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                Privates Tremaine and Gill ran over from a second Pave Hawk, giving the Okay hand-signal. Their personal radios were as vulnerable to the facility’s jamming hardware as everything else. The C-Guards had directional antenna to reduce friendly jamming inside the Complex, but at best their radios would be unreliable.
    Team assembled, Coleman led Third Unit towards the main entrance.
                His goal was clear. Third Unit would enter the habitation level via the front entrance, secure the central administration hub, and then sit tight while the weapons inspectors completed their investigation. The inspectors would enter once the labs were secured. The rest of the facility would be encouraged to function as normal.
                Across the roof, four other FAST units reached their designated entry points.
                Coleman’s was the only team not accessing the facility via the elevator plant rooms. Instead, ahead, a four meter high cement hump curved around the large helicopter pad and framed the main entrance.
                Two sliding glass doors nestled right in the center of the hump.
                Coleman reached the automatic doors.
                The doors parted and released a cool wave of air-conditioned air.
                Third Unit jogged through in tight single file formation, passing an unmanned security foyer and continuing down the wide flight of stairs to the open habitation level.
                Coleman knew what to expect at the bottom. The habitation level’s layout resembled a big square wheel. In the middle sat the administration hub. Surrounding the hub was the pedestrian loop – mostly open space. Enclosing the pedestrian loop, the outer walls functioned like a shopping plaza dotted with services and amenities. The simple design gave residents plenty of free space.
                Coleman reached the bottom of the stairs.
                He stopped and stared, absorbing the bloody pandemonium unfolding before him.
                ‘Holy crap,’ he breathed. His sense of reality derailed at very high speed. What he was seeing couldn’t be real, but judging by the Marines’ stunned swearing behind him, he knew they witnessed the same spectacle.
                What in the name of all things holy?
                It was like a scene from a horror movie.
                The creatures chasing and eating people looked the size of lions.
                Each creature possessed a mass of tentacles like a dozen thrashing anacondas. A large tapered head sprouted from this tentacle nest. When the creatures caught a victim, the head blossomed open, revealing a mouth wide enough to swallow a wild boar. Concentric rows of inward-pointing teeth lined this crimson cavity.
                Like a Great White Shark, realized Coleman.
                Fleeing the creatures, the human content of the level emptied chaotically across the pedestrian loop towards its south-east corner, towards the evacuation tunnel entrance. Or at least they tried to. Many weren’t making it, and still more people were emerging from the western stairwell. The distance from the western stairwell to the evacuation tunnel measured at least four hundred meters. No refuge from the creatures existed in between. The loop’s only feature this side of the glass-walled administration hub were four large, leafy planter boxes.
    Essentially, the evacuees made their desperate escape across a four hundred meter long killing field. At least thirty creatures stood in their path. People were getting mauled. People were getting dragged. Coleman realized that every hump of thrashing limbs was somebody being torn apart. Only the sheer number of people weaving through the bedlam reduced casualties. Some creatures seemed unsure where to attack first and missed their