A log landed in the roaring fire, sending a spray of ashes and sparks up into the night sky. Thunder rolled in the distance, a dark cloud over the small speck that was the mainland, lightning setting the night ablaze.

A small makeshift oven was set above the flame, metal bars holding up a cracked pot and boiling water inside, wheat and other random edible items floating in the bubbling liquid. The lid on the pot was missing, steam floating into the sky and boiling water haphazardly splashed out of the cracks onto the clearing and managed to boil a trail of ants alive.

They had managed to rip apart the robotic arm that they found during the day, but thanks to Nova it took a while after they had somehow lost it in the dense jungle. They found it carried by a pack of ocelots, the one that looked like the leader with a red gash on his forehead and spaced-out look in it's eyes, and they put up quite a fight for a pack of glorified housecats. By the time they reached the ruined government building, the sun had already started to make it's descent into the earth.

Better to start later than to be eaten alive by mobs.

Ze shuffled awkwardly in the funny-shaped leaves, some shredding under his feet. It had been quiet for a long while, especially after they found out that the key component to making the arm work was damaged beyond repair. To be more specific, none of them could fix it and none of them were willing to learn on the spot.

So, of course, Nova threw it over a cliff in rage into a churning river.

The fox hybrid glared at Nova, ears twitching angrily, blaming him for their predicament. To be honest, having some quality friendship time in a clearing right next to a huge discovery didn't sound like the best thing that could happen, but it could have been worse.

Nova avoided Sly's gaze, instead suddenly becoming interesting in picking off a scab on his knee. Ze had no idea where or how he got it, as he never really followed his friend's news.

"Maybe you can use that fire to cauterise that," SlyFox rolled his eyes as he said that, the fact that the shark hybrid was ignoring him completely obvious to the group, "Oh wait, the piston that would have been perfect for a hot poker is missing." Sly spat out the last word, flashing his pointed teeth.

Nova just grumbled under his breath, words like "fuck you, Sly" and "may Notch strike down your dick with his holy shaft of lightning" raised above the rest.

Even though it wasn't appropriate for the mood, Ze felt laughter build up in his chest and had to bite his lip to stop it. Unfortunately, his teeth also pierced his lip and started bleeding

Without making a sound, he spat out a bit of blood, hating the tang of iron that stuck in his mouth. He wasn't really sure why every single time he smelled or tasted blood, bile would rise into his throat and he felt like he would vomit, but what he did know that it was a thing that happened.

Nova had obviously seen him in the dimming light of the campfire, turning his head around from Sly to look at the distracted Viking. "Hey, uh," he paused, going through possible sentences in his head, instead choosing the easiest one, "You alright?"

"Mhmm."

Silence lingered in the clearing, faint groans of zombies echoing through the jungle. Thank god they picked a relatively safe area which they could bolt from if danger was to appear, otherwise they'd be screwed.

Nova had given up trying to talk to Ze and instead returned to ignoring Sly slipping in a few insults now and then, and sometimes even throwing in a mock punch. Nova retaliated by biting on his hand once Sly tried to 'punch' him again, shark teeth cutting in easily.

"Hey, HEY!" Sly used his left had to pry Nova off, waving his right around wildly. His voice turned high-pitched as he inspected his hand with a pouty-face, narrowed eyes staring at Nova. "Asshole."

"Excuse me? Who is the one that's punching the other," he dragged out every other word, "And blaming them for a simple mistake?"

Sly snorted before opening his mouth for a retort before Seamus threw a rock at both of them, hitting Nova squarely in the nose.

"Can you ladies please stop fighting over there? Some of us," Seamus motioned between himself and Ze, "Are trying to listen to the horrifying sounds of the mobs that are no doubt closing in on us right now."

Sly ignored Seamus' dry remark, instead faking a grimace and clutching his hand. "Ooh, I can feel an infection coming on already. We might even need to chop it off!" he dramatically shoved it in front of Nova, who was fuming and looked like he might explode at any minute, "But, as I said before, that piece that could have been used for a cauterising tool is gone!"

"Shut the fuck UP, Sly." he muttered threateningly. Sly just giggled again and toppled backwards, feet in the air.

Even Seamus mustered a smile, looking at both of them like a parent would at two squabbling children. His smile froze, though, and eyes widened as he heard the sounds of leaves brushing against each other, and twigs snapping underneath some kind of force.

Nova must have heard, too, because he also stopped what he was doing. Cautiously, he lifted up his iron sword and gripped it in his right hand, his eyes staring at the source of the sound.

Sly was still oblivious and was giggling until Nova kicked him in the side.

Seamus slowly got up, face returning to a neutral position. The shuffling sounds got louder, mixed in with a few moans and groans of an undead creature. They all stood, frozen in the spot, one hand on whatever weapon they managed to bring (except for Sly, who held onto the robotic arm like a lifeline), and waited for the inevitable to come.

The moans stopped as fast as they had appeared.

Sly breathed a sigh of relief.

Which was cut off after a sickly green hand, skin was pulled taut over the bones, holes in flesh like Swiss fucking cheese, grabbed him by the neck and started strangling him.

Seamus was the first to react, bringing down his sword on top of the approximate location of the zombie's head. Instead it sunk into it's shoulder, it making garbled noises with it's mangled throat. It loosened it's grip for just a tick.

Sly spun around and kicked it with his legs, launching himself in the opposite direction of the undead monster.

The zombie was in full view now. One of it's arms was dangling by a thin strand of muscle, still moving somehow even on it's precarious perch. It had bumps all over it, sticking out awkwardly form it's skin that hung too tightly on it's bones, and a few strands of hair on it's head that may have suggested it once may have been a female. It's throat was a complete mess like it was scratched at during the last few moments of it's life, it's neck barely even able to support it's brainless head. Her jaw was hanging down, as if unable to close, and the rows of rotten teeth were visible.

Some bumps were open and popped while some were pulsing, a sickly yellow fluid dripping out and spreading all over it's tinted green skin. It dampened the tattered cloth that used to be clothes that were draped across her body.

Victim of the Toxic.

It had one of it's legs bent at an odd angle and it shambled towards them all, going painfully slow as it dragged the probably broken leg behind them.

Look where the quarantine got them. It didn't work. Only hybrids were immune for some reason that only Notch knew and everyone else needed some other source of survival.

Nova sidestepped and lunged out, sword in front of him, and took out one of it's arms, it landing a bit away. It let out a half-gurgle half-scream as it wobbled towards Sly, the closest one, who nimbly jumped on top of it's shoulders and into a tree.

It seemed to be enraged, or at least as enraged as a rotting corpse could be, and swung wildly. Ze held his battleaxe defensively, and as the loose hand scratched at him, he deflected the strikes off using his axe.

With one swoop, he brought down the axe on top of it's head with a disgusting, wet-sounding noise. It cut through the skull and the already-soft flesh, revealing a few maggots that had already made their home in the dead body (and some chopped up maggots from the strike) and went through until the crotch, effectively slicing it into two.

Both sides flopped down.

Ze didn't know whether to roll his eyes or wonder how he didn't scream or vomit while fighting that.

The body was leaking the Toxic everywhere, but no one there had to worry about the sickness spreading to them. However, the sickness was spreading onto the grass and ground below and that looked gross in Ze's opinion, not to mention that it was quickly killing the grass underneath and doing the whole infect+reanimate combo on the boiled ants.

Alright, maybe zombie ants were kinda funny. A screwed-up brand of humor.

"All in favour of going into that dark, scary, building instead of being in the dark, scary outside?" Seamus spoke up after everyone was still staring at the body, still squirming with worms.

Nova shuddered and made hacking sounds while Sly was still up in the tree, having avoided the conflict.

"I'll assume that's a yes."

Going into the building was vaguely unnerving.

Being in the building was about the worst thing ever.

The air seemed as thick as half-solidified concrete in there, vines dangling down from the ceiling and tangling them up once in a while. It was darker than any night that they've seen (Ze did realise that nights were pretty bright thanks to the swirling galaxies and the belt of off-white stars and splashes of colours that dotted the darkened sky) and multiple times he swore that hands were coming up from the ground and trying to drag him back into the underworld.

Fun times.

Nova sneezed at the thick cloud of dust in the air, but that only succeeded in shooting up more. Cracked glass littered the floor and tubes ranging from all sizes were attatched to the walls, some broken open with a tinted-blue fluid all around it while others had the hatch open. Wires criss-crossed the entire area, from a mess on the floor, dangling from the ceiling, or inside the tubes waiting for something to claim them.

Sly bounced happily through the corridor, smacking all the tubes all throughout. None of them seemed to have any sort of human in them, so it was a relatively harmless activity, even though Seamus cringed and swore under his breath whenever Sly made a little too much noise for a stealth operation.

Ze just kept a close eye on the darkness. If this was a government base, that meant government goons - and not all of them were as lucky as Gassy and had a gas mask on them all the time.

No zombie jump scares this time around.

Trails of the cobalt mystery liquid streaked across the ground and set off an eerie, ice-blue glow (because of course, glowing things mean either science or some kind of Abyss-type magic) that illuminated and exagerrated everyone's expressions. Nova looked angry at the universe, Sly looked like he was having a whale of a time, Seamus looked even more sarcastic than normal, and Ze was almost 100% sure that he looked incredibly uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable than normal.

It led off into the back of the room, which they were all following Sly into. Hopefully there'll be piles upon piles of hot dogs, some sleeping bags, or maybe a flushable toilet.

The thought of food made Ze's stomach growl. The food (if some wheat thrown into a pot with water in it could be considered 'food') they prepared over the fire spilled over ages ago in the fight, and the effects of not eating some kind of dinner was starting to get to him. Notch, he hoped that Chilled was alright by himself. If previous encounters were anything to go by, he'd probably burned down their new house and the surrounding forest. That, or he'll just go to the (ruins of the) City of Machinima and check out Junkyard to see what eats he had in his house.

Junkyard, if that was even his name (Junk never really told them upfront and he had a nagging feeling that Chilled made up that name since he lived in a, you guessed it, junkyard) always had some type of food lying around. Good cook, too. The spaghetti Chilled brought home that one time from him was absolutely wonderful, even though he had to check for a variety of different poisons before eating it because all of the ingredients found in the spaghtti were currently extinct on the island. Still, that made him even hungrier.

He lives his normal life as if the Toxic never happened. He smells faintly of cooked food and spices. He seems to be a normal human. He's normal except for the fact that normal is definitely a sign of something being horribly off nowadays.

The hallway in front of that stopped, only two tubes being at the end instead of something useful like they wanted. One of them was opened, seemingly harshly since the doors were already off the hinges, but the other one was just covered with vines.

"Look at what we have here..." Nova rubbed his hands together and placed them on top of the glass, pressing his face and smooshing his nose against it.

Seamus tilted his head to the side, examining the intact one. "Still shining inside. Think there's something inside?"

"Someone," Sly corrected, looking the tube up and down, "Cyborgs and androids are people too!"

"Yeah," the shark hybrid rolled his eyes and snorted, "People assembled together from metal scraps they get from mines and have a computer for a brain."

Ze didn't add in anything, instead looking closer at the tube.

Above it, a nameplate stood against the test of nature, an engraved letter/number combo on top. Sly paused in front of it before swiftly leaping on top, fiddling around with what looked like some kind of opening mechanism and keypad before Nova shouted for him to, to quote him, "Get the fuck off before you accidentally set off a nuke or some shit!".

Ze eyed the engraving. Probably the serial code for the test subject, or perhaps some kind of rabid animal, inside - if there was somebody alive in there.

ALEKS - wait no, 4L3KS

Well that was confus-

The sound of air escaping out of an enclosed area snapped him out of his thought, the hatch for the tube swinging out and hitting Nova. The liquid fell onto the floor in front of them, unceremoniously splashing both Ze and Seamus and coating them with a blue glow. Sly hung upside-down from the top of the tube, peering into the newcomer's closed eyes and looked cautiously at the wires that still hung off his frame.

All the wires made a clicking sound and detatched from the subject, and when Sly finally dropped down onto the floor to give the rest of them a better view, Ze was pretty surprised at what he saw.

There was a strange metal helmet-like thing covering one part of his face, cracked and revealing the metal and wires underneath. Blue pieces of metal dotted the silver and two horn-antennae-things stuck out where his ears were suppose to be, probably transmitters. The code YL-4L3KS-HD was engraved onto his skin, leaving spaces where fat and flesh were visible,' and the same blue liquid that was currently soaking Ze's red sweater was pulsing through the wires on only his robotic arm like blood through veins.

It was a he, although his brown hair was pretty long. His skin was pale and had a spiraling tattoo that covered the entirety of his right arm, incomprehensible designs of colour and coding. He wore a black sweater except for the bright red letters "HD" as if making a statement, right sleeve ripped for some reason, and a pair of not grimy and dirty jeans.

He slowly opened his eyes (which were a uniform and drab brown) and surveyed the area, his eyes taking in the information after being awakened so rudely.

"Uhm." Sly smiled awkwardly and shuffled backwards, "My name's Sly, what's yours?"

The test subject opened his mouth and started screaming.