by S. A. Lusher
He moved quickly through the complex, shouldering his SMG tightly and putting down the five Fiends that roamed the narrow alcoves. He slapped a fresh magazine in as he came to the exit of the complex. Passing through the door, he entered a heavily secured area. An enormous silver door, locked up tight, awaited him.
It didn’t budge when he tried to open it. He keyed his radio. “Eric, I’m at a locked door, the exit from the office complex, looks like some pretty heavy security. Can you open it?”
“Uh...yeah, hold on,” Eric replied.
“What’s behind this door?”
“Not sure. All it says is Research Bay One. Cameras are down.”
“Great.”
“It’s opening now.”
Even as he said it, there was a whirring sound from inside of the door and it began to slide away, disappearing into its niche. Greg readied himself. What lay beyond was indeed a research bay, though it was such a generic, harmless name for such a perverse, malignant location. At first glance, it reminded Greg of the conversion bays he’d seen in Erebus’ installation. But this room was more...sophisticated, he supposed.
The men and women who worked here were human, with human concerns and, perhaps, delusions. They didn’t seem themselves as butchers but as people of science and illumination. Greg wasn’t entirely sure which one he hated more, Erebus or whoever had been running this place. How many test subjects had there been for the Mutants? Or maybe as fodder for the Shadows to study their method of murder?
He didn’t want to think about it, or look at the still alive and struggling Mutants that were strapped down to two rows of examination tables that took up the left side of the room. Or the Shadows that occupied a row of glass chambers along the right side.
“Jesus,” he muttered, pulling out his pistol and walking up to the first of the Mutants that were clamped down to the examination tables.
He placed the barrel against the chest of the first squirming subject and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot stilled and silenced the Mutant. Greg quickly moved down the line, killing those that were still alive. As he turned and considered what to do about the Shadows, he suddenly heard a tremendous, deep growl come from somewhere nearby, followed by loud, heavy footfalls. Great, now what the fuck was he going to have to deal with?
“Uh, Eric, something big is coming my way. Can you help me out?”
“Hold on, I...what the hell is that!? Greg, get out of there, it’s big and looks pretty lethal,” Eric replied quickly.
“Where the hell am I supposed to go!? We need that antidote!”
“Um...fuck, I guess you’ll have to kill it. Listen, the research bays you’re in, they’re basically organized in a square, one leading to another. I’m going to open up all the doors to give you some breathing room...although I have no idea what might be loose...”
A tremendous bang resounded through the research bay and a door to the left shuddered in its frame. “Ah fuck, just do it!” Greg snapped, raising his SMG.
The thing on the other side continued to pound on the door until finally it buckled. A few more punches and the door blew inwards, admitting the cosmic horror that wanted so desperately in. It was solidly built, and kind of hunched forward. Crazily, it kind of reminded him of a tick, at least the head did, or maybe he was thinking of some other kind of bug. Its hands seemed to gleam like metal under the lights of the research bay.
And its mouth…
It was huge, a gaping, blood-smeared maw of awful, gleaming teeth.
As he raised his SMG, Greg suddenly realized what it was he was facing down. He very specifically remembered Trent telling him about it, a thing that he had killed during his campaign on Arctica.
The Carnivore.
Screaming in furious bloodlust, Greg emptied his submachine gun into the thing. The bullets smashed into its tough hide...but seemed to do little damage. That took some of the piss and vinegar out of him. The Carnivore was advancing on him now, its stride sure and full of awful intention, its eyes, the color of fresh spilled blood, staring at him with a terrible intelligence. He quickly ejected the magazine and slapped a fresh one in, then repeated the procedure as he began rapidly backing up. It had about the same effect.
“Fuck!” Greg snapped as he slammed home his third magazine.
He didn’t a whole lot of bullets to his name at the moment. The Carnivore charged for him. He turned and began sprinting away, towards a door dead ahead of him. It was open and he remembered what Eric said about the layout of the labs. As charged through the next door, he saw some Mutants roaming around. Growling in frustration, he quickly put them down with bursts of gunfire to their chests, unwilling to let them trip him up.
He was probably going to need a lot of space to work with.
With a tremendous roar, the Carnivore burst into the room after him. Greg finished off the last Mutant and turned around, then opened fire, trying to get the rest of his magazine into its big mouth. But the creature was fast and now, unfortunately, had its mouth closed. He couldn’t seem to hit one of its eyes, either.
Cursing, Greg turned and sprinted again, dodging between examination tables and medical carts, slapping his last magazine for the SMG home and then letting it hang. It was time to bring out the biggest gun he had on him. He switched to his shotgun as he entered the third lab, through a door to the left, and just in time, too. A Shadow was waiting for him. He let out a startled shout, aimed and squeezed the trigger.
The slug shell popped the creature in an instant.
Spinning around, Greg took aim and fired again as the Carnivore burst into the room, closing the gap between them. The shells seemed to do a little more damage, drawing some of its deep red blood from the wounds across its broad torso, but it still wasn’t enough, and again the creature drew so close that he didn’t have time to do anything but run. He sprinted over to the left, heading into the lab that the Carnivore had originated from.
This time, once he cleared the lab, he spun around and waited, aiming where its head should be. The second it appeared in the doorway, he fired. It was a dead on shot, taking it in the skull...and it didn’t stop the thing. It blasted off a good chunk of skin, but apparently this monster had an amazingly hard head.
Greg continued running, but he knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. There had to be some way to kill this thing, some way to-
An idea burst into his head like golden sunshine after a particularly dark, awful, stormy night.
Letting out a laugh of pure, violent joy he ran the rest of the way back into the lab that he had first been in, the Carnivore hot on his heels. He saw what he was looking for dead ahead, across the room, and aimed his shotgun.
It took two blasts to shatter one of the glass containers holding a Shadow.
Greg heard the heavy breathing of the Carnivore behind him. He about-faced, ran directly towards the big beast, dodged around it at the last second and sprinted back into the lab that he’d just exited. The Carnivore let out a loud roar of frustration and Greg had just enough time to spin around and catch a glimpse of the main event.
The Shadow hit the Carnivore from behind and with a sharp popping sound, everything that wasn’t pure bone disappeared, leaving behind just a strange looking skeleton that held its shape for about an eighth of a second, then collapsed into a pile. Greg was waiting for the Shadow to come into view and the second it did he hit it with a slug shell and killed it.
“Ha ha! Messed with the wrong fucker, didn’t you you goddamned sack of shit!” he screamed, overwhelmed with the elated joy of pure survival, of staring directly into the cold, uncaring face of death and living to talk about it. He ran forward and kicked at the pile of bones, sending them scattering, then accidentally stepped on one. It slipped right out from under him and he went sprawling, landing hard on his ass.
That kicked some of the good cheer out of him. He snorted at his own stupidity and slowly, painfully got to his feet. “Thank god the security cameras are off,” he muttered. He took a mom
ent to stretch and pop his neck, then activated his radio again. “Okay, Eric, I’m clear. Killed it. Um...where the hell am I going?” he asked.
“Good to hear. Head into Research Bay Two, go directly through it to the opposite door and go through that. From there, you’ll find a junction that should lead you to a few bigger offices. You’re looking for Doctor Volker’s office. There’s a terminal in there that should have what we’re looking for,” Eric explained.
“Thank fuck,” Greg muttered. “On it.”
He quickly made his way through the research bays, but as he did, he felt a chill settle over him. He’d come close more than once since waking up on this station. It wasn’t anything new, it shouldn’t be any new, brushes with death were basically in the job description. But he didn’t have on his power armor this time. Simple things could get him killed. As he tracked down Volker’s office, he couldn’t help but realize how much he’d come to rely on that armor. He was going to have to readjust his thinking for this one.
The junction led to six larger offices, a break room and a bathroom. He spent a moment clearing them all, putting down a pair of Shadows that had killed everything in the immediate area, apparently, and then slipped into Volker’s office.
It was definitely the largest office.
“There’s no power in here,” he said as he tried to boot up the terminal.
“Okay, hold on, lemme see if I can...aw shit,” Eric muttered.
“What?”
“Volker’s terminal is physically separate from everything else, running on its own server. Meaning we can’t access the data anywhere but from that specific terminal. You’ll need to restore power, which means...well, fuck.”
“Now what?”
“You can restore power, it should be easy enough, but you need to go through a really awful place to get to it.”
“Which is?”
“The holding cells for all the test subjects.”
“Of fucking course,” Greg muttered.
“Sorry, no other way to do it, from what I can tell. When you get through the holding cells, there should be a power junction room there at the back. It’s on your map. Tell me when you get there and I’ll see what I can do to help.”
“Okay. Any luck? How’s Drake?”
“Still unconscious, and not a whole lot. I’m still trying to find out where the actual fuck we are and who’s behind this.”
“Gotta be government or military,” Greg replied as the left the office complex and moved back out into the research bay beyond.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking for a few weeks now. I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Got it. Gotta go dark now.”
He stood before the door that led to the holding area. Like most of the other doors in this place, it was big and intimidating. It didn’t help that it was dented, scratched, burned and stained with various types of blood. With a soft sigh, Greg ensured that his weapons were loaded up and settled on his shotgun, then reached out and hit the access button.
Hell awaited him.
Whatever containment procedures and security precautions that had guarded the holding area had obviously failed. Stacks of glass and steel cages were arranged in grids to his left and right, taking up the entire wall, left-to-right, floor-to-ceiling. There had to be hundreds of them. And most of them were empty or broken open.
The main area between the stacks of cages was a huge, open space, like a warehouse or a factory floor. At least two dozen mutated horrors roamed around. He saw mostly Mutants, but there were definitely some Harvesters and Guardians in the mix. Deciding that now was a spectacular time to put one of his recently discovered fragmentation grenades to use, Greg grabbed one, pulled the pin and tossed it into the thickest cluster of hostiles, then he backed out of the room, stopping about ten feet from the door.
At least he could funnel them to him.
The whole thing got started with a bang as the grenade erupted, killing hopefully a lot of them. As the explosion died away, what replaced it was a cacophony of shrieking, inhuman voices, filled with rage and fury and pain. On the heels of that noise was a thunder of footfalls as every surviving freak in that room stampeded towards the door. Greg kept his shotgun tucked tight to his shoulder, preparing himself for the onslaught.
At first, it went well.
The first thing to appear was a Mutant and it went down easily enough, the slug shell he fired blowing open a fist-sized hole in its chest. As it fell, another Mutant took its place and was put down just as quickly. Greg blew through the shells in his shotgun as fast as he could manage as more and more of them were lining up to receive their daily recommended dosage of lead. Once the shotgun was spent, he really didn’t have time to reload, so he brought up his SMG and emptied that weapon as well in short, controlled bursts.
Five awful horrors went down, then ten, then fifteen. By the time he was reduced to his pistol and then expended that weapon as well, he’d put down, by his count, twenty two of the things. Then his pistol clicked empty and two more Mutants were still coming through the door, crawling over the pile of the dead.
Greg frantically groped for another magazine, wishing he still had that damned knife on him, and managed to get it out. He ejected the spent magazine but the creatures were already through the door and nearly upon him. He was still fumbling with the pistol, becoming increasingly panicked, until he realized he’d had to do this the hard way. Dropping the pistol and the magazine, he brought his shotgun up and drove it down as hard as he could onto the head of the first Mutant. There was an awful, wet crack and the thing went down as its skull caved in.
The other one wasn’t going down so easily.
He tried to do the same thing but the monster swiped at him and knocked the shotgun from his hands. Screaming a curse, he punched in the face as hard as he could. It was like punching frozen meat and he cried out in unexpected agony. He dodged out of the way as the monster took another swing at him and kept backing away, looking for something to use. Guns were a scarcity and he’d already risked his shotgun, he didn’t want to risk fucking up his SMG as well in case the shotgun was busted now. He bumped into an examination table.
Tossing a glance over his shoulder, he spied something shiny: a scalpel. Snatching it up, he ran forward and drove the tip into the thing’s right eye, then palmed it hard, shoving it almost entirely into the Mutant’s skull and piercing its brain, killing the host body instantly. He shoved it away from him and then took a moment to catch his breath...then immediately regretted it as both of the corpses, including some from the pile he’d produced, went about the grotesque process of ejecting their Slug puppet-masters.
Growling in frustration, he sprung into action, spending the next two minutes stomping on Slugs as they came for him. By the time he was finished, he felt like puking. Swallowing the rising bile, he retrieved his shotgun and pistol, then took stock of everything. The pistol was fine and, as it turned out, so was the shotgun. He reloaded the pistol and the shotgun, but frowned when he checked his dwindling reserve of ammo.
He had just three more magazines for the pistol, none for the SMG and only enough shells left for the shotgun to top it off.
Sighing, Greg made his way through the mess, across the holding cell and through the door at the back, where he found the power junction room, which was thankfully connected to a maintenance bay. He even remembered enough simple technical stuff to find the problem and fix it himself. Once it was done, he called Eric to confirm that power had been restored and once that was certain, he jogged back to the terminal.
It booted up without a problem.
“Okay, download everything to an infoclip if you can find one. I want to look through everything these fuckers have been doing,” Eric said.
Greg did just that, hunting down an infoclip and setting the entire database to copy to it. While that was happening, he started searching for information on the antidote. He felt every second that slammed by, knowing Drake was getting closer and close
r to dying. Suddenly, he came across a file that was marked fairly recently that came up in his keyword search for antidote. Scanning over it, he felt his hopes soar.
They had apparently injected Drake with a poison, a toxin of some kind, synthesized from the Slugs and the Mutants somehow. They’d done it to test out their antidote but hadn’t gotten around to actually doing it because of whatever had happened. The antidote in question should still be locked in a drawer in Research Bay Three. Memorizing the code, Greg updated Eric and hurried back out, racing through the labs until he found what he was looking for. He punched in the code and felt a tremendous, if cautious, relief flood through him as he found several hypodermic needles filled with a bright blue liquid.
He took all of them and packed them in a shockproof container, then hurried back to the terminal in Volker’s office.
“Okay, Eric, I’m coming back,” he said, pocketing the infoclip. “Data’s downloaded, I’ve got the antidote.”
“Thank god,” he muttered. “Hurry back, I’ve found a few things out.”
Greg proceeded to hurry back.
* * * * *
“We’re near the edge of the Far Reach,” Eric explained as Greg injected Drake with antidote. “We’re in orbit around a snowy world that has no name, just a designation. The bad news is that we’re pretty far out here and the communications array on this station is totally shot. I don’t think I could fix it within a reasonable amount of time. I’ve also confirmed two pieces of hopefully good news: LifeScan has shown that we are the only three people still alive on Tempest Station. And I’ve found a shuttle that appears to be in working order we can use to leave. There’s also what appears to be a military cruiser in orbit between us and the planet, and also some kind of colony or research outpost is on the planet below.”
“Any idea who’s in charge of this operation?” Greg asked, coming to stand by Eric.
“No, not yet. I’m hoping the good doctor’s notes will clue me in on that. I think we should make for the vessel,” Eric replied.