Chapter 2: Prey and Predator
The office door swings open.
It took every inch of willpower for Uzi to not make even a sliver of noise. All her time living in Copper-9, never once she felt close to being this terrified and trapped. If something that strong is able to make mincemeat of the security gate, heaven forbid if it manages to get a hold of a small drone. Uzi suppresses another peep escaping her mouth when the monster's body came into view near her hiding spot. More unearthly growls emit from its maw, its breath deep and ground shaking with each inhale and exhale it took.
Oh god please leave please leave.
Step after step, each foot shaking the office floor as the monster scans the office for its prey with piercing eyes examining every nook and cranny within the office. A guttural belch escapes its lips like a scoff in frustration. It sniffs and searches around the desk towards the center of the room, its back turn towards the locker Uzi is hiding in. The rows of intersecting spines and other visceral material lacing across its back vibrated with each time the monster breathes, as though it was attempting to use echolocation to locating its prey. Uzi needed to make run for the exit. The monster is getting close to finding her.
Uzi had to refrain from gagging due to the putrid smell of rotten oil and corrosion the creature was emitting. Everything about this thing is wrong. The claws, the limbs, the strange fixtures on its backside. She got a glimpse of the creature's back contorting in several directions and wished she hadn't when two glowing orbs appeared along its spinal area.
The creature's head somehow is stretched all the way backwards like the neck of a giraffe. Eyes searching in a 360 angle through the office like a lighthouse along a harbor guiding voyaging ships, only instead deadly intent behind the light being cast. A soft chuckle emits from the monster as it plunges its clawed hand into the desk before flinging it across the room with little trouble. The desk shatters across the office door, piles of wood and debris blocking Uzi's only way out of the office.
Uzi's phone starts ringing. It wasn't on silent.
oh no oh no oh no
The creature snaps its head towards the locker, a massive smile creeping with rows of teeth itching to sink into prey. Its whole body giddy with delight and claws itching to be put to use. It sees her.
"Hello, Uzi?!" N's voice muffled through Uzi's phone.
The monster stomps over to the locker with outstretched hands and a sadistic gleam across its piercing yellow eyes. The sound what laughter was suppose to sound like escaped the predator's lips, a terrifying glee at display which no being would want to witness. Uzi scrambles and pulls her phone to her audio sensor. No subtly and all panic upon seeing her killer toying with its prey.
"Uzi where are you? J is about to flip a gasket and-"
"N! Help!" Uzi interrupted over N, terror taking its hold over her. Her screams being muted over the monster's roars of delight as it grasps the locker's sides. "Help! A monster is about-"
Uzi felt the space around her cave in, the locker warping inward against her body like a fly to a venus flytrap. Her arms and legs pressed against her sides, the walls almost crushing her into paste. The monster hoists the locker up and pries the door open with its teeth, finally pleased to find its intended mark upon hearing Uzi's horrified screams emitting from the locker. Uzi manages to free her legs, kicking and flailing to keep the monster at bay. The hunter took pleasure in its terrified target, each boot connecting its snout only fueled its pleasure to when it goes for the kill.
"N! HELP!"
The monster hurls the locker through the office walls, Uzi's screams muffled from the crash and destruction of wood and plaster exploding around her. It wanted to enjoy this. It wanted to savor its victim's panicked ridden, futile escape.
Searing pain took over Uzi's body after she crawled out of the crumbled locker. Her body protesting with every motion she made, any movement pinching her mind in agony from the loss of oil thanks to a gash running along her side. Confusion took over to the amount of oil pooling around her gash and body. This amount would be fatal, she should be dead. The realization soon hit Uzi upon seeing a corpse beside her.
Uzi managed to land beside the mutilated remains of her boss Brewster, a victim of the monster. His face barely recognizable with his chest completely exposed and arms twisted in unnatural directions. Wires and metallic organs splatter the pavement in bits and pieces. Oil pooled from his corpse like a malfunctioning fountain, staining the floor around Brewster's body and Uzi's clothes. Death. Death in all its brutal glory.
Uzi couldn't take it and felt her insides revolt, bile cascading out of her like a small waterfall as it pools onto the asphalt. It was too much. Seeing death up close is far from seeing it on a screen or film. It was all too real and overwhelming.
"Oh god…Brewster…" Uzi croaked, her stomach still reeling from seeing her dead boss and the prior moment of her stomach emptying its contents. Images and memories flash before her eyes of her boss during her first day working at her job. He wasn't the most elegant of drones, but his jolly personality and strict but fair work ethnic has won her over to stick around. He didn't deserve this. But she can't mourn now.
Catching her breath, Uzi manages to feel a cool breeze tap onto her exoskeleton, the faint chill of a spring night in her hometown, she's outside. She scrambles up and sprints towards the WDPD station downtown, not stopping to glance back if the monster is pursuing her. The confirmation she needed was the sound of a four-legged animal sprinting madly behind her with its breath in gleeful spurts. And it's closing in.
A/N: Chapter 2 done.