Lightning flared through the clouds the color of coagulated blood as the Blackhawks dipped low and the blades thumped like war drums back toward the mission they all signed up for.

  On the way back to Colón, the silver surf licked at the collapsed seawalls. The streetlamps flickered from an overtaxed electric grid. The jungle ridges rose through the mist, here and there.

  The pilot, Duncan, banked west away from the last twitching lights of civilization and into a stretch of land the maps labeled but nobody truly claimed except the forest itself.

  “Picking up heat signatures,” Duncan called back. His voice sounded scratchy through his headset. “There are three targets moving beneath us.” He paused. “I’ve never seen anything like it…they’re moving quick!”

  Cormac leaned toward Duncan. “Local militia?”

  “No. Too fast. Too smooth. They’re not using any trails. They’re cutting straight through the jungle like there’s a path. But guys, there’s nothing down there. We’re flying over wild jungle.”

  “Fleeting vampires?” Sawyer asked.

  “Couldn’t be,” Ashley said. “We’re fast but we’re not coordinated enough to run straight through the thickest parts of the jungle at any great speed.”

  Sawyer craned his neck. He couldn’t see anything. Only trees.

  “Wait…yeah…I lost them,” Duncan muttered. “They’re gone.”

  Colonel Bradford climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and inspected the readings. “Yep. There’s something down there. Do you guys want to continue to the drop zone or pick a new LZ?”

  Sawyer locked eyes with Ashley. She gave him a nod. So did Cormac.

  “We’re not turning back,” Sawyer said.

  “Copy that,” Duncan replied.

  The Blackhawk wheeled hard into a descent. A slum opened below them. Tarpaulin roofs fluttered. The tide surged through shattered foundations. Rebar curled up from the sand, stretching out from cracked concrete foundations. On the map it was called Playa Desesperación. It was a condemned quarter of Colón which used to house drug dealers, thieves, rapists, the worst kinds of people, until the Panamanian government raided the place, locked up some of them, and killed most of them on the spot. Locals claim it's haunted.

  The Blackhawk’s skids hit the sand with a crunch.

  Rotor wash blasted sand against the remnants of Playa Desesperación. It kicked up tarps, rattled tin roofs, and flung ash into the sky.

  Duncan’s voice crackled over comms, tight with unease. “Godspeed guys,” he said. “Call me for your next pickup.”

  Once everyone exited, Colonel Bradford peered out at them from the sliding cabin door. He gave them a respectful and curt salute, then slammed the door closed. The bird roared and lifted up and then banked into a cloud. The moment it vanished, the silence welcomed them. There were no barking dogs or shouts from the street vendors. There was only the crashing surf beyond the crumbling seawall, and there was the groan of warped metal in the salty gusts of wind.

  Sawyer’s boots crunched over what used to be a sidewalk. Cormac followed with his M4 raised. He swept the sector. Sawyer gripped his .45 while Ashley gloved her nickel plated Glock. Her eyes scanned the horizon like she expected the devil to rise out of the sand.

  Rotted wooden stilts jutted from the ground where homes once stood on platforms and were now collapsed. The jungle vines reached out and grew along the ground, wrapped around rebar and reclaiming what it originally owned.

  “Oh my God,” Cormac said, holding his nose. “Do you smell that?”

  There was something in the air. It was salt, ash, soot, maybe something worse? It almost smelled chemical, synthetic, like something sweet but also horrid like rotting fruit.

  Ashley’s voice came low. “Keep your weapons up. If there are vampires near, and I was wrong, this could be a hell of a fight. Aim for their heads.”

  A chunk of corrugated roof groaned nearby. A hanging wire swung lazily overhead and tapped an inharmonic rhythm against a pole. The surf seemed to quiet, which was disturbing since the sea never slept.

  No, it wasn’t that the sea had gone still, it was that the sounds of crashing waves which had been overshadowed by a new noise in the area. It was like it had been swallowed and replaced by a resonating hum. But then it transformed into a haunting high and low distortion of tonal change, which for a moment sounded like some awful backdrop to electronic music. It was off-tune. But in some places it sounded almost beautiful, but then it sounded off again, bending into something that irked Sawyer. It wasn’t a song. It wasn’t an animal. It was something else entirely. And it was headed right for them.

  It tore across the slum. It was inhuman, metallic and mechanoid. Any windows left standing shattered as it stomped toward them. A second one jumped from roof to roof, bending and buckling the tin with each step. The sand beneath their feet shook. A third one crashed through a shanty behind them, a geyser of sparks and debris, combined with that awful electronic singing.

  “Reapers!” Ashley shouted.

  There were three of them.

  Each Reaper was a towering atrocity of metal and bone. They stood nine feet tall and wore armored plates black as volcanic glass. Their skeletal frames were encased in mechanoid exosuits which hissed from the pistons and pulsed with tubes of luminous red blood inside of it. It pumped from their chest cavities and out toward their limbs in coiled bundles. They emitted a sound no man was meant to hear. It was a mechanical dirge that rose and fell like a funeral choir. It sounded like it was recorded backward. It wasn’t music exactly. It was closer to static. Were they speaking to each other? Their voices were layered and agonized, bent into a harmony which teetered on the edge of divine and demonic.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Their eyes flared red inside deep sockets like two burning coals which were sunk into their skulls. Their heads jerked too fast like marionettes possessed by something unseen. One of the Reapers turned. The moonlight layered atop the weapon in its hand. It was a two handed axe, a brute medieval weapon with a handle fused from bone and twisted steel. The silver glow of the edge of the blade confirmed it was razor sharp. While they were frightening to look at, even the wind seemed to blow harder and recoil in their presence.

  The first Reaper landed in the middle of the broken asphalt street and slammed down into a spray of ash and sand. It rose to its full height. A snarling sound emanated from its skull which held a visible anger in its lifeless eyes. Its piercing gaze locked onto Ashley.

  She raised her Glock and fired first. Two shots rang out, both aimed dead center. They hit but the bullets dinged off its armor and did not affect the mechanoid.

  The Reaper charged her.

  Ashley spun and sprinted into a partially collapsed shanty. She dove through a window just as the Reaper swung its axe and sheared off the wall behind her like a cleaver through bone. The shanty wall exploded into splinters.

  The second Reaper dropped behind Cormac. He barely had time to turn and sprint away when the Reaper’s hand snapped out, grabbed him by his plate carrier, and hurled him across the alley like a sack of meat. He hit a rusted truck door with a clang and tumbled to the ground, groaning.

  The third Reaper came for Sawyer.

  He raised his .45 and fired two shots into its chest. The rounds sparked and ricocheted. One clipped its knee joint. There were sparks and hydraulic fluid sprayed across the sand. The Reaper staggered, but didn’t fall.

  It shrieked, surged forward, and swung its axe.

  Sawyer ducked. The blade cleaved a steel pole in half beside him. He rolled, came up, then fired three more rounds into its joint. It sparked.

  The Reaper turned, found Sawyer, and launched itself again.

  It raised its bony hand and backhanded him hard.

  Sawyer flew through the air and collided with a concrete so hard his shoulder dislocated with a crunch. White hot paint shot through his torso. He screamed, then dropped his pistol. Blood ran down his arm.

  “Cormac!” he shouted, coughing and spitting dirt.

  Through the gap in the wall, he saw Cromac crawling across the sand, dazed, with blood streaming from his scalp. The second Reaper stalked toward him from behind, looking down at him through those burning red coals. The screams from its body, the mechanical choir, grew louder as it approached its prey.

  Cormac turned and raised his M4 with trembling arms. He dumped a full magazine, fully automatic.

  Bullets peppered the Reaper. It flinched.

  The Reaper raised its axe and snarled.

  Sawyer grabbed a rebar spike from the rubble and charged. He used his vampiric fleet to gain incredible acceleration. Teeth bared, he plunged the rebar into the Reaper’s damaged leg joint.

  The rebar sank deep and sparks exploded from the joint.

  The Reaper screamed. Its speaker system erupted with a distorted laugh. And yet, the laugh wasn’t mechanical. It sounded prerecorded. Sawyer then realized he had heard that laugh back at the Gamboa Luxury Rainforest Reserve. It was the laugh of a monster he would never forget: Harland Morrow.

  “Still breathing, are we?” came Harland Morrow’s voice from a speaker embedded in the Reaper.

  Ashley reappeared atop a rusted balcony. She held her pistol and fired six shots in rapid succession. They pounded against the Reaper’s armor and chipped some of its skeletal face, but was ultimately ineffective. However, it gave the Reaper enough pause to miscalculate its swing, causing it to sink its blade deep into the sand, just missing Cormac who reloaded a fresh magazine.

  “We need to go!” Ashley shouted.

  Sawyer reloaded his pistol magazine with one hand, aimed, and fired slow calculated shots at the Reaper’s arm joint as it raised its axe again. One of the bullets hit something vital, because its arm snapped and its axe fell. As if lifeless, the Reaper froze in place. Its burning eyes found Sawyer.

  It wasn’t dead, but it was hurt.

  One by one, all three of the Reapers launched up into the air at a wide arc. They must have jumped a height of fifty feet with each bound. In a matter of seconds, Sawyer heard the crunching of leaves and branches in the distance. That sound repeated and stretched further and further away from them.

  Once the silence settled, Sawyer knew they were alone.

  Cormac was shaking. Ashley put a hand on his back and then helped him up. Sawyer pulled himself out of the rubble and reloaded his .45 with his last magazine.

  “Come on,” Ashley said. “We’re not safe here.”

  “What the hell were those things?” Cormac hissed, still bleeding from the scalp.

  Sawyer limped over to him.

  “Reapers,” Ashley said. “They are with Harland’s cult. They are part of a unit called the Black Choir. I’ve never seen them in person, only heard rumors.”

  “Why didn’t they kill us?” Cormac asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sawyer said.

  “Fear,” Ashley said. “Their primary purpose is fear. Harland is trying to scare us out of Panama without attracting more heat. He has to know we’re heavily involved at this point. Think about it, if he scares us out then that sends a message to other task forces in the area. He doesn’t know how deep our rabbit hole goes. He probably thinks we’re more connected than we are.”

  “Still doesn’t make sense,” Sawyer said. “Killing us would have sent a pretty clear message.”

  “Harland’s logic is that of a monster,” Ashley said. “Harland has a particular kind of hate inside of his heart that distorts any ordinary human rationale.”

  “We can’t let this slow us down,” Cormac said. “He’s clearly getting angrier. If we kick down enough doors, we’ll find him and we’ll discover the truth.”

  “You’re right, brother,” Sawyer said, wrapping his hand around Cormac’s waist to help him stand.

  Ashley pointed toward the jungle. “We can go to my safehouse. It’s two clicks east. I was only going to use it in case of an emergency.” She motioned to their surroundings. “I’d call this an emergency.”

  Sawyer popped his shoulder back into place with a wet crack and a groan. “Let’s go.”

  Together, although broken and bleeding, they fled toward Ashley’s safehouse deep in the jungle as a storm gathered above them. Harland was out there, somewhere, and he was watching them.