The moment lasted for an eternity, and in that half-second Ailen saw universes die in a flash of fire. Everything was dark except the Agent, her hair streaming around her face in the wind, and she was a fireworks display.
Then, with just as much deliberateness and care as she had looked down at Ailen, directly at her, into her eyes, the Agent turned her face away and looked down at the strange facility below. The world around Ailen started to fade back into existence, now seeming like a dull and hazy recollection more than anything solid.
“Ailen?” said the sergeant, grabbing her shoulder. That at least was solid. “Are you alright?”
“She… saw me,” whispered Ailen.
“No, she didn’t,” said sergeant Huff. “If she saw us, we’d be dead. And save the personal revelations for back at base, alright? You’ll have plenty of time to think it over back with the girls. Right now I need you here.”
Ailen nodded absently. The distant figure of the Agent was descending now, silent as a cloud, one hand extended towards the concrete of the building.
“I heard they cut them up,” said Lon. “And fill them full of alien biotechnology. It eats the human brain, all the organs, and it turns you into a monster. Then they put an implant in the alien mush to control it. I met a man who said he sneaked into one of the secret labs where they make them. Rows of kids split open on surgical tables being hollowed out like gourds.”
“Thanks, Lon, for that delightful image. But if you could be quiet for one moment-”
Ailen pointed suddenly. “She’s doing something!”
“I swear, Ailen, I will write both of you up for insubordination-”
The wind around the hovering figure was growing stronger, her hair flying wildly as if she was standing in the middle of a hurricane. The people on the concrete below, ant-like at this distance, were running as if in a panic. As the six soldiers watched in silence, there was a sound like a sonic boom and all the little figures stopped running. The winds surrounding the Agent died suddenly, and she dropped the rest of the way to the ground.
“She must be dead after that fall!” Lon hissed, wrongly as it turned out. The small figure of the Agent walked into a large vehicle bay door that had been left open when she had done – whatever she had done.

It was a slow walk that the squad took towards the facility. Nobody wanted to get there that much. Even Ailen, as stunned as she had been by the awesome power and beauty of what she had seen, had a certain reluctance. Still, ever nearer they drew, and the insistent pulse at the back of Ailen’s mind became a siren wail stabbing into her mind.
“Get down,” said Huff, and they all ducked into a crouch, moving slowly through the undergrowth as they got nearer. It was, as it turned out, pointless.
Ailen knew before they saw the gate, saw the bodies collapsed inside and outside, that those little ant-like people were never getting up again. Where there had been helmeted heads, flower-shaped patterns of red blood and white bone swelled.
“Ye Gods,” said Lon.
“But these are Imperial soldiers!” said Huff. “That Agent must have gone rogue.” The worry on their face confused Ailen.
“Isn’t that a good thing? The enemy of our enemy?” said a voice from the back of the squad. It was Tark, the only man in the group. Ailen had forgotten he was there, but he was saying just what was on her mind.
“Not here, Tark. Not this enemy. A rogue Agent is like an A-bomb – the only defence is not being around when it goes off.”
“Then why are we walking towards it?” said Lon.
Huff adjusted their grip on their plasma rifle, a grim expression on their face. “We search the exterior, assess the damage, and we report back. There’s no way we can go any further than that, but if we can learn the purpose of this place – why it’s so important as to be worth an Agent attacking – we have a duty to.”

The six and the sergeant stayed close together as they shuffled closer to the main gate at the front of the complex, weaponry sticking out at odd angles like a porcupine. Lon stepped in something that squelched and let out a groan.
“What is it?” she said, looking down. Blood dripped off her boot.
“Looks like a brain,” observed Huff. “Keep moving.”

Ailen shuffled through the pile of documents and shook her head. “It’s all dressed up in code, and it’s written up tight like a safe. I can’t glean anything from the context at all.” She handed it to Huff, who slid the documents into their backpack; the codebreakers at base could check it against everything they knew.
Ailen threw the switch marked “Gate”, and the two of them exited the gatehouse and rejoined the group as the heavy gate rolled aside on bearings the size of a head. Don’t think about heads, thought Ailen. Especially not heads rolling. Too late. She struggled to hold steady as the lurch in her stomach threatened to bend her double. The blood on her boots made her think of Colls. The medic had said that the spike had gone all the way through her brain. Nothing that could be done.
As they entered the open concrete courtyard the others began to relax, to open up their tortoise formation and spread out. Ailen remained tense as a tightly-wound spring, though.
“Help!”
Ailen paused, not sure what she had heard. There it was again. She looked around. The squad had spread out too far. Nobody else had heard it. It was coming from a dark doorway, lying open not far from her. She edged closer to it.
“Hello?” she called, and felt silly for it. Another step.
Then suddenly her feet were moving on their own and carrying her towards the darkness and she tried but she couldn’t cry out and she saw as she turned her head desperately to try and catch someone’s gaze out of the corner of her eye the sergeant flashing their light up a huge red stencil-painted sign that read: FACILITY 000 – 14.
Then, everything was darkness as the door slammed shut behind her. There was a beep from her chest, then her autolight flashed on, leaving an afterimage on her eyes when she looked down. The inside of the base was grave, silent and empty. She saw no bloody stains, no corpses, nothing at all in fact.
She felt the control that had overtaken her body release and took a deep breath of impossibly stale, stagnant air that somehow still felt like a relief. Silence again. The voice that had cried out for help was gone, or perhaps it had never existed. Ailen wondered if it had all been a trap to draw her in, how far back the trap went. Had it been meant just for her? Or could someone else have stumbled into-
“Help!”
Never mind. She jogged along the dull, concrete corridor and turned her light down each doorway she came across. This place was top secret, and anyone who had authorization would also have had a map. Ease of navigation was clearly not the objective.
Finally she found the voice. It belonged to a man on a screen, who was strapped to a chair and surrounded by anonymous lab technicians. Every twenty seconds or so, the video looped and the man underwent his torment again. Ailen swung the butt of her pulse gun at the screen and shut him up for good. A trap? Maybe. The thought of returning to the door and trying to get out didn’t occur to her. The Agent was somewhere in here. Whatever the sergeant had said, Ailen couldn’t believe that a mind capable of producing those fireworks could be as broken as that.
She kept going.

She must have been walking for hours, deeper and deeper into the metal and concrete silence, before she saw a sign of the Agent’s handiwork again – doors blown backwards by a massive surge of strength, bent out of shape leaving just enough space for a small figure to pass through. The blood was back. She descended a long stairway that ended in a sealed door.
“Biometric access ONLY”, said the sign, and an arrow pointed to a black box mounted on the wall with a large electronic eye protruding from it. She pressed the button, and the eye flashed a light, and then said in a flat, metallic voice: “LA-MENT.”
Ailen’s brow furrowed. The door opened. She shook her head. The agent must have done something to the door. That was the only logical explanation. That was how she had got in, that was how Ailen had got in.
But how did it know her name?