“Then neither do you!” Kurst’s sudden outburst caused the intercom to buzz into static. When the ringing subsided, he sounded calm again. “This world belongs to whoever is bold enough to seize it, and I have allied with one strong enough to defeat all the other factions. I will serve as his general and in exchange he will grow more bodies for the Fallen. In honor of our new alliance he has presented me with a Gift. We may have been created in your image, but we have evolved beyond. The first generation has already partaken of this gift, and now I bestow it upon the next.”

“Sir!” the MCB agent by the monitoring station shouted. “Something’s wrong.”

“What?”

“Their vitals are spiking. Heart rates are through the roof.”

Franks turned toward the nearest growth tank. The thing inside was watching him through the glass with milky white eyes. “Shit.”

“Awake, my army.”

Kurst had released some powerful mutagenic chemical into the tanks. Every Nemesis creature Franks had eyes on was stirring. Some were twitching violently, as the greenish fluid around them turned red. Bodies were changing, bones were twisting. Horns were sprouting from heads. Someone shouted a warning as a Nemesis demon spread its newly grown wings and the glass of its tank cracked. Another tank ruptured, and the rushing fluid swept several men from their feet.

“Kill everything!” Franks bellowed as he pulled the trigger.

Glass shattered. A rushing wall of sticky fluid struck him, but Franks was planted there, unmoving as it swept by. Franks kept on shooting as the demon ripped itself free from its wires and tethers. There was movement all around him as the MCB opened fire. Demons either burst through the glass or clambered out the tops of their tanks, their soft, ill-fitting flesh leaving bloody trails. Lights were swinging wildly. There were muzzle flashes all across the factory as his agents engaged the demons.

Franks hammered the demon in front of him, putting round after round through its soft organs. The first noise it ever made was a frustrated screech as it sliced its palms to ribbons trying to crawl across the broken glass. Franks kicked it through the opposite side of the tube.

The tank fluid was as slick as soap, and his men were sliding and falling on the concrete. The wet, misshapen creatures weren’t doing much better, though a few had already adapted and grown suckers on the ends of their limbs. One demon was climbing up a pylon like a monkey, preparing to leap down on top of some of the Swiss, so Franks aimed his rifle and shot the thing through the back of the head. It slipped and tumbled twenty feet to bounce off the floor.