Wyatt whirled around and grabbed the woman again, his desperation propelling him forward despite the searing aches in his limbs and the woman's muffled protests. Her struggles against his grip only heightened the urgency of the moment.

  "Are there any other entrances?" he demanded, his voice tight with fear and uncertainty. He still didn’t know her name.

  "Yes," she replied matter-of-factly, her tone steady even as she fought against him. "The entire complex is riddled with maintenance passages." Her words barely registered over the pounding of his heart, his knuckles blanching white under the strain and terror.

  "Great," Wyatt muttered bitterly. "That thing’s going to be able to get in from who knows where." His voice trailed off as they reached a heavy door. In a sudden motion, the woman twisted free of his grasp, shaking him off with a sharp glare. She flailed, determined not to be dragged any further than she intended.

  "Stop. We can walk," she said firmly, as if this were just another step in a long, inevitable plan. "The Faithful will stop the advance."

  "I’m not worried about the Faithful," Wyatt snapped, his tone laced with desperation. "I'm worried about that thing among the Russians." His words were punctuated by a palpable tremor of fear.

  "Either way," she replied calmly, "this place is too massive, too complex for mere mortals to fully understand." Her measured pace continued—slow, deliberate—and Wyatt found himself forced to match it.

  "I don’t care—we have to reach the rendezvous point, and I need to deliver you both intact." Her face remained hidden beneath her hood, a silent nod confirming her words.

  "Now you're speaking sense, soldier of fortune," she added, her voice cool and unyielding. "Worry not—the Faithful will deliver as we walk the unseen path." And she kept on walking. Slowly. Deliberately.

  Wyatt stared after her, a storm of conflicting thoughts churning inside. Just like the older woman before her, she was unbothered and detached. For a brief, tantalizing moment, he considered abandoning her—turning and running for his own survival, leaving her to her mysterious faith in whatever force she believed was coming. But then he calmed himself, letting his anger subside as he realized she was moving so slowly that he could easily catch up after a brief respite, perhaps even sip some water. Not to mention, the baby securely harnessed to her added an unexpected weight of responsibility. Whatever that thing was, he couldn’t afford to lose them.

  They passed through a series of abandoned offices and laboratories—once sterile, now eerily empty—along reinforced corridors and past a quiet library. At one point, she carefully closed a door behind them. The entire structure felt like a blend of a submarine’s claustrophobic confines and a secretive military base. Wyatt’s skin prickled as an unnatural sensation crept up his spine. A soft giggle from the baby echoed through the dark, empty hallways, and he swallowed hard.

  "That wasn’t just the Russians back there," he muttered, finally falling into step beside her despite every survival instinct screaming to speed up. The oppressive silence of their passage contrasted sharply with the chaos they had left behind.

  "The Faithful will deliver," she repeated, her voice eerily calm. "What I carry is too important." She said nothing about who or what that was—only that it was vital. Wyatt inhaled sharply, his frustration and dread mingling in a bitter exhale.

  Maybe he was just seeing things. Maybe his brain, fuelled by fear and adrenaline, had conjured a monster where none existed. Maybe it was just a trick of the shadows—a hallucination born of exhaustion. But he had seen it clear as day: a dark figure with two silver eyes, standing untouched by the chaos around it. It had looked at him, recognizing him as an individual, and that realization sent a fresh wave of terror crashing over him.

  "It looked at me, you know," he said, his mouth dry and voice barely a whisper. His words were met by a subtle shift in her step—a barely noticeable falter, as if the weight of his admission had momentarily unsettled her.

  "The Faithful will deliver," she intoned again, her tone resolute. Yet, in that moment, Wyatt noticed the faintest twitch at her side as she reached for her sidearm. Relief mixed with dread—at least she was armed—but it did little to soothe his racing mind. He methodically released his magazine, emptied the spent casing into his hand, pocketed the remnants, and reloaded a fresh magazine into his rifle. Each mechanical motion was an anchor, a small comfort in a situation that defied calm.

  Even as he forced himself to match her measured pace, his grip on his weapon remained unyielding. He swept his rifle across the dim corridors, every shadow deep and foreboding. Every distant echo of gunfire set his nerves on edge. He knew, with an instinct as old as battle itself, that the thing they had seen wasn’t going to be stopped by a mere firefight.

  They passed storerooms filled with abandoned tools and supplies—forgotten remnants of a hurried exodus. Long, narrow hallways lined with exposed pipes and bundled cables stretched ahead, and with every step, the air grew colder, more oppressive. The entire hidden structure seemed to pulse with an undercurrent of menace.

  "What kind of hospital is this?" Wyatt muttered, unaware that his voice had carried his question aloud.

  "The Faithful owned this hospital—or at least, they used to," she said, and Wyatt could almost detect a prideful smile beneath her words. "It has served its purpose." That was all she offered, and Wyatt’s instincts screamed at him not to press further. Yet, some part of him—his insatiable need for answers—urged him to ask more. He fought against that foreign compulsion with all the training he had received; asking would do him no good now. Besides, if his instincts were right, the very air carried a deep, simmering terror. Marshal had been right.

  As they moved deeper into the maze-like corridors, Wyatt’s mind teetered on the edge of paranoia and clarity. The slow pace, the eerie silence punctuated only by distant sounds of battle, and the nagging suspicion that the people who had hired him were as dangerous as the monstrous presence he had seen—all of it wove together into a tapestry of fear. His heart pounded as he recalled the dark thing, its silver eyes fixed on him, as if it had recognized him personally.

  Every step echoed in the quiet, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching them—something lurking just beyond the flickering lights. His thoughts tumbled in a frenzied loop: Was it the Russians? Were the Guardians somehow involved? Or was the unseen enemy far more sinister than he dared imagine?

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  "Enough questions," he muttered to himself, forcing his focus back on the path ahead. The corridors grew colder, the scent of antiseptic and disinfectant mingling with an undercurrent of decay. The very structure of the hospital whispered secrets of a past purpose, now overtaken by the relentless march of war.

  The woman’s voice cut through his swirling thoughts. "The Faithful will deliver," she repeated, almost as a mantra. "What I carry is too important." Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact, yet beneath it lay a chill that unsettled him even more. He wanted to ask—wanted to know who she was, who the Faithful were—but he swallowed his questions, knowing that now wasn’t the time for doubts. Marshal had warned him: trust the plan, even when everything screamed that it was a trap.

  Yet, as they pressed on, the dissonance between her calm and the lurking dread in his own heart grew ever louder. Every shadow seemed to pulse with hidden menace, every echo a harbinger of the relentless pursuit that waited beyond. And with that, the weight of his own uncertainty pressed in on him—was he merely a pawn in a game far beyond his control?

  He forced a steadying breath, clenching his jaw as he vowed to push through the fear. For now, the only option was to follow the unseen path, however treacherous it might be. Every step forward was a defiant act against the dread that sought to paralyze him, a refusal to yield even as the walls of this strange, haunted hospital seemed to close in.

  "Move," he whispered, not just to the woman but to himself, his voice carrying a grim determination. And with that, they continued their slow, deliberate march through the labyrinthine corridors, each step a heartbeat in the dark symphony of fear, doubt, and unyielding resolve.

  Then, suddenly, they passed into a room that made Wyatt’s steps falter—a server farm. Rows of towering metal racks blinked with dim, flickering lights, and machines hummed softly, still running despite everything. His stomach twisted. What kind of hospital was this? The servers droned on, low, constant, almost soothing.

  Wyatt’s fingers flexed around his gun, knuckles white as he swept his gaze across the rows of blinking machines. The place smelled of dust and ozone—a sharp contrast to the lingering stench of blood, sweat, and gunpowder from above. He risked a glance at the woman beside him. Unbothered. Focused. The baby in her arms stirred slightly but didn’t cry. Too calm. That wasn’t normal, was it? No fussing, no wailing—no sign that it sensed the chaos around it. He exhaled sharply, pushing the thought aside. He had bigger problems.

  “This isn’t a hospital, is it?” he muttered, keeping his voice low. His eyes traced the cables snaking along the walls, the cooling units humming behind the racks.

  The woman kept walking, her face hidden under the hood, as if unfazed. “It was.”

  “Right.” His lips pressed into a thin line. That wasn’t an answer.

  His boots barely made a sound against the cold floor as he followed her deeper into the server room. Every instinct screamed at him to move faster—to get away from whatever hell he had seen upstairs—but she walked at her own pace: steady, deliberate, as if she knew exactly where she was going. The silence pressed in. No gunfire. No distant explosions. Just the constant hum of the machines. Wyatt didn’t trust it. He checked his six; the corridor behind them stretched into shadows, broken only by the occasional red emergency light. His nerves prickled. Nothing there. Yet.

  His fingers twitched near the trigger. "Where exactly are we going?" he demanded.

  She pointed ahead, toward a heavy metal door at the far end of the room. “There.”

  “And behind it?”

  “The maintenance tunnels connecting to the sewers.”

  Wyatt exhaled. At least that was something.

  Then, just as they reached the door, something changed. The humming deepened—as if a sudden power shift had surged through the servers. Lights flickered overhead, and the air itself seemed to tighten. A low, almost imperceptible vibration ran through the floor beneath his boots. Wyatt froze. The woman didn’t. She reached for the door handle. And then—a sound. Not from behind them. Not from the firefight. But from between the server racks. A scrape. Slow. Deliberate. Like claws dragging across metal.

  Wyatt snapped his gun up, training it on the darkness between the machines. His breath came shallow, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Nothing. Then—a shape shifted. It was low. Too low for a man, too big for a rat, too human to be ordinary.

  The machines gave off just enough light for him to make out a long, lithe silhouette moving between the racks. Something crawling. Seeking, hunting. A pair of silver, moonlit eyes watched him from the darkness. The same thing from before. His stomach twisted into a knot. It hadn’t followed them from upstairs—it had been here the whole time. Wyatt’s grip tightened around his weapon. "We need to move. Now." The woman turned the handle; the door groaned. The sound from the server racks ceased abruptly, as if the thing knew it was about to be confronted. And then—it lunged. A blur of movement, a scraping rush of claws on the floor, the smell of rage, anger, and triumph flooding the air. Wyatt fired.

  He had hoped to avoid a fight—hoped that the sacrifice of his group had been enough. But reality didn’t care about hope. The thing lunged again.

  It looked human—almost. A twisted, man-beast, moving with a blend of animal grace and unnatural sharpness. Too fast. Silver flashed in the dark. Claws? No—steel. Knives fused to its fingers like an obscene extension of its body. Wyatt’s rifle roared, its sound hammering against the tight walls of the server room. Muzzle flashes illuminated the creature in flickering snapshots: dark skin, unnaturally long limbs, a face half-hidden by shadows that clung like a second skin. Bullets struck, disappeared, were swallowed—like the darkness itself was consuming them. Yet, physics still applied; the sheer force of the rounds made the creature stagger, even if it didn’t bleed. A half-second of recoil—barely enough.

  Behind him, the door groaned open. Too slow. Wyatt fired again—too slow. His empty magazine clattered to the floor as his off-hand reached for the spare one strapped to his vest. The creature recovered swiftly, muscles coiled, its body winding like a spring, ready to launch forward, to close the gap, to tear him apart. Wyatt’s fingers fumbled with the mag—half a second too slow. His body moved on instinct, training screaming at him to load faster, fire faster—but he wasn’t going to make it. The thing was already crouched low, its limbs tensed. And then, the woman denied it the chance. At his side, she raised her weapon and fired. The shots were precise, disciplined—not panicked, not desperate. And just as before, the bullets disappeared, swallowed by the creature’s writhing darkness. But the force of her fire sent it staggering once more.

  Wyatt didn’t waste the opening. Mag locked. Chambered. He fired. Muzzle flashes strobed the scene in violent, frozen frames—the beast recoiling, the woman pivoting, the door yawning open behind them. She grabbed him, yanking him backward. He didn’t resist. Fire and move. They retreated into the dark, step by step, with Wyatt firing every time the creature so much as twitched. He emptied his second magazine before they were through the door. And the thing was already moving again.

  Then—something changed. The servers sparked. Not from gunfire, not from damage—they lit up on their own. One by one, machines caught fire, not with the slow smolder of overloaded circuits, but in sudden bursts of unnatural flame. Sparks danced in the air like erratic fireflies, clashing against the dark. The creature flinched. It didn’t scream—not yet—but its movements faltered, its body twisting, caught between rage and hesitation. Then, one of Wyatt’s stray rounds hit its eye. This time, the sound it made was real. It shrieked—a raw, horrible noise, part animal, part static, part something ancient and furious. The shadows around it convulsed, writhing as if in shared agony.

  Wyatt didn’t wait to see what happened next. “That’s our cue,” he barked. They ran—bursting through the door, slamming it shut behind them, plunging headfirst into the stinking black of the sewers.