AMIDST THE CATS' CRADLE - 21

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E - - - - M I T C H

Along the way to the main chamber, Mitch, Jordan, and Shaun cleared a few rooms, but all they discovered were storage areas and file cabinets. Mitch was more irate than he could ever recall being, and his hackles were up.

He had sustained a side stab wound somewhere down the line, which was happening much too frequently in his line of work. Back then, it seemed like every jerk with a bad attitude was armed.

Heavy gunfire could be heard coming from the second floor, where the rest of Squad Six was positioning themselves, trapping The Arctics between Tom, Jerome, and Tim. Mitch nearly felt sorry for the wolfy bastards who were given that obligation.

When they reached the outside edges of the main chamber, Mitch stopped abruptly as a faint, eerie hum rumbled in his ears. It sounded both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It was somewhat reminiscent of the sounds he'd heard when squaring off against those creatures in Ilocos, the mutant werewolves who looked like true nightmare material.

He continued to linger in the hallway, gesturing with his hand for the others to stop moving so he could gaze into the space. It seemed more akin to a ballroom than anything else, empty of furniture and glowing a cold, clinical white. The floor, though, was the most bizarre aspect of it. It was intermittently translucent, pulsing with lights, and brimming with an intense chill.

Mitch extended one hand into the void beyond the tunnel and swiftly retracted it, little ice crystals forming on his hand. He looked back, his eyes wide with astonishment, and extended his hand to Jordan and Shaun.

"They must be working really hard to keep anything cool down there," Shaun observed, pointing to the chamber then up to the ceiling. "Did you see those?" Large ass vents. They're releasing the air. Gwen mentioned over the radio that there was a rapid updraft of something cold as fuck, which Jerome verified when they crashed through the ceiling."

"Anything we want needs to be downstairs." "In the basement," Jordan explained quietly, his eyes already looking back, searching for stairs.

Something from above caused the structure to tremble on its base at that same moment. Mitch grimaced, his gaze catching Shaun's, which was narrowing rapidly. The memories of Ilocos were too fresh in the man's memory, and Shaun knew as well as Mitch that strange noises at The Arctics' bases were not good news.

"Delta One, I need backup." "We're getting killed up here," Jerome said over the intercom, his voice strained with static.

"We need to get downstairs," Jordan muttered, stalking down the corridor away from the center area, which would have turned them into Popsicles if they had tried to enter it. They were on the lookout for a route down.

"We can't leave them up there either," Mitch remarked, quickly following.

“I’ll go bail them out. You go find what your boys need,” Shaun said, practically running past Mitch and clapping him on the shoulder.

Mitch was about to protest but the look Shaun gave him told him everything. Shaun had been in a similar situation. He knew how it felt to be holding the lives of someone you loved dearly in your hands. Tough choices had to be made. Squad Six could take care of themselves. Duncan and Dawson couldn’t.

Shaun rounded the corner fast enough and was soon out of sight. A moment later, Jordan found an elevator heading downstairs, hidden behind a door that looked exactly like every other. Checking his rifle, Mitch dubiously looked at the elevator.

“You want to get into a steel box and ride into the abyss, not knowing what’s waiting for us down there?” Mitch asked.

Of course Jordan did. Good thing then that it sounded like a hell of a good time to Mitch as well.

When the elevator reached downstairs and the doors flung open with a ping, at least five rifles were trained on the seemingly empty box. Two rifles sat on the floor, unmanned. Then, two smoke grenades flew into the midst of them, followed closely by two very pissed off ex-Navy SEALs.

Mitch and Jordan flung themselves down from the ceiling, having held to it with arms and legs, knives between their teeth. Mitch caught the first guy in the face with his elbow, spinning to kick a guy in the chest with the same move. Then, he grabbed his knife and plunged it straight into the heart of the man teetering back from the punch to the face, yanking the blade back immediately after.

But the guy didn’t go down. Instead, his eyes flashed with rage and he practically flung himself on top of Mitch, along with the man whose legs Mitch had swept out from under him with the kick.

“Shit,” Mitch muttered, The Arctics guards down there clearly taking more of whatever they’d been huffing into their systems.

It was uncharacteristically cold down there, made more obvious by the fact that the men attacking the twins were absolutely burning up. One of The Arctics guards on Mitch made a seething hissing noise, his heavy fists pummeling Mitch in the face as Mitch thrust the dagger into his head this time, the blade making a crunching noise as it cut through thick bone and then squished into his brain.

Blood gushed from the man’s clear blue eyes and he managed two more good punches, probably dislocating Mitch’s jaw for a moment, before his body caught up with the fact that he was already dead.

Mitch flung the body off and hopped back up on his feet, only to duck the onslaught of the next man coming at him like a bull to a red cape as the fog started to clear. A lucky hit to the neck made the right kind of impact, the dagger cutting through delicate flesh and leaving the man gagging on his own blood.

Disheveled and hurting like hell, Mitch looked around for his brother, finding a trail of blood leading away from the elevator. He found one of The Arctics dead in about ten steps, his gun thrust down into his throat, and another still clinging to life, deep gashes on his stomach, neck, and face. Mitch put the fucker out of his misery with the utmost of enjoyment.

“Jordan?” he called, the hum louder now, more insistent now that he moved closer.

He got a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked forward, forgetting all about how he was burning from the punches and cuts he’d already sustained. His eye was going to swell shut soon enough and his jaw hurt like hell, but he’d weather through. Like he always did.

Another few paces down through the murky halls he found the third dead body, his face caved in from getting repeatedly slammed into the wall. Every now and then, a twitch still ran through him, the brain wiring signals to a body long dead. Mitch’s lips pressed into a thin line. Humans rarely did it, but with shifters, death could take a while to really set in.

Like a chicken running around with its head cut off, a shifter’s body didn’t want to give in as easily as it perhaps should. The chemicals the guy must have been pumped full of didn’t make it any easier.

There was a door ajar right up ahead and Mitch grabbed a rifle off of the twitching mess of tissue at his feet. He skulked forward, his breathing ragged, looking like he’d gone through one deployment too many as he pulled the door open.

That was when he found Jordan. And he understood completely why his brother had not found the words to call back.