Chapter 321
AN: Here’s a warning. This one gets a little messed up. Think snake altar back at New Tress City type messed up.
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I touched down as light as a feather, though sunk into the floor as soon as the anti-gravity chambers shut off. I lifted my foot, feeling the meat squelch and pulled at me desperately like it didn’t want to let go. I sunk into the substance that shouldn’t be moving, but somehow did. The pink fibers twitched around me like muscles.
Mira pried open the elevator doors, revealing what I could only describe as some kind of hell. A corridor opened up entirely lost behind layers of meat. The red webs stretched over everything like it was trying to absorb it into some central organism.
“I’m definitely going to be sick.” Mira muttered and jammed the elevator door so it’d stay open. “What is this stuff?”
I jumped down into the corridor and poked at the fiber webbing. It pulsated under my touch. I nicked it with a knife and dark blood welled out from the meat. The slick tissue twitched as if aware that I’d just injured it, though didn’t otherwise react.
“Ugh-“ Saint groaned through the Packheart connection. “I’m going to be sick. What the hell were they researching down there?”
A sickly sweet meat scent welled up from the walls. I jabbed my knife deeper, peeling just enough back to see what used to be sterile white walls. Whatever was going on down here, it was spreading. And rapidly at that. There was a high chance this all went down after Polar Moon got here and it’d just spread this far in a short time.
Mira moved up beside me into the dark lab. A shudder came from deeper inside the complex like the building itself was breathing. The corridor constricted slightly, walls flexing inward and the disgusting sound of tendons stretching echoed. A loud throbbing noise came from deep within like an oversized heart beating slowly.
Down the hall, just out of sight of the others, I caught something in the dark. Only the outline was visible beneath the layers of fiber. I could make out a hand, a face frozen mid-scream, and the broken form of a person. The features were distorted into something nightmarish, but still recognizable as what was once human.
My chest tightened and my heart hammered. Was it—was it absorbing people? The once white lab coat merged into the wall said all I needed to know.
”We- we should get out of here, Shiro.” Mira spoke up from beside me. “I really don’t like where this is heading.”
Saint’s voice echoed across the Packheart Rings. “It’s already grown up the shaft. If you guys leave it, how long till it escapes the facility? It’s still contained, but if it gets out into the city…”
Luna spoke up. “T-that’s not our problem. We just need to find my squad.”
“It will be our problem. What are you going to do if this thing consumes all of East End?” Saint sighed. “I should’ve come with you guys.”
”Please, a non-combatant like you? You’d be torn apart.” Mira tried to inject some levity into the situation, but it rang too true.
“T-the longer you spend down there, the worst it’ll be for Polar Moon!” Luna once more tried to get us to just leave.
“What if they’re still down here though?”
“Can you set a firebomb at the entrance? Or something?”
”Just- everyone shut up!” I shouted, wincing as my voice bounced off the pulsating walls of meat. “I-I just need a moment to think. All your voices are bouncing around my head.”
The rings went silent. I took a breath, nearly choking on the sweet meat scent, and tried to think this through. I stared at the absorbed person, watching the meat pulsate and shudder around them. A sinking feeling filled my gut when I saw the person’s fingers twitch and arms pull. Were they still alive?
Saint was right. This- this biomass was already growing up the shaft. Once it fully escaped the lab, there might not be any containing it. We already knew that that would be bad. There were those meat and muscle puppets up top acting as guards for this place, right? Add in the absorbed person, and it obviously wasn’t a friendly entity.
Assuming it fully escaped the lab, would it just keep growing and absorbing people? How far would this spread? Would it be a world level threat or would it be stopped by the endless expanses of the desert? Regardless, Aythryn City would likely be hit with a God Rod if it got to that point.
Luna was also right, though. The longer we spent down here, the worse the odds were for Polar Moon. What she overlooked was that Polar Moon was likely still down here. I didn’t see any return tracks, so unless they found an alternative way out, they were stuck down in this lab. Not to mention finding Polar Moon wouldn’t matter much to me if my home city was wiped off the face of the planet.
Mira wasn’t wrong either. This entire place sent uncomfortable tremors through my heart. How could it not? The disgusting pulsations of the biomass were enough to create nightmares for decades. I take back what I said. This is sooo much worse than the altar of agony back in New Tress City.
”We keep going.” I finally came to a decision. “If they were working on something like this, then there’s likely a self-destruct in here somewhere.”
That wasn’t just coming out of nowhere. I’d noticed thermite in the vents on my way down. Unless a PMC squad got down here and planted them, then there really was a self-destruct hidden in the lab. If we activated that, then it would solve this issue. Hopefully.
”Roger.” Mira put up no arguments and immediately locked in.
”Thank you.” Saint sighed. I could hear a not so subtle tension in his voice, likely at forcing us deeper into this situation. He wasn’t entirely to blame, though. “I’ll- I’ll try and get this out there. You might get some fire support. I’ll look for who was behind this too.”
Somehow I doubted we’d get fire support. This place was basically a free for all of a war zone, so the chances of getting reinforcements were low at best.
Only little Luna had a delayed response. “F-fine… T-there isn’t much down there for me to get into, but I’ll keep looking.”
“Let’s move.” I double tapped Mira on the shoulder. We slowly moved deeper into the corridor. A wave of heat and thick, cloying scent washed over us.
Each step we took came with a sound that shouldn’t belong in a facility made of concrete and steel. It was wet, organic, and disturbingly alive. Mira’s light finally caught the shadowed form I saw earlier. “W-what is it doing?”
The form on the wall twitched erratically under the light and a moan of pain erupted. Half corroded eyelids blinked, though their sockets were disturbingly hollow.
I heard several gags from across the Packheart Ring. Sounded like Luna, though Saint was the first to say something. “Fuck.”
”W-what do we do?” Mira took a step back.
“What else?” I fired a shot into what was once a person. The blaze round erupted, causing the walls to recoil and ending their life. It was the best mercy we could afford to give. Besides, the person was already half assimilated. Their fate was sealed before we got down here.
It took a moment for the squad to lock back in. We pressed forward down the corridor. Observation windows into biolabs were entirely covered up by webs of fiber, and doors were jammed with meat pustules growing into them. This entire place had been swallowed by the biomass.
One lab’s window was entirely shattered with a chair thrown through it. Inside the room, walls bulged with fiber and equipment was half-absorbed by the pulsating meat. A broken containment tube roughly the size of a person sat with a pulsating heart-like organ inside of it. It was easily the size of my torso. Each pulsation made the nearby walls tremor.
A statue—no, not a statue. A person completely overrun and fused into the floor stood in the middle of the room with arms outstretched as if desperately trying to escape.
I pulled out one of my pyro grenades and—
“Wait, Shiro.” Mira stopped my movements with a hand on my arm. “I want to end this as badly as you, but maybe we should antagonize this- this thing more. Not until we get deeper inside.”
”You worried more of those flesh creatures will come after us?” I looked over the room for a moment and then put away the grenade. Wish she should’ve said something before I flatlined the first guy… though the mental shock of seeing something like that definitely hit everyone but me hard.
”Roger… and if there is a self-destruct, we’re better beelining for it rather than wasting time cleaning up every—“ Her face was pale as her eyes flicked to the grotesque statue of meat. “Every person.”
“Chek.” I swallowed hard and we pressed on. Countless biolabs and people passed us by.
We were about halfway through the hall when something changed. A broken, distorted mass dropped from the ceiling. When it hit the floor, the walls twitched like an organism flinching. The broken tatters of a hazmat suit clung to the red flesh that’d been twisted into something almost unidentifiable. It left its head and let out a broken scream, one that stabbed at my ears with just how wrong it sounded.
“Contact!” Mira shot before I could, catching the creature in what was once its face with a burst of fire. The bullets erupted, causing the thing to writhe in agony for a moment before its life, if it could even be called that, was snuffed out.
“Above!” A pulse of Insight hit me from above. I pulled Mira and moved to Burst Step backward. With the additional weight, we didn’t go far. It was enough to dodge what would’ve been a perfect ambush, though.
Another meat creature dropped down where we’d just been, slamming into the ground with bone claws outstretched. Time distorted thanks to Dexterity, and my rifle kicked hard into my shoulder before I even realized I was shooting. Blaze rounds erupted across its body, burning the creature to death.
“We definitely got its attention.” Mira and I stood back to back, waiting for any other attack for several minutes. Nothing else came. My mikata shuddered behind me. “Feels like it’s watching us.”
It might be. I swallowed those words down. Even if it was, I didn’t want to voice such a horrific thought. Every interaction so far pointed toward at least an instinctive protection of itself. If this biomass actually had intelligence enough to plot and scheme…
We hesitantly moved down the hall, freezing when an excited shout came across our rings. “I-I have a signal! It’s R-River! H-he’s down there with you!”
River… he was the Adept of the group, I think. He was also the one that was an asshole to me. Even so, if he was down here… that didn’t bode well. “Where, Luna?”
“Think he’s…” Mira didn’t finisher her question, but I got what she was trying to say.
”Even if he is, we still need to find him.” Not only for the request, but he also might have some clue about what was going on down here. Of course, our conversation wasn’t transmitted through the rings.
”He’s d-down the hall to your left.” A bright light filled my vision and a green ping popped up where the signal was coming from. The icon wasn’t moving.
I gave Mira a look. “Let’s keep moving.”
We moved down the hall, stopping to gun down three more flesh monsters before they could approach. My blaze rounds were the perfect counter to these monsters. Anytime they were hit, the flesh would recede like a fel tide from the fire.
We fought our way toward the center of the lab and the source of the green light. The flesh here was pulled back slightly, and bullet holes lined the walls in spots between the fiber growths. Someone put up a fight, though it looked like it’d ended a long time ago.
Turrets along the roof looked like they’d run out of power mid fight. Their barrels were twisted and overgrown with flesh, completely taking over the metal casings. Guards in half corroded body armor and broken weapons lay scattered around, half covered like moss on a boulder. At the very least, this thing wasn’t smart enough to use guns. Mira and I would be in a whole different situation if that happened.
Eventually, we got within reaching distance of the green icon symbolizing River. He looked to be inside of a control room of some sort. The sealed door was almost completely covered in red. “Saint, you having any luck?”
His warm voice pushed back some of the pressure mounting on my shoulders. ”Not much. It looks like this place belonged to the Aggrican Foundation, though. Might not be a Savant lab. They aren’t the kind to make them.”
The Aggrican Foundation, huh? They were one of the Big 7 and responsible for over half of the world’s food supply. They were a direct underling of BosSpace Solar, and generally considered one of the ‘good’ guys. At least, as far as corporations went. They were the most charitable of the corps, often handing out free food and underselling their product. 9/10 kinds of silage came from them.
”What else could this be?”
“I’ll keep digging.” Saint sighed. “No luck on getting support your way either. Be careful.”
”As if we weren’t already.” Mira fired a shot down the hall, splattering a heart-like object. The flesh around it wilted for a moment before regaining its vitality. “Are we cutting in?”
I looked over the door in question. It was heavy duty like a vault door. Cutting through it would take a seriously long time. I tapped on it through the meat wall and a pulse of Technical Expertise tore through it, highlighting the mechanisms in my mind. The components all still looked good. If it just had some power…
I channeled the electricity that’d been building up inside of me. It flowed down through my hand and into the heavy door. An ID reader off to the side of the door lit up through the mass of red fiber. “Luna, can you get this thing open?”
”G-give me a sec.” An ID reader on the side of the door flashed green and the mechanisms whirled. The flesh kept it from opening all the way though. “Y-you’ll have to clean it off.”
“Chek.” I pulled a pyro grenade and shoved it into my coil-pistol that’d been converted into a grenade launcher. We moved down the hall slightly and I pulled the trigger. Fire immediately erupted all along the door, causing the meat to writhe. It stubbornly clung to he door though, intent on blocking access.
“Movement!” Mira shouted and started firing down the hall. A wave of red figures charged at us. On the way here, we only faced four or five at a time. Now there were dozens all charging down the hall.
I fired a grenade down the hall. It slammed into one directly in the chest. Fire erupted all around, taking out a swathe of them. The figures pushed through the fire though, continuing to charge recklessly. Their previous instinctive fear was overpowered by their desire to stop us from entering the control room.
Mira dropped back a step and reloaded, giving them time to close the gap. Or they would’ve if I hadn’t started firing in perfect sync with her reload. The assault rifle type Blaze rounds had enough stopping power to keep them at bay until she slammed a mag into place.
We alternated our shots so that there was always one of us shooting while the fire raged behind us, burning down the walls of meat. I found gaps every once in a while to get a pyro grenade down the hall, but even then we were slowly losing ground.
Just as the tides of red were about to reach within melee distance, the fire behind us flicked out and a call came from Luna. “I-it’s open!”
“You first!” I shouted to Mira just as I popped a reload. She bolted down the hall while I kept the tide back. Once she was in the room, I used Arc Flash. My entire body erupted into lightning, scorching a flesh monster that had been mid strike. In a millisecond, I teleported to the end of the hall in a brilliant flash of light.
Mira shot around me when I returned from my lightning form. I ducked into the doorway and sent a pulse of electricity through the keypad, frying the mechanisms. The heavy door slammed shut, trapping us in the room.