AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The Motel Eight will be—”
“You’ll be staying in the top-floor suite.”
Reese choked on his tea. “I can’t afford tha—”
“I’ve made arrangements with the management to clear the level under it so a team of my men can utilize the rooms there. But two guards will remain posted at your door at all times.”
Reese wiped his mouth with the tail of his T-shirt. “Colonel, I think—”
“After Dr. Stacy looks you over, I’ll get you packed up and—”
“Wait—” Reese held up a hand. “Stop talking and wait a minute.”
Harrington arched an eyebrow.
“Thank you.” Reese pulled the blanket back over his shoulders. “I mean, not just for—never mind. Everything’s okay. But I don’t need a room at the Hyatt, a small army, and definitely not a doctor. I’m fine, Colonel, I pro—”
Harrington checked his watch. “If her plane landed on time, she should be here in a few hours. I’ll bring in a cot so you can take a nap.”
Reese slumped. “I don’t need a doctor.” Unless it was a psychiatrist. Yeah, after the most recent events in Reese’s life, he could probably use counseling.
Red outlined his nails despite washing up in the restroom. Not ichor, but blood from the Anubis. The one he’d beheaded with a goddamned meat-cleaver.
The moment a never-ending loop of memory, caught in milliseconds, every detail from the sharp pitch of breaking glass, the fish swept under the couch by a wave of water, to the speckles of gray in the granite of his countertop, and the Anubis.
Black fur, soulless eyes, how its ribs expanded when it inhaled, how its lean body flexed, how the stone floor buckled under its claws, each square chirping as it cracked.
Studying the ichor showed it took over any biological tissue, temporarily erasing it in Phase. Except for smoked glass, nothing could hold it. So when an Anubis destroyed, it didn’t cut through materials by separating it. The material parted on a molecular level, leaving the surface so perfect it was almost as if it had never been the same sample.
The best hypothesis Reese and Echols had to explain the phenomenon was the ichor existed on some quantum level they had no knowledge of, let alone understood.
The claws of the one in Reese’s kitchen hadn’t defied physics. It had left jagged lines in the drywall. Splintered fissures in the hardwood floor. All damage created by something sharp and strong.
But that wasn’t the only rule of the ichor the creature hadn’t followed.
“Shit….” Reese lost his hold on the blanket, couldn’t coordinate his hands to get it back around his shoulders, and wound up spilling half his tea on the floor. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Harrington rescued the cup from Reese’s grip.
“You said these Anubis were live-streamed.” Reese looked for somewhere to wipe the tea off his hand.
“Yes.” Harrington dropped paper towels over the puddle on the floor and gave one to Reese.
He took it. “And that you have satellite imagery.”
“I do.”
“An electronic eye can’t see an Anubis in Phase.” He waved the paper towel around.
Harrington took it too. “I remember.”
“Then you know the captured images shouldn’t be possible.”
“We saw the unknowns on the footage from the Utah Facility.”
“They were blurred.”
“But we saw them.”
