It smelt off; the air reeked of torment. Jackson stalked in pure darkness without light, each step as silent as the last with his rifle firmly on his shoulder. The floor was wet and slimy, evidence that the creature made the cave its home. The cave was an expansive complex of tunnels and turns, though Jackson couldn’t tell which were natural or made by the monster itself. It was a maze of earth and smoothed rock where the only thing guiding the reptile was the ever-intensifying miasma of the suffering.

Jackson halted his advance when he heard a groan in the distance. His heart skipped a beat as he knew what was waiting for him and what he needed to do. He followed the sound which led him to a large room; the surfaces were made of thick black and dark brown resin that made it almost as hard as stone. At the centre was a cauldron made of the same material, inside was a bubbling green viscous that was cold to the touch.

However, that wasn’t what attracted Jackson to the chamber. Around the room were 10 women fused to the floor. Their stomachs bloated to unnatural proportions like there was an entire cow inside of them, the skin on their stomach stretched so thin it was almost transparent and ready to burst. Jackson examined one of the women whom he knew from the Disposal Unit, the same one that was tasked to hunt the monster. She screamed as a clawed hand pushed inside of her, one of the claws poked against the inner walls of her skin and uterine, ready to split it open and emerge out of her like a reverse caesarean section before it retracted its hand to hug itself. The woman cried in agony, knowing she was only on borrowed time before her unborn monstrosity would kill her.

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The room from what Jackson could tell, was one of the monster’s incubation chambers. The cauldron was a nutrient-rich paste that would help the further development of the horror that grew inside their wombs that was forcefully inseminated into them by the monster that took them.

Jackson pulled out his Glock, he knew he couldn’t save the women, nor could he leave them to suffer. Without hesitation or pause, he shot them all in the head. None of the women begged to be saved for all of them incoherently wished to die. It was a mercy to them, for what they’d been through. Afterward, he tore the unborn monsters out of them and slit their throats in case they survived the death of their vessels. The horrors would never consider the women mothers, it would be likely that once they were born, they would consume the flesh of the poor soul that brought them into the world.

Before he left the incubation chamber, he took a sample of the green liquid for the Order to examine for it could hold the key to knowing how to detect the creature and how to kill it.

The reptile raised their rifle the moment he heard something move in front of him. Yet nothing was there, but the reptile wasn’t convinced. He knew he was being watched, and that the creature was nearby. The reptile pursued the monster that lurked in the shadows.