Nikita Khrushchev sat alone at the long table, eating breakfast. It wasn't yet nine o'clock but he had already been up for several hours; his sleep had been plagued by apocalyptic nightmares. He was still wearing night-clothes and a robe. He thought he might still go back to bed. He certainly didn't feel much like eating.

There was a knock at the door and Ana the serving girl came in. Khrushchev tightened the belt around his robe. The petite twenty-something with captivating grey eyes only ever knocked if she was bringing someone in with her.

Sure enough, Marshal Gharkov followed behind.

"Bring us a fresh pot of coffee," Khrushchev told her. "This one's cold." Even though it wasn't. He bit into some toast as she scuttled away with the pot.

Gharkov didn't sit down. He looked grim.

"Sir, we were attacked last night," he said.

Khrushchev paused mid-chew. "Where?" he said, his voice muffled.

"Vladivostok, sir," Gharkov said, refusing an invitation to sit. "Preliminary reports are that our beach-head defences outside the harbour were completely wiped out. That's about a dozen tanks and roughly thirty men, sir."

Khrushchev finished chewing and pushed the rest of his breakfast away, the mere sight of it making him feel nauseous. What he'd already eaten rose into his throat and he sighed a bloated sigh, then he patted the food back down.

"I've begun an investigation, sir."

"Into what?" said Khrushchev.

"Into who's responsible, sir."

Khrushchev wiped his mouth on a napkin, tossed it aside and gave Gharkov a patronising look. "Are you telling me there's still some doubt?"

"Sir?"

"Metzkin was right, wasn't he?" Khrushchev grumbled. "We're being invaded by the United States. Tell it to me straight, Gharkov."

"I'm not yet entirely convinced, sir."

"No?"

"No, sir," Gharkov said firmly. "Beyond the purely evidential level, for which we have no proof either way, there are several counter-indicative factors."

"Meaning what?"

Gharkov paused. "Meaning that it just wouldn't make any sense for anybody to invade the Soviet Union from Vladivostok, sir."

"Go on."

"For one, it's several thousand miles away from here. An invasion from there would take weeks if not months to push inland, a stretch on anybody's resources. And by which time we could mount a successful defence anyway."

Khrushchev nodded sagely.

"Plus, on a more obvious level, whoever attacked us last night took out our coastal defences, but then, for whatever reason, chose not to take the town."

"But they could have?"

"Yes. Which suggests their intentions are elsewhere."

Khrushchev snorted. "What other intentions do you have when you attack someone other than wanting to start a war with them, Gharkov?"

"I think it may have been a gesture, sir."

"A gesture?"

"Yes, sir, or a warning. An aggressive but not necessarily an offensive move, putting the onus on us as to whether this goes any further."

Khrushchev sighed. "Of course it's going to go further!" he cried. "There are going to be demands for retaliation, Gharkov. And plenty of opportunists waiting in the wings to deliver it if I don't. You know who I mean."

Gharkov nodded.

Ana came back in with the coffee.

"I appreciate you may be in a weakened position if you don't appear decisive, sir," Gharkov continued. "But there's a possibility that this attack on us wasn't the first shot across the bow, but in fact, retaliation for our own actions."

Ana put the pot down loudly.

Both Khruschev and Gharkov looked up.

"Leave us!" the Premier barked.

Ana hurried from the room.

"What are you saying?" Khrushchev went on.

"It might just be a coincidence, but I fear it's not. A few hours prior to the attack, a submarine docked in Vladivostok. The same submarine, as it happens, that supposedly found the USS Roosevelt adrift in the Sea of Japan."

"Supposedly?" Khrushchev echoed.

"Yes, sir." Gharkov licked his lips. "It turns out - and I only discovered this from our agent in Vladivostok in the last few hours myself - that Captain Rikhalin took a prisoner from the American cruiser."

"An American prisoner?"

"Yes, sir."

Khrushchev slowed. "You told me the ship was abandoned."

"As I was told, sir."

"Gharkov," Khrushchev growled. "If there was just one person left on board that ship, then it wasn't abandoned. Which means the American communiqué was right, after all - we really did attack their vessel!"

"Apparently, the prisoner wasn't a member of the crew, sir."

Khrushchev sighed and got up. He went round the table and began pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot Ana had just brought in.

"This is all getting very messy, Gharkov," he said.

"I know, sir," Gharkov muttered.

Khrushchev turned to him. "What should I do?"

"Do you think you can bury this for twenty-four hours?"

The Premier sighed again. "I don't know, Gharkov. Twenty-four hours is a long time if someone like Brezhnev finds out in the meantime."

"I know, sir," Gharkov said. "But in twenty-four hours I can investigate properly. I can find out who is responsible with one hundred percent certainty, and more importantly why. We could yet avert major hostilities."

Khrushchev shook his head slowly. "I can't promise anything, Gharkov," he said. "I'm already feeling my hand being increasingly forced. If it becomes known there has been an attack on Russian soil, my options will quickly diminish."

"Yes, sir. I understand."

"I have no intention of letting this escalate into war. But I don't like being stuck in a corner with my back to the wall either, Gharkov."

"I understand, sir."

"I need facts. Who is this prisoner? Do we have any right to hold him? What is his connection to the attack? Was it an American rescue attempt?"

"I'm already investigating, sir."

"No, Gharkov," Khrushchev said slowly, blowing across the top of his steaming coffee. "You're interrupting my breakfast."

"Sir," said Gharkov.

Then he saluted and headed toward the door.

"Gharkov," Khrushchev called after him.

The KGB leader stopped and turned.

"I don't want Metzkin to be right," the Premier said. "But if you conclude that he is, I will have wasted valuable time. And we will all suffer for that."

"The difference between Metzkin and I, sir, is that I am looking for our enemy, and Metzkin thinks he has already found them."

Khrushchev grunted in approval.

"And even if he is right, and even if the Americans did attack us, they'll be waiting for us to make the next move. Do nothing, and this may all blow over."

Khrushchev nodded dubiously. "We'll see," he said.

Then he waved Gharkov out.

The serving girl Ana checked there was nobody about before picking up the phone. She dialled the number she memorised the night before. Her heart pounded as she waited for someone to pick up, but she didn't have to wait long.

"Metzkin," said the voice on the other end.

"It looks like a bomb went off," said the chief of police.

His men were already on the scene when Anton Malakov arrived. They had set up roadblocks in either direction and were manning a human cordon.

"That doesn't explain the bodies," said Malakov wearily.

He had only got about four hours sleep. A man burst into the harbour master's office shortly before first light to report that a truckload of fishermen had found the devastation on the coastal road as they arrived at the harbour.

"Then what did this?" asked the chief.

Malakov had checked on the prisoner before leaving. Shelby was asleep, as he had been when Malakov returned to the harbour master's office the night before. Both times he decided not to wake him. Gustach's claim that only something invisible could have evaded his search had given Malakov a lot to think about.

"I don't know," he finally told the chief.

It had rained heavily through the night, but as Malakov and the chief wandered amongst the wreckage, there was just a faint drizzle in the air.

Malakov hadn't expected destruction on such a scale. Tanks were torn open like tin cans, their guns twisted by explosions. Several were no more than burnt out black shells, their remains still smoking where the rain had dowsed the flames.

"It looks like a battlefield," said the chief.

"Maybe it was," Malakov mused.

The bodies had all fallen within yards of each other.

"It was slaughter. Just total slaughter."

"Perhaps," said Malakov.

The puddles were red with spilt blood. The chief kept holding a handkerchief over his mouth, but Malakov was unfazed as he crouched down.

"What are you doing?"

Malakov ignored him as he pulled up the corpse's shirt. The man's flesh was white and cold. He was soaked to the skin from being in the rain.

"What are you looking for?"

"Bullet holes," Malakov said hopefully.

But that's not what he expected to find. Sure enough, as he peeled back the man's clothing, he found long, deep slices across his chest.

"What is that?" said the chief.

Malakov covered the man back up and picked another corpse nearby at random. This one also had a large puncture mark on his uniform. And beneath it a deep wound that had long since stopped bleeding.

All wounds like Rikhalin's.

Last night he'd ordered the captain's body retrieved from the submarine and decided to leave it in the warehouse with the sub's crew overnight. Perhaps by morning they would be incensed to talk, but he hadn't had time to see.

"Let me see," said the chief, pushing past.

Malakov moved back and buried his hands in the pockets of the waterproof wax coat he had sequestered from the harbour master's office.

"These aren't bullet holes," said the chief.

Malakov bent down again and removed one of the soldiers' guns from the stiff fingers of his corpse. It hadn't even been fired.

"These men have been stabbed!"

Malakov nodded idly, looking around.

"And this one, he looks like he's been attacked with a sword!"

Malakov was drawn to one of the tanks with a strange burn mark. As he got closer he found it was actually a hole the size of his fist. But it was a clean hole, the edges smooth when he felt them. Like a poker through ice, he thought.

"What happened to those men?"

The chief came up behind Malakov, who turned.

"None of them have been shot," the chief noted. "How can men with guns let anyone close enough to stab or slash them?"

"I don't know, chief."

He turned back to the tank and looked through the hole. Light was coming through a second hole in the top of the tank. It was enough for Malakov to see two bodies inside. They looked melted like candles to their waists.

The interior was drenched in their blood.

"Don't look in there."

Malakov put two hands atop the tank, pushed up, hoisted a leg up onto the treads and then pulled himself onto the vehicle's roof.

Below, the chief threw up.

"I did warn you."

Malakov stood up on top of the tank. He was no longer protected from the cold wind that was still blowing across the harbour since last night. He pulled the coat's collar tighter around his neck as he looked around the area.

All the bodies were centred round this tank.

"How many attackers do you think there were, chief?"

The chief coughed hoarsely. "Dozens!" he cried. "There must have been dozens of them; they completely outnumbered them!"

"Yet it looks like there was just one."

"Impossible! No one man could do all this!"

Malakov nodded, turning his face into the breeze. He could see across the top of all the tanks and to a roughshod wooden building at the far end.

"Has anyone checked in there?" he asked.

"The barracks? No, sir. Why?"

The barracks building was built beside the beach, two storeys high, with very few windows. There was a watchtower on the roof, with an abandoned spotlight, a radio mast and a siren post. Malakov frowned.

"It wasn't attacked," he said.

The chief looked blank. "So?"

"I would have taken it out first." He started climbing down again. "Taken out that siren, the radio mast, any means of calling for help."

"Ah." The chief nodded.

As they reached the barracks, it stopped drizzling.

The hunter stirred, his accentuated senses stimulated by the presence of two new life-forms in the vicinity. He switched to thermal vision mode.

He could see two human heat signatures, faintly - he was seeing them through the floor, they were on the next level down. He stood up.

"Lights aren't working," said the chief.

He flicked the switches a couple of times.

"Got a torch?" said Malakov distantly.

The chief hadn't. But Malakov did. He turned the beam on and aimed it at the ceiling. He found the two light bulbs. Both had been smashed.

"Why do that?" said the chief monotonically.

Malakov didn't respond. In one hand he held the light. In the other he held the unfired machine gun he'd picked up. Part of him was glad.

Behind him, the chief took out his pistol.

They went into the armoury. Most of the racks along the wall were empty, and ammunition cases lay scattered untidily across the floor. Just as the soldiers billeted here had left it; it didn't look like it had been disturbed since.

Along a short corridor from the armoury was a dark, narrow room with bunks in it. Malakov danced the beam of light around the room, exposing every dark corner for inspection. Like the armoury, the dormitory looked abandoned in a hurry. Bed sheets had been thrown back and left trailed across the floor.

"Hey, I found a torch," said the chief jubilantly. He held up the flashlight and turned it on. The beam was more powerful than Malakov's.

"Go check upstairs," Malakov told him.

"Got it," said the chief.

Malakov continued to poke around downstairs. He went into the CO's office where a small lamp had been left shining on a logbook.

There were two entries for last night. Shortly after midnight, the CO had written the word 'siren' in large capital letters. Flicking back, Malakov found other such instances, but all with explanations of the cause for alarm.

He looked briefly in the freezing cold shower room, checked all the filthy toilet cubicles were empty, then went into the maintenance garage.

But there was nothing there either.

Malakov was already heading to the stairs when he heard gunshots. He sped up, reaching the bottom in time to see the chief appear at the top.

"Chief!" he barked.

The chief didn't respond. He had his back to Malakov, arms outstretched, aiming at something on the other side of him.

He fired, fired again. Again.

But then he stopped firing. He took a step back, looked like he was about to trip down the stairs. Malakov started up toward him.

The chief teetered back. But just as he was about to fall, he doubled over, a brief scream muted as something burst out of his back.

Malakov froze.

Instead of toppling down the stairs, the chief's convulsing form lifted up into the air, impaled through the middle.

Malakov had a flash of Captain Rikhalin.

He didn't wait until the chief had stopped gurgling. He lifted the machine gun and fired a wide spread up the stairwell.

The gunfire lit the stairs like the torches never could. But the rapid flashing only revealed that the chief was being held aloft by nothing.

Suddenly there was a howl.

A loud, horrific, screech-like inhuman howl, and for a moment, Malakov faltered, stopped firing and stumbled back down a few steps.

When he started firing again, the chief was gone.

Malakov listened. Heavy feet were thudding across the floor of the next level up. Malakov didn't hesitate. He started up the stairs.

As he reached the top, however, gun raised and ready, something drew his attention on the top step. He'd long since dropped his torch and it was lying smashed at the bottom of the stairs, but he didn't actually need it.

The green liquid was luminous.

There were several splatters of it on the steps, even more on the wall. He put his fingers in it. It was sticky. He smelt it. It smelt a little acrid. As he crouched down he put his other hand in something else wet. The chief's blood.

As he crouched, the door to the barracks burst open. He spun round, aimed his gun, found he was being aimed back at. More police.

"We heard shooting!" one shouted.

There was a sudden crash, a splinter of wood and smash of glass. Malakov jumped to his feet. "It's trying to escape!" he cried.

He thundered down the stairs, shoved his way back into the open. He rushed away from the building, trying to get it all in his sights. He could see the smashed window. Whatever had smashed it was too big for it.

Bigger than a man, thought Malakov.

The police officers, puzzled and scared, came hurrying out after him, waving their guns in the air, targeting everything and anything.

"What was it?" one hissed.

"It's gone," Malakov murmured.

Just then the chief's body fell to earth. They all jumped. It looked like it had fallen off the roof. Several of the police officers vomited.

Their chief had lost his head.

Jack Shelby only woke up when the KGB agent burst into the room and yanked the pillow out from under his head violently.

"What the fuck?" he slurred.

Malakov dragged a chair into the room, dumped it next to the bed and clicked his fingers at it. Then he went and stood by the window, arms crossed.

"I'm ready to listen," he said.

The hunter's trophy sat unskinned and bloody beside him, but for the moment he didn't show any interest in it. His injuries were severe.

He had retreated to a nearby storm drain. It was wet and he couldn't use his cloaking device, but it was dark, and a suitable hiding place.

He had a small kit of tools unwrapped at his feet. Most of his wounds he was able to tend to. One day they would become fine battle scars.

But several of the bullet holes were too close. Three or four rounds had hit him in rapid succession in the chest, between his armour. There were no exit wounds, and the hunter didn't have the ability to remove all the bullets.

As he patched himself up, temporarily halting the bleeding, he thought what a fine opponent his attacker had been. He'd like to fight him again.

But that would have to wait until another time.

This hunt was over.

NOTES:
Little to note about this chapter, apart from the fact that this isn't the end of the story, however many loose ends it appears to tie up. In true "24" fashion, things are about to go off at a tangent. Whether that's also true to the "Predator" mythos is yet to be seen. I had a little difficulty writing this chapter, so that despite being 3000 words, there are probably just as many again that have been deleted. I wrote the first section between Khrushchev and Gharkov three times and rewrote the whole Malakov vs Predator bit - originally, the police chief wasn't even in it.