Ranson didn't like the noises he was hearing in the walls. He didn't see anything other than regular mana lines feeding power to the walls. And the control room was moving around. Every time he scanned for it, it was in a different direction with different rules. Maybe an airstrike would have been a better approach.

Massive bombardment always seemed the best way to go in his opinion.

Chan could call for help if things got out of hand. His worrywart tendencies might be the right approach. Coming in alone was helping him stay ready to shoot anything that moved, but it wasn't getting him to the source of the problem any faster.

Ranson checked his arsenal. He had a couple of things that might help. He needed to get to the control source. The only way to do that seemed be to breaking things. He had something that did all right.

It might alert the Agency that he was using heavy weaponry, but if he could get more men to clear this out, that would be a good side H of his effort.

He pulled an egg from his suit jacket. He twisted the top and bottom. A spike sprang from the bottom. He jammed the point of the spike against the wooden floor. It made a soft noise and dug into the floor. He twisted the top again and jogged down the hall. He sank down into a ball and covered his ears with his hands.

A beam of blue light tore a hole through the dimensional space. He straightened and rushed to the two holes that had been dug out. He needed to go up if he wanted to get to the control room. He pulled his grapnel gun and drove a spike through the hole in the ceiling into the remains of the ceiling in that room. He pushed the switch and let the wire pull him up.

Ranson used the sole of his shoe to avoid touching the glowing edges of the holes he had dug. He frowned at the ceiling trying to close up and prevent him from reaching the next floor. He rolled over the edge as soon as his body was clear. He took a moment to look around before he reset the grapnel and let the floor finish healing up from his attack. The hole that had been carved in the ceiling was also closing up above him.

He checked out things with his scanner as he looked around. The control room was moving around again. There were three other sources pinging the scanner. One of them was inside the area he wanted to be in. He paused as something scuffed the floor out of the light from the overhead lamp.

He had expected magicians since he was inside a mystery house. Now he thought something he couldn't scan was in the halls with him. A list of cryptids popped into his mind.

He couldn't stay where he was. Whatever was in the halls with him would eventually catch up with him, and he didn't like the thought of that at all.

He started to go through the cryptid list to sort out the potential enemies he was facing. He ruled out everything that was fast and silent. He thought the whole list was gone by this point. He found himself with things like animated furniture and the walking dead.

He hoped it was animated furniture. Killing zombies was messy.

Ranson had a flare he could dispense. He had only brought the one since his glasses amplified light. He decided he needed to get a better look at whatever was shambling on the wooden floor with him.

Once he had done that, he could check which of his arsenal suited the threat.

He pulled the flare from his jacket. He twisted the top and threw it down the hall. He turned his head when he reached three in his head. Green light exploded, covering every surface with the glowing chemical. Some of the spray outlined humanoid bodies staggering toward him.

He had thought the walking dead would be on the list. Now he had proof. He also had a stopgap until he could find a place to get around the mob.

He pulled another long gun out of his jacket. He primed the charge as he stepped back. He took aim at the first zombie shambling toward him. He pulled the trigger. A rod punched through the target and everything behind it. Walking fires replaced his targets when they could still walk. Others tried to pull themselves toward him with the remains of their hands.

Ranson dropped the rifle. He pulled his pistol and put one slug into every head he could see in the dark. The flare and the fires he had started had improved visibility immensely. He reloaded the pistol and put it back in its storage space. He picked up the rifle, frowning at the burn mark on the floor. He walked through the destruction to find the source of the tide.

If the house was producing zombies to stop him, he needed to do something about it. He didn't like diverting from what he considered his main mission. He also couldn't let the animated corpses fill up the halls until they overpowered whatever tricks he might have.

The Agency had dealt with plagues like this before. They were priorities with vampires and some types of demons. The Agency would pull an agent off a mission to stop a zombie plague. The only exceptions were world ending.

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There wasn't much point stopping a plague if something wiped out the planet first.

The zombies were coming up an elevator shaft. They were piling in at the bottom, and stacking themselves up to reach the floor he was on. He pulled his pistol and cleared the door. He could fix part of this.

He stored the pistol and pointed the long gun down the shaft. He fired, aiming for the bottom of the shaft. He blew apart the dead bodies in the shaft, setting them on fire as they fell down to the bottom. He wondered how long the floor would burn down there.

One of the zombies entered the shaft and started burning. He watched as it watched the flames slowly consume its legs.

He didn't think the fires would keep burning, but maybe they would slow the zombie advance up the shaft.

He wondered how many other places he could slow the security down while he continued his search for the control room.

Ranson waited for the long gun to cool off before storing it. He used the scanner to point him in the right direction. Maybe once he had seized control of the house, he could do something permanently against the zombies.

He couldn't let them escape into the real world.

The Agency would notice the threat sooner, or later. He could count on a force of agents arriving to help try to take the place apart. They would have to fight through the zombies, depending on if he had made a difference temporarily blocking that one elevator. He wished he knew what the plan was. If he did, it would help stop this situation much faster than what he was doing.

He still felt the control room was the key. Once he had the source of the energy his scanner noted, he could just shut everything down. The house would be warehoused and he could go back to looking for other threats.

He hoped his next case was simpler like a sewer dragon run amuck.

Hunting monsters always seemed simpler than trying to figure out the rules for an out of control artifact.

Ranson found a flower of expanding staircases. They led up into the ceiling. The floor seemed blocked so he couldn't head down. He used the scanner to find which stairs headed toward the control room. He hoped that it stayed in place long enough for him to climb up and find the right room.

He would have to deal with the magic source in the room. He doubted that would be too much of a problem. He started up the stairs, scanner in hand to keep an eye on the control room.

He reached a hall full of doors. He frowned. He ran the scanner back and forth until he found the correct one. He pulled a block of red clay out of his jacket. He slapped that on the doorknob, pushed a pen inside the clay, and pushed the switch at the end of the pen in. He stepped back as the molded clay caught fire. A hole appeared in the door as the knob melt off and broke with its piece on the other side of the wood.

Ranson pulled his pistol, checking to see if it was charged and ready. He kicked the door out of his way. He stepped inside the room, taking cover behind a bank of machines. Something flew by his head, and he was suddenly glad he had moved out of the way.

“Another one,” said a voice out of the air.

“I told you the locals were trying to stop you too,” said a more tired voice to Ranson's right. “Why don't you give this up before you destroy this portion of the multiverse.”

“I can kill as many humans as I want, Hecat,” said the voice. “They are just a step behind you, and I can kill your kind easily too.”

“Why bother?,” said Hecat. He moved as a barrage of sound bolts ate at his cover. “The jig is up. You've attracted too much attention and can't stay here.”

“But I can,” said the voice. “My security is heading for the front door. Once outside, they will cause the locals to divert their attention long enough for me to compensate and deal with all of you.”

“Your zombies will be dealt with,” said Ranson. He moved ahead of the floor being ripped by sound. “We've handled outbreaks before.”

“You've never handled an outbreak that will constantly produce zombies to hunt the living until they are gone,” said the voice. “No matter how many you stop, there will always be more leaving the house and infecting the people outside.”

“I know some people who will help bottleneck such a threat,” said Hecat.

“And how will you ask for their assistance from inside here?,” asked the voice. “Communications are blocked with the outside.”

“I'll come up with a way,” said Hecat. “I know enough about magic to make a solution.”

Ranson crawled next to a shelf. He wondered how shielded the machinery around him was from EMPs. He exchanged his pistol for an EMP gun. He took aim at one of the banks of machinery and pulled the trigger. The lights on the machines snapped off under the attack.

“Good move,” said the voice in the air. “You stop me by shutting down the machines keeping the intersections open.”

Ranson moved as more sound came down on his hiding place. He ducked under a table as he looked around.

“One problem,” said the voice. “As the house expands, so does the machinery. Redundancies are already fixing the damage that you did.”

“Will it fix a chain reaction?,” asked Hecat.

Something snapped to Ranson's left. He shifted to the right. A small explosion made him glad that he had taken cover instead of trying to fight out in the open. He heard the whine of machines shutting down around him.

“Poltergeists and gremlins love wrecking stuff,” said Hecat.

Ranson agreed with that. He had faced a gremlin once. It had wrecked the Agency car before he had put it in a bottle for disposal.

“I see that I will have to resort to extreme measures to deal with the both of you,” said the voice in the air. “My employer wants to keep things on track. I can't allow him to think I let the two of you put his scheme in jeopardy before I am ready to take it over.”

Ranson's brain twisted in his skull. He felt grass on his face, as he tried to bring himself back together. Teleportation had long been something the Agency wanted, but could never get a working mechanical model to use. It looked like he had been close to having one before he had been dropped wherever he now lay.

“That's great,” said Hecat. “How do we get back to stop him?”

Ranson rolled over and looked up at the purple sky. He had no idea.