Just as I exit the university I study at I am stopped by a man covered in tattered clothes. He grabs the water bottle from my bag and chugs the entire thing in front of my eyes. Angrily swiping the mostly empty bottle back I ask what’s wrong with him.

He claims he came from the future, an apocalyptic wasteland where he hasn't interacted with anyone living in forever. He comes off very standoffish. Before any follow up could be made he turns and walks around the building, acting as if he owns whatever he comes across. He grabs an unattended scooter and rides it to a playground where he spends a few minutes playing around with the equipment.

…

I open my eyes to a few fellow survivors standing over me, my back to the destroyed remains of an old university, and one of them offers their hand. I realise it’s raining as they pull me up, overhead rubble blocking the black water from hitting us. They woke me up so we all can discuss where to go next.

I get a bad feeling and ask one of the girls in the group to check the toxicity levels of the area. She says she checked not long ago but I want to confirm it with my own eyes. She pulls a phone like device from her backpack and flips it open, the screen showing a fifty eight. That’s really bad.

We assemble everyone and show them the toxicity level of the area, one exclaims that we'll all die the minute the sun comes out. We collectively agree that we should speed up our search for a traveling caravan of doctors that call themselves The Smog.

The Smog runs itself similar to an organisation and runs experiments of all kinds. The man that claimed to be from the future is one of the lead researchers in a few different areas. One such area is for biological experiments.

The biological division houses many different species in rectangular pits, the names of the creatures are spray painted on the walls next to their respective pits in white. They use nicknames for the creatures to keep morale high such as ‘Bald’ for a bald eagle. The man wonders how they managed to get ahold of an actual bald eagle. A lot of people didn't like the name Bald so they replaced the spray painted name with a question mark and held a site wide survey to rename it.

Besides studying normal creatures they try to make their own in the hopes of creating a creature that would survive almost anything. One of the creatures has the base of a bird, four thin trunks, spider-like legs, can breathe in water, and can vocalise. The way it vocalises is a problem though as it uses a frog vocal sac, the sac is vulnerable and the whole creature is deemed a failure.

…

In our search we came across a laboratory. The main entrance is inaccessible but there is an unfinished side entrance not too far away. The side entrance reveals an empty hallway with glass walls that look into offices and a red double door at the end. On the other side of the red doors stands a small girl in a white dress, her back turned against us. She suddenly dies before her body glitches like an old television and her body reverts back to before.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This death and glitchy reset loops continually with no end in sight. I slowly step up to her and poke her in the back, everything goes completely silent for a moment and then suddenly I am outside staring at the closed side entrance again, alone.

I enter the laboratory again, the side entrance revealing the exact same hallway as before with only one major difference, the bodies. Scattered all throughout the hallway are cold bodies and long dried blood. I open the same red double doors and instead of seeing a girl, I see nothing.

Memories rush to the forefront of my mind. I do not know if these memories are mine or are being implanted. The memories clears and I see myself strapped down to a chair in one of the labs, no sirens or warnings blare out of the speaker system but I know that there is an ongoing outbreak of monsters.

One of the monsters breaks down the door and spots me instantly, drool rushes down its mouth as it shambles closer. This monster has almost no flexible movement anywhere except in it’s mantis-like arms due to it’s chitin shell and fortunately as such can not eat any part of me without first removing me from the chair.

The monster takes a few snapping bites of the air close to my face before it realises it can’t reach me. It rears back and takes a swipe at the base of the chair, wrenching the chair apart, releasing me, and causing a horrid screech of metal.

The monster rears its arm back once more before letting out a screech itself as it’s tackled from the side by another monster. The new monster sports a bulbous head full of unique bloodshot eyes. Them fighting means none of the parasitic hive minds lived through the beginnings of the outbreak and I use the distraction to escape.

Bursting out the door I run towards the mix of human and monster cries. Every part of the facility should be swarming with monsters and if it’s quiet something must have gotten rid of the others in that area.

Too soon am I blocked by a pile of bodies. The bodies look like they were perfectly skinned alive, a telltale sign of a monster that can camouflage itself and ambushes anything with a heat signature; jumping on them and injecting them with acid before sucking out the melted insides.

I turn into another door but it just leads into another lab with no other way through. I turn to go back but I’m stopped from making another step out as the inflexible monster from before blocks the doorway.

I freeze thinking it got me but a second look reveals its eyes to be gone. It’s head is turned slightly sideways, its ear pointing forwards. I tiptoes backwards as slowly as possible getting halfway to the back of the room.

The monster furiously screeches out, brings the tips of its mantis claws to its empty sockets and stabs through the bottom of the holes and into its nostril. It rips out the claws and starts breathing heavier than before almost as if it’s hyperventilating.

I've got only so long before it sniffs me out so I have to take drastic measures. I cut my thumb on a scalpel and wipe the blood on a close by beaker, the monster snaps its body to face me the second I do that. I then grab the beaker and throw it as hard as I can at the wall, making sure it shatters.

The monster leaps at the broken beaker and wildly tears through everything in the area. I use its destruction to grab the head of an anatomy mannequin and run out of the room. The moment I’m out I throw the head in the air towards the pile of bodies, a giant needle seems to appear out of thin air and spear through the head. I have to get as far away as possible while it attempts to remove the dummy head from it’s needle since it will track me through the scent of blood on me.