"I hope you have a really good plan," Dan said as he appeared inside the Summers mansion beside Abby. She immediately latched on to his hand like it was a lifeline, pressing herself shoulder to shoulder with him.

The haggard Coldwater commander barely flinched at Dan's appearance. His helmet was off, and he was panting from exertion. His men were behind him, finalizing lockdown procedures. They were all gathered near the center of the mansion. Heavy steel shutters blocked off all entrances, windows and hallways. The Summers family and their retainers had been evacuated to a panic room directly below with varying levels of protest. Only Abby remained above ground.

The security room was located behind a revolving bookshelf, and it was currently turned perpendicular to the wall for easy access in and out. There was a wide array of screens and sensors, and a pair of Coldwater guards kept careful watch over each monitor. The armory was attached to the security room, accessible from the same door, and the surviving Coldwater mercs were in the process of rearming themselves.

"Our plan is the same as with any attacker," the Coldwater commander said stoically. "Fortify our position and wait for reinforcements."

"There's a lot of walls between us and the outside, but I don't think it'll stop Cannibal forever," Dan pointed out. "What kind of reinforcements are you thinking?"

"Lady Summers has been alerted. She should be en route shortly."

"'Lady Summers'," Dan quoted acerbically, "is in Austin. She's over a thousand miles away. I don't think she'll be arriving in time to do much."

"She will depart via rocket sledge," the commander replied, redonning his helmet. "She should arrive somewhere around half an hour from now, depending on how quickly she can make it to the craft."

Dan blinked. "That's..." He ran some calculations in his head. "Really fast." And they weren't nearly as screwed as he'd feared they would be, but that was still a long time to wait. Assuming Anastasia could actually take on Cannibal.

"So we're stalling," Dan summarized.

The commander accepted a handful of rifle magazines from a subordinate and began to slot them into his tactical vest.

"We're stalling," the mercenary confirmed.

"Where's Cannibal?" Abby interrupted. Her eyes were on the screens in the security room. Various feeds from around the manor appeared and disappeared as the guards searched feverishly for the hunting serial killer.

"We can't find him," one of the guards admitted. He pressed a few buttons, and the feeds image turned a deep purple, with various shades of yellow, green and red filling out the shape of the forest. Thermal vision, Dan recognized immediately.

"Don't bother," the commander said. "Cannibal doesn't show up on thermal. No idea how that's possible, but there you have it."

"He hasn't tripped any of the motion sensors, sir," the guard noted. "I don't see him on any cameras either."

"He's avoiding them somehow," the commander stated with certainty. "There wasn't a hint of anything wrong before Ms. Abigail called in Jenkins' body. His death didn't even register on the vital signs monitor until after the fact. And he wasn't the only one we lost. I'm down a dozen men, over half of which we didn't even notice were missing until it was too late."

"So Cannibal has more going on than just durability and sharp teeth," Dan summarized. "What's his next move?"

"Cannibal is acting outside expectations," the commander said. "Lady Summers believed he would be unwilling to target her family members before herself. Lesser prey, I believe she called it. His psychological profile indicates that Cannibal targets the strongest Naturals he can find, and none of the Summers fit that bill."

"I'm thinking his priorities have changed." Dan looked at Abby with concern. "He tried to go after her several times, before you fellas pissed him off."

"Grandma was the one who captured him," Abby said, worrying at her lip. "Revenge seems like a pretty obvious motive to me. I don't understand how this wasn't expected."

The Coldwater commander looked uncomfortable. "As I said, Lady Summers thought it unlikely. Cannibal's powers alter his state of mind, and given the duration and isolation of his imprisonment, it was thought unlikely for him to have substantially changed in overall character."

"Clearly she was wrong," Dan stated, trying to keep his voice civil. It sounded like Anastasia was risking Abby's life on a series of misinformed guesses. He knew she was arrogant, but this was beyond the pale.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"We have contingencies in place," the commander said stiffly. He glanced at Abby who looked about as happy as Dan did, then turned towards the security room. "The longer Cannibal stalls, the better our chances are. He can't surprise us again. We have a clear view of the surrounding area. Cannibal is obviously not completely invisible to cameras—that turret would not have been able to track him if that were the case—so we have to assume he has some sort of sixth sense for where there are openings. If there are no openings to exploit, he must show himself."

Dan scowled at the screens. They showed nothing but an empty forest. It should bring him comfort. Best case scenario, Cannibal had retreated in frustration. They could comb the island for him once backup had arrived, and nobody else needed to die.

Dan no longer believed in best case scenarios. He extended his veil, stretching towards the trees. It was very far away, and his veil strained to do much more than scan the shrubbery. At the very least, he could reassure himself that Cannibal was watching from just inside the tree line.

He considered other options, and recalled a trick that Cannibal had pulled against the APD.

"You have underground sensors?" Dan asked. "He can dig, you know."

The commander frowned. "There are, yes. But they are meant to sense mechanical drills, or large scale terrakinesis. It isn't calibrated for something human sized. The likelihood of a single individual tunneling beneath the mansion..." He broke off, striding towards the security room. "Bring up the seismic sensors!" he barked.

Dan let him work. He pulled his veil back into himself, then sank it into the ground. It dipped easily through the mansion's wooden floor, through concrete foundations and through the reinforced metal layers that made up the panic room below ground. From there, he spread out. His veil tagged dirt and stone and every kind of rock. It found bugs and worms, the occasional small mammal, and more roots than he could shake a tree at.

Abby had wandered over to the security room and was peering at the screens. One of the monitors had a seismograph updating in real time. The line was steady, barely shifting. That made sense to Dan. Even if it was capable of sensing Cannibal, whatever instinct had him avoiding the motion sensors should also work on the seismograph. He wished they had a more updated dossier on Cannibal's capabilities. The Natural's strength had waned during his imprisonment, but he'd clearly managed to advance some aspects of his power. They were fighting in the dark, and it had already cost them.

Once again, Dan cursed Anastasia. She was too arrogant, too overconfident, too self-assured. She'd been too strong for too long and had forgotten how to be wrong. Dan refused to let her mistakes cost him nor Abby. He dug deeper into his well of power, extending his veil as far as he dared. Finally, he struck air. His tendrils hit a wall of empty space and progress came to a standstill. He pulled back other threads, diverting more power to figure out just what he'd found. He mapped out the shape, a cylindrical burrow. He followed its path and found life, digging at a steady, measured pace.

Cannibal was burrowing beneath the mansion like some kind of Resident Evil zombie.

"I've got him," Dan said grimly. "He's underground, making his way towards the mansion."

The commander swore. "How far?"

Dan pointed. "Maybe... two hundred yards that way? And another ten down. He's moving quickly."

Dan couldn't sense Cannibal directly, but he could feel the large, powerful shape as it practically swam through the earth. He considered what he could do to slow the creature down. He couldn't launch one of his logs at this distance, and it wouldn't do much besides. He'd already established that Cannibal could shrug off those hits with ease. The most it would do is briefly inconvenience the Natural, and give away that Dan knew he was coming.

The commander was shouting orders to his men, but Dan ignored him as he flicked through his hammerspace. He didn't have much that would help here. He doubted Cannibal would be stopped by his spare clothes or his badly melted cane sword. There was a vast array of other crap floating through t-space that Dan had displaced at some point or another, but that stuff was unshielded by his veil. While his Navigator could probably track it down, it would be contaminated with cosmic radiation.

Though Cannibal was pretty far underground...

He turned to Abby. "How well does cosmic radiation penetrate the ground?"

She seemed at first surprised by his question, then alarmed. "Poorly. Why?"

"Just a second." Dan retracted his veil and dropped into t-space. The world fell away, and he was greeted by stars. Dan frowned into the abyss, then looked to his Navigator. "You can do it buddy."

It wasn't that long ago that Dan had dealt with Andros Bartholomew. The mad scientist had created a powerful anesthetic gas and had filled Dan's house with it. He'd spent the better part of a night cleaning it up. It was still somewhere in t-space, floating and waiting to be found. It's not like it would go anywhere. It's not like it could go anywhere.

That's what I need, he thought, and reality shifted around him. The stars changed, and he was elsewhere. But this was still t-space, and it still obeyed him. His veil bubbled off his skin and flailed blindly outwards. It brushed against the air and latched on; not the false air of t-space but something very real, solid— or rather, gaseous. Dan smiled as his veil drenched more and more of the substance. It was all here, gathered together for him, despite how he'd carelessly thrown it inside the great emptiness that was the Gap.

He loved his power.

Dan dropped back into the mansion. He relocated Cannibal in a matter of moments and began to pump in Bartholomew's poisonous gas. Maybe it wouldn't work. It's not like it had been designed with Cannibal in mind. Presumably. Or maybe Cannibal would sense it somehow, through smell or whatever instincts guided him to his prey, and realize he'd been spotted. It was possible, but this was Dan's best chance of slowing down the violent Natural. He wasn't about to let it go.

The gas pumped steadily out of his veil. Cannibal moved doggedly forward, clearing away great mounds of earth seemingly without effort or exhaustion. And then he slowed. Then paused. The dirt ceased shifting. Dan's veil danced across the bits of dirt attached to Cannibal's head and felt it as the serial killer looked around. His neck tilted back, then rocked forward in a violent motion.

He sneezed.

Cannibal wiped his nose with a grimy finger, and continued digging, all but oblivious to Dan's attempts to stop him.

Fuck.