16:41 <tom> The projector lights up the briefing room. Rats in a terrarium, chewing on grain pellets. No sound. The video briefly pauses, highlighting the timestamp in the corner. 16:41 <tom> T equals seventy seconds after cell culture introduction. 16:41 <tom> One of the rats goes splat. The Lieutenant claps. 16:41 <tom> The other rats scatter, confused. It happens quickly now. Mercifully quick. 16:41 <tom> The scattered bits of flensed rodent wiggle. The ones closest, the ones in the splash seating- they're next to go. None of them have the time to be afraid. 16:42 <tom> By T=92 the view into the terrarium is blurry behind a thin pink coat of goo. 16:42 <tom> But there's movement. Bits of viscera on the interior wall start to coalesce like raindrops, leaving little trails of cleaned glass in their passing, growing, congealing. The growing pile of gore wiggles and turns over on itself, grabbing on, merging. 16:42 <tom> There's bits of bone and fur and teeth swimming on the thing's surface as it pulls together in the far corner of the glass box, where it gathers in a vile mess. 16:42 <tom> The odd ugly bits of rodent sink into the semi-translucent mass, and little flashes of electricity play inside the thing's interior as the remaining bones are dissolved seemingly into nothing, leaving a homogenous mass of red jello. 16:42 <tom> "Here's the really cool bit," snickers the Lieutenant. He skips forward. 16:42 <tom> There's movement in the frame outside the terrarium. An out-of-focus figure in what's pretty much a full-blown spacesuit is fiddling with an air lock on top of the box. 16:42 <tom> A jumble of batteries drops onto the terrarium floor, rolling away. The thing in the corner doesn't react at all, that is, until one of the slowly-rolling batteries bumps into it as it comes to a stop. 16:42 <tom> The creature flies into a frenzy, whipping out at the stimulus with appendages of twisted bone and sinew, lunging onto one, then another, fractal patterns of wet circuits spreading like mold onto and into the batteries as they're engulfed, in turn. 16:43 <tom> Veins crisscross the mass, gleaming metal under the wet coat of viscera. Shapes emerge from within, cylinders and cubes, coiled up with copper and aligning themselves on considered streets of organic circuitry sprouting from the pile of meat. 16:43 <tom> It seems to cool, twitching. The Lieutenant speeds up the video. The red pile wobbles, loses cohesion, spreads out as it turns opaque, cooling into a vaguely pancake-shaped chalky mass that crumbles on the edges. 16:43 <tom> The Lieutenant fast forwards again. A nozzle is inserted through the airlock and blasts the dust away. 16:43 <tom> The final half-minute is just a series of still shots showing the cleaned object at various angles; an incestuous tangle of golden circuits and interlaced capacitors sprouting from one another like a colony of fungi. 16:43 <tom> The insulation on the cables is made of fur, tightly woven. 16:43 <tom> The video ends, the briefing room goes dark. 16:43 <tom> "Do you copy?" 16:43 <tom> "Dagger Two, do you copy?" 16:43 <tom> The radio clicks on. "Dagger Two. Say again, Big Sky?" 16:44 <tom> "Air support is inbound, ETA Fifteen to Twenty. Can you sit tight till then?" 16:44 <tom> "Negative, Big Sky. Bravo says the target crashed the gate. I've got two minutes before it's on top of me." 16:44 <tom> There's a pause. The receiver blinks on. "HQ advises displace." 16:44 <tom> "...If it stays on the highway it'll be in downtown Boise in half an hour." 16:45 <tom> Click, Big Sky seems to hesitate before speaking. "Then it's ADAMSKI's problem." 16:45 <tom> "I can stop it." 16:45 <tom> "Negative, Dagger Two. Reaper is the designated heavy weapons team. HQ repeats you should displace." 16:46 <tom> "Your HQ. My orders are clear. Dagger Two out." 16:46 <tom> Bill tugs the radio on its elastic cord and lets it snap back into his vest. He rolls his shoulders and climbs out of the MRAP onto the asphalt. 16:46 <tom> Outside it's quiet and still. Barely any wind. There's no streetlights out here, and Boise's a distant glow on the western Horizon. There's dry thunder from the east, and Bill cranes his head to see if he can catch a glimpse. 16:46 <tom> The weather channel will be receiving another special dispatch from ADAMSKI in a few hours. Set the record straight. 16:46 <tom> No time to fuck around. 16:46 <tom> He pops the fuel tank and sucks the hose, sputtering, coughing back the awful black tar spitting from the siphon. He fills the empty bottle. Onto the next. And the next. 16:46 <tom> He's got a whole sixpack here. Bill wobbles. 16:46 <tom> The gas station was empty when he got here. They cleared out as soon as they got the tornado warning. He had time to crack one open and clean out their stock of slim jims while listening to Bravo's frustrated cries over the radio. 16:47 <tom> Click: "Dagger Two raising Bravo." 16:47 <tom> "Bravo, do you copy?" 16:47 <tom> "Bravo One here." The reply is terse. 16:47 <tom> "Did you get any hits in?" 16:47 <tom> "Came too fast. Abrams max out at sixty, but it was hauling ass like I've never seen." 16:47 <tom> "Shit." He's wrapping duct tape around the neck of the bottle. 16:47 <tom> "Wounded?" 16:47 <tom> "Negative. It ran through all its AP shells shredding our APCs but we're fine. If it's figured out the autoloader, that means it'll be onto the H.E." 16:47 <tom> "Don't fucking tell me it has a coaxial." 16:47 <tom> "Can't have much ammo left by now," Bravo One sighs. 16:48 <tom> Bill makes a strangled noise before clicking back on: "I'm gonna go for a mobility kill." 16:48 <tom> "...Any word from Dagger One?" 16:48 <tom> "Negative. Dagger Two out." 16:48 <tom> A pair of flickering eyes crest a rise far down the road. Bill makes for cover. 16:48 <tom> The MRAP fucking explodes, lifted and twisted by the force. The distant tank's turret wobbles with the recoil, sights in, and with a follow-up annihilates the abandoned checkpoint. Yep. It's onto the high explosive shells. The burning wreck of the MRAP slides down the embankment into the creek below with a splash. 16:48 <tom> ...It's quick, too. Nobody could compensate that fast. It must be making upgrades. Bill lies face down in a shallow culvert and strains his ears. The distant engine drones. Louder. Is the ground shaking? No, it's just him. 16:49 <tom> It has to slow down as it takes the turn, steel treads snarling as it leaps up onto the curb to pulverize the sidewalk into gravel. That's his cue. 16:49 <tom> He pulls the pin. 16:49 <tom> Bill leaps to his feet, colored smoke trailing from the grenade as it bounces off the tank's casemate. The turret's servomoters squeal, straining to swivel its monstrous cannon around to swat the annoying bug. It can't traverse fast enough to get a bead before being lost in the billowing smoke. 16:49 <tom> The gearbox cranks, shifts. Yes, yes! You dumb motherfucker! Bill tears the tape from the neck of the first bottle of churning fuel; the ad hoc fuze sparks to life in mid-air, disappears into the smoke. There's a crash like a window breaking. The cloud of smoke blooms bright and hot. "FUCK YOU DUDE!" He screams, giddy. 16:49 <tom> There's a sound from the smoke like a gigantic, belt-fed sewing machine. Faster and faster. 16:49 <tom> "SHIT!" 16:49 <tom> Bill hits the dirt, and the world around him explodes into noise as the coaxial machine gun stitches blind through the smoke, tearing up the turf all about him. 16:50 <tom> The still-smoldering tank grinds forward in low gear, wary, spitting withering suppressing fire on its abuser, backlit by the flames of the burning gas station. 16:50 <tom> He crawls, face down in the muck and litter and worse things you find in a roadside ditch by a rural Idaho gas station. 16:50 <tom> The tank dips its nose into the ditch where Bill had been moments before, crushing the muddy earth flat. It reverses, seems to inspect its work. The engine looses a frustrated squeal and the turret begins to turn. 16:50 <tom> Now or never. He rips the tape covering the molotov's fuze and launches himself up from the grass. 16:50 <tom> Bill vaults up the rear of the tank, clambering up over the rumbling exhaust vents to cling for dear life onto the bits and bobs of the moving the turret, safely behind the firing arcs of the coaxial machine gun and the long one-oh-five. 16:50 <tom> "Your move, shithead." He raps the hatch with the back of his hand, and is almost thrown from the turret as the engine roars into reverse and plows the tank backward into the burning wreckage of the gas station. 16:50 <tom> The turret's rotation follows through, swinging him around as it tries to crush the man and scrape him off on the burning rubble. For just a moment... there! The square vent just behind the turret, briefly visible as the squat metal casemate swings around. 16:50 <tom> Bill hurls the bottle onto it with as much force as he can muster before himself being thrown from the vehicle by the sudden seizing of the gears. 16:51 <tom> The flames leap toward the sucking intake. 16:51 <tom> The engine makes an awful noise, like a caged animal. 16:51 <tom> Bill bounces, and something breaks. He skids out on the ground, leaving a red streak as exposed skin meets the asphalt, and he's left in a little heap at the wheels of an overturned dumpster, grabbing his abraded forearm and doing his level best to squash the scream bubbling up his throat as the blood seeps up between his fingers. 16:51 <tom> The tank's gears seize again, and the remaining momentum carries the lumbering monster just short of crushing him before coming to a halt banked up atop a pile of broken brickwork. The engine gasps, shudders, dies. For a little while there's no sound but for the crackling of burning fuel oil leaking from a destroyed pump. 16:51 <tom> He tries to move, but the slightest movement sends a tidal wave of pain shooting up his leg and arm. Bill blacks out. 16:51 <tom> He's awoken an indeterminate time later by the pneumatic pop of a seal, like a giant can of jelly.. The hydraulic assist on the turret's hatch comes alive. 16:51 <tom> Bill can only watch, sweating, breathing hard as he tries to hold, literally, himself together. 16:51 <tom> It comes out like toothpaste. 16:51 <tom> The hatch extrudes a red cylinder of meat pate, undifferentiated, shaped and indented to match the contours of the narrow passage. 16:51 <tom> Limbs bearing veins of copper wiring unfold from the mass as they pass the narrow hatch and palm the casemate's exterior, probing, searching. Dozens of tongues taste the air. Borrowed eyes twitch and focus as it reviews the damage to its shell. 16:51 <tom> The Praecipitatus can go no further like this. 16:51 <tom> The arms push off from the turret, and the whole vile thing arcs off the side of the tank onto the pavement with a wet smack. It falls apart on impact, and the red jello erupts into a splash of gore as its segments tear themselves apart in wretched mitosis. 16:52 <tom> Creatures of twisted limbs and eyes and pulsating, naked circulatory systems scatter into the night. They flee from the spreading gasoline fire and, more importantly, the small woman kneeling over the bleeding hunter. 16:52 <tom> She pats his shoulder, throwing him into an agonized fit of coughing. 16:52 <tom> Sweetly: "Aw, does it hurt? Sorry." 16:52 <tom> "You're not her," he spits. "You stole that face." 16:52 <tom> "There wasn't much left to steal after you were done, kid." 16:52 <tom> "How do y-" Hannah puts her hand over his mouth, and her needlelike fingernails dig greedily into the skin, into his cheekbones, muffling his yelp. 16:52 <tom> "Even to the last second, she thought you wouldn't do it," she grins. "She really did." 16:52 <tom> Bill squeezes his eyes shut and tries to turn his head away, drawing only another cry as her talons dig into his face. 16:52 <tom> The thing in the shape of Specialist Hannah Schroeder just laughs, steps off him, and starts off down the road away from the fire and the quietly weeping man. 16:52 <tom> He wakes up, stumbles to the bathroom, throws up messily in the toilet. 16:52 <tom> "Guh." 16:53 <tom> Bob's already forgotten his dream as he wipes his dinner from his chin. "Fucking D-AMP," he mutters.