Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 51

NOTHING COULD STAND BETWEEN General Samil and his prey. Especially not when they were already caught in his web. His piercing headache had dulled to a low, welcome throb. He couldn't remember a time when it had disappeared completely. Years, at least.

It was strange. If anything, his head should have been pounding harder. Petar had slipped away. He'd nearly been killed after being flung off the creature. His forces were being trimmed down like crabgrass under a finnicky gardener's shears. Three whole units had streamed into the lab and been forced into small bands of survivors that clustered in twos and threes under every piece of cover they could find. The bodies of the less fortunate littered the concrete floor along with the scattered remains of years of government research. Everywhere, men were in the stages of dying. Some were still on their feet. Others crawled, sat, slumped where they'd fallen. Many were screaming in pain. One had been flung straight against the ceiling and left a red smear across one of the flat fluorescent panels. Three or four formed a pile of jutting arms and legs over near the caved-in wall that marked the creature's point of entrance. Samil couldn't see who they were, couldn't see their faces. It didn't matter.

The creature – Objective Alpha, he called it when ordering his men; "Alph" for short – showed no signs of slowing regardless of how many rounds tore through its flesh. Its blood was sprinkled from the east wall of the lab to the west, dark, violet-hued smears that crackled with static charge. When he'd crawled away from the center of the floor toward the storage end, he'd dipped his palm into one of the little trickles of Alph blood. It had shocked him slightly, like he'd touched a doorknob after scuffing across a dry carpet.

Samil couldn't understand it. Couldn't pinpoint its weak spot. Everything, Samil knew, had a weak spot. The Alph moved with the speed of a volcanic eruption. Its razor-sharp teeth claimed scraps of flesh as it moved among the soldiers, but most of them were either eviscerated on the spot or flung flailing across the room. He'd watched with chagrin as Lieutenant Fred Jameson had been reduced to a quivering black char after accidentally gripping the Alph's lowest tentacle, the mop-like one that swept across the floor behind it.

Nothing was going according to plan, and according to the rules governing Damien Samil's neurology, that meant he should be on the floor with the skull-splitting shriek of a migraine. But he wasn't. He was calmer than he'd been in years.

It may have been because he was claiming his destiny.

Samil lurked behind the Tesla coil in the center of the lab's foreward section. This was a safe place, for now. The Alph was currently at the rear of the lab, leaping over a pile of debris toward a small contingent of soldiers who'd formed a strategic circle with their backs pressed against one another. The man facing the approaching Alph – Private Jason Simmons; practically a boy at eighteen – shouted and squeezed the trigger of his M4. A hail of bullets pounded into the Alph's ridged face and then it was inside the group, spinning in a dervish of tentacles and limbs. Simmons's body became a multitude of trajectories as the Alph blasted through it. The other three men in the circle had no time to regroup. The Alph's upper hooked tentacle imploded one man's face while it whirled to a second and tore his shoulder cleanly away with one massive bite.

The third stood to run and tripped on one of the little, snake-like tentacles that grew from the rear of the Alph's feet. The toothed appendage bit into the back of his thigh and he screamed, arching his back in pain. Another foot-tentacle plunged into the soldier's side and a tiny fountain of blood sprayed across the floor. Samil was close enough to take aim with his own sidearm and place a bullet into the soldier's forehead. Put him out of his misery. But that would mean giving up his position.

Instead, Samil watched while the thin, whippish tentacles digging into the man's flesh pulsed and bulged as if they were sucking blood out of his body. His face was flush with blood and drawn into a thick knot of pure, tormented agony. Finally, mercifully, the Alph calmly reached down and bit the man's head away at the neck.

Then it dropped its shoulders to the floor and sprang toward another soldier.

Samil understood two things about it: First, it didn't seem to have eyes. Its face, if he could even call it that, was predominantly a wide gash of a mouth with a ring of black teeth. Above the mouth, a series of hard, bony ridges sloped over the dome of its head and gave way to tight, smoky gray skin along the back of its neck, where the hooked tentacle began.

And if it didn't have eyes, it had to see a different way. Samil assumed it sensed electrical energy. One of the original artifacts in the underground lab had been a low shelf filled with notebooks in which handwritten notes described the other dimension of Nikola Tesla's. Tesla was no naturalist, but he'd devoted a small part of one notebook to descriptions of the flora and fauna he'd found on the world. Over half of the animals he described were attuned to the planet's electrical fields. They used it to navigate, to hunt, to see.

Second, it appeared to be absorbing fuel as it went. It showed no sign of flagging after nearly twenty minutes of fierce fighting, and Samil would have bet his blinded left eye that the lower tentacle sweeping the floor was pulling energy into its body as it went. He almost had to admire it; it was the most efficient killer he'd ever seen.

Too bad he had to kill it.

And he was standing beside the perfect weapon.

But all things in their right order. First, he had to stop Petar. Besides the recently broken wall yawning into the sewer system, there were only two doors in the lab. One led outside, where it was camoflauged by a storage shed at the top of a staircase. The other opened into the secondary lab. The army rarely used it – hell, they barely understood it – but they'd kept it functional nonetheless. Petar had come here for a reason, and he wasn't in the main lab anymore. That meant he'd either run away through the shed, or he was in the secondary lab.

Samil understood people. Petar wasn't the kind of person to run away. He lowered his mouth to his collar mic.

"Unit C, regroup along the west wall. Repeat, Unit C to the west wall."

Whoever was left would obey the order immediately. Samil's punishments for disobedience were worse than anything the Alph could offer. A thin smile flashed over his lips as six men sprinted from where they'd found cover and converged along the wall with the two doors. They'd all die, of course, but it would give Samil a clear shot into the room. All for the greater good.

"Fire," he hissed.

As if he'd pulled the triggers himself, a line of muzzle flashes ignited from the remaining members of Unit C. The Alph shrieked and launched itself toward them.

They didn't have time to scatter. The beast slammed into the wall like a wrecking ball, obliterating the soldier in the center of the line. Samil made a mental note to personally sign the letter to his family. He'd served the greater good well.

The other soldiers at the wall dove away, then came up in synchronized crouches and continued firing. The Alph howled and charged again. Another red streak along the wall marked where a soldier had been crushed by the furious beast. Under the stain, a thin, black crack cut into the gray cinderblocks.

"Hold," Samil seethed. "Hold and fire." The headache was receding by the second. He held the power of life in his hand. It was glorious.

For a third time, the Alph lowered its head and rammed the four remaining soliders. One broke and ran, flinging the exit door wide and sprinting out of view. Cowardice. Samil would kill him later.

The Alph's bone plate connected with the wall with a high-caliber crack and powered right on through, leaving a ten-foot-high hole in its wake. Samil caught a glimpse of the raised platform through the gap, and then the Alph slid back into view and raised up on its rear legs, shrieking in rage.

Samil calmly reached out and pulled a lever on the Tesla coil, then stepped out from behind it.

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 52!