5. Chapter 5 - Matt #2
Matt exhaled through his nose. “You people really need to stop saying that sentence.”
Nobody disagreed.
Outside, thunder rolled across the mountains again while floodlights flickered through sheets of rain. For a brief moment the excavation entrance became visible beyond the command post, a jagged wound in the center of the ruined courtyard surrounded by ancient claw marks and descending darkness.
Matt felt the pull toward it. Not stronger exactly. Closer.
The realization unsettled him enough that he looked away almost at once.
Unfortunately, Baptiste noticed. “You’re doing it again,” he said softly.
Matt kept his eyes on the operations display this time. “If you say thinking loudly, I’m leaving.”
Keene didn’t look up. “We’re trying to manage expectations.”
Matt looked toward him. “See? That right there. You all make normal conversation sound vaguely threatening.”
“It saves time,” Keene replied.
“Emotionally, all of you are exhausting.”
For the first time since entering the command post, Vale’s mouth twitched faintly at the corner. It vanished quickly, but Matt caught it anyway. Which honestly was more alarming than reassuring.
Then Vale turned and expanded the lower excavation map across the central display while rain battered the command post hard enough to make the support poles tremble.
“We descend in twenty minutes,” she said.
“Primary objective remains recovery of surviving personnel. Secondary objective is identification of whatever forced the lower levels into containment failure.”
Matt frowned. “Containment failure is another phrase I would prefer never hearing again.”
“You’ll hear worse before sunrise,” Baptiste said.
“That actually feels statistically very likely.”
Keene stepped forward and placed the sealed equipment case onto the operations table. Metal latches snapped open a second later, revealing compact radios, chemical light sticks, silver-edged combat knives, and several of the matte-black motion anchors Matt had seen at headquarters.
Matt eyed them. “I was hoping those were a deeply unnecessary precaution.”
Soren adjusted his glasses. “They are not.”
“Of course they aren’t.”
Matt stared at him for a beat. “I miss regular terrorism.”
Nobody laughed this time. That caught Matt’s attention.
The mood had shifted again, losing even the thin layer of dry professionalism that had carried them through the briefing. The deeper they pushed into operational details, the more obvious it became that everyone here understood something dangerous was already moving beneath the monastery.
Vale began assigning teams with clipped efficiency. “Keene remains command-side coordinating upper relay points. Baptiste, Reynolds, and Team Two descend through level three and establish forward contact near the breach corridor.”
Matt blinked once. “I’m sorry, breach corridor sounds aggressively important.”
“It is where we lost contact with the last recovery team,” Vale replied.
“That is significantly not comforting.”
“It was not intended to be.”
One of the wolf operatives near the equipment table checked the chamber on his rifle before looking toward Vale. “Motion sensors below level four just triggered again.”
The entire command tent went quiet, and Vale looked toward the technician monitoring the excavation feed.
“What are we looking at?”
The technician studied the display. “That’s the problem. We can’t tell.”
Matt could sense the shift move through the room almost physically as the atmosphere tightened around the operations table.
It was not panic yet, but urgency sharpened suddenly as another alarm pulsed across the monitors, followed a second later by another.
The technician’s expression hardened as she scanned the incoming data.
“Multiple sensors just triggered,” she said. “Something’s moving between corridors.”
“One contact?” Vale asked.
The woman hesitated. “I can’t confirm that.”
Matt exchanged a glance with Baptiste. “That answer feels professionally alarming.”
Baptiste was already checking ammunition magazines. “That is because it is.”
A sharp burst of static exploded through the nearest speaker, loud enough to make several operatives flinch.
Heavy breathing crackled through the interference, uneven and noticeably closer than before. Then a voice broke through the static.
“...help...”
The word came weakly, barely recognizable beneath the distortion.
A second voice answered somewhere deeper in the recording.
Low. Animal. Wrong in a way Matt could feel more than understand.
Then the gunfire started.
***
The gunfire lasted less than two seconds.
Three rapid shots cracked through the speakers in quick succession, echoing violently through what sounded like narrow stone corridors.
Someone shouted afterward, the voice distorted badly enough that Matt could not tell whether the operative was yelling orders or screaming in panic.
Then another sound hit the recording beneath the static.
A growl.
Deep enough that the speakers themselves vibrated. The transmission cut out abruptly a second later.
Silence slammed back into the command tent hard enough that even the storm outside seemed distant for a moment.
Nobody spoke. Several operatives remained frozen exactly where they stood, listening to the dead static hissing faintly through the speakers like they expected the recording to resume on its own.
Matt became aware of his own pulse again somewhere around the same time he realized his hand had drifted toward the pistol at his side without conscious thought.
Commander Vale moved first.
“Final equipment check,” she said, her voice calm enough to cut cleanly through the tension. “Team One establishes relay points through levels two and three. Team Two pushes toward the breach corridor and locates the source of that transmission.”
One of the wolf operatives near the rear table looked toward the monitors. “Ma’am, the signal’s changing.”
The technician pointed at the display.
“It won’t stabilize.”
“Equipment?” Baptiste asked.
She shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s the problem.”
That changed the room again. The tension inside the command post sharpened instantly, not into panic but into something colder and far more focused as every operative recalculated the situation at the same time.
Matt watched the shift happen across every face as operatives transitioned from uncertainty into preparation.
Weapons were checked again. Radios snapped onto tactical vests.
Somebody killed the remaining audio feed from the speakers while another technician rerouted power toward portable relay equipment stacked near the entrance.
Outside, thunder rolled across the mountains hard enough to rattle the temporary steel supports.
Vale looked toward Matt. “Stay close to Baptiste once we descend. If communications fail, you maintain visual contact with your assigned team at all times.”
Matt adjusted the strap across his shoulder. “The fact you keep mentioning communication failure feels aggressively suspicious.”
“It is realistic.”
“That continues to be worse.”
Keene approached carrying several compact devices about the size of flashlights and handed one to Baptiste before passing another to Matt. “Activate the motion anchors if the tunnels begin shifting.”
Matt looked down at the device in his hand. “I would like you to know that sentence barely qualifies as acceptable.”
“You’ll understand when it happens.”
“That is not comforting either.”
Baptiste clipped the device onto his vest before checking the magazine in his sidearm one final time.
Unlike earlier, none of the dry amusement remained in his expression now.
He looked focused in the dangerous way experienced soldiers often did right before entering hostile structures, calm not because the situation was safe but because panic had already become useless.
Matt recognized that look because he had worn it himself.
Vale stepped toward the entrance and keyed her radio. “Proceed as briefed.”
The command post erupted into motion around her.
Rain lashed sideways through the excavation site as operatives pushed into the storm beneath sweeping floodlights.
The ruined courtyard looked harsher now that the adrenaline had finally caught up with reality, all shattered stone and black shadows broken apart by flashing equipment lights and distant thunder.
Ahead of them, the excavation entrance waited beneath the monastery like an open wound in the mountain.
Matt felt the pull toward it again, stronger this time. The hyena stirred hard enough to tighten his chest as they crossed the courtyard. It wasn't urging him toward danger so much as insisting he was heading in the right direction, and that unsettled him more than fear would have.
Then he heard it again.
The breathing carried faintly upward through the excavation shaft, distant enough that he almost mistook it for wind moving through the tunnels below. But the rhythm was wrong for that. Too slow. Too heavy. And unmistakably alive.
***
The excavation entrance descended through the center of the ruined courtyard in a series of reinforced platforms bolted directly into ancient stone.
Floodlights illuminated only the upper levels before the shaft vanished into darkness below, the deeper sections swallowing light so completely that Matt’s eyes kept trying to invent shapes inside it.
Rainwater streamed down the carved walls as the team approached the perimeter barrier.
Up close, the claw marks surrounding the descent looked even more unnatural than they had from a distance.
Some stretched nearly eight feet across the stone, carved deep enough that entire sections of the original monastery foundation had fractured around them.