- Doomsday - Volume One: Gods and Monsters

Chapter 5: Prelude to Project 'Doomsday'

I'm not really sure about much of my life before I was forced into this experiment, my memory is somewhat fuzzy. I remember flashes, a quick image of an older woman. Perhaps the blank face of an older man. The joyful laugh of a younger girl or boy. I can't remember anything before I got here. Well, not everything. My name is [Y/N], or, at least, that was what I used to be called. All the grown ups here only call me 'Experiment Seventeen', I don't even know what that means. What am I an experiment for? Who is using me? Everything is so strange and obscured that nothing feels real at times.

Yet, there is one image that I keep seeing in my head, constantly, day and night, and worse in my dreams. The monster that haunts me, with its claws sunk in deep. It refuses to let go.

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I see a smoky room, with little flakes of fire and ash falling from the upper ceiling.

I see the bodies of people on the floor. Whether they are people I once knew, that I do not know.

The smoke is starting to fill up the room. The air becomes harsh and barren, struggling to breathe.

My eyes start streaming.

A loud metallic screeching can be heard, a few gun-shots firing in the near distance, causing the structure of the building to stumble.

Fear. Not plain fear. Fear. A real, guttural feeling. The type of fear that prey feel knowing that a predator is on the hunt, one of the most innate feelings a creature understands.

I need to move. MOVE NOW, I NEED TO RUN. I NEED TO RUN NOW OR I WILL DIE.

I sit up, attempting to stand, only to struggle and fall once more. Looking back I notice a large wooden support beam has fallen onto my legs, I can't feel any pain. Perhaps they are broken or just numb.

Trying to move the support beam, it becomes obvious that my small body has no chance of moving this large wooden support, double my size.

I'm going to die here. I am stuck here. I can't move and there are monsters outside of my room. The monsters are coming to kill me, right here, and I can't do anything.

The room is now entirely filled with smoke.

I can barely see or make out any details a foot or so in front of me.

I can see parts of the upper room as the ceiling is starting to collapse in on itself.

I am paralysed. Paralysed with fear. In the corner a shadow falls and disappears, but only for a brief second. Was that movement in the room, or maybe not? I can't tell at this point. This smoke must be messing with my head.

Two red lights, two further red lights underneath, piercing in through the smoke. I can't see anything else besides a general shape of the body of the monster.

The lights scan over the room, going over every item, scanning for some form of life.

I am going to die here, there isn't a way out of this.

What did I do to deserve this? I haven't done anything to anyone! Is this God? Some divine intervention?

This isn't a fair world.

The lights scan over the room, slowly, deathly slow. The wait was more painful than whatever would come after.

The lights are on me. The lights stop. The piercing red lights move up slowly. The lights are pointed directly in my face.