Fireteam Delta, J. Halpin [online e book reading .txt] 📗

and women pouring in from the outside. More than a few had rifles trained on him as they entered.

This was not looking good.

Summers watched as the thin man appraised him. He was covered in the black, shifting, tar-like substance Summers recognized from the hamr he’d fought in the city. Though oddly, it wasn’t covering him completely; there were still patches of skin around his neck, arms and sides. Summers could see his very human ears, as well as a few tattoos that looked more appropriate on a grunt than on whatever he now was.

“What the hell are you?”

“We are a harbinger,” the thin man explained. “Now then . . .”

The thin man raised a hand toward Summers, then paused.

“Something’s wrong. . . . Your mind should be . . .”

Summers grunted in pain. He could feel parts of his body shifting at the man’s gesture, more like a muscle spasm than anything. But by the confusion on the thin man’s face, that wasn’t what he was trying to do.

“What’s the matter with you?” The man leaned forward, looking at Summers intensely before putting a hand on his forehead. “What have you done to your head?”

“This.” Summers reached back and gripped the exposed spine of the dragon. In retrospect, announcing that he was about to make a move may have been a mistake. Just as the dragon’s tail swept through the cracked concrete, two bullets slammed into its body, inches from Summers’ position. He allowed the momentum to carry him around as he forced the creature to use its entire body as a blunt instrument, sending everyone in the room but himself into the wall opposite.

There was a series of crunching noises as the dragon came to a stop. Summers concentrated, forcing the creature to back off.

The room had been painted various shades of red in its wake. A group of men had somehow survived the worst of what happened, their mangled arms and legs struggling to move to the weapons that had been thrown to the far corner. Summers allowed the creature to tilt to its side and crushed them.

He took a breath as he slumped out of the creature, utterly spent. Summers wasn’t sure how the skeen’s power worked, but after moving something that big, he felt as if he’d run a marathon. Considering they more or less had done that before they came here. . . Summers didn’t have much left in him.

“That . . . was interesting.”

Summers groaned as he looked up to find the thin man still very much alive, though his torso looked to be bent at a ninety-degree angle. He sat, twisted in the most grotesque manner Summers could imagine.

“Just . . . fuck you.”

That was all Summers could manage. His breath was coming in ragged gasps now, his head swimming as he forced himself to stay awake.

Thankfully, the thin man didn’t get up. He just sat there, watching as Summers struggled to his feet, then threw open the freshly cleared hatch that led below.

His friends were waiting for him.

“What the fuck happened?” Nowak looked up at Summers. All of them had their weapons trained on him.

Summers didn’t answer. Instead, he awkwardly sat, then lay on his back. Vaguely, he could hear Synel yelling to Nowak about the gouge in his side. That wasn’t important right now, though. He was sure things would work out. He let his attention drift, looking up at the sky above.

It had been a really shitty day.

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“Oscar Zulu Three, do you read me?” Nowak spoke into the handheld radio.

There was no answer.

The radio had more than a few dents in it; the fighting had seen to the end of most of their horses, and the equipment they carried.

Asle watched as Synel treated Summers’ wounds. She’d removed his shirt, working to clean the large gash in his torso, among dozens of other things. Cortez had said he was more shrapnel than man at this point. Asle wasn’t sure what that meant, but she was certain it was bad.

He’d been too weak to do anything else for more than an hour now, even though his wounds had mostly sealed up.

That wasn’t what worried her, though. The strange, thin man sat at the far end of what remained of the bunker. Cortez had held a gun to him the entire time Pat and the twins had secured him within the bunker’s basement using a few lengths of rope. Asle had been the one to suggest they not touch him. His skin looked eerily similar to the hamr’s, and she’d already experienced firsthand what that thing did to a person.

Cortez had instead decided to drop a big rock on his legs and arms and hope for the best.

Asle was not fond of the snapping noises she heard.

Despite all that, though, the thin man just laid there, smiling at them. He didn’t answer any of their questions, just stared back with that same eerie expression.

It worried her.

Cortez scowled down at him. The man’s smile didn’t waver.

“Army should be here soon.” Nowak tossed the radio to the side, frustrated. “Just need to keep him like this until then.”

Asle watched as the thin man seemed to consider that a moment.

“What if we made a deal?” He managed to smile, despite his appearance.

“You got a shitty sense of humor,” Cortez replied. “Not a chance in hell we’re making a deal with . . . whatever the hell you are.”

“We’ve already—” The thin man stopped. “Ah, our mistake. It has been a while since we’ve spoken to someone . . . new. We are a harbinger. We came to your world in search of people. People like you.” He eyed Cortez.

“Since you’re feeling chatty, mind telling us where the rest of your group is? That would buy a