Chapter 27

"What do you mean that Eric Nebel is dead?" Razor asked the female scientist as they sat in an abandoned personnel relaxation room in the underground lab, drinking soda and trying to piece together the events that had unfolded over the past week. She nodded, "Yes," she replied, "He was killed, by that S.T.A.R.S. team that the police department sent three days ago.

"Why did they kill him, Sarah?"

"For his research on the chemical that he was developing in the lower labs…."

"How did they…?"

"… Know about his work?"

"Yeah."

"They sent someone from the precinct to act as a scientist here and shadow Eric for years. When the undercover cop called the S.T.A.R.S. team in… they shot him down right on spot in front of me in his lab."

"Do you know of the project they were working on that involved a young man named Mike Arevir as the test specimen?"

"Oh yeah, you mean the Chimera project?"

"Yeah, I guess…"

"How did you know about that?"

"Mike was my friend that Dr. Nebel's experiment ruined his life."

"The B.O.W. wasn't supposed to become attached to living…."

He narrowed his eyes, "What did you just say?!!"

"The B.O.W. wasn't supposed to gain affection towards any other people or even himself for that matter. Unfortunate, too… he was so handsome…"

"Did he know about anything that was done to him prior to his death?"

"No, I don't think so…"

"Damn it, bitch!!! Don't you have any idea what you bastards have done?!!! By killing my friend or the B.O.W. as you call him, you have released a creature into the city that will stop at nothing to kill all living beings around it!!!!"

She gasped in shock, "I… I had no idea that Eric's experiment would lead to that…. Then that must mean… OH NO!!!!" She darted to her feet suddenly then ran out of the room.

"What the fuck?" he ran out and followed her, not taking too much time to catch up to her "Why did you run out all of a sudden?"

"I remembered that Eric injected himself with that stuff he put into your friend!"

"So now there are two of these damn monsters to take care of?"

"Not unless there's an indestructible lock on the containment capsule that the leading scientists placed Eric's body in."

"Why would they put him in there?"

"They might have expected that Eric was going to do research on himself or something like that." She ducked into a doorway and entered a room, he followed her. The inside of the room was dark but illuminated by the light from inside of specimen tubes that contained various monstrosities: a human-sized plant with a bulb about as big as his upper body, what appeared to be a skinless humans with no eyes and exposed brains, and some large things that looked like scaled gorillas.

"What the hell are these things?!"

"Early experiments that are just lying dormant until the time for awakening. Here we have an Ivy, a Licker, and a Hunter."

They stopped at a large tube with some kind of creature that partially resembled a heavily built man but with much larger muscles on arms and legs. He estimated in his mind that the creature was about nine feet tall and it looked as though it might be able to rip the beast that was his friend limb from limb. "Damn…" was the only thing he could say.

"No, he couldn't Trans-mutate this fast!" she screamed

"You didn't know about this?"

"No…"

He looked up to its eyes and stepped back when it opened them, Shit!!! He yelled in his thoughts, This is just too fucked up now!!!

The thing inside the capsule pounded one clawed fist through the glass and stepped out, stopping in front of Sarah. It lowered its head and expanded its chest as if it were giving them an opportunity to admire it. Its flesh was mottled brown-gray-green-black, with lighter patches that almost resembled human skin, though it was mostly pebbled like elephant hide and scaled in some places. The head was pear shaped, set at a slant on a thick muscular neck, with the round end at the top and the slimmer end at the bottom of the face. The entire narrow end of the head was composed of a snout-like protrusion and jaws. When it opened its mouth to hiss, the pointed teeth within were shark-like in their sharpness and amount. The darting tongue was dark, quick and utterly inhuman. Its entire face was lumpy; in addition to a pair of hornlike knobs on the forehead, there were odd outward curves and inwards curves that served no purpose, plus tumorous knots and bone or other tissue. On its brow and radiating downward from its cataract whitened eyes, throbbing arteries and swollen veins shone just beneath the skin.

Sarah was frozen in awe and terror while Razor just kept backing away from the huge man-thing by the passing second. "Uh, Sarah…?" he said with fear in his voice, "Move… your… ass… NOW!!!"

"I… I can't move....!!!!" she screamed in terror, "I'm too scared!!!" She glanced back at him, "Go!!!"

As she turned her attention back to the monstrosity standing before her, it moved so fast everything seemed to be in slow motion for Razor. Slender and equipped with a handgun, Sarah would've had an easier chance of surviving a fight with a regular man with tendencies to rape or mug her on the street, but the monster was of course not an ordinary man or even quite a man at all. And the young woman's shock at her attacker's appearance was a grave disadvantage, leaving her paralyzed. It slammed into its prey and drove all five talons on its left hand into the girl's belly, extremely deep. At the same time, seizing its prey's throat with its other hand, it destroyed the girl's windpipe, ripping out the voice box and vocal cords, ensuring silence from her. Blood spurted from several arteries and death glazed her eyes even before it tore open her belly. Steaming internal organs cascaded onto the hard tile floor, and the dead girl collapsed into her own entrails.

As Razor saw the thing descend to Sarah's body to consume its prey, he saw his chance for escape and took it, running out of the room to find either Kat or Vash, wherever they might have been.