Free Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel by Greig Beck Page B

alighted on it, and he saw, really saw, he felt a fist clamp down deep in his skull.
    Beside him, Gökhan grunted, doubled over and vomited. Instead of the wet splash of stomach juices and partially digested lunch, what actually hit the ground was more like drying cement.
    Maluk’s mouth opened in a silent scream and he dropped to his knees, clawing at his face. His skin started to crack and craze like a clay pot that had been left too long in the kiln.
    *
    The figure looked down at the two men, or what was left of them. One was doubled over, his fingers digging into the ancient cobblestones. The other’s frozen hands clawed at a face that was now as solid as the ground beneath his knees.
    The creature turned its head slowly. It didn’t see the town of Guyve, just as it hadn’t seen Izmit or any of the others it had passed through. Instead, it saw a land that had existed thousands of years ago, when the ancient towns were little more than huts, or caravan trails, and the humans were few. The small beings had worshiped it then, gladly offering up morsels that it had either consumed immediately, or stored for later use. But then it had been trapped and imprisoned.
    It looked at the silvery orb overhead, hating its clarity and dryness. It longed for warmth, wetness, and an endless blue twilight. It ached for the tall cities of its homeland, with silver spires that touched the sky. Most of all, it felt the pain of separation from its own kind. The years of imprisonment, of solitude, had caused a loneliness and sadness that was fathomless. They had also given it a ravenous hunger that was all consuming.
    It sensed the millions of living beings all around and felt overwhelmed. They had multiplied so quickly. Since its release, though, it was growing stronger; every small life absorbed gave it energy, nourishing it, making it more powerful than anything that had walked the land since the time of the saurian giants.
    The moon’s silvery light was strong enough to cast a weak shadow of the creature on the wall of the laneway. It saw itself and once again felt the irresistible urge to find its own kind. They still had work to do.
    It drifted carelessly past the dried husks of the men. The small beings existed only to worship it, or feed it.

CHAPTER 8
    Colonel Jack Hammerson watched Alex Hunter tossing and turning on the narrow bed. There were no adornments on the walls or surfaces in the billet he’d been assigned – no pictures, mementos, or personal items of any shape or form. Beside him on the floor was a duffel bag containing spare clothing and cash – the sum total of his possessions. Hammerson turned a dial, and the camera focused in on Alex’s face. It was slick with perspiration. His lips moved, and the muscles in his jaw and cheeks bulged from time to time.
    ‘That’s some nightmare.’
    Hammerson didn’t turn to the voice. ‘Been like that every night.’
    Lieutenant Alan Marshal, formerly second-in-command of the Alpha Soldier Research Unit, raised his eyebrows as he  looked at the readout. ‘The EEG still looks like a cross between a migraine and epileptic seizure, but there’s a change from when we first tested him a few years back. Something else within the primary rhythms. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s another signature underlying his own – like two wave streams, one on top of the other.’
    ‘You mean like a split personality?’ Hammerson’s forehead creased.
    Marshal flipped a page. ‘Don’t know. But that encephalic thunderstorm raging in there sure is masking something weird.’ He shook his head. ‘The continual high alpha activity alone should be burning him up … killing him.’
    Hammerson turned slowly. ‘Just like Captain Graham’s experiments, huh?’
    ‘Wasn’t my call then, Jack, and it’s not how I would have done things.’ Marshal looked up from the feed and into Alex’s room. ‘I can’t believe he’s alive … and here.’
    ‘Well, he’s here because I trusted