"Are we there yet?" Julius asked through chattering teeth.

"How many times are you going to ask that?" Ramona asked.

The two of them were sitting on one of the remaining dog sleds. They were only using five of the original dozen sleds as most of the werewolves were now pulling the dog sleds instead of riding inside of them. They quickly moved towards Research Center THX 1138. The base was already in sight as the team had made good time.

"Hey, you're the one who didn't bring any winter gear. I'm freezing here because you're wearing my winter coat." Julius shot back as their sled bounced through the snow. They were just reaching the research station when Charlie, the cowardly werewolf, spoke up.

"Hey, sir, I thought we were going after the bugs. What are we doing here?"

"Our job isn't to hunt insects, Charlie. Our job is to salvage what we can from the research center and then, if possible, investigate what happened. Any additional actions will be up to me and Dick. Besides, If we waste our time with the bugs, we might fail our primary objective. There is also the chance that the bugs didn't attack the base, and if that's the case, then board members are going to be up our asses about why we abandoned the mission for an unrelated monster attack."

Dick spoke up as they disentangled themselves from the dog sleds.

"The moment we're inside, I want teams A and team B to secure the area. I do not want us to get ambushed. Understood."

""Yes sir"" the wolves responded.

Julius, Ramona, Dick and the rest of the wolves moved inside the research station, guns at the ready.

The inside of research center THX 1138 was a mess. The halls had been trashed. Blood and two other fluids, one green and one yellow, had stained the walls like the painting of someone from a psych ward.

Broken glass, plaster, and ceiling panels litter the floor. Any electronics that haven't been outright destroyed were flicking. But despite all of the damage, not a single body was in sight.

"Holy shit!" Ramona breathed out. "What were you guys researching up here? Xenomorphs!?"

Julius rolled his eyes.

"The Americans refused to tell us what they're working on. That being said, if anyone sees any strange large eggs, do the smart thing and just shoot them."

Julius allowed his vision to expand into the magical spectrum and immediately met with an overwhelming amount of eldritch green.

"Wow ... I mean, just wow, That is a lot of Eldritch magic."

"Um, excuse me, sir, what does eldritch magic even look like?" Ramona asked.

"Eldritch green," Julius responded, missing the eye rolls some of the wolves shot his way.

"Thanks, that's oh so helpful," Ramona said sarcastically.

Julius pulled out a device from his jacket. The device was a slime sampler specially built to identify weird slime. Taking a swab of the yellow slime, Julius waited for the device to analyze the sample.

Sample Identified and Cataloged: 3 Substances detected

ID 1: CAS Number: 35523-89-8 / C10H17N7O4 / Saxitoxin

ID 2: CAS Number: 9000-70-8 / C102H151N31O39 / Geleton

ID 3: Water Magic

"Shellfish?" Julius asked in confusion.

"What fish?!" Ramona asked, looking over his shoulder.

"This contains Saxitoxin, its potent neurotoxin that a lot of shellfish produce. What the hell is it doing here?" Julius scratched his head as he tried and failed to imagine the creature that could produce that toxin and would live not only this far north but this far inland.

While he was pondering that question, and checked the green slime.

Sample Identified and Cataloged: 2 Substances detected

ID 1: CAS Number: ???? / ???? / ????

ID 2: Eldritch Magic

"Well, shit," Julius swore. "Nobody touches the green shit. It's almost pure Eldritch magic."

"Why is that bad?" Ramona asked.

"If you touch it, it will start consuming your life force in order to sustain itself." Julius deadpanned. "Think of the magical equivalent of a parasite, a parasite that mutates the crap out anything it comes in contact with."

Almost everyone in the room stepped back from the green slime, carefully avoiding it.

"Um, Julius," Dick called out. "I don't think the bugs did this."

"What does that mean … oh shit!" Julius swore.

Turning to face Dick, he saw what his old friend was looking at. Six massive claw marks had torn through the aluminum wall.

"Any idea what did this?" Dick asked.

Julius considered the question,

"Claws, Eldritch magic, shellfish … I've got nothing. Dammit, I knew should have brought Lambert and Eskals Beasteriay with me."

"Oh hell no," Dick cut in. "that 'book' weighs over two hundred pounds. I've seen people that weigh less than that thing."

Julius was just about to point out that for all of the book's problems, it was the single greatest collection of zoology and botany in the galaxy before he was interpreted.

"Sir, we've swept the area. We found no evidence of any hostiles, no civilians either."

"Great, let's get to work. Paul take some people to grab the base's hard drives, and Charlie and Ramona will check the security cameras. Oak, we need to cover up any evidence of the paranormal, hide what we can and burn the rest. Dick, you are with me.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Ramona looked like she wanted to protest and tag along with him and Dick, but Julius gently shook his head, indicating that she should just go along with his instructions. Ramona paused but then nodded before heading off with Charlie.

A moment later, Dick and Julius were alone as the two teams of ten and one team of nine left them.

"So what are we doing?" Dick asked.

Julius looked at his old friend and shot him a manic smile.

"We're retrieving the nuke in the basement,"

🜛🜣🜤🜸🜘🜌🜳🝌

Julius led Dick through the research station's secret door into the depths of the station's bunker. Dick never really liked being underground. He preferred the wide open spaces. It was part of the reason he had moved out of the city. He loved the vast open sky, the clean air and the warm sun. Now he was in a cramped underground tunnel in the middle of the Arctic, retrieving a nuclear bomb. He needed a raise.

After squeezing down the tunnel, they finally arrived at a large door with two sets of scanners. They each moved to one of the scanners. Going through the motions, they first scanned their thumb and then moved on to the retinal scanner. The door opens with a hiss. Behind the door is a large black suitcase. Opening the briefcase reveals a small nuclear bomb and a timer.

"So Julius," Dick started up. "Why are we really here?"

"What do you mean?" Julius asked as he led the way down the tunnel.

"You purposely didn't mention the nuke as it is now. You and I are the only people who know the bomb is still here. So what are you planning that you want to give everyone plausible deniability."

Julius sighed.

"How much C4 do we have," Julius asked.

"A lot," Dick said.

"Enough to kill the hive in those mountains? And enough leftover for whatever attacked this place?"

Dick scratched his head awkwardly.

"Well, probably not, but we should be able to seal the entrances to the mines."

Julius shook his head.

"We couldn't be a hundred percent sure we sealed every entrance, and even if we could, we risk someone else digging them out before the bureaucrats let us come back and dealing with them, if they even let us come back."

"So," Dick began, "we checked the vault, but the bomb was gone?"

"We checked the vault, but the bomb was gone." Julius agreed. "Whatever attacked this place must have used some weird magic to bypass the defences and steal the nuke. Fortunately, it seemed they didn't know what they had and blew themselves up."

Dick rolled his eyes.

"Just one question, why am I here?" Dick asked.

"Well, if I tell them I didn't find anything, Baker's going to have a cow. Who's going to call the nine-foot lion man a liar?" Julius smiled at him suggestively.

"You know, sometimes I can't tell if you're an actual racist or just an ass," Dick said.

"Pretty sure I'm an ass," Julius said.

Julius just shot him a million-dollar smile as he closed the suitcase and stuffed the massive suitcase into his tiny coat pocket.

"I really need to buy one of those," Dick said.

Julius turned to stare at him, dumbfounded.

"I've been telling you that for years! And you just realized that now?" Julius said.

"The basic ones cost half a million dollars," Dick shot back. "Now come on, let's find out what actually attacked this place before you make it on some country watch list."

"Pretty sure I'm already on those lists," Julius quipped as he skipped away, not a care in the world.

🜚🜳🝋🜻🜕🜏🜆

Julius walked into the office where Ramona, Oak, and the rest of the Lycans were rummaging through the files. One of the teams was pulling three black boxes from the computers. The black boxes contained everything the Research station contained. Work files, security tapes, inventory, everything.

"Did you find out what they were researching here?" Julius asked as he walked into the room.

"Um, yes, manipulation of dimensional wormholes. Apparently, they were stumped for two years until someone known as the Puck provided technical support." Charlie said. "I don't actually know what any of that means, sir."

"Fuck" Julius swore. "It means … fuck! It means these morons were attempting to hack into the portal network."

"What's the portal network?" Ramona asked.

"The portal network is a massive web of interconnecting portals connecting habitable worlds across the Milky Way," explained Julius. "Now, normally, a portal is a simple tunnel through space from point A to point B. But the portal network isn't man-made. It's a natural phenomenon, so the wormholes twist and loop around black holes and stars in an inane mess of interdimensional spaghetti. Because of that, each portal is a tangled spaghetti noodle in the soup of the Milky Way. The reason you don't mess with the network is that each noodle is not only connected with every other portal, but the network contains insane amounts of energy, all the energy tied up within it. Messing with them in the middle of nowhere deep space is dangerous. Messing with them on Earth is just asking for the planet to explode."

"I understood, like, half of that," Ramona admitted.

Julius continued, not listening to her, "There's no telling where they are connected to. They could have a portal directly to Hell for all I know."

"Wait, time out. Hell, is real? The actual burning pit?!" Ramona asked, bewildered.

"Yes, Hell is real but more freezing than burning," Julius said before waving his hand dismissively.

"We're getting off-topic. Where is the footage? I want to see what these fucks sets loose. Let's just pray they didn't summon a titan."

Charlie typed away on the computer for a minute before bringing up the file. On the screen were three massive humanoids lurking through the halls. They had large squid-like heads with tentacles flowing down from their mouths, with two being longer than the rest, their bodies were covered with chitinous armour, and each hand was tipped with six claws.

Behind the two creatures, something that looked like insects fluttered through the hallways.

"Is that a demon?" Ramona asked.

"Not even close," Julius said. "What are those things in the background? Do we have any better footage for those?"

Charlie jumped through several camera feeds until they found one that offered a better image. The large mushroom-like insect that had attacked them in Cooperton.

"Well, today is just getting better and better," Julius said. "We've got two monsters working together. And given that the big one isn't showing any intelligence, possibly a third."

"So …" Dick began, "we kill them all?"

"With fire," Julius replied. "Can someone get me the location of all of the nearby mines? Preferably the ones those bugs were heading towards."

"What are we going to call them?" Ramona asked.

"Call what?" Julius asked, turning back to her.

"These things," Ramona said, gesturing to monsters on the screen.

"I don't know, there probably in one of the bestiaries we have at the base," Julius said.

"I vote we call them lurkers," Ramona said.

"What? No, first off, why lurkers?" Julius asked

"Well, they seem to be lurking in the videos. So lurkers." Ramona said simply.

"I'm in," Dick said.

"No, No, No. We can't just call them lurkers," Julius protested. "That would be like calling a unicorn a pointy horse. Names have power and deserve proper respect."

"Too late. There called lurkers now." Ramona said.

Julius rubbed his temples in exasperation. Sometimes he really wished he could work alone.

"Back to the job at hand." Julius began, "Dick, get your two fastest wolves and have them return to the airport with the black boxes. Have someone write up a report of everything that's happened so far to take with them."

Julius turned to Ramona and the other wolves and began shouting out his orders.

"The rest of us are heading up into those mines. Someone find a map; we're heading out in ten minutes!"

Julius turned to help with the prep when Ramona timidly raised her hand.

"Yeah, what's up?" Julius asked.

"Um, who's Puck?" she asked.

"Puck?" Julius parroted back to her, confused.

"Yeah, on one of the tapes we found, they said some guy named Puck helped them out. Who's Puck."

"Show me," Julius said.

Ramona pulled up the video that Daphne had first shown him when he had been asked to do this job. Only this one wasn't a static mess.

"It sounds like Doctor Winters and Puck were the movers and shakers of this project," Julius muttered. "I know I've heard the name Puck, I just can't remember where ….."

"So, could this have been an inside job? Was Puck trying to do this?" Ramona asked, gesturing around to the destroyed research base.

Julius felt his stomach drop.

"There's a reason that can't be true. I just can't think of it."