Julián (The Armored Alpha) POV
The world inside the helmet was silent, save for the sound of my own breathing amplified by the tight space. Inhale. Exhale.
Outside the visor, the cavern was a nightmare bathed in violet light.
"Step here," my voice rumbled, distorted by the suit's external speaker. I pointed a bulky, armored glove at a stable patch of stone on the narrow bridge.
Through the thermal overlay of the visor, the cavern didn't look dark. It looked alive. The bioluminescent moss glowed a cool blue. The team behind me were hot orange shapes against the cold background.
And above us...
Thousands of them. The sleepers hung from the stalactites like overripe fruit, wrapped in resinous cocoons. In thermal, they were dull red pulses—low-power mode. Dormant.
"Keep your eyes on Julián's feet," Sofía whispered behind me. She was tense, her heat signature radiating sharply around her weapon.
We were halfway across the bridge. Below us, fifty feet down, was a carpet of that glowing moss. A fall wouldn't kill you, but the noise would.
Every step was an agony of restraint. The suit was heavy, restricting my movements. I felt claustrophobic, trapped inside a metal skin. The static in my head was a low hum, muffled by the lead lining, but it was still there, scratching at the back of my skull. It wanted me to tear the suit off. It wanted me to climb the walls and join the sleepers.
Focus on the stone. Step. Wait. Step.
We passed beneath a massive cluster of them. A stalactite groaned under the weight of fifty intertwined bodies. A drop of viscous fluid—condensation mixed with the resin—dripped from above and landed on my helmet visor.
Plip.
I froze. The sound was minuscule, but in the cavern's acoustics, it sounded like a gunshot.
Above us, a cocoon twitched. A dull red heat signature flared brighter for a second, then faded.
"Keep moving," Sofía breathed, her voice tight enough to snap.
We shuffled forward. Miguel was directly behind me, his breathing ragged. He was still weak from the hypothermia, stumbling occasionally on the uneven stone.
"Careful, kid," I murmured.
"I'm okay," he gasped, adjusting the straps of the heavy pack filled with MREs he was carrying. The nylon strap was old, frayed by dampness and time.
He took another step. His boot slipped on a patch of slick moss. He jerked to regain his balance, flailing his arms.
The movement put sudden, violent tension on the frayed pack strap.
SNAP.
The buckle sheared off. The canvas pack swung wildly off his shoulder. Miguel grabbed for it, missed, and the pack tumbled over the edge of the bridge.
We all stopped. We watched it fall in horrified silence.
It hit the mossy floor fifty feet below. It didn't make a loud crash. It was worse. The tin cans of MREs inside clattered together inside the canvas bag.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
The sound echoed. It bounced off the walls, magnified by the cavern shape.
Silence returned.
"Run," Sofía said. It wasn't a whisper anymore.
Above us, the red thermal signatures didn't just flare. They ignited.
Sofía (The Muscle) POV
The sound that followed wasn't a roar. It was a collective, wet shriek that tore the air apart.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEE!
It started directly above us and rippled outward at the speed of sound. Thousands of eyes snapped open in the dark, reflecting the violet moss light like shattered glass.
"GO! GO! GO!" I bellowed, shoving Camila forward, abandoning stealth for pure terrified velocity.
The resin cocoons ripped open. Bodies began to rain from the ceiling.
They hit the bridge ahead of us. They hit the floor below us. They hit the bridge behind us.
They were gaunt, skeletal things, their skin pale and slimy from hibernation. But they moved with frenetic, starving energy.
A sleeper landed on the bridge five feet in front of Julián. It uncoiled from its crouch, jaws snapping, its limbs elongated and wrong.
Julián didn't break stride. He couldn't. The suit made him a freight train. He dropped his armored shoulder and plowed into the creature.
CRUNCH.
The impact sounded like a car hitting a deer. The infected flew off the bridge, tumbling into the darkness below.
"Don't stop for anything!" I yelled over the din of screeching creatures.
I brought the MP5 up. I didn't need to aim; the air was thick with targets. I thumbed the selector switch to full auto.
BRRRRT! BRRRRT!
The German engineering sang its deadly song. 9mm rounds tore through the horde dropping ahead of us. I saw sprays of black blood in the chem-light glow. I dropped three of them before my magazine ran dry.
"Reloading!"
"Elena, cover left! Camila, just shoot forward!" I screamed, dropping the empty mag and slamming a fresh one home.
Camila was screaming, firing the Glock wildly. Most shots went wide, sparking off the stone, but a lucky round caught a lunging crawler in the throat.
We were running a gauntlet. The bridge was narrow, no rails, slippery with gore and moss.
Behind us, the bridge was a river of grey bodies scrambling over each other to get to us.
"They're gaining on the rear!" Elena shouted, swinging her crowbar at a claw reaching for her leg.
Miguel tripped. He went down hard on his knees.
"Miguel!" Camila stopped, turning back to grab him.
A massive infected dropped right behind them, cutting them off from me and Elena. It snarled, looming over the fallen boy.
"NO!" Julián roared.
He spun around in the heavy suit. He couldn't reach them in time. He did the only thing he could do. He reached out with his armored hands and grabbed the thick stone edge of the bridge itself.
The violet veins on his neck, visible just above the suit's collar, flared blindingly bright. The heat inside the suit must have been incredible.
He roared, channeling every ounce of the Alpha strength into his grip.
CRRAAAAACK.
He ripped a chunk of the bridge's stone railing free—a slab of rock weighing easily two hundred pounds—and hurled it over Miguel's head.
The rock slammed into the infected, crushing its chest cavity and carrying it over the edge into the abyss.
"Move, kid!" Julián hauled Miguel to his feet with one hand, practically throwing him toward me.
We were close to the other side. I could see a dark tunnel mouth waiting for us.
But the path ahead was completely blocked. A wall of twenty or thirty infected had dropped in front of the exit, snapping their teeth, waiting for us.
We were trapped on the bridge. Horde behind. Wall of teeth ahead.
"We can't punch through that!" Elena yelled.
"Yes we can," I gritted my teeth, reaching into my pouch. "Cover your eyes! Fire in the hole!"
I pulled the pin on a flashbang grenade and lobbed it over the heads of the infected blocking the exit. It bounced once on the stone right in the middle of the pack.
I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head away.
BANG.
Even with my eyes closed, the flash turned the world searing white inside my eyelids. The concussion wave hit my chest like a physical punch.
The cavern went silent for a split second, followed by the confused, pained wailing of blinded creatures.
"NOW!" I opened my eyes. The world was swimming in afterimages.
The infected blocking the path were staggering, clutching their faces, disoriented.
"Push through! Don't stop to kill them, just knock them down!"
I led the charge. I used the MP5 like a club, smashing aside blinded crawlers. We trampled over them, slipping on slick skin and stone.
We hit the tunnel mouth.
"Inside! Everybody inside!"
Elena, Miguel, and Camila scrambled into the darkness. I grabbed Julián's armored arm and pulled him in.
"Seal it!" Julián yelled, his voice frantic inside the helmet. "Sofía, the mines!"
I looked back at the bridge. The effects of the flashbang were wearing off. The horde was refocusing. Hundreds of them were pouring toward the tunnel entrance.
I ripped the detonator clacker from my vest. The two Claymores I had rigged to the tunnel entrance frame—just in case—winked their red armed lights at me.
"Happy new year, assholes."
I squeezed the clacker.
KA-BOOM.
The explosion was deafening in the confined space. It wasn't just shrapnel; the blast collapsed the tunnel entrance. Tons of rock and earth crashed down, sealing the cavern off with a cloud of choking dust.
We were thrown backward by the overpressure. I hit the ground hard, coughing, my ears ringing violently.
Slowly, the dust settled. The screaming on the other side was muffled now, distant.
We were alive.
I sat up, checking my gear. I was down to two magazines for the MP5. I looked at the team. They were battered, bruised, covered in dust and gore, but whole.
Julián leaned against the tunnel wall, the heavy suit scraping on the rock. He pulled the latches on his helmet and ripped it off, gasping for air.
Steam billowed off his head and shoulders. His face was shining with sweat, his eyes wide and manic.
"Too hot," he panted, clawing at the neck seal of the suit. "The suit... it holds it all in. I almost lost it on the bridge."
"But you didn't," I said, standing up and offering him a hand. "You threw a damn rock the size of a microwave. You did good, monstruo."
Elena was already shining her light down the new tunnel.
"We're out of the frying pan," she muttered, wiping blood from a cut above her eye.
"And into the fire," I finished, reloading my weapon. "This tunnel leads straight to Site VESTA. No more sneaking."