"That fancy laser toy and your crawly friends just weren't enough huh?"
Jurgen almost had a smirk on his face. He didn't emote much especially with taunts towards an enemy that for all he knew, wouldn't even understand him. It wasn't often one would hear this side of him speak over the joint channel but with the rapid change in fortunes, he supposed it could be excused. Command wouldn't have a line to him anyways and that cocky confidence was something people remembered. It wasn't an act but it could function like one.
His weapon spat again and he saw fragments of carapace tear off of the creature's shoulder, whatever cries it would have made buried by gunfire.
"Korofi, how are you holding up?" He replied as he sprinted, another group of troopers aiming down the corridors in case the retreating beast decided on a heroic final stand. He'd held up... decently as an FNG. Harsh as it sounded, he was probably going to have take a re-examination given how his recklessness had gotten him injured; recklessness that hadn't amounted to much in his eyes. Rafael had been forced to tend to him and Jurgen much would have preferred him putting more rounds into the scuttling monster's crabby features.
Doug? He hadn't had the time to formulate an opinion between loads of supprssing fire and nearly being torn open by an overgrown centipede. He'd found that damn Vlad a pain in the arse at first but hopefully he could be someone else's rectal agony soon. It seemed he could at least earn his right to be undisciplined. It seemed Lars at the very least was the other truly reliable one in his eyes, on top of having proved that perhaps a sniper rifle wasn't that bad of an idea in close quarters.
He was thinking too much and that creature was retreating too quickly. He thought it had begun crawling and it had. The thing is, it was crawling faster on all... 10? 12? That was a lot of legs but it was moving with the speed of a spring, leaving a broken trail of its own blood. Like a shark, Jurgen and the rest of the squad followed the creature not even bothering to retreat. The solid tiling gave way to carpeted ground, broken doors, collapsed furniture and the intermittent, fresh stains it left as it ran for its life.
There was something else he noticed on his HUD scans - a fresh current of air! They were nearing an exit of some sort out of this maze, back to the surface. It also meant that this bastard would be getting back to its friends.
Jurgen and the squad ploughed through a half-hanging door the beast had crept under, his foot stomping down on a splashing puddle of its fluids. Yet the trail of blood had stopped and as he swept around, he saw no creature. He did see however, something far more concerning. Not the sickly, unusual coloration of the creature's lifeblood but tattered, scarred, charred-black forms scattered amidst the wreckage of what was once probably a living room.
Two arms, two legs, a roughly round head, rib cages, skin and bone - that was all he could see of them.
He cut his radio feed, taking a moment to exhale long and slow, shoulders rising and falling.
A massacre had taken place and given from the burn wounds and lack of any visible weaponry or armor on the bodies and ground, the targets hadn't been armed.
Jurgen remained paused and huffing, his weapon hanging in one arm as his head turned, trying to scan for maybe the vague chance of someone huddled under a table or beneath a rubble pile.
All the while, the sound of debris rattling across a nearby street and the wind that carried it filtered in through the ceiling and the rubble pile below. No light poured through beyond a dismal white upon the withered remains of the less fortunate.
He figured that it had escaped through there. He also figured he knew what the blood was for; the same blood that was why they even ran into this building. They were too late; maybe by hours, a day even. These bodies didn't look very old.
