Chapter 3:

Arynn fell quiet as she watched Peter continue to step down the stairs. She could feel the fear creep up the small of her back as she stood motionless. Peter's stare through his mask was intense and his body was firm. He didn't hesitate to step off the last step and towards the two mutated beasts. Arynn didn't want to watch this man get mauled to death, but she had feeling that something bad was about to happen. She just hoped that she didn't have to be the one to see it.

Peter unhooked an assault rifle from a strap along his back and aimed at the beasts. His infrared laser scope locked onto one of the beast's twisted muscular arms. The bleeding strands of exposed muscle tissue that coiled around patches of wet fur suggested that the beasts inherited their Cerberus parents' K-9 traits. Their shortened snouts and jagged double sets of teeth and jaw structure were products of an insane screwed up experiment gone completely wrong. Peter cocked back his gun and the click of the load produced a faint sound. The beasts immediately looked up in Peter's direction. Arynn drew her pistol shaking. One of the beasts stopped eating and started for Peter. But the shooter already had pulled his trigger and the bullet plastered through the side of the gandharva's rib cage underneath its arm. What followed was a series of gurgled hisses and high-pitch screams. The other creature hissed at Peter while the wounded one stood stationary clawing at its wound. It completely ignored the agent and ferociously tore at the damaged flesh.

"What the hell is it doing?" Arynn yelled as she watched in disbelief.

"It's getting rid of what it doesn't need" Peter said back.

"What?" Arynn responded as she continued to watch the abomination rip off layers of skin to get to the bullet. Blood and tissue oozed out of its wound and onto the floor.

Arynn took a shot at the other beast. The bullet only grazed its arm. What impossible, she though, I know I hit him.

"If you value your life, you won't do that again…" Peter's voice trailed off as he stepped closer to the wounded gandharva.

"The hell I won't!" Arynn replied as she fired another shot, this time in the creature's neck causing massive bleeding. The major artery that she hit was gushing blood but the creature continued to come at her. Peter caught it off guard, grabbed its enormous back and fired into the same spot as he did the first creature. This time instead of the gandharva scraping at its tissue to take out the bullet, it buckled and collapsed on the floor. It struggled to regain its composure but fell back squirming. Peter aimed for the other side of the creature's rib cage and fired again. The other gandharva finally found the bullet and scooped it out with its mangled claws. Once it did, it started for Arynn. She held her breath and aimed at its head.

"Aim for the side," she heard Peter call out as the creature edged closer.

She did but missed. Arynn took a few steps back and the creature snarled lashing its long tongue out at her. Her bullets weren't having an effect on it. She holstered her pistol and quickly reached up and over into her backpack. She pulled out a gleaming sleek desert eagle. The clicking of the gandharva's claws running along the ceiling was getting close to her. She silently aimed straight for its forehead as it ran top speed. With one bullet, she hit him point blank and he fell onto the hard concrete floor. To Arynn's shock, a smokey odor rose from the fallen monstrosity. Peter turned immediately back to her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her from the stairs.

"Hey!" she spoke as he dragged her from the sight of the two dead gandharvas.

They got to the end of the corridor and came to a fork in their path. Two tunnels leading in opposite directions further into the darkness awaited them. Echoes of groans and growls came from the right end of the tunnel. Arynn narrowed her eyes to make out shadowed figures fast approaching. Peter turned and his eyes widened. There were more of those things coming! Never letting go of Arynn's arm, Peter took the tunnel to the left. It was evident that no one had been down in these tunnels since the explosion. The air was even more stagnant and motionless. The ground was dusty with debris from the ceilings. The light fixtures that were still intact produced no energy. Only Arynn's shoulder light and Peter's belt light showed through the thick haze of dust. It seemed like they were running with no end in sight. Arynn could hear Peter's deep breathing through the mask. The ventilators were not going to last much longer down here without fresh air to filter through. The longer they stayed down here, the more they would suffocate. Coming to a corner, Peter held out his gun and leaned along the wall to scope out what was at the end. As he did, Arynn turned back hoping the gandharvas weren't there. Not only were they still following closely behind but her calculations were off. There were a handful of them coming. The gandharva on the far right stuck out long protruding claws and ran them alongside the concrete wall, making a high-pitch irritating noise. Arynn grabbed her ears. Peter immediately turned to the noise.

"Sh**…" he muttered as he took Arynn once again.

The young lady already had her desert eagle drawn and was about to fire a round into the gandharva when Peter put his hand in front of the gun. She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Are you insane!" she yelled.

"No," he said, "I'm smart…"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she replied as her eyes narrowed.

"--Means that, if you shoot and you hit 'em, we're done for."

He started around the corner and Arynn quickly followed. They ran down another long dark corridor. This time, their PLSs could not penetrate the heavier atmosphere of the dust and they practically ran blind. Murmurs of the gandharvas were starting to fade and Arynn briefly glanced behind to see. She let out a small sigh relieved that they were nowhere to be seen. She stopped abruptly as she continued to hear groans and growls followed by hissing. But where was it coming from? Peter had continued on not knowing that his female companion had ceased to move. He disappeared into the darkness. Where are those things, she wondered as her light probed the distilled air. Something caught her attention along the wall. There was a dark shadow moving rapidly through the dust. Arynn shrieked. Her eyes darted to the other side and saw that the figures were there too. The gandharvas had doubled in number and were freakishly running erratic along the concrete wall! She turned and ran into the darkness. There was no other direction to go in, except deeper into the abyss of the tunnel. Arynn hoped that there was another door or stairs at the end of this hall; she couldn't take another corner of hallways. If it was up to her, she would've shot all those gandharvas and that would've been the end of it, but she took Peter's advice. She thought about the lethal odor that emerged from the fallen gandharva and how she felt a little nauseated when the stench got to her. Even with the mask on, it seeped through and into her sinuses.

Finally she reached the end and there was a solid metal door. She turned the hook knob and the door opened. She didn't hesitate to run in. Arynn locked the door behind her and looked around the small room. There were papers everywhere similar to the sight upstairs, but this time the room was twice the size and there was a huge computer archive and record cabinet in the middle of the floor. Moving around the room quietly, Arynn glanced at old computer monitors and hard drive towers still sitting neat in their designated areas.

"Too bad, there's no power," Arynn whispered to herself as she scoped out the rest of the room.

Off to the side, she saw a narrow wooden door. At first she thought it was a closet but something made her want to take another look. With one hand on the knob and the other on her desert eagle, she opened the door and peeked inside.

Her shoulder light revealed something entirely different. It was a vast room, probably the size of the first floor waiting room and emergency room together, with miniature incubator tanks stationed in the middle and medical machinery along the dark walls. Arynn walked in and closed the door behind her. Pointing her desert eagle out in the darkness, something bright and reflective caught her eye from one of the incubator tanks.

She walked up to one. The light inside had long burnt out and the water inside showed evidence of neglect. Greenish shrubs of vegetation floated and swayed to an unknown rhythm. There was something attached to the bottom of the tank. As Arynn leaned in for a closer look, her heart began to race. The mutation had arms and legs, even a head. It resembled an undeveloped fetus in late term pregnancy. Arynn grabbed her chest to feel the rapid beating. There was something not right about the way the fetus looked. Where the eyes should've been there were none. Where the nose and mouth were there also was nothing. The fetus was faceless.

"My god…" Arynn whispered as she felt the coming of nausea, "What were they doing down here…"

"Creating the perfect soldier…" answered a familiar tone in one of the dark corners of the room.

Arynn looked up and out into the darkness. Peter appeared with his weapon at his side.

"But why?" Arynn struggled as her vision began to blur.

"Why not? It was all for a greater cause…" Peter continued.

"What, a cause in playing god!" the young woman managed before grabbing her stomach in pain.

She went down and Peter instantly caught her. He held her in his arms as she went in and out of consciousness.

"No…" he whispered, as her eyes began to close, "a cause in creating someone…like you…"

All she saw before she went out was the eerie tint of dark gray in his eyes like the last gloomy day of Raccoon City before the outbreak.