Fireteam Delta by J. Halpin (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📕

“I don’t think you have friends,” Asle answered. “Not really.”

“You might be right.” Rhodes shrugged on one side. “But this is bigger than you, or me. I will be deep in the ground before I let those fucking things gain an inch.”

Asle just stared at him, impassive.

“What the hell am I saying? You’re just a kid.” Rhodes turned away. “Get the fuck out of here before I call someone.”

Rhodes was clearly done talking.

He’d done nothing but use her friends since they’d come to this city—for weapons, to save face.

Slowly, she reached into a slit at the hem of her dress, feeling for the holster still at her thigh. He’d taken everything from her friends, but they’d never even looked at her.

He’d never considered that she’d be a threat.

 “What—?”

Bang!

Rhodes surged upward out of his seat. The shot tore through his side, spraying blood in a mist behind him.

She fired twice more, the shots going wide as Rhodes tore the gun from her hands. Asle stumbled back away from Rhodes as he fell to one knee, gripping his side in pain.

“You little b—” He was cut off as the ground suddenly shook.

She watched in horror as the beast bound to the wall began to writhe. Its skin was bubbling, just where the spray from her bullet had hit.

Rhodes hesitated only a moment before he tried to run.

This time, he was too late. The thing crashed into him, convulsing, the sound of bones snapping resounding in the courtyard.

Then all at once, it stopped, and a single arm burst out from the monster’s back.

Asle ran, a chorus of wet flesh tearing following behind her. She didn’t dare stop, even as servants spilled into the hallway. By the time she’d reached the doorway to her friends’ wing, all she could hear was an ear-splitting, inhuman scream.

Chapter 27: Powder Keg

Summers lay in his bed, trying to sleep. It wasn’t going well. His mind continued to dwell on the revelation that it might not be wholly “his” anymore.

He’d been trying to remember anything he could about his mother: what she looked like, sounded like, what her name was. He had nothing.

Trying to remember his life back home, he could grasp every other detail. The dozens of part-time jobs he’d held to pay their rent, the old woman who lived across from them, but he could recall nothing about the woman herself. The fact that he could remember his stint in McDonald’s over his own family was a revelation he wasn’t prepared for.

There were other holes in his memory, of course: his father—though he recognized enough about the man to not mourn that loss—a few of his friends, his first girlfriend. Every time he tried to quiet his mind, something new and disturbing would crop up.

And through it all, he had to deal with the gnawing hunger nibbling at the back of his mind.

A single, distant pop pulled him from his thoughts, too close to be someone on the wall. The shrill, savage scream that followed confirmed that something was off.

Summers stepped out of his room to find Nowak, Cortez, and Logan already in the common room.

“That was a gun, right?” Logan moved to the dorm’s entrance. There was muffled shouting outside.

Bells sounded alongside more gunfire, automatic this time.

“Move,” Cortez ordered, cracking open the door to look outside. After a moment, she looked back to the others. “Guys. I think our guards forgot about us.”

Summers moved up to look. Sure enough, there was no one in the hallway.

And the gunfire only intensified.

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Asle pounded against the door as the screaming behind her grew louder. She turned to see a creature of pure, greasy black with a mouth too large for its body. It opened as it fed on a woman at its feet.

The servants were panicking, screaming. At some point, it had killed nearly half a dozen of them, the bodies scattered in a circle around it.

And the door in front of her was locked from the inside.

Two guards with more courage than sense charged the creature with spears.

She didn’t even see it move. The first man’s head simply disappeared, while the second was thrown to the ground in an instant. The creature was on top of him then, its black, almost liquid-like skin seeping over the corpse. Asle watched in horrified fascination as the man seemed to disassemble, his arms moving to the creature’s back, its mass more than doubling.

In the distance, Asle recognized Nisha’s voice. The woman was shouting orders.

The creature lifted its head just as a spray of bullets slammed into its side. It screamed, sprinting off to its unseen attacker at a speed Asle was sure was impossible.

The door beside Asle exploded outward, and two more guards with assault rifles ran in. A servant was shouting, pointing down the hall. They hesitated only a moment before moving forward.

She wanted to shout out, to warn them, but she knew they wouldn’t listen. She needed to find help.

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Summers and the others stalked through the halls of the castle. Between the shouting and the panic, no one was paying them much mind—in fact, most were trying to get out, same as they were. Something told Summers that the bells that had been sounding in the distance were a warning.

“Do you know if they have some kind of armory?” Cortez looked to Logan.

The man had spent the better part of their time in the city with Nisha, so he was the most likely candidate out of any of them to know how it worked.

“Are you kidding?” Logan looked at Cortez incredulously. “If they had weapons stored somewhere, the higher-ups would be trying to take them. If it’s not in someone’s hand, it’s probably