Al's Rabbit Hole
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The the Noose Chapter 8
🕑 Added 2025-08-23 03:05:07 +0000 UTCDaniel didn’t hesitate. The flicker in the fog was all he needed. He squeezed the trigger and the P90 erupted in a staccato roar, muzzle flashes lighting the vapor around him like strobe lights in a nightmare. He barely saw what he was shooting at; something long-limbed, hunched low, darting sideways with a speed that turned motion into blur. Joints bent in impossible angles. Talons scraping against the floor. It vanished into the steam just as quickly as it appeared, and he couldn’t tell if the rounds had hit.
Then came the scream, bone scraping on tile, high and violent.
Daniel spun, instincts flaring like a bomb had gone off.
Something massive exploded from the mist behind him, claws cleaving the air with a shriek of metal and fury. Daniel dropped flat just in time, the backwash of heated air and the scent of rot slamming into his senses as the creature barreled past. Its scything arms scraped sparks from the tile, and its bulk nearly clipped him as it skidded across the floor in a messy slide. Bone-armored and broad as a freezer door, it was a monstrosity of twitching plates and shattered muscle, half crawling, half collapsing as its ruined hips failed to hold its weight. The momentum carried it forward in a grotesque twist of limbs, lower half dragging behind in a tangle of jerks and scrapes. Daniel caught a glimpse of the pulverized bone, flesh sloughing at the seams, as the thing tried and failed to pivot for another charge. He moved before it could regain direction.
He moved before it could recover. A short burst into its back caught it just below the shoulder blades, forcing it to scuttle sideways into the haze with a wet, rattling growl. Steam curled where the shots struck, mist mingling with some kind of pressurized exhale from its damaged lungs.
Behind him, a noise: the ticking scuttle of clawed limbs on metal piping- quick, calculated, circling.
Above.
Daniel's eyes snapped upward just in time to catch a blur slithering across the ceiling, too fast to fully register. Talons scraped the ductwork, limbs angling like a spider navigating a web. It vanished into the mist again, its silhouette swallowed by shadows. He pressed his back to the wall, his PDW high, and his breath gusting hard inside the mask.
The first one was still here. He caught a flicker of its shattered frame slinking around a cryo tube, dragging its ruined hips, blade-arms flexing. The two of them weren’t just random killers, they were working in tandem, shifting in counterpoint, drawing his aim away from one so the other could close. Not intelligent. But not aimless either. Patterned. Trained, maybe. Or programmed.
Daniel adjusted his stance, weapon sweeping tight. He could feel it, the way they were repositioning: one ready to rush, the other waiting for distraction. It wasn’t just a fight anymore. It was a hunt. And he was the cornered animal.
Even as he tried to track the slippery nightmares, that cackling lunatic screamed at him over the intercom, slowly getting more and more deranged as he built up steam.
"Still breathing? Pathetic," Hargreave's voice tore through the speaker overhead, warped by distortion and fury. "Umbrella must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. They send a dog, and not even a useful one. Just a mongrel rooting through my life's work like it's trash."
The static popped, but the voice kept coming, bitter and venomous. "You think I don't know what you are? I've seen your type. You're nothing but a cleaner with a leash. Here to steal what your masters couldn’t build, and torch the rest like it’s all yours to bury."
There was a rising pitch in his voice, unhinged and cracking under the pressure. "This is MY lab! MY research! You’re trespassing in the temple of a mind you’ll never understand. Every step you take, every round you fire, you piss on genius. And when my children tear the meat from your bones, dog, I’ll be laughing through the feed."
Daniel ignored him. He swept the muzzle in a slow arc as he pressed his back to the chilled wall, following the slithering scrape of claw against concrete. His hands were steady, but the weight of his gear pulled at his shoulders like anchors. He felt exposed. Trapped.
Then the second one slammed into him from the side with a bone-snapping crash, its weight and velocity folding him like a hinge. Daniel's shoulder smashed into the tile and his gear plates cracked against the floor, the air knocked from his lungs in a hoarse gasp. Claws raked across his vest, snagging at straps, fingers jabbing for his throat, his mask! It’s eyes were wild and unrelenting, driven by a monofocused madness.
He barely managed to wedge his boot between them and kicked with desperate force. The blow landed square in the creature's chest with a crunch of cartilage, launching it backward into the steam. It screamed, an insectile screech that cut through the mist as it tumbled, limbs flailing and catching briefly on scattered debris before vanishing again.
Daniel rolled the other way, his ribs flaring with agony, and came up into a crouch. He didn't hesitate. The P90 snapped up and barked a burst through the curling miasma. Muzzle flashes lit up the drifting silhouette just as it twisted mid-motion, one shoulder jerking as rounds punched through soft tissue. It shrieked again, trailing spatter as it retreated into the cloud, its form warping into shadow like a retreating nightmare.
The entire exchange had lasted seconds; a blinking kind of violence, rapid, brutal, and over fast. Daniel's chest heaved, his body shaking with adrenaline, but he stayed on his feet. Barely.
His lungs burned. His ribs screamed with every breath, a fire stitched through his side where armor met flesh. The mist curled low and heavy, coating his visor in a film of condensation. He was slick with sweat, vision tunneled, heart hammering in his ears, but he kept moving.
"Come on then," he growled, the words half-choked through his respirator, weapon up, the muzzle twitching from shadow to shadow. "Try me again."
Overhead, Hargreave laughed with a guttural snarl that broke into a shriek. "They’ll pick you clean, little man! You’ll die choking in your own piss, twitching on the floor like the rest of them! The dog dies slow in my house!"
Daniel didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was already moving, fingers sliding along his belt until they closed around a cold metal cylinder. He yanked it free and palmed the pin, gaze locked into the steam, listening for the next scrabble of claws or the whisper of muscle moving overhead. He needed to buy space- any space. He needed a chance.
He needed a flashbang.
The pin came free with a tug and Daniel didn’t hesitate. He counted one breath, then tossed the device underhand toward the center of the room, watching it bounce once across the slick tile before vanishing into the mist. The silence that followed lasted barely two seconds; a heartbeat stretched taut with violence.
Then it went off.
The blast was blinding, even through the fog, a sunburst of white that lit the lab like a trapped explosion. The sound came a moment later, a concussive crack that slammed into Daniel’s chest like a riot hammer, rolling out in a thunderclap that rattled the glass tubes and shivered his bones. His hearing protection caught the worst of it but not all. The world reeled sideways for a breath. His skull rang. His balance spun.
But he was better off than they were.
Both creatures screamed. Not like animals. Not like anything earthly. A double shriek tore the silence apart, one high and stuttering from the ceiling, the other deeper and guttural from the floor. The spider-limbed freak dropped like a stone, its talons skittering across the floor in a tangled crash of limbs. The crawling brute spasmed behind an overturned console, claws flailing like a drowning insect.
Daniel moved into the confusion, lungs burning, every step half a slide on the condensation-slick tile. He raised the P90 and zeroed in on the broken one, still bleeding from the maiming he’d given it earlier. He fired. Controlled. Fast. The burst tore into its side, armor popping, bone splintering as a gout of pressurized mist exploded from its ruined torso. It shrieked and thrashed, one of its arms separating with a crunch and skidding across the floor, leaving a smear of viscous white.
Hargreave's voice detonated from the speakers, cracked and vibrating with fury.
"You blind, blundering cur! That was mine! That was irreplaceable!"
Daniel didn’t respond. He wasn’t listening. He was already shifting aim, walking the burst up through the thing’s chest and into its throat. The head buckled under the final volley. It collapsed in a writhing spasm, then twisted inward like a folding insect and went still. A last spout of milky gas erupted from its back like a death rattle.
The moment he pivoted, the other one exploded into motion again.
It bolted sideways on too many limbs, a blur of slashing talons and whip-fast legs, cutting across the broken floor in an arc that nearly carried it out of sight. Daniel was already tracking it, eyes locked, breath caught in his throat. He re-shouldered the P90 and squeezed the trigger.
The weapon roared.
The remaining rounds tore into the thing's side with brutal force, the impact shredding through sinew and hammering the shoulder joint like a sledge to wet plaster. Flesh burst in meaty chunks, ligaments unraveling as bone splintered beneath the assault. It staggered, limbs folding and scrambling as it screamed, one arm flopping limp and useless, mangled beyond recognition. It tried to recover, limbs scraping across the tile in a frantic scramble as it ducked low and skittered sideways. Daniel's last few rounds tracked it, chewing into the meat of its upper shoulder and collarbone, shredding muscle and snapping the joint into a slack, dangling mess. One arm dropped uselessly, hanging by tendons. Blood sprayed in arcing jets across the floor as the creature let out a high, rattling screech and jerked back into the mist.
Click.
The weapon locked empty.
Daniel let the P90 fall against his chest, fingers already curling around the Jericho's grip. The pistol cleared its holster just as the creature twisted back into view, fast and low. He fired on reflex. The first two rounds caught it center-mass, failing to penetrate the thick bone armor, the third clipped high near the collar, and the final two punched into its flank as it scrambled sideways.
The thing shrieked and vanished into the haze again, but not before fluid burst from the wounds in thick arterial sprays, splashing across the shattered floor. That wasn't enough to kill it, Daniel knew. It was repositioning. Looking for a new angle to rip into him.
He stayed crouched, breath tearing in and out of his mask, chest aching like someone had cinched his ribs in barbed wire. The fog was worse now, swirling with heat and smoke and flecks of atomized gore. Every breath seared the back of his throat. Cordite layered the air like powdered metal. Sweat ran down his back in sheets.
He adjusted his grip on the pistol, finger straight along the guard, eyes locked ahead.
Hargreave was still shouting, his voice warping over the intercom; bitter, snarling, rabid. Daniel couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t care.
He held his breath, listening.
Nothing.
Then came the soft rasp of metal shifting against the tile.
Daniel turned just as it lunged.
The thing came low and fast, a tangle of slick limbs and a yawning vertical maw erupting from the mist like a sprung trap. Talons raked the floor for traction as it hurtled toward him, and for one instant he saw the ragged flesh around its gullet twitch and flex like a second heartbeat. Where a head should have been, there was only that gaping, tooth-ringed cavity- lined with twitching barbs and coated in slime, flaring open as it lunged.
Daniel fired.
The first round punched into the thick sinew just below where a neck might have started, and the thing recoiled with a spasmodic jolt. The next two rounds struck wide, gouging into the side of its carapace and ripping open a chunk of exposed meat that sprayed gelatinous white fluid in looping arcs. It didn’t slow. It crashed into him like a charging boar, its talons raking the Phalanx plate with a screech of bone on metal. The impact drove Daniel backward, and they tumbled across the slick tile. His shoulder struck a gurney leg with a dull crack, the corner of the frame biting into his back.
But he kept hold of the Jericho, knuckles white and shaking.
It snarled, tried to bite through his mask, but he twisted to the side and jammed his forearm into it's chest, forcing the barrel upward and squeezing off another shot. The round blew through the thing’s distended jaw, and it shrieked, rearing back on all fours. Daniel shoved with both boots and sent it skidding back across the floor, trailing thick ropes of pale blood as it clawed at the surface for balance.
He scrambled upright, panting, vision swimming. The monster wasn’t finished. It twitched violently, and then leapt fifteen feet straight up. It hit the ceiling pipes with a heavy clang and latched on, limbs wrapping around steel support beams like rope. Daniel ducked just as it scythed a claw down, sparks raining as the talons carved through an exposed conduit.
He fired up blindly, two shots snapping off in succession. One connected, sending a spray of bone fragments raining down, but the creature was already swinging around behind him.
He spun, breath ragged, the pistol almost slipping in his grip from the clinging humidity. It landed behind him hard, skidding out of the mist on all six limbs. Daniel threw himself backward, hitting the tile on his side, arm outstretched as he fired again. A lucky shot clipped one of its joints, and it stumbled, one limb collapsing under its weight. The monster shrieked in fury, its damaged shoulder still dragging limply, but its other arm came up high, claws gleaming in the fluorescent light.
Daniel rolled under the next slash, came to one knee, and aimed up fast. He slammed a shot directly into the creature’s open maw, the only soft target he had. The bullet tore through the slick, muscular interior with a wet pop, bursting out the back of its throat in a spray of thick fluid and splintered teeth. The creature reeled, its limbs flaring out as it shrieked, more fluid gushing down its chest in strings of white mucus. It staggered but didn't fall, the maw still writhing, twitching open and closed like a torn wound trying to scream.
Then it started to swell.
A whimper built deep in its chest, and white liquid oozed from the seams of its armor-like skin, bubbling at the joints. Its body convulsed once, then again, the torso distending like a water balloon under pressure. Daniel’s eyes widened behind the mask.
He dove behind the wreckage of the console just as the thing erupted.
A blast of dense, clotted mist sprayed out in thick jets, coating the walls and floor in hissing slime. Where it struck metal, it bubbled like acid. When it hit wiring, the plastic insulation shriveled instantly, and the air filled with acrid smoke and stuttering sparks. Daniel could feel the heat of it through his gloves as he ducked low and shielded his face. A glob the size of his fist slapped the tile near his foot and immediately began to melt its way through with a greasy, bubbling hiss.
He scrambled sideways, half-crawling over broken tiles slick with runoff. The stench of chemical rot filled his respirator. Behind him, the thing wheezed a thick, ragged gurgle more fluid than breath. It wasn’t dead, somehow. Not yet.
It pulled itself forward in a grotesque crawl, dragging its ruined bulk across the floor on three limbs. One leg flailed uselessly, twitching. Pale sludge oozed from its open maw, pulsing with each movement like a broken diaphragm. Its body shuddered violently as it closed in.
Daniel holstered the Jericho with a practiced snap, his hands already moving. He yanked the spent magazine from the P90, letting it clatter to the floor without ceremony. His fingers found a fresh one on his belt, cold and slick with condensation. He slammed it into place with a solid, metallic thunk, then racked the bolt with a sharp pull. The sound echoed in the mist.
He fired.
The first burst ripped into its side, stitching a tight, brutal line across the ribcage. Bone splintered under the pressure, the impacts smashing through the outer carapace and rupturing the meaty tissue beneath. The monster jerked, torso convulsing as limbs tried to brace and failed.
Daniel stepped in.
The second burst hit the upper chest and drove deep into the cavity. Viscera burst outward in thick clumps, and one of its limbs gave out entirely, folding under its own weight. The third burst struck the base of the maw and drove upward, pulverizing what was left of its internal structure.
It collapsed into the tile, twitching once. Then it sagged.
Steam hissed from ruptured vents above, mixing with the heat of the mist and the stink of blood. Daniel stood over it, weapon tight to his shoulder, barrel still hot.
He waited. Counted.
It didn’t move.
Only then did he breathe again.
Daniel stood still for several long seconds, chest heaving, pulse thudding behind his ears. The mist had begun to thin now, retreating in lazy spirals as the room’s climate tried to stabilize. Steam hissed from ruptured piping overhead, blending with the ambient crackle of damaged circuitry. The body lay slumped in front of him, unmoving.
It was over.
He backed away slowly, step by step, until his shoulder met the wall. He slid down to a crouch, weapon still up, waiting for any sign of twitching limbs or residual spasms. None came. Just the sound of his own breathing and the slow drip of fluid from somewhere in the ceiling.
The pain came next.
A burning throb lit up his ribs, sharp and insistent now that the adrenaline was starting to fade. His shoulder ached where it had taken the brunt of the gurney’s frame, and his knees felt like they’d been driven through broken glass. He set the P90 across his lap and let his head rest back against the wall, just for a moment.
Overhead, Hargreave’s voice crackled to life again, less fury now and more frantic edge. “You idiot. You don’t even understand what you’ve done. That specimen was months of work. Months! What are you hoping to find here, dog? Glory? Revenge? You’re nothing but a thief, a slave to your Umbrella masters!”
Daniel stared up at the speaker, lips tight, eyes hard. Without a word, he drew the Jericho and aimed high. One shot echoed sharply in the ruined lab, and the speaker sparked violently, showering metal shards as it went silent. Across the ceiling, a small black dome blinked faintly- probably a camera. He adjusted, squeezed the trigger again. The lens shattered in a spray of cracked glass and silence.
As Daniel sat catching his breath, he felt something hard pressing against his thigh. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the USB stick, the one he’d taken from the table earlier and promptly forgotten. Not ready to move yet and looking for any excuse to stay seated a little longer, he figured this was as safe a place as he was going to find. Besides, while it might be nothing.. it also might be important.
He pulled the laptop from his pack, the heavy casing solid and familiar in his hands. It booted up instantly, the screen glowing bright in the haze. Daniel slid the USB stick into the side port, watching as the computer read it without delay, no security or password needed. One video file appeared on the screen.
He clicked it.
Then the screen lit up.
A grainy security video filled the monitor. It showed a long corridor, a familiar one. Daniel recognized the junction point just past the bulkhead door, the one full of people bits. Eight USS operatives advanced through the hallway in tight formation, rifles up and heads on a swivel, but their body language betrayed them. Shoulders hunched. Knees stiff. Fear radiated off them like steam.
Then they ran.
From the far left edge of the feed, a towering shape stepped into view, nine feet of chitin-armored bulk that moved with the slow, deliberate grace of something that didn’t need to hurry. Its head was hooded, snakelike, almost ceremonial in shape. From beneath its arms unfolded whip-thin tentacles tipped with blade-like claws, their edges sparking against the tile as they dragged.
Two of the soldiers tried to hold position, raising their weapons. One even shouted, though the feed had no audio. Then the thing shrieked.
The video juddered and distorted, static crawling across the screen from the force of the screech. On camera, the operatives convulsed. One dropped to his knees, hands to his helmet. Another collapsed face-first, weapon forgotten. The rest staggered, trying to regroup, but their movements were sluggish, paralyzed with pain or terror.
The creature struck.
One of the whip-limbs lashed forward with inhuman speed, striking a man across the chest. His upper body folded in half, armor parting like tin as he was slammed into the wall. Another was pinned against the far bulkhead and torn in half, legs dropping twitching to the ground. The hallway dissolved into thrashing limbs, splattering fluid, and panic as the survivors tried to flee, only to be cut down one by one.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.
Then the video froze.
Daniel stared at the paused frame, heart thudding slow and steady. They were trying to escape the same way he had entered, but the security door had been locked then, just as it was for him. They never made it through. Which meant they believed that was the way out. And if it was, then there had to be another way in. Somewhere.
Somewhere close, maybe?
That thing hadn’t just been hunting. It had been guarding.
He shut the lid quietly.
Then he stood.
He was going to find it.
000
The door hissed open, stale air spilling into the corridor like breath from a crypt. Daniel raised the P90 to his shoulder and stepped through, hyper aware of the dwindling weight on his belt. Just under four magazines left. That was it. The hallway ahead was narrow, walled with thick paneling and bathed in dim, yellowing light. Empty. For now.
The corridor forked several meters ahead, its walls lined with cracked panels and the flickering remnants of overhead fluorescents. Dust clung to the air like smoke. One branch bore a faded sign reading "Lab 1," its edges scorched. The other corridor stretched away unmarked, its tiles smeared with long-dried grime. Daniel chose the known path.
He moved carefully, boots thudding against the damp tile, until he reached the end of the hall. A security panel blinked red beside a locked steel door, the metal stained with old handprints and streaks of something darker. Daniel pulled the stolen card from his pocket and slid it through the reader.
Red light.
A speaker above him crackled to life with a hiss of static.
"Did you really think that trick would work forever?" Hargreave's voice was thick with contempt, every syllable bristling with derision. "You're incredibly, pathetically stupid. You think you're clever, you little dog? You think I wouldn't lock you out the second you showed your hand?"
Daniel stared at the red light, jaw clenching so tight it ached. His thumb hovered near the safety, but he knew better than to waste another round on a speaker.
He went back down the hall, hoping to maybe find something in the cold room, but it was a wasted endeavor.
The cold room door was sealed as well, but that didn't surprise him. One way doors were becoming par for the course. He made a mental note to bring something that can deal with the issue, assuming he lived through this. Thermite maybe. Or an angle grinder.
His gut knotted. Not from fear- he was past fear. It was rage now, low and simmering. He could feel it behind his eyes, in the ache of his ribs and the bruises along his arms.
"You've got control over the doors," he muttered. Of course Hargreave did. The smug bastard probably locked them the moment Daniel stepped into the corridor, just to watch him squirm.
The thought alone made his fingers tighten around the grip of his weapon. If the good doctor had been in the room, Daniel didn’t know if he would’ve shot him or strangled him. Maybe both.
He forced the thought down, breathing slowly. Focused.
Then he turned toward the unmarked corridor, boots scraping concrete.
Fine. He’d play the rat in the maze. For now.
Time to try the unknown.
The hallway bent and straightened into a longer stretch. Eerily still. One body lay sprawled on the tile, face-up, unmoving. Daniel slowed, weapon raised.
A single round to the skull. Dead center.
Nothing. No twitch. No sound.
He circled closer. No breath, no reaction. Definitely dead. The corpse was bloated and pallid, dressed in a shredded lab coat. Daniel crouched to inspect it.
There was nothing in the coat itself. But the inside pocket held a small glass vial, about the size and shape of a cigar, capped tightly. Inside was a fine green powder, rich in color and evenly packed. He frowned and turned it over in his hand.
He recognized it from earlier; the green powder matched one of the labels on the mixing kit he’d found ten minutes ago. A Class 1 herbal tincture, supposedly regenerative and mildly painkilling. That was the claim, anyway. The sticker on the inside lid had mentioned local uses as a replacement for stronger meds.
He remembered the herbs from the games he'd played, though. Magic weeds that could save you from death with the right RGB color combination. He didn't buy into it though. He'd tried them once, out in the real world and yeah, he felt a little perkier but there wasn't any miraculous regeneration effect. Hadn't even fixed the nick on his finger at the time, despite everyone and their cousin swearing by it.
Daniel eyed the vial, shaking his head. This even assumed it was the right stuff, and not fucking strychnine or something.
Still though, his ribs were throbbing, but not enough to risk weird chems he found on a corpse.
He pocketed it anyway, though. Never knew what might be valuable after all.
The hallway angled sharply again, terminating at another security door, this one torn off its hinges and lying crumpled on the floor. Daniel stepped over the twisted panel, unclipped his flashlight, and secured it to his helmet. The lights were dead, and the room ahead hummed faintly in the dark.
It was a maintenance room, wide but tight with steel walkways above and massive equipment below. Two industrial generators rested on the sunken floor, coated in rust but humming away, which explained how Dr. Crazy out there managed to run what looked like a pretty complex operation down here.
A body slumped against the far railing of the upper level. The head was wrecked, looking like a melted candle, and undeniably dead. A ruined handgun hung from one hand. Daniel pried it loose, the action frozen, but the magazine slid free. Twelve clean 9mm rounds. He slotted them into an empty mag and added it to his belt. At least these were somewhat plentiful.
Beneath the corpse was a soggy but laminated file.
"Resetting main circuit will override lockdown. Keycard security bypassed. All doors revert to default position," he read, skimming the document. That was something he could use.
Then the fine print: "Power reboot disables bidirectional access. All doors become one-way. Plan routes accordingly."
Of course, because it was never that easy. Then again, it's not like he was having much success backtracking anyway.
The reset switch was located on the lower floor near the main generator. Unfortunately, a thick white cloud clung to the bottom of the chamber, pooled around the machines like swamp vapor. Daniel crouched at the ladder and groaned. If that wasn’t ominous foreshadowing he didn’t know what else to call it.
"Perfect." He sighed.
He checked his mask filters. They hadn’t had much of a workout even with the two BOWs he’d killed in the cold room, but he knew that he’d need to swap to his second-last set of filters after this.
He descended all the same. The ladder rungs were slick, each one coated in condensation and a thin film of something slimy that squirmed under his grip. He tightened his gloves and pushed past it, trying not to think too hard about what was alive and what was just residue. The air grew thicker the lower he went, each breath tasting like copper, mildew, and the sharp tang of chemicals too old to name.
Each step off the ladder landed with a wet squelch. The floor was spongy in places, sticky in others, coated in a mucous-like grime that clung to the soles of his boots and made movement unpredictable. Hazy droplets shimmered in the air around his visor, scattering light in a greasy halo. The fog made his skin itch through the fabric of his pants, a crawling sensation that felt like he was walking through wet insulation.
He didn’t linger. His pace quickened, every step sloshing louder than the last. The room wasn’t silent anymore. There was a ripple to the mist ahead. Movement.
A shape shifted in the mist.
It moved with a jerking gait, legs clearly human but coated in boils and streaks of yellowed flesh. The upper body was a grotesque mass of fused tissue, no arms, no neck, just a bulbous hump of tumors that pulsed and wheezed with every step. Veins snaked across it like roots, twitching as it exhaled thick clouds of pale mist from open, glistening pores. The skin glistened wetly, patches of it translucent enough to show roiling movement beneath.
It gurgled, wet and hollow, like someone choking on their own lungs. Then it reared back, and the tumors along its core contracted.
Daniel saw the motion and moved fast, shifting sideways with a sliding half-step that nearly took him down on the slick tile. He barely kept his feet as a blast of white sludge hurled past him, striking the floor where he’d just stood.
The tile hissed, bubbling as the fluid spread in widening, corrosive streaks.
He rose fast and leveled the P90, his finger tapping the trigger in sharp, deliberate pulses. Three short semi-auto bursts cracked through the room, the shots driving deep into the creature’s bloat with each controlled squeeze. Tumors ruptured with wet, meaty pops, spraying ropes of pale fluid across the floor and walls. The creature reeled, legs stumbling as it tried to compensate.
Daniel adjusted his stance and put two more rounds into the mass at center, targeting the largest cluster of tumors where the swell was most aggressive. It gave a shuddering groan and began to swell uncontrollably, the flesh distending with visible pressure as it reached critical mass.
The thing ballooned.
Daniel’s eyes widened as the tumors along its flanks pulsed outward, and the flesh around its midsection started to split under the internal pressure. He knew what was coming. The wet, gasping inflation. The way it trembled at the edges.
"Shit-"
He was already moving, staggering backward across the slick tiles, one boot skidding dangerously close to a fall. He threw himself into a stumbling retreat, arms raised to shield.
It burst.
The explosion sent a dense cloud of viscous filth into the air, misting the chamber in streaks of bubbling bile. A blob of sizzling muck splashed across the back of his glove, and Daniel felt the burn instantly- a deep, acidic heat that cut straight to the nerves. With a strangled shout, he ripped the glove off, letting it hang loose as the skin beneath began to melt like wax under a blowtorch.
The pain surged white-hot. His hand looked raw and alien; red, blistering, strands of half-dissolved flesh bubbling like he'd just dropped raw lye on it.
Panicked, he yanked his knife from its sheath and began scraping, teeth clenched so hard it made his skull throb. The blade peeled away the hissing sludge, taking strips of skin with it. He let out a ragged scream, the sound bouncing through the fogged chamber as blood welled from the back of his hand.
The pain was blinding. But he got it off. Most of it.
The mist thinned as the corpse collapsed inward, bubbling quietly as the remaining fluids leaked out across the floor. With the creature dead, the source of the white miss went with it, leaving only the slimy, moist coating of fluid on everything down there.
Daniel pushed forward on shaky legs, wincing with every step. His injured hand pulsed with heat, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The glove was ruined, the exposed skin underneath an angry red smear wrapped in torn flesh. Every movement sent a jolt of pain radiating up his forearm, but he grit his teeth and kept moving.
He reached the control panel. The corroded switch stuck halfway, looking like it had been abandoned mid-pull. He braced and yanked hard.
The lights in the room flickered, once, then locked into a dim, steady hum. A mechanical thunk echoed through the walls as systems realigned. Somewhere overhead, doors clunked open in sequence.
He exhaled.
Then tried to reset the switch. It snapped off in his grip, the brittle metal shaft, weakened by the mist, shearing in half and falling to the floor with a clink. Without it, there was no way to return full power.
Daniel stared at the broken piece in his hand, then shook his head.
"Of course it fucking broke," he muttered. His voice rasped with pain, and he half-laughed, half-coughed. "Thanks for that, asshole."
He turned toward the ladder, wiped the blood and bile off his fingers against his pant leg, and began to climb one rung at a time. His shoulders burned. His hand stung with every motion.
He didn’t look down.
The moment Daniel stepped back into the corridor, he noticed the change. The lights were dimmer now, close to emergency red in tone rather than the off-white fluorescents that had bathed the hallway earlier. The system reboot had throttled the power, reducing the ambient light to a pulsing, low-intensity glow that made everything feel cavernous and uncertain. The shadows seemed to stretch deeper now, pooling in corners and beneath doors, playing tricks on his depth perception. Every edge looked sharper, every hallway more narrow. Annoying, but for the moment, the hall was quiet.
He leaned against the wall for a second, catching his breath. The burn on his hand pulsed, a deep ache rather than a sharp pain, like his skin was trying to slough off. He popped open his IFAK, slumping against the wall. Fingers moved with quiet familiarity, grabbing gauze and burn cream. Rebecca’s voice rose in the back of his mind, her lessons on just how to manage this small disaster ringing in his thoughts. Tight wraps, breathable layering, don’t trap the heat, each one a tidbit that guided him. He found himself smiling faintly despite everything, a breath of warmth in a cold, hostile place. He could almost see her tutting over the mess he had no doubt made of things.
Looking at it now, the sight wasn’t pretty. Blisters had ruptured and collapsed, revealing patches of flesh mottled pink and white, puckered around angry red streaks. The skin was warped and raw, the edges of some welts already darkening. He winced. The burn was worse than he thought- definitely second-degree, but he didn’t see bone, thank Christ. He tilted his hand in his head light, checking for deeper tissue damage, then let out a slow breath. It hurt like hell, but wasn't debilitating. He could still use the hand.
The cream came first. It spread cool and smooth across the raw surface, instantly dulling the angry throb beneath his skin. The relief was nearly immediate. Not soothing, exactly, but manageable. His fingers moved with precision as he layered gauze, tight but breathable, locking everything into place with practiced calm. Clean layers. No sloppiness. It felt almost meditative. He wasn’t a medic, but she’d taught him well, and it helped now more than ever.
Then the realization hit, slow and grim. That knife… the one he’d used to scrape off the acid, it had been buried to the hilt in a corpse not even an hour ago. A filthy, decomposing zombie. His stomach sank. Infection was a certainty in places like this. But this wasn’t just tetanus or sepsis. This was Infection. Capital I. The kind with teeth.
There was nothing to be done now. No point in dwelling. He gave the hand one final antiseptic spray, more out of routine than hope, and forced the glove back on. It tugged over the gauze in stiff resistance. Not comfortable. But better than nothing.
Next, he unscrewed the spent filters from his mask and screwed in his second-to-last pair. The white gunk had corroded the old ones badly, blackening the insides and turning the edges soft. He gave the mask a once-over and sealed it again. Hopefully, the new filters would last longer. It was another thing to add to the list. Bring more filters. A lot more, as it seemed.
The door to Lab 1 blinked a steady green. Rebooted systems meant unlocked doors, but only opened one way. Not a new problem, thanks to Hargreave’s constant meddling, but still an annoying one. He’d already grown used to the idea that returning the way he came wasn’t going to be an option.
Daniel stepped in carefully, P90 shouldered and ready, muzzle sweeping through the low-hanging gloom. The air carried a metallic sting, tinged with mildew and the sickly sweetness of decay. A pale haze curled along the floor like steam from a broken pipe, thick enough to obscure his boots. The lab was awkwardly laid out, built in a hexagonal pattern with an outer and inner chamber segmented by partial walls and observation glass. The sight lines were terrible, every angle a potential blind spot, every turn a new threat. It made his teeth clench.
He paused at the threshold, weighing the silence. Something was here. He could feel it. But if it wouldn’t show itself, maybe he could make it.
He drew his knife, grip reversed, and slammed the pommel into the metal frame of the door. The clang rang out like a gunshot, sharp and jarring, echoing off the inner walls in metallic ripples. The fog shifted.
Then came the sounds; soft shuffles, dragging feet, low groans from dead throats.
The first figure stumbled into view through the haze, clad in the sagging remnants of a security uniform. The helmet was dented, visor smeared with grime. Daniel aimed and fired once, the shot cracking the stillness. The guard’s body folded backward, twitching as it dropped.
More followed. Another in corporate slacks and a tie, his jaw slack and drooping. A woman in a lab coat, eyes milky and mouth frozen in a half-scream. Then another, and another. Nine in all. They emerged from the hazy dark, shambling toward him in a loose, disjointed group.
He held position just beyond the narrowing of the corridor, heart hammering in his chest as the shapes closed in. When the shambling dead clustered together in the bottleneck, their limbs brushing against one another in slow, twitchy coordination, he raised the compact machinegun.
The weapon barked.
Tap. Shift. Tap.
Brass danced across the tile as he moved with methodical precision, walking the sights across sagging faces and gaping maws. Each burst was purposeful, each correction automatic, like muscle memory guiding steel. The air filled with the steady crack of gunfire and the wet impact of bullets punching through flesh.
Each shot was deliberate, each target measured. And that's what they were in his mind's eye, targets. He stopped seeing faces, imagining them as people. It was easier that way. Bodies collapsed in sequence, some jerking violently as the impact registered, others crumpling silently like puppets with strings cut. There was no thrill, no tension. Just the clinical rhythm of repetition.
When the last one fell, he stood still for a moment, scanning the space.
Clear.
He waited a moment for the buildup of white mist to clear before moving in, noticing just how little there was from the precision. He wasn't rupturing pustules all over the body with wild fire this time, and it showed. It still took a minute to return to the normal haze of darkness, but it was time well spent. He wasn't on a timer yet, anyway.
He checked the dead one by one, stepping over collapsed limbs and crumpled torsos slick with whatever fluid had soaked the tile. Wallets, shredded ID cards, even a few name tags clung to the tatters of what used to be respectable uniforms and tailored suits. Most of it had been eaten away, reduced to soggy pulp by the ever-present white mist. Whatever this shit was, it didn't discriminate between paper, fiber and metal. It just took longer for one than the others.
Still, a few valuables remained. A thick gold ring clung to a bloated finger, and a delicate silver pendant rested against the collarbone of a woman in a tattered blazer. Daniel hesitated for only a moment before collecting them. The Survivalist had said that jewellery was fair game, and these people didn't need them any more.
He knew he should feel worse about it. Looting the dead always carried a stink, even now. But these weren’t innocents, people who just stumbled head first into this place. These were scientists, security, executives. People who had stood by while things were built to kill. People who funded this. Enabled it. Whatever morality he had left wasn’t going to bleed over them.
Still, as he pocketed the items, he didn’t look at their faces. It made things easier.
The lab itself was worthless. Everything inside was scorched, water-damaged, or rotted through. He was about to move on when a smashed security locker caught his eye. The weapon was gone, but four intact shotgun shells and an unusual magazine sat on the lower shelf. The magazine was thick and blocky, not one he recognized, but one that could fit the shells. He took it all.
Deeper in the room, behind a tipped-over shelving unit, he found something better: a laminated map, edge-sealed and intact. He scanned it into his Gridlink. Two more labs showed on the schematic; one to the north, one to the south. There was another, bigger lab marked as “alpha” on the laminate, but that was a problem for later. Right now he needed to get through these two horror shows.
The southern access was a lost cause. The map confirmed it existed, but when Daniel approached the doorway labeled for Lab 2, it was clear the entire frame had been warped beyond recognition. The metal had buckled outward as if from internal pressure, twisting the structure like it had been struck by a battering ram from the inside. Heat scoring blackened the seams, and the control panel blinked erratically, a single red diode flickering in short, dying pulses. No power. No access. Not without industrial tools, and even then, maybe not. Whatever was on the other side wasn’t meant to be revisited.
North it was.
But before he moved, his eyes caught something the map had hinted at; a utility door, partially obscured behind a pair of collapsed medical charts and a tipped-over filing stand. Without the map, he might’ve missed it completely. The door was flush with the wall, painted to match the concrete, and only the faint seam of the frame betrayed its outline. A basic key lock sat at waist level, rusted but intact. He had some lockpicks, but for this there was a more expedient solution. He knelt, working the crowbar into the gap with practiced force. A few tense seconds passed before the lock gave way with a sharp metallic snap and a reluctant groan from the hinges as it swung open.
The storage room was empty, nothing out of the ordinary, just several shelves of various things, most of which Daniel didn't know. On a low shelf, though, he found a mostly full box of pistol rounds, about thirty, all told. Not a bad haul, really. But that wasn't what caught his eye. There were several canisters marked C-III Biochlorine Recirculator Set. Opening one showed him a set of filters not unlike the ones he used for his mask, but thicker and heavier. Something specific to the lab? A prototype maybe? It ultimately didn't matter. He bagged them anyway. They took up a lot of space in his pack, but if he did run out of his own filters, well, these would be worth a try. The real prize, though, was tucked away behind the rest of it, a single flashbang grenade, which he immediately put in his grenade pouch.
Daniel left the storage closet with a final glance at the tightly sealed shelves and the still air that had preserved everything within. The door clicked shut behind him, and he adjusted the straps on his pack, which now sagged with the added weight of supplies. The load was manageable, but it pressed uncomfortably against his shoulders, a reminder to make sure he was circumspect in whatever he took. Space wasn’t the issue, weight was, and despite the reinforced straps keeping the pack flush to his back, it still started to drag on top of all the rest of the weight he was hauling.
He moved down the short connector corridor, boots rolling heel-to-toe in near silence. The overhead strips buzzed softly, casting uneven shadows that danced in the dim light. The door to Lab 3 opened without resistance, the lock disengaging with a soft mechanical click. The room beyond shared the familiar hexagonal layout of the previous lab but lacked its segmented interior. Instead, one large chamber stretched out before him, ringed with waist-high counters cluttered in elaborate chemistry rigs and half-assembled machines. It smelled faintly of sterilizer and something sharper, more acrid, more chemical, and old in a way that turned the bunker into a tomb.
Daniel entered slowly, scanning left and right in measured arcs. His grip on the P90 was steady, but his posture was tight, alert. The floor tiles were spotless in places and sticky in others, like someone had begun cleaning but never finished. Wires spilled from disemboweled instruments, abandoned experiments, and shattered beakers and vials littered the room.
Something about this place felt wrong, but he didn’t know what. The ceiling above, almost cavernous now that he’d moved out of the narrow corridors, was bathed in black shadow and his headlamp pierced only the smallest cone of the looming abyss. Pipes, wires and ventilation ducts met his eyes as he turned back to the room as a whole, wary of what might be hiding behind the tables.
Then a faint creak broke the silence, but the shape of the room made everything bounce, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
He swept again, frozen, as he hunted. The glare of his headlamp flickered off a thousand metal surfaces, but nothing jumped out, figuratively or otherwise. He took a slow step, and... there it was again. A raspy slow sound, of metal slowly flexing under an unnatural weight.
He knew he'd made a mistake when he felt something wet dripping on his shoulder. He tried to turn, to shoot, to do anything, but a tendril of meat, wet and slimy and slick, coiled around his throat from above.
He choked as he was lifted from the floor. The cord of flesh pulled hard, muscles bunching at the base of his skull. He grasped for the P90, but it flopped uselessly beneath him, out of reach.
His vision swam, the edges going dark as blood thundered in his ears. The crushing pressure on his neck was relentless, stars bursting behind his eyes. Panic clawed at the edges of his mind.
His hand found the knife on instinct, yanking it from the rig with a desperate jerk. No time to think. Just act. He twisted and hacked at the tendril of pulsing flesh constricting his windpipe. The serrated blade tore into the cord, the resistance sickeningly tough, like cutting into a tendon wrapped in mucus.
He struggled, gagging, as it yanked him up, his neck screaming in pain as he slashes again, and again, trying to slice the rope of meaty flesh as it hung him like a noose. In a desperate move, he leg go of the tendril around his neck and grabbed it before plunging in the knife, sawing through the width of it. The tension released immediately, the boneless strand flopping around him as he plummeted to the floor. The impact was hard, and left him gasping for air as his lungs dragged in a precious, ragged breath.
It felt like breaking the surface of water after nearly drowning. For a heartbeat, nothing else existed but air and the sheer, dizzying relief of it. Then reality caught up to him, and his head snapped up. What the glare of his headlamp revealed was another horror to add to the pile.
Above, clinging to the overhead pipes, a grotesque shape twitched and reared. The creature's limbs were twisted parodies of arms and legs, too long, jointed wrong, their surfaces slick and raw like peeled muscle. Its body clung to the piping with obscene ease, anchored by splayed, talon-like digits that dug into the metal as if it were flesh. Its head was worse: not a head at all, but a circular mass that split into four wet, flapping petals of flesh, peeling back to reveal layers of grinding bone-plated teeth, it’s tongue a long, ropey cable emerging from the center of the gaping maw. It screeched, high and shrill, a sound of rage and pain, as the tongue slithered back into its mouth like a dying eel, flopping around and spilling dark blood across the room as it slurped back into the maw of the beast..
Daniel grabbed for his pistol, nearly yanking it from the holster-
It was already moving, as it exhaled a cone of chemical fluid straight into his face. The blast hit with brutal force, the acidic goop eating into his mask with audible hiss. The filters began to melt instantly, plastic warping and buckling as the rebreather tore away from his face under the corrosive assault.
Daniel gagged, stumbled, and tore off the mask just in time to vomit across the floor. The chemical stung his eyes, his throat. He choked, retched, and collapsed to his knees. He collapsed, his mouth raw and burning, hands braced on the tile as the creature vanished into a vent above, the sound of its heavy limbs pounding on the metal above, the thumping moving away from him.
He desperately hunted for the discarded mask, but what he found rendered the effort pointless.
The mask was obliterated. Both filters had melted to slag, the plastic dripping in warped globs. The rubber seal had dissolved in places, curled and puckered, and the faceplate was shattered into a spiderweb of broken glass. Even the armored cowl that held the seal to his face had bubbled and peeled, corroded by the caustic mist. It had taken the brunt of the chemical blast, sparing his face by seconds. If he hadn’t ripped it off when he did, his skin would have gone with it.
He spat the lingering burn from his throat, rinsed his mouth with a swig from his camelback, then forced down another swallow to calm the sick rolling in his gut. Slowly, unsteadily, he rose to his feet.
The creature was gone, scuttled into the vents above, leaving behind a choking trail of acrid mist and silence. Daniel knew he couldn’t stay there. The longer he lingered, the more likely it would come back. He needed somewhere he could get away from the yawning abyss above him and his mind latched onto an offshoot corridor to the west. It wasn’t marked as anything, but hopefully it was safe enough for him to regroup.
Still half-blind and gagging on the remnants of chemical stench, he forced his legs to move. His balance faltered on the slick tile floor, boots slipping slightly as he stumbled blindly, his feet unsteady as he pushed on. His head swam and his eyes watered, every breath shallow and harsh. But his mind knew what his body hadn't yet caught up to: he had to get away.
Daniel's shoulder slammed into the wall next to the door, the P90 held loosely in his grip. His breathing was ragged, throat raw and burning, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t afford to. Above him, the ventilation ducts groaned, the metal flexing under an unnatural weight and reminding him that the thing in the ceiling was still tracking him. The memory of its gaping maw and the searing chemical blast made his skin crawl.
He shoved the door open and nearly fell through, stumbling into a hallway that looked like a warzone. Bullet holes riddled the walls. Concrete had been chipped away in shallow craters. Spent casings littered the ground like autumn leaves in a graveyard. Blood smeared the walls in wide, ugly arcs. Two security officers lay sprawled in the open, and neither bore signs of bites. They had been gunned down. Another corpse, a USS operative, slumped against the far wall, his armor torn and riddled with holes.
Overhead, the dim, flickering lights struggled to remain lit, casting long, erratic shadows that danced across the corpses. Daniel moved past them without slowing. There was no time to ponder the details. His gaze flicked to the bodies in a quick assessment, and moved on. They had no weapons, no spare ammo, and had clearly been field stripped. Whoever came through had taken everything of use.
It was clear they were in a rush, as he spotted a glint of gold on one of the bodies. A wrist watch, valuable but not practical, at least not to whoever was doing the stripping. Daniel dropped to a knee, yanked it off without hesitation, and stuffed it into his pouch. Maybe it was worth something, maybe not, but half the reason he'd come was to collect things worth taking, and that meant anything he could carry. Even if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
At the end of the hall, a warped door hung slightly ajar, bent inward and off its frame. He approached slowly, sweeping left and right with the P90. Every footstep was measured. The corridor was dead quiet, the kind of silence that made his skin itch. No movement, no sound. Still, he kept his muzzle up as he slipped through the open doorway.
Inside was chaos. The security office looked like someone had tried their best to erase it. Lockers lined the walls in twisted rows, most of them melted or warped beyond function. Weapons inside had fused with their racks, slagged under what looked like some kind of thermal explosive. The acrid scent of burned polymer and cordite still clung to the air. Anything useful had been swept with gunfire, or haphazardly crushed.
Three more bodies dotted the room. Two guards lay near the threshold, riddled with bullets. Behind the main desk slumped another man, his torso cratered by a close-range blast that had shredded the chair behind him. Blood and carbon char coated the desk and floor in sticky layers.
A wall of security monitors lined the far end of the room, a fractured mosaic of dead screens, each one cracked or blacked out by scorch marks. Several had melted along the edges, their plastic housings drooping like wax. Below them, a row of computer terminals had been reduced to slag, their keyboards fused into their desks, monitors shattered or barely hanging on by frayed cables. To one side, a fire-scorched bulletin board displayed the remnants of several security memos, edges curled, center charred black. Daniel moved cautiously through the debris, checking lockers, tugging at twisted hinges, hoping for anything salvageable. He needed a replacement mask badly, but all he found were blistered respirators, crushed filters, and the seared remains of what might have once been emergency gear. The destruction had been thorough but rushed. Messy.
He sifted through the wreckage for several long minutes, checking under scorched panels and broken chairs, flipping aside ruined binders and crumbling memos in the desperate hope that something, anything, had been overlooked. A half-melted toolbox yielded nothing but slag, and what had been a series of hazmat suits had been slashed to pieces. Whoever had gone through this place knew what they were doing.
“Goddamnit.” Daniel growled, staring at the ruin. It was only when he returned to the desk, breathing shallow and frustrated, that he noticed a subtle glint of metal half-hidden beneath the slumped body of the man who had died behind it.
Daniel hesitated a second, then stepped close, bracing his boot and pushing the corpse aside with a low grunt. The body shifted reluctantly, sticky with dried blood and carbon scoring, and the space beneath came into view. Nestled in the dark shadow below, resting near the desk’s support beam, was a weapon.
Jet black and built like a battering ram. The weapon was an ultracompact Saiga-12K, the barrel was barely ten inches long, capped with a fixed choke, optimized for tight patterns and devastating close-range spread. The polymer foreguard had been replaced with a modern rail system, skeletal and vented, fitted with a vertical foregrip for close-quarters stability. The original stock was gone, replaced with a hinged side-folder that hugged the receiver. Attached to the rear was a single-point sling, the kind that allowed a shooter to keep the weapon slung behind their offhand shoulder when not in use. It would hang comfortably against his side, leaving his P90 clear up front. It was lighter than he thought it would be, still solid but designed for the narrow corridors of the lab and very clearly purpose built.
He flipped the gun in his hands and checked the magazine: a five-round box of 12-gauge buckshot, seated snugly. Inside the lower shelf of the desk, nestled between a ledger and a pile of loose files, were two more box magazines. One was a match to the one loaded, all standard buckshot. The other was bright yellow, each shell marked with shock hazard decals and the designation "Electric-TVII."
Some kind of taser round, maybe? Did those even exist? It didn't matter now, he supposed.
He chambered a round, the Saiga's action snapping forward with a sharp, metallic crack that echoed across the ruined security office. The sound cut through the stale air like punctuation, a promise in steel and powder.
It wasn’t what he was looking for but he’d take it all the same.. A small victory, but hard-won, and he had shells to spare. Almost twenty extra, tucked away in a belt pocket, the magazines stored in another.
Daniel turned, casting one last look at the shattered doorway and the shadowed hall beyond. His fingers tightened around the grip of the shotgun. Stock out, locked and loaded.
He wanted to see how that fucker with the acid spit would like some double-aught. It was time to settle accounts.
