“Seems clear,” Connell said, peering through.
“I’m gonna need more than a ‘seems,’ man,” Palmer said agitatedly.
“As good as we’re gonna get for now.” Connell grimaced. “Damn, this place was taken down a notch. Guess they abandoned attention to aesthetics down here.”
“What do you mean?” Palmer was unable to see around the auto-door’s right jamb due to the stuck panel itself. He also withdrew occasionally to avoid the splash of sparks.
“Take a look for yourself, if you don’t mind leading briefly. I got your six; Sabartinelli, Loudon—on me, let’s go.”
A gurgling scream caught their attention, spinning them all like tops. It rose in volume, on a gradual climb as the source neared. Everyone had turned to face the auto-door on the far right, which just then slid open and the scream amplified. It was masculine, but not alone; a female whimpering followed with, and in the ensuing seconds their suspense was severed.
A man and woman, both in trailing white lab coats, ran through the door. The man was in his thirties, the woman maybe a decade older. Blood streaked the man’s face and spurted from his lips. He had a gash the size of a canyon bridging his left shoulder and right hip, but still he ran. His lack of grace was worsened after clearing the doorway, with the shell-shocked woman to his left adding to it amid flailing arms. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was wet with sweat and home to scraps of bloodied flesh.
“They’re coming!” the man howled through blood-gurgling lips. He staggered toward them, Connell rushing past the frozen Felina and Loudon to help. But everything had occurred so fast, and the following seconds were no different.
An almost serpentine shape emerged from behind them, crawling through the doorway but not on the ground. It passed the lintel like a threshold and scaled the wall to the man’s right, thus Connell and the others’ left. Its claws sustained inexplicable purchase on the white steel and it its oblong head tilted to survey its fleeing prey. The curved crest protruding from its chin lowered at an angle to nearly touch its chest as the creature screeched shrilly, saliva flung from its jaws. It leapt at the man from the wall, agility unmatched. Connell fired his Seighty an instant too late, his bullets smacking the wall behind its feet while his eyes traced its airborne arc. It landed in front of the man but its momentum carried it into the woman, although a talon on its left hand didn’t leave him mercifully. In a blur of decaying-bone gray, Connell witnessed the man fall to his knees while clutching at a gullet wound. The creature’s talon had slit his throat like a rapier through butter, and as a curtain of blood rolled over his hands and down his chest, the man’s eyes rolled up into his skull.
Connell readjusted his aim, heart racing like a derby horse. He wanted to shoot, but not hit the woman; time was not on their side, anyway. The creature seemed capable of manipulating the seconds to its advantage. It swept around to latch onto the woman’s back, its hands’ claws curling around her shoulders, their points digging into the flesh above her breasts. She emitted a shriek of dread that contested even the creature’s own terrible volume. Its feet bore into her calves, crushing them to the floor, while its jaws pinched her left trapezius.
No eyes to shoot between, but Connell knew he stared Death in the face. Seighty shouldered, he squeezed off a short burst that caught the creature in the snout. Before reeling back and shrieking like steel nails on a chalkboard, it convulsed briefly. A sallow liquid like bile splashed the woman’s wound and she fell forward groaning on the verge of death. That slick purplish-red blood spewed from the creature’s gunshot wounds, and it landed on its back briefly before twirling around to stand on all fours.
Its jaws hung ajar, teeth glistening with more than just the woman’s blood.
“Die!” Palmer drawled, voice scratching his throat as he stepped forward to pelt the creature with a barrage of bullets. The Seighty’s muzzle flashes splashed warmth onto Palmer’s face, its 6.8mm ammunition ripping up the creature where it stood. Moments prior so menacing, now rendered to shreds of flesh, primarily of its oblong skull and upper torso. It tried to retreat through the auto-door from whence it came but Connell helped stop it halfway there. Finally the Xeno carnem ceased its efforts, simply unable to continue its extraterrestrial life.
While Connell reloaded, Palmer marched past the two bodies to tower over the creature’s corpse.
“Dammit, Palmer, get back here!” Connell urged.
Palmer, ignoring him, fired a good eight rounds into the creature’s already ruptured skull. Its blood misted the air and splashed Palmer’s boots.
“Just confirming the kill, sir,” he said casually, and returned to Connell. En route, his ankle was grabbed by the woman who seemed to have survived the attack. She convulsed spasmodically, blood and vomit spewing from her mouth. Her eyes had begun to roll up, exposing mostly bloodshot whites, but death hadn’t claimed her just yet. Palmer, startled by the ankle grab, blurted an expletive and tried to shake her hold loose; it was surprisingly strong.
Literally, a death grip. But it wasn’t Palmer that death had its claws on.
“Help…me…” she pleaded, her voice distorted from the blood filling her lungs and pervading her mouth. Crimson framed her teeth and coursed over tattered lips.
“Sir?” Palmer groaned, now looking more disgusted and even sorrowful than upset. “Connell!”
Having reloaded, Connell slung the Seighty onto his back and rushed forward. He knelt by the woman and pried her pallid fingers off his comrade’s ankle, then her hands became rigid and her eyes rolled up entirely. Her jaws locked open, the joints making a terrible clicking sound, and she croaked in pain.
“What the fuck, man!?” Palmer exclaimed, reloading only to aim his weapon at her.
“Point that somewhere else, Palmer!” Connell exclaimed. “Don’t be an idiot!”
Felina and Loudon arrived to try and placate Palmer, whose eyes wouldn’t widen any less. However, the shock on his face couldn’t shake palpable grief.
“We’re gonna help you, alright?” Connell said low but audibly to the woman, assuming the blood coming from her ears didn’t hinder sound. Connell’s own voice trembled; he struggled with believability. “We’ll find some medical assistance—”
“No,” she croaked. Her voice was wretched but horrifically clear. The second of the next two words she uttered was drawn out to scratch every known rough surface of the human chord. “Kill me!”
Felina glimpsed tears glisten Connell’s eyes while blood welled in the woman’s. His own lips struggled to grasp his next words, perplexity putting its vise grip on him.
Loudon stepped forward suddenly and shot the woman in the side of the head. Brain matter sprayed the floor beside the man’s corpse and her body went limp.
“What are you doing!?” Connell sprang up, exclaiming, spittle flinging from his lips; he’d turned beet-red within an instant.
“What you should’ve!” Loudon retorted, her voice ringing off the walls to counter his.
“Bullshit!” Connell barked back, their faces dangerously close, like rabid dogs pitted against each other but with short leashes.
“She was gone, Connell!” Loudon’s voice scratched.
Connell’s teeth grinded against each other as his jaw clenched and his gleaming eyes glared at Loudon; he knew from the very beginning that the woman was beyond help, and as of now that Loudon had done right. But this didn’t keep it from setting fire to his veins. Finally he pulled away from her, nostrils flaring as his repressed breaths burst from his lips in one drawn out word.
“Fuck!”
As he slowly calmed down off to the side, Palmer brushed by Loudon with his voice low.
“Certified badass. You did the right thing.”
He gave a nod to Felina then reached Connell and together they acquired their Zen of camaraderie. They might be part of a gung-ho USMB squad and they certainly have experienced simulated combat but this…this was different.
“So which way, then?” Felina finally
asked what was probably on all their minds.
Connell, with his back still turned to them, sighed and cleared his voice. Palmer patted his back before turning to face the women, Seighty cradled in his arms.
“We proceed through the Observation Compound,” Connell said at last. He remained facing the jammed-open door. “Asher is our priority; after we find him, we sweep the other two areas to S&C.”
“You good to take the lead?” Felina asked, approaching him. Her voice was consoling, not condescending.
“Yeah, I’m fit,” he replied. His voice sounded to be back on track. Just as she reached him, he turned to face the approaching Loudon. “Thank you, Loudon, for doing what I should’ve but couldn’t. I’ll take the next one, though.”
“Nobody ‘should’ have that responsibility,” she replied, eyebrows raised, eyes of comfort. She might have acted upon the mercy kill and then defended it with brutal honesty but she was clearly shaken up, too, just in her own way. “And let’s just hope there won’t be a next one.”
“Fucking-A,” Connell said monotonously. He then nodded and took the lead again, as they resumed their prior formation. With Palmer rearward, Felina and Loudon remained adjacent. The Observation Compound’s series of corridors were just as Felina remembered—bland and raw, architecturally. Steel grating beneath their feet and exposed-piping walls on either side of them. Wire-caged fluorescent fixtures lined the center of the ceiling every ten feet, leaving iotas of shadow to cling to bulkheads.
Except now that everything had gone to shit as it were, Felina thought, the setting was even worse. A few decapitated or eviscerated corpses were strewn about, some even sitting with their white-coated backs to the wall. It was horrendously comforting to actually see bodies for once instead of severed limbs, heads, and loose entrails. This nonetheless begged to question the location of the missing corpses from the MALBO foyer, much less the scientists Wisniewski claimed were attacked in the corridor earlier with Taylor.
Felina’s mind raced to grasp possible scenarios but didn’t dwell on them, not so much because it befuddled her but was too horrifying and rather distracting.
She focused on the here-and-now.
Reaching the four observation chamber auto-doors was a straight shot and a short walk. Each of them surely wondered why it was so quiet down here, of all places, where the Xeno carnem specimens were kept. Unless they had all come to accept Connell’s former logic as to why they wouldn’t be concentrated here.
“Which one, or does it matter?” Connell asked. He had stopped them to stare at their options.
“I imagine it doesn’t,” Felina said quietly.
“Then we start with the rightmost.” Connell swallowed and led them to file down the right side of the wall to said auto-door, approaching it at an angle so as to not trigger its motion sensor.
When Connell neared it, he accidentally clinked the jamb with the butt of his Seighty, causing a quiet metallic sound to ring out. His teeth gritted and he cursed under his breath, but upon activating the door’s automatic opening, the room was revealed to be empty. Unfortunately, that meant the specimens as well. The chamber behind the silica-palladium glass panel was vacant, and upon further inspection a sight of exit could be discerned. Not in the panel, however, but the wall to the right of the control terminal—a jagged hole in the otherwise clean white partition. While Connell was briefly taken aback by the chamber’s startling asepsis in comparison to the corridors between it and MALBO’s foyer, he was more moved by the hole itself. Sizeable enough for the passage of a Xeno, and upon closer observation a similar opening was spotted on the other side of the panel.
“How?” Felina said in awe. “How could they have just torn through the wall like that?”
“More like tunneled,” Loudon said. “And why now?”
“Maybe they finally wised up,” Connell said despicably. The room was, much to everyone’s surprise, not a blood bath. Except for the rugged hole, the room was untarnished. This did not, however, keep it from reeking—especially nearest the hole on their side.
“Maybe they found their courage,” Palmer muttered. When all eyes were brought to him out of skepticism and judgment, he looked back without capitulation. “Ya know, for a mutiny.”
“More like they found something within themselves.”
The voice startled everyone present. It wasn’t one they were familiar with, belonging to a woman distinguished from experience. Even eyewitness accounts of the unspeakable. Everyone turned to locate the source of the voice, from whence she stepped forward, from a floor-to-ceiling cabinet by the doorway. It had been ajar, but now it hung open, and her figure emerged. She was a few inches shorter than Loudon, with curly blonde hair that hadn’t abandoned age’s gray touch; she wore the white lab coat and associated uniform, which to Felina made her appear younger and livelier than she really was, the prior at least, her guess being upper fifties.
Antiquity plagued her face in the direst form—not years of the flesh, but the weight of her experiences. Whatever she had witnessed in the past hour clearly took its toll on her, and the terror of it remained in her steel-blue eyes.
The ID tag hanging from her neck denoted the woman as Anissa Reid.
“Were you in this room when they escaped?” Felina asked, just as Connell began to speak. She stepped forward, closing the distance between Reid and herself, while the others remained further back, the silica-palladium glass behind them. Felina glimpsed louvered slats on the upper half of the cabinet door. As Reid swallowed and nodded tentatively, Felina thrust her mind into the scientist’s shoes, thus imagining being in her position as of earlier—and it made her spine tingle.
“What the hell happened!?” Palmer exclaimed, not as quietly as Connell would’ve liked, yet again, but also not too explosively.
“We didn’t know they could. And I…I don’t think they knew, either.” Reid zoned out briefly and fidgeted as she spoke, her voice coated with a mild British accent. “They were months old, anyway…replications, creations in a lab, using DNA but not memories, of their source chromosomes. But yes, it was only…only a matter of time before they realized their potential. Their full capacity. Madhavari was right. I should’ve never…oh, forgive me, I shouldn’t have ever—”
Felina immediately comforted her, stepping forward and lending a hand. Reid clung to Felina like koala to tree, and began quietly weeping. The audacity that had originally been detected in her voice was now nothing but a relic dominated by fear and regret.
“You said Madhavari,” Loudon strode closer to them. “What was his first name?”
“Sanjit,” Reid said, withdrawing from Felina and drying her cheeks with a lapel. “Why?”
“We’ve met him,” Felina said with the weakest of smiles. Something was better than nothing at this point, however brief. “He seemed like a good man. And one of ours…the other documenters, ya know—he mentioned being contacted by him less than two hours ago, claiming that Madhavari spilled what he knew about Project Xeno.”
“Then he’s safe?” Reid seemed moderately, if not logically, delirious. “Madhavari’s safe?”
“We can hope so,” Loudon said, taking the words out of Felina’s mouth. “If he’s not near here, but somewhere else on board, frankly his chances are better than ours. But, that said, they’ve managed to reach beyond the labs’ bay door. Via holes, probably, like that one in the wall…did they burrow through the floor somehow, and come out the wall on this side? Is that how they escaped?”
Reid shuddered. “Yes, but not with claws.”
“What you mentioned earlier,” Connell stepped forward, weapon lowered. Palmer, meanwhile, went between staring at the shut auto-door and the observation chamber behind him. Connell’s voice took charge, but he did not riddle the woman with questions; she seemed more responsive with him than Felina. “About finding something ‘within themselves’—and then again, that you didn’t know what they could do…?”
“What they did do, oh! How awful a th
ing, and we should’ve known! We should’ve figured it out but we didn’t.” Reid’s rant picked up speed and cohesiveness, garnering everyone’s attention without further delay. “It would appear that their bile is acidic once it makes contact with oxygen, a fact elusive to our studies for we examined their bile ducts and livers but found no traces of anything unnaturally acidic, and dissections had always been conducted in a heavily sterilized environment with high levels of carbon monoxide, but when the specimens started to suddenly bicker between each other and even rub against the glass, my colleagues and I grew apprehensive. One of them ran to inform Asher; in the next few seconds, one of them seemed to be having a seizure but ultimately vomited a slimy yellowish fluid onto the floor, which then burnt through, and our attempts to neutralize the specimens were too late; one was shaken up, but the other two were already tunneling their way through the room’s substructure until finally rising behind the bulkheads on this side; my other colleague abandoned me but I hit the alarm, knowing it would shut down MALBO and seal the bay door, which I felt was the right thing to do; I knew I wouldn’t make it out, not in so little time, so I took my chances in there…I…I watched the specimens leave the room—two left immediately, and I heard screams outside. The one that stayed behind investigated, studied the room for about twenty seconds…I was so sure I’d be found, but eventually it answered to the shrieking calls of its own kind in the neighboring chambers, and left—I imagine—to help them escape, too.”
Felina let Reid’s elaborative words sink into more than just her ears or even skull. Analyzing this information as it was, in its rawest form, proved to be a difficult task. She already wished, regretfully, that she had been recording with her PDA; memory would have to serve its purpose now, albeit unauthentic to third parties.
“Is that all you know, ma’am?” Connell asked, not being sarcastic about it.
“Yes…yes, unfortunately.” Reid took a big gulp then stared at each of them as she asked her next question, which seemed to make the entire room grow heavier yet. “How bad is it out there? Did they get through the bay door via the walls? H-How bad is…how bad is it?”
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