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Remembering my promise to myself, I don’t let my hands linger on his. His drop from my waist when mine do and I am thankful for that.
    We are coming up on the threshold of the metal d oors as four soldiers run past us, locking and loading their automatic rifles. The shooting begins immediately and sets our line in a dead sprint into what looks like a compound. The soldiers around us are visible now; black helmet, black fatigues head to toe. They push us further beyond the door and start pulling guns from holsters and loading rifles. One of the soldiers hands me his tactical shield, “Hold this!”
    I grab a hold of it just as he turns and starts shooting his rifle into the night. Monica, Jake, Siobhan, and the rest of the team rush the door with shields in their hands and try to seek additional shelter in this open area of the compound as the metal door begins to close. Outside, in the darkness, I see only the black of night against the assault of firearms as the soldiers shoot into the darkness at the Dwellers. I feel someone pulling me, trying to get me to move deeper into the compound, but I hold still. I need to see what they look like. Do they look the same as they did beyond the veil? Black orbs, slithering, slinking in to attack. Or, the way they looked in the video back at the facility moments before they took a vessel to dwell in or kill immediately. I feel my stomach lurch as I catch sight of one of them. The face…it is almost human, once human, now consumed. The eyes, they are black as night, no whites. The sockets are sunken with red-streaked veins jutting above the skin, spidering out toward the sharp skeletal cheekbones of the being. The movements they make; walking, running, they are unnatural, but quick, like something acting within the body that doesn’t know how to direct it in its normal capacity. The body jerks into a crouch, then jumps arms splayed out toward me. Thinking fast I swing the shield and send the Dweller soaring toward the doors. The body hits metal and collapses to the ground in front of the sealed doors. I blink just for a second and within that time, the Dweller is back on its feet staring at me. No one around me moves, Everyone freezes as this sole Dweller stands motionless. The soldiers’ guns are drawn awaiting its next move. As its chilling eyes meet mine, its taut mouth stretches into a rancid inhuman smile. The beastly being shakes its head from side to side slowly sending a chill straight to my core.
    “Ezra?”
    Ezra’s voice shakes as he responds to my call, “I see it.”
    The vessel’s mouth widens beyond the capacity that a human mouth could ever achieve. Paired with the brutal angle of the arched back and neck, the images from the files in Florida flood my mind again. A small puff of blackened smoke hovers above the vessel’s mouth. Slowly, the black mist grows tendrils that stretch and pull from the body. Seeing what I see, the soldiers release gunfire filling the compound with the echoing chaos of bullets zipping and the most savage scream I have ever heard. I drop to the ground, tucking my body, and covering my ears, but keeping my eyes fixed on the Dweller as the body it is trying to escape trembles from the force of the bullets.
    I have seen some disturbing sh...stuff. Seeing this malignant, evil, inhuman Dweller escaping from a human body to attempt saving itself, is now on the top of my growing list of disturbing stuff. My stomach twists and the humming within me spikes as I watch the inky snake-like tendrils reach up above the body and take shape into long, thin arms, oval shaped head, and the length of a torso.
    The soldiers continue raining bullets on the inky form as it completely separates from the human vessel and hovers in mid air, taking e ach bullet with no effect. The Dweller descends back to the ground, standing on the tendrils that have formed into legs.
    I only have one thought in my mind at the moment. It is going to charge me.
    I should run, but