Perspiration trickled down Naguib’s temple as he trained the AR-15 on the scuttling ghoul behind the crystal pane. The creature, though vaguely humanoid in form, moved with a disjointed jerkiness of a crawling marionette. In the hour after Mshale had left, it had settled to just stare at him with its sunken, blackened eyes, behind the leathered wrinkled mask of its face. It reminded him of a movie he had seen back when Johannesburg was still Johannesburg. Naguib shifted, uncomfortable under the creatures gaze and shouldered his weapon. He was in control here. He had the gun. [center]***[/center] Omari spent most of his time in a modest hovel tucked away in the eastern end of the hangar cavern. Space was a luxury that was difficult to afford in Omari’s clinic, hoards of supplies were pushed up against the walls, under tables, in corners--bandages, antiseptic, medicine, and some other medical supplies, some of it not. The medic was known for his resourcefulness. What Omari wasn’t able to heal with medicine and thirty years of practical experience his other abilities came in handy for. The ambient crystal trimmed back in this room to the ceiling glimmered, giving the room a gauzy glow. This illumination was supplemented by pilfered generators that lit up several swaying incandescents. The center of the room was taken by a repurposed dental chair and was surrounded by a moat of clear space as if the chair itself had shoved all the junk at bay. The tide of injured soldiers who sought his care found Omari’s den like a tranquil watering hole, common ground and a safe space. Currently, the medic’s attention was elsewhere, upon the broken from Phalaborwa. “You are very brave to protect your mother,” Omari said to the seven-year-old who sat at the center of the room, “she must be very proud of you.” The boy was still in shock, holding his broken arm as he vacantly stared through the doorway that the seated fixture faced. The aging Mozambican smiled, the dark creases folding around the corners of his eyes added ten years to his complexion in a single instance. “You will find everyone here is very nice. We take care of one another down here.” The boy sniffled, as he held out his arm into the clinical officer’s waiting palm, who began to set the bone and bind it. “[i]Mungu atuokoe! Tafadhali nisaidie![/i]” a man sobbed. Omari jumped clattering a part of the splint to the ground. His eyes widened as he warily scanned the cramped interior of his clinic, then whirled about in his chair, and jumped to his feet looking at the door. It was as if the shock knocked the boy out of his stupor as from behind the aging man the boy called out “What is it?” But Omari simply stood, frozen, transfixed at some apparition beyond the confines of his safe zone. His shoulders neither rose nor fell for breath, and his body was stiff and rigid. After several minutes of tense silence, Omari turned back to the boy, his movements spasmodic and jerky. He looked back at the scared child, his visage twisted in malice but Omari's eyes betrayed his ill intent as they were full of teary hemorrhage yet his loins still stiff. [center]***[/center] A low din of conversation, cars revving into ignition as well as humming in idle, and distantly shouted conversation filled the hangar. In a cordoned off section, a row of cars sat awaiting the attentions of several mechanics stationed in full-service shops. Here, the valuable tradesmen and women refurbished salvaged automobiles, as well as plundered Xanathan vehicles. Imani was one such expert. Six months into the job, she found Marange to be a hectic environment filled with (mostly) good people. The Swazi woman sighed as she examined the stripped bolt from underneath the salvaged APC. “Hawu… Should I expect Xanathan to care about their things? No.” A nearby raid on a Xanathan supply depot several months ago had rendered a number of valuable military-grade resources for NYUNDO. As Imani slid out from underneath the APC on a rickety wooden creeper, she wiped the grease off on her oil-stained coveralls and raised her glasses onto her dark, loosely braided hair. Pacing over to a nearby barrel, Imani shook her head as she made several curt strikes on a paper attached to her clipboard, then picked up a hammer and a would try her luck. A strained snapping sound and the clatter of loose metal from underneath the vehicle caught her attention as the seized bolt rolled out from under, preceding the slow oozing of oil as the pan emptied its contents onto the floor. Imani paused, staring at the growing stain, and then picked up her wrench as she cautiously approached the vehicle. Placing her hand on the vehicle she slowly crouched down to peer underneath the car and saw only the diminishing trickle of oil below. Suddenly, the vehicle, as if it had been waiting in the bush for her to let her guard down, pounced off its front tires before crashing back down. The crash reverberated through the hangar bay as a chorus of vehicle alarms echoed through the chamber. Imani jumped whirling about to confront a bay filled with confused technicians and screeching vehicles. “[i]Mungu atuokoe! Tafadhali nisaidie![/i]” A voice screamed. She dropped her wrench and picked up a larger monkey wrench off the cart near her as she looked over to Taavi, the mechanic adjacent to her. “What was that?” She asked him, feeling her heart pound heavily in her chest. He shrugged and bent under the hood to disconnect the screaming vehicle's battery. A strange sensation washed over her. As sinister as the feeling was invasive and violating. Imani felt her limbs move on their own, and her teeth gnashed as vitiated urges flooded her mind, her heart, and just below her abdomen. Darkness clouded her vision, both emotionally and physically as she glared at Taavi with newfound antipathy. She approached the unsuspecting man, who had drawn his attention over towards stall 3 where his friend Dakari worked, with heavy footfalls that forewarned her enmity. A half second before the wrench impacted the side of his head, Taavi looked at her, “Imani? What are-” Her facial expression twitched as if she were having a miniature stroke, foam began to develop around the corners of her mouth. Imani stared down her friends prone form, and reached down this rip back his coveralls. [center]***[/center] “[i]Mungu atuokoe! Tafadhali nisaidie![/i]” The echoes traveled through the mouth of the prison cave whereby a gun, gnarled almost artistically in nature, sat discarded as a single twisted, useless half strand of helix. The screaming, crying, growling, and grunting echoed macabely from the cracked porphyry and with each reverberation so too did its magnitude further reach. Pushing further into the grisly grotto a large pane of stone lay upended some ten meters from where the telekinetic had only just secured it. Within, the supine form of the cell guard Naguib lay wailing, violated, restrained, and hysterical. Atop him, pumping and thrusting its pelvis into the shattered hips of the man, a cyclopean creature, whose leathery wings shrouded the two like a dark cloak. The creature's carpal claws impaled through both shoulders and pinned the guard to the ground. Naguib begged, called upon his god, screamed in horror, and beheld the horn-lined face of his assailant. The shifter delighted in his terror, feeding off the frenzied fear. With every grunt of pain from its prey, the swain beast's fanged grin widened. As his hip joints dislodged, bone splitting from the creature's shapeshifting phallus, Naguib exhaled a rattle of pain, and spasmed in tortured trepidation. After an eternity in Naguib's Hell, the creature released into the victims ruptured rectum, unnaturally distending the guard's abdomen. The creature no more swain than it was demon, examined its catch, as if ensuring his survival for continued misery, then withdrew its barbed shaft,randy crawled away. The broken form of Naguib laid behind as a twisted remnant and the only thing he had strength or will to do was lay still and breathe. The swain-beast, a telepathic popobawa who rode Naguib's empathic cries and seeded horror through the hangar and barracks, emerged from the prison on taloned feet and the bloodied claws as tremors rocked the cave sending dust and small bits of debris falling around it. Standing, the creature splayed out its wings and reflected upon its dark work. A doctor who violated a child in unspeakable ways. A woman sodomizing a man with a wrench. A man who would slay his love. The creature heaved its chest and chittered in what could almost be construed as a bestial laugh, then focused its attention to what would be its latest victim. [center]***[/center] Thick plumes of dark smoke billowed from the humble Kasenyi village, which burned against the purple dusk sky. The small village, nooked into the firth of the freshwater lake, was a smaller settlement of the Kasese district and sat narrowly straddling the edge of guerilla territory, but were close enough to Xanathan influenced territory to benefit from the occasional patrol. Xanathan offered understandably flimsy support at this part of the Congo/Uganda border. Even were there a legal understanding Xanathan patrols were constantly assaulted, their caravans raided, their drones shot down. Fire licked across peat and thatch roofs. The screams died down leaving the intermittent rapping of distant gunfire and crackling of healthy flames. Hunched humanoid shadows charged, crashing from pyre to pyre as they pillaged each homestead and business. "Adjoining houses always burn." That was what these proud people were told when they refused protection. Gorerilla, the chief of the raiding guerilla gorillas, lumbered down the mainstreet towards the dock district where a single abode remained untouched at his request from both from the flame and from plunder. The creature, more billie ape than gorilla, measured from shoulder to knuckle at nearly two and a half meters tall, and wore the talismans and trophies of a warlord proud of his conquered prey. A hollowed, mutated leopard skull—his prized trophy, hand wrested from an apex predator of the infected fauna of the congo, fitted over his skull outfitting him with a fearsome visage. Under his heavy custom stitched Xanathan-issue body armor, ripped from the corpses of a squadron of elites, Gorerilla bore the scars of the leopard, and countless other battles triumphant. Around his thick, robust, neck jangled a cavalcade of clinking skulls, mostly human, that clattered with his procession. He approached the two-story house with a three-point knuckle-walk, in his open arm what used to be an M2HB heavy machine gun was now an army-slaying weapon of the future with the best enhancements the tribe could pilfer. As he approached the homestead, his dark eyes peered up to the second floor where he could hear frantic shuffling and shouting. Palming open the locked double doorway, Gorerilla forcefully smashed the entryway off its frame and squeezed through the vestibule, crumbling mortar and plaster raining in his aftermath. Flaring his nostrils, the billie ape leaped to the second floor, crushing in the railing as he barged into the room where he could hear commotion. Inside, a woman shrieked as he pushed his way in, and an elderly arthritic man with fear in his eyes charged the chieftain with a hatchet. Gorerilla caught him with a foot, crushed him, and threw him shattering through the front window where he landed in a heap upon the street below, then turned to the man’s wife, repeating his caution. “Adjoining houses always burn.” Before leaving with everything of value the village had, Gorerilla added a few more skulls to his collection.