True Apocalypse Game

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Thomas’s hands were trembling. "I’m just a cop in some poor, backwater town. Why did I have to get caught up in something like this?!"

Joey stared grimly in the direction the two FBI agents had come from and said,

"We have to figure out what they’re up to on our own. We need to find evidence, blow this whole thing wide open. It’s our only chance to survive. Otherwise, our only option is to run for Mexico, and people like us wouldn’t last long there anyway."

"Chief, let’s do it," Aili said, taking a deep breath. She racked her Shotgun again, her eyes wide. "Let these bastards have a taste of the taxpayers’ wrath!"

Thomas had calmed down as well. He looked down to examine the body and said,

"They’ve got moss and concrete dust on the soles of their shoes. They must have come from the embankment by the lake. The only thing over there is the old industrial drainage system. It belonged to the town’s paper company decades ago. I only know because Old John, the gardener, mentioned it to me once."

Joey looked down at the dead agent’s suit and found a bit of rust on the shoulder.

He yanked the earpieces off the two men, putting one on himself and the other on Thomas.

Just then, a voice came through the earpiece:

"Hound, Hound, you missed your check-in. What happened?"

The three of them exchanged a glance. Joey lowered his voice, doing his best to imitate the dead agent’s, and said,

"Signal’s spotty, probably getting interference from the brush..."

After a moment’s thought, Joey added, "Long live Whisper... Over."

"Long live Whisper," the voice on the other end replied. "Report any situation immediately. Snakehead has arrived. Over."

The comm channel went silent. Joey knew his gamble had paid off.

He nodded to his two partners. They took the FBI agents’ weapons and credentials, grabbed some more gear from their car, and headed for the lake.

Following Thomas’s directions, they found an abandoned pipe and made their way through it, moving slowly toward the lake.

In the distance, they spotted three figures wandering near the shore. They looked as if they were just out for a walk, but their eyes were constantly scanning their surroundings, and the bulges at their waists betrayed the presence of weapons. They were obviously sentries!

"State Police! Those are the state troopers I saw this morning! My God, I think the governor sent them, and they’ve got ties to a few congressmen!" Thomas muttered.

Aili pulled out a camera and quickly snapped a few photos. She turned to Joey and asked,

"Chief, do we just go in and take them out?"

Just as Joey was about to answer, the three men appeared to receive some kind of message. They rushed to the shore, boarded a small motorboat, and sped off into the distance. In moments, they were gone from sight.

’Thank God.’

Joey prayed silently, then raised his gun. He and his two partners scrambled out of the broken pipe and sprinted toward the shore.

They soon reached a crumbling embankment overgrown with tall weeds. Thomas went ahead to search, and sure enough, he found a small entrance concealed in the brush. You’d never see it if you weren’t looking for it, and no ordinary person would have any reason to be here.

Joey went in first, squeezing through the entrance. It opened into a tunnel, abandoned for who knows how long, that was shrouded in pitch-black darkness.

Aili pulled out a tactical flashlight and switched it on. The trio moved forward for several hundred meters, navigating more than a dozen turns. Suddenly, the sound of footsteps echoed from a bend up ahead, accompanied by the beam of another flashlight.

Aili instantly killed her light. All three of them ducked down, hiding in a small utility room off to the side of the tunnel.

As their eyes adjusted to the dark, they saw two figures in black combat gear approaching. They were fully armed, carrying automatic rifles!

All three of them froze. A single glance in their direction and they would be spotted!

Joey and Aili fired at the same time. Two soft THWAPS echoed as both men were taken down with headshots.

There was no turning back. Joey’s experience as an Iraq veteran kicked in. He lunged forward to catch the bodies before they could fall, lowering them silently to the ground. He and Aili then took the men’s weapons and ammo and put on their ballistic vests.

They continued deeper into the passage. They hadn’t gone far before a drab, gray alloy door blocked their path.

Clearly, the answers they were looking for were behind this door!

Next to the door was an electronic key card access system. They had no way in.

Just as Thomas’s face fell in despair, Joey pulled out the credentials from one of the dead FBI agents. Rummaging through it, he found a plain white keycard hidden in a secret sleeve.

He swiped it on the access panel. The heavy door immediately slid open, revealing a hallway inside.

They quickly slipped inside, Aili filming with the camera as they went, and the door slid shut behind them.

Only now did they have time to see what kind of place this was.

It had white walls and bright fluorescent lights. The hallway was lined on both sides with doors, each with a glass window looking into the room beyond.

It looked like a hospital.

The only difference was the logo printed on every door: a red rattlesnake.

It was a snake biting its own tail.

And a simple logo made up of a few letters.

Without breaking stride, Joey sprinted to a room at the start of the hallway that looked like a guard station. He threw the door open and charged in, gun raised.

Inside, four men in black combat gear were gathered around a table, playing poker. They yelped in surprise when they saw Joey.

One of them was reaching for his gun when, with a wet SPLAT, a Shotgun blast blew his head apart.

The remaining three quickly raised their hands.

"Thomas, search them. Tie them all up," Joey ordered coldly.

Thomas immediately moved in and frisked the men, finding three handguns. He tossed them aside and cuffed the three of them together.

Meanwhile, Aili, who was standing off to the side, suddenly gasped as she stared at the monitor wall.

"My God, these are Demons!"

The monitors showed what was happening in each of the rooms.

In each room was a child. Some were hanging upside down, others were being beaten, electrocuted, having their toes crushed, or being burned.

Every child here was suffering inhuman abuse!

And yet, in front of every single one of them, without exception, was a drawing board and some pens, as if waiting for them to draw something.

Martha, the little autistic girl who had just gone missing yesterday, was among them. She was being continuously electrocuted, her entire body convulsing.

Martha clutched a pencil in a death grip, scrawling furiously across her drawing board!

Just then, the lights throughout the facility flashed red, and a piercing alarm began to blare:

"Warning, intruders detected! Warning, intruders detected!"