Alex could hear the girl’s voice. She was alone in the dark and was calling his name – frightened, so frightened – she needed his help. The ancient tunnel was desolate, black and icy cold, but his extraordinary senses allowed him to perceive the danger all around him.

It was Aimee. She screamed his name again, so terrified and alone. The walls of the tunnel were collapsing, suitcase-sized granite blocks were falling in on him. Alex used his enormous strength to lift and throw the blocks out of his way – but the more he threw, the more rained down on him.

He screamed his pain and anger into the dark.

‘Holy shit.’

The EEG alarm screamed as the machine’s four reading pens crazily mapped Alex’s alpha, beta, theta and delta waves onto the printout. His encephalogical storm was turning into a full-blown hurricane. Lieutenant Marshal tried to make sense of the wild oscillations and spatial disturbances, but even to his trained eye, the pages were now almost black with impossible scribbling.

Marshal moved back to the observation window in time to see Alex’s body convulse upwards. The soldier made a fist with his right hand and slowly tried to bring his arm up. His muscles bulged and sinews stretched – and a fatiguing metallic sound echoed through the observation room’s speakers. The iron railing on the cot started to bend.

Aimee screamed again. He wasn’t going to make it in time. More stones were falling in on him and the leviathan was rapidly approaching from below. Alex had to do something – now. He pounded the rock with his bare hands, smashing the ancient boulders in an effort to break a path through to Aimee.

The creature had him now. It had hold of his arms and was trying to drag him down to its lair. He had to break free; he had to try harder. Anger and fury pulsed through him – he would tear it apart, he would destroy it.

The two scientists stood immobile at the toughened glass of the observation window. Lieutenant Alan Marshal knew he had his secondary physical manifestations to accompany the psycho-cranial quake taking place in Hunter’s mind. No longer the face of calm, Hunter’s visage was a mask of pure rage. His eyes were still closed but his lips were pulled back to reveal gritted teeth that gleamed whitely against his flushed and perspiring face. Veins bulged in his neck and shoulders as he struggled with the monster in his mind. He tried to bring his right arm up – and the specially strengthened steel bar on the cot groaned and bent another inch.

Marshal stared in awe at this display of raw strength. He had witnessed many things in his years of medical military service – feats of outstanding bravery, bursts of impossible energy or Herculean effort under pressure – but no one should be able to bend high-gauge military steel like this soldier was doing.