Delta didn't know how much time had passed after she started walking down the stairs. It certainly felt like quite a while, all she knew that she was just surrounded in darkness. The occasional scream, screech of metal or other ghostly noise would flow into the tunnel, joined by a cold wind. After who knows how long, Delta finally came to the bottom of the stairs, light slowly filling the area. She found herself in a large room clouded by a pink mist, an odd squelching echoing off the unseen walls. Delta readied her weapon as she walked into the mist...fully knowing she didn't have a clue what to do, but instinct was telling her to go forward. The room felt both empty and not empty at the same time, like something that wasn't there was watching her. A few minutes passed of Delta making her way through the maze, the mist turning to a fog, which got thicker and thicker as she progressed.
She froze up when a red dot appeared in the fog, unmoving. She tried to move, but her body didn't react an inch, frozen in position. The red dot began to approach, the squelching getting louder as it did until the owner of the dot was shown – they looked almost identical to the person that Delta had taken her weapon from, their skin a sickly green with a sea blue set of tentacles. Their eyes were covered by a pair of sunglasses, the left eye being where the glow came from. Their armour was rusty and battered, revealing a lot of their skin. The further down Delta's eyes went to take in this person, the more she noticed the green got lighter but it was covered in more pustules...the sight of which creating an odd, sour sensation in Delta's throat and stomach.
The sick green person opened their mouth to speak, a torrent of thick black ink oozing from their mouth down to the floor, Delta's hands starting to quiver as they got even closer, dragging their feet in the black trail they set out in front of them. They suddenly released an ungodly screech and leaped towards Delta. The young Octoling immediately swung her weapon up with the slim end facing her attacker. Her finger pulled down on the trigger, a brief crack sounding followed by an ear-splitting BANG, the sound reverberating throughout the room. On the other side of the wall, two being stopped in their tracks, one of them holding a large metal dragon. They exchanged a glance before continuing on their way.
Delta's shoulders rose and fell with her heavy breaths. The head of her attacker had been blown wide open, scattering a mix of black and green along the floor. Delta slowly lowered her weapon...what had she just done? Questions immediately started running through her, was that a bad thing to do? What even happened?
As she began to approach the body, she then let out a yelp of fear when she saw the body twitching, its fingers curling into fists before uncurling as soon as it happened. The twitching got more and more violent, Delta immediately running for cover behind an upturned piece of metal. The body finally stopped moving after a small while, finally coming to rest in a twisted position. The tentacles that had been blown away by the shot melted into the green ink, silence falling once more...until the echoes of screams continued to permeate the air.
Delta slunk away from the body, taking a corner in the maze she had previously passed on. Only two turns later she found another red dot in the fog, marching straight for her. With sweat dripping down her forehead, Delta shot back into the hall she just came from, weapon clutched tightly by her chest. The person marched by without a second thought, looking identical to the one Delta had just blown to bits. Ignoring the similarities, Delta quickly rounded the corner where the patrol had come from, the fog suddenly clearing after she passed through another hall to find herself in a room with a floor made of toxic sludge. Delta immediately pinched her nose, gagging lightly.
"Ick..." She muttered. A loud bang suddenly shook the room to its very core, Delta's uneasy legs giving out from the shaking. Her weapon slipped from her grasp, teetering dangerously near the edge of the small platform that was her only solid ground among the sludge. A small squeak escaped the girl as the weapon just hung there, an inch closer and it would be lost to the brown-green mess. Delta slowly crawled forward, her fingers touching the end of the gun, gently pulling it closer as she curled them up. After a few moments of careful pulling, Octavia finally got a solid grip on the weapon, yanking it back to her. Using it as support to stand up, she silently examined the current room, only to find...nothing. That was until she gave her own platform another solid look, finding a pink button on a pole. She walked over to it, gently pressing it down.
Nothing.
Delta sighed, slumping down to a squat...what was she supposed to do now? Nothing came to mind, and she had no way of talking to Marcus or C.Q Cumber either. She was about to turn and leave until a whirring noise filled the room, lights of all different colours flashing into life, revealing this room to be a long, long hallway with the exit at the other end barely visible to Delta. A low rumbling sounded, the room shaking as a collection of rails were raised up from underneath the surface of the sludge, their rusted metal dripping of the stinking liquid. A faded light appeared on the platform as the rails snapped into place, Delta barely able to make out the word "GO" on it. Her foot gingerly left the ground, gently touching the rail. In an instant she found herself torn from the platform by a tremendous force from the rails, sparks flying behind her with her wind flapping in the wind as she shot along the metal, releasing numerous yelps of shock before she finally got her bearings, seeing herself hurtling along the track "OK...I was-wasn't expecting that."
The rails suddenly veered off to the right, a door opening in the wall to reveal the wide open space of nothingness that was the rest of the metro system. Delta recalled the tunnel opening up at points to reveal a wide expanse of nothingness besides floating objects and mist.
And now she was smack in the middle of it.
Looking over her shoulder, Delta saw the silhouette of the room disappearing into the mist, already having lost track of the one she had previously been in. Looking back to the direction she was hurtling, a bright light faded into vision from within the mist, Delta squinting at it, but was unable to see what it was. Her attempts to figure it out were cut off by the whirring of helicopter blades, a large yet rather scrappy looking helicopter flying into her view from behind, surrounded by Octarians wearing metallic hats with whirring blades of their own. An Octoling threw the side door of the flying machine off with ease, hanging over the edge with a rocket launcher in one arm. Delta found her instincts take over, she immediately pulled her weapon off her back and shot the rocket launcher out of the green Octoling's grasp, watching it smack against the rail and tumble into the abyss. Delta took a moment to register that...it was like her body acted on its own.
The Octoling shook their fist at the girl in response, snapping her fingers. One of the flying Octarians sped up before arching around and hurtling straight for Delta. The Octoling grabbed her weapon, only for an empty click to sound instead of anything actually happening. The sharp blades of the Octarian's hat were getting closer, presenting Delta with only one choice.
The moment she felt the fans were too close for comfort, she leaped off the rails, the Octarian quickly turning to face her as it passed under her only for Delta to stomp directly onto it. Her boots were drenched in the bloody remains of the Octarian, their metallic hat being sent flying off, its movements sporadic as it darted about until it came hurtling for the helicopter, smashing right through its tail, which spun off and smashed straight through the rail behind Delta. The rest of the helicopter began to spin out of control, the Octarians fleeing in an instant. The Octoling, however, leaped from the helicopter down to Delta, landing right on top of her. Delta's back ached with how far she was forced to bend back from the impact of the Octoling, who was now trying to force them both off the rail.
"IF I'M GOING TO DIE, YOU'RE COMING WITH ME!" The Octoling screamed, their black spit dotting on Delta's face.
"I...doubt that!" Delta yelled, using all her might throw the Octoling off her. They bounced off another rail that had suddenly appeared, staining that section in their blood as the sharp edge cut right through them, their two separate pieces falling into the abyss below.
Before Delta could recollect herself, a horn echoed through the air, Delta now seeing the source of the light being another one of those metal carriages – and it was careening right for her.
Starting to hyperventilate, Delta's eyes darted about to find a way to escape the oncoming train. She could only find one solution: jumping to the other rail. Would that work, though, it had cut the other Octoling clean in half already…
Another horn reminded her of what little time she had left, taking a deep breath she made the jump to the other rail. Her upper body lunged forward as she landed, her whole body dangerously leaning close to falling before Delta was able to right herself, the silver train screaming past her. Delta saw the shadow of another room approaching, no signs of more trains coming her way, either.
"Looks like smooth sailing from here..." She thought to herself, ever so carefully keeping her balance on the rail as she hurtled towards the next room. A door split open as she approached, Delta preparing to come to a stop only for the rail to cut off suddenly and throw her into another dark room. She smacked into the floor with a loud KANG, telling her there was indeed a floor to this one. Red lights suddenly filled the room with blaring alarms sounding, Delta immediately scrambling to her feet. A low rumbling filled the air, the shivering Octoling backing up in fear, only for a pair, no, 2 pairs, of yellow eyes to appear among the red. The alarms stopped, the red turning to a white light to reveal the owner of the eyes: a bio-organic monster almost solely composed of the green ink that Delta was finding everywhere, mixed with the black that the Octolings secreted from their mouths. Its mouth opened to reveal a whole horde of teeth, rows upon rows of the razor sharp things. The beast released a ground shaking roar, Delta clenching her fists with a determined look on her face.
ELDRITCH HORROR REBORN – THE TWISTED