The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 08: Questionable Ethics

He was about to hit the damned thing when he noticed a sticky note lying on the floor. Picking it up, he read it over. It basically said that the Prep Lab door lock had been malfunctioning and the only way to override it was from inside of the Growth Chamber, in the auxiliary power room. Blake groaned. Not the Growth Chamber...

He had a good idea of where that might be. He left the command room, crossed the little antechamber and opened the final door in the area. He hurried down the corridor and found a door marked GROWTH CHAMBER, with a keypad. Recalling the code he'd read in Dr. Faraday's report, he punched it in and stepped through the door. Immediately, he didn't like what he saw. The Growth Chamber seemed to be a maze of metal corridors and small rooms. This was definitely going from bad to worse.

Mustering his courage, Blake set off into the maze.

The corridors were too narrow, the lights too dim, the ceiling too high. Everything he did echoed horribly, and soon he became aware of the fact that he wasn't alone. He kept encountering smashed glass cases on small white pedestals. It was obvious they were meant to hold Scuttlers. Blake made his way through the twisting maze, coming to dead ends, occasionally finding dead soldiers or researchers with Gen Inc stenciled on their uniforms.

None of them had any weapons.

It wasn't long before he started running into Scuttlers. He took them down as they came to him, two or three shots at a time, but by the time he finally came to the end of the maze, the auxiliary room, he'd run dry on ammo. Not that it mattered too much. The auxiliary room turned out to be where that camera had been pointing, which meant that Blake located the Walker that had killed that unnamed man in the white jumpsuit.

It was still feasting on him, or...doing something to him. Blake torched the beast, backing out of the room and letting it burn and die. When the shrieking stopped, he reentered the room and located the override switch for the Prep Lab. Throwing it, he retraced his steps, making his way out of the Growth Chamber as quickly as possible.

He needed to find someone still alive, or maybe some research or...something to help him put an end to this madness. He couldn't just walk away empty-handed. Hell, he couldn't really walk away at all. Where would he go? The question was still bugging him as he stepped into the command center and opened up the final door he intended to. Blake quickly retraced his steps through the steamy room and prepped his flamethrower.

Almost as soon as he stepped into the corridor, the massive Walker leaped out of the chamber it'd been locked up in and ran for him. Blake immediately squeezed the trigger, blasting the thing with lit flamethrower fuel, screaming in both fury and fear. He backed up, keeping his finger on the trigger, and emptied the fuel canister he was using. Hastily, he reloaded as he continued backing up. The thing was still coming for him.

He'd just made it back into the steam room when it collapsed to the floor, letting out a weak roar of pain. Blake made his way past the smoking terror and entered its cage. How or why it ended up locked in here was beyond him, and Blake was beyond caring at the moment. He checked out the pair of test kits and the box of ammo. The kits looked great, so he put them into his backpack, and, even better, the box of ammo was for an MP-5. There were five magazines. Blake let out a relieved sigh as he reloaded, then pocketed the rest.

Maybe things were looking up.

It was time to see what was in the Prep Lab.

Blake approached the door cautiously. There was something ominous about it, something that made his combat instincts stir. What could he do? He had no choice. He had to go on. Blake stepped forward and opened the door. He moved, gun first, into the Prep Lab. Immediately, he saw that it was all built around a huge depression in the floor. It was cordoned off with metal bars. In the depression was some kind of tank of steel and glass. Within the storage tank was another Walker, a hideous mutation that was distorted behind the glass.