Context: This is a haunted scene in A.T.X.D. Full Scale I have been planning since I was in early high school, but it was only fully written in the last week or so. Does it scare you? Read to find out.
This next section was a grayish, concrete room that was wide enough to be a hallway in either direction. But ahead of them was a large, two-piece security door with a complex set of locks and mechanisms.
[Dialogue scene]
Next to this big armored door was an electronic lock console, which William approached and attempted to disarm with his Digital Lockbreaker. Surprisingly, his tool didn’t activate when he held it against the panel, so the Comms Officer and ex-SEAL tried resetting the device. Once again, no response.
“It uses analog human electronics and magnetism, Poison Frog; not a digital code system,” Howard explained, coming up and replacing William’s position. “It needs a specific magnetic signature to open, just like the securement sections on our body armor that holds our rifles.” Howard held his wrist screen up against the wall-mounted panel and waited a few seconds before the device recognized the magnetic ID signature being projected from his suit.
A series of pneumatic locks disengaged before a small wheel-like piece rotated rapidly and two rods rolled outward. The operatives then backed up before the door split across the middle and opened like the jaw of a mechanical beast with a deep whirring grumble.
Inside was a haunting sight: a giant, black room with open side corridors, a ceiling that stood maybe thirty or more feet above them, and very little light. But upon entry, they saw why: not only had all the bulbs practically burned out over the years, but there was an immense cluster - almost a jungle - of decayed Harbinger biomaterial. The fungal sheets and branch-like structures covered almost every part of what may, at some point, have previously been another two-story storage facility. As the operatives switched their suit’s night vision back on and some even turned on their IR Laser accessories to better scope out threats while others turned on their rifles’ flashlights, they split up into their respective teams: Theta 2-3 proceeded straight through the tunnel ahead of them, while Bravo Team split in two sections, with Ashley taking one squad to the left and Dave taking the other to the right.
Richard followed up behind Dave and warily looked around the passageway as he checked for any sign of life in what was essentially a forest of death: not only because what surrounded him was the decayed remnants of what looked like a massive Habringer mutation, but also because he too had heard parts of Jordan’s earlier message; particularly the intel about the lifeforce being able to grow even after its hosts had died and fallen apart into those decayed puddles. Emily was third-in-line, followed by Jack while Mark covered the rear, and they did everything possible to avoid so much as brushing their shoulders against the infested walls or even letting a threaded strand of the stuff touch any part of their armor. There were some old electric conduits and fluid pipes covered in the stuff, and most of them still seemed intact. A few of the power conduits, however, were ruptured, and one of them suddenly cracked with a flash of sparks, causing Mark to jump and emit a deep-throated yelp in response to the fright.
“What’s the matter, Buffalo? Afraid of a little shocker?” Emily joked, trying to relieve the tension among her teammates instead of taunting her friend.
“Very goddamn funny, Bighorn,” Mark grumbled with disgust. “Just keep moving.”
Looking through a dried net of fungal material above them, Ashley was able to see the metallic ribs and structure of the ceiling thirty or so feet overhead. She also noticed additional open catwalks on an apparent second story which stood above them, but were also covered in Harbinger secretions. But then an eerie sight was spotted above: although the original lighting had since burned out and rendered the place in darkness, the Lieutenant was forced to shield her face a few times as she saw newer lighting placed in the space. And given that the image signature in her night vision was darker instead of brighter compared to the rest of the space in her view, Ashley could deduce that these were dark lights. Briefly turning off her night vision, the Lieutenant saw otherwise dull parts of her suit lighting up in a vague blueish, purple, or green-equivalent color, confirming her assumptions that dark-lighting was being used to illuminate the space and appeared to be more recently installed.
But how recently? she wondered internally.
Sophia was following up behind the Lieutenant when she heard a light squelching sound below her. Turning around, Sophia pulled her right foot up and saw her boot covered up to the sole in a sticky mucus-like substance. Ulgh, nasty the ex-Army soldier thought to herself as she saw the material practically dripping in almost-elastic strands and making the sole of her boot glimmer with a wet reflective appearance. She tried to scrape it off on a branch-like structure ahead of her only to find more of the slime clinging to her boot as a result of touching it. So although keeping her queasy disgust to a silent clenching of the lip and a squeamish look in the eyes, Bravo Team’s young medic and sniper cautiously stepped over the branch structure and attempted to ignore the presence of more slime-like strands trailing off her other foot now as she pulled it up behind her and tried to avoid bumping the arch or toe against the obstacle or anything it was connected to.
James followed closely behind, also ignoring the slime that was now clinging to his boots. He then heard something off to his left while facing forward: a quiet but constant hissing sound. His tracker also began to beep, but it was glitching and buzzing too: the watch-sized display on his wrist was fluctuating and fading with colored lines of static as though something was overloading the device. But when he finally located the hissing sound through a rift in the fungal wall to his left, he relaxed just slightly as he saw that it was just a severed plastic hose conduit that was gently dousing a part of the floor with a consistent spray of nitrogen gas. Huh, just a simple mechanical defect. R-right, James? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just a little…I dunno, haunted house of history with this Harbinger shit.
But as he moved on, James and his squadmate Kellie didn’t notice two pairs of slender, mean-looking yellow eyes glaring down at them from behind on the catwalk above. The two Kronosian scouts lay hunkered down in the upstairs catwalk to the left of the operatives’ positions, protected in their stealthy battle-equipped chem suit armor and watching as their prey wandered further into the Harbinger nest. Silently tapping his partner on the shoulder, the scout on the right nodded to his left and his comrade slowly lifted himself a little higher before crawling quietly down the catwalk. The scout then looked across the way and saw two more of his camouflaged comrades hunkered down. When one of them on this opposite side saw the scout’s partner moving, she gently shoved the shoulder of her teammate, who got up and began slinking to her right.
Although their movement was close enough that Bravo and Theta Team’s trackers would have picked up the Kronosians’ presence, the nest was so densely packed with decaying and ever-so-slightly alive, bulk quantities of the Harbinger that the signal was getting overwhelmed. In effect, the Kronosians here in this space could practically stalk the operatives alongside them, and the latter party’s trackers wouldn’t be able to distinguish if their readings were genuine moving targets or just a static lifeform which they themselves were passing by.
Through a seemingly blown out breach in the wall ahead, the forest of unearthly death and decay continued. The room was even larger now, though: maybe forty feet high compared to what was behind. There was even evidence of smaller laboratory rooms surrounding them, with their wide rectangular windows still intact but almost curtained by the mutagen’s physical manifestation. Slowly, the operatives proceeded through the hole and then split up again into their respective squads and went in the same directions as before.
Kellie briefly stumbled as her feet dropped about an inch or two further down during her next step, and she saw that her boots stood in a collapsed indent in the floor. But stepping back out while ignoring the slime on her soles, the ex-Beverly Hills cop began to shake on the inside when she saw that it was a large, three-pronged, moderate-sized, claw-like footprint.
“Um, guys,” Kellie uttered, “I think our friend is here.”
“What do you mean….?” James began, retreating back to his teammate before seeing the footprint for himself. “Whoa. Oh fuck me. I think you’re right.” Looking around, the ex-Army Ranger inquired, “See if it’s showing up on your tracker, Strawberry.”
“My tracker still doesn’t work for shit down her, Joker,” Kellie hissed, holding up her arm to show that her tracker was still glitching out.
As his boot cut through a weaker branch-like tendril on the ground and caused a slow gushing of Harbinger fluid to puddle on the floor, Howard saw something else which creeped him out: giant mounds of Harbinger biomaterial on either side of his team that stood in a linear fashion up ahead. But a closer look revealed an even scarier sight: the mounds were in fact covered-up tanks that stood maybe ten or fifteen feet tall, and although empty of any specimens, the stasis fluid itself was still in there. More disturbing was the fact that the fluid was just vaguely glowing. But…no, that’s impossible. That would imply that something was in these tanks recently. He then thought about the Kronosian Nescetar and wondered internally, Maybe this is where that son of a bitch was grown. But these tanks don’t seem to have been used in decades; otherwise there wouldn’t be so much Harbinger material covering them.
His train of thought was then derailed when he heard something even more chilling over the radio.
“This is Grizzly to Bravo Leader and Cyclops,” came Dave’s wary voice. “We’ve got bodies: four o’clock. They look recent and….*gulp*, it’s worse than a not-so-pretty sight.”
--
The air had been so still in this place for so long that when Richard shoved open the door, the chains inside shook and clinked with an echo.
“Nice,” Richard muttered with clear disgust. Dave shortly transmitted his message to the others before the Sergeant Major and his former trainee took a closer look.
Suspended by their arms in what looked to have at one point been a walk-in freezer or a store room were a series of dead human bodies. They were not gored up or otherwise ugly-looking, and they were fully clothed so no unmentionable body parts were showing. These victims, though, had very pale skin and the vaguest stench of decay was detectable in the room. Their genders and even their races also appeared to vary, with almost an equal number of female and male victims suspended from the ceiling.
Ashley and Bravo 2-1 came to check it out while Theta 2-3 continued their search of the surrounding area. Although the morbid sight prompted a grim-stricken face that was only partially visible behind her mask, Ashley kept her cool and requested, “Tomcat, take a reading of these bodies. I want to know what killed them.”
Without hesitation, Sophia approached, activated her bar-shaped Detector tool and scanned each body, trying as often as possible to avoid nudging them. Each scan only took about half a minute, and Sophia examined about three bodies out of a total of eight before giving her report.
“Well, these victims weren’t tortured to death; at least physically.” Sophia took a moment to look around the front and back of one of the suspended victims. “I’m not seeing any wounds or physical damage, though some of them have vague defensive bruising likely because of their forced participation in….whatever the hell happened here.” The medic then looked at her Detector again to determine something from the readings before adding, “And it looks like most of these poor souls died of dehydration and starvation. A couple even appear to have been suffocated to hasten the dying process.”
“Fuck me,” Emily muttered. “What would these Kronosians be doing hanging humans by their limbs and leaving them to starve to death?”
“The better question,” Ashley then pointed out when she took a closer look at the victims’ clothing, “is why are they targeting civilians now? And that’s assuming that the Kronosians are actually responsible for this.”
“You think it’s our black-armored friends who did this?” Jack inquired, briefly probing his rifle behind them as though to verify said hostiles weren’t trying to eavesdrop on their position.
“No idea,” Ashley admitted. The Kronosians certainly tortured their prisoners, but this seems too slow for them. Looking at one victim, who had a crew cut but also a ragged t-shirt and jeans, a tattoo of sorts, and dirted Nike Cortez trainers, Ashley continued her internal analysis. And these people don’t look like valuable targets. So what if this is those….what did Jordan call them, Luminara soldiers? What if this is something they have been doing? But then….wouldn’t….? The Lieutenant meant to ask herself if that meant A.T.X.D. was already aware of these other kidnappings for experimentation. However, she simply shut her eyes with some remorseful anger and patiently ordered her team to vacate the room.
It was just as they backed out that Howard came on with equally disturbing news. “Bravo Leader, Grizzly, we’ve got bodies here too.”
Ashley held back her squad while Dave took his group over to check it out, although Sophia switched out with Emily to do post-mortem examinations on these reported bodies. Through another breach in the wall, Bravo 2-2 found the rest of Theta 2-3 observing what looked like tree trunks of the Harbinger forest they stood in. But a closer look revealed something even more icy than what they had found in the abandoned freezer room: human bodies sealed within a mess of vines and tendrils against these trunks, and there were anywhere between four to five such bodies restrained to each pillar. And to Richard’s shock at least, he saw one Kronosian body tied up in this mess also.
“So what is this then?” Kellie questioned. “They starve humans to death and then feed them to the Harbinger?”
“The Harbinger may be able to propagate from dead tissue, Private McNeice,” Howard informed, “but it can grow much more explosively when mutating within living tissue. And to the degree that these….pillars or whatever the fuck they are, have grown, I would say all of this would more likely have formed if these victims had been alive beforehand.”
Sophia had just finished scanning one body with her Detector - confirming she was dead - when she heard her tracker go off. Despite the interference the device had been encountering from all the bio-material, this signal was close.
“Tiger, let’s check out this signal,” she requested. “It doesn’t seem to be moving, so it could be a victim who is still alive.”
As much as his gut told him to advise Sophia to stand down and wait until the full team could group up, the Lance Corporal decided to follow the medic and sniper. Looking at his own tracker, Richard could see the same signal and noticed it was just around the bend of one of these pillar structures. So if there was something to back away from and call for reinforcements, Richard knew that help was nearby.
“You think this stuff is recent, Cyclops?” Dave asked as Richard and Sophia briefly departed to investigate.
“Hard to say,” Howard replied. He removed his suit-contained datapad, attached a GENE-Scope scanner to the top, and scanned another one of these pillars that had some sealed bodies in it. “But one thing has been increasingly bothering me.”
“That being?”
“Everything we’ve seen in these rooms. It all seems….engineered. Like somebody has been doing experiments down here in the last ten or twenty years….and it was never reported. What if….if Archeneka knew about this and never told us? Or Scollay had been doing something down here and kept it hidden from Theta Team’s quarantine sweeps?”
“Are you making us believe that our bosses have been involved in some kind of conspiracy, sir?” one of Theta Team’s operatives grilled.
“Do you have a better explanation, Private?”
“I might, but it’s not much,” Dave then offered. He then paused and tried to piece together his thoughts into a one-sentence-summary. “The Luminara - they could’ve been experimenting down here without either Scollay or Archeneka’s knowledge.”