A ding of metal went through the corridor as my flashlight falling to the floor making it flicker in and out, rolling down the tightly packed metal hallway. These large hallways were what humanity has come to, no one knew who, or what these hallways were for. Some hissed out white substances that could burn off your flesh off the unprotected parts of your body, my arms were covered in thick black strips of fire resistant material. The rest of my body wasn’t much different, but the colors nor material matched finding enough to cover up all of my arms was a great pride of mine.

“Black.” My friend yelled at me from across the hallway from a room, they were rare this far up the territories, if they were very valuable for their materials. Nothing special like old world tech, or something most of the computers, and things to make life easier has survived weaponry has even gone past the old world when it came to handheld weapons. The materials most valuable here were things like clothing, and plastics, because metal, food and water were plentiful or no one would have been able to survive down here for so long.

Making my way down the hallway, I picked up the flashlight with a frown as the lights turned from red to the annoying bright yellow color that most of these rooms had. Any residential rooms had these lights replaced with the lower intensity red ones, they caused far less stress on the people. “Black, look what I found.” My partner tossed me a magazine, the front of it filled with a scantily clad woman the pages yellow with age, reading the front I struggled a bit English wasn’t the easiest language to read. The cover read ‘Barely Legal’ and I was curious if it would have those Televisions, and the gaming consoles that many of the youths dreamed about.

Hestly laughed at my blushing face as I opened it up, giving him a sideways glare before I reluctantly added it to my bag. He smiled, showing me that there was a large pile of at least a hundred individual magazines ranging from ‘Gent’ to ‘Lemon People’. We both picked over a few of the magazines before getting back to work, Hestly taking a cord attached to his Gene Hunter badge, and slid it into one of the many ports along the wall. “Andrew and Hestly reporting.”

As he talked to the commander, I made my way along the walls using a crowbar to rip apart the lockers pulling the worn fabric into my backpack. Being with a rank two had its advantages, coming to the higher floors of the underground passageways always had more unexplored rooms nearer to the entrance. Only about five or so miles had been mapped out and explored on this floor. It was odd how quiet it was, there wasn’t any life that could be seen which was rare for such a low numbered floor, and it's what made his command cautious.

Finding a heat resistant work coat made of the same faded black as my arms I grew increasingly excited. I knew that we had to tear the coat to use the materials more effectively, but I had done that before quite a few times so I took out my knife to get to work on it. Hestly eyed me distastefully, he couldn’t understand those that were lower ranked them him rising through the ranks faster than anyone had seen before. He was a rank Three which many people spent their lives and never amounted to, my own rank being a rank Nine which was well below those around my age.

The higher ranked people had special privileges, from fresh supplies to actual recreation items much like those seen in old magazines from before the war, large boxes that had smaller boxes hooked into each other followed by smaller boxes at the ends of wires. With his high rank he was wearing an actual jacket, not torn to make the jacket more efficient and even tailored to his size. Sadly high ranks usually ran in families, and I wasn’t one to break tradition, nor did I have the ability to do so. Once you realize that you don’t have the ability to do something it becomes that much harder, especially when you’re forced to do it.

Being a lower ranked Gene Hunter never bothered me with Hestly bringing me along with his trips, it was rather peaceful. When hell did break loose Hestly wasn’t a rank Three for nothing, he was a specialist in Electrokinesis which left little to no evidence a Splicer came through, it was especially powerful because enviroment. He did make a lot of pathways unusable when he used too much power, but that wasn’t a problem as most of the places they went had thousands of hive like entrances and exits to every room.

“There isn’t any logic to this place.” I frowned as I made a mental note of where we were, our auto-mappers would do that but the actual thought of relying on the technology was never very settling to him. The power that they could wield was also unsettling, even though he was a rare variant with his Psychic abilities he was just happy it wasn’t as offensive as Hestly, he was a mental radar able to sense anything with sentience in his area of influence, which made him valuable even with his low rank.

Only two pings came on my natural radar, one was Hestly, and one was his inner inhibitor the symbiotic parasite inside his body to keep his body temperature regulated while using his powers. Splicers for whatever reason were avoiding this place like the plague, noticing that Hestly was no longer talking into his badge I nodded over to him, “Hey, why do you think the Splicers are avoiding this area?”

“Who knows, probably some of the pre-war shit in the area.” He smiled a bit as he flicked through the magazine in his hand, he made his role clear, he was the protection I was the packmule and radar.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Shouldn’t that worry us?” Replacing the strips along my chest area made it look like I had on a black shirt now, it didn’t provide much stealth in the brightly lit rooms like this but it’d keep me out of danger in the red rooms.

“What can keep the Splicers at bay should only interest us, not make us worry.” Looking up from his magazine, he started to walk out of the room, “Call me when you strip this room, I’m going to look for a restroom for some water that isn’t at room temp.”

Rolling my eyes, I went back to work until everything was in nice little piles separating out their priority then stuffing two of the high priority bundles into my bag. Fully formed the bag was about half my height, and was collapsible barely filling the inside of my cargo pants without much of an effort leaving two small metal poles that I wore strapped to my arms. Having hooks on the ends really helped to stay on the walls going up and down the entrances since most of the ladders have broken off.

Picking up a laptop, I added it to a pouch that was behind me then two others along the bag’s side plugging in another to see if there were any games on the system, these government computers mostly never had anything good on them but you never knew. I looked over to the magazines still sitting there, and I hoped that something could come from the search, first being “.jpg”.

An hour passed from when Hestly left, turning off the laptop which I played about a hundred games of solitaire which was becoming almost like a sport to the group of survivors and I was one of the main stars. Tossing the laptop back into the third pile, I made my way to where my friend had left to, he was the only other person around as far as I could sense and he wasn’t moving in distress so I made it a leisurely pace.

Walking through the tight hallways lead me to something that was rare no matter where you went in this labyrinth, an intact door. Getting close to it, the door’s sensors scanned my body the clicked loudly as gears started to turn pulling the door up from the ground with a hiss. At the end of a small hallway lead to another door, in between on the walls was a large amount of reflective glass. Stepping through the hallway was uneventful, the door at the end opening after scanning me as well.

Stepping outside of the hallway I was met with the sight of Hestly bent over a railing, and staring at something, his mouth agape and his eyes wide with wonder and a hint of fear. Walking to where he stood, I looked down to see what he was staring at as the same look as my friend’s went over my face as well.

The room itself was large spanning out over five hundred feet, and the area only contained a piece of the creature along with two large robotic exoskeletons that were placed to hold down large spikes into the creature’s clawed hands. This monstrosity looked reptilian, blackened wings impaled down by even more metal rods that were impaled into the wall, its head sunken, with flesh decaying in some areas. Thousands of tubes, and cables snaked its way out of the bottom of the stomach twisting out of it like the creature’s intestines and crawling up the walls to many blinking and beeping monitors.

“What the fuck is that?” My mouth went drier with each word, staring at this thing sent a shiver down my whole body.

“I don’t know Black, I’ve never heard anything in the records about something like this.”

Strength escaping me, I fell to the ground a look of complete fear crashing through my body like tidal waves upon a rubber duck. Hester looked to me as if to ask me a question, then the source of my fear must have registered as he looked to the giant body under us.

Another mind came up on my radar, right where the corpse was this one not just a flicker along the darkness like most people were, but a blazing star that made everything seem insignificant. This being was something that we could not understand much like a chicken’s mind can not comprehend its lack of understanding about humans, we could never even imagine what we don’t know of this creature.

Its booming voice echoed through the room, “You have come, you are suitable…” Each time his voice echoed it made the ground tremble. It opened its eyes, and struggled against the spikes impaling it to the ground, the quake from its movement made us both tumble to the ground in a daze. Snapping, then crashing was heard from the exoskeleton suits as they burst apart, machinery breaking as they hit the ceiling, “You have been chosen.”

Memories flashed into my head, Earth before the war, its surface turning molten as giant ships shot large weapons down onto ground. Screams in agony as humans died in mass, and the ships they created to retaliate against the extraterrestrials. The crashing of their ships into the land causing even more damage, and forcefully evolving the human race giving them unique powers. The last of the human race siding with either the aliens or against them, those that went against them were driven underground, into their tunnels, Splicers, and the Humans.

Everything stopped, there was no echo, no shaking of the floors, and no more struggle. When I opened my eyes, the door scanned me opening up to showing Hestler standing there with his mouth agape and his eyes wide with wonder and a hint of fear. Walking to him I saw the same form, the monstrosity from before but with a spike crushed straight through its mouth to its spine. The words still haunted my mind, “You have been chosen.”