There was a noise in the hallway. No, it was behind him. It was a voice, David thought. He strained his hearing faintly heard a chant. It was as if he was in a sports stadium and had just won the world cup. Something was repeated again and again, in rising intensity, but he couldn’t make out the words.

David turned his head and the voice moved, it wasn’t behind him, it was back down the corridor. He pushed himself off the ground and tried not to slip on the pooling blood that now covered the floor.

He stumbled down the corridor, eventually reaching the large reinforced door that the girl and the surgeon had opened. Inside, a translucent sphere was raised on a marble pedestal. Surrounding the pedestal was a wide circle of marble that slotted into the floor like a boundary around the pedestal. An unusual pattern was engraved across the circumference of the marble circle.

Surrounding the pedestal were six corpses, David recognised the cultist lady, but the others were heavily armoured soldiers which he struggled to differentiate. The corpses leaked fluid from their facial orifices, and their skin was swollen purple.

Other than the corpses, many empty fabric bags covered the floor. It looked like they had been cut open in a hurry.

What the hell?

The voice remained in the background, continuing its chant and luring him to a different part of the facility. David left the room and continued down the corridor. The voice was louder now, and he started to understand it.

“Mushroom! Mushroom! Mushroom! …“ The voice spoke. It was coming from one of the reinforced rooms.

David couldn’t open these doors before, but he had just seen the soldier girl manage to open the large one. He remembered that she had used a strange rectangular device to do so.

He returned to the soldier girl’s corpse to find the device. The girl had a small single strap backpack, which he imagined would contain the device.

The sensation of rolling the girl’s corpse over to get at the backpack was an unnerving one. David could only compare it to touching a live person, but live people moved with or against you. The corpse did neither, it was completely limp.

David opened the zipped backpack and saw a variety of strange items. It was part survival kit, he recognised most of the items, items like bandages and gauze pads, small knives and other metal tools. A small collection of containers, and a large water bottle were also present. The bag also contained what David thought was fire starting lint and survival rations.

He didn’t recognise all of the contents however, as there were four silver-like discs with some sort of pattern engraved on them, and a silver rectangle which he expected was the door opening device. He took the whole bag, and the girl’s knife sheath and belt, the latter of which only just fit him.

David held the strange rectangular device in his left hand, and the knife in his other, as he returned to the reinforced door that was calling to him. He was more stable now that most of the adrenaline had worn off. His hands were still shivering, but David told himself that his lack of clothing was responsible.

He approached the door and the chanting intensified, reaching a crescendo of noise. His own heartbeat was hammering though his skull, beating like the drums of war.

He raised the hand that held the rectangular device, which was magnetically attracted to a depression in the surface of the door. He guided his hand towards the recess and the device snapped into place. There was a clunking noise before the wall began to hum, and the door retracted into the ceiling.

“Mushroom! Mushroom! Mushroom!” The voice was screaming now. David could see someone’s bare feet on the other side of the door.

The door completely receded into the ceiling and David stood in front human that had been infected by some sort of fungus. It was stuck behind a glass wall that divided the room into two parts. The creatures face was disfigured by a large mushroom which encompassed the majority of its head. Each word spoken by the creature sent a ripple of blue glow across its fungal surfaces.

David stared in shock. The voice quieted as soon as he saw the creatures face. He glanced around the room, it was better lit than the hallway since none of the lights had been damaged. It was made of blank white tiles, the same as the corridor’s, and the walls were covered in drawers, just like most of the rooms he had seen so far, except that these were transparent.

Inside the drawers were all manner of vials and samples, but the more prominent items were petri dishes full of life and different terrariums of mushrooms. David felt as though he had a better understanding of the point of this facility now, it was some sort of secret laboratory.

He looked at the strange mushroom creature again, its visage was otherworldly. David couldn’t help but doubt his own reality yet again.

He stood there for a moment in contemplation before the mushroom creature started to knock on the glass wall. After catching his attention, the mushroom creature gestured for him to approach.

He did, fearlessly. If there was anything in this world that wanted to help him, it would have to be mushrooms, he was the mushroom apostle after all. Once he was close enough, the creature spoke again.

“My… my prayer… finally fulfilled” The creature spoke in a language which was foreign to him, yet he could understand nonetheless.

“So-so glad... to serve… apostle.” It continued.

A shockwave of blue colour shot across the surface of the mushroom creature, bursting open veins which began to spew blue glowing blood.

The mushroom creature fell to the ground. David fell with it, as a mental energy swept him off his feet.

His eyes rolled around in his head as he looked at the empty air. It felt as though his head was being compressed and expanded at the same time. Then, the sensation became painful, eliciting a scream that David fought with his teeth.

Strange words entered his mind, words that he didn’t recognise but could understand. Words that were unmistakably foreign to him. The pressure became unbearable, then, as quickly as it had started, the sensation receded, leaving him on the ground to catch his breath.

David stood up again, bracing himself on the glass wall, and looked at the now unmoving mushroom creature.

Shit. He tried to speak aloud, but he bit his tongue as he tried to pronounce two different syllables at once. It took him several attempts, but he managed to enunciate the word in both English and whatever language he had just learned.

Somehow, the mushroom creature had taught him an entire language in an instant.

For a while, David rested in the strange room, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He still felt ill, but thankfully he wasn’t spewing blood again.

The surgeon’s brutal grin appeared whenever he closed his eyes, taunting him. Whatever the dead man found so funny, it made him uneasy. He looked at the mushroom corpse and hoped that he wouldn’t be the next disfigured corpse.

Whatever his fate, David remembered the mushroom god’s advice to ‘follow the setting sun’. It was all he had to go on, unless he wanted to bunker down in the destroyed facility until eventual reinforcements came to lock him up or put him down.

He hadn’t seen any raining or bad weather while he was in captivity, but the super hailstorm that had almost killed him on the first day made him reconsider roaming the outside world again.

If he wanted to survive, he would need equipment, and there was a whole, or at least part of, a facility for him to loot. In terms of equipment, the memory of the hailstorm made David desire a big metal shield.

Once he had regained some strength, David grabbed his new single strap backpack and left the mushroom corpse and the reinforced room. He looked through the hallway for other rooms to open.

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He weighed the options in his mind, the reinforced rooms might hold valuable equipment, but they might also contain more survivors. After all, the last two reinforced rooms he could see into held corpses of his captors. The bent door and the pedestal room both.

Despite the threat, David felt that he had a better chance against injured soldiers than he did against the wilderness. Plus, surely any able survivors would have assisted the soldier girl and the surgeon, meaning those that remained here must be incapacitated or dead. At least, he hoped.

He approached the next reinforced door and placed the door opening device in its spot. There was a clunk and a hum as the door began to raise into the ceiling.

This room was larger than the previous, there were more benches and draws, but there was no glass wall or mushroom creature. A pile of papers lay on one of the tables, David took a closer look and was extremely surprised when he realised, he could read them.

One of the bundles was titled “Cross-Species Transmission of Fungal Drone Pathogens: Selectively Breeding Fungal Drone Pathogens to Infect Humans”, and another was “Civilian Targeted Biological Weaponry: Using Low-Fatality Pathogens with Highly Infectious Carrier Agents”.

David read on for a moment.

Traditionally, Aelfheim’s biological weapons have been designed to target military personnel. Using traps and artillery, the dissemination of biological weapons against military targets has been highly effective in the past. Because of this, Aelfheim’s biological weaponry has been designed to be highly fatal, resistant to treatment and difficult to detect during incubation. The most recent directive from the Aelfheim Special Defence Agency indicates a paradigm shift in the defence objectives of Aelfheim. Instead of targeting high value military personnel, A.S.D.A has determined that industrial capacity is the more critical metric to determine a nations military power. With this in consideration, this paper describes the methods in which currently manufactured pathogens can be reduced to less fatal variants and combined with highly infectious carrier agents to produce bioweapons intended to destroy civilian industries by maiming or killing entire human civilian populations.

What the fuck?

Disregarding the genocidal part, David noticed that the word ‘human’ was used. He wondered what other kinds of civilian populations there might be. Mushroom-people?

His captors had certainly seemed human, but unless they were planning to destroy their own society, he couldn’t understand why they would be developing bioweapons intended to do so. Maybe they could also inoculate their own population?

He bundled up the reports and put them in his new bag.

David ruffled through the draws along the walls of the room, they contained similar items to the last. Vials, jars of mushrooms, petri dishes, and strange silver disks could be found throughout the room. He found another drawer full of books, mostly related to biology. He read some of the titles: ‘Human Anatomy in Depth’, ‘Natural Mycelium Hives’, and ‘Disease Identification and Treatment: 4th Edition’.

David wasn’t interested in those, his bag was full already. There was a particularly interesting book in the mix, however, ‘A.S.D.A Biological Weapons Manual: Dissemination Techniques’. It was small enough to fit in his bag, and it sounded important. If there was anything valuable here, it would have to be the secret weapons manuals.

He found more of the salt-powder tubes in one of the drawers. They were a different shape and colour to those that the soldiers carried on their belts. It seemed that the powder could be found in all throughout the facility.

David scavenged through the remaining drawers and found nothing that would aid his survival. He didn’t have a use for any of the scientific samples. He wanted clothing, waterproof tarp, rope, he wanted survival equipment.

He left this room and opened the next reinforced door. This room was slightly larger than the last. It looked like an armoury.

The walls had lockers, and the centre of the room was filled with sitting benches. The far side of the room held a mostly empty weapon rack. Only a bow and two spears remained. David tried to swing the spear, but it was too heavy and unwieldy for him.

He could carry the bow easily, but he couldn’t draw it, not without reopening his wounds. He also found a bag next to the weapon rack that was filled with strange arrows that had long cylindrical arrowheads.

David decided to keep the bow and arrows. The next reinforced room he opened was another armoury. This one was stocked more than the last, unfortunately for David, the remaining items were a variety of heavy swords and armour pieces, none of which he could carry.

He searched through the lockers, most of which were unlocked, and managed to find a full set of clothing. The shirt was slightly large, but it was better than nothing. Similarly, the pants were too wide, but they had pockets unlike his surgery pants, plus he had a belt, which would solve the size problem.

David put the new clothing on, he now had pants, a belt and knife sheath, a single strap backpack, a bow, and a bag of arrows. Furthermore, the locker even had a pair of slightly large leather boots and socks, which David was extremely grateful for.

He tried to pick up one of the remaining large chest plates as a hail-shield, but as he expected, it was far too heavy. The helmets were lighter, but they didn’t fit and pinched his skin when he moved his head, he still grabbed one for cooking purposes however, a helmet would make a good substitute for a pot.

He went to open the next reinforced room, but this one was visibly damaged, and couldn’t open. David tried the last few reinforced rooms, but like the other side of the building, the doors here were broken.

David went back into the surgery room, he wanted to bring some medical equipment with him, preferably clean wound dressings, scissors, and some sort of antibiotic or antiseptic. He wanted to be able to keep his wounds clean while they healed, assuming he lived long enough for them to heal.

David opened the drawer that he remembered contained the vials of liquid. The chemical vapours quickly escaped the drawer, but he pulled out the intact vials quickly and closed it.

Opening the vials, he smelt each of them, looking for the scent of highly concentrated alcohol. David did this several more times until he realised, he was able to read the labels.

There were lots of medical terms he didn’t recognise, and one that he did, isopropyl alcohol. David put that vial in his pile on top of the drawers, which he then added bandages, gauze pads, scissors, and scalpels to. He also found a large drawer of soap, a portion of which he added to his pile.

At the end of this process, he had amassed a reasonably sized pile of items. He then went to search the other side of the room.

He had previously avoided this part because the floor was covered in sharp fragments, but now that he wasn’t barefoot, he could venture through.

This side of the room had more drawers and some cabinetry. While most of the cabinetry was filled with different shapes and types of glass instruments, one of the larger cabinets held uniforms, they looked to be the same as what the surgeon and his assistants had been wearing when they operated on him.

At the bottom of the cabinet was a large leather rucksack, exactly what David was looking for. He brought it over to the other side of the room and filled the larger rucksack with the contents of the smaller bag, and the new medical equipment.

He wrapped the vials with bandages to stop them from clinking together or shattering. He did the same to the metal tools. David decided he would keep the small single strap backpack, and since it was now empty, he folded it up to put in the rucksack.

The arrows would have no chance at fitting in the backpack, but he could attach their bag to it in order to carry them. For the bow, he could attach it to the backpack as well.

David couldn’t put the rucksack straps over his shoulders without rubbing his stitches, so he took his shirt off and wrapped some bandages around his chest and torso, covering the wound dressings, some of which had partially fallen off.

He wrapped extra bandages around the parts which would come into contact with the straps in order to provide padding. Finally, he put his shirt back on and picked up his new repossessed gear.

As he entered the corridor again, David thought that the next thing he would need is money, or things he could barter with. He had decided to bring a couple of the powder tubes with him in the hope that they were valuable.

David walked past the room with the large pedestal again and paused. His face was wrinkled but his mind was torn. He was worried about looting their corpses because he didn’t know how they died, and he was in a biological weapons laboratory. But could whatever it was that killed the cultist lady and friends really do more damage than whatever the surgeon had done to him? David didn’t think so.

He began to loot the cultist lady, but her corpse came apart like wet paper at the slightest touch, leaking organic fluid like a full sponge. David took her necklace and golden bracelet before he gave up on the disgusting endeavour.

He didn’t bother with the armoured corpses, on which he couldn’t see anything of value. Instead, he wiped the organic matter off the jewellery and packed it in his bag. Gold was valuable everywhere, he hoped.

It was then that he noticed that the cultist lady had unnaturally long ears hidden under her long auburn hair.

Aelfheim… elves… of course. David realised. This wasn’t just any biological weapons laboratory, this was an elven biological weapons lab, and one made to kill humans at that.

Nazi elves, great. He thought sarcastically.

It was time for him to depart, he had gathered as much as he could comfortably carry, and he wanted to be at least a couple of kilometres away from the ruined facility before sunset.

He approached the fallen ceiling which provided a ramp to the surface. The soldier girl and the surgeon’s corpses hadn’t moved from where he murdered them. The scene sent a chill down his spine, but he didn’t have the energy to think about it anymore.

His hands, which had just stopped shaking, started again. Now that he wasn’t scavenging, anxiety sprouted in his gut. It felt like every second he spent standing there was another second that enemy reinforcements approached. The feeling gained pressure, growing stronger and stronger.

David wanted to get out of here, and fast.

He placed his gear on the ramp before beginning to climb onto it. It was waist-height, not a particularly difficult climb unless you were injured, David was.

Just before he lifted himself onto the ramp, David remembered that the surgeon had pointed to his watch. Watches were valuable.

A grin spread across his face.

Cheers fuckwit. David thought as he repossessed the war criminal’s expensive-looking silver and gold watch.

David couldn’t recognise the surface of the facility. The ground was scorched and covered with debris from the destroyed building. Luckily, the perimeter wall had also been decimated.

He set off into the grasslands.