“That certainly was an interesting story,” Aurora said, her voice smooth and composed. James barely stopped himself from tensing. She was standing right behind him—he hadn’t heard her approach. Either he had gotten too emotional in his retelling, or she was even better than he had originally assumed.
“So, did you ever find your friend?” she asked, her violet eyes studying him carefully. “And who was it that hired you?”
James exhaled lightly through his nose, shaking his head. “No, never did. From what I gathered, he took off on a ship heading for Europe. Doubt I’ll ever hear from him again.” Then, his signature smirk returned as he leaned back slightly, meeting her gaze with a flicker of amusement. “And as for who hired me… well, I don’t kiss and tell.”
Aurora arched a brow at that but didn’t press further. Instead, a small, unreadable smile played on her lips. James noted how it didn’t quite reach her eyes—another thing to add to the growing list of questions he had about her.
With that, Aurora turned away, heading back toward the group of scientists. James’ gaze lingered on her for a moment as she walked. There was a quiet confidence to her, an assurance in her steps that didn’t match the panicked, uncertain energy of her colleagues. But he pushed the thought aside, refocusing on the task at hand.
His attention returned to the mercenaries as he leaned forward slightly, resting his arms on his knees. “So, with storytime over, shall we see if there’s anything interesting in that locked-off section of the lab?” His tone was casual, but his mind was already running through possibilities. He wasn’t just looking for any old scraps of abandoned tech—there was something in particular he wanted to find. But that was for him to know and him alone.
Raven didn’t seem convinced. She crossed her arms, shifting her weight as she cast a wary glance toward the hallway leading to the sealed section. “Hmm… I don’t know,” she admitted, her orange eyes narrowing slightly. “We’re not being paid to poke around in this place. And from the looks of it, something got out.” Her voice was sharp with suspicion, her instincts clearly telling her to leave well enough alone.
Laim let out a slow breath, rubbing his hands together as if to warm them, despite the stable temperature inside the lab. He shot James a look “I’m not one to shy away from danger,” he said, shaking his head, “but this mission is already difficult enough as it is. Sorry I’m out.”
James nodded, as if taking their words into account, but he had already made up his mind. There was a chance he could find it in this lab, and he wasn’t about to leave without at least taking a look. Whether or not they wanted to join him was up to them.
James didn’t waste any more time trying to convince the others. He had already made up his mind. Without another word, he left the group and made his way toward the sealed-off section of the lab. He doubted any of the guards would join him anyway—if anything, they’d probably stop him.
As he approached the reinforced door, one of the scientists finally spoke up. “Where do you think you’re going?” the man asked, his voice carrying a mix of disbelief and irritation.
James didn’t even break stride. “To look around,” he answered simply, pushing open the outer lab doors before the scientist could object. The door sealed shut behind him, leaving him alone in the dimly lit hallway.
The sealed section of the facility loomed ahead. James walked up to the primary security door and ran his fingers over the cold metal. It was thick—too thick. His welding laser could cut through it, but it would take too long, and the noise would draw unwanted attention. He needed another way in.
His eyes scanned the walls and ceiling, searching for vulnerabilities. He moved along the corridor, carefully pressing against the panels and checking for weaker spots. Dust and debris covered the floor, remnants of long-abandoned instruments. Exposed wiring and shattered glass from old light fixtures crunched beneath his boots as he explored. He tested a side panel next to the ventilation shaft—too solid. He moved further down and knocked against another section of the wall. A hollow sound echoed back.
Bingo.
This section of the wall was thinner—likely an access panel or a maintenance bypass that led into the sealed area. He set down his bag, retrieved his welding laser, and got to work. The blue light of the cutting torch hissed as it sliced through the metal, sending glowing embers drifting to the floor. Minutes passed as he traced the shape of an opening, the stale air growing warmer from the heat.
Finally, with a soft groan, the cut-out section of the wall gave way, tilting inward before falling through to the other side with a heavy thud.
And that’s when the smell hit him.
James immediately recoiled, his senses overwhelmed by the unmistakable stench of death. This wasn’t just the decay of a single body—this was the scent of dozens, maybe more. The putrid mix of rotting flesh, dried blood, and something even fouler filled his nostrils.
The emergency lights had been completely destroyed. Normally, there would have been faint red or blue indicators flickering along the walls, but here, there was nothing. Something had torn through the backup systems. His night vision kicked in automatically, painting the world in a dull, monochrome hue.
Blood was everywhere.
It coated the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. It looked like something or many things had been completely torn apart, their remains splattered across the entire area. There were no bodies. No bones. Just blood, and an eerie silence that set his senses into a heightened state.
James tightened his grip on his rifle and moved deeper into the hallway. If this lab worked on similar stuff to the others he'd need to be careful.
He reached a T-junction. To the left, a corridor stretched into darkness, lined with shattered glass panels that once separated different lab rooms. To the right, the hall led further into the unknown.
He went right.
The first room he passed had a gaping hole in the glass wall. The interior was a disaster— overturned desks, shredded documents, and broken lab equipment were strewn everywhere. A row of test tubes had been shattered, their contents long since dried into sticky residue. Vials filled with an unidentifiable black liquid had spilled onto the floor, forming thick, tar-like pools.
A few monitors still flickered, displaying garbled text and corrupted data logs. One terminal, however, remained intact, its cracked screen frozen on a single word. “Breach”
James chuckled. Yeah, no shit.
Moving forward, he came across another room, this one even worse. Signs of a struggle were evident—deep gouges had been carved into the walls as if something had tried to claw its way out. A reinforced observation window had been completely shattered, its edges curled inward, something inside had broken free. Blood trails led from the broken restraints on the operating table, streaking toward the exit. James hoped the thing starved to death this lab had to have gone down during the Nuclear war.
His pulse remained steady, but he knew deep down he felt that the thing would be roaming somewhere down here.
As he ventured further down the hall, he found a security station. The reinforced door had been forced open, its frame warped and bent. Inside, chairs were overturned, lockers broken open, and weapons racks empty. There were old bullet casings scattered across the floor, signs that someone had made a last stand here. The walls were riddled with deep impact marks from gunfire, yet no bodies remained.
James took a slow breath, scanning the scene. There had been a battle here—one-sided, judging by the destruction. Whatever they had fought against had torn through them without leaving a trace.
At the end of the hallway, he finally found it—a massive, reinforced security door. Unlike the other destroyed entryways, this one remained intact, locked down with multiple layers of security. It was clear this was the real heart of the facility, the place that had been most protected. And right next to it was a break room.
James exhaled sharply, staring at the large supercomputer core behind the security door in front of him. “Finally,” he muttered aloud. “Just the place I was looking for.”
He would be able to turn it on and search to see if the lab had what he was looking for. He would also be able to download all the research data to his implant. That's how he came across anti splicer rounds. The info sells for a pretty penny too.
Problem was, he didn’t have access.
James clenched his jaw, cursing under his breath. Damn it. I should’ve brought the hacking module. He had left it back in his car, thinking he wouldn’t need it for the escort job. Big mistake. Without it, he needed an access code. And that meant searching through the rest of the lab… which also meant he had to go looking for whatever had eaten everyone in this place.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Great.
His eyes flickered toward the break room, hoping for some miracle—a carelessly left access key, a terminal left logged in. But after a thorough search, he came up empty. He sighed. No easy way out of this one.
James turned back toward the hallway, this time heading down the other path—the left wing of the facility.
As he ventured deeper, the destruction became worse. The walls bore deep gouges, the kind that metal wouldn't leave. The floor was cracked and uneven, marked by the impact of heavy, uncontrolled force. Blood was splattered in erratic patterns, dried into grotesque smears, evidence of desperate attempts to flee.
James was starting to piece it together now.
Something had broken out from the left side of the lab—something fast, something brutal. It had torn through the facility, killing almost everyone before they had a chance to respond. Only the guards in the security office had managed to mount any resistance, but judging by the results… The extra time didn’t help.
James examined the scene closely, following the trail of destruction. Bullet holes riddled the walls, concentrated around what would have been defensive positions. Claw marks, deep and unnatural, marred the surfaces, overlapping the gunfire.
Further down, a large smear of blood streaked across the floor—a body had been dragged. Another set of spattered remains indicated a more violent kill. James imagined the guards standing firm, holding the line against an abomination they barely understood. He could almost hear the panicked shouting, the frantic gunfire as whatever-the-hell-it-was got closer and closer.
Then, the first man had gone down.
James followed the trail. One poor bastard had made it nearly to the end of the hall, his desperate attempt to flee written in crimson across the walls. But it hadn’t mattered. The thing had caught up to him, and his last stand had been just as futile as the others.
The hallway led to a series of rooms. The first was a storage archive, filled with stacks of paper documents and scattered oddities. James sifted through them quickly, but there was nothing useful, mostly research notes and inventory logs, outdated and irrelevant.
The next room was cold storage—or at least, it had been. Large containment units lined the walls, their surfaces covered in frostbitten rust. Whatever had been kept here had long since evaporated or rotted away, leaving behind nothing but empty, malfunctioning containment chambers.
Then, James reached the final room.
He stopped just outside the door. The air felt different here. If the creature was still alive… It was behind this door.
James tightened his grip on his rifle, his muscles coiling like a spring. His enhanced senses sharpened, his breathing slowing. He listened for any sound—movement, breathing, a whisper of something waiting on the other side.
Nothing.
But that didn’t mean it was empty.
James reached for the handle, every instinct screaming at him to be ready for whatever came next.
James opened the door, his rifle raised, prepared for anything. But as he stepped inside, he saw… nothing.
Most of the equipment had been destroyed, shattered glass and broken machinery littering the floor. But in the far corner, something caught his eye—a pile of bones and tattered clothing.
A lot of bones.
James stepped closer, his boots crunching against stray fragments of shattered glass. His enhanced eyes picked apart the grotesque heap, recognizing the sheer number of remains. Everyone from the lab—the scientists, the guards—must have been dragged here. Picked clean. The clothing remnants were shredded and blood-stained, some pieces still vaguely resembling lab coats and others uniforms.
He exhaled slowly. What the hell happened here?
Then, he heard it.
A whisper of movement—so faint his enhanced hearing barely registered it in time.
James didn’t think. He moved.
His body reacted on instinct, muscles coiling as he leaped backward, just as a massive clawed limb crashed down where he had been standing. The force of the impact cracked the floor, sending debris flying.
James rolled to the side, rifle snapping up as he got his first real look at the thing.
And thing was the only word that came to mind.
It was wrong.
A grotesque mockery of nature, something his mind refused to categorize.
It stood at roughly seven feet tall, its body an amalgamation of twisted muscle and bone. It had two sets of legs, one pair supporting it upright while the second smaller set jutted from its sides, twitching and writhing like some malformed evolutionary afterthought.
Its arms—if they could even be called that—were something out of a nightmare. Elongated flesh-like limbs ended in curved, scythe-like appendages. Not bone. Not metal. Something else entirely, something organic yet unnaturally sharp.
Then, there was the face.
It had the broad, powerful structure of an ancient short-nosed bear, but hairless, with taut, leathery skin that resembled that of a skinned feline. Its exposed flesh was grotesquely raw and pink in some places, scarred and calloused in others.
And the worst part? The growths.
Bulging, pulsating flesh sacs were scattered across its torso and limbs, throbbing with a sickening rhythm. James had no doubt—they were some kind of biological weapon, waiting to burst. The creature reeked of decay and something else, something sharp and chemical, like a blend of rotting meat and industrial waste.
James steadied his breathing, rifle locked onto the thing’s center mass.
"What the actual fuck are you?" he muttered under his breath.
The creature didn’t wait for James to finish processing. It moved with terrifying speed, its grotesque limbs a blur as it lunged.
James ducked just in time to avoid being cleaved in half, feeling the whoosh of the air as the scythe-like appendage cut through where his head had been a second ago. The impact of the missed strike sent cracks spider webbing through the concrete wall behind him.
Fast. Too fast. He now understood why it wiped out the lab if it were anyone else they would be on the floor cut in half right now.
James rolled to the side, raising his HK416 and squeezing the trigger. The muzzle flash illuminated the dark lab as a burst of full plasteel armor-piercing rounds tore into the creature’s flesh.
But it didn’t go down.
The rounds hit, tearing through its exposed muscle and sending thick, blackish fluid spraying against the walls. The thing jerked from the impact, but instead of collapsing, it twitched. It barely hesitated before launching itself at him again.
James sidestepped, but not fast enough.
One of its bladed arms swiped out, narrowly missing his chest but catching the barrel of his rifle. With a sharp clang of metal on an unnatural bone, the creature ripped the weapon from his hands and sent it skidding across the floor.
Shit.
James barely had time to react before the thing rammed into him. It was like being hit by a freight train. The sheer force lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the far wall.
His back exploded with pain as the concrete cracked beneath the impact. His vision blurred for a second, his enhanced body working overtime to keep him conscious.
The worst part? The hit dislodged his 1911 from its holster.
James barely caught a glimpse of it clattering across the blood-stained floor before a shadow loomed over him.
The creature had him pinned.
Its massive, grotesque form loomed close, its broad, flayed-bear-like face inches from his own. Up close, James could see the pulsing of its flesh sacs, the sickening undulations of whatever biological nightmare this thing carried inside. Its breath reeked—like rotting flesh and chemicals fused into a nauseating stench.
James struggled, trying to push it off, but its strength was overwhelming. One of its clawed limbs pressed against his chest, pinning him down, while the other rose.
He knew that if it swung down, there’d be no dodging. No blocking.
This is bad. This is really fucking bad.
Then, a gunshot rang out.
The creature jerked its head up, its attention snapping toward the source of the shot.
Aurora.
She stood at the entrance of the lab, pistol in hand, her violet eyes cold and calculating. Smoke curled from the barrel of her weapon.
James didn’t waste the opportunity.
With the creature momentarily distracted, he moved. Twisting his body with every ounce of strength, he wrenched himself free from its grip, rolling to the side just as its blade-arm came crashing down. The impact sent concrete shrapnel flying.
Without hesitation, James unsheathed his plasteel tactical sword in one fluid motion.
The creature turned its gaze back to him, but this time, James was ready.
He lunged.
The blade sang through the air, cutting a deep gash across the thing’s torso. It screeched in pain, flailing wildly, but James was relentless.
He ducked under its desperate swings, moving with deadly precision. Another slash—this time, severing one of its smaller side-legs. The thing staggered, throwing off its balance.
James pressed the advantage.
He twisted his grip, shifting his weight, and brought the sword up in a brutal arc.
The blade met flesh.
And sliced.
The creature barely had time to react before the plasteel edge tore through its midsection.
It let out a final, gurgling shriek as its body split clean in half, its top half collapsing backward while its lower half crumpled in the opposite direction. The sacs on its torso burst upon impact, releasing a sickly, putrid-smelling fluid that sizzled against the floor.
James exhaled, standing over the bisected corpse, blood and viscera pooling at his feet.
His fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword, heart still pounding. His body ached from the hits he had taken, but the adrenaline kept him moving.
He turned his gaze to Aurora, who was lowering her gun, a smirk tugging at her lips.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
James let out a breathless chuckle, wiping the black ichor from his blade and picking up his 1911.
“I had it handled,” he said, flashing her a grin.
Aurora raised a brow. “Sure you did.” and for the first time a smile reached her eyes.
Should James say sorry to his 1911 for allowing her to get thrown?
