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My heart can’t take this. I can scarcely breathe, watching them make their way deeper into the belly of this hell. Before I can stop myself, I grab Gregor’s hand, where it rests beside me. And as if we share the same terror, he places his palm over mine. I feel helpless, watching Six venture head-first into danger. The idea that this whole mission relies on the Alphas’ ability to fight off the mutations is the most twisted part about it.
“If only I believed in prayer,” Gregor whispers beside me.
The sound of a hard thump echoes through the corridor, and the camera swings toward a door.
Don’t go in there. Please
Jed approaches Six, rustling his suit as he seems to search for something, and the light flicks to a green haze. At the same time, Gregor pushes the same button as before, the one that muted the camera. “I suspect any noise on our end would pose a danger to them. A distraction.”
“Why is everything green?”
“Its a night vision camera. So they’re not detected.”
They gather at a window of the lab, where an echoing thump continues to hammer my nerves to shreds. Inside are a half-dozen beastly things, like those I saw roaming the hallways just before we escaped Calico. Their skin is blistered, from what I can make out in the altered coloration, and deformed. Muscles bent and distorted, but bulky and intimidating. Where the Ragers tend to be thin and gaunt, these creatures clearly carry the Alpha gene.
They pace around some kind of machine made of glass. Inside is a cylinder, also made of a clear material, beneath a light that beams down on its contents. I squint to focus on what it is inside that cylinder. It’s only the long locks of hair that give any indication it’s a body.
A human body.
“Pneumatic tube system.” Gregor’s voice is as grim as the view before me. “It was designed in the early stages, to transport cadavers down to the lab for study.”
It’s then that I notice other glass tubes lying about the machine, reminding me of desecrated and discarded coffins. Their openings have been torn away, half cocked and destroyed, the tubes themselves bent and battered.
“It’s seems this is how they’ve been staying alive. Calico has been sending them bodies to feed on.”
Horror fills my chest, suffocating me, as I watch the mutations pound against the machine, as if it’s stuck. One screeches at it, and pounds again. The woman inside is dead. She would have to be after two months.
Jerking his head again, Jed signals for Six to follow, and they stay crouched to the floor, passing beneath the window. Through deep breaths, I mentally count down how long it takes to put distance between them and those beasts.
At a crackling sound, my breath stalls, and the camera swings around. The view pans down to the floor where Tinker has crawled over a broken lightbulb. A substance coating his hand, unidentifiable through the night vision lens, must be his blood. Eyes wide, mouth gaping, the look on Tinker’s face as he stares back through his mask sends a cold chill down my spine. Camera panning upward shows one of the mutations sticking its head out the window, sniffing the air. The half of its face I can see appears to have been burned away, and its skin droops there. I can’t tell if it’s the night vision that makes its eyes look stygian black, but they are completely devoid of life. Bunched, irregular muscles give it a different appearance from the mutations I’ve seen before. These monsters are beasts, likely strong enough to tear a human being in half with their bare hands.
Tinker remains on all fours below it, head low and visibly trembling in his suit. Behind him, Ratchet doesn’t move, also keeping his head low, though I can’t see his face from this angle.
I shift in the chair, the anxiety twisting and churning in my stomach, while I watch this creature sniff and twitch, undoubtedly searching for the source of blood. The hazmat suits likely cloak some of their scent, but I suspect fresh blood probably gives off a strong enough aroma to narrow in on their hiding spot.
Another mutation slams into the window beside the first and the two fight, pushing each other back and forth, momentarily distracted from the smell, it seems. Six reaches out from the camera to pat Tinker, giving him a nudge in the darkness, and he moves forward, while the beasts create a clamor inside the room.
Slowly, they crawl away from the window, and I force myself to take a breath, my lungs wound tight with tension. Backing himself away, never taking his eyes off Tinker, Six seems to breathe far more steadily than me, his consistent inhalations never confessing fear.
Movement just behind Tinker brings both men to a halt. Tinker lifts his gaze to Six, and before he can stop it, their friend is yanked backward and pulled through the window of the lab.
“Oh, shit,” Gregor says beside me, sitting forward in his chair. “Oh, no!”
“Fuck!” Six barrels forward after his friend.
Ratchett’s flailing arm swipes out at nothing, as he, too, attempts to grab Tinker.
The sound of Tinker’s screams skates down the back of my neck. Peering through the window shows the mutations inside throwing him around in the air, tearing off limbs as if they’re nothing but frail and fragile twigs on a tree branch. Blood coats the face shield of his suit and the stainless steel surfaces inside the room—even that is discernible through the camera’s green haze. In seconds, the man has no arms and legs, yet he continues to scream as their claws tear into his flesh.
“Six … get out of there!” I’m screaming, but he can’t hear me through the muted screen. With a trembling hand over my mouth, I watch through tears as those monsters tear apart a good man with no remorse. One who gave continuously to our small tribe and didn’t hesitate to join the group down inside those tunnels.
I hear Six breathing hard through the mask, and I know he’s trying to hold back tears and his rage.
“C’mon,” Jed whispers beside him. “Before they find us. We have to keep moving.”
The tears stream down my cheeks even as the camera shifts away from the macabre, and only one thought pounds through my skull.
How easily that could’ve been Six.
