“Hey,” Mitzi said as gently as she could, gripping Adam’s shoulders to hold him still. “Can you hear me?”

“Gnn,” he murmured, and his head lolled to one side. Mitzi’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the dent in back of his helmet. She pressed her hand to the indent, and Adam flinched.

Crap.

Skye and Ellen had knelt by Mitzi’s side. Even though the suit, Mitzi could see Ellen was trembling.

“Should we take the helmet off?” Skye asked, her voice reduced to a whisper, as though talking too loudly could hurt Adam. Mitzi supposed it might.

“Yes,” Mitzi said, feeling chills crawl up the back of her neck, “but not now. We need to get out of this stairwell.”

“What’s wrong?” Franc asked. He kept his flamethrower spitting a lick of fire to light the hallway, and he was watching the oozing black lump on the floor. Puffs of toxic, dark smoke rose from its corpse, and bubbles appeared occasionally then burst on the liquefied parts of its flesh.

Mitzi was listening as hard as she could. Farther down the hallway, she could still hear the echoing drip, but other sounds had joined: shifting, dragging sounds of large creatures recently awakened from their sleep. “There’re more coming. We need to get out of here.” She turned back to Adam. “Can you stand?”

“Ghh.”

Mitzi swallowed, flicking her eyes towards the dark stairwell behind her. She spoke as quickly as she could. “Mir, take his right side. Ellen, his left. Move fast, but try not to jostle his head. Skye, lead the group.”

Skye squared her shoulders and raised her flamethrower nozzle. “Where to?”

“Up the stairs and into the hallway we passed. Find a room we can barricade ourselves inside. Stay alert.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The shifting noises were growing closer. Mitzi got to her feet, raising her flamethrower’s gun and pointing it towards the darkness. “Eoin, stay behind Skye. Franc, with me.”

She waited until Ellen had pulled Adam to his feet and Mir had reluctantly put his arm around her shoulders, then she began edging backwards, keeping herself between the darkness and her team. Shapes materialised at the edge of the shadows. Mitzi twisted the band on the gun’s handle to increase the flamethrower’s reach.

Adam moaned as his companions began pulling him upwards, and Mitzi’s stomach lurched. After twenty years in the force, she’d never been able to tolerate seeing her team injured. She’d once been denied a promotion because she “couldn’t make necessary sacrifices.” The phrasing had enraged her so much that she’d thrown her phone across the room. She’d never understood how Central could expect her to serve with and nurture a team for months or years then just abandon them if they were injured during their duty.

The batch with her was even worse. They were too inexperienced to be on a battlefield, but Central had still asked them to fight and die if necessary. Mitzi felt personally responsible for them, that she was failing by letting them be hurt.