The explosion was a dull raging rumble that just didn’t want to end. Something slammed hard into Neb from behind, throwing him painfully forwards. He would have screamed but his mouth and nose were full of choking dust and dirt. He rotated crazily in a cloud of flying stones and searing fire and smoke. Objects crashed into him painfully, and then he was falling for what felt like a long time. He landed with a hard thump and tumbled painfully down a steep slope. He could see nothing except smoke and dust and falling rock, and the only sound was the sad ringing of his ears, a too-small warning that something terrible was happening.

He slid to a stop on steep rough ground, coughing and choking, trying to heave in a breath and get to his feet, but he succeeded only in getting to his hands and knees before falling sideways and rolling further down the slope. His ribs were screaming in pain. His legs and arms felt disconnected and he could not breathe properly. He tried again to cough, but it was a half-formed thing. Fuck, he thought. I’m suffocating.

But then there was water in his mouth. He coughed and retched and spat, but then managed to heave in a big breath of air.

‘Doc’s okay!’ someone yelled, Gray maybe.

This is not fucking okay, he thought, but he could not speak he was coughing so much. He was dragged by the collar painfully over rough ground, bouncing and twisting and feeling stones cut and scratch and bruise his legs. ‘I can walk goddammit!’ he snarled, unsure if this was actually true, and he felt himself being pulled to his feet and a hand shove him forward, causing another painful flare of agony in his ribs.

He was able to stagger forward far enough to half-fall down the last of the steep hill and land amongst a knot of people covered in dust and blood that he recognised as the much-banged-up members of his team. He landed on his back and found himself looking up at the early-dawn sky. The mountain towered over him, and smoke poured from a small hole further back up the slope, about fifty meters over his head.

‘How the fuck did we survive that?’ he asked no-one in particular.

‘The charges were designed to collapse the tunnel,’ Anna answered as she passed him a water bottle and he drank gratefully. ‘Meathead remembered his days as an offensive lineman and pushed us all out the door simultaneously as it went off. Our last two healing orbs did the rest. But thank him later, because we’re pinned down by --’

Her words were cut off by the deep chug of a large automatic projectile weapon, accompanied by the terribly-near whine of bullets slamming into the ground around them. They were showered in earth and chips of stone.

‘Oh fuck,’ Neb said, and cowered back against the ground, eyes wide. Only some harshly-trained-in instinct overrode his panic. He wanted to just stay there unmoving, but he rolled over onto his stomach and peaked out between two rocks.

Their journey through the tunnels had taken them all the way back to the very entrance he had seen with Anna and Gray a few hours before. The military base was transformed -- far from looking abandoned, it looked like every team in the Circle was there. The humans were taking heavy fire from at least three directions as they hunkered down on the slope, barely protected by a low ridge in the ground. Gouts of flame blossomed from heavy weapons, and more bullets whined into the stones and earth around them. The idea of sneaking in with the tunnels may possibly have worked had Mallory not set off the booby trap, Neb thought, but now the humans’ sudden appearance on the hill made them the center of attention for every heavily-armed enemy in the place, of which there seemed to be many. Neb saw small-arms and rifle fire as well as heavy weapons, but not all of it was being directed at the humans on the hill. Multiple were other battles happening simultaneously.

‘It’s a fucking shitshow,’ he muttered.

‘You’re goddam right it is,’ Buzz responded. ‘And we can’t stay here. Doc, Mallory -- break left to the next rise, right fucking now. GO GODDAMMIT, GO!’

In his past life Neb would never have suspected that there was a version of him who would narrowly survive a huge explosion and a life-threatening fall, and then jump to his feet and run under heavy fire to a new position. But there was. He sprinted after Mallory, keeping low, pistol in hand, bullets slamming into the ground around him. He was running on something beyond fear, something almost automatic. He could see the low rise just ahead, picture how it would feel to dive and slide to a stop in the painful shale and wait for the next screamed command from Buzz.

But even as he had the thought, there was a thrum-thrum-thrum burst from one of the heavy weapons below and Mallory was cut down. The big man was turned around by the bullet impacts ripping across his chest, and his wide eyes met Neb’s. His mouth opened in a comically surprised ‘O’. His pistol flew through the air. ‘Fuck!’ Neb gasped and he dived for cover, a reaction of pure instinct. Bullets screamed past him. He landed hard and rolled and came to a stop behind the small rise. Mallory was lying on his back a few meters behind him, his head turned to one side, a trickle of blood coming from his mouth.

But there was no skull icon. His HP read 2/30 -- unconscious but alive.

‘Fuck,’ Neb said again. An arc of bullets raked the ground less than a meter from his head, but luck was with the two men -- the low rise gave them both just enough protection that the shooter did not have the angle to finish them off.

But with no healing orbs and no decent weapons, things were still looking pretty grim. Neb let his head fall back on the cold stone, which should have been painful but was instead deeply restful. The stars were fading as dawn pushed its way on. Bullets impacted around him, and the sound of gunfire from all the simultaneous engagements in the base interlinked and overlapped and rolled across the landscape like a fucked up symphony.

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Then he heard a different sound, a high-pitched electrical whine underlying a shrieking roar, and the scene lit up brightly. He risked lifting his head to see what it was. A mounted cannon on a tower at the other side of the base had started up and now the operator was relentlessly strafing the courtyard. Multiple creatures fell, red skulls glowing in the dawn, and there was a rush for cover inside the base buildings. The fucking military base, he thought. They had known it was a trap but yet here they were anyway, dying in it. The mounted cannon shrieked again, casting its awful light.

Then Neb saw two things at once.

First, a tall, dark figure was coming up the slope towards him, with a gun in its hand.

Second, there was a second cannon. This was one was on a matching tower at the other end of the base, only a hundred meters or so from Neb’s position, covered under a tarpaulin.

He was almost certain that the tall creature didn’t know Neb was there, that it was coming to finish off Mallory and flank the other humans. It was close enough now to register in Neb’s overlay:

Nemarian squad soldier, Level 6. Nemarians are often called ‘sawfish’ for their unusual facial physiognomy.

Neb saw the thing’s face at the same moment he read the description, and he knew he would be seeing it again in his nightmares, if he lived long enough to have any. The creature had a long serrated tooth-like protrusion instead of a nose, like a sort of fucked-up downward-pointing horn. It seemed to pull a lot of its face with it, so its eyes and mouth were arranged far more three-dimensionally than a human’s were, more like somehow aquatic.

Neb waited with his pistol in his hands, feeling his breathing and his heartrate run completely out of control. Fucking get it until control, he told himself. Wait… Wait… He checked the magazine. Three rounds remained. He felt a wave of panic, but forced it down. Three was enough if he used them well.

He let the thing come closer and closer. Wait, he told himself. Wait. And then when the sawfish was almost on top of him he turned onto his stomach and shot it at point blank range.

Or at least, that was supposed to happen. But the sawfish was still a lot further back than Neb had realized, and he had acted too quickly. For the first two shots there was a golden glimmer in the air around the creature, and only the third bullet caused it to grunt and stumble. The HP label appeared over its head: 24 / 30

Was that a fucking shield? Neb had no time to think about it.

There was a click from his pistol. Out of ammo.

The sawfish snarled in pain and rage and rushed forward faster than Neb thought something of that size could possibly move. It was even taller than Meathead or Mallory, though not as broad, and it wore a long dark cloak that helped it blend into the background, easing away straight edges. It looked down at Neb and its facial expression changed, rearranging the already hideous features. Neb needed a moment before he could understand it: a smile.

The creature put away its pistol and in its hand appeared a long curving blade. It was in some ways like a human sword, but there were multiple holes and thin curves and arcs cut from the metal, forming a complex lattice that supported the blade’s edge. The edge itself glowed in a bright white line.

The creature stepped forward and sliced the sword across Neb’s stomach, in a move intended to gut him.

But Neb’s uniform had built-in exopolymer pads, and he crossed his arms in front of his body instinctively. He was still holding the empty pistol, and the angle of attack from the sawfish meant the white-glowing blade sliced right through the weapon, a clean cut that left a shining metallic surface behind. The blade was slowed by the uniform exopolymer, but not enough. It bit deep into Neb’s forearm, and when the sawfish puled away the blade it threw an arc of red blood into the air. Neb screamed and clutched his arm.

Save me please, someone, please, he thought desperately. But there was no-one to help. No-one was coming. He was alone with this awful thing in these nightmarish final moments.

The sawfish stood over Neb, the long nose-tooth pointed hideously right at him, the oddly-shaped eyes staring down from either side. It was making a grating, disgusting sound, somewhere between a poorly-tuned engine and a drunk vomiting. Laughter.

Then it lifted its boot and stamped down hard on Neb’s chest. Neb screamed in pain, hearing and feeling ribs crack.

‘FUCK YOU!’ he screamed up at it. ‘FUCK YOU!’ Neb pulled his combat knife and rammed it down on the thing’s knee, knowing it was his last act.

But it was like trying to stab stone. The thing just laughed again, a terrible sound, grinding its weight down on Neb’s chest and making him scream in intolerable pain, drawing out the moment.

Then the sawfish stood off him, reached down and grabbed Neb’s collar, and threw him high into the air. While he was still in flight, the creature spun and kicked him. It was, Neb thought distantly, a kind of beautiful thing in its way -- so athletic and powerful and violent and unnecessary. He landed and rolled like a rag doll. His chest and upper body were in agony, and one leg was twisted underneath him at such an angle he was sure it was broken. The sawfish was walking towards him slowly, enjoying his pain and suffering. The sword was in the creature’s hand, the tip just above the ground. It was coming to finish him this time, Neb knew. Play time was over. He sighed, feeling pain wrack his body. He let his head fall to the ground and turn sideways, as if looking away, his eyes closed.

But he didn’t want to go out like this. Not looking, like a coward. Open your eyes, dammit, he told himself. Open your eyes. But he couldn’t. He was afraid of what he might see. Afraid of that terrible face.

OPEN YOUR EYES YOU FUCKING COWARD.

He made himself do it. He forced his two eyes open despite how awfully afraid he was of what he would see, and found himself staring right at Mallory’s pistol.