“The bastard took eight men out! Craziest thing I ever heard of out there…I’m sure glad I wasn’t on patrol. They managed to sedate it but rumor is they still don’t know how to kill it. They’re holding it now in the maximum security cell, basement level. Cheers to the assholes who get guard duty tonight!”

And with that, I finally started to worry about the thing they were calling the Saint. Of course I always worried, as any of the other grunts would tell you. So I decided not to worry that I was worried. The spaghetti wasn’t so good today, but still better than the meatloaf. I hate meatloaf.

“I hate meatloaf! Thank god for these noodles,” Todd chimed.

Todd was my best friend here. We hung out a lot, pretty much agreed on everything, and he was the only one who didn’t make fun of me worrying all the time. Todd was all right in my book.

Mike, on the other hand, was a real tool. He was that guy who acted like he was doing you a favor by being in your presence. A jock in high school, a chick magnet in college, a schmuck since birth.

“Oh Toddy, your mother always cook you spaghetti? Awwww, he misses mommy!”

“Shut up Mike.”

“Oh Toddy-Todd needs his nap!”

Mike laughed himself up to the line for seconds. He always ate like he was in a fine restaurant here, but I never saw how he kept it down. I had finally decided he just ate the food to look good to the superiors, like he loved everything about being here. To our boss, he was a regular saint.

Oh yeah, the Saint. It had occurred to me earlier to ask why they called it that. The reason was the thing had a massive amount of force in its attack, but a particular and deadly accuracy as well. All the men who died were only struck once, head trauma. The damage was where the spine met the base of the skull. This was known to cause the eyes of the victim, normally still conscious for a few minutes, to blacken quickly while their ears bled a mix of blood and spinal fluid. The mix of those fluids is known as the halo effect, hence the Saint.

“I sure hope we don’t end up on guard duty tonight.”

Todd just nodded. The nod cued the intercom.

“Evening guard duty tonight from the hours of 2200 to 0600 will be manned by Perez, Manning, and Woodson.”

Mike Woodson, Todd Manning, and myself. Todd just looked at me as if to say, not my fault! Mike chuckled nervously somewhere by the food, keeping up macho appearances, although not so well. And it was 2157. Three minutes to report and relieve the previous guards.

We collected our things, Mike jamming the last of his food down his throat. We went down five floors of stairs and through a dark hallway, past a checkpoint, past a second checkpoint, through an airtight chamber, and through a final checkpoint. We equipped our gear in the small storage room before taking the elevator down to the cell. I stared up at the hoop-shaped light of the elevator ceiling, thinking about how deep we were going. No one really knew for sure, but the ride felt like fifty stories.

When we got there, the open area was extremely dark. They like to do that with prisoners in the lower cells. Keeping it dark makes it hard to know if it’s daytime, or what time it is at all. It disorients. Of course, no one really knew if it affected the Saint. The lone source of light, other than a faint blue glowing of floor bulbs around the wall and the circle of the elevator hoop, was the clock which switched from 2159 to 2200 just as we stepped off the elevator.

The previous team stepped by, mentioning that we should remember the power surge procedure because there had been a lot of surges today. We nodded. One of the passing guards leaned up and put a new battery in the clock on the wall, the last thing required of a team before exiting. Then they stepped into the elevator. The doors cut the ribbons of light, and we were alone.

“Well, I’m sure glad I get to be stuck down here with you two losers,” said Mike.

“Tough break, shit head.”

Todd was always quick to respond, but I normally kept my mouth shut. I was more concerned with remembering the power surge protocol. This state-of-the-art cell that could contain just about anything was worthless if power went out. You had to reactivate it. Electricity was under constant surveillance down here, but surges were unavoidable at this depth, especially considering this outpost was constructed at breakneck speed. Little quakes, too small for a man to feel, would disrupt the power for a split second, and the cell locks were no longer magnetically sealed. A kitten could force it open. I decided I would take responsibility for reactivation after a surge because Todd failed his Engineering exam and Mike was a dick.

“Too bad we don’t have any booze.”

“Like being drunk is a good idea.”

“What, you worried the little monster here will step out and eat your inebriated ass?”

“No, I’m worried our superiors will have us jailed when they see us on that camera up there.”

Mike just snickered. The camera mounted above the elevator door was a subject of hot debate. Most of us had decided that it was just there to make us think we were being watched since everyone knew that it would be impossible to actually see anything in the dark down here. There was a pool going on whether or not the security room for the camera was even manned. I personally thought it was, because worrying goes hand in hand with assuming your superiors do everything they can to keep an eye on you.

There was a whirring sound, and power flicked off. I went to work. Step one, pump the hand pump to get a charge. Step two, enter the five-digit pin. Step three, hit power on. Step four, manually check the door handle and pull to hear a click.

Click

“Well, you just take care of that for the night while I sit over here and dream about your momma, okay?”

Guys talked about sleeping on duty and never getting in trouble. This was part of the argument in favor of the camera being unmanned, or at least worthless.

“I can watch if you need some shut-eye?”

I told Todd I was fine for a while and would switch with him later, fully intending to let him sleep the whole thing away.

“Okay, just let me know.”

Todd started to nod off and Mike gave him a little push. He jumped awake, and then gave Mike a look of anger. Mike just giggled and then leaned himself against the wall to nap.

Whirring sound again. Step one, pump for a charge. Step two, pin. Step three power on. Step four check the handle. Check the handle. Where’s the handle?

Shit.

This is where your mind reverts back to that one class in basic that you always slept through. They told you what to do with the creatures you would encounter out on the frontier. I know I was awake that day! My life depends on me being awake that day.

I remembered. The creatures in this particular area are highly sensitive to motion. I freeze.

Mike whispered from somewhere “I’m still hungry.”

“You’re still an ass too.”

Todd laughed but stopped when he realized I was silent.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Then he realized it too. I was too afraid to make noise, but I very slowly rotated my head. Todd’s eyes were focusing in the dark all around him while sweat beaded on his forehead. Then he grew rigid. He remembered class too.

“What are you ladies babbling about?”

Something moved across the light of the clock, blocking it momentarily. Mike’s jaw dropped. Todd just shut his eyes. I tried to see where it was now, but I couldn’t make out a thing.

There was a swift, blunt sound. Something wet like a mist sprayed across my face. From the reflection of Mike’s metal buttons, I could see that he had collapsed. His head fell by the floor lights, and I could barely make out the black rings around his eyes and a pool of watery liquid slowly forming around his head. He twitched a bit, like he was shivering.

Todd’s eyes opened. He was shaking now, and he seemed to tell me he was going to make a break for the elevator. I looked a no back at him, but he was too scared to listen now. He ran.

He got to the doors. He opened the doors. He stepped into the elevator, and the light of it gave me a clear view of his death. The massive thing, like a huge upright bull made out of stone, swung its huge fist with speed that a cheetah would envy. Todd was knocked horizontally and fell lifelessly into the elevator. Strangely, my mind wondered how the heads of the victims stayed on. Frantically calculating the physics, looking for a reason, enough of me knew that this was pre-death escapism so it wasn’t working.

The doors closed, killing the light. The Saint had stayed in here with me. I remained absolutely still, trying not to breath. The thing stood motionless for a second, and then swung around, as if it suddenly realized I was here. How good was its night vision? Sense of smell? Hearing? Could it feel me breathing?

A story came back to me, one I’d heard from a friend of one of the survivors of the group that first caught the Saint. He said that the thing didn’t seem to take any joy in killing men, nor did it kill them like an animal might kill something in its territory. He said it was more like a machine simply carrying out the task that it was built for. Find a man and kill it, then find another and so on. And it never stopped.

Some time passed. I don’t know if it was seconds or hours. I was panicked, then suddenly calm, and then panicked again. I almost got angry with impatience when I found I was still standing. Finally, I saw its shape in front of the clock again, moving back towards me.

I didn’t bother raising my gun at it. It took a regiment to capture it before. I kept my eyes wide, trying to see in the dark. I listened for it breathing, smelled for it. And when none of this worked, I thought about maybe taking a bullet.

The elevator doors opened. My eyes adjusted slower than normal and the first thing I noticed was Todd’s blood still on the floor. But it didn’t take me long to see the fifteen men standing with rifles aimed directly at me. No, not me. A foot to my right, right in front of the open cell door, where the Saint stood, arm cocked, and eyes fixed on my skull.

I flinched. My life came down to this moment and I didn’t scream or cry or stand bravely and accept my fate. I flinched. The soldiers fired and the Saint fell back into the cell, dazed but unharmed in the least. I leapt to the door handle and threw it closed with all my might. It slammed seconds before the thing got back on its feet. There was hard beating against the door that slowly subsided as the sedatives took effect. I sighed and looked up at the camera, clearly visible in the light of the open elevator. For the second time that night, I must have been clearly visible to the superiors on the other side of that camera.

Three men assumed guard positions while the others started cleaning Mike up. One told me to go up and get debriefed. I stepped through the still open doors, standing under the hoop of light once again. There was a whirring sound and everything stopped for a split second. When the hoop came back on, I saw a guard start pumping the pump. As his hand reached the pin number keypad, the elevator doors slid shut. I stared up at the light as the elevator rose back to the surface.