Free Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4) by S. A. Lusher Page B

the process.
    He aimed, fired, aimed, fired. His finger smoothly squeezed the trigger as his left hand guided the barrel of the rifle with an almost peaceful grace. There were four of them on his side. He put them down quick with the proficiency of a two-decade veteran. The gunfire ceased almost simultaneously. Trent turned around and spied another five dead bodies.
    “What the fuck are these things?” he asked, grimacing at the black bodies and silver pools of blood.
    “Creepy. Come on,” Drake replied.
    They moved through the exit and looked down the length of the corridor they'd stepped into. Trent frowned as he realized something and activated his radio.
    “So, Sharpe, you forgot to tell us where the security center is.”
    Sharpe sighed. “Same as the other building. Same layout. I heard gunfire, what happened over there?”
    “More lizard men. And there's something in the vents, too, but we didn't get a chance to really see it.”
    “Fantastic. Hurry up, I'll walk you through the process of raising the lockout. It's simple.”
    Trent thought that strange, considering she and the other corporate dogs wanted the mercs to have as little contact with any terminals as possible. Not that it mattered, he surmised, as they walked down the body-strewn corridor. Any meaningful data was probably locked behind firewalls and password encryptions and all sorts of bullshit. Trent knew that he wasn't technically-minded in the slightest.
    They reached the security center.
    Trent opened the door, took a step in, then stopped. Drake shifted in past him, then stopped as well. They both stared for a long moment.
    Finally, Trent activated his radio. “Uh...we found Sergio.”
    “What do you mean? What happened?” Sharpe replied.
    “He's...well, skinned,” Trent said.
    There was a long pause. “Are you sure it's him? Is he dead?”
    “He'd better be,” Drake murmured.
    “Yeah, he's dead. And his armor is here. What's left of it,” Trent replied.
    “Fuck. Anyone else there?”
    “No, there's no one else in the room.”
    “All right. Head over to the main terminal.”
    Trent did as he was told. He spent a few moments running through the procedure of unlocking the door to the tram area, then raised this portion of the overall lockdown.
    “What about power?” he asked as they headed back out into the main corridor.
    “What about it?” Sharpe replied.
    “Trevor said we only had about two hours before everything goes dead and we freeze.”
    “We've only been in the facility about forty five minutes. We should be able to finish our job before then.”
    “And the others?”
    “They're expendable, now get back here.”
    Trent opened his mouth to protest, then froze as he spied something up ahead, further on down the corridor, about halfway in between them and their destination. For a second, he thought it was another lizard man, but he quickly realized that the dimensions were all wrong. For starters, it was about a foot or so shorter.
    It was dark in color...only it seemed to be lacking a head. It looked like it was roughly humanoid, and it was crouched on the ground.
    “What...holy mother of fucking God, what the fuck is that?” Drake whispered.
    “What's happening?” Sharpe asked.
    Trent couldn't answer. His eyes seemed to be sliding out of focus, as though they couldn't comfortably look at what was being presented to them.
    Slowly, the thing stood up. Even in the dim lights, Trent had a good view of it. The thing stood maybe five and a half feet tall. Its skin was dark and strangely reflective. It was, in fact, humanoid, complete with two arms, two legs and a torso. No head though. He'd been right about that. But that wasn't even the strangest thing of all.
    Where its chest should have been, there was a circular hole with what looked like giant follicles of black hair growing from the inside of the chest wall, all of them pointed inward to meet in the middle. Otherwise, there was nothing there.
    Trent and Drake