Chapter 6 - Visions
Author's note: Hey, readers! I'm so sorry about keeping you waiting for longer than I should have. Don't worry, I'm sure that the events that will unfold in this chapter will make up for it. :D Okay, it's response time!
mike teavee, that's hilarious. :D
The Illuminaughty Pine Tree, you'll find out shortly! ;)
JOHNHAMMOND1993, yep, Mike's act of disabling the security system only made matters worse. By the way, I love Tower of Terror! It's an amazing ride, but I like Rock n' Roller Coaster a tad better. Have you been on that one? :D
Sonny April, you'll find out what those creatures are (or were) very soon!
Gs33022, you'll find out what happens next right after the next sentence! Now, on with the story!
"Now entering the Administration Corridor," an automated voice spoke as the elevator Mike was in continued to descend. A few seconds later, it came to a halt, and the doors opened to reveal a corridor with flickering lights and bloodstains on the walls. As if that wasn't bad enough, the pungent smell of dried blood permeated the air throughout the area.
"Why am I doing this to myself?" Mike whispered as he began to walk down the corridor. He reached for his plasma cutter, knowing that at any time, he might need to use it.
Suddenly, his watch began to beep, and Stella's face appeared in front of him.
"How are you doing, Mike?" she asked sweetly.
"Stella, you psycho bitch," Mike growled. "You nearly left me for dead out there!"
"Now, Mike," Stella said calmly, "you don't need to use that kind of language here. I can tell that you forgot to use your saw on the fuses in the Security Room. If you would have used it to take the system fully offline, the door would have remained open so that you didn't have to worry about being crushed."
"That wouldn't have changed the outcome, Stella," Mike told her. "If anything, your 'advice' would have only made matters worse, since these...things...would have had more ways to get around! They were using the factory's ventilation ducts, so even if every room went into quarantine at once, it would only serve to stop humans, not those creatures! Speaking of which, what even are they, anyway?"
"Hold on a sec," Stella said as she temporarily disappeared from view. Mike could hear the sound of typing in the background, and Stella reappeared a few seconds later. "Apparently, they used to work in the factory. According to the government's database, they were once known as Oompa-Loompas. Something horrific must have happened since the apocalypse for them to become what they are now."
"Are they...zombies?" Mike asked her, and she shook her head.
"No, they aren't," Stella replied. "Zombies move slowly and blindly while attempting to kill their target. These creatures still have a working central nervous system, and a brain that functions almost as well as they did when they were alive. They are quite intelligent, they often work together as a team, and they know what they're doing. And the worst part is, there are several different mutations that happened to these creatures. Some can run fast. Some can jump all over you. The biggest ones can grab you and rip you in half without even trying. You need to be careful at all times. Now hurry!" And with that, Stella was gone.
"Well, go figure," Mike growled, loudly stomping on the floor in frustration. After regaining his composure, he began to jog down the hallway, keeping his eyes and ears out for any further signs of danger, but curiously, there were no more signs of these monsters. No more grunting, no more shadows on the wall, no more sounds of their feet squelching and clicking on the floor.
"Now where am I supposed to go?" Mike asked himself, tapping his watch to bring up the locator. Much to his frustration, the blue line was being projected behind him this time, meaning that he had missed a turn somewhere. "Damn."
He followed the line, backtracking past a few doors until he reached one that was closed. Mike proceeded to turn its large, vault-like handle, but it didn't budge. He tried using his locator again, but it still pointed him towards the locked door.
"Are you freaking kidding me?!" Mike yelled. He kicked the door with his foot as hard as he could, and it did nothing but cause him to hop around while clutching his foot in pain. A few minutes later, as the pain slowly began to subside, he proceeded to turn around to go back the way he came, but he suddenly noticed an access card perched on top of a narrow shelf.
"This had better be it," Mike said, sighing as he grabbed the card, and he held it up against the door. A loud beep was heard, and the door automatically opened to reveal another locker room. "What a stupid mission. I'm getting a feeling that this factory might either be a gigantic booby trap, or that I'm intentionally being tricked into something by either Stella or the government." He walked into the room, and after closing the door behind him, he found a small, yellow hard candy with Wonka's logo printed on the transparent plastic wrapper. Beneath the logo, it read, "Lemon Flavored Healing Candy".
"Well, at least it's not chocolate," Mike said as he took it and stashed it in a storage compartment fitted to the side of his suit. "And yes, I hate to say that I still detest chocolate. That's one trait that hasn't disappeared with my amnesia, all for the worse."
He walked back towards the door, but just before he touched the handle to open it, a click was heard, and the door locked itself.
"Foreign beings detected."
Mike gasped, remembering that automated voice from before and the horror that unfolded as a result, but to add insult to injury, there was no escape route this time. He whipped out his plasma cutter just as something dropped down from a vent in the ceiling. It was the same type of creature that pursued Mike on his way to the service elevator. He instinctively shot it in the chest with a burst of hot plasma, all to no avail.
"W-what the hell is going on?" Mike stammered as the unscathed creature began to confidently strut towards him. He shot it in the abdomen over and over again, but the plasma beam did absolutely nothing. Rather, it only agitated the creature, which pointed its tentacles straight at Mike's neck, complete with deadly barbs at their tips.
With split-second timing, Mike quickly shot a plasma beam towards the tentacles, and the creature screamed as they were cleanly severed from its body. It helplessly curled itself into the fetal position, and Mike delivered a final shot of plasma to the head to end its wrath once and for all.
"Quarantine lockdown lifted," the automated voice spoke, and Mike breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank God," he said as the door's lock disengaged with a click. "At least I know that those bastards can be defeated effectively."
His big toe was still throbbing from when he kicked the door earlier, and he hastily unwrapped the Healing Candy before popping it into his mouth. He didn't even bother to suck on it; instead choosing to let it slide down his throat. Seconds later, a warm, euphoric feeling radiated throughout his entire body, and the throbbing quickly vanished.
"So these things really work," Mike said in awe as he stared at the empty wrapper in his hand. "Is it true they're actually candies and not over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs? If they're indeed candies, then Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket really did deserve as much fame as they must have. It's too bad I don't remember anything about them from back in the day, because I know that I was alive and well back then."
Mike used his locator once again, and it led him past a few more doors and around a series of tight corners, until he saw a door at the end of the hallway. Its discovery would have been unremarkable if it weren't for the beautiful blonde woman leaning up against it. Her long, silky hair flowed over her shoulders and halfway down her back like a golden waterfall. She wore a scant, swimsuit-like outfit that covered just enough of her body before things became vulgar, and her piercing blue eyes were locked on to Mike as if they were laser beams.
"There you are, Mike." Her voice sounded awfully familiar. "It's me, Stella."
Mike gasped in shock. "Y-you're Stella? I have so many questions to ask you about this mission!"
"There will be plenty of time for that later," Stella said as she reached for Mike's right hand. Mike quickly retracted his hand before she could grab it. "I just want you to check out this room over here," she continued, pointing at the door. She pressed a button on the wall, and the doors slid open to reveal an enormous room that looked like a laboratory, complete with test tubes, computers, and various control systems.
"What's of significance in here, Stella?" Mike inquired, but he was beginning to grow suspicious. "Are you sure—"
"Just get inside!" Stella shouted, her normally soft expression replaced by that of sheer fury. "NOW!" She used a special ring-like attachment on her middle finger to fire a purple beam at Mike. The beam immobilized him, and with a casual flick of Stella's wrist, Mike was sent flying into the room, landing on the floor with a hard thud. The doors slammed shut from behind, and Mike's heart was pounding like a jackhammer, dreading to hear the voice that said the room was about to go into quarantine.
But the announcement never came. Instead, he turned around to find out that the door had completely disappeared, and it was replaced by a solid wall.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO, STELLA?!" Mike screamed in anger. He frantically looked around the whole laboratory, but there was absolutely no door in sight, just four cold, gray walls that were as solid as solid can be. "I've got to be dreaming. This is impossible! I'm gonna be trapped inside this room for the rest of my life!"
To make matters worse, some of the test tubes rotated into a horizontal position, and they turned out to be nozzles. Without warning, a thick, brown liquid started to gush out of those nozzles, creating puddles on the formerly sterile floor.
Mike paled with terror as soon as he realized what this liquid was. "Chocolate?! NOOOOO!"
The molten chocolate was spewing from at least fifty more nozzles until it covered the entire floor in a thin layer, and as more of the warm, sweet liquid filled the room, it gradually rose higher and higher, like what happens when you fill a bathtub.
As the chocolate reached Mike's knees, he looked down in horror as his protective metal suit slowly disintegrated around him, until all that remained was bare skin. Mike was starting to hyperventilate, especially when the chocolate reached his chest a minute later. He tried to swim, only to realize that his feet were firmly anchored to the floor.
"I...I...this c-can't be real!" Mike screamed, pounding on the wall with his bare fists. At this point, the chocolate had submerged his shoulders, and it was now approaching his chin.
Mike instinctively tilted his head back to keep his nose and mouth above the chocolate, but it didn't take long before he felt the sickly sweet liquid run down his tongue. Essentially, he was being force-fed the very thing he hated most.
If this is what it's like to drown in chocolate, Mike thought as the chocolate was beginning to fill his nose, throat, and esophagus, I can't possibly think of a worse way to go.
Suddenly, everything turned black, and before he knew it, he was standing outside the very same door where he had met Stella. He was fully clad in his suit, there were no traces of chocolate anywhere on his body, and Stella was nowhere to be seen.
Mike clutched his chest just before falling to his knees, barely able to process what had happened to him.
"No way," he whispered, profusely shaking his head as he did so. "Was I...hallucinating?"
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Let me know what you thought of it, and hang in there for the next one. I promise I'll update it more promptly than I did with this one. Stay tuned!