Progenitor: Chapter 13
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As Mac ran through the halls of the old Medhall building, he found the only thing he could truly rely on was his memory and his ears.
In this darkness, he could scarcely see a thing, even with the road flare. The red light that shone upon everything only served to warp the meager circle of illumination around him into a twisted crimson vision of itself. The way it bathed the few things he could see in that scarlet light set him on edge, it made every shadow look as if it was some nightmarish creature from the depths of hell.
Dust and ash filled his nose and choked his lungs with every hungry breath he sucked down. He could scarcely feel anything other than the sporadic rumbling of the building as people moved around along with that thing chasing them. Combined with the gunfire, Mac was starting to feel like he was reliving the 14th.
Pops and bangs echoed through the devastated building. The staccato of submachine guns fired at flitting shadows, the punch of a shotgun blasting through plaster, and the roar of his fellow merchants fighting for their lives filled the air. All coming together like a symphony of terror.
Then he heard a heavy thump reverberate through the floorboards, followed by a familiar dull rumbling hum. Mac stopped, cocking his ear and straining to make sure he was hearing things right. A second later, the hall flashed with light and the buzz of electricity.
Mac winced, shielding his eyes with a hand. When he lowered it, he saw that the ceiling lights had come on, the ones that still worked at least. He figured it was probably less than half that was supposed to, but the patchy illumination was leagues better than the darkness of moments ago.
He breathed a sigh of relief, wiping some sweat from his brow. When Mac noticed how much the sound of it stood out, he realized that the building had gone quiet. The once thunderous cacophony fell into nothing. All he could hear was the mild hum of fluorescents, his racing heart, and his heaving breath.
He looked around cautiously, suspicious about what such a calm in the middle of the storm could mean.
"Mac!"
He jumped, aiming his borrowed revolver at the source with a trembling hand. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, it was all he could do to keep from dropping the gun in shock.
"Jess?" He blinked, staring at her like a slack-jawed idiot.
The thin slip of a pale woman rolled her eyes in that way of hers, practically drowning in her thick acid green jacket. She smacked the gum in her mouth, brushed aside her short brown hair, and gave him a dull look.
"Yeah, no shit numbnuts."
"I-"
"Save it," She brushed him off, "We're gathering in the central hall. That's where everything's at, generator, radios, guns, you name it."
"Uh...yeah." Mac nodded dumbly, he'd figured as such. It was where he'd been headed in the first place, it'd just taken him longer in the dark.
She gestured for him to follow and he jogged to catch up to her.
"You seen Karl?" he ventured after a moment.
"Yeah," Jess smirked, "He's having the time of his life with his new toy."
Mac frowned, knowing the gun Karl was no doubt worshipping as they spoke.
"I haven't seen you around in a while."
She shrugged. "Been running errands here and there."
Mac nodded absently, he figured as much.
They walked in companionable silence for a while before entering the central hall. Cracked stone pillars lined the sides, and what might have once been a polished marble lending a sense of wealth and gravitas. The ceiling stretched high above them and rows of doors were in the walls, all leading to the wide array of elevators at the opposite end of the long chamber.
Sure enough, there were dozens of other Merchants in there, all of them arming up with various guns they'd scavenged from around the Burnout. The center of the room was dominated by the large rumbling generator that looked like it was cobbled together out of rusty scrap and strong language.
Next to it was a bulky radio set with a couple of guys fiddling with it. All it was playing was some kind of static, so Mac figured they were trying to get it to work so they could call for help. Though, it sounded like they were getting close to something given the faint snippets of words and a catchy tune they managed to catch. Maybe someone was blasting their own mixtape from a pirated station nearby?
Mac shrugged and turned away. He didn't know the radio game, that was their problem. Instead, someone else had caught his eye.
Leaning against a column and brandishing his massive assault shotgun with a drum magazine and one part pride and another apprehension, was Karl. He looked like a viper wound up and ready to strike at anything and anyone that gave him the excuse.
When Mac and Jess got closer, Karl noticed them and looked up. He gave them a wave and a smile that was all teeth.
"Well Jess," he chuckles, "You're a sight for sore eyes. Surprised you're still alive too, Mac."
Mac scowled at the larger man. "Yeah, no thanks to you."
Karl belts out a laugh and pats Mac on the back. "You made it out alright! And look!"
He spread his arms out to the whole lobby. "You've got nothing to fear! Whatever Nilbog wannabe shit for brains is coming after us ain't getting through ol' Bessy!" He grinned as he patted his gun proudly.
"In fact-!"
THWUMP
Suddenly, all the lights went out and the room was bathed in darkness once more. Shouting erupted, chaos filling the hall. Through it all, Mac could still hear the loud rumble of the generator at work.
But underneath that, just at the edge of his hearing, Mac could hear the chitting, slithering, skittering sound of a thousand creatures snickering in the darkness.
Then he felt the earth shake beneath his feet. Something was coming for them, something big.
"Karl-" Mac started.
"Yeah," Karl cut him off, standing up straight and moving to get a sightline on the door the sound was coming from. "I heard it too."
Karl walked up to the door and kicked it open, revealing the gaping maw of a hall shrouded in darkness.
"Come on you son of a bitch," Karl groused, hefting the shotgun up to his shoulder.
The series of thumps coming down the hall grew louder and more frequent, yet the all-encompassing shroud of darkness hung steadfast, revealing not so much as an inch of the massive frame lumbering towards them.
Karl let out a guttural shout and fired.
BOOM
The gun's roar was like the clap of thunder, blinding and deafening all at once. A sound so loud you could taste it. In an instant, the world turned deaf, all other noise oppressed into silence, as Mac flinched under the sheer concussive force of such a beast going off. The massive eight gauge explosive slug hurtled down the hall, only to tear a massive hole in the opposite wall when it detonated, sending another shockwave of light and sound down the hall.
Then he fired again.
BOOM
And again.
BOOM
And again.
BOOM
The drum mag fed the auto-shotgun round after round, and Karl fired them one after another into the dark abyss. With each miss, the tiny burst of light on the other end illuminated something moving towards them. It's footsteps like the rumble of thunder, it's indistinct bulk like a wall of writhing muscle.
Mac could see Jess shouting from beside Karl. He couldn't hear the words, but her lips screamed, "Kill that fuck!"
Then, Mac spotted something down the hall. A flicker of movement, gone just as soon as it appeared, but it almost seemed like something in the hall had darted to the right…
BOOM
"Karl!" Mac shouted, trying to get his attention, but the man couldn't hear him over the roar of his gun. It seemed, at that moment, that the only sound that was allowed to exist in that hall was that of rolling thunder.
Still, he tried again.
"Kar-!"
BOOM
Mac froze, his heart jumping into his throat.
BOOM
Another flash of light, revealing an open door that he knew had been closed. On the other side of the door, a dark abyss.
BOOM
A giant's dark chitinous hand reached out, covered in writhing tendrils and grasping mandibles.
BOOM
An enormous frame is illuminated in the dark.
BOOM
Mac shouted, he screamed.
BOOM
Nobody could hear him. There was only the rolling thunder.
BOOM
The thunder and the beast.
BOOM
The beast reaches forward
BOO-
And suddenly there was nothing.
Like a gaping wound in reality, where once was deafening sound, now there is a deafening silence.
Mac blinks, unable to comprehend this new reality.
Karl is gone. Simply...gone. The dark abyss and the beast their only companion.
Suddenly, a battle cry echoes through the room. Gunfire erupts, flashes of muzzle fire illuminating the darkness in fits and starts.
Mac could see walls torn apart by gunfire. He saw dozens of...things descend from the ceiling. They weaved between the bullets, darting through the crowd. In another flash of light, he sees something latch onto a woman's neck. A man tries to tear something off his face.
Even as this chaos unfolds around him, bullets flying, friends screaming, assaulted by some fresh new abomination. It was like something straight out of the horrors of the Nilbog campaign.
Mac screamed, unable to take it. He turned around, ready to take Jess's arm and get out of there.
A tendril lashed out from the darkness, wrapping itself around Mac's head and neck. He felt a trail of pinpricks, like ice-cold needles dancing along his skin. The surface of its skin almost looked coated in tar. He froze in terror and looked down the long tentacle, only to find something incomprehensible at its end.
"J-Jess?" He whimpered.
She looked at him with all nine eyes spread across her face, each one pitch-black yet shining with bright reflection along with every muzzle blast. Her arms split open into long tentacles, branching out like the roots of a tree only to ensnare unsuspecting Merchants in their grasp, just like him. She parted her lips. On a human, he might have called it a smile, but for Jess, her mouth split open to reveal a line unnatural needle-like teeth stretching from ear to ear.
"Hush Mac."
Everything was going numb, his mind felt slow and his eyelids heavy. He collapsed to the ground, unable to stand up anymore. He tried to fight it, but the darkness rose up like a wave and consumed him. As he was dragged from the waking world, he heard her whisper in his ear, her tone soft and multitone.
"Only dreams, now."
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Finally
I put the last merchant down with a level of care that surprised me. The more I'd looked into things here, the more their actions seemed to be born of desperation. That, and most of these guys were at the bottom of the rung, just doing anything they could to survive out in the Burnout.
That didn't forgive the experiments that had resulted in over a dozen deaths, or what they'd tried with Emma, but it did provide a measure of context. Not everyone here was a raging asshole, and not everyone had much choice in the matter.
Maybe that's just the memories talking I considered as I pulled myself back together.
Various scattered lumps of flesh, skittering selves, and lumbering abominations clumped together, the meat melting together at the seams. It bubbled up, twisting and writhing, protein chains linking up as tendrils of flesh wove themselves back into my desired form.
I suppose that's what I get for taking them I think as I once again took a human form, leaving a few recon selves scattered about nearby just to keep an ear out, I looked around the room with human eyes.
All the Merchants in the building were stable and unconscious. The cocktail I'd used to render them unconscious a combination of a strong anesthetic, sleep aid, and amnestic. It'd sap the fight from them, put them into a natural, if deep, self-sustaining sleep, and they'd be barely able to remember anything about the past few hours. What little they could remember would be so muddled with the bizarre dreams they'd had that, combined with complete lack of any remaining physical evidence of my more nightmarish presence, they wouldn't be able to really tell what did and didn't happen. While I'd been at that, I'd also decided to leech some memories out of them. Nothing specific, just a surface scan of brain patterns to get a general read.
Suffice to say, most of them weren't thinking about how to get babies hooked on crack.
Some of them had been hit by the stray bullets flying around. Nothing fatal this time, but looking at some of the injuries I realized I'd really just gotten lucky. Honestly, this was the kind of thing Mr. Smith drilled into me and Taylor's head enough that I should have probably known better. A stray round can go through walls and houses before finally killing some random bystander a whole block over.
"Stupid," I muttered as I made my way around patching people up. "Mental note, even if bullets can't kill you, everyone else isn't so lucky."
I couldn't replace anything, not in any permanent way, but I could give them the best damn bandaid in existence. I cleaned out the wounded, dug out the bullet if it was still there, triggered rapid coagulation, platelet collection, cell growth, and cleared out any internal blood pooling inside them. It was the kinda thing that would need a full trauma team, a clean room, and no doubt thousands of dollars in state of the art equipment, some of which was ironically enough made by Medhall. I could do it dozens of times simultaneously as an afterthought.
"Well, at least that's over with," I muttered, getting up and walking over to the row of elevators at the back of the lobby.
There were seven of them, each no doubt elegant and refined in their own way back when the building was still running. Now, they were falling apart, rusted, and in some cases torn to pieces.
All except the central one.
The platinum slabs still held a measure of luster, the doors rigid and aligned. There was even a dim red light at the top of it, making it stand out in the darkness.
"Red light, huh?" I rubbed my chin. It reminded me of one of the memories I'd picked up from the corpses outside, but it didn't fully align.
It was also a sign that there was another source of power for the building somewhere. Unfortunately, I could also tell it was locked. Even by my standards, the security for it was airtight. Literally, in this case. The whole thing was hermetically sealed and ensured that I couldn't get so much as a microbe through. Looking at the sonar maps of the building, I could tell easily enough that this was the only shaft that went down into the sub-basement.
"I guess Medhal doesn't fuck around."
I walked up to the door and knocked on it with the back of my fist. There was a dull, thick, bang from it.
"I'm going through you somehow," I mused as I looked at the pad beside the door. It looked like it was some kind of fancy security scanner, the type of thing a rich biomedical corporation working with The tinkertech corporation would have. "Or I could just rip you open."
Probably wouldn't be that hard, all told. The central elevator did look bigger and more robust than the others, but all I needed was to make a crack in the armor and I could slip in.
"I suppose we'll find out-" I stopped.
Pausing, I looked around with my recon-selves, probing the depths of the building for another ping.
Then I found it.
"Well...fuck," I sighed, turning back to renter the ruined depths of the humbled skyscraper. "Looks like I missed one."
So I guess that's how you got here. I thought as I directed my attention out of the building, seeing the frame of what looked like a motorcycle parked down the street. But shouldn't I have heard a motorcycle rolling up?
With how dark things were out here in the burnout, I'd had to turn up my night vision, which meant sacrificing color and definition, which meant I couldn't really get much in the way of details for it. Given the fact I hadn't been able to hear it, I had my suspicions it was a Squealer special stealth bike, but without getting a good look it could just be a fancy Ladon E-bike. Then again, they could have pulled up during the firefight. It's not like that was exactly quiet.
Oh well, I shrugged, dividing my body into a thousand slivers in the dark, it doesn't matter either way.
"This shouldn't take long."
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A/n:
Alright, I honestly feel kinda sorry about this chapter. Not because it's bad, but because it treads a lot of the same ground as the last one.
Now, the reason for that is that 12 and 13 were originally the
same chapter. If things had gone the way I'd wanted, this whole horror thing with Mac would have been over and done with in one chapter, and then the next would have gone over the extra. Instead, it ran long and I figured I could split them in half to give me some more room to breath. Which it did, got chap 14 just about done.
So I'm sorry if you guys are getting tired of that theme. I promise we'll be on something new soon-ish.
Anyways, thanks again Trav for all your help with this. You're a great sounding board and you fix the grammatical nightmare that I'm sure this unedited work is before you work your magic on it.
Let me know any comments or concerns ya'll got, until then,
Bye for now.