The door opened into dry floor.
A thin film of moisture at the threshold where the sewer damp had followed him through, but past that the concrete was dry. The fixtures here were recessed into the ceiling rather than strip-mounted, and more of them were working. The ones that weren't left gaps rather than the total dark of the tunnels.
The corridor was wider. The walls were paneled — concrete underneath, faced with prefabricated sections bolted at intervals. A heavy conduit ran the length of the ceiling. Half the panels on the left side had been pulled from their mountings, fasteners stripped, the concrete behind them exposed.
He moved along the right wall and checked the first junction. Left ran to a door, closed, a keypad beside it showing no power. Right ran deeper, the corridor bending out of sight.
He went right.
The air was drier. Still carrying the underlayer of something organic that the sewer had made familiar, but less immediate. He moved deeper and kept the shotgun forward and didn't let the relative order of the place change his pace.
He heard them before the bend — weight dragging through a corridor, the overlap in the sound making the count uncertain. He slowed at the corner.
Three. Spread across the corridor width, moving without direction, no target yet. The corridor ended in double doors, both closed. Nowhere for them to go.
He stepped around the corner and put the handgun into the nearest one at four meters — closed the distance before firing. It dropped. The second tracked toward the sound and he took it through the throat, then the skull on the follow-through. The third was already turning. He stepped right to clear the falling body and put one round through the temple as it finished the turn.
Three shots. Three bodies. He checked the double doors — locked, panel dead — and moved past them.
The office was small. One desk, one terminal, a wall of shelving with most of its contents on the floor. He pushed the door with his left shoulder and cleared the corners in two steps.
One. Behind the desk, seated, wearing a lab coat with a facility ID clipped to the pocket. It had been there a while. It registered him and the chair went over as it stood. He stepped around the desk and put the Matilda into the side of its head from two feet.
He crouched and unclipped the ID. A photo, a name, a department designation. Below the ID, a keycard on a separate lanyard — heavier, different color, magnetic strip intact.
He pocketed both and stood.
The terminal was dead. Research folders spread across the tile. He left without stopping for them.
The medical station was mounted to a wall at the next junction — a steel cabinet, key tumbler lock. The sewer key didn't fit. He used the butt of the Matilda on the hinge side and the door came open on the second strike.
Top row cleared. Bottom row: a sealed blister pack of tablets and a single prefilled syringe in a foam slot. Field-grade analgesic.
He looked at the syringe. Pulled the cap with his teeth and put it into his left thigh through the fabric.
The effect came in stages. The volume of what his shoulder and ribs had been running dropped — not eliminated, reduced. The right arm moved through maybe fifteen degrees more before the joint ended it. Slightly easier to breathe. He pocketed the tablets and kept moving.
The terminal at the next junction was running on backup, screen dim but active, a document open.
Restricted access protocol active — sublevel clearance required for continuation of primary research lines. Personnel without B-clearance to remain in processing sections.
Below that, on a sticky note pressed to the screen's edge, handwritten:
Don't use the east corridor after 0200. Something got through.
He read it standing up and moved on.
The next lab room had two of them in the far corner, facing the wall. He put the first down before it turned. One shot. The second came around fast — he stepped left, let it commit, fired into the back of the skull as it passed him.
He was through the room before the second body finished settling.
The door at the end of the east corridor was different. Heavier frame, rubber gasket seal, battery-backed panel still active.
B-CLEARANCE REQUIRED
He held the researcher's keycard to the reader.
CLEARANCE INSUFFICIENT — B2 ACCESS REQUIRED
He filed the door's location and took the corridor past it.
The damage started two sections deeper. The left wall had a section punched through — the prefabricated facing gone, the concrete behind it fractured, rebar bent outward. The floor in the same section was heaved, a ridge crossing the corridor at an angle, both sides displaced. The fixture overhead had been torn from its mount three meters from the wall damage, above the middle of the corridor. Something had hit it from below.
He looked at the ceiling. At the arc of the damage on the wall. At the ridge in the floor.
The wall damage continued in the next section. And the one after. Getting worse rather than better.
He slowed without deciding to.
The corridor ended at a stairwell. Down. The railing on the right side was gone — not removed, pulled away, the mounting brackets still in the wall with the bolts sheared. Dark past the first landing, emergency lighting reduced to a dim strip at the base of each flight.
The wall beside the first landing had the same fractured concrete. Whatever had moved through the corridor above had come this way. Or something had come up and met it.
The air rising from below was colder. Carrying something under the facility smell he couldn't categorize. Not rot. Not chemical. Something that had been alive recently and in quantity.
He checked the shotgun. Two shells. Checked the Matilda. Partial.
The magnum rounds were still in his pocket.
He started down.