The facility was a mess. The main salt reserve had been sabotaged, two staff members had been locked in a secure room, and the subjects hadn’t been attended to in a full day with all the drama. Worst of all, she couldn’t find the person responsible.
She had her suspicions, however, and the most suspicious of all was the new subject, who Luthina knew she should have executed. There was a solution, however, she would get rid of the subject and gain some critical experimental data in one, they just needed to test their new bacterial payload on him. Two birds with one stone.
Unfortunately, they had to surgically remove the fungal carrier agent that they were acclimatizing to his body so that it didn’t interfere with the bioweapon. Their research was yet to discover a method of combining the two, a fact which would hopefully change once they broke the cross-species transmission barrier and developed a human strain of the fungal drone infection.
A loud screeching siren blared through Luthina’s office. The facility had detected a high-power spirit signal, indicative of a beacon spell. Had she guessed wrong? The newest subject should still be unconscious from surgery, so who had cast the spell?
Luthina didn’t have time to guess at the source. She had worked in the Aelfheim Special Defence Agency for more than twenty years, and in classified facilities like this, beacon spells had only ever meant one thing, a guided artillery strike.
She rushed to the facility spirit core, as the second in command, she could authorise the facility spirit to raise a shield. Unfortunately, the facilities salt reserves had fallen below safe operation levels due to the sabotage, and the next shipment would not arrive for another week because of the sudden request.
Luthina rushed into the secured room, five guards were already present at attention, the rest of the facilities staff would be either sheltering in the reinforced basement or securing dangerous experimental samples and materials for impact.
The room was hexagonal, with one wall that was occupied by the door and the rest which were covered in recessed shelving that should have been full salt bags, instead only a quarter or so of the shelves were filled. An unfortunate distribution of resources, since this was the only reserve spared from sabotage.
In the centre of the room was a pedestal which held a semi-transparent glass sphere. Around the base of the sphere was a channel carved into the pedestal and filled with salt, and surrounding the pedestal was a ritual circle carved into the smooth marble floor.
“Begin the shield initiation ritual. “ Luthina commanded. The guards started immediately, pulling bags of salt off the walls. They threw the bags into the circle in the centre of the room. One of the guards approached each of the salt bags began to cut them open. The mana absorption process was more efficient if the salt was open to the air.
Luthina wasn’t standing around, she was chanting under her breath and making gestures with her hands, causing the sphere to pulse in response. Each time the sphere pulsed, some of the salt on the floor would combust with a light red glow and a soft hiss. Luthina guessed that they had around five minutes before the artillery strike would impact the facility, the shield initiation ritual would only take three.
Once the walls were empty, the guards moved to their positions around the circle to assist in the shield ritual. All the remaining salt would be used power the shield.
“Great spirit, we beseech you to offer your aid. Shield and protect this place from the approaching threats. We offer this salt in return.” Luthina chanted with the other five guards while holding her hands in prayer below her chin. Once the chant was complete, she knelt on her left knee and clapped her hands together.
The sphere exploded with light for a moment before it settled to a strong glow, the salt on the floor began to combust with a red glow, and the piles began to disintegrate as all the salt slowly levitated up streams that emanated from the tip of each pile. Luthina knew that outside, a shimmering barrier would materialize into existence in the shape of a dome that covered the facility.
What she didn’t know was that high above the clouds, two shield breaker shells and one high explosive shell were approaching. For guided artillery strikes, this was an expensive one.
The entire facility shook as the first shield breaker shattered the forming protective dome, earlier than expected. The second shield breaker, barely obstructed by the weak reforming shield, pelted the facility with thousands of glowing blue fragments that pierced through anything in their path. Without a shield to destroy, the second shell was an expensive waste.
The artillery strike was obviously designed to impact once the shield formation was complete, not during its formation. It had been launched early, or the shield had been raised late. The third shell impacted the shield as it began to reform again, detonating it much earlier than intended. Luthina was as lucky as an artillery target could be.
The explosion annihilated the above-ground portion of the facility, sending shockwaves through the ground, breaking parts of the hidden basement. The bright explosive light could be seen for kilometres, and heard even further.
In the spirit core room, Luthina and her officers had escaped from the blast that destroyed the top side of the facility. Unfortunately, there was a safety oversight in the ritual’s design. The ritual operators were within salt absorption range of the great spirit during the spell cast.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if enough salt had been placed in the ritual circle, or if the great spirit had been trained to not draw salt out of solution. Unfortunately, the effort required to train such behaviour to great spirits was great, and using mana links with safety trained normal spirits would reduce the speed at which spells could be cast. It was a design flaw that could only become visible in the most dire of circumstances.
Luthina wouldn’t have to worry about that, like each of her officers, her cells had been destroyed by osmotic shock when the salt inside was absorbed to power the facility shield.
She died in an instant.
***
David was sick to death of not waking up in his real bed. He had given up on the idea that he was still tripping a while ago, and most of his other theories like being in a coma were mostly disproven by the permanence of this world.
Objects didn’t appear or disappear at random, words didn’t change when he wasn’t looking, for all intents and purposes, the only unreal thing he had seen was the strange weapons and movement that his captors had. That and the strange device around his neck. Oh, and the mushroom god.
He was up for a surprise today, however, since he awoke on a surgery table instead of a bed. He tried to move his head but was struggled to move against the drowsy weariness that permeated his body. Whatever drug they had injected him with was still wearing off.
David looked across the ceiling, it was clearly damaged. There were holes where parts of the ceiling had fallen down, he was thankful none had fallen on him. He lay still for a while until he gathered the strength to move.
David sat up on the edge of the table, he had no shirt, and his torso was covering in red tinted wound dressing, his blood had sept through the white cotton, causing it to stick to his skin. There weren’t any bandages holding them in place. He peeled back one of the gauze pads and saw stitches that held his skin together.
His torso, chest, and arms were all a mess of partially healed stitches and brand-new wounds. Thankfully, his back, legs, and head were untouched, and there was only a small wound on the side of his neck. After inspecting the surgeon’s handiwork, David observed his surroundings.
The floor was covered in tiles and tile fragments that had fallen from the ceiling, and there was a layer of dust that had lightly settled upon most of the surfaces in the room. David stood and walked towards the door, stepping carefully around the sharp fragments that would cut his feet.
The door was closed, but the locking mechanism was on his side, so he could open it. Unfortunately, he would only be able to open the door open a fraction before it would be stopped by a large piece of debris on the floor. David knew he had no chance at lifting the debris out of the way without reopening his wounds.
Instead, he decided to scavenge the room for items and information. On a bench next to the operating table was a variety of surgical instruments, several of which were sharp, and would make better weapons than his precious glass knife.
David went to the drawers that lined the walls of the room, they were filled with different syringes, tools and vials. Most of the vials were shattered, but some survived. The chemicals pooled in the bottoms of the drawers, producing a pungent smell which quickly invaded his nose whenever he opened them.
Some of the drawers were filled with less obvious equipment however, one of which was filled with small discs of a silver like metal that were engraved with strange patterns. Another was filled with what appeared to be tubes of some sort of white powder, it looked like table salt, but he wasn’t going to do any taste tests.
David, after exploring the room, looked at the door again. The hinges were on the inside, just like the lock. He could probably knock the pins out of the hinges and pull the door down, allowing him to escape.
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David looked through the drawers again, he found something that looked like a big spike with a handle, and another object which was probably a paperweight. They would approximate a hammer and nail for the purposes of his escape. Thankfully, David was tall enough to reach the top hinge easily.
He pointed the spike into the pin that held the upper hinge together and struck the handle of with his paperweight, it didn’t budge. He tried again, and the pin moved slightly. He struck the handle several more times until the pin was halfway dislodged and the spike could no longer fit through the pinhole.
“Damn. “ David spoke aloud.
He looked for a pair of pliers among the surgical instruments and found something that better fit the description of forceps but would hopefully function similarly. He gripped the bottom of the pin with the forceps and pulled downwards. After a bit of wiggling, the top hinge came loose. He gave the same treatment to the lower hinge, but it wasn’t moving at all.
David looked to the other edge of the door, which was sagging under its weight at the removal of the top hinge.
Of course, there’s too much pressure on the bottom hinge. He thought as he grabbed a rolled-up bandage from the bench and unrolled it a bit. He shoved the bandage under the edge of the door to prop it up, and with some help from his spike, which he used as a lever, the door was once again level with the floor.
David tried again at removing the lower hinge and it fell out easily. He moved out of the way and pulled the handle. The door began to fall inwards, over the top of the internal debris. It crashed against the floor with a loud noise, but it was no longer preventing him from leaving the room.
David went to pick up some sharp surgical tools before leaving the room. The hallway was dimmer than the surgical room, several of the lights were flickering, dim or broken. He only had a vague idea of where the exit would be.
Time to get moving. He thought.
***
David had come across several rooms now; he had seen one other surgery room and several storage rooms, each of which were mostly empty. Some of the rooms had reinforced metal doors which he was entirely unable to open.
He was approaching the main corner, the underground part of the facility was in the same L shape as the aboveground part. On the inner side of the corner, the monotonous white tiling of the wall was broken by a large, reinforced door. It was secured shut like the other reinforced doors he had seen.
David thought he was on the lowest level of the facility, since the two staircases he had seen so far didn’t go down, only up. Unfortunately for him, both staircases were also obstructed with debris, so he couldn’t traverse them. The only option was to continue down towards the other end of the basement, if the facility was symmetric, there should be a third and fourth staircase in that direction.
He continued to walk down the tiled corridor, avoiding the sharp fragments on the tiled that patterned the floor randomly, and the sudden blue explosion of one of the lighting fixtures. Thankfully, the fragments didn’t injure him.
David’s attention was captured by a reinforced door, this one had taken a much greater impact than the others, and the door was bent out where the ceiling had sagged downwards. The bending of the door opened a small hole through which David could see the inside of the room.
He saw three of the lightly armoured soldiers in the room, their bodies were disfigured and. David guessed that there were more soldiers crushed under the rubble out of sight. An unfortunate fate, but he felt little sympathy for his captors.
This side of the building was more damaged than the other wing, but that ended up being a benefit, since the fallen ceiling had produced a path out of the facility. It had fallen on David’s end, but was still attached on the other, forming an inclined plane which could be traversed to escape the basement.
None of the rooms beyond the fallen segment would be reachable, or escapable. David was thankful that he was operated on at the other side of the building.
A metallic noise resonated through the corridor, making him flinch. He paused and strained his hearing. It was silent. The silence extended for a moment before someone shouted.
“Kliama! Kliama! Suteh jishna kliama!” Screamed a feminine voice through the corridor, there was no response.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the basement, at least one person in the corridor wasn’t barefoot, and it wasn’t David. He decided he didn’t want to be in plain sight when the captor turned around the corner, so he carefully opened the door to one of the non-reinforced rooms and hid inside.
This room was some sort of cleaning cabinet, David imagined. There were a variety of mops, buckets and glass containers full of liquid. It wasn’t important, as he was busy breathing slowly and staying still as the metallic footsteps continued.
David leaned on the wall in the dark storage room, so that he could peek through a slit in the door. He saw the person who screamed earlier, she was injured, and another person, whom she was supporting with her arm. The second person was hopping, it looked like one of their legs was crushed.
More than that, David recognised the second person, they had the same white clothing and body structure as the surgeon that had operated on him twice, although they didn’t have a mask. David sneered in the dark.
The girl hobbled to the large, reinforced door that he had passed earlier on the inner side of the main corner. She knocked on the door desperately.
“Kliama! Kliama… klia-“ she broke into a coughing fit as she braced her body against the door to stabilise herself. The surgeon tapped her shoulder with his spare hand and pulled a small, thin brick-like object out of his pocket. The girl recognised the object and used it to interact with the door, but he didn’t see how she did it. There was a loud hum as the door reacted to the device.
“Aaaaagh…“ the girl wailed as her voice broke. She couldn’t muster the energy to shout in response to whatever she saw, but it wasn’t what she had hoped.
David hoped that more of her friends were dead, that would mean less people trying to cut him open. It was a morbid thought, but his face was contorted in disgust for the duration of the pathetic performance.
He didn’t have any sympathy for people who performed human experiments, particularly those who experimented on him.
The girl stood for a moment in shock before she resolved herself and continued to stumble through the corridor towards the fallen ceiling. He remained silent and hidden as the metallic footsteps passed near him; the girl hadn’t bothered to check any of the rooms along the way.
The girl and the surgeon stood at the base of the collapsed ceiling, it would be difficult for the surgeon to climb with his injured leg. David had thought the girl was mostly uninjured from afar, but at this distance it was clear she was bleeding from her head, and the way she was moving indicated another injury that he couldn’t deduce.
David gripped the scalpel in his hand tightly, he hadn’t let go since he picked it up in the surgery room earlier. Could he kill her before she could kill him? David didn’t know, but he did know that he wouldn’t be safe when reinforcements inevitably arrived. He couldn’t imagine no one responding to whatever emergency had occurred.
The surgeon was sat down and laid his head on his good knee. The girl leaned against the wall to catch her breath, facing away from David. He wouldn’t get a better chance.
David approached with the scalpel in hand. He was almost a meter away when the girl noticed his shadow, she turned in fright and struggled to pull her knife out of its sheath, it was stuck.
The girl instead pulled the cap off a tube attached to her belt and gestured in David’s direction, chanting something under her breath.
The girl saw the collar on his neck and immediately changed her pace, gesturing something else. A red glow emanated from the tube on her belt and David’s limbs locked in place for a moment as a searing pain spread across his neck. A moment later, the effect was lost.
The girl looked down in shock, there was no more powder in the tube on her belt. She didn’t freeze, immediately trying to draw her knife again, but it was jammed. It would take precious seconds to dislodge, seconds of focus, not panic.
David made for an intimidating sight, his torso and arms were bloody, and his face was contorted in a vicious focus. He didn’t hesitate for even a second, the adrenaline in his blood smoothing his thoughts into actions.
He lunged forward and slashed the girls throat as she struggled with the knife sheath. She immediately tried to staunch the bleeding with one hand while she managed to withdraw the knife with her other.
Her face mouth flapped open like a fish as she struggled to breath. She took wild swings at David, but he had already retreated away. He was content to stand back as she bled out. She became more and more desperate, slashing viciously at the air in front of her as more and more blood spilled through her hand.
The girl’s eyes were wide open, but she wasn’t looking at him, her eyes seemed to lose focus as she stumbled forward. David moved back in response, the movement seemed to shock the girl into lucidity again, as she lunged forward in response, unable to reach him.
She stumbled, falling against the wall which she slowly slid down as her feet scrambled to find purchase on the now-slippery floor. A gurgling sound emanated from her throat as she choked. Her hands were completely white, and she gripped her knife tightly even as she slowly lost consciousness.
The girl sputtered, resulting in a spray of blood from her neck. Slowly, her eyes lost focus and she stared into the blank tiles of the wall in front of her.
The girl had no final words.
The surgeon hadn’t moved much during the fight, he had a large piece of debris gripped in his hand, and he had propped himself up against the wall. David watched him with caution as he moved to pry the large knife out of the dead girl’s grip. The surgeon sneered at him and spoke something that David couldn’t hope to understand.
“Fuck you.” David snarled.
The surgeon laughed, and a brutal grin stretched across his face. He gestured to his chest, pointing to imaginary stitches. Then, he brought his right hand up towards his left, and pointed to watch on his wrist.
“Tchik Tyokk.” The surgeon spoke before breaking out into a chuckle.
David, enraged at the taunt, approached and kicked at the surgeon’s good leg. The action sent a wave of pain through his stitched torso, which rejected the difficult movement.
The surgeon was more stable than he thought, however, as the kick didn’t knock him down. David went to kick again, but the surgeon held his debris threateningly, warding him away. He moved back and went to pick up his own piece of debris, a heavy rock.
David pelted the rock towards the surgeon’s head, who dropped his rock and moved his hands to guard his head in response. The throw broke a stitch on David’s shoulder, which began to dribble blood.
The surgeon, however, was much worse off. The rock had cracked him in the head, destabilising him. The surgeon was about to fall, so David approached and slashed with his new knife.
The first slash lacerated the surgeon’s hand, which he used to defend his head. David slashed again, cutting across the surgeon’s forearm.
This time, David stabbed. The knife penetrated the side of the surgeon’s neck. He withdrew the knife and the wound spurted with blood in time with the surgeon’s heartbeat.
David took a moment to lean against the wall as he looked at the two people he had just murdered. An uncomfortable heat washed over him.
He considered the possibility that he had deluded the entire scenario. What if the super smoothie had triggered some sort of schizophrenic psychosis in him? What if he was in a mental hospital and had just murdered two of the staff? It was a dreadful thought.
David slouched down the wall and took deep breaths as if he was suffocating. He felt ill, the kind of ill you could only feel after you had just killed two people.
He retched as nausea caught up with him, but there was nothing in his stomach. His head was spinning, so he laid down, adopting the recovery position. He retched again and an unnerving amount of blood spilled out of his mouth, it was mixed with strange black particles that he thought was mould.
David wondered if, in the real world, he had just been shot. The amount of blood he threw up indicated a serious injury, but he hadn’t been injured in the fight. It didn’t make sense.
He laid there as he struggled to keep himself together, his muscles cramped and seized, sending sharp pains through his body. He was choking on air.
Then the moment passed, and his body relaxed.