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  “First, tell me the name of your branch. The real name. Who do you work for?”

  Blackwell paused. After a moment's consideration, he finally said, “the Office of Intelligence. OI. Happy?”

  Allan thought he was lying, could almost taste the lie, but he supposed it was as close to the truth as he was going to get. He had heard of the OI. For the next however long, he recounted his experiences involving the killer. This went for a while, Blackwell occasionally asking questions, going down different paths.

  Finally, Allan fell silent.

  “Any chance I could get some water?” he asked.

  “There will be some waiting for you back at your cell. You see, I find you and your two friend fascinating. So far, you're the only people we've found to have come in direct contact with the subject and lived to tell about it. And, not only that, you actually went after him! Truly remarkable,” Blackwell said, seemingly lost in the notion.

  “Who is he?” Allan asked. “He doesn't seem...human.” It wasn't the word he intended to use, it simply popped out, but he realized it was correct.

  The killer didn't seem human.

  “I'm afraid that's all classified, Sergeant Gray. I can't tell you any more.”

  Blackwell stood up and walked to the door. He opened it and motioned to the two guards who'd been standing outside.

  “How long are you going to keep me here?” he asked.

  “I'm not sure,” Blackwell said, the two guards now coming to 'escort' him once more back to his cell. “It all depends on how things play out.”

  “He's here, isn't he?”

  “Yes. He's here. Back under our control and-” Someone else appeared in the door, another faceless guard. Blackwell turned to face him. “Yes?”

  “Sir, Montgomery is asking for you again,” he said.

  Blackwell heaved a sigh. “Fucking military bitch...I'm sick of these idiots looking over my shoulder all the fucking...” he hesitated and glanced at Allan. “Tell her I'll be in at once.” He looked at the two guards holding Allan. “Bring him back to his cell and bring me the women.” With that, Blackwell left the room.

  The two began walking Allan back to his cell.

  * * * * *

  When Allan came back to his cell and sat down on the bed, all his thoughts came to a halt as he realized how tired he truly was. The combined events of not only the chase of the killer, but the sleepless previous night and the failed assault on the smuggling operation weighed heavily on him. It became so difficult to keep his eyes open that he finally decided to give in to the lethargy. Allan laid down, closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  Alarms.

  Allan's eyes snapped open, staring up at a bland metal ceiling. He sat up, swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood. The first thing he noticed was that the door to his cell was open. The second thing, he was shocked to find when he checked his chronometer, was that ten hours had passed. He still felt groggy and dislocated from the world, but the alarms and a chance at escape gave him a much-needed shot of adrenaline.

  Allan hurried over to the door and stepped out. The corridor was empty. There was only one other door open in the long corridor. Allan nearly ignored it, noting that it was just another cell, but something made him stop. The open door had an ominous feel to it, as though there was something held within.

  Something he didn't want to see.

  Allan swallowed nervously, his throat still dry. He didn't have time for this. Yet...he approached the cell. Peering cautiously in, Allan's gaze immediately fell on exactly what he didn't want to see. A body on the floor, the neck crushed like an empty can of Vex. Blood had pooled beneath the corpse's head. It looked very fresh.

  Lucy Banks stared at the ceiling, or perhaps beyond it.

  Her gaze seemed accusing.

  Allan lingered for a moment, then slowly turned and walked away, making his way to the end of the corridor. He moved through the door and hesitated once more. Three corpses, men in suits of dark armor, lined the floor. Their chestplates, and the torsos beneath, were all caved in. Allan walked over to the nearest one and patted him down. He took the man's pistol and holster and added it to his own suit, then took the man's rifle and slung it over his neck. Finally, he finished field-searching the corpses and gathered up some ammo.

  They were armor-piercers, he noted, not that it seemed to have done them any good. Allan took the bullets anyway. He began working his way through the base, slowly tracing a path of destruction through the ruined Obsidian Station. At first he encountered only a dozen or so dead guards along the way, all killed in the same manner. But as he moved out of the holding and storage areas and into the center of the installation, he began to encounter dozens of bodies. Men and women in black armor and jumpsuits.

  Finally, he located a terminal and plugged into it. There was no password or encryption or any kind of lockout. Unfortunately, he could also only access the most rudimentary of functions. He called up the map and studied it for a moment. At firmly fixing three points in his head, the command center, the armory and the garage, Allan abandoned the terminal and set off deeper into the base. He ignored the death and destruction as best he could.

  His mind remained surprisingly quiet as he made for the command center. Maybe it was the quiet dislocation from the world he felt, both due to his long sleep and all the murder he'd encountered so far, most of all Banks's death. Or maybe he finally had a single, clear-cut, all-consuming goal for once in his life.

  Kill the killer.

  Allan came to the command center and stopped in the doorway. It was a broad, rectangular room, the walls of which were taken up by all manner of instrumentation and workstations. On a raised platform in the center of the room was a chair and a command terminal, likely where Blackwell would have sat and lorded over all he surveyed, Allan imagined. There were bodies in the command center, but none of them belonged to Blackwell.

  He left the command room and began making for the armory. He began to ask questions and formulate a plan. Why hadn't the men used the same electrical weapons on the killer a second time when he obviously woke up and escaped? Maybe the weapons were rare. Or, perhaps they had underestimated the abilities of the killer. He could easily see a force like this being overconfident in itself.

  And they had all paid the price.

  Allan came to the armory and opened the door. It was half-empty, lockers still hanging open from the panic that no doubt ensued once they realized there was an unstoppable killing machine in their midst. Forcing himself to go slow, hunting through the weapons for the special kind of weapon that had taken down the killer at first. After several long, quiet moments, he finally found the model rifle that the strike team had used.

  It was long, black and sleek. The hole for the magazine was larger and he found a pair of magazines in the case with the rifle. Abandoning the rifle he'd grabbed from the dead soldier, Allan slung the electrical weapon over his shoulder, loaded it up with one magazine and pocketed the other. Then he left the armor.

  Moving once more through the dead silence of the facility turned tomb, he thought about what he was going to do. His plan was simple. First, he would incapacitate the killer by emptying the magazine into him. Then, he'd removed the bastards helmet, take a moment to see just who...or what, had caused all this trouble, then he'd pull out his pistol and empty that magazine into the bastard's face. And that would be the end of that.

  Allan came to the garage. He walked across the room and opened the far door, which slid into the ceiling, revealing a setting sun, casting a familiar red glow across the wastelands. Allan made his way back to an all terrain jeep, got into and started it up. He checked the power levels, found them acceptable and then froze.

  How would he find the killer?

  After a long moment, the idea came to him. He fired up the navigational computer and found himself on the map. He was nearly a hundred miles from where he'd last been. Pulling back and studying the map, he used
the original comms relay as a point of origin and tracing the route the killer had relentlessly walked, he saw that Obsidian Station was very roughly in the same direction. Continuing along the flat path, he found another settlement and immediately began driving. It was as close as he was going to get.

  As Allan began driving, he had the distinct impression that he'd forgotten something. It came to him after a moment. Johnson. He'd never found the whiny technician. Allan decided that it didn't matter. Either he was dead or he was still alive. If he was still alive, he'd likely find his own way out and then do what he'd always wanted.

  High-tail it to the nearest sign of civilization and hide under a bed somewhere. Which was fine by Allan.

  He'd always been a bit of a lone wolf.

  He drove off into the setting suns.

  Chapter 09

  –On the Hunt–

  Alone.

  He was alone again, and there was something peaceful about that. No other teammates to worry about keeping safe and alive, no hostiles to shoot at him, no one from command telling him what to do. He was wholly, totally alone.

  He'd driven for ten minutes through the packed-earth wastelands before finding an abandoned highway that was probably laid down upon first colonization, when the companies were only willing to invest in ground-based vehicles for transportation as opposed to the much more efficient areal transports.

  He'd bought the jeep onto the highway and began driving along it, as it was roughly the direction he needed to go in and better driving than the wastelands. Allan let his thoughts drift as he made his way down the lengthy strip of pitted concrete. The suns were dying on the far horizon, bathing the wastelands in fiery twilight. The sky was painted in gray overcast, further diffusing the crimson and orange light.

  Distant thunder threatened rain. He was heading for it. Fitting, Allan supposed. He thought on the killer. On his black armor and the curiosities he'd been presenting since their first meeting. Something in Allan's head kept going back to the jeep in the back of the downed transport. The killer had every chance and reason to take that jeep and get driving. And clearly wasn't a question of being able to fit, he'd been ready to take a jeep back in the colony.

  So what was the problem?

  Allan supposed that his own fundamental problem was that he knew basically nothing about this maniac. Where had he come from? What was his history? What was his motivation for doing what he did? Where had that armor come from? Too many questions and no real answers. Allan told himself that it didn't matter. Whatever the reason, whatever the why and how and what and where, it just didn't matter to him.

  He was going to end this killer.

  The jeep hit a pothole in the disused highway, bring Allan back to the world. Up ahead, he could see buildings, a low collection of one-and-two story dwellings alongside the main road. The settlement he'd seen on the map earlier. There wasn't much information in the navigational database on the upcoming colony, only that it was small, had once been a mining support settlement and it had long since failed.

  A ghost town.

  Which was perfect. No innocent bystanders. Just him and the killer. A confrontation. A final showdown. One of them wasn't walking away from this. Gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, Allan pushed the jeep faster.

  He jumped in surprise as his radio crackled to life.

  “Sergeant Gray, this is Captain Carpenter, please respond immediately.”

  Allan blinked in response. For a moment, he considered deactivating his radio, just ignoring it, pretending he hadn't heard it. But there was a part of him that responded almost immediately, a respect for the chain of command that had been pounded into his skull over the years. Finally, reluctantly, he activated his radio, realizing he must be out of the dead zone now.

  “This is Sergeant Gray, responding.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Allan, where the fuck have you been!?” Carpenter snapped.

  “I've been out of contact due to the blackout, followed by unconsciousness. I've been in pursuit of a hostile in state-of-the-art military power armor that has been murdering everyone he comes in contact with. My entire team is killed in action, including Banks. I was rendered unconscious and captured by an unknown paramilitary organization and brought to somewhere called Obsidian Station. I am alone, have upgraded my arsenal and am presently in pursuit of the target,” Allan replied as clearly and sufficiently as he could manage.

  The cold, rational report seemed to calm Carpenter somewhat. “At least you still know how to deliver a fucking report...listen, Allan, I need you to stand down and report back to base. SI has been appraised of the situation...barely, and we've been cut out of the loop. Whoever these people are, they've got clearance and they want their own manpower on this operation. No one else. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand, but...I'm afraid I cannot comply,” Allan replied after a moment's consideration.

  “...this is an order, Sergeant Gray. I am ordering you, as your commanding officer, to stand down and return to base immediately.”

  “I know, Captain. I can't...” he paused for a long time. “He killed my team.” Then he turned off the radio, cutting off Carpenter mid-sentence.

  It felt good to do that, Allan realized. He was on his own. Truly, totally on his own. It began to rain, the sun disappearing behind the gray horizon.

  The colony was close.

  So, hopefully, was the killer.

  * * * * *

  By the time he pulled into the colony, the skies had really opened up. The last rays of sunlight slanted across a landscape of decay. The hollowed out shells of prefabricated structures were overgrown with some native plant life that had been transplanted and allowed to grow wild. Windows were broken out or cracked, caked over with dust and dirt that was slowly disappearing in the rainfall. The roads were untended, abandoned and ruined. There wasn't a soul present in the entire colony as far as Allan could see.

  He simply sat in the jeep, having pulled into the central square. Much like the previous colony he'd been to, it was a circle of pitted concrete around which a ring of once-important structures loomed. He spied the Administrator's office, where the man who ultimately ran the colony resided during the day. There was a building that had once served as a public headquarters for whatever mining company had built this place.

  Now its metal was worn by time, windows dark and dead, like malignant demon eyes. Staring out at the world, revealing nothing. Allan sat in the car, watching the water bead and run on the windshield, trying to get a feel for the place. The killer was here, he could feel it. Somehow, someway, he could sense the very presence of the man.

  But where?

  He slowly looked at the other buildings in the area. There was a derelict apartment building where probably the richest of the tiny population lived. An old SI headquarters, which gave him a pang of regret at having tuned out Carpenter. But it had to be done. His eyes finally settled on a huge structure that towered over the rest.

  The local hospital.

  He imagined it had to be pretty big, considering that mining was still a pretty dangerous profession. Lightning split the sky, momentarily lighting the colony up. Allan frowned as he thought he saw something up high, in the hospital. He continued staring, waiting for another lightning flare to strike. Within a minute, he was rewarded, and confirmed what he had thought he'd seen: a dark figure stood behind one of the windows in the top floor.

  The killer.

  Allan immediately grabbed the rifle and stepped out of the jeep, into the pouring rain. He ignored it, shutting the door behind him and stalking towards the entrance of the building. He didn't give a shit if the killer saw him. This was going to end, here and now. Allan moved across the desolate cityscape to the front entrance of the hospital.

  It was open, as though someone was expecting him.

  He had no illusions as he stepped into the abandoned lobby. He was probably going to die here. But going down fighting was a lot better than anything else. B
etter than hiding on some isolated colony world where the jobs were easy and the risk was low. Better than slowly going insane. Better than thinking about the past and about failed relationships all the time. About dead friends. Yeah, going down swinging was probably the best option right now.

  Allan stalked across the lobby, gun in hand, butt of it tucked tight into his shoulder. He knew the elevator would be dead, so he made for the stairwell. The lobby was dark and dreary, but his visor had a light-enhancement feature that cut through the gloom, throwing all the urban decay into sharp detail. For a second, he found himself wondering why this colony had failed, and how many other like it dotted the landscapes of all the colony worlds?

  He hit the stairwell and began ascending. All his thoughts turned outward as he went higher, everything turning towards the killer. This one, singular goal encompassed him. He didn't think about the dead, not about Carpenter, probably sending someone to find him, not about his growing reliance on his suit of armor.

  Just the killer.

  He went up two stories and hit a block, as the next stairwell had been caved in, blocking his passage. Stepping out into a ruined corridor, Allan began looking around, hunting for another method up. There were five stories, the killer was on the top and he was on the third. Allan began making his way down the corridor.

  Most of the doors that led to patient rooms were open. He glanced into them as he passed them by, finding nothing but gutted shells of what they once were. No furniture, no supplies, no humanity left. There were outlines on the ground of where the furniture had once been. Ghosts of the past. Allan stopped as he spied another open door that led to a stairwell, this one intact. He began to move through it, then hesitated.

  There was something on the wall. He frowned as he stared closely at it. At first it had seemed like more decay, or perhaps graffiti, but it was something more. Something recent. Something meant directly for him.