“Do you mind if I finish here?” said the man languidly, without turning around. “I have some important business to hand.” Felicity frowned, trying to identify his accent.
“Finish,” said Odgers calmly. “If anything unexpected happens, I will shoot you in the spine. Chopra, Jennings, keep the room covered. Clements, can you scan this place?”
Felicity turned to take all of it in. The first thing that struck her was how clean everything was. She’d expected, well, the inside of an animal. Flesh pulsating. Liquid dripping. Maybe some huge organs, or bones supporting everything. At least a smell of some sort.
Instead, she was in a large white chamber whose smooth rubbery walls curved to meet the ceiling and the floor. The lack of edges actually left her feeling a little dizzy, and the effect was compounded by the fact that light glowed gently from the entire inner surface. On the metal benches that lined the sides were several closed metal suitcases. The music was coming, so far as she could tell, from the walls and ceiling, although it had gotten much quieter as they’d entered.
After the derelict grubbiness of the row houses, the bright antiseptic nature of this place was disorienting. To the left of them another membrane hung down, obscuring the area beyond. Chopra and Jennings had it covered.
She crouched down and put her hand on the glowing floor. Odgers darted a look at her, and Felicity shook her head. As she had suspected, she could not read it at all. It’s all alive.
“You! Pissing guy!” snapped Odgers. “What’s behind the curtains?”
“The living room,” said the man drily.
“Is there anyone in there? Anything I need to be worried about?”
“No.”
“Jennings, that curtain makes me uncomfortable,” said Odgers. “We’ll be going there next, and if anything comes out, you smite it.”
“Yes, sir.” Jennings slung his weapon over his shoulder, lifted his arm toward the membranes, and flexed his fingers wide.
Felicity kept her gun and her eyes firmly pointed at the man. Unfortunately, that meant that she got a good look at his backside. It was hairless, but then, so was the rest of him. Or at least, the parts that she could see. There was no hair on his scalp, but there was a set of curious bony ridges ringing his head. His skin was paper white and shone like glazed porcelain. As she peered closer, she saw that he was actually covered in tiny, perfect, polished scales. He was tall and slim.
The man finished and took his foot off the pedal of the rubbish bin, sending the lid down with a clang. To Felicity’s consternation, he then turned around. He didn’t look over his shoulder, and he didn’t cover himself up. Despite herself, she looked at his penis.
Okay, that’s... unorthodox.
Instead of any form of genitalia with which Felicity was acquainted, the white man’s groin sported a smooth skin of those tiny white scales that shivered and locked together seamlessly before her eyes.
The rest of him was similarly nonstandard. Like the back of him, the front of him did not have any hair. His skin glistened white in the light, and he was fairly muscular-looking. A ridge of scales rimmed his face, which looked normal and smooth apart from its pallor. Felicity guessed him to be in his late twenties.
The most eye-catching thing about him (apart from the weird nodules on his head, the odd quality of his skin, and his lack of such traditional accoutrements as clothing and genitals) was the large crimson splash of blood on his torso. There was also blood on his arms, from the middle of his forearms up to his elbows.
“Kneel,” said Odgers. “Hands on head.”
“Of course,” he said as he knelt down smoothly. “I expect you are from the Checquy?” he asked, his accent seeming to skitter around the globe, as if he’d lifted pronunciations from multiple different languages.
He knows about the Checquy!
“We’re from the government,” said Odgers firmly, and the man smiled. He was not at all perturbed by the guns pointed at him. “Where is Melinda Goldstein?”
“Through there,” said the man, jerking his head to the far side of the room, where the membrane hung down.
“Is she alive?”
“Ish.”
Alive-ish, thought Felicity. Jesus.
“Fine,” said Odgers grimly. “Now lie down with your face on the ground.” The man nodded and cleared his throat.
“Skreeoh,” he said.
“I beg your —” began Odgers, and then the music stopped and a horrendous shrieking sound began to rip forth all around them. It hammered through their heads. Automatically, Felicity began to hunch down, but —
“Keep him covered!” shouted Odgers.
“We’re clear!” shouted Jennings. “It’s coming from the walls!” Felicity saw the man tense his face, and then the floor beneath his feet and the ceiling directly above his head darkened, and the light was swiftly extinguished throughout the entire chamber. She caught a glimpse of him beginning to move just before the place was completely shrouded in darkness.
“He’s bolting!” she shouted.
“Shoot him!” barked Odgers, and the two women opened fire at the corner the Homeowner had been kneeling in. The rest of them held their positions as the muzzle flashes lit up the room for a moment. The screaming noise of the walls mercifully cut off with a tortured squeal, leaving everyone’s ears ringing.
The strobing of the gunfire left afterimages glowing in Felicity’s eyes against the darkness, and she hurriedly slapped her visor down over her face.
The room had apparently not taken well to getting peppered with bullets; the screaming had ceased, but a cloud of acrid black smoke was swirling through the space, along with the smell of burned hamburgers. Felicity could just make out that the corner of the chamber had been somewhat shredded, and the thick walls were oozing a viscous liquid. The rubbish bin of urine had been knocked over, with vile results. There was not, however, any sign of a white naked man or a white naked corpse. There weren’t even any white naked fragments.
“I don’t see him!” she shouted. “Scan the room!” She peered around, gun raised, and saw that the others had flipped down their visors too. The valve-door had closed itself tightly; not even a trace of the seams remained.
Then Felicity saw that Pawn Odgers was lying on the ground, her throat cut.
“Oh no,” she breathed.
“Clements, Chopra, flank me!” ordered Jennings. His tone cut through her horror, and she nodded obediently. The two of them moved to either side of the Pawn, trying to cover every direction the enemy might come from.
“No radio contact with the team,” said Chopra grimly. “The door is shut.”
“No sign of the target?” Felicity asked.
“Maybe he escaped out the door?” wondered Chopra. “And then shut it behind him?” They looked around, peering through the smoke, and saw no trace of their quarry. The chamber was silent, apart from the dripping of the wounds in the wall.
“Or he went into the other part of the room,” suggested Felicity quietly. “That bit behind those membranes, where he said the civilian was.”
“We’ll take it,” said Jennings. “Burst through and secure the area. Standard trident assault pattern. If that sneaky fuck’s there, we kill him. Don’t hold back. Ready on three?” They nodded.
“One.”
Felicity’s hands tightened on her gun.
“Two.”
She took a deep breath.
“Thr —”
There was a swirling in the smoke, and the unexpected figure of Pawn Cheng manifested just in front of Felicity.
“God, Andrea! Don’t do that!” Felicity gasped. That must have been what Odgers was muttering before, she thought. Ordering Cheng to accompany us. “I almost shot you.” Pawn Cheng, who had opened her mouth to say something, paused and gave her an incredulously pitying look. Then she shook her head and got straight to the point.