Victor slammed into the wall. The air came out of his lungs in a short wooph. He had not been expecting Olivia to shove past him, especially not as hard as she had done. She was small, making it all the more surprising.
He smiled sheepishly at the two soldiers guarding the door. They smirked at him through their clear face masks. Victor realized they could not see his face through his AN95 mask. He wiped the fake smile off his face and shrugged instead.
“Guess I better head back to the monitoring station.” he said to them.
“Yeah, guess so.” one of the guards said, not hiding the relief in his voice.
Victor had never bothered to make any effort to learn any of their names. He was glad of it. They were always so rude to him. Even Olivia's ‘lab assistant’, Gross, was extra curt with him, instead of just normal curt the way he was with everyone else.
Victor plodded down the hall, forcing himself to maintain a slow pace and to not look back at the soldiers. As soon as he rounded the corner he took off running. He only had a little bit of time to enact his plan.
Victor had been waiting for his opportunity since the subjects had been brought in. He had had some chances throughout the night. Those chances might or might not have worked out based on the information he had had at the time. They were nothing he was going to gamble on. It wasn’t that Victor didn’t like to gamble, it was that he didn’t like to lose.
Now he was finding that his patience had paid off. He saw a chance now that he was willing to bet it all on. Olivia was distracted by her ‘friend’ Grant. Victor had noticed how much more time she had spent talking to this Grant than her own brother.
Dr.Shaan was out in the lab, right where he needed to be. He would need to do something about that too.
“One down, one to go.” He said, as he entered the monitoring station.
He looked at the camera and saw the other stroke of good luck. As horrifying as watching Grant hold a slime on his charred hand had been, Eva scared him more. It was the eyes, or lack thereof, that really set her over the top.
That and all the nonsense she had been spouting every chance she got. Victor had been raised Christian, for him it had been a very positive experience, even if he no longer believed. Her talk of serving God’s will was a strange perversion of the positive message he remembered.
It set him on edge.
Now she was opening little holes into the beyond. She was obviously attempting to create some sort of array of them. If this would do anything was completely unknown to Victor and to AROG at large. So far interactions between anomalies had gone largely unstudied.
He considered his plan some more, was he really going to do this? There were so many unknowns.
His contact had reached out to him almost as soon as Victor had learned of the latest event. His contact had always been impeccably well informed about all of the goings on. Whoever they were, Victor was sure they were part of the AROG network; very likely one of the private partners.
He had taken some assorted samples to them before; bits of slime, insects and rodents that were changed by the anomalies, and even some human blood and tissue samples. He had been paid considerably well.
This would be the biggest score by far. Orders of magnitude in difference. Then he thought about the money. They had promised him one million dollars. One million fucking dollars. The money so far had paid off his student loans. This could buy him a house.
He resolved himself to do it. He pulled up the command prompts. He scrolled down until he found the option he wanted.
EMERGENCY UNLOCK
He hovered the mouse over it. At the same time, Eva bit into her wrist. He cringed, his hands instinctively recoiling towards his body.
“Fuck.. fuck… fuck!” He shouted the last one.
Could he really let them out just to cause a distraction. They could present a real threat to the soldiers and his coworkers…
One.
Someone might get hurt…
Million.
They could even get out into the world, who knows what would happen then…
Fucking dollars.
He clicked the mouse. It would be ok. After the command was executed he realized he had been expecting another prompt, a confirmation. He had thought he would have a second chance to stop himself.
Oh well, It was too late now.
He jumped out of the chair and ran over to where he stashed the hazmat suit. As he started to put it on the building shook and the lights went out. The room was utterly dark and he only had the suit halfway on.
“Fuck.” he said again.
—
Grant ran in the pulsing red light. A shock wave hit him from behind. The ground changed under his feet. The neatly patterned carpet designed for high traffic became a messy shag. The walls and ceiling lost their eggshell sheen; they seemed both wetter and more porous.
Everything was infused now with that red Glow.
“...harbinger.” The cultist’s voice came from beside him.
She had been closer to the source and had been knocked harder and farther than he.
Doors began to open in the hallway. It was not, to his relief, the other cultists. It was the cops. Eric and his partner, Rick, were the closest to him but there were four others as well.
“What the fuck did you get me into!” Eric barked, hauling Grant up by the arm.
His partner grabbed up the cultist.
“The seed will bring trials, we must grow stronger, to save Jacob, to save ourselves.” The cultist said, her voice weak.
Grant shook his head.
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“We gotta get the fuck out of here, something is coming through and-”
A wet slapping noise cut Grant’s words off. Tentacles gripped the outside edge of the cultist’s doors.
“Fuck run!” Grant shouted.
No one had waited for his suggestion Eric and Rick both took the cultist under one arm as Grant followed behind them. He heard the sounds of something following behind him. He reached out with Harbinger of the Beyond, but the link was too strong, much too strong for him.
It was like pushing on a brick wall.
He didn’t dare turn around to see behind him, though he could hear it. Wet slapping tentacles smashed into drywall. It broke where it clung to. Grant ran for his life.
The building shook again and another shockwave passed over them. It was not as strong this time, as they had put a considerable distance between the source and themselves, but it still nearly tripped him up.
The transformation of the walls and floor continued. The floor became more like grass than carpet. It glowed dully, and swayed in a breeze that was not there. He could feel it clinging to his feet like an anemone; he wasn’t wearing any shoes.
They rounded the corner and came face to face with the elevator lobby. A dead end. Tentacles gripped the wall and the monster was pulled into view.
As far as Grant could tell it was only tentacles. A great ball of tentacles. One of them reached out and lashed around his arm. It yanked it towards him. Grant was taken off his feet and sailed over the monster. Hitting the wall on the opposite side.
He got tunnel vision as he nearly blacked out. The monster advanced forward towards the remaining people. Grant forced himself up and dove into the ball of tentacles head first. He thrashed and bit as he made contact with the central tangle of tentacles.
The creature reacted by lashing inwards. It was too late though. Grant’s Consuming Teeth of the Void had punched holes the size of fists in it. Red blood drained from it. It still pulled at Grant but weakly. Grant pulled himself inward and bit and bit at the meat of it. Finally he felt his mouth pass through cartilage and then finally into organs.
You have killed mass of tentacles.
You have received:
* (7) Flesh of the Beyond
* (1) Consuming Essence
* (1) Writhing Essence
* (1) Propagation Essence
* (1) Grasping Essence
He stood up. Looking at Eric, Rick, and the other police he saw six horrified faces looking back at him. The cultist’s face shone with pride even though she was looking weaker than ever, still being held up by Eric and Rick.
“Very well done Harbinger.” She said, smiling weakly. “You should consume essences to grow stronger, more trials are coming.”
Grant thought about what she said. As he thought another window appeared in his mind.
You may consume essences to advance formation sequence. Consume (9) Essences to advance entire formation sequence?
[Yes] [No]
He considered that, but this unknown function gave him another idea. He thought about it, and focused on it.
Share Flesh (3) Flesh of the Beyond with Servant of the Harbinger Eva?
[Yes] [No]
He selected yes. She straightened up immediately.
“Thank you Harbinger, that is the most generous of you.” She said, bowing towards him.
“You can repay me by not doing anything crazy. Anything else.” he said.
She looked hurt but said nothing. The group made for the stairs.
—
Victor finally got the suit on properly. The building had stopped shaking, so that was good. He turned on the headlamp on the suit. It was time to get moving. Last he had seen Dr.Shaan was still out in the lab.
He hoped she would be heading over to the armory to meet up with the tactical teams. There had been quite a ruckus coming from upstairs and she would need some people to do a round-up.
Either that or she would have evacuated the building. It had shaken considerably. They might be worried about collapse. If so she would be out in the parking lot. That would complicate things for him, he had to make it to his car, but he could probably manage to get away in all of the chaos.
In either case, from here, he would head straight to the lab and grab the samples. He walked out of the monitoring station.
Dr.Shaan’s headlamp along with six soldiers’ headlamps were pointing directly at him.
“Victor, where is Olivia?” She said, “Wait, where did you get that suit?”
“Last I saw of Olivia she was running off to Grant's room.” He said, avoiding the other question.
“Dammit, that’s what I was afraid of.” She said,
It seemed his tactic worked. Maybe it was still his lucky night.
“The building’s been compromised. We need you to destroy the samples immediately. The incinerator has its own gas supply so it should still work. We’re going to contain the remaining subjects upstairs.”
Damn, it really was his lucky night. That would give him an excuse to be gathering up samples. He could probably just take the ones he wanted out to his car and no one would be the wiser; everyone would just think they had been destroyed like they were supposed to.
“Breckinridge, go with him, he’ll need a hand.” She said,
Ok, maybe not that lucky.
—
Olivia sat in the dark. Well, not quite the dark. A red light pulsed from the walls. The walls of the stairwell were concrete. All the cracks had been filled in with glowing red slime. The slime swelled in and out of the cracks, some of it dripping and oozing down the wall.
The locks were electrified and opened for her keyfob. They also worked with a physical key but Olivia had not brought that with her. She should have, but she never did carry it with her.
She had pounded on the door hoping someone would hear, but no one had.
There was a panic bar on the door, but that had been deactivated. Containment of the subjects had taken precedence over life safety. Another harsh truth of this place.
Olivia had been sitting in the dark considering all the little ways the rules of this place made her feel uncomfortable. She thought about the person she wanted to be, the person she was comfortable being.
She worked with some pretty off putting subject matter before the start of the endemic. All kinds of nasty cultures and cells. Nothing like this though.
No live subjects, that was what she had wanted.
She heard the sound of metal clattering on the stair landing above her and then the door opened.
“Hello?” She shouted.
The dim red light cast a looming shadow on the wall next to the landing above her.
“Who’s there?” She asked.
She heard something wet slap onto the stairs above her. The steel and concrete vibrated ever so slightly as it passed onto them. That it didn’t answer her told her everything she needed to know; it was a sentient anomaly.
She froze. She wanted so badly to pound on the door. She wished again that she had the key, instead she just waited in the dark, not daring to make a sound.
Another wet slap sound came from above, whatever was coming her way wasn’t quick. At least it wasn’t moving quickly right now.
A key slid into the lock and the door opened. Two soldiers preceded Meera into the room. They hustled in around her, guns out and at the ready.
“There’s something up there!” She half whispered-half shrieked.
The soldiers rushed up the stairs and began firing. The sound of gunfire was deafening. They used at least a dozen rounds each. More soldiers rushed up behind them and she heard the static roar of the full sized plasma torches.
“Good gods, that was close.” Meera said, once the noise died down.
She leaned in and put her arm around Olivia.
“Let’s have Gross get you out of here, okay.” Meera said, smiling at her.
“Meera, what are you going to do with my brother?” She asked.
Meera’s smile turned into a sad frown. “The only thing I can do.”
“What? no… no!” Olivia said. “He isn’t… There's nothing wrong with him.”
“We can’t take that chance.” Meera said, her face turning cold.
Meera nodded at Gross who had stepped up right beside Olivia. Gross took her by the arm and began to drag her out of the room.