MOTHERS

◙sixteen◙

Scrambling up the last steps of the stairwell, Elle coughed so hard her lungs hurt. She barely made it to the nearest lavatories before hurling her guts into a toilet, heaving as she sprawled herself on the cold tile. She rested her head against the stall's wall, taking deep breaths as she wiped her mouth, closing her eyes to erase the gruesomeness of what she'd just witnessed.

But there was no erasing any of it, she knew. She could puke up her intestines and beg for relief fifty times, over and over, but she'd never forget what had happened downstairs, and how she'd only narrowly avoided that same fate because Dr. Price saved her.

What the hell was happening? What had she seen? Had the smoke gotten to her head?

"Aliens," she whispered to herself, pressing her palms to either side of the bathroom stall to lift herself up. "Super-powered, pissed-off aliens?"

The image of Lola haunted Elle. Lola, gripping Dr. Price by the neck, lifting him from the ground with little to no effort, her lips sliding into a smirk of satisfaction as she dug a jagged tentacle—a jagged tentacle?—straight into his chest. And then the sizzling sound of the laser beam that shot out of Rivo's monstrous yellow eyes, searing across Dr. Price's throat, ripping his head from his neck.

Another round of vomit started to squeeze up Elle's pipes, but she shoved it down, knowing now wasn't the time to panic. She'd found herself stuck in some kind of sci-fi horror movie, and if she was the heroine, the last thing she needed was to break down and have an internal attack of some kind that'd make her more vulnerable to the children.

Children. No, that wasn't what they were. They were never children, never innocent.

They'd come upstairs next, she knew; she'd heard Lola speaking of killing them all, so it was only a matter of time.

Skidding across the hall, Lola made her way to her security office, hurrying to watch the live footage of whatever the two aliens had gotten up to now. She plopped onto her chair and gripped the armrests.

One screen showed a multitude of bodies on the tiled floor of the lowest level—men with their olive-green uniforms splattered with blood, heads cut off, arms ripped off, lying in puddles of their insides. Lab coats tinged with red, stained through to the bone. Decapitated corpses drowning in blood, shoes and bags and various lab instruments strewn across the floor, all caked with guts and a deep crimson liquid that drip-dripped into the tile's cracks.

It was all so vivid, more so considering Elle was seeing this on a high-tech camera that had captured it all, rendering it in perfect colored format, showing her what she'd barely escaped. Had she not listened to Dr. Price, had she insisted he come upstairs with her, had she shown herself... she'd have been one of those bodies. She'd have been mangled beyond recognition and left to rot while Lola and Rivo enacted the rest of their plans.

Speaking of which—she gritted her teeth, ignoring the sickness still crawling up her throat. She searched the screens for the bloody culprits but couldn't find Lola or Rivo. They were likely still whipping those tentacles out and jamming their tips into torsos and tummies, reveling in the sprays of blood everywhere.

She soon located Rivo glowering up at one of the cameras, fingers pressed to his temples as he concentrated.

He was whispering something to himself, but Elle couldn't read his lips, as they were thin and covered in blood. It was as if he'd bit off heads and limbs instead of using his laser beam eyes to do so; and it was as if he'd enjoyed it. The yellow burned in his eyes, swirling with orange and red, like fire brewing inside, waiting to be shot out. Was he going to fry the camera with his beams? Or was he panicking, slowing down, trying to figure out his next move?