Six Hours Ago

Like the rest of the base, the restrooms were mostly metallic, though UAC had attempted to make them feel less sterile by installing tiles. Tiles that were now broken and cracked, slick with blood. A trail of blood led into one of the stalls, as though someone or something had been dragged into it. Lara could hear a snuffling sound, heavy breathing, and the whir-clack of a mechanical motor.

The breathing and whirring grew louder, and a large shadow moved along one wall. It was a hulking shape, accompanied by heavy footsteps and that incessant whir-clacking sound. The shape stopped, then turned towards her. In the dim light from a flickering lamp, she could make out mounds of pink muscle and a snout like a pig's over a maw filled with deadly teeth.

Lara nearly dropped her gun. In the hours of searching the city, she'd only seen the aftermath. Bodies dangling from ceilings, blood smears on the floors, and sounds in the distance. Screaming or crying, and once, singing.

But this thing looked like a demonic, disfigured pig with mechanical hind legs. Blood stained it's mouth and she thought she saw the fabric of a lab coat caught in it's teeth. It was close, too close, and smelled like death and urine. Swallowing her panic, she aimed her gun and fired two shots into it's head. It squealed, rearing up and then slamming back onto the ground, shattering tiles underneath its front hooves. She rolled out of the way, nearly slipping in blood as it smashed into a stall door. Lara climbed onto the sink, aimed again and kept firing until the creature stopped moving. She crouched, watching it for a full minute before she felt safe enough to climb back down to the floor.

"Demons," She muttered, reaching into her pack and pulling out her tablet print outs. The creature resembled some of the carvings in the tablet. "Something dangerous, at least. No wonder they tried to warn us, but who'd believe it? Ancient superstitions..."

She was exhausted. She needed a break, or a rest. But she had to find Sam first. She'd heard no word from anyone since the whole thing started. She'd tried sending a mass message on her PDA, but no one had responded.

Lara refused to entertain the idea that her friends might be dead, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

Two Hours Ago

The Marines had been taken by surprise. Some of them were folded over like pieces of paper, others had been shredded. Few had been able to get to their weapons in time. Lara stepped gingerly over one woman, and opened the locker. She replenished her clips, threw a medical kit into her backpack and pulled out a change of clothing. She was soaked in blood, and gave the locker shower a brief, longing look. But Sam had made Lara watch enough horror movies to know that that was just an invitation to disaster.

She stripped quickly, settling with wiping herself down with a wet towel while keeping her back to the wall. The woman's pants were a little loose and the military green tank top was a little snug, but Lara could live with that.

The real prize was the armory. Alex's magic worked like a charm, giving her access to a variety of weapons and armor. She grabbed the armor first. Green, like most of the rest of the Marines' gear, with lightweight, reinforced plates to protect her torso, legs and arms. For the first time since all hell broke lose, Lara felt a measure of protection. She set aside the helmet to sort through the weapons.

Lara strapped a grand total of six pistols to various parts of her body, slung an assault rifle across her shoulders and stored a shotgun against her back. It had always puzzled her how well armed the base was. She'd thought it was partly because the military funded so much of the UAC's activities, but now she knew better.

UAC knew exactly what they were dealing with.

She was reaching for her helmet when something slammed into her. Her head collided with a security console and dazed, she fell to the ground. Lara got her hands up in time to push back against whatever was on her. Her vision was blurry, but it looked like a woman. One clawed hand cut through the floor to her right, and she kicked away, rising to her feet and getting the assault rifle into her hands.

The woman reared up, and then kept rearing up. Lara pushed blood away from her eyes as eight legs came into view, supporting a large, spider-like body. The "woman" shrieked at her, and Lara fired an assault rifle for the first time in her life. It sounded nothing like a movie, the sound like a rapid buzzing as bullets tore into the monster. Lara dodged to the left, only to find herself lifted into the air and thrown against the bulkhead.

The spider woman lifted her hands, and one of the weapons lockers was ripped from the wall and flung towards Lara. Lara fired blindly and dove underneath the creature. She crawled out into the locker room and bolted for the door. Claws cut through the air where her head was and she jerked back as one left a cut down her face, barely missing her left eye.

The claws belonged to a creature the size of a human, grey skinned and dessicated, with bony scales on it's arm and ten small eyes in a large head. Lara recoiled back and the thing shrieked at her. It lobbed some kind of ball of fire that seared the bulkhead above her head. Lara tossed the now empty rifle aside and pulled out the shotgun. "Come and get me you piece of shit!"

Before she had the chance to fire, the spider burst through the reinforced window of the armory, shoving ten-eyes aside. The smaller creature leapt to its feet and flung fire at the spider.

While the two became occupied with a sudden turf war, Lara took the opportunity to escape. The pounding in her head came in waves and her face stung. Twisted pigs, something out of an arachnophobe's nightmares, and now what ever that… imp thing was. Lara felt like she was trapped in some kind of horror movie.

She found a corner to sit down and get her bearings. There was a message waiting on her PDA. "Please be Sam…"

It was Alex, which was also a relief.

Lara, are you okay? I'm stuck in the computer lab. There's some really freaky things stalking the corridors outside. If you get this, don't come here, it's too dangerous. I'm just going to wait for them to leave.

"The hell I'm not coming for you."

She'd been headed in that direction anyway. She sent him a message to stay put, tried sending another to Sam, Amanda and Grimm, then shoved her PDA back inside her armor. If they got the message, they'd know to meet her back at her lab.

Between Lara and the computer lab was a long hallway with a few adjacent labs. If Alex was to be believed, there were more creatures in that hallway and labs. Lara wasn't a praying woman, but she had a shotgun and her patience had run out.

The corridor was dark, and as she quietly approached it she could hear things moving in the shadows. Eyes glowed in some of the windows, and she crouched, moving low and out of sight. In the dim, unsteady light from one abandoned lab, she got a good look at the creatures between her and Alex. There was another one of those grey imp things, and three others. They looked like people. Walking. Dead. People. One woman was missing most of her jaw, the portly man near her had half of his face chewed off, and standing silent in the corner was a security officer. If it weren't for the blood dripping from the inside of his mask and the pallor of his skin, Lara wouldn't have suspected he wasn't alive. No one was going to believe her if she survived all this.

Four against one, but Lara had a plan. She'd seen the way the imp and spider-woman had turned on each other, so she just needed to get them fighting each other and pick off the survivors. Lara drew her pistol and slowly took the safety off as she edged closer to the guard. She took aim, shooting the imp in the back, then rolled away as it turned and flung fire into the corner. The guard hissed, rushing forward and shooting blindly towards its attacker. In seconds, all three of the zombies were attacking the imp and each other in a free for all melee.

The first dead man caught fire, groaning and stumbling away. He hit a wall and fell over as the smell of burning flesh reached Lara's nostrils. The imp tore apart the other zombie, before the guard put it down. Lara stepped up behind the guard and put two bullets into the back of his head. The barrel wavered in her hand, and she flicked the safety back on before holstering it. She hadn't had this problem with the pink pig thing. "They're not people, they're not people."

But they had been people once. Lara felt the bile rise up in her throat and before she could stop it she was doubled over, retching. The world felt very small and suffocating all of a sudden and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a closet somewhere and never come out. But Sam… Sam was out there somewhere. Sam needed her. Alex needed her, too. Lara straightened, wiping her mouth. "Pull yourself together, Lara. It's only going to get worse from here."

The computer lab wasn't much farther. The door didn't respond to her PDA, and she peered into the window. She could see someone huddling inside, so she reluctantly rapped on the window.

The man turned, and she recognized Alex. He rushed to the window, and she could barely hear him through the reinforced glass. "Lara! I thought I told you to stay away!" A panicked look crossed his face as he placed his hands on the glass.

"I couldn't leave you alone! I took care of the creatures outside. We need to get back to my lab. Have you heard from Sam or Amanda?"

He shook his head, and shuffled in place. "I… Lara. I'm sorry… Lara.."

"Alex…?"

"Lara...Run…" Alex stumbled back as the skin on his face started to shrivel inwards and he turned a deathly pale before Lara's eyes. Fire seemed to ripple around his head before it exploded off of his body. Lara screamed, backpeddling as the disembodied head of her friend slammed repeatedly into the glass, each blow creating more and more cracks.

"Alex!" Her gun was in her hand on sheer instinct and she fired as it broke through. Two bullets, and the flying, burning head careened out of control and disappeared into the darkness.

Lara turned her gun sideways, staring at it, then in the direction of Alex's body. She pulled the clip out and counted the bullets in it. She had plenty of other clips, but this clip she wanted to save. Six bullets. Three for any poor souls she found along the way, and one each for her, Sam and Amanda, if it came to that. The coldness of the thought should have disturbed her, but she stowed the gun inside her armor. She'd been too slow for Alex.

She couldn't afford to make that mistake with Sam.