The parachute jump through the night ended with a soft landing in a small clearing, surrounded by towering trees that scraped the sky. The canopy was so dense that almost no moonlight could penetrate it. Kael quickly detached his parachute, his Kestrel rifle already in his hands.
Over the next few minutes, the other members of the Hummingbird team landed one by one, moving with the silence and efficiency of ghosts. Gryphon was the last. He gave a hand signal, and the team quickly formed a defensive circle, weapons pointed in all directions.
They were in the belly of the beast.
The air was hot and suffocatingly humid, clinging to their skin and clothes. The sound of insects was a constant, deafening symphony of life.
But something was wrong.
"Roll call," Gryphon's voice came over the comms.
One by one, they reported in, their callsigns echoing in Kael's ear: "Viper, check." "Jotun, check." "Wraith, check."
"Spectre, check," Kael replied.
"Oracle to Nest. All signals are clear. You are approximately three kilometers from the western edge of the complex. Proceed to observation point Alpha."
"Roger that, Oracle," Gryphon responded. He signaled, and the team began to move, melting into the jungle's darkness.
They moved in an arrow formation, with Kael near the front, just behind the point man. His experience with biological threats made him a living early warning system.
And that system was screaming.
This jungle was too... quiet.
Yes, there were insects. But there were no night birds. No distant calls of monkeys. No rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth. All the background noise of a healthy rainforest was gone.
There was only the drone of insects and the sound of their own footsteps.
This is a bad sign, Kael thought. A sign of an apex predator dominating the area. Something that has silenced all other life out of fear.
He raised his hand, signaling the team to halt.
"What is it, Spectre?" Gryphon asked.
"The silence," Kael replied over the comms. "Something's not right. It feels... like the calm before a storm."
Gryphon didn't argue. He trusted the instincts of his seasoned soldiers. "Everyone, high alert. Safeties off."
The soft CLICKS of seven safeties being disengaged seemed abnormally loud in the oppressive silence.
The real hunt had begun.
They moved slower, more carefully. Every broken twig, every rustling leaf could be a threat.
After about a kilometer, a thick, putrid smell assaulted their nostrils. The smell of decay. Of meat exposed to the humid heat.
Gryphon signaled for the team to spread out, forming a security perimeter while he and Kael moved forward to investigate.
They found the source of the smell in a small clearing. The sight made even a hardened soldier like Kael pause.
It was an African forest elephant. Or what was left of it.
The massive animal lay on its side, one flank completely torn open, revealing a ribcage and internal organs that had begun to rot. This was not the work of ivory poachers. Its tusks were still intact.
Kael knelt, his night vision goggles analyzing the scene.
"No bullet wounds," he murmured. "No signs of a trap."
He pointed to the gashes on the elephant's thick hide. "Look at this. These cuts are too deep and too clean. Like it was slashed by massive blades. And these bite marks..."
He shined a small laser onto a huge bite mark on the elephant's shoulder bone. It was semi-circular, with deep, evenly spaced puncture holes.
"This jaw is bigger than a saltwater crocodile's. The bite force would have to be astronomical to get through this hide and bone."
Gryphon let out a low whistle. "So those 'large bio-signatures' Oracle mentioned are real."
"Realer than real," Kael said, standing up. He looked at the mud around the carcass. "No clear footprints. Whatever did this, it moves lightly for its size. Or... it doesn't walk on the ground."
He looked up at the dense canopy above. An arboreal predator? A monster big enough to kill an elephant but able to move through the branches?
The thought was both absurd and terrifying.
"Spectre, Gryphon, we have movement," the voice of Jotun, the team's sniper, came through. "Northeast. Multiple targets. Moving toward the complex."
"Roger," Gryphon replied. "We're falling back. Rejoin the formation."
As they backed away into the darkness, Kael glanced back at the elephant carcass one last time. He wasn't just fighting mercenaries and corrupt agents. He was walking into a warped ecosystem, an open-air laboratory where nature's worst nightmares had been given new fangs and claws.
The Hummingbird team reached observation point Alpha, a high, tree-covered rock outcropping that looked directly down on the western edge of the mining complex.
The place was much larger than the satellite images suggested. Barbed-wire fences were reinforced with scrap metal plates and makeshift watchtowers. Powerful searchlights swept the open ground between the fence and the tree line.
And there were guards. Lots of them.
They weren't raggedy guerillas. They were well-equipped. Body armor, helmets, modern assault rifles. Like a small private army.
"The Broker has upgraded them," Gryphon whispered over the comms.
But that wasn't the most disturbing part.
Accompanying the patrols were creatures that had no right to exist.
They had the basic shape of a large dog, like a Doberman or Rottweiler, but that's where the similarity ended. Their skin was hairless, covered in a layer of grayish-green scales, like a reptile's. Their muzzles were long and narrow, filled with needle-sharp teeth. And their eyes... their eyes glowed with a faint amber light in the darkness.
A Cerberus variant, Kael recognized. But spliced with reptilian genes for added protection. Fast and armored.
"Scaly-hounds," one of the team members muttered. "Fantastic."
These "Scaly-hounds" walked alongside the guards, held by thick chains. They sniffed the air, their forked tongues flicking in and out.
A patrol was walking along the fence line, directly below their position. Two soldiers and a Scaly-hound.
Suddenly, Kael saw her.
Walking out of one of the main buildings was Ingrid Hunnigan. She was no longer in her BSAA uniform, but in a black tactical outfit similar to the Hummingbird team's. She was talking to a tall African man in the uniform of the MLF. Their commander, no doubt.
"Oracle, we have target confirmation," Gryphon reported. "Hunnigan is on site. Looks like she's overseeing the transfer."
"Roger that, Gryphon. Begin phase two. Find an insertion point and plant the surveillance devices."
But just then, the Scaly-hound in the patrol below came to an abrupt stop.
It lifted its head, its long snout pointing directly at the rocky outcrop where the Hummingbird team was hidden.
It growled, a low, menacing sound that rumbled deep in its chest. The scales on its neck bristled.
The two soldiers stopped, looking at their dog. "What is it, Rudo?" one asked in French.
The dog didn't answer. It just stared into the darkness where Kael and the others were holding their breath. Its amber eyes seemed to pierce the night, through the bushes, and lock right onto them.
It took a deep breath.
And then, it began to bark. A frantic, echoing series of barks that alerted the entire complex.
They had been made.