Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel (32 page)

Once again, the MECH suit reacted faster than Alex could move. Borshov caught Alex in midair, his long arms holding the HAWC at a distance. One armored glove compressed around Alex’s throat, while the other made a huge fist. Alex braced for the impact, knowing a sledgehammer would have been more merciful.

Borshov held the fist back, grinning behind his black beard, savoring the moment. He squeezed harder, cutting off Alex’s air supply. Alex gripped at the Russian’s forearm, feeling the bars and titanium plating shielding it. He raked at the metal, pounded at it, his frustration fueling his anger.

Alex felt like his body was on fire. He roared his fury, and grabbed at the armored forearm, squeezing with all his strength. One of the support struts began to bend, and there was a ping as rivets separated.

But before Alex could finish the task, Borshov rocketed his fist forward. It connected just above Alex’s eye. The world spun, and stars exploded across his vision. The bullet wound that had just knitted closed burst open, spraying blood over Borshov’s chest.

Alex wanted to slip into unconsciousness, but another part of him was never going to let that happen.
Weak
, it hissed at him.
Get out of the way
. The voice was full of scorn. It didn’t care if Alex’s team was safe, or whether he was mortally wounded. All it cared about was sating its desire for blood and revenge.

Alex ground his teeth, not just fighting against Borshov’s grip now, but against the demon rising in his mind. He needed to maintain control. If his team was to escape, he had to keep Borshov occupied, and draw the attention of the Spetsnaz. He couldn’t afford to forget strategy and tactics and brawl like an animal.

Borshov brought his fist back again, his arm having completed its arc from the punch, ready to deliver a backhand as it returned in the opposite direction. Alex’s legs drew back and he kicked out hard into Borshov’s gut. There was plating over his torso, but the impact was enough to rock the big man backward and loosen his grip on Alex’s throat.

Alex felt part of his biological armor suit rip away as he dropped, rolled, and then staggered to his feet. He heard Rebecca and Matt screaming their support, and his fellow HAWCs calling advice and tactics. The words were garbled, meaningless, drowned out by the Other One’s voice in his head.

Borshov looked over toward Rebecca and grinned. ‘Another woman. Maybe you like to watch her die as well?’ He raised his fists. ‘Come on. Stop running. Fight.’

Alex circled, looking for an opening. Borshov was growing impatient, obviously thinking he had the HAWC’s measure, with victory only minutes away. The big Russian lunged and Alex backed up. He lunged again, and Alex danced back out of his reach. Too late, he realized the Russian had herded him into a small lane between two buildings, a dead end. Alex felt his back strike the wall – no further to go. He glanced down to see more broken swords, bones, and skulls – evidence of another last stand by a group of Constantine’s soldiers.

The trap was what Borshov had been waiting for – he charged. Alex used the wall to spring at the huge man, flying at him like a human spear. Borshov lunged, incredibly fast, but Alex expected it and twisted away, striking out at the Russian’s head as he moved. Borshov’s shoulder jerked up in defense, but Alex’s blow, delivered with all his extraordinary strength and the extra weight of the biological armor-plated gloves, exploded titanium tubing and the hyper-alloy plating from the Russian’s upper arm.

Borshov’s other arm flicked out, its hammer-like fist thumping into Alex’s back. Alex went down, but got back to his feet and turned, smiling. Pain didn’t matter any more.

Borshov rolled his shoulder. The movement was slower, and some fluid spurted from a severed tube. He pointed a finger at Alex. ‘You still fast, huh?’ He reached down to pick up a broken sword, hefted it, and spun it in his hands. The iron was green-coated, and only about a foot of the blade remained. He grunted his approval, and waved the sword back and forth. ‘Soon I be like you. We have your scientist – the smart man who made you. By now he has told us everything.’ He shrugged. ‘No more Arcadian secrets. Soon be hundreds like you, maybe thousands.’

‘You’re not home yet,’ Alex said.

He moved sideways, his eyes never leaving Borshov’s. The big man slashed the blade back and forth, his eyes darting down to the ground momentarily, then he grinned and leaped at Alex.

Alex stepped back to brace himself, preparing to take the charge head-on. But instead of stable ground, his foot stumbled on a skull at his feet. Borshov had positioned him right over it. Alex fell backward as the big man leaped, coming down with the broken sword held in both hands. Alex reached to the side and grabbed a bronze shield, lifting over his face. The clang of metal on metal was loud in the huge cavern.

Alex batted Borshov off him and rolled away, bringing the shield up. He looked across to see Sam’s gun up and pointed at Borshov. But Alex knew Sam wouldn’t fire until the outcome was clear. Come hell or high water, Sam would stand his ground or die.

‘Thirty minutes,’ the big HAWC yelled.

Alex had two options – spend his last few minutes fighting the huge Russian, or be buried alive and condemn his team to the same fate.
Fight or die
, the voice in his head whispered. ‘Fight or die,’ Alex whispered back. He turned, bracing himself as Borshov rushed at him.

Alex held the shield up again, and Borshov’s blow created a fist-shaped dent in the thick iron. The next moment, Borshov had ripped it from his hands. Grinning, he brought both hands together and the ancient steel crumpled like a soda can.

 ‘No more flying away, little HAWC,’ Borshov said, and charged like a bull.

Alex saw the Russian had a long machete tucked into his belt.
So much for no weapons
, he thought
.
He was outweighed almost two to one, which meant no matter how strong he was, he was on the wrong side of any mass times velocity equation. He needed other tactics, he needed something else. If he couldn’t increase his mass, he needed to increase his speed, his strength and ferocity. He knew he had another weapon, but one locked away in its mental prison. Perhaps that
something else
he sought was there all the time, just waiting to be released… from within.

Borshov arrived. At the last moment of impact, Alex turned sideways, moving in past the Russian’s outstretched hands by a hair’s breadth. Automatically, Borshov’s arms closed around him, the machine sensors allowing him to move faster than he could ever have hoped to by himself. Alex knew he was no match for the suit’s super-assisted weight and power, but he now had what he wanted – he was in close.

Now
, the voice in his head screamed, and Alex felt the familiar sensation of being wrenched in two
.
The ancient village, the heat, the darkness, his HAWCs, Matt and Rebecca – all went away, leaving just Borshov, the enemy.

A grin of triumph split the Russian’s face as he began to compress Alex within his grip. Alex grinned back, then swung his head forward, smashing it into the bridge of Borshov’s nose, breaking the already battle-scarred snout.

The Russian snorted blood and squeezed harder, and Alex felt the titanic pressure begin to bear upon his spine. Instead of slowing him, it made him more furious. He swung his head into Borshov’s face again and again, hammering the squashed nose into a mess of cartilage and bloody pulp. In so close, he couldn’t swing his arms for a long punch, but he could use close-quarters combat techniques – his thumbs, the tips of his elbows, his teeth. Though Borshov’s upper body was like an armored bulldozer, his face was just flesh and bone. Alex swung at it again, gritting his teeth as his biological armor and also his spine began to crack. One of the Russian’s brows split, running blood into his good eye.

Before we die, we’ll make him pay
. The voice didn’t care about victory or death, just about the brutality of the battle. Alex head-butted again, and again, ripping his elbows back and forth, over and over, until Borshov flung him away.

The big Russian wiped at his face, trying to clear blood and gore from his eye.

Alex got slowly to his feet, his teeth bared, choosing the next point of attack. He was about to charge in again, when a sensation like a wall of ice smashed up against his spine. He crouched and spun, his senses on high alert to a new and more terrifying danger.

‘I got a shot,’ Franks breathed as she sighted along the barrel.

‘Negative on the shot,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Boss ordered us to sit tight.’

Sam kept an eye on the two Spetsnaz, who were undoubtedly doing the same to him. But that wasn’t what transfixed him, instead it had been the two bloodied titans coming together in all their savage brutality. It reminded him of a ferocious dogfight, but with fists, boots, steel, and strength many times above those of mortal men.

Though Borshov was the enemy, and a monstrous adversary in the MECH suit, what worried Sam the most was Alex and the way he had changed – he had once again becomes the thing that was loosed in Italy, the being that even Alex referred to as the
Other One
.

 Sam gritted his teeth as the two men smashed into each other again and again. Alex used every part of his body as a weapon, his eyes round and furious. Sam doubted that he remembered or even cared that the cavern was set to come down in mere minutes. The big HAWC knew he might be forced into an invidious choice – what if Borshov went down? Would the Other One be sated, or in its blood lust, turn its ferocity onto others? What would he then do against Alex? What
could
he do?

Sam gripped his gun and looked up at the millions of tons of rock overhead – maybe the cavern coming down might save them all from themselves.

Thompson lifted his head. ‘Reid…
Reid!
We’re going to have to move. Got to get Rebecca out of here.’

Sam cursed, but knew the SAS man was right. ‘Okay, but you two need to be the shields – take all the heat from Borshov’s men.’ He turned to Franks. ‘Get the civs out. I’ll stay and cover the boss.’

Franks’ lip curled and she looked as if she was about to challenge him.

Sam’s voice went up a notch. ‘Do it, soldier.’

Behind him, Sam heard Matt suck in a deep breath. ‘Oh no, no, no.
Look!
’

Sam turned to where Matt was pointing. A mist was forming up at the far end of the street. ‘For fuck’s sake … right now?’ He pulled the helmet visor down over his eyes. ‘Go to visor shields, people. Matt and Rebecca,  blindfolds on. Looks like we got a visitor.’

Sam grabbed Alex’s damaged helmet from the ground and moved to the corner of the building, hoping to get a chance to toss it to him. He prayed Alex,
the real Alex
, would take it.

*

Alex heard Sam call to him, and he spun in time to catch the helmet out of the air. He held it aloft for a few seconds as he used every one of the techniques that Marshal had taught him to control his dark side. He knew that if he could release it, then he could also restrain it – he was in control, not the other way around.

Blood spurted from Alex’s nose, as a hammer-blow of pain struck from inside his skull. The cage swung shut – he won.

Clarity returned in an instant, and he knew immediately what the danger was. Without a second thought, he jammed the headgear over his head and snapped the visor down. Immediately the world turned to an artificial landscape – a high-graphics computer game, where everything looked real but wasn’t quite right.

Borshov watched him, his face screwed in confusion. Behind the big Russian, the cloud formed up. Alex could hear it weeping. He wanted the man dead, but wanted to do it himself.

‘It’s Magera,’ he called out. ‘Better shut your eyes, asshole.’ Then he turned and sprinted toward Sam. ‘Get ’em moving.’

Sam roared instructions. Casey Franks dragged Matt and Rebecca, now blindfolded, to their feet and pushed them out into the street. Sam and Thompson ran alongside them, using their large bodies as shields against the Spetsnaz. As Alex had expected, it was unnecessary, as Borshov’s agents concentrated their firepower on the solidifying figure rising up behind their commander.

Borshov spun and the figure grabbed him by the throat. Alex heard him groan as Magera compressed the MECH suit’s armored collar around his neck. Words hissed from between his teeth: ‘
Mohctp stragoi
.’ Alex didn’t know what the Russian meant, but guessed it was something to do with ‘monster’.

Borshov struck out, making contact with Magera but seemingly without effect. He struggled and jerked, but neither his own brute strength nor the MECH suit was a match for the being that gripped him. It slowly lifted him from the ground, and Alex heard the powerful suit’s hydraulics humming with the strain. He knew the strong alloys were probably the only thing keeping Borshov in one piece now. Its tentacles grasped at Borshov, slithering and writhing as though each had a mind of its own. Alex could see that the bulbous ropes were tipped with sucker pads.

Borshov’s men sent more bullets smacking into Magera, but it didn’t release its grip on its prey. It turned its terrible gaze on them, and Alex saw their faces first go blank, then twist in pain and horror. What looked like thick vomit poured from their mouths. One of the men struggled to his feet, clawing at his neck, but his movements soon slowed. A golden vapor escaped his lips, flying toward the Magera. It opened its large mouth and inhaled it.

Borshov screamed. He screwed his eyes shut as the creature brought his face close to its own, and struggled furiously, fighting for his life. The hideous face seemed to elongate toward him from within the mass of writhing tentacles. Borshov seemed compelled to open his eyes, and the Gorgon was revealed to him in all its horrifying glory.

Borshov’s eyes went wide. He coughed and then gagged. A thickened paste of soft stone exploded from his lips and spilled down his beard, solidifying as it hit the air. Borshov stopped struggling. Gradually his face became pale and lined with fissures. He was trapped in a stone prison made of his own skin and bone. The Gorgon drew him in close, opened its mouth impossibly wide, and inhaled, sucking out his essence.

In those slitted alien eyes, Alex saw a hell that contained the souls of millions. He remembered all the Minoans in the ship, stacked up like firewood, and realized they were food. This was how the monster fed, consuming some essence from within a human being, leaving the body a lifeless block of stone.

He glanced at his team, already halfway up the steps that led to the cave’s main entrance, and then down at his watch. Seven minutes left – barely enough time if the collapsing wall brought down the entire tunnel system.

He looked back to Magera and saw that its head was turning … to him. Pain needled the center of his head, and fragments of static washed across his visor screen. The damaged helmet wasn’t working at full capacity. He turned to run, but couldn’t. Pain bloomed in his skull. It was too late.

*

Sam brought up the rear of the group. Matt and Rebecca were still blindfolded so their progress was slower than he’d have liked. Sam glanced back down at Alex, and saw that he was staring at the Gorgon, unmoving.

‘Shit, no.’

The only positive to the situation was that Magera also seemed frozen in place. Borshov’s body, now nothing more than calcified stone, and the heavy machinery of the MECH suit hung about the creature’s neck like an anchor.

The sound of weeping rose, then was drowned out by a shriek of fury. As Sam watched through his visor, the Gorgon started to dissemble into mist again, and he had an impression of huge scaled hands grabbing at Borshov and tearing him and the hyper-alloy framework to pieces.

Magera was now free to descend on the frozen Alex.

Sam roared, ‘The fuck you will!’ He stepped to the edge of the steps, preparing to leap the more than a hundred feet down to Alex.

‘Don’t,’ Franks yelled, and tried to grab him.

‘Franks, get ’em up and out,’ Sam said. ‘That’s an order.’

Franks’ face twisted in disbelief. ‘Like hel…’

Sam leaped into space, and landed like a colossus, shattering the street’s paved surface and sinking about six inches into the rock. He went down on one knee, but the MECH suit absorbed the impact, and he was immediately up and sprinting toward Alex.

Magera descended on Alex, the hideous face forming up beneath the writhing mass of tentacles.

As Sam picked up speed, he saw the shattered remains of Borshov and his suit, and knew he stood little chance against the Gorgon. But sacrifice had its own strategic value. He was traveling at around fifty miles per hour now, with the locomotive force of a truck. He dropped his shoulder and launched himself at the huge figure, striking it mid-center and knocking it back twenty feet.

Sam rolled and came up fast, turning to Alex. Franks and Thompson were already there, dragging the HAWC leader away from the Gorgon. For once, Sam was glad Franks was so strongheaded. Alex was still unmoving, but he wasn’t dead, and he hadn’t been turned to stone.

Magera rose up like a column of dark smoke, then solidified, screaming her rage. Her focus wasn’t on Alex any more.

‘Game time,’ Sam said. He gritted his teeth, pulled both his gun and knife, and charged again.

*

Casey Franks pulled Alex’s damaged helmet off and slapped his face, hard. ‘Boss, you still with us?’

He opened his eyes, sat forward and immediately threw up. ‘My head.’ He looked one way, then the other. ‘Where’s Magera?’

‘We need to get you up and out of here,’ Thompson said, putting his arm under Alex’s shoulder.

Alex pushed him away and rubbed his eyes. ‘If the Gorgon’s free, we’ll never make it.’ He pulled on his helmet again, and turned in time to see the monster smash Sam aside. ‘And we’re not going anywhere without Sam.’

Matt was suddenly beside him, blindfold off, his computer resting on one knee. He tapped some keys. ‘We got something we can try.’

A discordant, grating tune emanated from the computer; it sounded eerily alien. Matt jacked up the volume just as the Gorgon glided toward Sam.

Sam lowered his head, holding his ground, but Magera stopped and turned toward Matt.

‘Don’t look at it,’ Alex said urgently. ‘Keep your eyes covered.’

Matt turned away, but kept tapping at the keys, making the tune louder again.

‘It’s not working,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s confusing it, but not putting it to sleep.’

Sam raised his gun and fired. The bullets did nothing other than attract Magera’s attention.

 ‘We need to get out of here.’ Thompson dragged at Alex.

 ‘We’ll never make it,’ Alex said, getting to his feet. He saw Borshov turned to stone, the obliterated MECH suit. There was no way he’d let his second-in-command suffer the same fate.

‘It wants me.’ Alex had felt the thing’s pleasure when it almost had him in its grip just a moment before. Perhaps it was his enormous strength or the furious being inside him, but whatever it was, Alex knew that he had given it nourishment beyond anything it had felt in countless millennia. ‘Then I’ll give it what it wants.’

Alex ran toward the Russian’s remains, picking up the long silver machete and swinging it at Magera. Ten feet out, he leaped in the air, blade high, and brought it down with all his strength on her neck. The blade bit deep, but didn’t sever the head as Alex had hoped. Instead, the huge head turned and its mouth dropped open. The wail that emanated from it bounced around the huge cavern like a hurricane of madness and fury. Light poured from the wound.

Alex raised the sword again, but before he could move, the pack of Cerberus hounds appeared, slinking between the buildings, their armored hides catching the glow of the flaming lakes of oil, their eyes as red as fire.

Alex turned, ready to defend himself from the new threat. Against a few of these huge beasts he and Sam had only just survived – a pack of them would tear him to shreds.

But instead, Alex felt himself grabbed and lifted and a force far stronger than his own demanded his attention. His helmet was ripped free, and then it was as if the world went away – there was no more sound, or sight, or heat or any other sensation, but the dreadful attraction of the Gorgon’s gaze.

Alex turned his face away, crushed his eyes shut, and gripped the huge arm that held him. He fought, but he was an insect compared to its colossal strength and slowly his head turned back. He screamed and raged, thrashing in the creature’s impossible grip. The Other One’s fury exploded to the surface to struggle in unison, but it too was quickly subsumed. Alex’s eyes were opened, and he looked.

He hadn’t known fear for longer than he could remember – no man or beast had ever made him tremble or hesitate. Probably because death held no horrors for him anymore, and pain was something that was endured and overcome. But this feeling dragged at his soul and then tore it from him. Once again the images of the humid world were flashed into his mind. The sense of millions of years of invading, harvesting, and enslaving countless populations for food and slavery, and a determination that the Earth would be next.

A cold crept over him; first in his fingertips and then his toes. It moved inexorably along his limbs. Alex knew what was happening to him, as his body became immobile – the shouts of his comrades, the Cerberus, his own mind and body didn’t matter – all that was left were the eyes of the hellish creature that slowly pulled the energy from him.

A flash of movement in his dimming periphery was the huge pack of the Cerberus, now picking up speed, mouths hanging open, powerful jaws ready. The ground shook under their combined weight as they charged. Alex would be spared this fate after all – by death.

The beasts struck hard, taking the larger figure of the Gorgon to the ground.

Alex was dropped and forgotten. He lay shuddering as if in a fit, and felt his team grab and drag him away. He felt cold, and weaker than he’d ever felt in his life.

He managed to hold up one creaking arm. His vision was blurred, like looking through a curtain of fine gauze, but he could just see that his hand was bare, the glove having been lost. The limb was now white, and as he watched, dust fell from his fingertips. He guessed his legs were the same.

‘Can you hear me?’ Matt asked as he lifted Alex’s head a fraction.

Alex tried to nod but couldn’t. Instead, he parted ash-dry lips. ‘Leave… me.’ There was a small puff of dust and he wasn’t sure the words were heard. He summoned up every ounce of remaining strength he had. ‘
Leave… me… now!
’