Fresh air had never felt so temporary.
I came out of Arcadia at a run with Dad's staff in one hand and the backpack bouncing against my shoulders, Six tucked safely inside with my laptop and what remained of my equipment. Searchlights washed the hillside in hard white circles, equipment cases lay open around the entrance, and everyone outside had already heard enough gunfire and screaming through the bunker to know something had gone catastrophically wrong. Several weapons swung toward me the instant I appeared.
I raised my free hand and stopped.
Leona: "Human! Don't shoot!"
That was becoming a distressingly useful introduction.
A wolf hybrid in GHCA tactical gear approached without lowering his rifle. Two others spread out beside him rather than conveniently believing the strange barefoot blonde woman covered in blood who had just emerged from an abandoned bioresearch facility. His eyes moved over the oversized maintenance clothes, backpack, metal staff and lack of shoes before returning to my face.
GHCA Sergeant: "Hands where I can see them. Who are you, and where is Captain Mercer?"
Reasonable questions. Unfortunately, we'd reached the part of the evening where reasonable questions were expensive.
Leona: "I'm a video content creator. Exploration stuff. I found another way into the facility before you arrived. Mercer sent me up. He said full biological breach, evacuate the surface and call everything you have."
The sergeant stared at me.
Not convinced.
Fair.
GHCA Sergeant: "You entered an abandoned biological research site to make videos."
Leona: "When you repeat it like that, it does sound worse."
GHCA Sergeant: "Identification."
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
That was going to become complicated very quickly.
Something screamed beneath our feet, deep enough inside Arcadia that the sound came through the ground more as vibration than noise. A burst of gunfire followed from below, several rifles firing together, then something heavier.
The sergeant didn't look away from me.
GHCA Sergeant: "Identification. Now."
Leona: "I can give you something better."
Slowly, very slowly, I reached into the backpack.
Three rifles followed my hand.
Leona: "Tablet. I'm getting a tablet."
GHCA Sergeant: "Two fingers."
Leona: "Yep."
I pulled it free and held it out.
Leona: "Drone recordings. Look."
He didn't take it immediately. One of the other officers did, keeping his weapon slung forward while the sergeant watched me. I opened the saved footage myself and scrubbed backward until the camera feed from Spider Three appeared.
The chamber filled the screen.
Blue-white containment fields flashed across black organic shapes packed along the walls. Progeny clung to concrete and webbing in numbers too large to count. Then the Matriarch moved from the darkness, enormous even through the drone camera, pressing regenerating tissue against the electrical barrier while dozens of smaller bodies turned toward the hidden drone at almost exactly the same moment.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Nobody spoke.
I switched clips.
The containment display.
PROJECT CHIMERA
SUBJECT ZERO: THE MATRIARCH
PRIMARY CONTAINMENT: CRITICAL
AUXILIARY RESERVE: 4%
MULTIPLE SECONDARY BREACHES
Then another recording showed the ventilation breach, black bodies forcing themselves through a gap and widening it for the swarm behind them.
The sergeant's attention finally left me.
GHCA Sergeant: "Timestamp?"
Leona: "Minutes ago."
GHCA Sergeant: "What am I looking at?"
Leona: "Project Chimera. The big one is called the Matriarch. Extreme regeneration, psychic or tele-empathetic abilities, asexual reproduction and some kind of coordination with the smaller organisms. The main containment field is almost dead, but her offspring have already bypassed parts of it. There are thousands inside."
He took the tablet from his officer and watched another few seconds.
The suspicion didn't disappear.
It simply became less urgent than the evidence.
GHCA Sergeant: "You read the project files?"
Leona: "Enough of them."
GHCA Sergeant: "How long were you inside?"
Leona: "Long enough to know I should've picked cooking videos."
Another volley of gunfire thundered beneath us. This one lasted several seconds before abruptly becoming scattered single shots.
I pointed toward the entrance.
Leona: "Your captain is still down there with several people. He told me to tell the surface team this is a mass biological containment failure. He specifically asked for air support, incendiary containment and every armed unit you can get here."
The sergeant looked once more at the frozen image of the Matriarch.
GHCA Sergeant: "Danger assessment?"
Leona: "S-Class."
That changed the air around us.
GHCA Sergeant: "You're qualified to make that assessment?"
Leona: "No."
He frowned.
Leona: "Which is why I'm saying S-Class instead of pretending I know where the upper limit is. The report says conventional attempts to kill her failed, including incineration, because she regenerated in seconds and may absorb thermal energy. She's psychic, she's reproducing without a mate, and she's had twenty-eight years to fill the lower levels with offspring. You can downgrade her after someone survives meeting her."
That was apparently the correct answer.
The sergeant grabbed his radio.
GHCA Sergeant: "Command, Surface Two. We have visual confirmation of catastrophic biological containment failure. Unknown civilian has recovered internal footage showing mass hostile organisms and a probable S-Class parent entity. Captain Mercer remains below with contact ongoing. Request immediate escalation, air support, regional containment units and full perimeter withdrawal."
He pointed at another officer before the radio reply had finished.
GHCA Sergeant: "Keep her here. Get a copy of that footage. She does not leave until we know who she is."
There it was.
Much better.
They didn't trust me.
They believed the spiders.
I could work with that.
Personnel began moving before command finished answering. Equipment that had seemed important five minutes earlier was abandoned or thrown into vehicles. Someone ordered the helicopter higher. Drivers started turning trucks around on the narrow dirt approach while another team established a wider perimeter facing Arcadia's entrance instead of the surrounding woods.
Whatever mystery I represented had been demoted beneath potential S-Class hive organism escaping underground laboratory.
Smart people.
I moved away from the hatch under the supervision of the officer assigned to me and started looking through the clearing.
Then I found Kira.
She was under a tree.
Apparently the Authority had eventually solved the engineering problem of moving my sister by attaching powered straps to her and dragging her bodily away from the entrance. Kira lay in an enormous orange coil beside a medical pack, unconscious enough that somebody had sensibly chosen to monitor her from several meters away rather than stand within biting distance when she woke.
Several empty tranquilizer darts lay nearby.
I counted five that I could see.
There were probably more.
Leona: "Wow."
The officer assigned to watch me glanced over.
GHCA Officer: "You know her?"
I looked at Kira.
Leona: "...from around."
Technically true.
Kira didn't move as I crouched beside her head. For perhaps the first time since I'd come home from the hospital, she looked harmless. Her blonde hair was tangled across her face, her breathing slow and heavy from the sedatives, and those stupid pointed lamia ears stuck through it exactly the way they had when she was ten.
I looked at one.
Then at Kira.
Then back at the ear.
There are opportunities a responsible older sister should ignore.
I have never claimed to be one.
I flicked it.
Kira's ear twitched.
I smiled.
Leona: "Elf snake."
The GHCA officer looked at me.
I ignored him and rubbed the pointed tip between two fingers.
Leona: "Snake elf."
Kira's face tightened faintly. Even unconscious, apparently, some insults crossed neurological boundaries. For a few seconds I was eleven again, touching those newly pointed ears specifically because she'd told me not to, shortly before she solved the disagreement by biting my wrist and leaving me conscious but paralyzed on the carpet for two hours.
I flicked it once more.
Leona: "Can't bite me now."
Kira made a sleepy little hiss.
I immediately removed my hand.
Some instincts deserved respect.
The officer beside me narrowed his eyes.
GHCA Officer: "You sure you only know her 'from around'?"
Leona: "We have history."
Arcadia shook behind us.
The joke disappeared.
I looked toward the bunker, then back at my sister. Kira was unconscious, heavily drugged and approximately as convenient to transport as a collapsed telephone pole made of muscle.
I sighed.
Leona: "Of course I have to pull your ass."