He stumbled back, suddenly weak from the loss of blood as the red glow left his eyes. He caught himself, though, and the Tec inside his body worked feverishly to patch up his injuries. Almost as an afterthought, four slender robotic arms extended out of the Engineer’s shoulder and started pulling shards of metal out of his body.

The shouting ceased and people stopped to stare at the hulk of a man, covered in blood and Warped bits as he stood, concentrating, while alien looking arms were removing spikes from his body.

Bulco glanced at the ten guards blocking the entrance. Two of them had fallen, but they seemed to be holding their own. A bunch of civilians were running back and forth, collecting empty magazines and handing out reloaded weapons. Then one of the civilians pointed a shaking finger upward and shouted. “They’re coming from above!”

Bulco barely managed to glance up before a second monster dropped straight down at him.

***

Lana clutched her Zapper and stared wide-eyed as Unity’s cargo doors opened over the structure’s roof.

At least a dozen of the smaller Warped were running across the surface looking for ways inside. Most looked like a rodent variety: mutated squirrels and rats that managed to climb the sheer walls. A couple of the bigger ones were pounding the roof, trying to smash their way inside.

“Fire!” Cattie shouted, and the three guards opened fire.

The male guards’ light carbines sprayed the monsters with automatic fire, hitting some, but missing most.

“Not like that!” Cattie shouted angrily. “Aim before you shoot! Use semi-automatic fire with short, steady bursts. You, guy!” she shouted at Nathan. “Reload our magazines.” She braced her shotgun on her shoulder, aimed carefully, and shot at a cat-like Warped that charged straight at them. The bullet hit the small creature mid-air and the 50 caliber Warped Buster slug tore its body to shreds.

The other two guards steadied their aim, picking out specific creatures. With Unity hovering several meters away from the building, they could afford to take the time to line up their shots in relative safety.

Lana fired her Zapper, her shots going all over the place. She only connected every third or fourth hit, and it took two or three hits to kill the low-level monsters. She and the two male guards were doing a decent job at reducing the Warped population, but Cattie was in a league of her own.

The woman didn’t miss a shot. The Warped she aimed at disintegrated into a spray of blood and gory metal every time she pulled the trigger on her shotgun. Twenty seconds after the doors had opened, all the Warped were dead, half of them by the Sharpshooter’s slugs.

“We made it.” Lana sighed in relief, seeing no more monster movements.

“No.” Cattie clenched her jaw. “One of them made it inside.”