by James Barton
The patient crouched down and began to sway back and forth before slamming into the door.
“Cell A5 unauthorized exit, Cell A1 door damaged, Cell A1 unauthorized exit,” the computer voice said without pausing. As Kenji took a shocked step back, the computer continued to blare out warnings and messages about escape. Without thinking, he ran over and picked up the phone. There was only silence, all communications were down. Kenji wondered if it was just bad luck or had Adam known it was down?
“Doctor! The security team is in place. Do they have the order for lethal force?” a man’s voice came through the speakers.
He ran over to the door and pushed the button in. For the first time ever, he was completely speechless.
“Doctor! Doctor? Do you authorize lethal force?”
“Lethal force authorized,” he said and released the button. “But, it won’t matter…” he said to himself.
“Alpha Hallway door damaged, Alpha Hallway unauthorized exit,” the computer whined.
“The doors are steel; they are steel,” Kenji murmured to himself in disbelief.
He ran over to the door console and brought up maps of the facility. Alpha hallway connected to Bravo Hallway, and Charlie Hallway led to the exit. If they had just broken into Bravo there was a chance, if he moved fast, he could get to the exit before them. He could make it out and activate the purge from the other side. An uneasy pain went through his chest as he pictured pressing a button that would kill everyone he had worked with over the past couple of months.
Kenji took a deep breath and held down the button on the door. It slid open with a hearty whoosh. The hallway was abandoned and ten doors down was the exit. That door would take him to the central corridor, which ultimately connected to the exit. He began to move quickly, not quite breaking into a run. Part of him thought that a single echoing footstep would open all the closed cells and release an army of ravenous cannibals. He knew this was illogical because those cells hadn’t even been occupied, but he couldn’t shake his fears regardless. As his adrenaline began to pump, he found himself wishing he could have monitored their changes more closely. It was too late now, but if he could escape, he could continue his research at a new facility.
He came up to the hallway exit and could hear the faint echo of gunshots through the multiple inches of steel. There he gazed at the digital pad on the door. “Bravo-Charlie doorway damaged,” was displayed across the screen. They were trying to get to the main corridor and about thirty feet from where he stood was the door they were trying to break. His mind screamed for him to turn back. “Go back and stay in your room, just listen to him.” He pushed the thoughts from his head. He stood at the door, his hands beginning to tremble.
He would have to open the door and outrun genetically evolved beings to the main exit. He knew that the odds were against him, but if he didn’t at least try, he would surely die. He put his shaking hand on the green button. The door slid open and two guards spun around and pointed their guns at him. Kenji immediately raised his hands in surrender.
“It’s me!” is all he could think to say.
They both lowered their aim. Each of them was in riot gear with gas masks. Kenji flinched as he realized he had left his mask in the room. The only distinguishing feature between the two men is that one had slicked back black hair and the other had a shaved head. That riot gear would protect them from many things, but Kenji knew it would offer little protection from what was on the other side of that door.
The door on the opposite side of the room was beginning to bow outward and there were visible tears stretching across the wall. A powerful thud caused the door to bow out further and it shook one of the hanging lights in the room.
“We lost contact with the rest of our team. What the bloody hell are those things?” the dark-haired guard asked. Underneath his armor and masculine physique, it was clear he was just as scared as Kenji.
“I’m not sure. We, we need to go … now.”
“You did this, didn’t you? You made them?” the bald soldier asked as he took his attention away from the door.
“I didn’t make monsters, I was trying to save people,” as the words left his mouth, he knew he should have just played dumb. He should have lied and stuck to it. Even through the mask, Kenji could see a look of disgusted anger that came across the men. “It wasn’t my fault,” Kenji added.
“It never is with your types,” the bald soldier scoffed.
“I’m sorry, I really am, but we have to move if we are going to make it,” Kenji pleaded. There was another thud into the door and now it was so bent-in that it barely clung to the doorframe.
“Why don’t you stay and deal with your own creations while we leave? Fuck this, we’re out.” As he spoke, tiny tentacles began to creep around the opening of the door. They started to wrap around and intertwine with themselves at the center of the door. Everyone was frozen in place as they watched this terrifying display. The bald guard spun around and fired a single shot from his rifle. The bullet sailed through Kenji’s kneecap and made a sickening popping sound. He fell to the ground grasping at his wound. “You brutish fucker,” he cried out through the pain.
“Are you fucking insane?” the other soldier called out in surprise.
“How fitting, the monsters might not even have a chance to kill me. Instead I could die to short-sighted boys playing soldier,” he thought to himself. Kenji narrowed his eyes as he scowled at the men. He wondered what they thought was going on down here when they signed up to work in an underground laboratory. For the first time in his life he really wanted to hurt someone. The anger welled up inside him and he could only dream of leaping up, snatching the gun from him, and putting him down. Only, his angry dreams were simply that, dreams. Kenji was still a small, wounded intellectual and not an action hero.
Suddenly the door buckled and there was a metallic scream as it peeled away from the wall. For a moment it hovered slightly in the air, suspended by a web of small black tentacles.
“Run!” the dark-haired guard yelled.
Ignoring his companion’s order, the other guard began firing wildly into the steel door. The sound of ricocheting bullets echoed throughout the room.
“Stop shooting at nothing!” the other cried out.
Kenji began to crawl away from the looming door. It floated a few inches off the floor and it reminded him of his closet door as a child. Only, this time, there really was a monster behind it. The guard continued to fire into the door, pausing only to reload his rifle. A few of the shots had struck the tentacles and they fell away bleeding a dribble of black liquid. Kenji, even in moments like this had a difficult time not analyzing everything. In that moment he tried to determine the weight of the door to figure the lifting capacity of those deceptively thin tentacles.
The door slammed down into the ground and seemed to lodge itself into the concrete floor. As the tentacles released their grip and retracted back behind the door a familiar voice could be heard.
“Kenji, Kenji please tell your gorillas to put their weapons down,” Adam said as he stepped out from behind the door. He casually straightened his shirt as though he was preparing for a meeting, only he was drenched in blood. His face was smeared with spattered dots and his hands were shiny with sticky blood. Dark silhouettes slowly emerged at his side.
Kenji saw three other people, if you could still call them that. The older male patient seemed to have grown younger; his face was smooth and devoid of wrinkles. Along his arm were black shards that swayed like feathers in the wind. On Adam’s other side stood a young blonde woman. She now had a nest of tangled tentacles waving behind her. And behind them all was the overweight patient. He now bulged with ridiculous muscles. His skin was torn and shredded from the excessive stretching and it revealed a soft pink inner layer of flesh. His hands had swollen to massive proportions, appearing large enough to easily wrap themselves around a human head. But it was the sharp claws at the fingertips that really caught Kenji’s eye, each bea
ring a remarkable resemblance to the dull pointed end of a rusty railroad spike. This creature was clearly an engine of destruction.
In less than two days, they had all gone from sick, terminally ill individuals, to … to this. Kenji, despite his terror, was overwhelmed with awe. The two guards were not so intrigued and began to unload their magazines in their direction.
“Every … fucking … time,” Adam said as bullets splashed into his chest.
It all happened so fast. The woman wrapped her tentacles around the steel door and lifted it eight feet into the air. The door levitated and looked as though it had forty extension cords dangling from it. The dark-haired guard looked up just as the door came crashing down, embedding itself a foot into the floor, severing him in two.
While that happened, the man with the black slivers unleashed a strange grunt and a shotgun blast of shards sailed out of his arms leaving behind a stringy layer of black ooze. The other guard stumbled backward as they pierced his chest; he was riddled with tiny finger sized shards. Kenji, again, couldn’t help himself from being intrigued.
At first glance the shards looked like black glass, but soon they began to wriggle and climb deeper into the man’s chest. As they burrowed into his skin, muffled screams filled the room. After a moment they had disappeared into his body, leaving behind blackened craters in his skin.
The muscle-bound man started to move forward, and Adam grabbed him and held him back. He whispered something to him and the man appeared to calm down. “Doctor, you probably want to witness the turning.”
“The turning?” he questioned.
“We are about to find out if this man is special.”
Adam got closer to the man and knelt. The guard gasped for air and Adam pulled at his gas mask until the small black straps snapped. The man’s eyes cried out in fear and begged for mercy all in a single look. He slid down the wall into a slumped sitting pose. Even from a moderate distance, things could be seen moving underneath his skin. He threw his head back and then fell anti-climatically on his side. Kenji watched with unblinking eyes. Time felt like it was crawling as he watched on. Kenji knew that he was probably next to be killed, but he still couldn’t help but be infatuated by the turning.
The guard began to thrash around and then simply stumbled to his feet. There was an empty expression and his mouth seemed to hang like a drugged-up dental patient. His lifeless eyes scanned the room and then met with Kenji. He stumbled forward and fell on his stomach after a few steps. He began to crawl forward, and Kenji suddenly realized that the guard had turned into a zombie. Kenji, still bleeding from his leg, frantically crawled backward. He gritted his teeth through the pain.
“Aaron, would you please,” Adam said softly.
The large hulking man stepped between them and pushed the zombie’s head into the cold concrete floor. It was intentionally slow and unnecessary. Kenji turned away as the man’s skull split under the man’s strength.
“I’m next, aren’t I?” Kenji asked.
Adam looked at him and rolled his eyes. “I told you to stay in your room.”
There was a low animalistic growl that interrupted them. It was raspy and weak. Kenji looked over at the steel door and the top half of the other guard was rolling around, trying to claw its way across the floor. It began to drag itself, leaving behind a trail of internal organs as they lazily flopped out of its chest cavity.
“Will you look at that? Aaron, could you?”
The man simply nodded with a sly grin.
Kenji didn’t watch this time as the large man took care of, what Adam had earlier called failures.
“You have the code to the door, Doctor. I would like to leave, and you wish to continue living. I think we have a very reasonable offer.”
“Why do you think I would let you out of here?”
There was a sudden interruption as a horrifying crowd of former scientists and assistants began to wander out of the bravo hallway.
“Cassie, can you please make this a private event?” Adam asked.
The woman threw forth her tentacles and lifted the door. While she began to move it in place more tentacles pushed the zombies back into the hallway. She slammed the door back into the frame and drove the bottom corner in slightly. With the door anchored into place, only a soft scratching sound could be heard.
“What were we saying? Oh yes, you asked me why you’d let me out. That door looks like any accidental push from my friends here and it could fall over. I’d hate to see you get eaten by the failures you created. Especially when I know that you want to survive. You want to continue your research.”
“You think that I would let you out, just so I could live? You really think I’m that selfish?”
“It’s not selfish to preserve one’s own life, its human nature.”
Kenji winced from a dull burning sensation that crawled up his leg. He looked down and saw a small pool of blood on the floor.
Adam reached out his hand, “You can die today. Or we can find out if you are a success.”
Kenji looked at the small group of successes and then glanced over at the door. Kenji let out a sigh.
“You’ve really got us all figured out,” Kenji said as he reached up and grabbed Adam’s hand.
Kenji woke up on the floor and was blinded by the overhead light. He shielded his face and looked from side to side. Adam and his crew peered at him with an almost tired look. He looked down at his leg and while it looked severely swollen it appeared to be healed over.
“Your leg is better, but you aren’t taking it as well as I’d hoped,” Adam said sadly.
Kenji sluggishly stood up and wobbled a bit before regaining his balance. He felt bloated and swollen. His fingers had expanded into tiny sausages and his hands looked like a surgeon’s glove that a child had blown up like a balloon. He placed his fingers on his neck. Everything had expanded, and he felt liquid dancing in his throat. It was like that second before you vomited. He removed his hand from his lips and a thin line of red liquid dotted his fingers.
“Wha em I?” Kenji mumbled.
“I’m sorry, I told you a lot of these are new to me. I haven’t seen … this … before. It could just be a side effect; you might clear up in time,” he said with an unconvincing shrug. “I have held up my end of the bargain though. I need to ask you to honor yours,” Adam said and nodded his head toward the steel door. It was being propped shut by the muscle-bound man.
“Fhine,” Kenji struggled to say.
He began to waddle toward the large exit door. As he moved, there was an unusual feeling deep inside him. He felt as though he heard whispers, except he couldn’t make out the words. Despite his disfiguration, there was a feeling, a feeling he shouldn’t have. It was the same feeling you had when you were the life of the party. He felt as though he was surrounded by family. It was disturbing how good it felt to be infested with these symbiotes; or affected by Regeneros.
His mind struggled to fight off new urges. It was like a food craving, but there was a feeling that he needed to share this with the world. He needed to spread this to everyone he could find. He sluggishly shook his head, trying to shake the thoughts.
He approached the door and looked back. The people that stood before him were no longer human. They were something far worse and yet something better, simultaneously. That look in their eyes; it reminded him of his dog from childhood. It was trusting and loving.
“Doctor, when the dust finally settles, I think you will be pleased at the final results,” Adam said and patted him on the shoulder. There was a soft watery give to his skin and Adam pulled away and faked a smile. Kenji thought how quickly this could spread, how dangerous the successes were. They bonded and stayed loyal to each other. He thought to himself how the world would change. For better or worse, he couldn’t quite decide.
“Exit chamber locked, requires Doctor Tran’s approval code. Please speak the code now,” the computer said in a droning digital voice.
“Fhendurah,” he spok
e through a swollen tongue.
“Access Code not recognized.”
Kenji licked his lips and tried to annunciate his words better. “Pan-dora.”
“Access granted, please enter the chamber.”
He looked at everyone. Adam smiled at him and looked into the chamber with a sense of relief. The others looked around and even though they didn’t make any expressions, Kenji felt it. It was like their symbiotes were singing to him. He could physically feel their excitement. He understood it and he realized now that it wasn’t necessarily evil. It wasn’t that they wanted to kill people; they just wanted to expand their family. Kenji tried desperately to shut out the feelings he sensed.
The chamber was roughly the size of a large personal truck. They entered the room and the door shut firmly behind them. The room was surrounded by six inches of steel on all sides. Along the walls were small porous holes, just waiting for the wrong code to be entered three times or the purge code.
“Doctor, I’m glad you made the right decision. It’s your drive to survive that makes your species so strong.”
“We haff to make hurd dessishuns,” Kenji said and smiled. As the corner of his lip curled up a dribble of red liquid ran down his chin. He approached the console and pressed the green open button.
“Exit chamber is in priority one lockdown. System requires Doctor Tran’s approval code to open. Please ensure all foreign objects and biological materials have been left behind. Please speak the code now,” the computer announced.
Kenji made one last survey of his new friends. He couldn’t quite decide if they were monsters or victims. He straightened up his posture and prepared to speak the most important words in his life.
“Sheckmate.”
“Doctor Tran, purge sequence queued, please repeat code to activate,” the computer questioned.
Adam cocked his head to the side and gave him an almost proud look. “Purge sequence? You son of a bitch …”
“Checkmate.”
Alone in the Crowd
“You can’t be serious,” Dylan said.