[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/vLyE4OE.png[/img][/center]
[hr]
Elbridge shouldered his rifle, taking up the rearguard after appointing the youngest member of his taskforce in the vanguard. He’d phrased it like a reward, but anyone who knew Elbridge understood it was more like tossing the kid to the wolves with a pat on the back. His reputation had preceeded him, anyone drafted into his team from another knew what they were getting in for. He was very much a man who believed that being feared was far better than being loved. He'd practically been licking his lips when Lord got into power and began setting up the checkpoints around the city, to him it was music to his ears. A return to order, his kind of order. The kind where a man with a gun and the authority to use it didn't have to explain himself. Lord gave him a leash, sure, but it was a long one, and Elbridge had every intention of running with it until it snapped.

He stalked through the cavern, boots stomping over each root that had the unfortunate luck of being in his path, floodlight sweeping left and right. The cavern's air was damp and dense, thick with spores. Every few steps, a subtle click from his wrist-mounted scanner confirmed his route, but no sign of the targets. Not yet.

Ahead of him, the squad swept their beams through the cavern's contours, arcs of light slicing through the shadows in rhythmic sweeps. The youngest at the front, Rogers, or maybe it was Ramirez - was already jittering under the pressure. His shoulders twitched with every half-seen glint from the wet stone. The others kept their spacing tight, disciplined, like good hounds. But Elbridge knew the fear was creeping in around the edges. That was fine. Fear sharpened the instincts. Broke the weak ones down. Separated the paper soldiers from the ones worth keeping.

He broke formation, moving up towards the young soldier and slapping a hand on his shoulder, giving him a startle. Elbridge guffawed as the kid flinched under his grip.

"Easy there, killer." Elbridge said, leaning in close enough that his breath fogged the boy's visor. "Don't jump every time a mushroom farts or you'll empty your mag into a rock and piss yourself in the same second." He laughed again.

The kid, Rogers, definitely Rogers - stammered something Elbridge didn't bother catching. He just smiled, all teeth, then gave the shoulder another squeeze that wasn't quite friendly.

"You're on point for a reason, Rogers. First eyes, first blood. Think of it like a rite of passage. Or a lottery. Someone's gotta win the first bite. About time you popped your cherry anyway"

He gave him a pat against the back, too hard to be comforting and turned to stalk back toward his position. Laughing all the while, a horrible sound that echoed through the cavern.

"Stay frosty. And if you see movement, don't freeze. Shoot. Then scream. In that order."

His unit continued their slow advance through the cavern. Silent except for the occasional crude remark from their commanding officer still taking up his cushy position at the back of the formation. Eventually they came to a split in the tunnel.

Elbridge whistled low through his teeth, scanning the fork with a practiced eye. Moss clung to one side like rot, the other looked cleaner, but narrower. He liked neither.

"Well, ain't this a goddamn buffet of bad options." He muttered, stepping up beside his second in command, Karras. Much more respected and reasonable, Karras couldn't have been more different than Elbridge as a leader. Unfortunately he was his junior in rank and experience, and while Elbridge mistankenly thought of him as a friend, his opinion mattered as little as anyone elses.

Karras glanced at the split. "Left path drops off quick. Could be a tunnel system underneath. Right one's tighter. Better cover, but no line of retreat if it goes bad."

"Beautiful." Elbridge said, smirking. He turned, raising his voice. "Alrighty then! Rogers, you're on a hot streak tonight, so guess what? You're choosing the direction."

The kid froze, visibly paling even behind the visor.

"I - uh...sir?"

"You heard me!" Elbridge said, stepping aside with a theatrical wave of his arm. "Pick a path. Left or right. This is what leadership looks like. Real character building stuff. You'll thank me for it later."

The squad stayed still, watching, silent. Karras looked like he wanted to object, but he knew better. Rogers hesitated for a painful moment, eyes darting between the two paths.

"...Left." He finally said.

Elbridge clapped his hands once, the sound echoing around the cave as his grin widened. "Atta boy! Decision made." He turned back to the rest of the squad, barking orders as he faced them. "Rogers, you and Grant take point down the left tunnel. Full sweep, check for breaches, movement, spores, whatever the hell. Radio in if you find anything worth a damn or if you start screaming. Rest of you, hold position."

Grant, a quiet, square-jawed soldier who'd done three tours in a Meta detention camp, gave no reaction. Just a curt nod and started moving. He was used to this kind of treatment. He'd done something to upset Elbridge in his first week with him and had never lived it down. Rogers, visibly scared, clicked his rifle into ready position and followed, one glance over his shoulder at Elbridge.

"Don't worry!" Elbridge called after them, cupping his hands mockingly. "We'll name a cafeteria sandwich after whichever one of you dies first!"

He snorted and leaned back against the damp wall, next to Karras, who wasn't hiding his displeasure.

"You keep burning through rookies like this, you'll run out of meat for the grinder."

Elbridge shrugged. "There's always more meat. Any hot blooded American patriot would kill to be part of my unit." He grinned. Karras couldn't tell how much of that sentence he meant as a joke.

They waited. A few minutes passed, no one daring to say anything. Elbridge had lit up a cigarette and was happily puffing away pondering over what the fillings of the 'Rogers Sandwich Supreme' could be. Then a burst of static through their radio, followed by silence again.

Karras stiffened, his brow furrowing as he looked down at his wrist mounted screen. "That was Grant's channel."

Elbridge tilted his head, listening. Then their comms buzzed again, half a scream muffled by static followed by a crunch. The squad froze.

"Elbridge-" Karras started, but the older man had already pushed off the wall, unslinging his rifle and motioning the unit to follow.

"Right path." Elbridge said, his tone decidedly less jovial than before. "We go now. Whatever took 'em, I want its goddamn teeth."

The squad fell in behind him, nerves tight, the tension could be cut with a knife. They swept down the narrower path, beams slicing through the gloom. None of them daring to question what had taken Rogers and Grant. The right-hand tunnel narrowed the further they crept down it, forcing the squad into single file.

Elbridge's earlier bravado had drained into something colder. He was quiet, professional - stalking like a cougar through the jungle. He moved in closer behind the lead man, no more lounging in the rear. They rounded a bend, and the tunnel opened wide.

The squad spread out instinctively, fanning across the lip of a broad, circular chamber. In the center of the room, the ground sloped down into a wide, bowl-like depression. Two silhouettes knelt at the centre of the chamber, maybe thirty feet down. A man and a woman, half-shrouded by the mist curling up from the cave floor.

The squad stood quietly, rifles raised and pointing at the two figures as they surrounded them from above.  Then Elbridge stepped forward slowly, weapon lowered and clapping slowly.

"Well, well, well, lookey what we got here!" The two figures heads snapped around to face him, and quickly began glancing around at the group that had ambushed them. "Looks like we caught ourselves a coupl'a freaks!" He laughed to himself, throwing hand signs down into the pit to signal the unit to begin their descent down the slope. He followed not far behind, casually sliding down the dirt with his rifle hung lazily on his side.

The two metas raised their hands as the unit surrounded them. Elbridge took a sick delight in seeing the concern etched across their faces. They had escaped them in the lift, now they had them surrounded. Powers or not he was sure their little tricks wouldn't match up to a barrage of sustained gunfire. 

"Now, you're gonna surrender nicely and let us lock these pretty little bracelets on you," He spoke, unhooking a pair of power dampening handcuffs from his belt. "Or we're gonna be dragging two corpses through the mud all the way back to base." He smiled.

The woman spoke first. "You know we're not going to let either of those things happen.

Reed didn't move. His eyes flicked over the squad's formation, cataloguing their spacing, the angle of descent, firing arcs, even now, the mathematician behind the man was at work. It didn't look good. This felt like a sum he couldn't solve. He leaned over to his wife and spoke as quietly as possible.

"Sue, this doesn't look good. You'll need to keep your shield up as long as possible."

"Naturally."

Elbridge narrowed his eyes. "What was that freaks? You spitting out yer last words?" He laughed again.

Reed back at Elbridge. "Shield. Now."

In one fluid motion, Sue dropped into position and threw up a bubble barrier around the two just as the first barrage of gunfire lit the cavern. Bullets slammed against the invisible wall, sizzling and sparking as if the air itself had turned solid. Reed crouched low beside her, already pulling apart the device in her hands they'd been using to trace the anomaly.

"We can't win a firefight." Sue muttered, straining under the pressure as fresh impacts made the barrier shudder. "We need another plan. This is too much for me to attack as well as keep the shield up."

"I'm working on one!" Reed called back over the thundering sound of the gunfire, his fingers pulling wires free with surgical speed. "I can pulse their magnetic cartridges, force a lockout. But I need a fourty seconds and a miracle."

The cavern trembled under sustained fire. Sue groaned, the effort of maintaining the shield clearly taking its toll.

"You've got ten."

Reed tried to work faster. His hands moving as quickly as they could. It felt hopeless, he couldn't connect everything fast enough.  In his haste, his grip slipped, a key coupling clattered to the stone floor and bounced out of reach, vanishing through a crack with a sound that felt impossibly loud in the chaos. The shield cracked like glass. The light stuttered. Sue gasped.

Then they were sure they heard a sound behind all the chaos. A low, subdermal thrumming, like distant thunder. The gunfire slowed as even the soldiers noticed it. They could feel a rumbling beneath their boots.

"What is that?" One muttered, still maintaining his fire.

Another stepped back a pace. "It feels like something's moving!"

A soldier screamed as the earth split open beside him and from it poured things not born of the surface world.

Yellow, slick-skinned, almost child-sized but twisted, deformed. Huge eyes glistened wet in the dark, blinking in odd, insectile rhythms. Their limbs were thin but powerful, ending in claws better suited to tunneling than killing though they proved plenty adept at both.

They swarmed like ants, shrieking as they surged from beneath, dragging the man down into the pit they'd clawed open. His screaming cut off halfway through a breath. Another soldier turned to run, one of the creatures leapt onto his back, jaws widening far too much, teeth sinking in. Blood sprayed across the stone.

One by one, the squad was pulled apart some into the ground, others ripped screaming into side passages. Rifles were dropped. Orders turned into pleas. The cavern was chaos, a pit of teeth and panic.

Sue collapsed to a knee, the shield flickering out. Elbridge saw it all, and lost whatever bravado he had left.

"N-no, no, no, NO!" he screamed, stumbling backward, nearly tripping over one of the discarded rifles. The screams of one of his soldiers rang out behind him, and he spun like a cornered rat, weapon raised with his eyes wide. "What are those things?! Jesus Christ - what the hell are those things?!"

A shriek tore through the cavern, not from the creatures, but from the last man in his unit being yanked into a tunnel wall that hadn't existed a moment ago.

Elbridge broke, he turned and ran, dropping his rifle as his fingers began clawing at the damp rock for balance. He shoved past Karras, or what might've been Karras, his body half-draped over a stalagmite, staring with glassy, dead eyes. Elbridge didn't stop, he couldn't stop.

The walls seemed to close in around him. Every turn he took led to more darkness, more sound, scratching, harsh breathing, movement in the periphery. He could feel them behind him, under him, watching him. Something brushed his boot, and he screamed, a high, wheezing sound, almost childlike in pitch. A flashlight flickered behind him, but no help came. No voices. Only the scuttling. The whispering, chittering static of bodies scraping through earth.

He was hyperventilating ragged, quick breaths as he stumbled again and fell face-first into moss. He began crawling on his hands and knees. "Please, please, I didn't sign up for this! I didn't, I didn't know-"

A small, clawed hand reached out of the wall and grabbed his ankle. Elbridge shrieked like a scared child and kicked, boot scraping free. He ran again, sobbing now, incoherently begging for his life. He turned a corner too fast and slammed face-first into something solid and warm. Not a wall.

He staggered back, blinking tears from his eyes. A small, squat figure stood there, unmoving. Almost childlike, but inhuman. Pale yellow skin, too-wide eyes, too many teeth.

It blinked up at him. Tilted its head. Smiled.

Elbridge reached for his pistol, far too slowly. The light on his shoulder died.

[hr]

Reed held one arm around Sue, supporting her in her exhuasted state as he held a stoic face towards the creatures surrounding them. They approached them differently from the soldiers, slowly edging their way closer and closer to the couple, tens of them, maybe a hundred all pouring out of the holes they'd dug and filling the pit Reed and Sue had made their last stand in. He was equal parts intriguied as he was terrified. Was this were their story would end? Miles beneath the surface torn apart by subterranean creatures? For a second he thought such a sci-fi way of ending things wouldn't be so bad. He knew Sue never felt the same.

The creatures got closer and closer, their hallowed breathing filling the room as they squabbled and bickered in some unknown language. Reed naturally felt his fist grow in size, if this was their last stand, he sure as hell wasn't going without a fight.

Just then, a figure appeared at the top of the pit. He was short, hunched, and cloaked in ragged layers of mismatched gear. For now just a silhouette as he waved a staff to the right and called down to the beings.
"Leave them, my children." 

With one command the creatures looked up at the figure and grunted in affirmation. The majority of them scuttled back into their holes, but a sparse few remained around the edges of the pit or peeking out of their tunnels. The figure made his way down towards the two.

"Hello Reed, hello Sue."