“What do you mean five minutes?” Justine barked out as she ducked behind a large metal partition for cover. “I’m planning on killing these things long before then.”

  Above her, the 8-ball’s fiber optics lit up one of the squids, causing the elusive creature to slip and slide along the floor and under desks until it found refuge from the light. “Listen, I’m not saying you can’t kill them. But if for some reason you can’t, we need to be back there in five minutes.”

  “Fucking, Foster!”

  In the darkness, she saw one of the creatures perch itself on a defunct console like a silent, aquatic gargoyle. Not wanting to give the thing time to think, she fired a couple of shots in its general direction. But as soon as the plasma discharged, the squid shifted away from her volley and back into the cover of darkness.

  “Hoover,” her words only slightly betrayed the fear and excitement she was feeling at that very moment. “Where did the other one go?”

  “You know, Agent Rushing.” Hoover watched Justine back slowly away from the partition. All the while making sure to scan her peripheries for any kind of movement. Unfortunately for her, she was looking with human eyes. “It’s not like this thing is omniscient.”

  “I’m not asking you to be all seeing, Hoover.” She found a more defensible position behind a row of cylindrical tanks that looked like waist high water coolers. That led to questions like do aliens take fifteen-minute breaks? And if they did, what would they gossip about? The possibilities almost made her lose her train of thought. “I’m just asking you to tell me what you see?”

  “Fine. One creature approaching at your ten o’clock.”

  Without taking time to acquire a target, she let loose a couple of shots in the direction of his warning. She watched as the small orbs of blue plasma illuminated everything in their path, including the creature’s undulating form as it spun away to safety.

  “The other one is approaching from your six.” Again, Justine didn’t wait to see the red of their eyes before firing her Slinger into the dark. And like before, the creature twisted to the side and out of range of the plasma orb.

  “What the hell?” Justine screamed as she reached the outer wall of the 3rd level. Ducking inside a small alcove, she did her best to quiet her whole body. Straining to hear the creature’s movements, she whispered. “Those things are too quick.”

  “It’s not really their speed that’s the problem, Agent Rushing. It’s their maneuverability. Add in hundreds of pieces of office furniture, and that combination is simply too much for anyone to overcome.”

  “How much longer before Foster’s stupid rendezvous time?”

  “Three minutes,” Hoover answered then added, “also---both targets are 15 meters away and slowly closing on your position.”

  “Do you know what he has planned?”

  “No,” the AI said a little too honestly. “I could guess though.”

  “Let’s not do that in a life-or-death situation, Hoover.” Justine rose up from her crouched position far enough to see the top of the console stations. What she saw slowly undulating in the darkness practically took her breath away. “Hoover?”

  “No,” Hoover could tell from the tone of her voice what she was about to ask. “There’s only two of them.”

  “It looks like there’s a lot more.”

  “I know,” the 8-ball’s light swiveled back toward the space directly in front of her position. Almost immediately, one of the creatures was laid bare by the fiber optic spotlight. An outcome she now wished didn’t happen because of the way the creature’s limbs stretched and contracted in a myriad of disturbing ways. “But it’s just the way those things create shadows.”

  “Do you have a direction for me to head back to?”

  “If you want to go directly to the rendezvous point, just head straight to your 10 o’clock.”

  Justine shifted her gaze from that unsettling sight to the direction the AI indicated. Right away, her eyes fell upon more of those horrific shadows kissing the top of the desks. “Is that the same direction as the other creature?”

  “I could say no.”

  “But?”

  “That would be a lie. A hilarious lie, but still a lie.”

  “Ok, smartass,” Justine readjusted the satchel slung over her shoulder and fervently wished that she had some of Foster’s DNA right now. “Is there a direction that gets me there in time and doesn’t walk me into a trap?”

  “Of course, Agent Rushing.”

  Far above, the 8-ball shot downward until it was only 15 feet off the ground. This sudden change in height was soon followed by two loud pings of the sonar feature. Pings that sent the creatures skittering around in the darkness in search of the source. Apparently, the creatures had a hard time pinpointing the origin of multidirectional sound.

  “I know you like to run, Agent Rushing.” The orb shot off to the right, hugging the wall as it flew away at a high rate of speed. “Now you’re going to have to prove it.”

  Half of Joseph’s body was crammed into the main compartment of the three-dimensional printer. His legs, too large for the relatively tiny compartment, flailed wildly against the floor as he tried to reach the gel packs further back in the machine. This organic CPR took more time and effort than the deputy currently wanted to expend. “Is there enough power built up yet?”

  Foster, on the other hand, was bent over the machine’s substantial control screen scrolling quickly through the previous menus for a very particular item. “This would be so much easier with my tablet. Even my new phone would work better than this.”

  “Well,” the deputy sounded winded as half his body spoke. “You don’t have them right now. So, hurry the hell up!”

  “Fine,” Foster looked down at the old blackberry phone and its highly pixelated screen where a disturbingly blurry image stared back at him. “Is that three lines and a squiggle? Or two lines with an equal’s sign?”

  “An equal’s sign. You little shit!”

  “Don’t yell at me!” Foster screamed at his friend as he began to remember some of the symbols flying by. “Do you know how hard it is to do this manually?”

  “First of all,” Hoover’s voice was the exact opposite of his friend... calm. “I’m not yelling. That was Agent Rushing.”

  Foster didn’t bother to apologize or look in the direction of his self-appointed rendezvous. He didn’t have time right now for distractions. “How close?”

  “Minute and a half,” Hoover continued over the violent sounds of plasma erupting and furniture being smashed onto the floor. “And second of all---it’s a squiggle.”

  “Fuck you, Hoover!”

  A second later, the part he had been disparately searching for flashed onto the machine’s monitor. He looked expectantly at the upper right-hand side of the screen. Thankfully, the deputy’s efforts had yielded the necessary power for his plan to have a chance.

  “Joseph,” Foster pressed the requisite part of the input device, and the symbol was locked into the print queue. “You may want to extricate yourself. This thing is about to hopefully work its magic.”

  Without having to be told twice, the deputy slid out from the opening and stood unsteadily on the scientist’s left side. “How much time?”

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  “One minute.”

  “And how much time for this thing to work?” Joseph asked as he turned in the direction of Agent Rushing and the floating 8-ball.

  “Forty-five seconds,” Foster’s response sounded more like a question than a fact. “Which way is she coming from?”

  In response, both men faced the same direction and saw what could only be described as a moving firework show headed in their direction. Joseph was the first to put into words what they were seeing. “My god she causes a lot of destruction.”

  “Not an unsound observation, Joseph.” Foster drew closer to the now working printer and waited with bated breath as the machine put the finishing touches on his plan. “Let’s see if we can help her cause a little more.”

  Justine dodged one of the learning machine’s stools by doing something akin to a forward roll from elementary school PE class. Joseph would have described the move as clumsy. Foster would have probably called it a ‘fluke’. She just thought the combination of skill and luck was nothing short of AWESOME!

  Before she could revel too much in her accomplishment, another stool crashed about a foot away from where she was crouched. Not wanting to get crushed, she ducked behind one of the many stand-alone workshops to buy herself a few precious moments of safety. “How much farther?!”

  “Fifty feet!” Directly above her position, the 8-ball signaled with its lights twice as it moved closer to her final destination. “The cavalry,” Hoover tried very hard to stifle a giggle. “Should be ready by the time you arrive.”

  “They better.” She peered back into the darkness and saw one of the creatures tentatively move in her direction. She responded to his advance by sending another orb of plasma in its general direction. This time, unlike everyone before, she got lucky as one of its legs was spectacularly severed from its body. “Or this is going to be a very short trip.”

  “You don’t even need an excuse, do you? You’re like a walking quote machine.”

  “Never tell me the odds, Hoover.” Her face was practically beaming from all the references she was getting to use. “But in all seriousness, what’s Foster’s master plan?”

  “You’re going to lead them down a covered alleyway and stop.”

  “Stop,” she said while resuming her sprint toward the rendezvous. “What do you mean stop?”

  “That’s what he said. Stop.”

  “That has got to be the stupidest plan I ever heard of. And what do you mean a covered alley?”

  In response to her question, Justine watched the 8-ball lower even closer to ground level before disappearing between two of the larger manufacturing cubicles. And attached to the top of the cubicles was a piece of corrugated paneling that resembled a tin roof. This roof ran the entire space between the two cubicles and did indeed form something like a covered alleyway.

  “Fine,” she begrudgingly conceded that the alleyway definition was technically correct. Still, what the hell was that man planning? “But he better be right about this, Hoover.”

  “Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Without any more thought to her own safety, Justine covered the distance to the alleyway in less than ten seconds. Once inside, she skirted down the hallway to a large slab of metal that essentially cut off her escape. Fully committed, she slowly turned toward the open end of this ‘trap’ and waited for the engineers to appear.

  “Are you even sure that thing’s going to work?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Foster’s eyes were locked on his targets. “You’re the alien.”

  Joseph crouched down beside the earthling as they watched the two creatures circle in front of the alleyway. On the verge of puking from all the physical exertion, he didn’t know if those things were being cautious or just lost sight of her in the darkness. “I may be ‘the alien’. But you’re ‘the genius’.”

  Foster squeezed the device in his hands a little tighter as the variables of his plan began to work their way to eventual zero. “I wish people would stop calling me that.”

  “Then stop being one.” In the distance, he could see the light from the 8-ball slowly dim until only the outlines of the creatures remained visible. After a few seconds, they formed up at the mouth of the alleyway and began to walk inside. “But for her sake, I would be one, one more time.”

  “Joseph,” the madman of Wilson said in a resolute voice. “Let’s go meet a Hannibal Lector.”

  Near his wits end, all the deputy could say in response to that wholly out of place statement was, “What does that even mean?”

  On one knee at the end of the long hallway, Justine stood at a ready position with the dim 8-ball floating just over her left shoulder. “Is his big plan coming soon?”

  “He should be along in a second.”

  “A second,” Justine raised her Slinger and tracked the creatures as they slowly shifted from one wall to another as a way of presenting a moving target. “You mean he’s going to enter to their rear?”

  “Maybe,” the 8-ball shifted slightly farther toward the middle of the hallway. “He wasn’t exactly forthcoming on all the details.”

  “Then what did he tell you? Because if those things get any closer, I’m going to have to start shooting. And if he’s behind them when I do...”

  “Just give him two seconds, Agent Rushing.” The 8-ball reached the exact center of the corridor and stopped. “As for what he told me to do, my main mission is to shine a light on the problem when he gives the signal.”

  “Signal,” Justine squinted down the corridor. The squid monsters were now about 30 feet away from her current position. Thirty feet directly in front of her, blocking any hope of escape. “What kind of signal?”

  Suddenly, over their comms, came a hushed voice that said the most asinine thing she had ever hear in a combat situation, “SIGNAL.”

  “What the fu---” Justine began but was interrupted by the entire corridor being bathed in bright white light. Almost as if the orb’s fiber optics found a new gear, the overpowering light caused the creatures to stop instantly in their tracks. Then, just behind them, at the end of the corridor, a hand poked out from around a wall.

  And inside that hand was a cylindrical object about 8 inches in length. Without a word of warning, the hand pressed a button on the side of the device, and it began to glow a soft purple color. “Fire in the hole,” a voice from around the corner screamed as the device was tossed toward the feet of the distracted creatures.

  “A bomb?” Justine called out as her options became laughably minute. “He threw a bomb in an enclosed area?”

  Before she had a chance to look for cover, a flash of sustained purple light enveloped everything within a fifteen-foot radius of the device. This radiant light show was soon followed by an auditory assault that sounded very similar to a massive whoosh of air. Bracing herself for a follow-up concussive blast, she was more than a little surprised to find none came.

  Just that purple light and the whooshing sound which both dissipated within a few seconds of detonation. Then, something even more strange occurred. Both Foster and Joseph appeared from around the corner and started walking toward her like they didn’t have a care in the world. For a second, they looked completely satisfied with how things were currently going.

  “Foster,” Justine yelled as she rose to a standing position with her Slinger trained on the creatures weirdly still forms. Without waiting for him to respond, the FBI agent moved forward at almost a sprinter’s pace. “Get back, those things are dangerous!”

  “Not anymore, Agent Rushing.” Foster reached the two creatures but stopped just short of being able to reach out and touch them. Curiously, he began to wave his hand through the air surrounding the creatures as they did absolutely nothing to stop him. “See, Joseph? Even the air is a little bit cooler.”

  “Talk about a complete molecular shut down.” Joseph said as he walked around the area that was once bathed in purple light. All the while, he made sure to stay out of arm’s length of the faux engineers. “That is a fucking diabolical weapon, Foster.”

  “Tell me about it.” Foster drew within a couple of feet of one of the creatures and smiled at their unmoving bodies. “Too bad we can only make one of them.”

  “One of what?” Justine asked as she joined the other two. “And will you be careful around those things.”

  “Oh, Agent Rushing.” He squared up to one of them and took a long, pensive look into its eyes. “We don’t have to worry about these things.” He took the satchel back from her and sighed in relief. Then, he pulled out his old Blackberry and checked the digital countdown clock flashing on the screen. “For at least another five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” She let the Slinger drop into a more relaxed position. “Why five more minutes?”

  “Because the time bomb only affects things for seven minutes.”

  “Hold on,” she let the weapon drop down to her side. “What the hell is a time bomb?”

  “A time bomb, Agent Rushing, is a device that temporarily arrests any kind of kinetic energy within a certain physical radius for a maximum of 420 seconds.” Foster said this as he pressed his finger against the skin of one of the creatures. Immediately, he pulled his hand back from the monstrous frozen form. “They’re slightly cold too.”

  “Wait a minute?” Justine looked at his newly regained satchel and concluded that this ‘time bomb’ must have come from one of those three-dimensional part printers. And if it came from one of those printers, then he didn’t create it. And if he didn’t create it, then... “How in the hell do you know all that, Foster?”

  “Agent Rushing,” Foster looked slightly taken aback by her lack of faith in him. “I’m a genius.”

  “No,” Joseph interjected as he backed up from the creatures to stand closer to the safety Justine provided. “He just read the part description in the printer’s menu.”

  “Is that true?” She sounded more disappointed than angry.

  “Maybe,” Foster coughed loudly before not so subtly changing the subject. “Hoover?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you finish your scan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And it will take a few minutes to compile the data.”

  “Fine,” he turned back to an obviously agitated Justine. He tried smiling at her, but she was absolutely in no mood for any of his bullshit. “Agent Rushing, if you would be so kind as to set your weapon to level ten. I believe these things need exterminating.”

  Justine inched closer to her frozen pursuers for a better look. What she found was very close in size and shape to the engineer on the previous level. The only things different were the slight reddish tinge to their eyes and the pronounced tip at the end of their creepy tentacles. But those eyes, even frozen, still seemed alive with menace.

  For a moment, she imagined one of the legs being used as a weapon. How its reach and speed would be devastating to someone made of what Hoover would refer to as ‘weak human flesh’. Just the thought of it put her senses on a razor’s edge. Finally, after getting her fill of the Lovecraftian beasts, she toggled her weapon to level ten and eradicated the nearest monster.

  “At least there was only two of them.” Then, as her Slinger put the other one out of its misery, she looked at Foster and asked, “now what?”

  “Now?” Foster looked impassively at the remnants of the creatures as they drifted slowly to the floor. “Now we go see your prisoners.”