Blood, thick and cold, splattered onto the ceiling and Jaeger’s face as the boom of his pistol echoed throughout the tunnels. For a moment, the creature’s body held in place, still fighting for control of the weapon piercing its head, and then it fell, a puppet cut from its strings, atop him. Pushing the creature off of him, he stood and turned as a hand fell on his shoulder. It was Milo, but he could barely hear the man; the whine of his eardrums healing masked some of his words.

  “Karl’s dead, … are necrotic; … chest is gone.” He said, pointing at the body. “Grab his tags… are others, the fighting will have alerted them.”

  Nodding as his hearing finally came back, Jaeger moved to the scout’s body as Milo turned to the fallen creature; each inspecting their respective bodies.

  Crouched over Karl, Jaeger gave a silent prayer, collected his tags, and then checked him for anything he could use, coming up with his medical supplies and the wicked trench knife he’d taken earlier. The trench knife was wicked and deadlier than his, so he sheathed it across his chest and shuffled the supplies across his various pouches. Reloading his pistol, he moved back to Milo, who was poking the face of the dead thing with his bayonet.

  “This thing isn’t carrying anything identifiable but these tattoos. They belong to a Lowrian navy man, the kind of guy who’d be in command of a ship, not fighting in the trenches.”

  Jaeger simply raised a brow in response.

  “One of my suppliers is a smuggler; he’s got tattoos like this.” He poked the face a few more times as he spoke. “Makes no sense, though. This thing isn’t gonna pass as human, let alone a Lowrian, it’s an abomination.”

  Spitting after the last word, he gave the bloody head a final hard stab, which seemed to kick-start something. Because before the duo’s eyes, the skin shifted, stretched, vibrated, and adjusted until it was a perfect fit on the skull. What had once been the corpse of an inhuman abomination was now the corpse of a Lowrian sailor.

  “By the Sacred Blood.”

  “Well, we know what the secret weapon is. These shape-shifting monsters.” A flutter of a memory passed through Jaeger’s head. “Remember that corpse from earlier, the bloody one.”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  Jaeger moved back to the bandages and moved them, revealing a pristine uniform, one belonging to the Lowrian navy. He then gestured towards the bloody bandages and towards the uniform underneath them.

  “When we went over the bloody body, I smelled an excess of salt and citrus. At the time, I didn’t know much about it, but if he’s navy…”

  “The salty bastards live off citrus fruits and salted meats,” Milo said in a slow response. “What the fuck are you trying to say? This thing was transported from the ocean?”

  “Maybe the thing stole the skin of the navy man alongside his uniform. The rumors of a new secret weapon, what’s better than one that can take on the look of anyone?”

  Milo planted the butt of his bayonet in the ground and pondered on that.

  “Shit. As a Navy man, especially an officer, we’d have taken him prisoner, even on a raid like this. Command is always on the hunt for sea lanes and ways to hamper supplies. This thing would’ve been with an interrogator within the week.”

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  “And then, before one or more commanders inside of two. Assuming it can’t repeat its shape-shifting and take the form of someone else.”

  “We need to move then, find the others, and retreat. This raid was a trap.”

  Jaeger moved next to him, gave a grim nod, and placed a hand on his shoulder, reaching out to reassure his friend.

  “Just like in Hittenlo?”

  He received a dark laugh in return.

  “I think this might be a bit worse.”

  In a single swift action, Jaeger drew and stabbed his new trench knife into Milo’s neck. The thing masquerading as his friend reacted fast and shoved the pair apart, ripping itself free of the knife in the process and sending Jaeger stumbling back. Slapping a hand to its slow, black bleeding neck with a frown, it spoke in a wet, croaking, alien voice.

  “What gave me away?”

  “Hittenlo.” The blood pulse he’d sent through Milo’s body had, in fact, tipped him off when he’d reached out to reassure his friend; the man’s blood hadn’t reacted in the slightest.

  “From this one’s memories, you two did in fact survive a trapped raid in Hittenlo.”

  “One caused by inside traitors.” A lack of reaction could only mean one of two things: Milo was dead, or this wasn’t him. Considering it talked and moved, it was alive but not his friend.

  “Oh well. I shall simply have to try again.” An eerie smile replaced its smile as it sized Jaeger up. “This time with your body.”

  It lunged forward, jabbing out with its bayonet. Jaeger two-handed his trench knife and managed to knock the bayonet’s point away. The being’s momentum was great, and it kept going past him. Taking advantage, he stabbed down, aiming to stack it like a blood fiend and lodged the blade deep into its back, near, if not directly through, its heart. It continued past him, yanking the knife from his hands, and stumbling to the ground, and for a moment, he hoped he’d managed to kill it.

  “Unfortunate.” That same creaky voice droned out, and before his eyes, he watched as Milo’s arm snapped.

  It bent in ways an arm shouldn’t, groping for the knife. Once it located the handle, it swiftly gripped the knife and pulled it free; a trail of black ooze connected it to the back. With the knife free, the body twitched and slowly rose back to its feet, like a puppet being lifted by its strings. Once its feet were firmly beneath it again, it turned to face Jaeger, its bent arm snapping back down with a wet and grisly crack. Its smile grew, and it slowly tore the skin from Milo’s face as it grew; with each space of ripped skin, more and more teeth were revealed, showing off more teeth than any creature should have.

  “So very close, dear friend.” It gurgled, tossing the trench knife in its hand. “But you should know that wouldn’t work; I showed you the right way.”

  It took the knife and cut a furrow across its forehead, then slowly drew the blade across its entire head, circling it before stopping back where it started.

  “The head or nothing. We are quite durable after all.”

  Jaeger wanted to yell at it, to tell it to eat shit and die, but knew that would do nothing. Instead, he took a breath and centered himself, letting go of his emotions and slipping into a familiar state of emotional detachment. He embraced that hunter side of himself and focused on only that. Every hunt started with knowing your prey.

  As he’d been regaining himself, it had kept cutting itself, leaving numerous black oozing wounds across Milo’s skin.

  “Now here, while not fatal, is debilitating; if you got a good length in, I’d be paralyzed. Or over here, this would rupture my current suit and make it difficult for me to wear another until I’d healed.” It tapped against its lower stomach and its upper chest area as it rambled.

  Why it was telling him its weaknesses was a mystery, but one he didn’t aim to fix. He didn’t know why it was still talking, but the fact that it was worth noting.

  Why it was still talking, let alone telling him its weaknesses, was a mystery, but not one he aimed to solve. As long as it was talking, it wasn’t attacking.

  “If you don’t speak, this isn’t a conversation, it’s just a lecture,” Not-Milo said, turning its focus on him.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why what? Why do I speak? Why do I live? Why do I wear your friend’s face and not yours? You must be more specific.” Its voice was losing its wet and gurgling tone; it was smoothing out into something more recognizable.

  “Why are we speaking?”

  “Because I have you at my mercy. The strong do what they like, and the weak endure what they must. I would like to converse, and you will or suffer.”