The US Navy SEAL

By William H. Brackley

2072. A US Government facility is on the verge of collapse, but once the Government send a team of Navy SEALs to investigate, they discover far more than they had bargained for. It immediately becomes clear that something much larger is lingering deep in the shadows of the cavernous ocean facility – an enemy much quicker and smarter than any soldier in US history. The elite team of SEALs rapidly find themselves in a dangerous race against time to evacuate the facility before it sinks deep into the treacherous oceans below.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: William H. Brackley
• Release date: Nov 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781916079724

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE CLEANERS

Downtown Tokyo,

Operation Dark Water,

June 17th, 2052,

0200 hours

OK, settle down. Come on, people, settle down. Let’s get this briefing started, Macy Adams, the White House Press Secretary, shouted at the loud reporters sitting in front of her.

As you may have already heard, four CIA covert operatives disappeared in downtown Tokyo a couple of hours ago. Based on the initial information we received, they were negotiating with our Japanese counterparts for further communications regarding one of the government’s facilities. I can take a couple of questions before I hand over to Leo, who will elaborate further on what the rescue mission will entail, Adams continued as I slowly peered down at the tablet that was lying on my lap. I switched over to our live hologram feed where we were getting a continual rundown of what the operation would involve.

Stood on the stage, Admiral Leo Malone began to shuffle the masses of notes that sat in front of him. He paused for a couple of minutes, coughed a few times, then, looking directly ahead, began to explain the ins and outs of what needed to be carried out in staging the rescue attempt. We had been tipped off by an unnamed source who claimed that the four agents were being kept in two towers, but our source had no further specifics for us to determine the exact tower they were being held in. Regardless, Malone persisted: we would clear each floor, one after another, in the hope of finding them. He continued to read out the rundown and eventually mentioned Russell Pierce, whose gigantic conglomerate IT organisation, KryptoGenetic Technologies, would provide us with new military gear for the mission.

Later, approaching the structures, it soon became apparent that the two gigantic towers were, in fact, adjoined to one another by thirteen skywalks, one for each floor. Parking within reasonable distance of the towers, I slowly peered out of the van’s small windows. The back alley we were sat in was completely empty, and there was no one in sight. Slowly, I opened the sliding door of the van and released hundreds of microscopic drones into the night sky as the rain began to pelt on the van. I noticed large puddles beginning to form around the van, which reinforced my own point of view: the rain was going to hamper our visuals, preventing us from carrying out this mission quickly and efficiently. Glaring at the towers, I watched as the microscopic drones made their way towards the towers. Silently, I shifted back to my seat in the van and began to cycle through the vast number of camera shots the tablet was receiving from the drones. About ten minutes later, we had confirmation that the hostages were in the basement of the first tower. While going through each of the other floors, I had noticed the heavy presence of guerrillas on each floor. Quickly and efficiently, I brought the drones back down to our location and opened the van’s sliding door before grabbing them, then closing the door without giving away our position.

We had two other teams who were also on the mission. They soon radioed in to confirm they were in position on the north and west side of the second tower. Our plan was to zip line through to the front of tower one. In preparation, we started to check that we had the necessary equipment on us before we proceeded to enter the building. The other two vans would provide us with live updates from aerial head satellite images that were being sent to us by the drones circulating both towers, along with the thermo vision of both towers, indicating any militia personnel wandering around in the towers. This would ensure that, as we entered tower one, we wouldn’t be caught off guard at any point.

Listen up. Right now, the clock timer, which was set by the higher echelons, is already ticking away, so I want this done quickly and quietly. Marks, Jackson and Blair, you’re on tech support. I want tower one in darkness before we even step into it. Jamison, Roberts and Franklin, you’re with me. Once we enter the tower, the rest of you will follow suit, understood? Colonel Peters quickly stated as he switched off the tablets and the other equipment.

We quickly cocked our rifles into place and double-checked we had everything we’d need. For the next couple of seconds, no one tried to leave the van. We sat there quietly, waiting for the signal: Peters nodded for all of us to get out of the van. One by one, we got out and found ourselves standing in the middle of the back alley. I glared up into the night sky. There appeared to be a great deal of interest in what we were doing here from the residents who were silently peering over their balconies. Above them, Japanese banners continued to flutter against the strong, gusty wind that had started to pick up over the last couple of minutes.

Approaching the building just behind the van, Jackson quickly moved to the front while Roberts proceeded to remove all three hinges off the door to the building. Jackson gently lifted the door and placed it to the side. Moving to the front of the line, I slowly advanced into the building, ensuring I kept my rifle close to me and as steady as possible. The light attached to the front of the rifle illuminated the passage towards the rustic-looking stairs, just a few metres ahead. As everyone piled into the building behind me, I moved towards the stairs.

Moving quickly up the stairs, I noticed a few kids at the top. They were heading down towards us, shouting and laughing. From my perspective, this was slightly off-putting, not to mention dangerous. The last thing any of us needed was to draw unnecessary attention to our perilous situation. In Japanese, I shouted out to them, telling them to go back to where they had come from, and to make themselves scarce until further notice.

About five minutes later, we found ourselves staring across the rooftop of the building. In the background, the only thing any of us could hear was the thunderous raptor of lightning, which was quickly followed by a huge gust of wind that almost made most of us lose our footing on the damp rooftop.

Looking across from the rooftop, my eyes soon found the gigantic tower which, from my point of view, stood in all its grandeur as it reached into the dark night sky above. Though, while admiring the tower for a few minutes, a cold shiver travelled down my spine. A sense of dread washed over me. Would we have enough time to enter and exit the tower, given the number of floors we would have to clear before we could make our way to freeing the hostages? The building looked as though it had seen better days, and this thought was beginning to play at the back of my mind.

I looked back at Blair and Jackson, who were already one step ahead of me. They had already started to hack into the mainframe computers located within the building, while I stayed on the lookout for any unusual movement around the floors of the building.

I turned my attention to Peters, who was busy coordinating with the other two sub-teams based in the north and west sections of tower two. It seemed to me that the ticking one-hour window we’d been given by the powers that be, was insufficient as fifteen minutes had already passed.

Roughly ten minutes later, Blair and Jackson had hacked into their system. The moment I turned my attention back to the tower, each floor, one by one, was plunged into complete darkness. It was like we had orchestrated it to absolute perfection.

Alpha 3-1, proceed to north entrance. Bravo 4-1, you’re a go on the south side, Peters said quickly over the radio.

Franklin, Peters, Jamieson and Roberts shot their zip line across and, within a couple of seconds, attached it to the tower. They placed the line on the edge of the building before Peters zip lined across towards the other side, giving us a thumbs-up to get prepped and follow after him.

Standing at the edge of the rooftop, Franklin, Jamieson and Roberts launched themselves into the dark night and, a couple of minutes later, found themselves attached to the building. Blair, Jackson and I quickly attached ourselves to the zip line and waited for the others to detach themselves from it. In that moment of waiting, gunfire erupted, echoing across the tight-knit city.

Ignoring the gunfire, we attached ourselves to the zip line and let go, and found ourselves flying at speed towards the tower. A couple of minutes later and we were attached to the building. The three of us were wearing the new ‘sticking’ technology suit which allowed us to move across the building without further use of the zip line. Placing our helmets on, we switched to night vision while the tablets, which had been built into the helmet, soon began to pick out any movement across the floors we were facing.

Incoming enemy personnel, hold position. Proceed to sidearms only. Wait for my go, I softly whispered over the radio.

I watched as three soldiers walked over to the window, talking to one another. The three of them failed to look outside. Instead, they began to scout the room before splitting up. I felt sick at the pit of my stomach as I glanced down. The height we were currently at was terrifying, to say the least.

Silently, I motioned to Blair and Jackson to wait a couple of minutes before proceeding to cut the glass. The three soldiers were still moving around in the room, not facing us. We pulled out our blowtorches and cut out the glass before the soldiers turned to face us.

Slowly, we eased the window out and let it drop to the ground below. Instantly, one of the soldiers turned around with a surprised look. Taking my gun with its silencer on the end, I placed a bullet straight through the soldier’s forehead, which alerted the other two, who then began to shout amongst each other.

Jackson, move to the west corner. Blair, on me. Let’s move! I shouted down the comms as we entered the room. Jackson scampered over to the west corner of the room while Blair and I proceeded to hiding behind one of the comms systems not too far to my right, where we stood, quietly waiting for the soldiers to get a bit closer to us.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of the soldiers and motioned to Blair to hold his position. We now found ourselves standing in a part of the room, not knowing if we were going to be taken out as I noticed the two militia soldiers searching in all directions. Surprisingly, they were looking everywhere but where we were standing.

But it wasn’t long before the soldiers started to head towards us, oblivious to the fact that Jackson had them both marked with his rifle. As they neared, I could hear loud engine noises, which gave their stealth away. The background underlying chatter accompanying the engine sounds seemed to worsen the more I focused on it.

Slowly, I closed my eyes, hoping the noises weren’t part of a nightmare as I stayed in place, waiting for the soldiers to find us.

Present Day

– Somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean,

June 17th, 2072,

0200 hours

Marks, wake up woman. Wake the fuck up! someone yelled at me. I felt their spit land on my face.

I opened my left eye first before attempting to open the other one. As I began to take in my surroundings, I felt a momentary sense of delusion before realising that I was simply overtired, and it was taking its toll. Fredrickson and Woods, who were sitting opposite me, were busy talking amongst themselves while Harrison and Carter, who were sat next to me, were going over the mission on a tablet. Fredrickson was deemed the quietest individual to have ever entered the US military, and leave without a word, but what he did bring more often was simplicity, which was rarely seen. He also had a more definitive approach that a lot of individuals failed to understand. Woods, on the other hand, was the old-school guy of the team. He’d had the roughest upbringing of the lot. From what I’d been told, he used to scrounge for food and clothes in the back of empty vans, garbage cans, basically anything he could get his hands on.

However, he soon found a way into the military and was rapidly propelling further up the career ladder with his eye for detail and his ability to spell out everything, right down to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Though, there were strong, persistent rumours that he was being paid handsomely off-the-books by privatised financiers, who were getting him to compromise clandestine off-the-book records.

My thoughts returned to Carter. I was quickly getting the impression that he wasn’t impressed with how long I had nodded off for. The stern glare he was giving me seemed to suggest he was asking for trouble.

We’ve been in the air, let’s see, a couple of hours. So, let me ask you, how long? Carter said, raising his voice so I could hear him over the loud engine.

How long what? I replied.

How long has it been since you’ve had any sleep? he repeated, this time enunciating his words, which made it seem as if he couldn’t speak English properly.

Mind your own fucking business, Carter. If I were you, I would worry about what this op entails, rather than what I’m doing. Got it?

Carter was highly regarded by the military. At twenty-three-years-old, he’d already covered more clandestine operations than I had ever been part of. Though, the fact his girlfriend had recently given birth to a baby girl made me wonder whether he was the sort of person who lived on the edge; and at some point, if his luck changed, he wouldn’t come back alive.

He glared at me, blank-faced, before getting up to sit on the other side of Harrison. Harrison was someone that I would consider as being America’s Godchild, where patriotism was something he lived, breathed and slept by, having been a part of any mission or operation run by the US Navy. Even though he was the second youngest in the group, his individualism, his passion and his heart’s desire for ensuring that, no matter what or how, the operation always took centre stage, was obvious.

Taking my concentration off him, I began to re-do my ginger ponytail while pondering the fact that this was my final clandestine operation, that at the age of thirty-eight, this was going to be my final curtain call. I’d finally hit the twenty-year mark, when all US Navy SEALS were required to take retirement.

Ignoring Harrison, I glanced over to the corner where Fleet Admiral Langley was sitting. He slowly bent his face ever so slightly, so it left the darkness of his location as he lit his cigar. Sitting there, unnerved and undeterred by his surroundings, he puffed away at his cigar in the silhouette of the AC-130, ensuring he avoided unnecessary eye contact with the rest of us.

Langley, from what I had picked up around locations at air bases, was someone you wouldn’t dare get on the wrong side of. He had a reputation for always taking the hard approach, as well as risky manoeuvres, which often meant his lower ranked peers often questioned the reasoning behind why he put everything on the line to attempt something that others higher up the food chain wouldn’t even dare consider. Even so, there was a large degree of respect for him as an individual who had pretty much seen and conquered everything within the army, and he looked to be on the right side of being close to retirement.

Instead, though, his full focus was being put to better use as base command communicated with him via his headset. Suddenly, he leaned forward, as if he had just received bad news, and placed the headphones on his seat as he stood up and took several short, quick puffs from his cigar.

He wasn’t a tall man but his facial features made him seem like someone you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. His grizzly grey beard, if it was anything to go by, revealed his age and gave us all something to marvel upon. Standing in the deep, lingering shadows of the plane, he took two huge strides forward and was now stood in front of us, as if to suggest he was now ready to get down to business.

Good news, people, for this to be done by the book, let’s do this quickly and quietly. We all have a schedule to adhere to, and I want to keep it that way. Is that understood?

The pilot began to shout something down the radio to Langley, who swirled his index finger at us, indicating for us to get ready as the red light above us turned green. This was it now. Our mission and goal was to execute a run-of-the-mill clean-up operation on a 100-year-old facility that, over time, had been repaired and completely refurbished every decade. Three months ago, though, disaster struck as 650 people instantly disappeared without a trace, but it was only several hours earlier that the six of us found ourselves sitting in a debriefing room. It was during this meeting that, subconsciously, I knew this was going to be something much larger than another run-of-the-mill operation like the ones we had carried out for the government in the past.

Within minutes, however, all my thoughts exited my mind as the plane suddenly hit heavy turbulence. The equipment which had been tightly strapped down above us, was now bouncing up and down while the equipment beneath our seats began to shift gradually towards the middle of the walkway. Most of us were sat holding on to our seats while our helmets and bags moved a lot more than they should have. Looking down at my hands, I realised my nerves and the tension were slowly building up within me, as if moving towards a knife’s edge.

As the AC-130 continued to plough through the thick, relentless clouds, the turbulence worsened. Harrison and Woods stored away the tablets while the rest of us clung to our seats with some proper grip. A sense of doubt as to whether we would make it through this situation seeped into the back of my mind.

As we quietly sat there, the plane’s ramp was slowly lowered, resulting in a strong and pretty powerful gust of wind blowing straight through the plane, causing most, if not all, of the equipment to rattle even more against the straps. A few items even landed in the middle of the walkway. Ignoring the wind, Langley came and stood in our midst.

This is it, people. Let’s make it count. Go! Go! Go! Go! Langley shouted.

With speed, we prepped our wingsuits and put our helmets on before simultaneously switching on the systems that had been built into our helmets, which, apparently, were still in the beta stage of testing.

System initialising, please stand by… a woman’s voice said as an image of a smaller version of the facility appeared in the left-hand corner of my helmet screen. The system then began to draw out a map of our current location in relation to the facility.

Harrison then quietly got up from his seat and placed his helmet on and, without saying a word to anyone, ran down the walkway and disappeared into the dark grey clouds that were surrounding the AC-130. He was quickly followed into the dark thunderous night by Fredrickson, Carter and Woods.

Standing there, alongside Langley, I continued to glare at him while realising, and sensing, that there was a great deal of weight resting on both my shoulders. I slowly turned my attention back to the ramp and, without thinking twice, found myself running down the walkway into the dark stormy night which stood before me. According to my system, Langley had followed me off the ramp and was only a couple of metres away from me as we began to fly through the night sky; the AC-130 disappearing from our sight.

Exhilaration was one way of describing the sheer rush of adrenaline that was soon travelling through my body as the heavy rain began to cover my helmet. I steadily gained speed as I travelled further into the clouds. I was now continuously wiping the helmet as the rain was much heavier now. However, in the not too far distance, fire and smoke could be seen burning into the night sky. I slowly began to hear noises, which were becoming louder by the second, as I found myself approaching the facility at full speed. Within minutes, Langley and I were seeing the full extent of the damage to the facility in all its might.

The corridors on the outside had been destroyed, while the glass that once formed the curved roof, which was now our entry point, had been shattered to smithereens. The worst part was yet to come. As we neared the glass centrepiece in the middle, hundreds of corridors were falling into the ocean below. From what my helmet had calculated, it was a drop of well over 300 feet or so.

Langley and I joined the others on the helipad. We took off our wingsuits and placed them in our rucksacks before getting into formation and advancing towards the six-inch reinforced titanium door, which sat about a couple hundred metres in front of us.

Harrison and Fredrickson quickly drew out the C4 charges and began to place them delicately, and with precision, around the door before indicating for us to stand back. Standing towards the right, the feeling that something wasn’t right about this place began to creep into the fray. It was becoming apparent that, in some way, we needed something else for this whole scenario to work. With the equipment we’d been given, we’d barely make it through another day.

Langley nodded his head towards Harrison, who quickly hit the charge. Instantly, the charges went off in a domino effect, and as the last charge blew, the door creaked for a good few seconds before dropping to the floor and onto the large puddles that lay there.

We stood there, gazing into the pitch blackness that stood before us while, not too far behind us, the dark thunderous night was bringing heavier rain. I was beginning to think that it was going to be one of those nights where only God could judge whether we would make this mission a successful one, or one where there would be no end in sight. Standing there quietly, I began to wipe the droplets of water off the front of my helmet as it was becoming a lot harder to see anything around me.

The six of us failed to move. Instead, we stared at the black, dark brooding entrance that stood before us. I began to think that, for the first time in my twenty years of being a decorated US Navy SEAL, and all the missions in the world I had been a part of, this operation was going to probably redefine everything that had gone wrong since the country had had to deal with the aftermath of the Watergate scandal a hundred years ago. Strangely, the fact was, this mission alone wouldn’t be exhilarating like the other missions. Roughly speaking, the only thing it would bring was signing, sealing and, probably, the delivery of our own death certificates.

CHAPTER 2

INTO THE ENEMY’S EYES

Over the last couple of months, the facility had been facing a shortage of funds as the government was slowly, step by step, distancing themselves from investing further funds into the facility. Based on unconfirmed rumours, this was due to certain individuals wanting to ensure that any cheques written were kept off-the-books, but, again, this was just from sources who claimed to be working in the White House. Though, a much bigger problem had come to light. Some media outlets had begun to circulate the idea that the government, over the period of a hundred years, had profited, making hundreds of millions of dollars from the facility while concealing where the money had gone.

Only a month or two ago, however, stronger rumours began to circulate, appearing at the forefront as respected media sources were beginning to report that the eccentric megalomaniac billionaire Russell Pierce was more than willing to invest in the facility from his massive conglomerate empire, KryptoGenetic Technologies. He was willing to invest over $6 billion of his empire in the facility, which, over the next decade or so, would enable America to develop and surge forward against richer countries. Countries that had, over several decades, managed to overtake us economically and financially, somehow. In my opinion, and how one media outlet had stated it, it seemed to be a farcical idea in the first place.

Before we each prepped our rifles into place, we all switched over to night vision as our visors went down. The lights on our helmets lit up the empty black hole. We cocked our rifles into place, holding them close to our faces. I joined the others as we began to advance towards the empty black hole, slowly descending the staircase in front of us. There was an air of creepiness about the place, which was further enhanced by the increasingly strong stench coming from the corridors as we moved further down the stairs.

As we continued to the third set of stairs, a pair of old, automatic curved white doors, which were opening and closing every couple of seconds, stood in front of us. We stood there silently with our rifles at our sides as we faced dark, dried blood smears that had been spread across large parts of the wall. The feeling of dread entered my mind. I wondered what lay ahead for the six of us. Before proceeding into the corridor ahead, I walked up to the smears to get a closer look, when I noticed that, barely covered by the smears, there was some lettering. Placing my bag gently on the floor, I rummaged around for a device which I eventually placed on the wall, hoping it would show up whatever was written on the wall. After a moment, the device displayed the following:

LEVEL 6

LIVE INFESTATION AND DISSECTION

We were all in a state of confusion. I noted the stunned expressions on the others’ faces. The last thing we had expected on entering the facility was the shocking discovery of dried bloodstains covering the walls, which continued as we began to progress further. We kept our helmet lights on as the facility was still in complete darkness.

Judging by the sheer devastation we were facing, it was obvious the facility would require quite a clean. For the next hundred metres or so, all we could see were the millions of glass fragments that our helmets were picking up. The fragments had been evenly spread across the metal ground beneath us.

Corridors of multiple proportions were beginning to appear to my left at random. I stood there, gaping at the length of the corridor, before my attention was quickly drawn to the rest of the group who were now peering into a variety of rooms on the right. The utter devastation in each lab spoke volumes. We switched our night vision off but kept the lights on, allowing it to illuminate everything around us. Remaining parts of doors lay in the middle of some of the rooms which, based on my own guesswork, seemed to range between laboratories, storage rooms and even what I would describe as a break area. Other rooms were completely burnt to a crisp. Things were quickly playing out like our own horror show, but as we approached the tenth or eleventh lab, the situation seemed destined to become a whole lot worse.

We stood in the doorway to the last lab. The lights from our helmets lit up the entire lab as though it were a stage. We stood, just staring, shocked at the utterly horrifying scene that lay before us: a pile of dead, naked bodies. Above them, hundreds of small flies were swarming around and the stench coming from the room was becoming intolerable, but at the same time, there was a sense of anger, bewilderment and distress all rolled into one. The doubt that plagued me earlier, before the mission, was stuck, ever-present at the back of my mind.

Everything around the bodies, from the worktops to the cabinets had been burnt to a crisp. Though, if you stood and carefully analysed the remaining parts of the lab, you could just imagine how it might have looked before the attack. I remained frozen to the spot, gazing at the sinks which sat at the top of the lab.

Jesus, Harry. Could you breathe any louder? Woods shouted at Harrison.

You two, cut it out, Langley whispered as we all continued to stare at the dead, infested bodies piled on top of one another.

Who would do this sort of thing? This ain’t no way for anyone to die, not out here, Carter stated.

I could read their anger off their facial expressions; anger at being put in a position where their own patriotism was going to be tested at a whole different level. My own emotions were slowly getting the better of me the longer we remained in the doorway.

We turned to look at Harrison momentarily before moving further down the corridor, which curved to the right. However, as we walked around, mini corridors began to appear towards the left. I approached one of them out of interest, and noticed a fire escape in one of them. When I moved towards it, I realised it led to the corridor below. Glancing back, I saw the rest of the group were already proceeding further down the main corridor.

For the next few minutes or so, none of us spoke as we slowly and carefully walked through the corridor. The rooms and labs, which had appeared out of nowhere, were no longer visible. However, we continued deeper into the corridor and soon found ourselves faced with something of truly exceptional proportions. Multi-directional corridors were appearing from every direction. What the hell had we let ourselves into?

Drawing my attention away from the random appearance of multiple corridors, I started to notice the old-style lighting above us flickering, though we kept our helmet lights on as the corridors were becoming increasingly daunting as we walked through them, wondering just where the hell we were. Some of the lights were noticeably covered with insects, moths and other creepy crawlies. Standing under them, the light from the helmet displayed the substantial damage that had been done to the lighting, which told me that, at some point, the lighting would give way while we made our way around the facility. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, one of the lights fell. With no warning, it landed on top of me, sending me flying hard onto the metal floor.

Marks! Harrison yelled, with everyone wondering why Harrison had potentially given away our position.

Both him and Woods slowly pulled the lighting off me. I slowly got up from the ground and brushed off what appeared to be fingernails stuck to my military pants.

Thanks for that, I whispered to them as Langley stood in the foreground with an expression that clearly indicated that he wanted to move on quickly. He seemed undeterred by the falling light fixtures.

We stood there for a few minutes, regarding each other as a strange, awkward silence drew out. Langley finally broke it with what sounded like a bit of sarcasm.

If everyone is finished holding hands and doing a fucking song and dance, what do we say to getting this motherfucking show on the road, hmm? he said, indicating for us to forge ahead.

Further ahead, in the distance, there was a sense of eeriness that soon filled the corridor. It put me on high alert to expect the unexpected.

As we finally reached the end of the corridor, we came across two large sets of broken escalators standing before us. As we all acknowledged the eeriness of the facility, a loud howling wind brushed past us, causing the temperature to fluctuate between warm and cool, with the sea breeze making us feel slightly colder than usual, even with the visor fully down. It caught me off guard and the ever-present feeling that something wasn’t quite right began to play on a seemingly endless loop as I looked down towards the bottom of the escalators.

As we began to descend, I started to realise that, if we wanted to cover good ground in this gigantic facility, the only way was to split up into smaller teams.

I looked over at Langley, who glared back at me. It seemed like we were on the same level of thinking. We were all now stood at the bottom of the escalator.

Shit, this isn’t working for me. We’re not getting anywhere with this. Marks, you lead Freddy and Harry as sub-team Alpha. Carter, Woods, you’re with me. No radio comms until we find a comms room, understood? Langley ordered.

We nodded in agreement.

Good, now move the hell out! he yelled.

Carter, Woods and Langley quickly went back up the escalators to scan the corridor we had just come from. Harrison and Fredrickson were already making progress as they made their way down some stairs and into the dark corridors. The lights on our helmets lit up the smashed TV screens on both sides of the stairs, barely hanging on by a thread. As I made my way down the stairs, one of them dropped onto the metal ground with a loud clang. It made me jump out of my skin as Fredrickson and Harrison whipped around to see what had caused the noise.

Not to curse anything, but I’m thinking we’ve already been cursed by this shithole, Harrison whispered to myself and Fredrickson as he gave a quiet laugh.

I don’t think you’re wrong there. By the end of this, at least one of us will be on the run, Fredrickson said with a light heartedness that, at that moment, I didn’t think was appropriate.

Can you both cut out the joking? Focus on what’s around us. We’re already on a watch, so we don’t need any of your carry-on shit, I told them in a firm voice as I caught up with them. The cold air hit me in the face, but we focused ahead and advanced further into the dark corridors.

Pausing for a moment, we took in the corridor’s atmosphere, with the darkness still enveloping the three of us. The cold air which had met us only a couple of seconds ago, seemed to have dropped drastically in temperature, resulting in the need to rub our hands together to keep warm. In the not too far distance, I could hear the waves crashing into the facility, while every now and then, the facility began to creak ever so slightly. Together, it kept me on edge as I was beginning to think that, at some point, the corridor would give way into the ocean below.

In the corridor, the eeriness persisted as I followed Harrison and Fredrickson. As I bent down to examine the metal floor for any clues, it suddenly lit up with a brightness that matched the light from our helmets. Slowly, fragments of what looked like human remains were being illuminated around us. It was a moment where I felt myself becoming less hopeful of finding anyone alive here. I whistled over to Fredrickson and Harrison to join me.

Stop walking through this as if we’re not here to do a job. I want photos and prints of anything on the ground, I said abruptly while holding back my concerns over whether we had found ourselves in something a lot bigger than we had bargained for.

What exactly are you wanting to take images of? Fredrickson asked as his light shone into my face.

That there, I said, pointing to the dark red spots of blood that spread along the corridor as far as we could see.

Both began to take photos of what lay on the ground in front of us as we began to move with caution, the kind of caution that kept