“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, it’s front parking lot reduced to nothing more than a swamp.
Amanda’s gaze was suddenly fixed on something she couldn’t fully see, just between a couple of rotting cars.
Poking out of the black water. It had antler-like growths with seven eye sockets forming an ovoid ring. Given its decay, she couldn’t tell whether the skull was a predator or prey animal.
“Something got extra killed…” Tom said uneasily.
She snapped a photo with a polaroid camera, waited for it to develop, inspected 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 shortly after.
The theater entrance had flaking gold paint peeling from the grooved support pillars on either side of the heavy, sagging door.
The heavy, sagging doors emanated a fetid, asphalt-like smell, while a moat of bile-water and spikes lay before them.
Amanda leaned back away from the little moat with a brief shudder.
“Spiky.”
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.
The trio looked up at the black moon coasting by.
The day it bounced off the miles-high barrier terrified them, Melissa only vaguely remembered the earth shaking briefly and the alarms of Citadel Refuge and, shortly after, just as quickly being shut off.
It hadn’t tried since.
Regardless, it coasted around the borders of the country, ignoring the citizens as if they were ants, so unimportant to it they were gracefully disregarded.
“Weird how it doesn’t damage any infrastructure, just phases through stuff like a phantom.” Tom said in a near whisper, peering around the empty place.
Melissa 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. Unlike the sows and cows of the rim of Decker’s Basin.
Why did they keep staring at the interior of what amounted to a bowl of weapon testing sites?
Most manned by the Federation thanks to Vahlen’s treaty with them.
Clots of debris broke free to float on the surface under Melissa’s boots as she pulled her white kerchief over her face.
She glanced to her right to see something that made her gag.
“Tom... I have a question.” He retreated his tongue from a rock he was licking.
“Why?”
“Mineral identification,” he held the shiny thing up for a better look, “I think it may be biological,” he grimaced as he spat a piece of something out.
“Tom, friend, brother,” Melissa clapped her hands together, “I know you’re not exactly fearful of sickness with those augments, but here, in this swampy ruin no one knows what kind of vaporial sickness you could catch.”
“I’ll be fine, not the worst thing I’ve tasted.” She rolled her eyes.
“Just don’t eat any flowers, toxoplasmosis from those red ones there,” she pointed at a dark corner on a landing, they had a strange meat-like texture, “no idea what creature it makes you fearless of, I’ve seen rabbit’s eat them, and then I usually find a dead tagged rabbit... if Evelyn was out here, I don’t know if she’d do what you did.”
“But she’s missing, Tom.” He nodded his understanding.
Strange reddish stains covered parts of the floor and walls as Melissa strapped a trail camera from her alice pack up to a pillar facing the deeper parts of the theater. “Worlds in a lot of trouble.”
The system hummed to life, she smirked briefly, thankful the thing designed by Amanda was hardened against interference. The lens cap hung down after it popped free, she flashed a quick smile at Amanda.
A skittering in the darkness in the shade of the theater stage made her whip around before a thank you left her lips.
“Hello?” Tom sung out, “anyone back there?”
Melissa squinted, “rats.”
Amanda called them from a pile of dead endotherms she hadn’t noticed, they were submerged in the black water, just above it, “found her notebook...” she whispered.
She opened it, inspecting a few pages and flipping to the last one. “Few weeks ago, she saw it too, I think.” The sketch was rough, but they could make out that they stood in the same spot as whatever she depicted. The shape was covered in flowers, towering above her from where it lay.
Something else caught their attention, Evelyn had depicted something on the stage of the theater, it was tarnished and faded by the fact it wasn’t finished, and the open edge dipped in the water for weeks.
They climbed creaking stairs to the faded stage, looking for the owner.
Amanda hung back as Melissa went to the hallway to the right of the curtain after finding it in tattered sheets. It bothered the ecologist 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 unsling her rifle.
“Evelyn?”
There was a deathly stillness in the air at the statement as her spine suddenly prickled.
No bugs, scrabbling creatures, let alone a creak of the ancient building broke the sound as they 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, just near the middle of the hallway as she glanced back, Melissa held her breath at the other thing she witnessed.
Black flowers creeping through to the breakroom, they climbed the walls.
Each one.
Horrifically fresh.
She knew that where they grew, the massive paw and hoof prints were.
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, it’s dark.” Tom hurriedly said. “I’ve got her journal, let’s go.”
“Yeah, I’m going,” she whispered as she made careful steps towards the exit, a mere rectangle of gloomy moonlight. 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.
A long pause made her think she merely manufactured the noise in her mind, regardless, she tried.
“Evelyn? Hey, it’s me, Melissa, are you here, are you hurt?”
In response to her raised voice, the air shattered in a rasping, wet croak from the maw of the break room, like air being sucked forcefully through a reed, 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, a crushing weight above made a gantry line sway. Whatever was above was surprisingly agile for its mass. It emanated quiet guttural croaks as it’s mass made itself known.
“Move fast.”
Her light chose that moment to turn back on.
As the blinding flash momentarily revealed one dimly glowing orb peering from the darkness behind the corner at the end of the hallway. Before they 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 and Tom 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!" Tom yelled, 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, Tom drawing his pistol and taking shots at the thing.
The noise made her ears ring in shrill tones 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.
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She cleared shrubs akin to a hurdling athlete right behind them.
"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, Tom ushered Melissa ahead of him.
It batted him aside as if he weighed nothing, regardless, he continued firing.
Melissa’s heart leapt from its chest at witnessing its intentions.
Murder.
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 called to her and Tom 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.
“Fe! Are you okay!” Tom’s concerned, near shaken voice echoed eerily in the ravine.
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.
Melissa painstakingly took her right boot off, and then her sock. “No, I broke my ankle. I can’t walk.”
“That thing ran off!” Amanda called from above.
She waved someone over. “Hey guys! Melissa’s hurt bad, get over here!”
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 carried her up the stairs, 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, it’ll smell me too.”
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, found Evelyn’s journal, she was really close to that thing before she went missing.” 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, 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 we found the next step to finding a missing person, and you found their nest. Hell yeah.” Tom smirked as he adjusted his pack, having pulled out the licked rock, contained in a sealed sample bag.
“And besides, why is this bone structured, and flavored, like concrete... and heavy ass ozone?”
“That’s odd... what do you think? Anomalous?” Amanda asked.
Melissa 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 Non 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.
“Non! The gate is malfunctioning again!”
Bishops voice rang out. “Keep trying!” As soon as Amanda could, she placed 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 as Tom stood in front of her, opening fire.
Amanda spun and drew her pistol, 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?”
“It wove off in those trees.”
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.
Regardless. World spinning. Sky.
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 loped 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.
“Yeah... damn thing almost... thank you...” he hacked and wheezed. Tom 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.
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, 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 gasps 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. Resolving to duty as she nearly flat lined again.
Once they got back to Citadel Refuge, she was immediately taken to the spire.
Melissa could only hear blood pounding in her ears as Eta shouted orders.