12 Hours Until Reset

I'm in a crouch, rifle up. I swing open the door slowly and creep into the hospital floor. I quickly scan left and right. We're at a T intersection, halls left, right and center, the broom closet at my back. Jose already took one step out to get a better look at the floor.

The sides of the halls look like hospital rooms, doors currently closed. The floors are white tile, the ceiling looks like tan plasterboard and the lighting is low, using mostly track lights. Kinda like an airplane at night. Dim lighting, to use the RPG term. Enough light to shoot someone in the face at 50 feet, but not enough light to make out their emotions as you do.

“Good adventurers always go left,” I say into my comm. I head to the left. Even in a crouch my speed is double that of anyone else, and I reach the first hospital room door. I reach for the handle. Jose comes up behind me and has the hall covered. I push the lever-style handle in and the door silently cracks open.

Even through this small sliver I can see blood. The floor is covered in red blood. I hear a mechanical beeping and a machine whirring, just like you'd expect to find in a hospital room. I open the door more and see a bed. The bed sheets are soaked red. I look at the occupant and have to hold myself back from retching.

The human occupant, Afghani based on his complexion, has had an arm removed and replaced with an octopus-like tentacle. I resist the urge to just close the door and run away. I push into the room and he hears me.

We make eye contact. He is so, so scared. He's hooked up to a breathing apparatus with a tube in his mouth. He can't talk, but once he realizes I'm some sort of soldier he starts crying and shaking his head. The sobbing forces me to rush to his side and I hold my finger up in the universal shush motion. God, his right arm was replaced with a giant claw. No arm, no elbow, just a long hooked bone.

Fuck this place.

He's still shaking his head, frightened out of his mind. I know very little Pashto, but I say, “friend, help.” That seems to pull him away from the edge of madness just long enough for him to motion with his eyes to his right.

The room's barely lit far corner moves, and what I thought was a chair slithers towards me. “Fuck you,” I say coldly, and cast Yellow Ray at the dweller in the dark. The bright yellow burst lights up the room for just a second, long enough to see that the monster is four legged, has five scrawny human arms on top of a dog-like body, and has way too many fucking eyes. The beam hits one of the arms- no, it actually blocked with that arm. Then it leaps at me, arms first.

I punch it as it flies towards me, sending the creature into the ceiling. Jose bursts in as it falls, taking plasterboard and electrical wiring with it. The lights go out and I cast Yellow Ray and aim my flashlight hand at where it... Used to be. Shit.

I hear muffled screams and turn to see the monster on top of the hostage. From this angle I can see that its mouth is on the bottom of its body, and circular like a lamprey. It bites down on the man and blood sprays, but unfortunately for it, Jose Amarillo is in the room. He fires two shots which knock the thing on its side, then he fires three more shots into the open mouth. It's arms flail around for just a second before the monster slumps to the side and falls off the hostage.

I look at the man and prepare to use one of my healing techniques but he's clearly already gone. That's... That's two human rib cages I've seen today. Fuuuuuck.

“Fucking wierd monster,” Jose says. Going over to kick it. I take a look as he kicks it again to make it drop loot.

Nine Limb Creeper. Tier 4. Takes reduced damage from pretty much everything except Psychic attacks. Did you know that this thing can't actually survive? A Nine Limb Creeper's organs won't support its own body for long. It dies every 20 or so hours only to have another terminal lifeform replace it. Fun!

Possible Loot: existential dread, misery, fake nails, tooth bracelet.

Jebus H. Christopher that's fucked. The monster fades from Jose's third kick and drops a bucket full of coins and a packet of fake nails.

Press-On Pressure-Point Pointed Nails. Increases the damage you do to pressure points when using certain unarmed techniques. Particularly the ones where you poke people.

Mercy bursts into the room as Jose and I are scooping up handfuls of coins as a bloody mess of a man is still on the bed beside us. I see her look of shock and quickly say, “not our blood! We're fine!”

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She takes another look at the mangled human corpse and then turns to leave the room. Quins comes in. “What's eating her, eh? Oh, and what ate him?”

A few minutes later we open another hospital room and find another monstrous human experiment. This one has his ribcage on the outside. Or maybe it's an extra ribcage. I'm not currently interested in finding out which. We sweep the room this time and I find another Creeper keeping watch. The only truly offensive Psychic power I have is Psi Punch. A glowing purple fist slams into the Creeper and caves in its... Face? Body? Whatever, point is I Psi Punch it twice to kill it.

I try to heal the victim and that seems to alleviate enough pain to let the poor man talk. Alicia does our translation again.

“The short ones are like dogs. They keep watch. The fish men only move us around. The tall ones are smart. They talk to us in our brains.”

“I think he means telepathy,” I say.

Alicia rolls her eyes, “sure but there's no word for that directly in Pashto so I'm giving you what he says.”

“They took us and brought us down here. The tallest one is their leader. It is a monster. Not human, but smart. Please, find my brother, he was brought here too.”

“How many are there?” I ask.

“The tall ones, not many, I think. The short ones, they come back, they always come back. I killed one. It came back, stopped me from escaping. The fish men, maybe lots, maybe one. I don't know.”

I look again at his... Condition. “I don't know if it's okay for you to try to escape or not. I don't know if you'll survive.”

“I don't care. I don't want to die on this bed.”

We help him up. His movements are stiff, like his joints can barely bend. I don't know if he'll even be able to get up the ladder to the previous floor. We show him the way and he begins a slow, awkward climb up the ladder.

I turn to my team as we stand back at the T intersection. “We need to clear these rooms, and find anyone else who can be saved.” I can hear Alicia's argument already, so I preempt it. “We have five floors to go, including this one. And 12 hours. We can do 2 hours here. Besides,” I look Mercy in the eyes. “We're supposed to be the good guys.”

Something in the air changes, and it's not my courage surging through the hall. No, something cold wafts through the hospital hall. Something distinctly evil.

Guns are raised. Down the center hall a tall, skinny figure in a long black outfit raises a skinny hand towards us and- BANG! Gets popped in the head by a goddamn US Army Ranger. Jose's shot is the first, but not the last as Alicia opens fire with a handgun and I follow up with rifle fire. Out of the corner of my eye I see Quins draw his bow and face to our right. He uses some technique on his arrow then fires right, the arrow exploding on impact with... Something.

“Creepers comin!” he says and I hear doors up and down all three halls open up. I look left and see two more tall monsters down that hall. Their hands are already raised and creating some sort of purple translucent barrier as they advance. I glance back at the central tall boy and see he's got a barrier now too.

Elder Thing Version 83. Tier 5. Did you read Mountains Of Madness? This is one of those aliens. Except evolved. After 82 previous attempts, this is the most human. It only has 3 arms instead of 5. Progress! Also it has psionic powers that will WRECK you.

Possible Loot: Ancient texts, surgery tools.

Creepers burst out of the open doors, 23 of them all at once. We're opening fire but the tough little bastards are hard to kill. I need more. I can deliver more.

Nine wakizashis fan out around us and then fly, three in each direction. I press my body against the wall to give myself as much peripheral vision as possible. I focus center and let my sub-minds take over the left and right halls. Blades slam into creeper bodies with 81 Strength. At 81 it's twice the strength of the world's strongest a few months back. The blades don't slice through the monsters so much as push into them, driving them back as the solid little creepers can't be killed so easily. On the right my sub-mind has decided to chop off their scrawny arms and that seems to work, so I and my other sub-mind follow suit. Soon the halls are slick with gross, acrid-smelling yellow blood.

The Elder Things must be just in range for their psionic attacks because Alicia, Jose and Mercy all drop to their knees and clutch their heads. I can see blood flowing from Mercy's ears. Shit, shit, shit! I get desperate and take a chance. I cast Rot Touch through my wakizashis and they drip with a black sludge.

The list of magic spells in my brain is organized like so:

Fire, Electric, Earth, Wind, Water, Ice, Light, Dark, Toxic, Psychic.

Since after light and dark, toxic and psychic are listed together, as a sort of pair, I have to guess that they're linked, or opposites, or... Something. I ram the rot tipped blades into the psychic shields of the Elder Things and they crack. The barriers don't shatter, but the black-green rot spreads out along the cracks, eating away at the barriers. I don't know if this effect will let me through in time so I just push with my blades and punch holes big enough for them to slip into.

My blades, on the other sides of the barriers, go to work and slice away at the Things. I crouch down and place a hand on both Alicia and Mercy, casting Healing Palm to try and keep them alive. Jose, buddy, just hold on!

The barriers go down as the Things try to parry and block my blades. Quins takes about five seconds to make some sort of big ass arrow and lets it fly into the pair of Elders on the left. THOOOM! The following explosion is massive and blasts the Things and several creepers apart, sending the others in that hall sprawling. The heat and shockwave from the blast hits us and I shout, “too close, Quins!”

“Yeah I did shoot those twins!” he deafly says back while firing an arrow into a nearby creeper.