“What? Frog in your throat? You got this, break a leg, champ!”
[---R.E.A. Expedition: 11,219: Dusk---]
The approach to the theater was made easier after chatting for a few minutes, mostly for Melissa to get her mind and tears away from the pain. Another welcome distraction came in the form of rapidly-shifting fungi clinging to the understory of bushes lining the path.
She wondered how the slices would look when she went to study them later and if they would change colors after being plucked from their muddy root system and merged with Cadre spores.
She shook a couple of them off, the stinking mud flinging itself on her canvas jacket.
“Gross!” Amanda quipped. The mud smelled like rotten fruit, a thick scent that stuck to her nose, making it scrunch. Melissa seemed unbothered by it.
She collected the specimens and placed them inside a couple of paper bags, taking a moment to label them. “Just how it is, rot is the smell of life, in its own way.” Her nose scrunched regardless as she tried to wipe the brackish mud off, her jacket sleeve stained brown.
“It means...” her gaze was suddenly fixed on something Amanda couldn’t fully see.
Poking out of the black water of the pond ahead. It had antler-like growths with seven eyes sockets forming an ovoid ring. Given its decay, she couldn’t tell whether the skull was a predator or prey animal. “It means that something was, alive...”
She snapped a photo with Karla’s borrowed polaroid camera. “Well... We found it...” She waited for it to develop, inspecting it to make sure it was clear and carried on.
The skull had a similar shimmer that resembled a glare off hot asphalt as the sun dipped on the horizon right behind it.
"See, this is what I came here for. It’s creepy but won’t eat me. Right?” Amanda shivered, her smile slowly faltered the longer she looked at the skull.
She hurried along with her friend, noticing the near constant eye twitch scan of paranoia, hands at her sides, marching steps like her own.
“Say, you were in the Western Federation military at one point, right?”
They walked to the small pathway leading into the theater. “Kind of, contracted by them, they wanted me to save a colony. I did that, and the Cadre showed up, but I wasn’t taught how to fight, just basic and they spit me out to do my eco stuff.”
“Ran for my life after the black moon arrived over us.” Melissa splashed through the black water that lapped at the crumbling floorboards with loose nails and threatening squeaks. “Once it touched down, curtains for those that didn’t.”
“You?”
The theater entrance had flaking gold paint peeling from the grooved support pillars on either side of the heavy, sagging door. “Eh you know already, a photographer, we were going around interviewing survivors from the first black moon attacks... weirdly, they all said the same thing sort of...”
The Masque Theater's entrance was flanked by crumbling, flaking pillars. The heavy, sagging doors emanated a fetid, asphalt-like smell, while a moat of bile-water and spikes lay before them.
As they approached, Amanda shuddered at the thought of falling into the hazardous moat, recalling the stories of strange creatures lurking in such places, abandoned buildings in the Outlands were dangerous. The theater looked much the same.
Amanda leaned back away from the little moat, she shuddered at the thought of falling in and dying of blood loss or catching a disease that took her leg. Or getting stuck as the rest of nightfall comes, and she too, would vanish.
Just like Evelyn Reed.
“They had said that the being or its location was the first target every time.”
“That’s creepy... so, could it be that this thing, whatever it is. Isn’t here for us?”
She peered inside the darkened building, only lit by the hole in the roof, the sunlight silhouetted several rafters that cast long shadows across the theater floor in darkened bars. Its rows of seats lay in shambles, unmoved and partly sunken into the building’s sagging flooring under blankets of moss.
“I mean... it doesn’t damage any infrastructure, just phases through stuff like... a Vaporial entity.” Melisa scrunched her face at the word. Most of what was wrong with the world came in the form of objects, creatures, and even whole places.
All of it wrong.
Nature was wrong. And despite it, nature held tightly to life.
No matter how it looked.
Clots of debris broke free to float on the surface under Melissa’s boots. She pulled her white kerchief over her face with a wince as she unslung her rifle and a trail camera. “I’m just saying, what if we’re not on its menu?”
Amanda stepped over the gap, putting a kerchief of her own on, orange streaks on stark black. A fiery streak of stink in her nose. “Then what the hell does it want?”
Strange reddish stains covered parts of the floor and walls as Melissa strapped the camera up to a pillar facing the deeper parts of the theater. “Beats me, worlds in a lot of trouble.”
The system hummed to life, she smirked briefly, thank the thing was hardened against interference. “Yeah, it is, currently working on that one.” The lens cap hung down after it popped free, flashing a quick smile at Amanda.
A skittering in the darkness in the shade of the theater stage made her whip around, heart pounding. But she saw only rats fleeing her light among the rubble running around Amanda’s feet, she quickly stepped up onto the raised platform that skirted the walls.
The back of Melissa’s neck tickled suddenly as the rats passed by to the theater’s entrance, feeling almost wet.
With a yelp she spun around and almost tripped over herself, grabbing the main stage railing while clambering to catch her rifle. It was a spiderweb that hung in a sheet, clinging to her shoulder.
She stabilized herself with a shaky breath, wrestling the backpack’s weight to get her balance.
A black spider web clung to her collar. She wondered what species the spider was that wove it. And, if it was venomous. "Hey, is there anything on me?”
Amanda hopped off the ledge and checked her shirt collar with a quick swipe.
“Nah, you’re good, wait, wait.” She pulled a single strand of web and when it didn’t leave her body, she kept pulling at it to no effect other than extending it. “Hrmm, yeah, one hell of a web here, it’s not breaking.”
She walked the web to the front entrance, and it kept going, she noticed after pulling it close that it was the same coloration as her uniform. Melissa plucked the opposing end off.
She pursed her lips and blew it off with a sharp breath.
Both climbed creaking stairs to the faded stage, Amanda uncurled a few posters and pamphlets, wanting to see what play or musical was last played before the world vanished in violence.
Instead, she found long tears in the walls and sheets, odd scratch marks too precise to be natural.
Amanda hung back as Melissa went to the hallway to the right of the curtain after finding it in tattered sheets. It bugged Amanda as she travelled to the old break room at the end of the hallway, an old, shattered TV with a neat hole dead center.
The darkening skies filtered in through the dusty windows ahead, waning fast.
The dark slowly encroached on the break room table. Amanda kept flicking her eyes back and forth to Melissa and the curtain.
A shape formed as the light died down, making Melissa almost automatically raise her rifle. “Occupied nest.”
There was a deathly stillness in the air at the statement.
No bugs, scrabbling creatures, let alone a creak of the ancient building broke the sound as both froze, concerned glances shared.
At the edge of her hearing, she thought she heard something. It was almost imperceptible, the pounding of her own pulse in her ears and her creaking footsteps taking her away from the break room the sole sound. She thought it was her alice pack’s faulty zipper giving way again.
She had another thought, thinking about the curtain, how it was torn and tattered.
Amanda slowly reached for her holster as Melissa whispered, almost backing into her, “we need-.”
She was cut off as her chest rig light went out, plunging both into darkness as the sun finally fully set on the horizon.
“Hey, just follow my voice, I see you.” Amanda’s vision wasn’t affected heavily by the lack of light as the moon revealed itself. Melissa was blind, holding stock still and trying to get her light to work.
“Hey, cmon, doc. We gotta’ go, it’s late/”
“Yeah, I’m going,” she made careful steps towards the exit, a mere rectangle of gloomy moonlight. Both hurried at the sound of scrabbling inside the break room, Melissa’s hair stood on end, something felt wrong, as if this nest wasn’t natural.
There was something disturbingly organic about the noise, it wasn’t the sound of movement on creaky hardwood.
It was as if lungs previously filled were slowly emptying in a death rattle. It scraped against her eardrums like claws drawn across bone, setting their teeth on edge.
The air shattered in a rasping, wet croak sounded from the maw of the break room, like air being sucked forcefully through a reed. It started low but steadily climbed in volume and pitch, taking on an agonized, keening quality that raised the hairs on their necks.
Her weapon light flickered as she heard something shuffle above them on the second story balcony. “We need to leave, quietly.” She spoke softly, eyes flicking side to side as her vision finally adjusted, still seeing nothing but the dimly moonlit theater shadows as she slung her rifle.
Karla's camera slowly rose to eye at the strange, nearly unseeable creature stalking through the hallway.
Trying to keep her voice calm, the camera held steady as both backed out, “I might get a good one, anything counts.”
She thumbed the capture button as Amanda quipped in a whisper, heavily considering either booking it or drawing her pistol. “Girl you’re crazy.”
She gave a silent chuckle as she pressed the button, “Here’s to science.”
As the blinding flash lit up the hallway she just left, it momentarily revealed one dimly glowing orb peering from the darkness behind the corner at the end of the hallway. Before either could process what they saw, the light lurched into motion with shocking speed as the snap of light went out again.
Her scientific veneer shattered as she stumbled back, screaming and felt the air in front of her whip with a glint of something sharp as Amanda grabbed her backpack carry handle, dragging her to get moving. “Go go go!”
Melissa leaped across the channel of shattered wood as the air behind her whooshed again. Amanda was just ahead of her with a horrified expression as she looked behind Melissa and saw what was chasing them.
It didn’t run.
It loped wrongly.
"Move, Amanda!" they scrambled through the puddles as the thing's heavy breathing closed in, Amanda cutting a path through the reeds. Its pounding steps shook the ground as they burst onto the street
As Melissa scrambled forward her head swooped down just in time to feel the back of her neck burn in a straight line. Her adrenaline was in high gear as her pace turned into an all-out sprint, she cleared shrubs akin to a hurdling athlete right behind Amanda.
Stolen story; please report.
"The board! Run across!” Amanda sprinted for the faceless apartment ravine, as their boots met the board, it held long enough for Amanda to get to safety, just as she got to the edge Melissa felt an impossibly strong tug as the beast’s breath roiled around her skull.
Its entombing musk assaulted her nose.
She could only gasp as her shoulders painfully took the whiplash from her pack, rifle flying down into the ravine.
Along with her.
Flipping backwards and landing in one of the darkened rooms two stories below. Amanda only heard the concussive thump as she called to her frantically, firing her pistol above along with a string of vile swears.
Melissa’s eyes burned her as she opened them to see a dark brown fuzzy surface and something sharp that gleamed in the moonlight, her adrenaline kicked into full gear as she rolled to the side. Her backpack stopped her, keeping her on her side. “Melissa!”
Her breathing stilled at the sight, an old, busted couch sat up against the wall of one of the exposed living rooms, its metal support rods were bent out of shape and caught the moon light. She stood up and yelped, promptly falling to the floor, catching herself just in time to keep her face from getting cut open on that couch.
“Hey you alright? That thing ran off!” Amanda called from above.
Melissa painstakingly took her right boot off, and then her sock. “No, I broke my ankle. I can’t walk.”
Amanda pried at the rooftop access door, it creaked open as she spotted Ripley and Bishop running down the street to investigate the sudden gunfire. She waved them over. “Hey guys! Melissa’s hurt bad, get over here!”
Melissa broke a piece of a chair to splint her leg, tying that with her boot lace to brace her foot. The pain made her gasp.
She cranked down on the final knot with a quiet hiss. She held her breath, thinking she might have alerted something, she heard a brief tap, scrabble, and something that landed in one of the other rooms neighboring her.
Heavy steps echoed inside the space, bouncing off the ravine wall.
“Hey, I’m here,” Amanda called out, she saw the Melissa had already got to one foot, leaning on the tall allice pack frame holding the machete. She helped her out of the building after she sheepishly holstered it with a metal on plastic scrape. The retention clip sounded like a firecracker in the silence.
She carried her up the stairs, “got it together quick,” she remarked, looking down at Melissa’s splinted leg.
“Yeah,” she shrugged as they opened the rooftop access door. “Not the first time, sprained it once on the Appalachian trail but I had a few miles to get to my car at the trail head... no authorities these days. Or medical care...”
“Damn, reminds me of me once.” The roof was level with the edge of the jagged sidewalk, Bishop reached out to Amanda as Ripley reached for Melissa to help them over the 2-foot gap with stories of darkness below.
Likely jagged concrete and rebar at the bottom.
“Thanks, what are you guys doing out here?” she waved, wincing as she lunged over the gap with Amanda pulling her the rest of the way and keeping her upright.
”Well, you wouldn’t answer your phone, at least that’s what Eta told me.” Bishop remarked, looking at both her and Amanda.
“Yeah, it doesn’t work in Zone 17.”
“She said you’d say that.” Melissa gawked at Amanda’s words.
“Did Eta send you out here to babysit me?” Amanda’s brows rose, eyes squinting.
“Maybe.”
Ripley had a concerned grimace as she glanced down. “I believe you need medical attention, regardless.”
Melissa winced again, “Yeah, I do,” she reached for her camera, checking the polaroid tray, she had a few stills waiting in their storage compartment. She packed it away. “I think I got a photo of... whatever that was.”
“Yeah, what the hell? That thing was straight out of a horror flick, couldn’t get a good look at it either.” Amanda rubbed her arms, regretting not bringing her jacket.
Melissa nodded, “Yeah.” She reached for the back of her neck with a wince, her fingers came back red.
Bishop reached into his pouch, producing gauze and tape, “here, lift your head for me, it’s pretty bad.” She lifted her head, wincing at the sudden pain and wet trickling down her spine, he wrapped the wound tightly enough to feel like she was being choked.
Her strained voice carried command, regardless.
“We need to move, it might come back because we’re in its territory.”
Bishop's voice carried an edge of wariness as he swung his large frame in a backward glance. “Where was it?”
Amanda picked Melissa up in her arms after handing her pack over to Bishop. “The Masque,” he grimaced, glancing behind him as he and Ripley were trying to get their lights on with no result.
“That is quite frightening, I must say.”
“Science can be.”
“It's worth it.” She glanced down at the battered ecologist, making brief eye contact, and Melissa wasn’t certain what look she had in her eye at that moment.
Nor was she certain what she felt as stomach pain rippled through her.
She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands other than hold them against her abdomen as she bobbed with each step. Amanda felt well-worked muscle under her canvas pants.
“Nice legs, you hit the gym, science girl?”
She kicked out her good leg, the fabric stained with mud, “Nope, but I do a lot of hiking. I don’t think I’ll be able to hike for a while,” her face scrunched in pain and something else Amanda could only place as regret as they made eye contact.
“I’m sorry I dragged us in there.”
“Nah, that was terrifying but exactly... almost what I came for,” she gestured at her broken ankle, “Just not that much terror, glad you’re okay.”
“And besides, I asked to come along after hearing you were coming here alone, glad I did.” She nodded her agreement as her abdomen felt like it was internally burning.
They passed the urban temple at a slow jog, eventually reaching the recently cut trail leading up and out of the sunken city. Melissa’s heavy breaths became more audible as the gut pain intensified, Amanda’s concerned look only made her move faster.
"Hey, you okay?” A lazy head shake said hell no as her eyes started lolling back slightly.
The clicking sounded behind them as Amanda picked up her pace. Bishop reached down as he marched, Ripley started at the sound of a wet pop nearby, turning slightly to her right and flinching at a swaying tree in the chilly night breeze.
Bishop scanned the lonely suburb for any movement, keeping his right hand low, and his eyes seemed to glow in the dark much like a feline would.
It was one of many reasons it made Melissa nervous.
Eye surgery.
Amanda’s own reflective orbs glanced down at her as she resisted the involuntary urge to wipe at her eyes, keeping her hands firmly pressed down, the pressure felt like it was digging a knife through her bladder.
As the group hustled down the dark streets, a rhythmic clicking that sent chills down their spines echoed out from behind them.
After half an hour of evading the noise and ensuring they weren’t followed, the group climbed up the rubble strewn overgrowth.
Shortly after finding themselves hurrying to the main gate, the tangled works of the Pythagorean blooms on the wall garden provided a dim light to see by.
It looked like a giant exit sign with its bioluminescent glow, one of the few things Melissa could focus on. Something felt horribly wrong.
Bishop and Ripley spun as the raced across the few hundred feet of flattened grass, glimpsing a fast blur racing past a shattered storefront right behind them.
"Move move move!" Bishop called out as he drew his pistol, it was a massive frame with a simple and elegant design. Capable of punching through body armor and exosuits.
A dark shape emerged from the gloom, barely visible except for twin pinpricks that bobbed in the dark.
They pumped their legs hard as Amanda broke into a full sprint with Melissa swaying in her arms. Behind them, that strange chorus of guttural clicking only increased in volume and seemed to emit from every direction.
The bobbing pinpoints in the dark gave their location away.
“We’re almost to the wall! Ripley, get that gate!” Amanda called out as they sprinted the rest of the way to the gate past the suburb and through the hundred-foot clearing. Ripley blazed past them, reaching the wall and sweatily palming a biometric reader to its side.
[Error, unable to scan Bio-Sig. Please retry.] Ripley frantically wiped her palm on her pantleg, slapping it against the panel control, she did this a few more times as the group caught up.
“The gate is malfunctioning again!”
Bishops voice rang out. “Keep trying, Amanda, back me up!” As soon as Amanda could, she dumped Melissa with her back against the gate and her ankle slamming the floor, making her see stars with the sudden lightning bolt of pain.
Bishop tossed her bag next to her as he spun around. Her vision swam with nausea and pulsing pressure.
Amanda spun and drew her pistol, both opened fire, deafening Melissa and Ripley.
The pained shrieks of the thing got closer as Ripley held one hand to her ear and the other pounded on the control panel. She was saying something in a language Melissa couldn’t understand but it sounded like she was swearing at it.
Melissa leaned to her left and frantically dug through her pack, rifling through to the bottom past all of her notebooks, markers, telemetry gear, specimen bags, to the little black box at the very bottom.
When she got her hands on it, the world went silent save for her ears ringing. Something is wrong.
A muffled voice asked. “Where the hell did it go?”
Ripley palmed the gate again and finally began to slither open, she swiftly approached with a stimm in hand.
The sudden surge of energy felt metallic and cold as her vision finally cleared, her pain subsided if only temporarily.
Something is wrong.
Bishop swapped mags after a glance at Amanda and the sound of her pistols slide locking forward. Melissa popped the tabs on the box she pulled from her alice pack, slowly scooting forward to get her back off the sliding gate.
Bishop’s emerald eyes went wide as he glanced to his left in the dark.
He squinted at something from around the corner of the recessed gate, he gasped, raising his heavy pistol.
He was suddenly on his back and screaming, Amanda fired at something in the dark Melissa couldn’t see as Bishop got dragged. He fired his pistol while Ripley stood back, eyes wide with her hands at her mouth.
Sharpened points like a crown upon its head. A devil’s candelabra, its flame flickered with each muzzle flash.
He frantically swore at it as it mauled him, firing his pistol into what he thought was its head between the violently thrashing pinpoints.
Red flooded his vision as he kicked it with crunching squelches, Melissa took careful aim at the black blur just ahead of him.
Her target gleamed bright pink in the flashing darkness. As she pulled the trigger, she feared she would hit Bishop or Amanda.
The flare thankfully rocketed into the things face, forcing it to let go of his leg as it thrashed back into the dark amid its agonized shrieks and guttural croaks.
Free of its grip at last, Bishop rolled away coughing.
Her eyes met his briefly as the thing ran off, a blurring red streak that was on fire headed back to the swamp.
“You okay?” She asked shakily, the smoke of the flare trailing from the barrel aimed at the dark, a shaky breath escaped her as she put it down, fighting a wave of nausea. Something is wrong.
“Yeah... damn thing almost... thank you...” he hacked and wheezed. Amanda helped him up, he just as quickly dropped to a knee. “My leg’s fucked,” his uniform pantleg was torn open, the bone showing as he bled profusely.
Amanda sat him down just outside, winding the windlass of a tourniquet around his calf, a couple inches above the ground beef. He screamed again as it was tightened, she marked the time on a little white tag.
Two hours or risk losing that thick assed leg to lack of blood flow.
Ripley helped Melissa up as they walked out, Bishop kept his eyes on the gate as it hissed shut, he radioed out to Refuge.
“Onyx 1 to Refuge, requesting medical, 2 wounded at Gate 19, hostile getsaltia animal contact inside, requesting capture team to mobilize on... standby.” He paused, glancing at Melissa and Amanda from where he sat in the grass, “The Masque Theater, 4th and Viola Street.”
Ripley finished packing Melissa’s flare gun in her bag, sitting next to it.
"Copy that, Emerald. Medical transport en route. ETA 15 minutes."
He put the radio down, looking at Melissa with a smirk.
His boot squished, his vision swam. Nausea.
“Thanks for saving my ass.” She smirked back, feeling the nausea creep into her throat at the site of his mauled leg. The garlicy rotten-fish smell of the red phosphorous burning her nostrils made her vision spin.
She shot a thumbs up, leaned over and vomited with Ripley holding her and her hair up. The pomatillo earlier spewed forth in bright green and red chunks that Amanda winced at.
“Gross, here.” She pulled a rag from her pocket out, handing it and a bottle of water to Melissa as her vision blurred, the adrenaline and sudden surge of internal pain hit like a wave.
She vomited again. Something is wrong.
Her vision slowly went dark in dawning horror.
She realized what color it truly was. Something is horribly wrong.
“Oh shit, Bishop, grab the kit, now, she’s puking blood.” Amanda’s muffled voice called out.
She rushed up to hold her as Bishop hobbled to grab the kit from his bag, tossing to Amanda as Ripley gently let Melissa down.
All she felt was fire, something was wrong with her abdomen. The vomit inducing pain tore through her as she gasped in agony.
She pulled a bio scanner, clicking it on, her eyes widened as she read her biometrics. The screen blipping warning signals, “Bishop, tell them to hurry the hell up and call Eta.”
“Hey, stay with me, you’re gonna be okay, we’ve got you, Ripley, roll up that jacket and get it under her head.” The movement caused waves of pain, eventually battling her closing eyes.
She was certain she had a concussion, her organs wouldn’t stop burning as her gasp turned to yelps of pain, and vicious swearing.
As the roar of a Spectre transport ship touching down a few hundred feet away, blasting the area with debris, her vision faded in and out as she was rushed to the massive gangway in Amanda’s arms.
Eta’s looming form stood over her. A mix of worry and a held back ‘I told you so’ crossing her face before resolving to duty as she nearly flat lined again.
Once they got back to Citadel Refuge, she was immediately taken to the spire.
“A union. In mourning black.”
Melissa could only hear blood pounding in her ears as Eta shouted orders.
from death, you shall come back. as spoken.