The next Roghul in line drop dead in a blaze of gunfire, its flesh burning followed by an unsettling bones cracking sound, and the previous dead silence came again afterward like a neverending looping boomerang.
Then another howls came again, cutting through the air like hot knife through butter.
Now there were dozens of them, close and echoing across alleys, rooftops, and sewer grates. Unfortunately they weren't aimless barks, they were a glaring signals to let the rest of the pack knows of the warzone location.
"These damn mutts... they're trying to overwhelmed us with numbers huh?" Torch said, his eyes narrowed and gleamed dangerously.
"Form defense grid!" he ordered with a cold and precise voice.
Banaspati team immediately fell into semi circular formation, rifles raised, eyes locked outward. Tappa retreated behind them into strategic position, already activating TapTech gloves.
"Brahma seals, now!"
Pale Ember and Flare, both field seal operators, broke from the line, racing toward alley mouths and building corners. The seals—small octagonal metallic plates, slammed into the pavement with a magnetic thud. Both crouched low, hands working fast, fingers clicking over the sigil Sanskrit codes embedded on the plates.
"One, two, three, set!" Pale Ember shouted, pressing the final sequence.
*BZZZZZ!!!*
The moment she locked the seal in place, a faint glow bloomed from the metal, expanding into a translucent field barely perceptible to the naked eye. Three of these domes snapped to life, forming a partial arc containment barriers.
"Watch out! First pack incoming from the east alley!" Spectre's warned aloud, his voice boom from above.
Spectre's perch on top of a big delivery truck, one knee down, and eyes lock on simultaneously to the chaotic battlefield and iron sight on the fully assembled rifle.
Torch gave a short nod. "Let 'em come."
The Roghul's pack burst into view, there were six of them darting closer erratically like a bunch of feral beast.
Their bare skinned and grotesque red muscles shimmered under fractured moonlight, and their slitted pale yellow eyes locked onto them like hungry revenant.
The sounds of bullets piercing through the air filled the place like a swarm of locusts yet once again, Banaspati continuously opened fire at the anomalies, precise and merciless.
Flare stepped forward, planted his right foot firmly while his left hand pulled all the way back into a throwing motion, he then unleashed a SoL grenade, it arced high into the air, landed right between two Roghul mid pounce—
*BOOM!!!*
The grenade detonated outward like a sunburst, two roghul were instantly reduced to charred lifeless meat.
The other Roghuls didn't flinch an inch by the sight of their kin deaths, they continue to move swiftly closer—some leaping over the blast with no fear whilst the other ducked down low.
"Left Flank!" Ash barked, pivoting hard, covering the breach. His shots tore into a Roghuls midsection cleanly, shredding muscle and bone, but it kept charging regardless like an unstoppable machine.
Torch ducked and weaved under a deadly swipe coming from above, he then slammed his rifle stock upward hard into the beast's chin, momentarily stunning the beast and giving Flare a clean shot. One round pierce through the air and right straight to the skull.
Tapir, crouched behind a shattered vending cart, tapped his gloves frantically. "Analyzing!—oh crap! I forgot the tap order!"
Seal groaned in resign frustration beside tapir. "Fuck me sideways, do you always have to be such a dumb monkey? Move!"
Seal shove Tapir to the side to take over, he double right tapped the Roghul corpse.
[Data incoming...]
[Energy Signature: SCP-0-020]
[Mutation detected: None]
[Threat status: Active]
[Behavior: Coordinated and pack dynamic.]
"Careful! They're not lone wolves!" Seal called out.
"Oh really!? How could I've not known when these bastards are flanking us!" Ash shouted sarcastically, his fire emblem flickered from the muzzle light that's currently raining down bullets to another Roghul mercilessly.
"Confirmed! Rear contact!" Spectre rotated his scope, breath calm, heart slower than most. He let out a long exhaled.
One shot.
*BANG!!*
The roghul climbing from a sewer grate goes down like a broken puppet, its frontal skull exploded just before it could rise fully.
The tension inside one of the buildings themselves also began to shift, a hand to hand contrast to the chaos going on outside.
A Roghul slammed through a boarded up 2nd floor window, glass raining down like sharp rain. It landed dead center in the formation, tackling Pale Ember down.
"Tiva!" Flare bellowed.
The creature bit down, teeth sinking into the side of her flak vest. The scream caught in her throat as her side compressed under pressure.
Before anyone could put a bullet in its head, one of the guy wearing plague doctor suite coming in hot with a needle in hand.
*SHHHK.*
Agent Patch swiflty drove a Quiet deadly Needle injector filled with special liquid into its neck, the beast jerked violently as all the muscles spasmed uncontrollably before it dropped completely still on the floor.
Pale Ember pushed it off and rolled aside, gasping. Trying to keep her composure. "I'm fine! Vest held most of the damage, only cracked a rib maybe."
Agent Patch was already on her, pulling out a med pack with one hand and a glock aimed readily in case another surprise came down again.
Outside, Torch's expression didn't change at the carnage, but his stance became lowered and calculating.
"They're escalating like a crescendo, trying to break the line with waves eh? unnecessarily smart for some damn mutts."
"Second wave incoming, northwest. About eight to ten of them." Spectre's voice remained calm, but faster now.
Torch's mind processed everything like a seasoned chess grandmaster playing within the chessboard of life and death.
6 seals still holding up.
9 Roghul's terminated.
Slight injury in some combatants.
Ammo reserve at 80%
The next wave inbound in any minutes.
Torch nodded once in finality and relay his next command through the comms. "No more holding back, team. Sweep them all, we go in offense now."
Team Tappa hearing the command rejoice mentally, now they can finally let loose and joined the party for real.
Moss chose an empty spot and kicked over a table, using it as partial cover while tapping with his left hand twice into soil samples with gloved fingers.
Unbeknownst to him a roghul emerge from the shadow on the floor behind him like an assassin, fortunately one of the agent nearby noticed this and immediately fire a hot round.
*BANG!*
"Fuck!" Moss flinched as the round struck passed his head, hitting the crouching Roghul behind him right in the head—swiftly terminated, he turned around with wide eyes looking at the inanimate corpse.
'Since when..? Wait, that's not right... These Roghul can teleport?' Moss could feel the cold sweats formed on his forehead as terrible chill ran down his spine.
"Seal! Get that Roghul corpse analyze and execute data broadcast! An oddity has appeared!" Moss order in urgency to his teammate nearby.
A Roghul's severed paw lay a meter ahead near Seal position, not far from the hole riddled body he just disposed of.
Seal vaulted forward, snatched it, and rolled back behind cover to Double left tap the Roghul remain—a small piece of the flesh got magically removed
[Tissue secured!]
[Commencing in depth analysis!]
[...3 ...2 ...1]
[Success!]
[Newly acquired data of SCP-0-020 stored in the database]
[Warning! Gloves durability sharply reduced down to 75%]
"25% right off the bat?" Seal's eyes narrowed, his voice grim.
Right after successfully securing the sample, Seal followed with a triple tap sequence on his left glove to execute another command.
[Report broadcast!]
[Broadcasted to: Crick, Tapir, Seal, Moss, Patch, Torch, Ash, Pale Ember, Flare, Spectre.]
A list of data ripple and pulsed outward from the gloves like a sonar ping:
[Tissue Signature: SCP-0-020]
[Description: A resilient and tough to kill anomaly, they cannot be truly dead as they possessed some kind of law to spawn almost endlessly from nowhere in response on how severe the 'accident' that's responsible of summoning/calling their kind.]
[Ability: Hunter's Mark, Phantom Dive (New!), Vengeful Lineage (New!).]
[Phantom Dive: Manipulate the shadow element to enable shadow traversal in short distance.]
[Vengeful Lineage: Each time one of its kin dies nearby, the more monstrous the Roghul becomes as they'll forcefully manifest their will to awaken a new ability to adapt at the current situation.]
"Fuck! They're responding to body count!" Moss shouted in alarm. "The more we kill, the more unpredictable they become!"
Tapir, fumbling with his Glock, breathed heavily. "Why didn't I choose HR?!"
A Roghul lunged at the easy prey from the darkness, Ash instinct flared immediately—with a quick thinking Ash lowered his body and burst toward Tapir.
The sharp claws are mere inches from trembling Tapir, but its body got checked by Ash before it could reach. The Roghul skidded slightly backward, before it could do anything—Ash aim his gun and shoot it pointblank with two tight burst.
*BANG!!* *BANG!!*
"Because you suck at interviews and need me to cover your ass, that's why."
Time keeps ticking and passes by like a flowing water current in the river, the quiet streets now became hell filled with the sounds of guns and beasts.
Muzzles flared repeatedly like stars, SoL grenades exploded, bathing the asphalt in dancing flame. Buildings burned and broken inti, glass cracked and rained down in shimmering shards. Barking and howling echoed in stereo, above, below, from every direction.
Spectre picked them off one by one, knees, skulls, and hearts with sharp and deadly shot from his rifle.
Torch moved like a grim reaper through the smoke, dealing with one Roghul after another without stopping. His voice cut through the gunfire like a sharp knife every now and then.
"Left sweep—! Flare, you're on me!"
"Spectre, eyes on top levels! More incoming!"
"Patch! Keep Tiva alive!"
"Seal, Tapir, don't you dare die on me."
Another hellish wave came down on them like a relentless downpour in the middle of a storm.
Together, Banaspati and Tappa held the line with everything they got. Not flawlessly, not without blood, and not without new surprises from the adapting Roghul.
By the time the last Roghul's body in the area hit the pavement, the street was coated in viscera. The smell of Gunpowder densely stained the air mixed with the smell of iron from the ungodly amount of blood and corpses, their breaths were heavy and labored.
Spectre lowered his rifle. "Clear."
Torch raised a hand. "Reload. Recover. Regroup."
Pale Ember coughed slightly. "Vital sign normal, still breathing."
Then suddenly came a sound that didn't belong, it was not a howl nor the cursed bark and not even the scuffle of claws against the pavement.
But it was a scream, a human scream to be exact.
The scream sounded raw and desperate, it echoed from somewhere deeper within the city.
The man's scream was akin to someone begging the world to stop breaking apart.
Everyone went silent and steal side glances to each other.
Crick tilted his head. "That... Didn't sound like one of ours, A civilian? Didn't they already got evacuated?"
The hairs on Tapir's neck stood one end. "What kind of scream was that...?"
Torch adjusted his weary grip on his gun. "Movement. On me, now."
Banaspati and Tappa began moving again, slower this time, following the echo of something or someone not listed in the mission briefing.