Earthfall: Retribution Read Online Free PDF

Voidborn – this was different, more like a nagging sense that there was something they’d missed.
    Sam shivered. The temperature in the lobby couldn’t have been much above freezing and the wind was beginning to blow in through the front doors, bringing with it flurries of fresh snow. He huddled up inside his heavy coat and tried to focus on what they still had to do. The vague sense of excitement that he had felt earlier at finally being back in action had gone, replaced by a feeling that he had not wanted to experience ever again. The feeling that they were being hunted.

    Sam heard the familiar high-pitched whine as his night-vision goggles activated, illuminating the darkened street outside the hotel in shades of green. They had watched and waited all day, but there had been no sign of life, human or otherwise.
    ‘OK, let’s go,’ Sam said, heading out of the door and into the street. The wind had dropped but the fresh snowfall had already blown into thick drifts that concealed all sorts of obstacles, and at times the four of them were slowed to a crawl. As they made their way closer to the centre, the buildings around them grew taller, their looming shapes making the ice-bound streets feel almost like valleys in some high mountain range.
    A few minutes later Rachel held a clenched fist aloft and the others quickly spread out across the street, taking up cover positions as she pulled a map from her coat pocket.
    ‘OK, we’re at the west end of Princes Street,’ Rachel said as she looked up from the map at the surrounding buildings. ‘There’s no mistaking that thing.’ In the distance, just visible atop its ancient volcanic crag, outlined against the night sky, was the imposing shape of Edinburgh Castle.
    ‘There’s nothing here, man,’ Jay said, shaking his head.
    ‘Even if there was, we’d never find it buried under all this snow,’ Jack said with a sigh.
    ‘We’ve got a few more hours before we need to head back to the pick-up point,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s take advantage of the time we’ve got and make sure that we don’t miss anything. If there are other people awake here, we have to try to find them. At least we haven’t run into any Voidborn yet.’
    ‘Starting to wish that we would,’ Jay said, scanning their surroundings. ‘Never thought I’d say that.’
    ‘Let’s work our way up to the castle and then head back out of the centre,’ Sam said. ‘We need to be out of here before it starts to get light.’
    The others fell into line behind him as he walked slowly down the broad road that had once been the busiest street in the city. The abandoned cars were barely visible beneath the snow drifts. The tattered shopfronts looked like cave entrances, their frozen interiors hidden in blackness that even night-vision systems struggled to penetrate. The wind was starting to pick up again and what had once been a persistent but gentle snowfall rapidly transformed into swirling eddies of ice that stung any exposed skin they found. Sam flexed the fingers of his left hand, trying to convince his numb fingers that they wanted to maintain their grip on his rifle. His other, less human hand felt perfectly warm, but then he supposed that now it always would, whatever the conditions.
    Sam was peering into the increasingly dense cloud of snow that lay ahead of them, when a hideous, unearthly howl came from nearby. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, somewhere between agony and terror, and it made his gut tense in pure, instinctive fear.
    ‘What the hell was that?’ Rachel whispered as the four of them sought cover behind the snow-covered vehicles.
    ‘Nothing good,’ Jay said, his head snapping from side to side as he strained to spot any sign of movement in the rapidly developing blizzard. Another screeching howl came from a different direction, off to their right and then was answered in turn by another somewhere behind them. The hairs on the back of Sam’s neck prickled as he felt a