Page 4 of Shadow Boxed (Shadow Warriors #2)

Chapter three

After a momentary hesitation, O’Neill finally asked the question that was on all their minds. “What the hell are we looking at? Zombies?”

He cringed as the question hit the air. Zombies for Hee-nes sake. But what else were they supposed to call the damn things? An entire science fiction industry had already identified what undead humans were supposed to be called.

“Perhaps.” Wolf frowned and quietly added. “They cannot be alive.”

“No shit Sherlock,” Aiden muttered, his gaze skipping from zombified squid to zombified squid.

O’Neill took a deep breath and focused on slowing his heart rate. For a while there, the damn thing had tried to thump its way out of his chest and make a run for it. He was just happy he hadn’t shit himself when those fucking wasps had disappeared into the glass.

“They do not breathe,” Wolf observed, as though explaining his they cannot be alive comment.

“They’re standing...moving...maybe we need to reexamine what alive means.” O’Neill studied the creatures across from him and suppressed a shutter.

“I believe the definition of alive includes breathing and a pulse.” Aiden took a step back from the glass, then paused to roll his shoulders and crack his neck. “Neither of which these things have.”

“We vented the oxygen from the room,” Wolf continued, apparently still stuck on their lack of breathing.

It seemed like an odd thing to focus on. The fucking things were dead. Of course they wouldn’t be breathing.

“Lack of oxygen doesn’t seem to affect them.” O’Neill watched the five former squids simultaneously tilt their heads to the left, like they were fucking birds or something. O’Neill took a long step back. That simultaneous head tilt was strange as hell.

He forced himself to focus past his instinctive sense of wrongness.

The way they tilted their heads reminded him of the raptors from Jurassic Park.

Not that the dinosaurs in the movie had been real…

but then neither were zombies. Yet here they were, five of the undead staring at him through the glass.

Unreal.

“You boys notice how they move in unison? Like they’re synchronized or some shit?” O’Neill’s frown intensified.

“Not Squirrel.” Aiden glanced over, his gaze dark and narrow. And spooked. So fucking spooked. “Squirrel came over first. Opened his mouth first too.”

O’Neill flinched at the thought of that horrific swarm of wasps. “Well, they’re all lined up and moving in unison now, like a team of good little soldiers.”

Wolf stirred. “Your warrior brothers, after infection, they became violent. Is this not so?”

“Yeah.” Aiden responded with a slow nod of his head. “Paranoid too. Even hallucinating.”

“They exhibit none of those symptoms now.” Wolf mirrored Aiden’s hand-to-neck massage. “They make no attempt to harm each other.”

“The bots could have eaten that part of their brains. Or...perhaps...the rifle blasts destroyed the hemispheres that controls violent behavior,” Aiden finally offered, although the confusion that flickered across his face showed he was clueless about this change in their conduct.

“The real question is how they are even...mobile?”

Good question.

O’Neill shoved a hand through his hair and tried to ignore the grisly sight before him.

“If the technology used to create the nanobot weapon was based on medical nanotechnology, then the bots must have the information necessary to repair the human body.” He stared at the fragile white spider webbing in several of the squids’ empty eye sockets.

“But whatever they’re using to repair the bullet wounds doesn’t look like human flesh. ”

“No. It does not.” A shudder rolled down Wolf’s spine.

O’Neill closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, he prayed the dead squids would be stretched out across their gurneys again, as the dead were supposed to be.

But...no such luck.

He grimaced and looked away. “There must be a reason they’ve come back to life...or at least this approximation of life. Have either of you tried to communicate with them?”

“We have not.” With a slow turn of his head, Wolf looked at Aiden. “You knew them...perhaps they will respond to you.”

From the rigidity that gripped Aiden’s body, communicating with his dead teammates was the last thing he wanted to do. “What if using the speaker system gives the nanobots an opportunity to escape?”

“Faith’s shield covers the speaker system. They cannot escape that room through such means.” Wolf sounded sure.

O’Neill wanted to believe that. He really did. But nanobots were microscopic; he wasn’t nearly as certain as Wolf that there wasn’t some gap or weakness in Faith’s shield that would allow the little bastards to sneak out of their prison.

Neither, apparently, was Aiden. The dude’s shoulders bunched as he eased up to the window and reached for the comm button.

“Squirrel?” His voice tight, he held the button down with his index finger, but kept his arm stretched out. “Buddy, can you hear me?”

All five of the things on the other side of the glass stared back. Their silence increased the tension tenfold.

“Squirrel? Grub? Lurch...?’ Aiden’s voice trailed off.

No reaction.

“Squirrel.” Aiden’s voice steadied and sharpened. “Sitrep.”

Nothing.

Aiden let go of the speaker button and stepped back. He looked almost relieved. Talking to his dead teammates must not be on his to-do list for the day.

“All five of them took rifle blasts to the face. Their tongues, jaws, hell the entire interior of their mouths are probably missing. I doubt they’re capable of speech,” Aiden finally said.

His brow furrowed. After hesitation, he stepped up to the glass and gave the pane three quick raps, paused, then followed the first set of taps with three longer ones followed by another series of short knocks.

O’Neill recognized the sequence. Three short…three long…three short…morse code for SOS.

All five of the corpses tilted their heads to the left and lifted their arms, trying to press their hands against the window. Dumbfounded, O’Neill watched their hands disappear up to the wrists.

“What the fuck!” Aiden whispered with a hard step back.

“Faith’s shield is preventing them from touching the glass…” Wolf’s comment came out hoarse and weak.

O’Neill flinched. Wrists with no hands. It looked like a fucking carnival act in there.

Fuck, the freak level just kept climbing.

“If Faith’s shield is preventing them from touching the glass, that could be why they aren’t replying to the SOS,” Aiden said.

O’Neill shook his head, his gaze never budging from the dead squids. They hadn’t changed positions. Hadn’t pulled their hands back. They were just standing there, like they were waiting. “If they wanted to respond, they could use the table surfaces rather than the window.”

“That’s assuming they have enough brains left to allow reasoning. With the amount of damage to their faces and skulls…” Aiden frowned, breaking off to massage the back of his neck with white-knuckled fingers.

True. O’Neill frowned. They had no idea whether these things were aware, intelligent, or capable of reasoning. And there was no way to find out, until they found a way to communicate with them.

Wolf made a thoughtful humming sound. “Benioko said the Shadow Warrior showed him a new future. One where Hokalita is swallowed by a new people. He said they were a people unlike any we’ve seen before.

That they were dead, yet not dead. Connected by thought as one mind, like our sisters the ants and bees. ”

“Dead yet not dead.” O’Neill repeated. “A fitting description for those things behind the glass.” He paused, watching the zombified squids pull their hands back. Again, in unison, as though they were connected. “Like the bees and the ants…that sounds like a hive mind.”

“Which would explain the synchronicity.” Aiden added thoughtfully.

True, although what that indicated was anyone’s guess.

“We better find out what’s going on at the lab.” Aiden turned toward Wolf. “Those vibrations your lab tech mentioned must be connected to…” He waved a tense hand toward the window. “This.”

“What’s going on at the lab?” O’Neill asked.

“The tank full of the nanobots you retrieved from Kuznetsov started vibrating.” Aiden’s gaze narrowed as he stared through the glass. “My gut says the vibrations are connected to what’s happening here.”

O’Neill frowned over that. Yeah, such a coincidence was unlikely. But how the fuck were the two linked?

Silence fell while Wolf talked quietly on the phone.

“Faith says the tank is still vibrating. She believes the vibrations are coming from the nanobots, which are clustered in a ball. The tank sensors are picking up electrical surges. However, the purpose behind the vibrations and the electrical surges is unknown.”

“Your shaman seems to know what’s going on.” Aiden turned away from the isolation chamber. “We need to speak with him again.”

Again?

O’Neill glanced at Wolf, who was on his phone, arranging a security detail to monitor the isolation chamber. O’Neill almost asked him what security could do if the damn things got out.

How did you kill the already dead?