back into the game. "My helmet's back in the room. I'll go get it. Meet me there."

She nodded curtly, pushing herself up and taking him with her. James rose somewhat unsteady, pocketing a syringe of clear contents from Rabbit's things before he went back into the room as Walker set off to return Rabbit's stuff and check on the progress of things.

Blood spattered the walls inside the room and pooled on the floor and carpet as James stared at the body of what had attacked him. If not for the scales that could camouflage themselves and a few other things, the body on the floor no longer belonged to a chameleon, but something feral and stripped down to the bones, mutated into something that might resemble bat-like features at first glance, but the truth was more hybridized insectoid.

The elongated bony features gave way to the beginnings of a carapace, the lower jaw splitting apart into separate mandibles that could clamp, puncture and crush, while the elongated sandpaper like tongue absorbed blood like a sponge.

Walker's shadow in the doorway brought him back as she stepped in. "Maybe another twenty minutes. Rabbit's sure most of the guests are on the other side. It's a kill gauntlet."

"So what happens if we make it through that?"

"We should be able to push ahead without much resistance unless whoever set this shit up has more plans."

James unpocketed the syringe from one of his vests. Walker turned her back to him to face the doorway ahead, unlatching one of her shoulder plates and rolling up the protective weave of her gear. She looked at the ceiling. "It's got to hit bone, James. Just.... don't tell me before you do it."

He paused in hesitation for a second before a lightbulb went off on how to do it. He edged closer against her back until their armor plates touched, wrapping his arm around her waist to no protest from her. "Got your six, Cap."

Her response was hushed but her hand clutched at his wrist gently. "No funny ideas James."

The needle went in hard until James felt the resistance of bone. Walker stifled a partial yelp and James clamped his hand over her mouth and supported her as her knees went weak. "I gotcha, I gotcha, almost....done!"

He eased the needle out as steady as he could, helping support her as she fell to her knees onto the floor. He held her on the floor for a long minute, in what would have been silence except for the noise coming from outside in the hallway.

But already the infection was doing its work, even if it was slowed. In the room he could swear that he could both hear and feel Walker's heartbeat transition into a slower state. It was something almost instinctual as he let go of his grip over her mouth and rested a hand over her breastplate. Walker exhaled slowly, getting used to what the concoction was doing to her system by slowing things. For a moment, the bite she usually had in her voice was gone, the edges of whimper of vulnerability replacing it.

"James, we have to go. They need us."

"I know." He relinquished his embrace slowly, pushing himself up to his feet with a lethargy on par with Walker's. She took control of herself once upright, pointing to the hall. "Check with Rabbit and Boris. I'll be out in a minute."

James nodded and left for the hallway. Boris scanned the hallway with the mounted gun, double checking everything. He was silent as he nodded his large head at James in what exuded sorrow.

Rabbit, on the other hand, was blunt but subdued in his tone as his torch melted through the floor panels to cut away the trench into darkspace. "She's infected too, isn't she?"

James inhaled slowly, looking ahead at the elevator doors. "Yeah. You need anything?"

Rabbit kept his torch going, finishing the final cut. Wood creaked and steel groaned, if only for a moment before an entire cross section of the hallway fell into the black and disappeared without a sound. Lifting his goggles and killing his torch, the rat turned, looking up at James. "About five minutes for a conversation."

Rabbit pushed up to his feet and shouldered his pack, pushing past James with a determined walk to him. Walker was returning from the room and at Boris's side as the scrawny rat raised his hand with a whistle.

"Gonna need all of you to shut up and let me speak for a moment." Rabbit dropped his pack to his side, bending down and opening it to rummage through its content. James shrugged at both Walker and Boris as Rabbit spoke.

"I can smell the drugs on you boss. That's two down and out. We're going up against a literal meatgrinder, and we're stuck in darkspace with no exit. We clear so far?" Rabbit looked at the three who leered down at him with some visible confusion and concern. He nodded as he lit up another smoke and pocketed his lighter. "Good, I think it's time we dip out of this shithole. This is beyond our paygrade."

He pulled out a black featureless box from the bottom of his gear, inserted a key into it, and opened it up. Walker's features went slack in shock while Boris squinted at what laid inside. James could have described it as looking like a fine grade watch, but something about the metal that formed it was wrong, golden sheens twisting organically in delicate looking spirals that interlocked with each other, and where the central timepiece would be located, a blank lens. Walker spoke first with a hint of rising anger in her voice.

"Where....the fuck did you get that, Rabbit? Is that what I think it is?"

He smiled meekly at her, puffing out a long drag and stroking his whiskers. "You remember Loisianna?"

Walker inhaled sharply with closed eyes. Boris looked over at James with a shrug, an event before even he was on the team. Rabbit spoke as he crossed eyes with James and Boris.

"It's a Chrono Singularity Displacer....a get out of jail free card."

Walker took a sudden step towards Rabbit pointing at him viciously. "It's not free, you know that! These devices are illegal for a reason! How the fuck did you hide it from the agency!?"

Rabbit shrugged. "The agency isn't all seeing and they aren't all knowing. I know tricks they don't. I've been in this game longer than you know." He rolled his eyes. "Anyways, listen. I was going to dip because everybody here knows this is a one way job at this point and doesn't want to say it, but I think we should all do this diplomatically. I served with you for too long Cap. You're a good woman."

Walker covered her eyes in silence. Boris studied everyone's reactions. James piped up. "So what does it actually do?"

Rabbit looked at him with shrewd eyes. Something more than shrewd. His eyes were older than his appearance. "It waves a fat dick in god's face and takes a shit on death's porch. Strap this to your wrist, activate it, and it'll take your soul and punch it through time and space. You'll wake up somewhere else, in another version of you."

James could only blink as he processed it. Rabbit turned his attention up to Walker. "You know I'm right. Whatever power source holds this pocket open needs to be destroyed to collapse the domino chain of dimensional stacks. Once you do that, it's over unless you've got the power to tunnel downwards back into our home dimension. All of us are dead no matter what we do. We might not even make it that far. It'll be for nothing."

Walker shook her head, holding a hand out as she stumbled. "It's not for nothing! People are counting on us.....I..need to sit down."

She stumbled away into the nearest empty room as everyone let her go. James motioned to Rabbit. "Gimme a smoke and your light."

Rabbit nodded. "It's a big call. I'm not going anywhere until she comes back. But we probably don't have long. That perception filter could get turned off any second. I'm not getting turned into mincemeat pie and shit out onto a hotel carpet."

James stood up and went after Walker, stopped for a moment by Boris's iron grip. The hulking grizzly smiled at him, and James knew he'd already made a decision before he said anything. "Maybe we have doughnut in other life. Maybe you....and Capitan? Rabbit is right. Why die when we get second chance?"

James thought about it for a second. "What happened to we live and die as soldiers?"

Boris's huge shoulders shrugged. "Was before I knew Rabbit was sneaky fuck. Dying in darkspace...not like normal death."

The titan's grip waned and James found Walker in the nearby room, sitting in the bathroom on the toilet, rigid but flexing her fingers back and forth. He closed the door behind him, handing her the smoke and lighter. She moved without hesitation, tossing the lighter away angrily into the empty bathtub after lighting up. James knelt down to face her.

"Cap...I don't know about this whole....soul jumping thing. I'm still new to all this. But I'm with you."

Her gaze found his, vulnerable exactly like it was just after the injection. Her hard tone gave way to resignation. "He's right. He shouldn't be, but he is. He always is. We all know this job is always a one way ticket sometime. I just...." she trailed off with a sharp inhale of tobacco.

James reached out and touched her face. The short fine black fur parting on her elongated jawline revealing darker corrupted veins under her skin, matching a similar tone to the ones in James's hand. "It's not finished. We finish the job, we use the watch. Wouldn't that be fair?"

She looked at him closely, totally lost. "You don't know what using it means....where it may take you.... James, the agency destroys these things for a reason."

"Then we just stay here. You and me."

Walker's gaze hardened a bit. She sighed. "Boris wants to use it too. He would. Okay, okay, fine."

She pushed onto her feet somewhat unsteady as James caught her. She put a hand against his chest plate near his heart. "I think it's moving faster through me than you. Let's go."

James helped her along back out into the hall where Rabbit and Boris were waiting. She leaned heavily against James as she wasted no time, but she sounded utterly defeated. "Rabbit, Boris. If you want to go, then go. I won't stop you. I'm not leaving until it's done."

There was a moment of silence of acknowledgment between everyone's eyes before Rabbit delved into his pack on the floor, pulling out four pairs of seemingly ordinary looking dog tags on chains and a detonation trigger. He handed the trigger to Walker along with two tags, passing the others to James.

He strapped the watch to his wrist, speaking quickly. "Red button for killing the perception filter. Blue button for some shrapnel mines I laid out past the trench. Put those tags around your neck, pull and break and you'll get about seven minutes of immunity to most magic and anything that could harm you. Works only once. Use whatever's in my bag only if you know what it is."

Walker nodded as Rabbit took a step back from the group against an adjacent wall, looking over them all with a nod. He paused at Walker. "Cowards way out by your books. Didn't make it this far by being brave. Always thought I'd be saving this for my retirement."

Walker leaned a bit harder on James, but she managed a weak smile at him. "Never put a rat up against a wall. I'd expect nothing less from you. You were the best specialist Rabbit. I just need to know one thing. Your files were always blacked out. You were old when you were my captain. Who the fuck are you really?"

Rabbit stroked his whiskers with a smile and a nod. "Long story Cap. I fucked around with magic and found out. I can't age. Agency didn't like how I went about and achieved that goal and they gave me a choice. Eternal torment, or serve something better. I've been trying to escape for years now, well, until you ended up in my squad."

Walker looked at him with a total loss for words until she spoke softly. "Why did you give me command? If you have all these years of knowledge...."

Rabbit smiled. "You were better at leading than me. If I just...stepped aside from my ego, let you do your thing while I was your wingman? We were almost unstoppable. But it's got to end some time. Just not here. Now I get to find out what other things I can be the best at. Cheers."

Rabbit turned the only dial on the watch, and as it sprang back to its original position, his entire body slumped and fell to the floor with a thump that resonated through the hall. Walker closed her eyes and turned away for a moment, looking over at Boris when she reopened them. The grizzly moved over to Rabbit's fallen body, checking his pulse first before undoing the watch and placing it on his own wrist. The unearthly material of the watch adapted itself to fit over his huge wrist.

He eyed James with a smile and nod before finding Walker's gaze. He held an immense arm up in a salute. "Capitan Walker. Give them hell. I would stay, but I wish to have a second chance. Perhaps I am not truly cut of the cloth of a soldier."

She nodded back. "Put the tab for the doughnuts on me. You'll find your way. Don't worry about me. You know I can take them. It was a good run, Boris. We had a good run. Go."

The Grizzly nodded back. Another dial turn and clink, and Boris's massive body fell to the floor just as lifeless as Rabbit's. James could only look around the hall in the moment of unnerving silence that followed, before Walker's knees gave out and she sputtered out a cry of anguish.

James went with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. He couldn't muster any words himself for what he'd witnessed or heard. But he found his gaze falling down the dim hall to the elevator as it remained waiting patiently.

Walker wiped her tears and inhaled sharply, inhaling one last puff before throwing her smoke away and pushing back onto her feet out of James's arms with sudden purpose, finding the watch and removing it from Boris's slumped body. James stood waiting as she approached him, grabbing his wrist and latching the watch to it. Before he could protest or say anything, she moved in.

Her black lips and muzzle overtook his in a grip that stayed locked tight. James's altering senses felt her heart hammer and the heat in her body flair like a furnace, and while he returned the embrace as a weight in his chest lifted, some part of her tongue slipping past his lips or the way her fangs pressed him felt like some other monster was clawing at her insides to get out. His own body temperature was rising, and he felt something inside of himself too. She broke the kiss with a heated breath, looking into his eyes.

"I'll take Boris's gun. Cover me and sweep for anything trying to get around the chokepoint. Wait for five seconds before you trigger the floodlights Boris set up. We put everything we have into it until there's nothing left standing."

James's face strayed close to hers, eyes locked onto her blues. "What about the watch and the talismans?" Her black lips drifted a bit closer to him and he felt her breath on his face. The natural smell of her body hit him like a freight train this time, a strange pleasantness to it with a hint of some flowery soap.

"We use the charms only when we have to. We clear the chokepoint and push hard until we get to the end. We're looking for a conduit. You know what that looks like?"

James recalled memories of briefings and training with a nod as Walker's lips pushed aggressively at his mouth again. Her hand pushed at his chest plate and he mirrored her, feeling her heart, hearing it. Every pulse stirred something primal in him he couldn't explain. The kiss parted with a single strand of saliva trying to bind things back together. Walker swallowed hard, blinking.

"You might have to put me down. It's moving faster. Adrenaline's burning through the serum."

He shook his head at her, summoning a commanding tone that paled to her usual presence. "You're tougher than that. Come on. It's now or never. Get your earplugs in, get on the gun."

She inhaled sharply, pushing off James. She hung her head for a second with a strange smile. "I wasn't supposed to feel like this....about anybody. It's bad for work, James."

She knelt down, setting the detonator to her side as she checked over Boris's machine gun and rounds. James took one last look over to the slumped bodies off to the side of the hall before taking position in a doorway at the side. He pulled a grenade off his belt, readying it as he set his foot down on the pedal that controlled the floodlights. He looked back at Walker. She held the detonator in her good hand, nodding.

Her finger hammered the trigger, and before their eyes the end of the hallway and the elevator dissolved into mist. She readied the machine gun with a shout. "Come get it!"

James tossed the grenade and sent it sailing to the end of the hall where a gaping passageway now loomed. Over two hundred bodies packed into the hall beyond like sardines turned in their direction. The machine gun sent shockwaves through the structure of the hall, and James saw blurs in his vision moving on the walls and ceiling before he stamped on the pedal on the floor.

Floodlights lit up the hall and a tide of bodies pushed forwards like a flood, their own momentum driving them forwards even as they sizzled under the UV. Dark blurs became solid as they burned up in the light and tried to retreat along the walls and ceiling and he let out salvos from his rifle as Walker directed machine gun fire down the central line.

Bursts of light seared mangled bodies into his vision, animated corpses pushed forwards into the pit and fell into darkspace, and Walker triggered the second set of shrapnel mines as the tide of corpses became so much that their fallen bodies began making a clogging bridge over the dimensional cutaway.

Silver shards tunneled through the first advancing wave and reduced it to pulp and smears on the walls, the force of the explosion blowing micro sized holes through the walls into the empty void.

James saw nothing as Walker managed a reload, swivelling from target to target and blur to blur as the wave of bodies advanced closer. Red and blackish blood coated every surface with each advancing line of of bodies that went down and internal organs and pieces of shattered bodies flew apart in all directions as the machine gun thumped steadily.

Bodies fell backwards like dominoes, until they started falling forwards like dominoes. James spotted the hulking mass first. An Ursine guest, mutated into some freakish thing that could have looked like a chitinous beetle with how massive its frame was and boasting the same speed as other infected moved like a tank through the fallen bodies and still moving ones, unphased by the spotlights as they set its hardened skin nearly on fire.

Walker's machine gun blew holes into its hardened skin and face and it kept coming, closer and closer until she ripped one necklace off her neck, diving off the machine gun as the living wall of flesh leaped with enhanced claws the size of swords and half a face left.

James caught it all in his peripherals as he ripped a necklace off his own neck, and he felt the strangest sensation he'd ever known. Bodies and guts spilled across the floor like a river and he raced back onto the machine gun, trusting that Walker could take the infected ursine.

He felt untouchable, indestructible, his every motion perfect and streamlined as he reloaded the gun nearly as a blur of motion and continued firing into the advancing wall of bodies. The tide was slowing but this dominoe chain of falling bodies advanced like a rolling wave, closer and closer to the gun until Walker stumbled, or more appropriately was thrown into a wall ahead of him where she impacted into the drywall, but bounced back with gunfire as she pushed off the wall with a shout.

The hulking monster took a swipe at James's already bloody backside, finding only the gun frame and empty air as James rolled to the floor. The hulking creature reared up above him, and the recoil that should have broken his arms continued as a stream of bullets blew holes through its stomach, shattered its ribcage and spilled guts out until there was no midsection left. The infected ursine staggered like a slowing spin top, finished by Walker as she unloaded into its exposed skull until bone disintigrated into tissue flecks and then nothing.

James rolled off the floor and left the nearly emptied gun, standing side by side to Walker as he emptied mag after mag into the closest approaching body, retreating with her well past the mounted gun until finally at last, everything stopped with the final drop of an infected guest's body hitting the floor, riddled with bullet holes.

A moment passed as he locked eyes with the woman standing beside him, the power of the talisman creating some high that was only multiplied by the rush of the fight and what they'd done.

He ejected his last magazine. Walker handed him one of hers. They moved quickly without words, taking what they needed from their fallen comrades equipment before setting off side by side through the hallway as they navigated a river of body parts and piles, jumping the gap over the black abyss despite the bridge of bodies overtop it, and pushing beyond what used to be the elevator doorway.

More of the same hotel interior walls and rooms greeted them, and while the hall was dirtied by the bodies that had stood in it before, it was eerily calm and still. At the end of this equally long hall, an exit doorway stood waiting.

Halfway through the hall, the talisman's protection wore off. James fell to his knees as the high faded, and his body was hit with a wave of fatigue and a feeling of losing something he needed to find and have again. Almost automatic, he reached for the second charm on his neck, stopped by Walker's bare hand as she lay on the floor with him.

It was only now that he could see in proper. Portions of her armor had been gouged and ripped apart like paper, the underlying naked body underneath unharmed. Her helmet gone and her tied short blonde hair now a free mess. She breathed as heavy as he did.

"Wait....until we open the door."

James's mind spun like a hurricane with feelings he could barely process, his body going from marathon fatigued, springing back to life as the regenerative like infection thrived on having faster destruction of his body to remodel it into what it wanted. New sensations hit him like freight trains.

It was Walker who pulled him back to his feet with a pained shout. They pushed forwards together, guns up until they got to the exit door. A sweep behind them showed movement. Those infected with Rabidus stayed dead. But the animated walkers that had survived were moving. James saw the impossible as body parts moved together like magnets, reforming bodies that stood upright like deformed puppets.

He looked into Walker's beautiful ocean blue eyes as they both gripped the necklaces at their necks. The blue hue to her eyes was fading, being overtaken by a pale white, and they reflected light dimly.

The second set of necklaces broke and they kicked the door. Some kind of trap was set off that utilized magic. James couldn't tell what it was other than some invisible presence like a wire. He had a feeling it would have cut them both to pieces had the talisman's power not just rebounded it. No time for hesitation.

A concrete stairwell with no apparent bottom that spiraled endlessly downwards until there was darkness greeted them. They ran upwards flight by flight until at last, a roof exit beckoned them through it with another hard kick and sweep for motion even as the talisman deflected another lethal trap.

James's eyes couldn't make sense of what he looked at above him and around him. The roof of the hotel was like some infinite mirror in all directions. Below him sat the parking lot, and the evening sun slipping below the horizon. Beyond this infinite horizon, darkspace loomed like this impossible distance to gauge, a black bar that was infinitely far, but right in front of his eyes. And above him, the sky exploded into a mirror of skies, darkspace, sunsets, and hotel parking lobbies surrounded by agency crews fronting as exterminators.

A metal pedestal that looked more like an anchor contained a crystal fused with metal rings etched in a language that when looked at, appeared to span ahead of him and behind him into infinite lines of differing symbols. The conduit powering and tunneling through the higher dimensions.

His sense of perception was overwhelmed and he froze, overcome with vertigo and a complete inability to tell how far apart everything was from him. Although beside him, Walker could have been infinitely far away from him.

In a moment, it ended as Walker overcame this blast of visually infinite noise, stumbling forwards until she had to crawl, removing a satchel from her pack and sticking it to the crystal. She staggered back over to James, urging him with her as she shut the door behind them and triggered the explosives.

His heightened hearing rung painfully with the blast, the door bent inwards and heated from some of the shrapnel and everything went dead silent. He exhaled as Walker opened the door once more to an even more disturbing sight. The anchor was unaffected by the explosion. Walker swore, beating her fist against the door. "Dammit!"

The talisman's protection broke, and James collapsed to his knees and puked. Walker fell onto her back and laid there on the roof, spent. The same cycle of exhaustion and craving filled his body, before the virus regenerated on the damage and gained another mile while leaving him an inch.

He tried to push himself back up. He tried to tune out the visual insanity before him and he focused on the anchor. He looked over desperately to Walker as she too tried to get up. He had an idea. "What about darkspace!?"

Walker looked over at the anchor. It was beyond one person's ability to move with one exception. She looked absolutely livid as her fingers dug into the gravel on the rooftop. "Fucking Boris god dammit, you couldn't have waited!"

James shook his head, pushing himself up to his feet. He defied the visual insanity and took a step towards the anchor, putting both hands on it and pulling. Something inside of him stirred. His body temperature rose. He strained until veins in his body grew pronounced and he screamed. The anchor slid on the gravel an inch.

Walker was on her feet, and she grabbed it with him. She pulled with everything in her and they made the anchor move several inches more towards the doorway. The two locked eyes and pulled in simultaneous efforts. The huge arcane chunk of metal slid down the stairwell easier.

Half ways down, a problem was coming up. Shambling rebuilt bodies walking drunkenly up the stairs. Walker looked back over at James as she wiped sweat from her face and hair as her body shook with exhaustion. "Push it down hard.... We get to the right floor, can you get it to the hole? I'll hold them off...."

James nodded and they pushed. The anchor toppled down the stairs in chaotic movements, its immense weight crushing and flattening the corpses walking up the stairs after them. Both ran down the stairwell to catch it and try to slow it, using the flattened broken corpses as their paper trail to get back down to where they came from.

James pulled with every ounce of strength and more. He pushed past what was safe as muscles tore and his body started to break. The virus in him burned like fire as if it were trying to burn him out of his own body, bouncing him back as he inched the anchor closer and closer through the hall, back to the site of the massacre.

Walker's gun resounded through the stairwell hallway until it was dry, her spare emptied all of its clips, and it came down to her knife. Animated bodies weren't smart, but they could rip people apart with ease due to having no muscle limits since their brains were gone.

Echoes of bodies falling down an infinite staircase rebounded in his ears. James pulled with all of his strength even though every time he heard Walker shout he wanted to turn back. The hall was in sight now. The piles of dead bodies loomed close as the skin tore in his fingertips on the rusted metal of the anchor.

Near the clogged cutout floor, James pushed. The anchor fell atop the corpses, its sheer weight crushing them like paste until the moment of truth. The weave of bodies buckled in sickening bone snaps and fell into the dark void, as did the anchor. He expected something. An explosion, a burst of light or arcane energies. It dissolved into nothing in the blink of an eye.

His enhanced hearing heard many bodies fall. It was more like animated chunks of meat. He laughed, lurching dangerously over the edge of the broken hole cut into the floor, nearly falling into the blackness himself until a hand caught him on the shoulder.

She was covered in blood and grime. They both fell back onto the floor and collapsed. He couldn't tell how long he laid there. Eventually Walker's sweet voice found his ears.

"We did it....it's done. James.....You did great..."

He rolled over and crawled closer to Walker as she laid staring up at the ceiling. "Cap... what happens now? I don't understand."

She rested for a moment longer, the virus in her veins feeding off the damage until she regained some strength. "It'll...take some time before this pocket collapses. The lower the dimension, the easier it resists decay. I think I need another smoke."

James pulled himself closer to Walker until he rested against her side, staring vacantly at the ceiling with her. One of her hands searched, finding one of his as she clasped it. "I just want some shuteye for a bit. You'll stay with me?"

He didn't even need to look. He could feel and hear her heartbeat beside him. "Until the end, Cap. Can I...just say that you're most beautiful woman I ever met?"

"I guess....we're not on the job anymore. Don't make it a habit. I can't stand being hit on. That's enough of this fucking day."

James laughed for a second. "I won't." He rolled over onto his side. Walker responded with him, facing him as she rolled over. He fell into in a peaceful sleep as he put a hand on her chest plate and listened to her heartrate and she did the same.

---

There was a period of sleep that he was unaware of, but it turned sour as flashes on repeat of mutilated faces and bodies passed by his eyes in vivid sequences. Old or young, man or woman. The sensation of falling caused him to kick, and we woke up in a burst of terror as his feet scuffed against the carpet of the hallway. Walker stirred beside him, just as on edge as he was.

James looked upwards into a void all around him. It was impossible to tell height in the blackness above him. But he noticed that all sides of the building around him seemed to be...fuzzy where pure darkness met matter, like he could see through the walls into the black. Walker seemed to pick up on his unease, putting a hand to his chest.

"We might have a day or two before everything falls apart. It'll progress faster as it goes."

"What do we do?"

Walker pushed herself up with effort, holding a hand out to James. "This little pocket will obey all the laws it was built to copy. I need a fucking shower and a bed. Everything should be dead now."

She motioned to him with her head to get up. James took her hand and stood. "What if it's not?"

Walker looked into his eyes. Her blues were much dimmer and even paler than before. She stroked her hand across his face which was equally marked with dark veins. Her touch felt blistering. "We're too far along. We'll smell like them. They don't attack their own, at least for food. Bring your gear if it makes you feel better."

She moved ahead for the stairwell but stumbled, caught by James. James felt unsteady as well, and the pair leaned together and made for the stairwell. Walker appeared to be right. Only one flight upwards through a door that led into a completely empty hall filled with undisturbed, unused rooms in the copied pocket.

The lights remained semi functional, power remained on. A vacant room's door closed and latched with the clink of some locks. James's bag and gear fell to the floor, now useless. From deeper into the undisturbed room, a light came on in the bathroom followed by Walker swearing. James flinched at the bright light too. She turned the light off, but water started flowing from the showerhead. It was a beautiful sound to his ears.

He walked ahead in a kind of trance to find her in the bathroom in the dark fiddling with the water. The water sounded like distant hammers in his ears. The darkness of the room despite the light being off was absent. For a moment he caught his reflection in the mirror.

His armor was as battered and destroyed as Walker's. His wounds were apparent, but this seemed not to phase him. But his face did. It looked gaunt and veined deeply. His eyes reflected light in greater quantities like Walker's. She pulled his attention away from the mirror by tugging against one of his cheeks with her hand, guiding him away in the gloom.

Her black lips found his somewhat awkwardly for a second, her breath feeling like a furnace. Her tone was gentle for a moment before it became insistant. "Don't think about it. Just take my clothes off."

By now James felt another presence's growing strength, a push inside of him. It was still himself, but a part of him that seemed to have no limits in its depth or hunger. Although fatigued he pushed against Walker's body with renewed intent. They ended up against a sink and cabinet, spilling whatever was set on it to the floor. Walker helped him along as he moved with intense drive.

Armor pads gone and unlatched, the underweave of her armor torn at and pulled with a frightening strength, exposing more of her dark skin and short black fur. James's heartrate spiked in tune with Walker's. The room was starting to feel thick in the air as the hot water ran.

A final pull and rip of two black bras across her chest exposed her topless body completely to him. A double set of upper breasts bared themselves freely while the lower smaller sets made no discernable difference on her stomach other than two sets of rapidly hardening nipples.

Walker pushed back on James with both hands with some kind of snarl before she caught herself with a gasp. James grabbed both of her wrists, speaking heatedly. "I feel it too. It's okay."

Her pale eyes found his and her heated breath was on his face again. Her black tongue slipped from her mouth, and for a moment James bared his own teeth at her as she ran it across his neck. Her fangs were noticably enlarged, and he could bet his were as well. James pushed on her wrists until she was pinned back against the cabinet, and the act snapped Walker back to her senses as her ears lowered.

She shook her head for a moment. "Get the rest of this shit off me. We're not doing this covered in blood and guts."

James returned to his regular sense for a moment. "Cap....we don't have to do anything at all..."

Walker's pale eyes narrowed at him and she snarled for a moment before catching herself. She pushed back against James's grip on her wrists. "You don't get to say that after staring at me like you have for the last two weeks! You gonna commit James, or do I suddenly scare you?"

James nervously laughed. "Just...manners Cap. We're not....really ourselves right now."

She pushed harder on his grip with a low snarl. "Exactly....we don't have a lot of time. Just take my fucking pants off and get in the damn shower with me."

James felt like he slipped inside of himself. One of his hands let her wrists go, gripping her neck with force. Walker responded with her free hand by pulling away what she could of James's battered armor plating. He let her other wrist go, trailing his clawed hand across her breasts and down her center breastbone to the belt of her pants.

Rather than fumble with anything he slid his hand past the waistband, parting the slim thong aside and finding what felt like the hottest part of her body, parting the black folds of her cunt forcefully and finding the small nub that would make her legs shake and her short tail curl.

There was a moment where Walker closed her eyes and started a moan riddled with ecstasy, replaced with a snarl as she opened her eyes and pushed hard on James. The blow sent him stumbling backwards with his own animalistic snarl, and by the time he'd gotten to his feet Walker had undone her belt and ripped most of what remained away. The part of his mind that was still him returned as he laughed at the pink g-string barely hiding anything of her body to him. "Really Cap? Pink?"

Walker moved aggressively towards James as she went to remove more of his battered armor, her black lips finding his oppressively while he ran one of his hands through her short blonde hair. James helped pull away his gear until he was a similar picture to her.

One of his clawed hands pulled her ass until their bodies were pushed tight together, and her own clawed hands gripped into the skin of his back. There was pain, but the virus ravaging his body thrived on it, rapidly starting a regenerative process.

Walker pulled her lips and tongue off James and they both gasped for air, James catching sight of their bodies in the mirror. Walker paused as well. Walker was losing her black fur in small patches, her dark skin becoming brighter as it became pale, showing off dark intense veins beneath her skin. James was no different.

He looked at the reflective circles of her eyes in the mirror. "How long do you think we have?"

"Not long. We burned through the serum. That's why it's hitting our heads."

"I think you still look good Cap."

Walker suddenly gripped the sides of his face in both hands as she looked into his equally pale eyes. "James, it's Vanessa. I'm Vanessa. Not a lot of people get to call me that. Now stop wasting time and do what I know you want to do."

James felt and heard her heartbeat and his own. The thing inside of him jumped like a giddy child as his breath quickened. "Cap...Vanessa...I don't want to hurt you. This...thing is brutal..."

Her altering, slimmer facial features frowned sharply at him. "At this stage....our bodies can take it. I can take it... it's you." She grit her teeth and fangs with effort before she lunged at his face with a snarl.

The thing inside of him roared back at her with his own equally impressive fangs and changing jaw structure. He could hear and smell so much. The slim pink material clinging tightly to her waist couldn't hope to hide the unique scent he picked up. It drove him crazy like a lure towards it.

He fell to his knees, still holding Vanessa's wrists in his hands. His mouth pressed to her cunt and his tongue invaded. Her scent lured him but the burning hot flesh in his mouth was wet, and it was sweet. He couldn't get enough, working his tongue deeper like he was searching for something to drink desperately.

The veins across her skin flared and her muscles tensed. Her hands struggled at her sides in his grip and her head arched. Her heated breath and moan gave way to a sudden snarl as she squirted violently as he lapped everything up.

She wrenched her wrists free of his grip and suddenly struck him across the face with one of her clawed hands. James snarled in retaliation, catching the next incoming blow from her. With immense strength he lifted Walker and threw her against the wall of the shower, cracking the stone as she dropped ungracefully into the tub.

Unharmed and unphased, she was in the process of recovering when James joined her in the hot water stream. He pinned her arms and body forcefully down into the tub, and for a moment they both paused as they made eye contact. Whatever filth coated them began to wash away under the water. James could only marvel at the remnants of her body, and in some disturbing way the alterations that the thing inside of him found pleasing.

While her body was growing stronger and more wiry than it already was, her breasts were swelling, the once smaller dual pairs on her stomach growing pronounced enough to warrant bras, and the top pairs even larger and heavier.

James's mind dimly recalled that Rabidus had different effects on different species, shaping a similar body and qualities, but seemingly optimizing some traits. Vanessa would be as strong and fast as he was, but her body wanted sex, only if the strongest could claim it from her. The offspring would genetically be stronger.

He pushed back the presence in him, leaning down to kiss her muzzle, and she moaned with acceptance. His own body as reactive as hers, he found his own sexual organ enlarged somewhat from what it had been before, just as burning hot as her black folds. He split her cunt apart as he drove inwards into burning heat down to the hilt and the thong snapped inside of her as she quivered and squirted violently.

Eight breasts pressed against his chest as he held her wrists down and started thrusting to deeply primal satisfaction. Eight vein ridden engorged tits swayed like pendulums with the motion of their bodies working in tandem. Vanessa could only moan, her voice altering into something not quite her own, before she snarled with aggression and pushed back against James.

Her altering jaw clamped into his good shoulder, straight to bone and the bite of pain spurred the animal in him to thrust harder into her sweltering cunt before his tongue slipped free to rake itself between her breasts until he found the largest of her top pair. He greedily sucked on one of her engorged black nipples, pulling hard until her soft tit was stretched as far as it could.

She drew blood from the force of her bite into his shoulder, and he returned the ferocity into her softer skin. She could only wrap her powerful muscled legs around his waist in response. Her altering body would out-heal the damage as their temperatures skyrocketed beyond a fever level that would kill any other species.

James let go in pent up torrents deep inside of her sweltering cunt with a snarl of dominance as his clawed hands let her wrists go to wrap themselves around her bony backside and ass even though her body moved in tune with his.

Her arms and clawed hands pulled at his back, the two of them keeping this locked embrace of struggle yet primal want. Her orgasms would come in wet spurts, her jaws clamping tighter, claws digging deeper. He would thrust harder, draw blood from his own bite and claws.

There wasn't much point in counting the orgasms. But the nature of their frenzied fucking would change as the virus ravaging them grew more aggressive in its final push. There was a moment where James buried his jaw and fangs into her neck deeply, and while she snarled in a combination of pain and arousal and arched her body to be closer to him and against him, the act snapped something back inside of James as he pulled away from her, fighting the monster.

He gripped both sides of her face with his hands, her blonde hair falling away in clumps and her elongating ears ever more batlike. "Are....you...still there?"

Vanessa bared her sharpening teeth at him, and a seam down the middle of her lower jaw split it apart as her elongating tongue spilled free. She could no longer speak. But her eyebrows narrowed and he saw the force of will behind her eyes.

In all the chaos the unearthly watch remained on James's wrist. The part of him that had control tried to remember every detail. He'd unloaded again hilted to her cunt. Her softer breasts against his body, heart pressed to heart and hammering under immense strain, her stern iron willed eyes.

The watch felt like metal, but it flexed and stretched like gentle golden stranded paper as he unclasped it. "I'm....not...letting you die here...."

Her body was caught in a forced form of sexual arousal and action as if it had a mind of its own, but her reflective eyes screamed no as he overpowered her. Even though she had a free hand, she couldn't will herself to grab the watch as he stretched the obliging material across both of their wrists, binding them together.

James didn't understand how the watch worked. He wasn't even sure if he believed in a soul, or something so powerful that it could cheat death. But he had a feeling about this. If they initiated the device together...

Walker said there was consequences. A dim part of his mind thought he understood. If their souls really did get transfered somewhere, what happened to their alternate selves? James realized that it was a probably a life for a life.

He struggled to reach the dial. "James....Spader....remember my name.....I'll find you...."

Vanessa's eyes still screamed no. He shuddered at another climax into her equally quaking body. The hot water had turned cold long ago. The temperatures in their bodies reached a level so high that the cold water steamed off their hairless hardening skin.

James struggled to repel the other force inside of him. Tempting not to, as all it asked of him was that Vanessa be continually mounted in wanton sex, as he had proven himself stronger than her. It also demanded food. Somewhere, lower down in this maze, two bodies lay with cooling blood in them. With blood he could outheal any wounds, he could live forever, and he could join forever with her.

James pushed back, looking into her eyes. "Come on....Vanessa. Come with me....Please..."

She flexed her lower mandibles wide with a snarl. But something in her eyes changed. She pushed against him, and he accepted her kiss. Eyes no longer blue, but he could read their depths.

Darkspace was moving towards them from all sides. Eventually the pocket would collapse. Nobody knew how potent it was. But it rendered atoms non-existent. Could it destroy a soul? Vanessa was deeply afraid. The most she had probably ever been in her life.

The moment James looked into her eyes the day he met her only two short weeks ago, he saw her ability to resist fear. He respected her immensely for it. She hated the idea of using the watch. But she also loved him deeply for a reason she was hard pressed to explain when it struck her the same day she laid eyes on him.

They'd face a different ending together, and they'd carry the burden of who died to enable their life together. The force inside of James pushed him down and away. His jaw split and his sandpaper like tongue licked her chest, becoming tangled in her own tongue.

Vanessa pushed with all of her remaining will with her free arm, overpowering James as he tried to pin her down and resume their coupling. She moved faster, finding the dial on the watch that bound their wrists together.

She didn't know what there would be on the other side. But the last memory of this life that she had was reveling in a shared orgasm together. It was better than lighting a smoke and putting a gun to her head before darkspace consumed her.

The dial clinked on the watch as it wound down. She woke up to the sound of an alarm clock.

---