Free Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) by Michael R. Hicks

splintering around the edge that he would have expected to see. These looked more like sharp spikes had been driven into them. A dark viscous substance, still glistening, oozed from them.
    One of his men leaned forward, extending a finger to touch the liquid.
    “Touch nothing,” Mikhailov ordered. He had not only seen harvesters himself, he had also read the reports Naomi and Jack had sent him by encrypted email, and he knew they had stingers that could produce this sort of damage. “It is deadly poison.”
    The man recoiled and took two steps back. The others looked nervously at the desks, then at Mikhailov.
    Mikhailov knew then that if they found anything alive in this place, it would not be human. He turned to Rudenko.
    “ Da, kapitan? ”
    “I have reconsidered my earlier orders. I believe that anyone we may find in here will be like our Spetsnaz friends on Spitsbergen.” During the ill-fated mission to Spitsbergen the year before to secure the Svalbard “Doomsday” seed vault from terrorists, four Spetsnaz — special forces — soldiers had been attached to Mikhailov’s company. They had all been harvesters, and had managed to kill most of Mikhailov’s men. “The men are to consider anyone they encounter to be hostile, even if they appear to be a civilian.”
    “Understood, sir.”
    “And warn them not to touch anything like that liquid. They must take great care.”
    “Sir.” Rudenko moved out of the office and repeated Mikhailov’s orders to the men outside, his voice calm and just loud enough to carry so that all could hear. Each soldier nodded his understanding.
    Mikhailov looked again at the remains of the computers. “Pull the hard drives and whatever remains of any thumb drives or disks.” Even if the plastic had vanished, the data on the drives would still be intact, and might be able to tell the story of what had happened here.
    Under Rudenko’s watchful eye, a pair of men quickly gutted the remains of the computers and handed the hard drives to Mikhailov. Another man produced a handful of USB drives, which now looked like the innards of electronic beetles bereft of their plastic exoskeletons. Mikhailov placed them in his cargo pockets.
    Catching Rudenko’s eye, Mikhailov gave him the hand signal to proceed.
    There were two other doors in the reception area. One was a bathroom. Empty, except for more bloodstains on the floor and mirror.  
    The final door opened onto the main hallway that ran the length of the building. Like the office and reception area, it was pitch black except for the soldiers’ flashlights.
    As they slowly moved down the hall, they passed another set of bathrooms — empty — and several storage and utility closets, also empty. There were more signs of struggle, but only a few traces of blood could be seen. The same was true of the cafeteria. The tables and chairs had been knocked over, and there were more spatters of blood, but not many.
    Then they found the labs. There were two, in large rooms on either side of the central hallway that occupied the bulk of the building’s first floor.
    “You lead third and fourth squads to check the left side,” Mikhailov said to Rudenko. “I will take the first and second into the right.”
    “Sir.”
    “Slow and quiet,” Mikhailov ordered the men behind him as he led them into the right-side lab. His whispered voice sounded like a shout in the unnerving silence that surrounded them. Even the buzz of the helicopter was barely discernible through the building’s thick walls. “Spread out and check everywhere .”
    The men moved a pace at a time as if they were walking on explosive eggshells, holding the stocks of their weapons tucked tight into their shoulders, fingers on the triggers as they swept the labs with the beams of their flashlights.
    Much like the administrative area, the labs were a scene of utter devastation. What Mikhailov guessed must have been millions of rubles of delicate equipment had been toppled over,