With my gold glowing arm raised slightly above my head we had just enough light to see where we were going down the steep narrow steps. The wounds at my right shoulder and stomach were stinging worse than ever, and the dampness was creeping across more of my overalls.

From what I could feel the blood was much more than I was comfortable with losing, but at the same time not something I felt needed my immediate attention. We simply didn't have the time to slow down.

The air remained stale and trapped on our way down. None of us spoke for about a minute, and then Walter cursed under his breath.

We stopped at the middle of the fourth flight of stairs we had turned a tight left into (giving the feeling of circling down the further we went.)

"What's up?" said Sophie.

I moved my arm above Sophie and Walter more to see them better. Though Sophie's round face was slick with sweat and her hair clung to her forehead, despite breathing heavily she seemed to handle the stress of the situation well.

Walter was sweating too, breathing heavily, and looking down at the Meter device on his wrist.

Our Meter devices!

"We cannae keep 'em on," said Walter, "I bet 'yer they're listenin' in on wha' we're sayin'."

Without hesitating Sophie placed her Meter device in the palm of my bulbed left hand. This took me by surprise for a moment before I felt the Meter device sizzle and burn up in my grip. The heat coming from my hand wasn't going to be enough as it was to do the job, since I was focusing more on light than heat. I amped up the heat some more and squeezed the Meter device, burning it up until I was sure it was unusable. I let the pieces drop to the floor, feeling some of the debris land atop my bare feet.

"Could you?" I said, holding my right arm out to Sophie.

"Yeah," she said, and she took my Meter device off for me, since my left hand was preoccupied with bulbing.

Like with Sophie's Meter device, after she handed me back mine I burned it and let it shower on the steps.

Walter held his Meter device closer to my bulbed up left hand.

"What are you doing?" said Sophie, looking cautiously up the stairs before fixing her attention to the Meter device in Walter's grip.

He had managed to pry the Meter device open, showing its inner workings. I didn't have a clue how the technology of it worked, though I doubted it was something all that complicated. Walter pinched something from the device and the light, which was blinking Red (as if some twisted final joke from the Pied Piper officers) blinked off.

"I took the battery out," said Walter, "I wannae hold on'ta this, keep some proof of what's gon' on here."

"Are you sure it's off?" I whispered, "If it's not they'll be able to hear anything we say."

"It's off," said Walter, "I got it, don' worry ye'self."

Walter closed the Meter device and put it back on his wrist.

"Can we get moving?" said Sophie.

She hugged herself in the dark. It was getting a little cold now we were away from the mayhem on the third floor.

Together, with Sophie leading the way, and me in the middle, we headed down yet more steps.

We're doing it, I thought, we're really doing it, we might just make it out of here somehow.

It was a thin, desperate hope to cling to. For all we knew the stairs would lead to a dead end and we would be trapped, no better than fish in a barrel for the Pied Piper officers, or the cats to come find us.

And the gas, I thought. Even several flights of stairs down from the third floor I didn't feel safe from the potential threat of the gas. Had Officer Freeman given the order to flood the third floor with the gas yet? If not, why would he be holding off?

After several more flights of stairs we came across a set of double doors. It was clear enough where it led because it was labeled on the door itself.

Level Four.

We all looked at each other.

"I know what's beyond there," I said, "It's just a medical ward and some smaller blocks."

"Could there be anythin' useful?" said Walter.

"Like what?" I said.

"First aid," said Sophie, gesturing to my chest.

"It can wait," I said, "I'll try and use my power to heal when we're away from here."

"Aye," said Walter, "I'm all 'fer health an' safety but we ain't got time t' waste."

Sophie stopped to think for a moment before nodding. Together we headed down the next flight of stairs. We picked up our pace as we went. The dark was scary, but worse was knowing that, sooner or later, something would eventually come to kill us; whether that was the cats or the Pied Piper officers.

After a few more minutes and more flights of stairs we arrived at another section where our option was to either continue down, or go through to Level Five. The double doors ahead of us was also labeled level five.

"We should keep going," I said, "There could be officers on the other side of that door."

"Aye," said Walter, "I donnae wannae risk it."

We both looked at Sophie.

"Yeah," she said, "Let's just keep going."

We all started moving together towards the next flight of stairs. I only made it one step before remembering that there was a slim chance, a very, very slim chance, that there might be other mice trapped down on the fifth floor.

I had presumed as much before.

"Burgess?" said Sophie, stopping first, Walter coming to a hard stop behind her.

"There might be other teenagers on this level," I said, "They might be trapped."

Sophie sagged for a moment, whining.

"No," she said, "I'm not stopping. I'm going down now."

"I'm wi' her," said Walter, and then he said a bit quieter, "What's ye' name again?"

"Sophie," she said, with a tinge of annoyance.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Walter," said Walter.

Sophie nodded, keeping her attention on me.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I have to know if there's anyone that might need our help. If you have to go, then go."

Sophie cursed under her breath but stayed where she was.

"Go on, quick," said Walter, dipping his head.

I began to move towards the door before Sophie grabbed hold of my left arm where it wasn't bulbed.

"Wait," she said, whispering, "We don't have to go in just yet. We can listen first."

She gestured to her ears which became pointed, and elf-like. I nodded, understanding. I did the same, allowing my hearing to be increased. Walter watched on, not joining us in our impromptu elfery.

It took me a few moments to focus away from the sounds that I didn't want to hone in on. I could hear the depths of the stairwell leading up and down, the trapped air, which was far creepier the more I could hear of it. I could also hear all of our heartbeats thumping at different rhythms; our breathing, the not-so-nice-to-hear sound of the three of us gulping and smacking our parched lips. I reared my head and made an effort to focus on what I might be able to hear beyond the fifth level door only.

There was a wealth of beeps and someone within was breathing. And there was the skitter of a desk chair. And there was a bubbling sound, and the hum of fluorescent lights. I couldn't be sure but I thought I could make out someone smoking from the specific kind of crackle that comes when someone takes a drag from a cigarette.

"Someone's in there," I said, trying to ignore the loudness of my own voice.

"One person," Sophie whispered.

"Jus' one?" said Walter, "Who?"

"Ow!" Sophie rasped, not prepared for Walter's normal voice booming in her ears. I was a step further away from Walter and it hurt my ears pretty bad too.

Sophie and I removed our elf-ears, returning our hearing back to normal.

"It's one person," I said.

"So tha' mus' mean there's nae mice in there, ay?" said Walter.

"No," said Sophie, "I think there might be."

My eyes narrowed.

"What do you mean?" I said.

Sophie hesitated about what she was about to say.

"They might be in there," she said, "But not alive."

"I just want to see," I said, "In and out, I promise."

Sophie's eyes searched the floor before she nodded. We looked to Walter who nodded as well.

I turned my back to them, removed the bulbing from my left hand, and gripped the door handle.

It gave, leading to an interim space where another set of double doors lay beyond the first. I tried both handles at the same time and eased the double doors open slowly, careful of whoever the one individual might be beyond.

The space we found ourselves in was dimly lit by fluorescent lights.

We were in a laboratory-like space. To the left sat a familiar face I had met once before at the facility. It was Dr. Abdullah, set in a computer chair smoking a cigarette. He sat up with a start upon seeing the three of us enter.

"What do you think you're doing down here?" said Dr. Abdullah.

His question hung in the air as the three of us looked to our right. It was hard not to be drawn in by the soft pale glow of the half dozen tanks, all huge cylindrical tubes. Each had a steady stream of churning bubbles.

But it was the sight of the bodies inside the tanks that made me feel like I had been stabbed in the gut with a knife.

There were familiar faces. Teenagers. I spotted Tommy in the first tube, eyes closed, face stiff and lifeless, and pale.

His body from the waist down was a mess of tendons and bone hooked up to cabling and monitoring wires.

I would have vomited if I hadn't already thrown up the contents of my guts earlier on the third floor.

In the next tube I saw the face of one of the girls Tiffany had been acquainted with before. The girl had been one of the ones who, like Tommy, had been adamant to leave the facility to take the flight out when given the opportunity. I had suspected then it was a false promise, had even imagined experiments being done to teenagers somewhere deeper in the facility. But it wasn't something I truly considered to be a possibility, or at the very least I had imagined it the way one might imagine the outcome of a sci-fi movie; something fantastical and not possible in the real world.

In the tank beside the first girl was another girl, who I had also seen leave when given the opportunity. The pair were inseparable whenever I saw them around the facility. I never got their names. They, like Tommy, floated in the tanks lifelessly. Each missed an arm and a leg, and their waists were cut open, revealing the connective tendons and their inner organs which bobbed sickeningly.

I looked at Dr. Abdullah.

"You did this?" I said.

Dr. Abdullah's hands were trembling. He shoved them in his lab coat pockets.

"It's science," he said, "How else are we going to figure out what you are?"

In the next instant Dr. Abdullah retrieved a handgun from his lab coat pocket. It was a very small gun, holding six bullets. He had it pointed at me.

"Get out of here," he said, "The Pied Piper officers are on their way so you don't want to be here when they arrive."

I scowled at Dr. Abdullah, hating him about as much as I hated Officer Freeman for killing George.

"Are they alive?" I said.

"These?" said Dr. Abdullah, "No," he said, "They died during testing. What we've got in the tanks is just their remaining materials."

There came a sudden thunk from the tank nearest Dr. Abdullah. He flinched, looking from the tank and back to us in intervals. The tank where the thunking sound had come from was the only one of the row of tanks that I hadn't yet looked at properly. It was twice as large as the others.

The first thing I noticed was the huge clawed paw within. The paw was clearly one that would belong to a lion, and the only person I knew that had transformed into a were-lion was Adam.

The huge paw was severed at the wrist save for a whole multitude of pink and red tendons, ligaments, keeping it attached. Huge swaths of Adam's body were visible, but the majority of the skin had been removed, showing just the hulking fleshless body; all the exposed muscle layered over the bone.

The head was still mostly intact. It was half Adam's human face, half his were-lion face. His eyes were closed but there was enough colour to his face to make me think he might still be alive. This was the only tank to give a rhythmic beeping sound, presumably monitoring Adam's vitals.

But there was something that didn't make sense about Adam's fleshless, mostly were-lion mass.

There was much more mass to the body than it seemed there should be. Slowly the body swirled around, as if turning itself, and it's then I saw the most horrifying thing I had ever seen in my life.

Fused through some forsaken surgical means to Adam's body mass was a second, twisted, wretched body mass. A body mass made of many eyes, and a face that was only half there. One half of the face was blank, and open and shredded, as if a bullet had torn through it and exploded it even more from within.

The other side of the face was familiar to me.

It was George.

"No," I whimpered, tears welling up in my eyes at the wretched sight of what had become of both Adam and George.

George's eye, the one where his eye was meant to be, opened wide.

"Are they alive?" I said.

"Barely," said Dr. Abdullah.

He pulled back the hammer of his gun.

"Get out, last warning," he said.

There came a sudden siren sound, but not from the floor we were on. We all looked up, hearing the muffled siren.

"What is it?" said Sophie.

"It's the gas," said Dr. Abdullah, "They're clearing out the third floor. Finally."

"Are we safe down here?" said Walter.

"From the gas?" said Dr. Abdullah, "Yes. From me and the officers? No. I don't want to shoot you so why don't you listen to what I'm saying and GET OUT OF HERE ALREADY?!"

It was then there came a loud cracking noise followed by the rush of water. Alarms on the fifth floor started to sound, the room bathed in flashing red. Dr. Abdullah fired his gun.

The bullet whizzed past my head. He hadn't been aiming at me or trying to shoot any of us. He was too distracted by the hulking mass of skinless flesh that had broken out of the tank beside him.

The Adam-George amalgamation, although a writhing mass of fleshy tendons, was still very much able to move with a horrifying fluidity.

Dr. Abdullah screamed for help as the amalgamation monster began to tear him limb from limb, piece by piece.

"George?" I said, pitifully.

Maybe I had lost my mind. I just needed to know if there was something of George left in the creature.

A huge clawed paw lunged out at me, the tendons stretching taught, the claw stopping a mere thumb-width from my face.

The combined human cries of Adam and George, as well as the were-lion howl, broke out from the writhing amalgamation.

Sophie, Walter, and I turned and ran back to the stairs. Several more gunshots rang out in the laboratory whilst Dr.Abdullah screamed for his life.