Page 88 of Elven Shadow

The shitty choice in front of her wasn’t really a choice at all. She had to make sure no one got stuck in there.

Even when more explosions and echoing scuffles now came chasing after her through the second story and the ceiling behind her, she probably had enough time.

Enough to dart through the infirmary door, clear the patients who needed to be cleared, and keep moving without wasting any time. Probably. She hoped.

No, she didn’t want to lead a task force or have any part in a fucking coup, but she couldn’t justleavethem there.

So she moved.

And realized too late that she’d completely misjudged the integrity of the old, repurposed factory building and therefore how much time she actually had.

Before she’d crossed half a distance, the hallway filled with a trembling groan and crackling snaps.

Rebecca ran, but the ceiling above her gave way in the blink of an eye.

Plaster, insulation, panel boards, stripped wiring, dust, broken wood splinters—all of it came crashing down as the floor of the second story ruptured beneath the anonymous attack.

She skidded to a stop and spun away from the crumbling debris to shield her face from most of it. Seconds later, though the hallway filled with dust and smoke that only made the flashing red light posted along every hallway that much harder to ignore, the rubble settled.

The security alarm blared over and over, then something above her popped and burst. A spray of lukewarm water tainted with the sharp scent of high mineral concentration rained down through the open hole in the ceiling.

Coughing and waving the dust out of her face, she turned back toward the infirmary to find her way out blocked by one enormous pile of caved-in second floor quickly being hosed down by a burst pipe.

So much for having enough time.

Gritting her teeth, Rebecca marched forward across the rubble-strewn floor toward the giant pile of cave-in debris right in front of the infirmary.

A ridiculously large pile, in fact.

Far too large for a simple five-foot hole in the ceiling to have brought down with it.

She realized all this in half a second as she took her final step toward the debris pile, but it was half a second too late.

The toppled cave-in began to move.

Just a shivering tremble at first, like something at the bottom holding up the pile’s general shape was quickly losing strength, on the verge of buckling just like the ceiling.

Frowning, Rebecca tried to step around it.

Her platform pumps slipped dangerously on the thick coating of sawdust and dirt and powdered plaster mixed with sprays of water. With a hand against the wall to steady herself, she eyed the trembling debris and took one more step.

The rubble exploded. A hand launched from the center of the mess—all black and glistening, like it had been dipped in a bucket of tar—and snatched at her ankle.

With a hiss, she jerked her foot away and staggered backward along the wall to avoid being crushed against it by the menacing form now hauling itself up out from beneath the collapsed building parts.

Massive chunks of plaster toppled away down the pile. Dust clouds blossomed into the air all over again. The hulking form rose to its feet, stooped and hunched before slowly rolling up to fully straighten its posture.

Head fully upright. Giant, muscular shoulders rolled back. Every inch of its unnatural flesh covered in mottled black and gray and the occasional streak of white paint from where the spray from the busted pipe had already washed rivulets of the darkest coloring away.

But the thing’s hands, from fingertip to elbow, were one solid, unchanging tone of the darkest, deepest black.

The same pitch black that filled the entirety of the creature’s eyes.

Rebecca only noticed those eyes a second after her brain processed the fact that this seven-foot mountain of soot and charred rubble and manufactured muscle stood before her completely naked.

It would have been especially awkward if the thing had also possessed the detailed anatomy of any nude humanoid—ormostof them—but there was nothing.

This thing was nothing more than a doll. An animated puppet created to obey. To seek and destroy.

---