"It must be some mistake. I never opened the doors in that wing. I didn't open any doors, I just gave us access to them," Apate stammered as she checked the monitors frantically for what could have possibly gone wrong. Flashing icons poured into the hallways and turned into a mass of blinking red. They stared in disbelief as the floating display in front of them exploded with warning messages. It didn't take long before it was impossible to distinguish specific icons.
"What is your problem? First you 'forget' to tell us about working for this facility, then you fail to mention that you are trying to save your kid instead of help us complete the mission and get out of here alive, and now you are actively trying to get us killed?" Bren roared as he watered the seeds of distrust Apate had planted. "How did you even get accepted for this mission? Wasn't your name in a 'do-not-let-this-crazy-chick-enter' list or something?"
Apate remained silent for a moment as she struggled to focus on what could have gone wrong and how she could fix it. She met Bren's accusatory glare with stoicism and tried to forget that her former colleagues had left her for dead, and probably erased her and her family from any formal documents to cover their tracks.
"It was a mistake," she said in the calmest tone she could manage, hoping Bren wouldn't go off on another tirade. Both Dante and Alistair exchanged nervous glances.
"Mistake or not, the fact remains those creatures are loose. We need to move. Now," Dante said, his voice no more alarmed than if he were ordering a meal at a cheap insta-food joint.
"Agreed, let's get on with it," Alistair said as he lifted his weapons in preparation.
"Fine. How do we get to the data banks?" Bren asked.
"We might be able to get what we need in the lab we found those women in," Apate said as she stood up from the console. Dante and Alistair grumbled. Apate looked around and wondered how to buy herself some trust. It would not be easy, but maybe if she kept them alive long enough to reach the main lab they would trust her enough to not let her get eaten alive by the mutant monstrosities en route to their position.
"They are in the main lab. All of their research passes through there at some point before being backed up in the data banks. It's entirely possible that they have information in that lab that hasn't been backed up, assuming they can even still make backups to the server," she explained. None of the men seemed convinced. "They will also have supplies in there and I know for a fact I'm almost out. What about you? Do we have any medi-gel left?"
Everyone patted down their pockets, gear and holsters. Resources were sparse. Whether or not she had an ulterior motive, Apate was their best chance of getting where they needed to go and getting out alive. Maybe the lifted quarantine was a mistake, and she truly was innocent. They weren't getting any closer to finding answers arguing in the basement of a facility swarming with things trying to kill them.
The team quickly gathered what was left of their belongings and left the security bay. Together they jogged back down the long hallway from whence they came. Everyone hoped that the mutated creatures wouldn't have time to fan out and reach the basement. If they were lucky, they could get to the laboratory that was their next objective unmolested. As they approached an intersection with a sign directing them to the elevator, their spirits rose. A second wind took them and they all moved faster, Apate's promise that the elevator exited close to the main lab fueling their flight. That hope was quickly shattered when a crescendo of scratching claws and enraged howls echoed around them.
"Anybody got a bright idea?" Bren asked as the noises suffocated the hallway. A pair of large mutated dogs jumped out of the stairwell at the end of the hallway. Hungry teeth gnashed and their bodies twitched and convulsed as if there were a separate beast inside each of them fighting to break out of the spiny black carapace encasing it.
Apate fired a burst down the hall and darted left to an adjacent corridor. She didn't bother to watch as her bullets split through the lead dog's spiny armor and ejected a stream of black ichor through its ribs. Alistair curled his lip in disgust and followed Apate around the corner, panting as he struggled to keep up with her lithe gait. The second mutated dog sprung away from its fallen comrade. It eyed the corpse for a moment before turning back to pursue its prey with renewed ferocity. Saliva dripped to the floor as the mutated canine barreled forward and quickly gained on the team while they searched for a way up to the main level.
"Follow her?" Dante suggested as he aimed his shotgun and fired at the second mutated dog. As if it read Dante's mind the creature jumped out of the way and Dante's shot hit the ground.
"Nimbly bimbly little pup, ain't he?" Bren muttered to himself as he picked up the pace to catch up with the others.
Apate made another quick turn and arrived in front of the elevator. She slammed her fist on the wall and mashed the 'up' button as if the harder she hit it the more likely it was to complete its function. A score of creatures fled in from all sides. Dogs, cats, small monkeys, badgers, lizards and a few arachnids all encased in spiny, bone-like armor and were two or three times their normal size.
A bead of sweat stung her eye as Apate looked up at the glowing display, waiting for it to read 'B' for basement and open the doors in front of them. Although their ammunition was low, they had little choice but to take shots at anything they could. It seemed a useless effort to try to slow the tide given the amount of creatures crawling out of every corner and crevice, but to do nothing meant certain death.
With a deafening howl, a carapace armored spider monkey jumped off a canine in front of it and latched on to Dante's shoulder. It clawed at Dante's neck and its fangs dug into his flesh as it gnawed furiously. Dante looked at the creature as if it were a stain on his shirt and swatted it away. His brute strength sent the monkey careening through the air. It crunched against a wall and fell to the floor with a limp thud.
Two more took its place, and a large lizard-like creature crawled up his leg. Dante smashed the lizard's face in with the butt of his shotgun and lowered the barrel down to finish the creature. He was rewarded with the click of a dry fire instead of a spray of gore. He patted his ammo pockets and fingered the hollow grooves in his ammo bandolier, swatting the mutated monkeys away. "I'm empty!" he shouted, instead using his shotgun as an impromptu club to keep the horde at bay.
Alistair and Bren had similar trouble as the confined space and proximity of so many creatures made it difficult to use their weapons freely. This forced them to use more vicious melee methods instead. Bren took a bad scratch to the face that split open his cheek and almost gouged out his eye before he threw the offending creature down and stomped it into a puddle of bony meat and viscera.
A scorpion-like creature with a long tail barb impaled Alistair's leg. He screamed in both pain and rage as the venom-filled barb punched clean through his leg and oozed toxins out onto his armor. This agony was followed by the horrific weight of a large bird as it slammed into him from behind and knocked him to the ground. The fall caused the impaled barb to break off in his flesh, still pumping venom but thankfully onto his armor and not into his bloodstream.
Apate fired a few bursts into nearby creatures as she bobbed and weaved through the attacking horde with much more finesse than any of the men. She did her best to keep the largest threats at bay so they could handle the smaller ones that broke through her defensive fire. Bren stooped down to help Alistair up, squinting through his own blood as the furious melee consumed them. He blindly stabbed his harpooned fist at anything that got close enough and hoped it wasn't one of their crew.
With an anticlimactic chime, the elevator doors opened and Apate dipped inside. "Come on!" she shouted, holding down the button to keep the doors open as she fired small bursts at anything that tried to get inside the elevator.
Dante roared in frustration as he flipped a creature off his back and slammed it into the floor. Its spine cracked in several places. He then started grabbing the creatures he had killed, ignoring the lacerations to his hands from their spiny growths, and hurled them at the remaining creatures like spiky murder balls. It worked better than anyone expected. The corpses of their assailants impaled the attacking creatures. Bren hooked one arm under Alistair's shoulder and used his free hand to punch back whatever got close enough. Once inside the elevator, Dante kicked a mutant cat down the hall and stepped in after them.
Talons and spiny limbs poked into the narrowing space as the elevator doors shut. A quick boot from Dante or a stab from Bren forced them out with furious shrieks. The safety mechanism on the doors that prevented them from closing on a tardy scientist or the arm of a polite colleague kept forcing the doors open before Apate had time to override them. This caused the whole ordeal to drag on much longer than anyone wanted. Bit by bit, the doors closed before finally sealing shut.
The whole crew struggled to catch their breath, apart from Dante who's enhanced lungs didn't seem bothered by the effort.
"We don't have much time, its only one floor," Apate said as she reloaded her weapon.
"There's gonna be another horde when those doors open," Bren said. He used a grimy sleeve to try to clear the blood from his eye while not tearing his own flayed flesh any more. Alistair gritted his teeth and tried to push the barb through his dense thigh meat, but the pain was too crippling. "He's gonna need a band-aid pretty soon," Bren said with a wry grin.
"You guys ever watch Dead Man Walking?" Dante asked as he moved to the middle of the elevator and pressed his back against the wall.
Bren blinked at the seemingly random question. "That holo you did with Aphrodite Summers? The one about an evil corporation that created a regenerative medication that accidentally turned people into zombies?" Bren asked.
"That's the one," Dante confirmed. "Remember the scene where I ran out of that burning building with all those zombies on the outside?"
"Yeah, that was awesome!" Bren began before the light bulb clicked on, "Oh. OH!" Bren picked up and shouldered Alistair despite his groans of protest.
"What is he talking about?" Apate asked. The doors cracked open and a seething mass of angry, spiked monstrosities started to claw their way in.
Dante let out a roar that could have shattered concrete before he lowered his shoulder and barreled through the opening passageway. Beneath his feet he crushed anything that wasn't rocketed aside by his flailing arms.
"Get that butt moving!" Bren yelled as he struggled to carry Alistair through the gory path left in Dante's wake. It didn't take long before Apate realized the plan and stooped to help shoulder Alistair. Together they ran after Dante.
Alistair's eyes widened as the monstrous form of a gorilla, mutated and perverted from its normal shape, lumbered around a corner ahead of Dante.
"This way!" Apate shouted as she helped Bren carry Alistair left down a corridor. Dante was busy pummeling every living thing within his reach and suffered a plethora of lacerations for his effort. Most of the mutated animals had set their focus on Dante by this point, which made sense since he was the largest and most audible threat. This gave the other three members of the team precious seconds to reach a door that led to the back of the laboratory where the female scientists were hiding.
Dante spotted the mutant gorilla and bellowed out a challenging war cry that could have voided the bowels of a Mezotanian eviscerator wyrm. The mutated gorilla turned to face him. It had enough time to beat its spiny chest once to accept the challenge before it was hurled down the hall by a massive brick of genehanced and enraged man. Dante certainly had a flair for the dramatic.
Apate snatched her security card from its home on her vest and buzzed them into the laboratory, dragging Alistair in with Bren's help. The doors shut behind them.
"We can't leave him out there," Alistair groaned. His leg was drenched in his own blood and slathered with venom. His eyes darted around lazily before drooping shut. Apate slapped him, hard. They fluttered back open, and he gave her an appreciative nod.
"Get him patched up," Bren said. He pushed the wall pad to exit the lab and entered back into the chaos beyond.
"Thanks for helping! Ass."
Apate rifled through some nearby drawers and looked for any supplies to help extract the barb lodged in Alistair's leg so she could better tend to the wound.
A door across the room opened and two women wielding shock rifles entered. The weapons wobbled as they looked around the room. They spotted Apate. Either unaware or unfazed, Apate kept looking for tools and supplies to help Alistair, who watched helplessly as the two makeshift soldiers closed in. He wanted to warn her but was too weak from blood loss and it took all his effort to just stay awake.
"Stop Apate, we'll shoot!" one of the women stammered. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself that she had the courage to follow through with her threat.
Apate ignored them.
They advanced and stood less than a few steps away, trigger fingers twitching. "Apate, we will fire!" the other woman shouted, with little more conviction than her partner. Apate turned and looked her in the eye.
"That man over there is dying. If you want to shoot me then do it, otherwise stay the hell out of my way," she said. She grabbed a kit of medi-gels from a cupboard and headed back over to Alistair. She kneeled down and pulled out a syringe of yellow gel, held it up to the light, and shook it for a moment to examine its quality. She then jabbed it into the wound caused by the broken barb. Only one of his eyes was barely cracked open, but Alistair did his best to stay awake during the process. It was made a lot easier when Apate started hacking at the barb with a surgical saw. The sawing motion caused the barb to shift and rotate slightly inside Alistair's leg at very uncomfortable angles. She shot him an apologetic look but continued to work.
She applied another type of gel, this one blue, and waited a moment for it to take effect. Poking the damaged flesh with her finger, Apate confirmed that the painkiller was working since Alistair didn't shout in agony or smack her in response.
"Probably should have done that sooner," she muttered to herself.
With a pair of thin forceps she removed the barb. The two women, who were supposed to be security guards, watched over her shoulder. A cacophony of wails and growls echoed from out in the hall, mixed with noises of exertion from Dante and Bren's vicious melee.
"Are they going to be all right?" one of the women asked, more to herself than anyone in particular.
"I don't know," Apate admitted as she focused on the removal of the barb. Gobbets of flesh tore out with the barb as Apate pulled. The second woman on security detail stooped down, holding out her hand to stop the procedure.
"Flip over," she said.
Alistair gave a wary glance to Apate, who returned an assuring nod. Despite his body's protests, he rolled onto his stomach and looked over his shoulder as the second woman pulled the barb out from that side, relieved to watch it slide rather effortlessly and with no excess flesh torn out. She grabbed a syringe of green gel and liberally applied it to the meaty hole. They watched as the gel quickly swelled and closed his wound.
"Security team, report," a voice sounded from a radio at the shoulder of both security women. They looked at each other.
The one still standing turned her head toward the radio and activated it, "Stand by," she said, shrugging to her partner.
Alistair was already looking better as the cocktail of painkillers and regenerative gel worked its chemical magic. Apate cleaned up the tools she used and threw away the gel canisters, a practice that seemed less than important at the time but habits were habits. After cleaning up the area she helped Alistair stand up and sit on an exam table.
Apate turned on her heel and strode purposefully out of the small sub-lab and into the main lab. There were close to fifty women in various states of dishevelment. Some still looked clean and unbothered while others were lying on makeshift beds as someone tended to their wounds. Apate stood for a moment and scanned the faces of all women present. Their eyes quickly turned to her and they panicked, amplified more so when Apate raised her gun.
A sudden collective gasp followed by shouts of fear alerted Eris Malliny to the danger behind her. This afforded her just enough time to turn and see the muzzle flash as a burst of bullets nested into her skull. Her body fell to the floor like a puppet with cut strings and a spray of blood from the exit wounds splashed against the wall behind her.
Apate strode over and held down the trigger. Burst after burst tore into the body as onlookers cowered in fear and tried to find cover. In one smooth motion, Apate ejected her magazine and replaced it with a fresh one. She emptied the new magazine into the corpse as well. The vicious onslaught showered the surrounding area in blood and small particles of flesh. A light haze formed around her from the smoke of spent shells.
The entire laboratory watched in horror as Apate emptied both magazines into the body of their former boss. Once the firing ceased, and their ears adjusted to the silence, everyone heard a faint sniffling. Apate took a moment to reload her gun again before slinging it over her shoulder. She then turned to the rest of the lab, squinting through her tears. "Where is my son?"
No one spoke.
"Where. Is. My. Son," she repeated in a voice that made absolute zero seem tropical.
There was a moment of silence before someone in the corner dared to speak, her strangled words barely forming a murmur. Apate turned toward the voice but couldn't identify the speaker.
Despite her knees' protest to the contrary, the woman who spoke stood up from behind a bank of monitors and repeated herself. "He's in the chem lab," she said, struggling to keep her fear at bay. Alistair, flanked by the impromptu security team, limped into the room and took in the scene.
"Is he alive?" Apate asked.
The woman who spoke nodded.
"We have a live feed of the laboratory if you'd like to-" she began but Apate had already covered the distance between them and was looking over her shoulder at the bank of monitors.
Her eyes once again filled with tears as she reached out and touched the screen where her child was displayed. He was in a hermetically sealed incubation chamber festooned with wires and tubes that were both giving and taking necessary fluids and gasses. "We are synthesizing an antidote from his blood," the woman continued.
"Stop it," Apate said, her voice dead and hollow. The woman at the monitors next to her tried to figure out how to say 'No' without getting shot. Apate did not appreciate her hesitation. "Stop it. Now," she said.
"Apate, you know very well we can't do that," another woman spoke from across the room. She stepped forward, mustering more courage than the rest of the room seemed to give her credit for if their shocked faces were anything to go by. "When we asked the corporation for help, I didn't expect them to send you. Not after what happened. And quite frankly, I think the way you are handling this situation is both irresponsible and reprehensible," the woman added. A name tag pinned to her coat identified her as Dr. Vilmonroe, Dr. Malliny's second in command.
The entire room held their collective breath. Everyone exchanged nervous glances, at least anyone who had the courage to move a muscle or tendon that wasn't busy keeping absolutely still. Muffled sounds of mutated creatures attempting to disembowel Bren and Dante echoed from outside the walls. Apate forced her eyes from the console and glared at the woman. Dr. Vilmonroe cleared her throat and continued.
"The fact that you have returned here, interrupted our research, disabled our defenses, released the infected specimens, and killed our lead scientist all for some immature vendetta is a clear indication of why we took you off this project in the first place."
"You stole my family and tried to kill me!" Apate screamed, her voice cracking.
"We confiscated your child to save the lives of millions of people on this planet. The life of your child, though valued by all of us, is not worth the destruction of an entire planet Apate, and you know that," she said.
No sooner had the words left her mouth Apate drew her gun and crossed the distance. She placed the still warm barrel on Dr. Vilmonroe's forehead.
Apate gritted her teeth and twisted the weapon against Dr. Vilmonroe's skin. She then took a deep breath and spoke. "I didn't release the infected specimens, at least not intentionally. The only reason I disabled the security system was because we would have died otherwise. Things spiraled out of control long ago, me being here is just bringing that all to a head. And I will not leave without my son."
"We can't let him leave until we retrieve the synthesized antidote and test-"
Apate's expression hardened once more, her voice quivering with rage. "You've already synthesized a cure?"
"We've been unable to retrieve it since the security system still sees us as infected, and once you shut it down the mutants got out. We haven't tested it yet, we aren't sure if it will actually-"
"I don't care if it hasn't been tested. I don't care if everyone on the planet turns into one of those things or gets killed by one. I don't care. All I care about is getting my son back and keeping him safe. This place has taken everything from me. My husband, my son, and my life are all gone and I just want to salvage what I can."
"You would doom an entire planet to extinction for your own selfish reasons?" Dr. Vilmonroe asked.
"If it were your child, wouldn't you?" Apate asked. Dr. Vilmonroe stared into Apate's eyes for a moment. Her lip quivered, and she looked away. Apate lowered her weapon and slung it along her back. If anyone would have sacrificed their child in her position, they didn't say so. Apate walked over to the monitor for another look at her son.
"Which lab is this?" Apate asked.
"Dr. Vilmonroe!" A voice shouted, running out of a side room. Dr. Vilmonroe turned to acknowledge the voice. Terrified and out of breath, the woman ran over to Dr. Vilmonroe and said, "Someone opened up the experimental labs."
Dr. Vilmonroe blanched.
"Oh gods, that means..." she began, but was quickly interrupted by the beep of a security card unlocking the door at the far end of the room and a hiss as the door slid open. A shrieking roar bellowed from outside.
"Dinosaurs!" Bren shouted as he skewered a winged reptilian creature out of the air before following a blood-soaked Dante through the door.
"He ain't kidding," Dante panted. Apate made the horrible realization that Dante, of all people, was breathing heavily. The man who had torn off a double-reinforced security door like it was a band-aid, the man who had shrugged off massive wounds that would have killed any other, the man who just bull rushed into a horde of mutated horrors without breaking a sweat was now out of breath. Things were bad. Very, very bad.
"They aren't dinosaurs. Not strictly speaking," Dr. Vilmonroe chimed in.
"Well, whatever they are, they are big and angry. Bigger and angrier than most of the big angry crap out there," Bren said. He pulled a nearby desk in front of the door, for what good it would do.
"Yeah, we were doing fine until Dr. Hammond got involved," Dante said, lifting a much larger desk with less effort.
"How do you know Dr. Hammond?" Dr. Vilmonroe asked, clearly astonished.
"There's an actual Dr. Hammond responsible for this? I was jok-"
"We don't have time for this," Apate said as she tried to get control of the room again. Unfortunately for her, the women recognized Dante and whispered to each other about their favorite holo-films in which he starred. Dante seemed unaware of the effect he was having on the room, much to Apate's unspoken relief. "Ok, well you are all safe in here. We will go out the back entrance and make our way to the lab where my son is being held."
"With all due respect love, we're not here t'rescue your son. We're here for th'files. Don't forget that," Alistair said. The painkillers and regenerative gel had worked well enough for him to stand on his own now. Apate shot him a betrayed look. "Don't worry, we'll still get him but we have to stay focused and accomplish the mission while we are at it," he added.
"Yeah, there is no way I'm not getting paid for this," Bren said, eyeing some surgical equipment nearby. Apate nodded and patted her pockets.
"I seem to have lost the drive they gave me, do one of you still have one?" she asked.
"Yeah, hold on," Alistair said as he pulled out several pieces of a destroyed hard drive from a pocket on his leg, "scratch that."
"Let me check," Dante said, reaching inside his armored vest. He pulled out a drive about the size of a pack of cigarettes and handed it to Apate after wiping it on his leg to remove the sweat.
Apate sat down at Dr. Malliny's computer and began transferring files. She was grateful that the system was already logged in and she didn't have to bypass any security measures. A blinking window at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. She enlarged it and discovered that the facility's quarantine lock down had been lifted seconds after she terminated the defensive drones. In the log to her right was a timestamp and username for the person who authorized the quarantine lift. Dr. Malliny had done it herself.
"Frakking bitch," Apate muttered under her breath as she plugged in the hard drive and copied the files. A status bar told her that the file transfer would take about twenty minutes.
Bren requisitioned the services of a nearby surgeon to help detach the bomb from his skull, despite her recommendation to the contrary. He sat on a nearby table and let the surgeon get to work. Alistair took the time to look around for food, bullets, fuel, medi-gel, or anything else he could find to replenish their stores. Fortunately, these women had the foresight to grab as many provisions and survival items as possible before locking themselves inside the lab, so Alistair had plenty of things to pick from.
He replenished some of their ammunition and grabbed a few of the more fast acting medical supplies, in addition to some protein bars and Hyperade. Dante's grinning mug was on some of the bottles.
With less than five minutes left on the file transfer the lights flickered and slowly dimmed, eventually turning off with the rest of the electrical appliances in the area. It also killed the data transfer. A moment later auxiliary lighting turned on but panic had already spread.
"What happened?" Dante asked.
"I don't know," Apate said.
"This place really sucks. I just want to get that out there," Bren said.
"It looks like something destroyed the main power supply. Backup generators should keep the lights on but I'm not sure about-"
The door to their sanctuary rattled and cracked open. Long black claws curled around the gap and feral screams grew louder as the creatures forced their way in.