I stand in front of the bunker door, press the intercom button, and yell into it, “Monty, open the fucking door! Oh, fuck!” I shoot a direwolf in the forehead as two more surround me. Taking down the second with another shot, I swing my crowbar in a powered strike against the third. Slamming the intercom button again, I shout, “There are a lot of them, Monty. HURRY UP!”

  I fire four bullets into a large ogre before reloading my revolver. Three bullets in, a goblin hurls a spear at me. Instinct kicks in—I slap the hammer, sending a shot straight into its chest. I load four more rounds and immediately empty the cylinder into four lizard men.

  Finally, the door starts to open. Monty yells for me to get inside and close the door while he lays down cover fire. I shove the trolley through and abandon it, sprinting to the controls. Monty keeps firing at the monsters trying to break in. With a heavy thud, the door seals shut.

  I slump into an office chair in the guardroom as Monty steps in and gives me a once-over. “Damn, you look like you tried to fight a paper shredder.”

  I glance at my arms—several shallow wounds already closing and scabbing over. Unwrapping my bandaged arm, I show it to Monty. He raises an eyebrow. “Did you find a tattoo parlor? ‘Cause if you did this yourself, it’s really good.”

  I give him a weird look before glancing at my arm. The cuts that once formed the mark have transformed into thin black lines. “When did that happen?” I mutter to myself. “Well, at least I don’t have to keep it bandaged anymore. No, it’s not a tattoo. Some monster marked me as its prey, and after I killed it, I got this thing.”

  Monty’s expression shifts to concern. “And what exactly did this to you?”

  I point to the trolley, where the wendigo’s severed head is tied to the handlebar. He grimaces. “And why the hell did you bring its head with you?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. There’s something about it, but I didn’t want to inspect it out there.”

  Walking up to the head, I activate Identify.

  I turn to Monty. “It’s a trophy. Once processed—whatever that means—it’ll make it so we find more edible monsters and fewer normal ones.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Monty nods. “That sounds good. Let’s just hope ‘edible monsters’ doesn’t mean something like a minotaur.”

  I glance around the loading area, now clean and organized. “Did you clean this place? It actually looks good now that we can see the floor.”

  “Yeah,” Monty says, crossing his arms. “Took a while, but it’s looking good. Even cleared the broken shelves from the sublevel. But the storage room’s locked—I’d need a keycard to open it, so I left it alone until you got back.”

  I grin. “Perfect. I want to try something. Come with me.”

  We head downstairs to the atrium, then to the sublevel. I approach the locked storage door and activate Overload. The lights flicker, and a low electric hum fills the air. A few seconds later, the electronic lock disengages. I push the door open, only to find a room filled with empty shelves. Disappointing, but at least the skill worked.

  I turn back to Monty. “Did you get the fridge door open?”

  “Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “It was a mess. All the food inside was rotten, and the whole place was covered in mold. That took me the longest to clean.”

  I nod, inspecting the smashed latch on the fridge. Something in my mind urges me to move it, so I do. Twisting the broken piece back and forth, it snaps off. My Reverse Engineering skill immediately kicks in, feeding me ideas on how to craft a similar latch to replace it.

  But right now, I have something else to do. “I’m gonna process the wendigo skull,” I tell Monty.

  He wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, do that in the shower room. I’ll unload the trolley.” Before leaving, he hands me the pocket knife I gave him on our first day here.

  Taking the wendigo’s head, I step into the shower room and start removing the rotting flesh. Monty brings me a bucket, and I dump the scraps into it as I work. Shining my flashlight into the eye socket, I realize the wendigo’s eyes are massive, filling the entire space. I have to cut them into pieces just to get them out.

  The spine is still attached, along with the brain. Using the knife, I slice between the vertebrae and the skull, severing the connection before dumping the spine into the bucket. Digging into the skull, I scramble the brain enough for it to drip out. That goes in the bucket too.

  Once finished, I take the bucket to the loading area and set it in front of the door. Then, I check the security footage.

  Rewinding the feed, I see that after the doors shut, the monsters worked together, trying to break in. After half an hour of no progress, they turned on each other. Now, the entrance is smeared in blood, but the creatures are gone. I open the bunker door just long enough to dump the wendigo scraps outside, then close it again.

  Returning to the shower, I grab the now-clean skull. Monty is waiting for me, something tucked under his arm. He hands me a wooden plaque. “Found one of those mounted deer heads in the goblin leader’s trophy room. Already threw the head in the recycler. Along with that opossum you brought back.”

  I blink, then laugh. I’d forgotten about that taxidermy opossum from the school. I knew Monty would hate it—that’s why I brought it.

  “Thanks. I can make a proper trophy now.”

  Using nails and glue, I mount the wendigo skull onto the plaque. Once it’s done, I hang it above my desk in my room. I stare at it for a while before deciding I don’t want it there. Instead, I take it to the lounge and mount it there.