Extraction

Hour Twenty Two

Carr became a hulking eight foot creature with an enlarged, tendril-like right arm. His left arm was more normal, but still very long and covered in keratinized spikes. His legs were large, but remained the normal human length. Half of his skinless face allowed for his voice to still be heard. "Is it really ecstasy Carr? Did she deliver on her promise?", I asked standing my ground. "Feeling is no longer necessary", he said, beginning to walk towards me as I sheathed my knife. I turned to begin running as an idea formed in my head. The decontamination chamber may be able to serve it's purpose. Taking the severed hand from my belt I ran towards the back of the of the office area. I whipped my head around to see Carr had begun a gorilla-like run towards me. Weaving in between desks, I slowed him down since he could only run straight. "You really lost your edge Carr, remember back in camp? When you always used to beat me at the races. You used to call me 'Dalaggin'", I tried breaking through to him with memories, but all his responses were animalistic grunts and breathing. He was gone, Carr wasn't human anymore, his consciousness wasn't his anymore.

I knew I just had to keep running. Reaching the decontamination chamber, Carr ceased running and began swiping desks out of his way to create a path towards me. Swinging his long, muscular tentacle-like arm he destroyed cubical after cubical. I pressed the hand agains the reader, but it was too cold. I rubbed it between both of my hands quickly to cause friction, but Carr was coming closer. I got it warm enough and set it on the hand reader. The doors opened and I left the hand on the reader. Stepping into the chamber Carr furiously swiped away the cubicles. I breathed heavily as he neared closer and closer. I hoped and prayed this worked. As Carr knelt down to enter the chamber I pressed my back against the opposite doors. As Carr began squatting into the chamber I pushed off of the back doors and slid between his legs. Carr lunged at me, making him fall inside the chamber. "Goodbye car, I hope to god it's painless", I said leaping off of the ground and removing the hand from the reader. A second later the doors began to close as Carr tried shifting around. I watched as he began to disassemble himself to downsize, but it was too late. The doors closed and a loud, shrill screech could be heard from within. "LET'S GO!", Jeremiah yelled as I began walking towards him. "Pretty good right?", I said feeling quite proud of myself. "No, the disinfectant spray doesn't kill the mold in mass, it only irritates it", Jeremiah said as a loud thrashing radiated from the chamber.

Cutting my losses and considering that event as a victory, I began jogging towards Jeremiah. "You need to run faster", Jeremiah ordered as he began running towards the now broken doors. "Do you not see me, I am the living definition of fucked up right now. Consider yourself lucky I'm not laying on the ground bitching and moaning", I angrily yelled gritting my teeth and attempting to push my broken ankle to the limit. Running through the doors we began rapidly descending the stairs, two steps at a time. Taking short, shallow breaths I continued glancing at the tracker. Nearing close to our objective we met with another set of large metal doors at the end of the stairwell. "Dalero, take the gun, I'll work on rerouting the power from every other level to here. One thing the mold hasn't developed resistance to is raw electricity. Enough power routed, enough cut cables, enough fire sprinklers activated, and we should be gold", Jeremiah said as we opened the doors to the final part of this research center, the shipment center.

We walked down a dark hallway lined with the black corrosive mold. "Touch nothing, this is the epicenter of where it all is. Patient zero is the last thing you wanna encounter with how many bodies and biomaterial they've collected. I'm going to split off and go to the power control center, you'll know when everything is ready. Keep following this path and you'll wind up at a colossal room, lay low above everything else. I lose you, and were done for, vice versa", Jeremiah said as I nodded my head trying to figure out why I'm taking commands from him. He walked off as I turned and followed the plan.