Gathering Darkness✔️

Chapter 07: He Has Arrived

"Something's wrong," Kane said.

"I feel it, too," Lara murmured.

They had been looking for Hux for a few minutes now and still had found absolutely no sign of the man. He couldn't even see any footprints. Suddenly, a crackle of static washed across Kane's HUD. For no reason that he could name, it spent a frozen black bolt of terror through him. He spun around and raised his SMG.

And froze.

"Identify yourself!" he yelled as his light illuminated a figure. Lara turned as well, staring at what the light have revealed.

"What...what is that?" she whispered harshly.

It was humanoid, and very tall. Despite not wanting to, Kane could see it rather clearly. It was about twenty feet away. It had extremely long limbs and seemed to be wearing some kind of black suit. And his face, (somehow he was sure that it was a male), was...nothing. Flat blank white, with only the barest hints of facial features.

The longer he stared at it, the more the static interfered with his HUD, and he began to feel a sharp pain somewhere deep in his skull.

Abruptly, it popped out of existence and almost within the exact same millisecond reappeared about five feet closer.

"It can teleport!" Kane heard himself shout. He squeezed the trigger. As soon as he did, the strange slender being disappeared once more and reappeared to the left and a few feet closer. "Run!" he roared as he began turning.

Lara didn't argue.

The pair of them turned and began running east, towards the military base. Even in near blind terror and total panic his combat instincts wouldn't abandon him. He and Lara ran through the forest, dodging trees, sprinting away from this new threat. What was it!? What was this tall, slender figure that could freaking teleport!? This was so beyond the pale of anything that Kane had ever faced, had ever even thought possible, that he had no idea how to react. All of his logic and reasoning and perhaps even his sanity had been kicked offline and he supposed that he should be lucky for his training. If he didn't have it, he probably would have froze up and still be standing there right now. It occurred to him that this thing probably had something to do with Hux's disappearance.

Kane threw a frantic glance over his shoulder. His ammo counter and NAV suite flickered as another wave of static made a slow roll across his HUD. He could see the slender mystery figure farther back, perhaps fifty feet this time. He turned and kept running with Lara, keeping up a near frantic pace, and when he looked back over his shoulder again, he didn't see the strange figure anymore.

"Wait," he said, slowing, turning. He scanned the area all around them. "I don't see it anymore. Do you?"

"...no," Lara said after a bit. "But I don't really feel like lingering," she added.

"I don't either. We should keep going. Goll wants us to get to the military base and see what their situation is," Kane replied. She nodded and they resumed their journey at a more reasonable pace this time. He activated his radio, "This is Kane to Sergeant Goll, do you copy? Over." He waited, only heard a haze of static. "Repeat, Kane to Goll, do you copy, over?" Nothing. He sighed and left the radio on just in case.

"What's our sit-rep?" Lara asked.

"Hux and I linked up with Goll and Ross at the ranger's station. Thompson and Diaz are still missing, no one's heard from them. Have you?" She shook her head. He grunted. "The only people I've seen so far are...those things."

"What are they? What was that tall guy?" Lara asked.

"I have no idea, not even a little one. Well...I guess that's not entirely true. There's got to be some kind of connection between that tall thing and the former humans. I've been seeing it ever since I touched down in the quarry and I've been finding weird messages scrawled on the walls, talking about 'he' and 'him', and after I saw a hasty painting on a wall of that tall thing, I'm inclined to believe that the messages are about him. He's got to have something to do the people that have been turned...ugh, I dunno," he muttered, shrugging uneasily.