It was almost like the mess had been intentionally overdone. And with the two intact bodies next to the freight elevator, Reese couldn’t help but wonder if the attackers were trying to hide the fact the people were dead before their bodies were mutilated. But that didn’t make sense. What would the betas gain from that?
Reese joined Jones back in the main area.
“Is it my imagination, or is it colder in here?” Connery said.
“The facility is under a mountain.” Spongy tissue swallowed the tip of Reese’s shoe. He grimaced. “The lower we go, the colder the ambient temperature will be. The environmental controls have been down for over twenty-four hours. Even at full capacity, it would take at least twelve to bring it up to seventy. The only thing working is the air exchange and filtration, so it will never get above forty without the heating system.” Reese stepped over the tattered remnants of a shirt weighted down with flesh. They approached the other side of the room with the lockers, benches. A steel cage with weapons was mounted on the wall. Camouflaged jumpsuits hung off to the side.
Jones and his team stopped.
“Why the hell do they have tactical gear down here and enough firepower to destroy a small village?” said one of the men.
“My guess,” Jones said. “It’s the same reason there’s a freight elevator to access topside.” The man towered over Reese. “You people were letting these things out in the gen-pop? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Reese couldn’t meet the man’s accusing stare and counted the jumpsuits instead.
“Stand down, Jones,” Harrington said.
“Colonel—”
“Later, Master Sergeant.”
Jones widened his eyes. The flush in his cheeks darkened. He pushed past Reese and cleared the rest of the hall and side rooms. There were fewer labs on this floor, mostly operating style rooms to examine the subjects before and after sending them out on a mission. More evasive procedures required sedation.
It took massive amounts of phenobarbital to take them out. Sometimes enough to make their heart stop. Of course, the ichor would absorb the lethal amounts within seconds, and in minutes they’d be awake again unless administered a near constant flow. If the subject had sustained enough physical damage and was overtaxed from healing, they could be out for hours, but eventually the ichor would break down the sedative. No matter how dead the subject might look, they always woke up.
The sloppy mess of flesh and blood thinned to misshapen footprints. The toes pointed to the next door leading to the stairwell going down to level four.
“Is that from them?” One of the other men jerked his chin at the tracks.
“Yeah,” Reese said.
“Fuck, how big are those things?” He put his booted foot next to the print. It was barely longer than the creature’s middle toe.
“Why are they heading in the direction of level four? If they came up from the containment area, the prints would be heading in the direction of level two.” Jones said.
One of his men answered. “Unless they were already in here,”
“If they were in here and they escaped through that elevator, there would be tracks on level two.” Reese indicated the way they’d come with a wave of his hand.
And except for the damaged cage in the lift, there was no sign they’d gone through.
The door to the stairwell for level four cut across a crimson footprint.
Reese opened the door. More tracks led them from the foyer with the elevator into the stairwell and down to level four. Reaffirming that the direction the Anubis moved was to the lower levels, not the upper ones where they would have escaped.
Two people lay at the bottom of the steps. A woman on the landing and a man near the door to level four with his neck bent and the bones of an arm poking through the tear in his shirt. Thick bloody clumps clung to his shoulder. Between that and the woman collapsed at the top, Reese was pretty sure the man had fallen in his panic to get out or from the lack of O2. He hoped for the latter. At least he wouldn’t have been awake to feel pain.
The tracks from the Anubis faded but not before stamping a mark onto the slacks the dead man wore.
They stopped in front of the door leading onto level four from the stairwell.
“Jones,” Colonel Harrington said.
“Yes, sir?”
“It looks like a battlefield in the next hall.”
“Then I think now would be a good time to bring Dr. Dante topside and come down here with more men.”