The unexpected fire support was ferocious and precise! Tracers ripped through the dark like angry serpents, slamming into the Shade Stalkers and the purple mist.
Incendiary grenades exploded near the entities, engulfing a section of the corridor in searing flame and smoke!
Fire proved devastatingly effective!
The Stalkers shrieked mentally, their shadowy forms writhing and distorting violently in the flames, like signals under heavy jamming!
The wounded one was singled out; armour-piercing incendiary rounds slammed into its bleeding wound, triggering a minor detonation! Sputtering globs of dark purple energy-ichor sprayed, sizzling and eating holes into the walls!
"The Army?!" Alice gasped, scrambling towards the observation slit.
Jack, fighting pain, joined her. A tactical squad of about eight soldiers was engaged in a fierce firefight from cover near the stairwell.
They were heavily equipped in arctic warfare gear, full-face night-vision helmets, wielding standard-issue L85A3 rifles and light support weapons.
Their movements were crisp, coordinated – clearly elite. Behind them, figures lay wounded.
The leader, a burly soldier (sergeant's stripes visible), pinned down a flanking mantis-creature with precise fire while bellowing into his comms: "Bravo Team! Sitrep! Have you located target unit?! We're pinned! Need support!"
"Sergeant! Bravo here! Bogged down on fourth! Heavy contact with chitinous hostiles! Request—*AARGH*—!"
The comms erupted with gunfire and a cut-off scream.
The Sergeant swore viciously, his expression hardening.
He spotted the blasted hole in Jack's door and the weak light within (Alice's lamp). "Survivors! Or targets! Alpha Group! On me! Establish perimeter! Charlie Group! Suppressing fire! Burn us a bloody path! Use everything!"
The soldiers moved instantly.
One team used the chaos and smoke from the incendiaries, advancing towards Jack's door in textbook leapfrog formation.
The other team laid down a withering barrage, suppressing the enraged Shade Stalkers and the mantis creatures trying to close in.
The cost was brutal. One Shade Stalker ignored some bullets; a shadow-tendril lashed out like a viper, spearing a covering soldier through the chest!
The man didn't scream; his body visibly desiccated and froze in seconds, life force drained!
Another soldier in the assault group was bisected by a scythe-limb from a creature dropping from the ceiling, entrails and blood painting the icy walls!
"Ryan! Davies!" The Sergeant roared, grief and fury twisting his face as he blew out the offending mantis-creature's eyes.
He reached the blasted doorway, helmet scarred and frosted.
"Open up! Now! Army Special Operations! Seeking survivors and… specific objectives!" The Sergeant hammered on the steel, his voice hoarse, raw with the stench of blood and cordite.
Jack and Alice locked eyes. Hope? Or new peril? What did the Army know? "Specific objectives"? Him? The book?
Alice's gaze was complex. Opening meant potential rescue, but also exposing their sanctuary, revealing the book, and entangling them in the Army's unknown mission.
Keeping it shut meant these soldiers would likely die, and they'd lose their only chance at powerful allies.
"Open it!" Jack ground out. He needed intel, power, knowledge of the outside world. He gestured for Alice to help move the barricade.
The steel plate was shifted aside. The Sergeant rolled through the gap, bringing a wave of cordite, blood, and freezing air.
Two more battered soldiers scrambled in behind him, immediately turning to block the gap with their bodies and gear.
The Sergeant ripped off his damaged helmet, revealing a weathered face streaked with grime, blood, and sweat, perhaps forty, eyes hawk-sharp beneath deep exhaustion and lingering battle-fury.
He scanned the stockpiled fortress and the two survivors, his gaze lingering briefly on Alice (recognising the former TV scientist), finally settling on the pale, visibly weakened Jack.
"Sergeant Will Harper, 22nd Special Air Service," he panted, speaking fast. "You're secure… for now. What the hell *are* those things? And… Mr. Miller?"
His eyes fixed on Jack. "We have orders. Canary Wharf sector. Male, Jack Miller. Conducted large-scale, premeditated survival prep before the predicted apocalypse. Intel suggests he may possess critical intel. That you?"
Jack's heart lurched. The Army *had* noticed him! He took a breath, deflecting. "What is 'The Emptiness'? Where is the 'Void Watcher'?"
Sergeant Harper's eyes widened in shock! Those names were top-secret codewords! "How… how do you know that?! Who *are* you?!"
A colossal explosion rocked the building! The floor bucked!
The soldiers blocking the gap were thrown back, coughing blood! Smoke and streams of purple energy poured through the opening!
A roar, deeper and more terrible than before – as if from the abyss itself – shook the air!
The immense, twisted silhouette of a **giant Shade Stalker**, seemingly woven from countless wailing souls, materialised at the shattered corridor's end!
Its aura of cold froze the very air!
"Alpha-class… They've got a leader!" a wounded soldier cried despairingly.
Harper's face went deathly pale. He looked at the monstrous entity, at his battered, bleeding men, then at Jack and Alice.
A brutal choice crystallised instantly: protect civilians (and potential intel sources), or complete the mission (likely costing everyone's life)?
He ripped a high-explosive grenade from his vest, thrusting it roughly but purposefully into Jack's hand. "Listen! No time! Basement! This building has an old, reinforced vault! Entrance behind the stairwell! Get her out! Survive! Find the answers!"
He pointed at Alice, then spun, bellowing at his remaining men: "Alpha Group! Final mags! Cover civilian extraction! For London!"
"Sarge!" the soldiers roared back, eyes filled with grim resolve.
Harper's final look at Jack was complex – duty, responsibility, a flicker of desperate hope for answers. "Survive! Tell London… we stood!"
With that, he slammed a bayonet onto his empty rifle and charged through the breach like a warrior of old, straight into the crushing shadow of the giant Stalker and the tide of shrieking horrors!
His form vanished instantly into the purple mist and erupting flames.
"Sergeant!" Alice sobbed.
Jack's heart felt hammered. He stared at the cold grenade in his hand, then at the hellscape outside where Harper had vanished.
The soldier's sacrifice burned into his soul like a brand. He hauled the near-collapsing Alice to her feet, a fire igniting in his eyes – grief, rage, and desperate survival.
"Move!" he snarled, forcing his last wisp of Qi into his exhausted limbs, dragging Alice towards the subterranean vault Sergeant Harper had died pointing to.
Behind them: the soldiers' final defiance, deafening blasts, monster roars, and the blood-soaked promise of an SAS Sergeant.
Amidst the scattered debris, a single, minute fragment of the shattered glyph, bearing a dark crimson hue, spiralled down unnoticed and settled onto a page of Alice's fallen notebook.
Upon touching the paper, it emitted a whisper of crimson light, almost too faint to see.