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rogueshadeaux · 2 months

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Chapter Thirty-Three — Shadow Play

“I see the mark on each affront to God, now. The Mark of the Beast. It burns in their chests like the pits of hell, it’s on their hands anytime they use their powers. They’re all branded. All marked, even me. But I see it now, I see why God has made me what I am.”

7k word count | 2 spacers provided as pause points | TRIGGER WARNINGS: a lot of words, possible claustrophobia [they are UNDERGROUND please remember that!], human experimentation, military mention. ONE imbedded link.

Our footsteps echoed back a thousand times as we walked along the crescent-shaped dais on the other side of the room, Dad the first to step up onto it. “How far back do you think this goes?” He asked, shining a light down the rounded archway of the hall he was standing in front of. ADVANCED SYSTEMS. The last words of his sentence reverberated in the chasm, Brent joining him to look down it.

“Hey!” He hollered, his voice overlapping Dad’s as the single syllable hopped around again and again. Brent turned back to face everyone, motioning down the hall. “It’s gotta be long.”

“Has to be some sort of tech lab,” Dad muttered in agreement.

Brent smirked at the thought. “Think we have enough time to go look? Maybe they have, like, ray guns back there,”

“If we’re talkin’ Vermaak,” Zeke started, looking over my head at Dad, “We should probably start here. Advanced systems has gotta mean power transfer device, right?”

Dad, though, wasn’t listening, not really; his phone’s flashlight had traveled along with his stare, looking across the dais to the hall on the other side, brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed a bit like he was trying to decipher something in the shadows, and he stayed quiet long enough for me to share a worried glance with Brent. “Dad?” I eventually asked.

“Hmm?”

“You okay?”

He blinked hard, coming back down to earth from wherever his head had dragged him as he looked over at me, then to the other men. “Y-yeah, sorry,” he stammered, giving the hall at the other end one last look before turning fully to Advanced Systems. “We should see what’s down there.”

Everything looked insane, so futuristic, and I felt bad for laughing at Bertrand when he said he was amazed by what he saw because I couldn’t help but agree. This place was amazing.

Dad blew past the unmarked doors in the hall, moving deeper into the hall as he sensed something I only caught onto the further we traveled; there was something at the end of the hall echoing our footsteps back just a little too loudly, the sound coming back like an irregular heartbeat as it tried to match the loud drumming in my ears. Zeke stayed behind Brent and I as Dad held up a hand, light sweeping the rounded ceiling and noting the strange change: “It’s getting taller.”

“The entrance was wider too,” Brent muttered, shining his own against the wall. “Means there’s something at the end, doesn’t it?”

“Probably.” Dad agreed.

And they were right; as the ceiling widened like a maw, it spit us out into a rounded room littered in broken glass and severed wire, the walls lined with pods built into the walls. It looked like the shattered glass came from there, rained down by nearly a hundred of something escaping. A raised platform stood in the middle of the room, the perimeter circled by computers while the center held some excavated hole, something ripped up out of the ground and the concrete remains left strewn among the glass.

And hanging from the ceiling were two cuffs, and a thick dangled wire with its copper ends sticking out.

“Jesus,” Zeke muttered, shining his light behind him at one of the pods. They also had wires dangling from their enclosure, the ends looking like the pasties of EKG machines and some still holding catheters for veins. Zeke came to the conclusion I did, first to verbalize it: “They look like experiment pods.”

“Think this is where the Vermaak were?” Dad asked, stepping up to the platform. The computers stood on metal podiums with no visible wires, some with broken screens. “Wish Eugene was down here…”

“Could be,” Zeke hummed, messing around with the electrodes.

Brent followed Dad up onto the platform as I slowly walked around it, shining my light at the base. There was no gap or welding or something that connected the platform to the floor; the ends simply bent out like the platform had been molded from the ground on a pottery wheel, no actual bolts in sight. It was so sleek, so unnaturally smooth and perfect.

There was a flash on the side and I glanced over to see Brent taking pictures of the pit, probably just as much for his own files as Dad’s. ‘Course. But the shine was enough to distract me, and I didn’t know there was something in my path until I could feel it under my ankle boot.

I lifted my foot to peel off the little thing off of it — it looked like a tag? Like the sort of paper tags I’d put on my gymnastics bag before going to a meet. It was in near-perfect condition, having been untouched since it was dropped.

Date and time of capture. Circumstances. Weapons, physical conditions, name rank, all duplicated three times on a page that signified needing to be cut. I flipped the page over, the sections on the back more for the holder than whoever the form was supposed to be attached to, the top titled ENEMY PRISONER OF WAR (EPW) CAPTURE TAG (PART A). “I found something,” I announced. “I think it’s some sorta…some sorta army thing?”

Dad’s head snapped up. “What?”

I didn’t bother answering, instead following the rounded edge of the platform again to where he stood and handed him the page. He breezed over the front before flipping it to the warnings on the back, huffing. “‘DA Form 5976,’” he muttered, looking over his shoulder at Zeke. “Direct Action form. The military raided this place."

“Oh yeah, more than likely,” Zeke agreed. “New Marais was under martial law for a bit as they dug around for information on the Beast and the First Sons. Guess they got here first.”

Dad made some sort of dissatisfied noise in his throat, flashlight going from the form back to the computers — and then to the divot in the floor. “If this is where the Vermaak were…that had to be where the power transfer device was. They came in here with the intention of detaining anyone they found.”

Zeke left where he stood to join Dad on the platform, his light adding to the one shining down into the pit. “Guess now would be a good time to tell you they didn’t get the original device, huh?”

Dad perked up, looking at Zeke. “Really?”

“Yeah. Bertrand tried shipping out the device, the original one meant for one-on-one transfer, when I was spyin’ on the Militia for Cole. He was trying to get it outta there before Cole got to it. You know the whole story about that gang fight at Fort Philippe?”

“Yeah,”

Zeke nodded once. “It was for that. We captured the place from the Militia, got the device, and Cole used it right there with Kuo. It exploded after.”

“What happened to it after?” I asked. Sure, it exploded, but it had to go somewhere, right?

Zeke shrugged. “It was basically scrap. Even if they got it, they wouldn’t have found anything useful in it.”

Dad’s brow furrowed. “So they never actually got the power transfer device?” He asked Zeke.

“If it’s what was in this hole? No. Most the military coulda done was download whatever was on the computers.”

“And probably wipe them,” Dad added, more a complaint than an observation. “I’m surprised they didn’t rip these things out of the ground.”

Brent stared thoughtfully at the computer we were standing in front of, finger tracing the pole of steel that was holding it up. “We could.”

I blinked. “What?”

Brent looked up, glancing between Dad and I. “You can recover deleted stuff from computers, right? Even if you’ve done everything to scrub it off. If we take the computer up to Dr. Sims, maybe he can find something.”

Dad rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the pedestal and the defunct computer on top of it. “We’d have to find its hard drive,” he eventually mumbled before looking back up at Brent. “We can’t just take the monitor, that’s useless.”

“Wouldn’t the army take the hard drive?” I asked. It seemed illogical that they’d sweep the First Sons base and leave behind something so crucial.

Brent’s eyes traveled down the metal pole, all the way to the floor and along it. “Maybe they didn’t know where to look,” he muttered, following some line we couldn’t see. His eyes raised to follow the wall and I saw all green was gone, replaced with a silver that reflected the light like…well, steel. He tracked whatever he saw to the wall next to the atrium’s entrance, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Hold this,” Brent asked Dad, not even looking at him as he passed over his phone and causing Dad to almost drop it on the ground. Brent stalked over to the wall and ran his hand along it, looking for some bump in the smooth texture and cursing under his breath when he couldn’t find it. “There’s something…under this…” Brent growled under his breath, sounding sure. “But the wall isn’t steel. I don’t see any…any bolts either.”

“Think it’s welded straight on?” Zeke asked.

Brent shrugged. “No idea. Either way it’s way too smooth to get through, unless I…”

Brent stared thoughtfully at the wall for a beat before bringing up his fist and turning it to steel, some extra metal shavings layering against the ridges of his knuckles as he reared his fist back and slammed it against the wall.

Whatever metal was there instantly gave away, revealing a hidden server farm sitting stagnant behind it, all ziptied servos wires and electrical tape. “Oh, shit,” Zeke muttered as Brent moved to grip the second panel and rip it off, more of the server bank being revealed. He looked over to Dad. “That’s gotta be for every pod in here and these computers."

Dad nodded slightly. “Alright. Okay, Zeke, you’re our best bet for this, so salvage what you think might be useful,”

Thirty minutes later, Zeke was zipping up the sling backpack and Dad sighed, turning to look back in the room. He looked absolutely displeased at how much nothing there was in this room. “The ice Conduit, Kuo — you said she was activated down here, too?”

Zeke nodded. “She came outta here cold as a corpse. Said they injected her with something to get her goin’.”

Dad mulled over those words. “We should try Bio-Science, then.” he decided unilaterally, voice making it very clear that this wasn’t up for discussion. “Whatever activated her here had to be made there.”

It was unsettling how loudly our footsteps echoed back at us as we walked out of the hall and back into the atrium, across the floor to the space where the Bio-Science hall stood. Dad was leading the pack, steps sure the entire way to the hallway before he faltered, staring down the hall with reservation.

“You okay?” Brent asked.

It took Dad a moment to even register that Brent spoke, glancing back at us. “Yeah, yeah, I just…” he drew off, attention going back to the hall. “You ever get a really weird feeling, like something’s wrong?”

“It’s probably the shitty horror movie lighting,” Zeke joked.

“Not like that,” he chastised. “I mean, there’s just…there’s something wrong here. In this hall. I don’t know what it is or…”

He drew off, growling under his breath as he failed to translate just how wrong it felt to him. I could sort of relate; I’d get a bad feeling in situations that did turn out to be bad, and there was whatever that gut feeling was when the ice soldiers appeared on the Sound. Maybe Dad was getting that weird sixth sense right now too? “Do you want to leave?” I asked.

“No,” Dad answered almost immediately. He flexed his shoulders, and that unsureness left him. “Come on,” He decided, “Let’s go see what we can find.”

Our footsteps rang out sharply like slamming gavels as we walked into the wing. God, how huge was this place? The hallway seemed to go on forever, large spaces in-between the labeled and rounded doors. And those labels didn't exactly help. Once we passed the basic ones that said things like 'Laboratory Supplies' or 'Restroom', the placards began to list off actual project names: Project Emerald, Project Mirage, Project Fracture.

I wasn't feeling very hopeful about much, especially when Dad just blew past the doors to keep walking down the hall. “There's...a lot of rooms to go through,” I mumbled, shining my phone light at another door that said 'Project Helix'.

“I know,” Dad replied. “Try to remember all the names. Let's get to the end of the hall, see if there's anything there,”

The end of the hall came swiftly after that conversation, the placard reading 'Project Metamorphosis'. The door…it was scratched to hell and back, chipped away like someone took an axe to its front and failed to take it down. Dad’s hand traced the edge of the door, that pensive look still on his face. He stayed unspeaking for so long that I finally cracked, saying, “Dad? Are you okay?”

Dad nodded. “This is it,” he said with so much assurance. His phone light traveled around, inspecting the weirdly shaped door.

“You sure?” Zeke asked.

Dad nodded slowly. “Yeah, I…” his brows came together, like he was confused by his own knowledge. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”

“Looks like someone else tried getting in, too,” Brent pointed out. “Think the military tried taking down the door with no luck?”

No one answered. If that was true, it meant we probably wouldn’t have a chance to get in, either.

Dad stepped up to the door and tried opening it. Tried. He pushed against the door, he fit his hands in the linear grooves to try and pull. Brent put his hand against the door only to flinch away at the attempt to drain it, and I crouched, running my hand along where the door met the floor — or, more accurately, where the recess was. “It lowers,” I said, looking up at them two. “Goes down, like a car window,”

“Without electricity, it’s basically useless,” Zeke said as Dad got to my level, looking at the recess. “Delsin, I know you’re intent on this, but it doesn’t look like we can get in—”

“No.” Dad snapped a bit. “This…there’s something in this room. I need to see it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before turning his head to look at Brent. "Well, any advice from the architect?"

Brent huffed, humored at the recognition but unable to answer. “Couldn't tell you. Haven't really looked into how to tear down buildings, yet. I don’t even know what kind of metal this is.” He hit the metal with his knuckle, the metallic ping that reverberated back high in pitch.

Zeke’s eyes narrowed at the sound, and before long he was digging in his pockets for something, pulling out his keys. He held a little flashlight-shaped thing on it up to the door, sliding it around its face. “It’s not magnetic,” he declared, shoving his keys — with the magnet on them, apparently — back into his pocket.

“So then, what’s that mean?” Dad asked.

Brent was the one to speak next. “Means it’s probably titanium,” he said, pushing his own hand against the door. “Which means it’s strong.”

“So we’re not gonna be able to get in?” I asked, standing.

Dad’s face darkened. “No. We’re getting in.” He said, determined. “How do you break titanium?”

“You don’t,” Brent said, almost sounding offended at the idea. “Do you know how strong it is?”

“There’s…” I drew off, unsure how to ask what I wanted to. “There’s rankings or classes or something for metal strength, right? Are there any stronger metals?”

“Steel,” Zeke hummed, looking over at Brent.

Brent shook his head. “I don’t know if it’d be enough,” he admitted.

“It's worth a shot,” Dad said, standing straight. “We throw enough steel at this door and it’s bound to break,”

“Yeah, and it could also take down the entire hall.” Brent stressed. “We have no idea what’s load-bearing in here and what’s not. Most doors are connected to one—”

“The door sinks into the ground,” I interrupted. Not only that, but this one was round. Didn't load bearing walls have to be vertical? “What’s the likelihood of it being one if it does that?”

Brent’s words faltered as he looked down at the rubber flaps on the door’s edge. “I…” he drew off, thinking hard. “Less…less likely, but still—”

Dad seemed to think that was enough. “Then we just aim for the door,” he decided. “And try not to bring anything else down.”

Brent’s eyebrow cocked. “‘We?’”

Dad nodded, saying, “We should use our powers together. Steel and concrete.”

“What about Jean?”

Dad’s eyes broke from Brent’s to glance my way, and he dedicated all of seven milliseconds to the thought before saying, “Jean, you and Zeke move back, be ready to help if something happens.”

I tried not to let the request get to me. My water probably couldn’t help here, anyways.

Dad and Brent passed me their phones and Zeke pulled me a good eight feet back as they both positioned themselves in front of the door, Dad hovering over Brent’s shoulder. I hadn’t realized they were nearly the same height before now. “You prep, I’ll add, we both throw. Okay?” He asked Brent, who nodded.

The steel Brent produced caught the light from the phones, little beams bouncing around and the very large and very threatening looking beams Brent was making grew over his shoulder like some magical spear being materialized from thin air. I guess, in a way, it was. But what was different this time was Dad putting his concrete-laden hand through the shrapnel cloud to reach for the bars and touch them, the black rock on his arms sloughing off and onto the steel to make a jagged battering ram.

“Now!” Dad yelled, moving to cross his arms over his face. Brent’s arms flinched as Dad threw his out and the battering ram went flying, the sound it made as it slammed into the titanium door something unpleasant I could feel in my bones as it screeched in protest, making me cringe so hard I accidentally bit my cheek. The door jolted hard, but stayed standing.

“Again!” Dad yelled over the echoes of the grinding metal. Brent built up another large spear, Dad touching it with his gravely grace before they both threw it at the door a second time. This impact came with sparks and a divot in its center that exposed a way darker metal beyond the painted surface, a bullet hole in the kevlar the First Sons gave the door. “Come on, almost,” Dad encouraged.

They ran the same race, Brent putting his entire upper body into this next throw, and the way the entire hall shook as the battering ram made impact with the door frightened me so badly that my water was reacting before I even saw the shrapnel, phones falling to the ground to instead let my hands shoot out to weave a wall of water between them and the wall they took down. The remains of the bent circular door shot back, taking out multiple desks in the room behind it and careening into a wall as my water caught whatever rubble it tried to throw back at the two men. The shaking stopped and the horrible sounds died off soon after, and within a beat, everyone breathed.

And then immediately groaned as the broken door slowly fell forward, revealing the hallway it couldn’t fit through. “God, it's neverendin', isn't it?” Zeke muttered, glancing at me. All I could do was sigh in return.

I let my water fall and we all entered the lab dedicated to whatever Project Metamorphosis was, shining our flashlights around the room. God, even the furniture was white, pure metal desks laid in rows in the center — well, minus the ones Brent and Dad sent flying — with standing laboratory tables lining the walls, the expo marker on the white boards posted on the wall above them faded out but still legible.

Zeke beelined it towards some leftover lab equipment while Dad moved to shift through the contents of the first desk. Brent and I glanced at each other and simultaneously shrugged, moving to the edge of the room and exploring on our own.

With no luck at my station, I moved back towards Brent, him not even looking up as I moved. “This is insane,” Brent murmured, looking down at some files. “It looks like they were trying to do something with inactivated Conduits,”

“What, like what the DUP did?” I asked, looking around his shoulder at the document. Or, trying to — the font was so small that it looked like gibberish to me.

Brent shook his head. “No, different than that. Not sure how, though...” His flashlight left the laboratory counter to shine on the board screwed to the wall — which we only then realized wasn't a board at all, but one of those x-ray lightboxes. There were still some x-rays attached to it, but Brent's phone light wasn't hitting the picture right to make it show.

“Here, hold this,” he said, passing me his phone so quickly that I almost dropped it on the ground. After throwing a quick glare my way, Brent leaned forward, ripping the x-ray from off of the board and holding it in his hands, elevated a bit. “Okay, shine the flashlight under it,” he requested.

I did — and immediately cringed after. God...what happened to this person? Their jaw simply wasn’t there anymore, shatterings of bone protruding out of the open orifice in ribbons. I've seen brain x-rays before in health class, and while you're not supposed to see every nook and cranny, it's also not supposed to be foggy white, almost like it was riddled with infection or melted to mush. “Jeez,” I murmured, shining the light farther down the x-ray. It stopped just after the clavicle — not that that was one anymore, either. It was riddled with extra growth, as if wrapped up in solid tumors. “What the hell happened to them?”

Brent opened his mouth to retort when Dad, in the center of the room, called out, “Found some stuff on the Ray Sphere!” looking up at Zeke.

Zeke turned, in the midst of wrapping a stoppered glass vial with his sock while handlessly shoving his foot back into the tennis shoe. “What's it say?” He asked, taking off the sling bag so he could store the vial away.

“A lot of big words I don't know,” Dad started, holding up the rather thick file as Zeke and Brent's light landed on Dad's form, illuminating his tall shadow against the wall. “But it has a beginning note — apparently, the Ray Sphere can corrupt a person's powers?”

Zeke's head tilted to the side as he slipped the sling bag back on, looking at Dad curiously. ""Corrupt?'” he repeated. “Corrupt how?”

Dad looked back down at the file, phone light traveling across it in tandem with his eyes. “Says it makes a person's power stronger, but more volatile. Harder to control.” He looked up at Zeke. “Were Cole's power like that?”

Zeke shook his head, almost seeming offended at the accusation. “No, he was in control of what he could do.”

“And his power didn't affect his daily life? He wasn't having issues with—” Dad looked down at the file in his hands, “—his 'enhanced capabilities exceeding the threshold of practical applicability in routine activities, leading to the unintended manifestation of his powers in a potentially disruptive or uncontrolled manner?'”

“What does that even mean?” Brent scoffed.

Zeke's eyes, though, went wide. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Then repeated it, louder. “Son of a bitch!” With a foot stomp, like he just made the world's biggest breakthrough.

Dad glanced back up, eyebrow quirking. “So is...that a yes?”

Zeke nodded fervently. “Cole couldn't do anything with electronics 'cause his power would short circuit the wires. He couldn't sit in a car or hold a gun 'cause he'd make 'em explode. You're telling me that's why he couldn't do that? The Ray Sphere corrupted him?”

Dad looked back down at the document. “More like made him too powerful for his own good. Which I mean, did help with the Beast, but he would have had a horrible time trying to live in the Age of Technology.”

Zeke nodded. “Yeah, you've got that right. Had to create a double insulated phone pouch just so he could call me whenever we were off doing stuff,”

“These powers,” I interjected. “The, uh, corruption. Would it be enough to turn someone into a monster?”

Dad looked over at me like I was insane — but Zeke just nodded sagely. “Guess that would make sense. Bertrand, his power was...well, it was somethin'. He could turn himself and other people into these things, buncha fucked up looking creatures.”

Brent held up the x-ray, and we both immediately shined our phone's flashlight behind it to brighten up the image of the jawless person. “Like this?” Brent and I asked in unison.

“Jesus Christ,” Dad muttered, looking at the image as Zeke nodded.

“Exactly like that. Well, one of them, at least.” He replied.

Dad looked equal parts confused and bewildered. “So there was a Conduit that could turn just anyone into monsters?” He asked Zeke.

Brent let the x-ray fall, turning back to the table. “Not just anyone,” he said, grabbing his own stack of documents. “People with inactivated Conduit genes,”

“That's somehow worse,” Dad's murmur echoed easily to us. He raised his voice. “But if someone's able to manipulate a Conduit like that, we need those notes. Anything that can affect their powers is close enough to what's going on with your sister.”

We nodded, Zeke motioning for us all to come here as he took the sling bag off once again for us all to put our found documents in. As I worked on rolling up the x-ray and slipping my hair tie around it so it would fit easily, Brent muttered, “You don't think you're gonna turn into one of those, right?”

I could feel the blood leave my face as I thought of the possibility. “Oh God, I hope not?” I said. “I mean, the notes said it was nearly instantaneous, right?”

He nodded. “They did, they did. Just wondering, 'cause it seems like it would be a great cosmetic improvement for you,”

My smack against his head rang out loudly through the room and into the adjacent hallway, his yelp bouncing around just as vibrantly. Asshole.

As Dad tried to find a way to fit the large x-ray into Zeke's bag, I watched Brent turn, shining his flashlight across the room and to the gap in the wall where the vast hallway stood. “What do you think is back there?” He asked me.

“I don't know,” I shrugged. “Probably more human rights violations.”

“Was there anything else over by that x-ray viewing box?” Dad asked us. We both sorta shrugged, giving him some noncommittal sounds that had him huffing hard. “Alright, I'll go double check. Do me a favor? Go check out the desk we flung next to the hall.”

We nodded, separating from the group as Zeke moved to fiddle with the other desk that was thrown to the side when Brent and Dad broke in. Brent put the flashlight on me like a spotlight as I tried to shift through the contents of the desk despite the weird angle it was at, pulling out nothing but useless to-do notes and nicotine gum foils.

“Anything good?” Brent asked me.

I scoffed, “Unless you wanna count old McDonald's receipts as loot, then no,”

I sat back on my heels and looked up just in time to see Zeke straighten, holding his hand up triumphantly like he had found gold — but whatever was in his hands was too small to see. “Got something!” He declared. “Some sorta recording chip.“

Dad turned to look over his shoulder. “Any idea what's on it?” He asked.

“Not yet,” Zeke hummed. He grabbed at a little pouch on the strap of his sling bag and there was a quick snap as he unbuttoned something. “But luckily, I brought Cole's old phone. I had tinkered with it a bit way back when — gave it a chip reader.”

Dad's eyebrow raised, and he 100% looked like he was not buying whatever Zeke was saying. “And you're sure a 25 year old piece of technology will work?”

Zeke snorted. “I modified a Nokia. I'll die before this thing does.”

Dad began walking over to Zeke as he fiddled with the old phone and the chip reader. The beam of light above me slowly started to move, and I glanced up to see Brent's attention — and inadvertently his phone — begin pointing towards the hallway again. “C'mon,” he finally said as I rose to my feet. “Let's go check out what's back there,”

Brent was already walking away by the time I called out to Dad to tell him what we were doing. “Okay, just shout if you find something, alright?” he requested as I jogged to catch up to Brent.

The hall was squared, which was different from the others — it felt like a normal hallway. Brent flashed the light everywhere; the high ceiling, the floor, where they met. He had this studious look on his face that left me wondering if he was taking notes for his own build down the line, or if he was critiquing the place and thinking of how he could have done it better. “Wonder if every other room is this big,” he hummed, light jolting to shine behind us. I couldn't blame him; I wasn't really a fan of treading through the dark underground, either. It felt like there was always something breathing over my shoulder. This entire place was freaky enough even without the fact that it was entirely powered down.

“Well, it's going to be a very long night if they all are,” I murmured back.

We turned forward simultaneously, just in time to see the light of the phone catch in the reflective surface of a pane of glass. It was as long as Brent was tall, following the curve of the wall in a slope. “What the hell...” Brent muttered.

The closer we got, the more I realized it wasn't a window, but a door, some large and super thick plexiglass thing that had five separate locking mechanisms on the outside. None of them had a keyhole though. There was a screen the size of a small television on the side, and a laminated piece of paper above it haphazardly taped to the wall like it was an afterthought, the 'TEST SUBJECT 0409' in giant bold.

There was nothing else about the corpse in the viewing room. No name, no demographics, no gender. Just a set of numbers the First Sons only bothered to throw on the wall after the fact. Barely cared about, barely human.

“What the fuck…” Brent drew off as he looked into the chamber. I couldn’t say much, I was too shocked.

The glass was iced at the edges, patterned spreads of white frost that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. There wasn’t a bed in the room, no sink or anything. There was barely something that constituted a toilet — but it was all frosted over. The corpse in the corner of the small observation room was curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her knees as if she was trying to keep every little bit of warmth she had left contained to her core until the very end. She was perfectly preserved. That’s what was worse; I could see her frosted eyebrows still screwed close together, how she seemed to have froze in the middle of chattering her teeth. The folds of the thin scrubs she was in were stiff with icicles, her lips softly blue.

“They froze her?” I whispered, the reminder of that feeling making shivers run down my spine.

Brent moved his phone’s flashlight around, up and down, trying to get a good look inside the chamber. “Look, see that?” he asked, pointing to the corner of the room. I looked up where he was pointing; it was one of those old flip signs, the kind they’d have at super old airports that would flip to say if a place was boarding or whatever. The white on it was damaged from the frost, but the dark black lettering showed through with ease; PRESERVATION ENGAGED.

“Do you think it was something to keep her body…” I drew off, unsure of how to even say what was going on, “...mummified?”

Brent flashed his light around the room once more before letting it settle on the 5 locks. “That, or keep her from squealing.” he sighed hard, turning. “C’mon, let’s look at the others.”

I threw one last look at 0409 before letting my eyes fall to my feet, following Brent.

There was a cshchsk that echoed into the hallway from the main room of the lab, like a walkie talkie was receiving interference, and then that same sickeningly sweet voice from the other dead drops came back, the voice of the Bertrand guy.

“At first, I questioned His choices,” Bertrand’s voice echoed down the hall, the gross drawl of his accent making another shiver go down my spine after the one wracked up it by the cold hallway. There was another testing room, this time a man in it, hands frozen to the wall as he died trying to claw through the frost. I couldn’t help but hold my arms close to my core and Brent noticed, dragging me along. “Why would God turn me into such a monster when all I’ve done is follow His word? I never strayed far from His grace,”

Brent scoffed. “Isn’t this the same dickwad that was a fascist?”

I shook my head in disbelief at this asshole’s words, looking into the next testing chamber — and pausing when I did. In this chamber, there was definitely…someone, but I couldn’t see them well. Not when they were buried under the frost like that. But there was something off about the lump in the frost that I couldn’t put my finger on, like they were misshapen in a way.

I mean, of course, that could have been a side effect of being frozen alive.

“I prayed for days after I used the Ray Sphere to ask God why. Why turn me into this beast, this monster?” He asked no one. I’m pretty sure it was just to hear himself talk. “Why would He damn one of His most loyal soldiers to be a demon for the rest of his life? But I don’t believe that’s it anymore, no. I think I finally see what He has planned for me.”

Brent stopped dead in his tracks, making me run into his side. “Wh–, dude!” I snipped, rubbing where the bridge of my nose hit his hard bicep and blinking back the tears from the impact.

Brent didn’t react. He didn’t even really care. He was too busy staring wide eyed into the next testing chamber, face a bit paled even in the dim light of my phone’s flashlight. I followed his stare, my own eyes widening as I looked at what was in the room.

There was a human…I think. It was definitely the remains of one, at least. Their skin was leathery, grayed out in the way you only expected corpses to be. But the color darkened to match the texture the further it crawled down their arms, the skin growing and hardening to become these scythes of a pollex crab claw. It looked shelled, too, just like a crab’s would be. There was still a face to the person, still a mostly human body…but those claws…

“I understand what the auras I see are now. Marks of the Beast, of the devil’s influence. I’m branded with my own, and that’s why the Lord has made me what I am. I must atone for my sins.” Bertrand’s voice said from the other room as both Brent and I looked at each other and then rushed to look in the next cell. This one had the same claws and grayed skin, but there was more. Jagged frills of shell climbed up their — its — arms, clubbed claws where its feet used to be. It laid curled, back to us, so I couldn’t see its face — but I could see how its back seemed larger than humanly possible, like there was an extra set of muscles along its spine.

“What the fuck?” Brent murmured again, more aghast this time.

I followed Brent as he walked briskly down the hall, glancing into each chamber before quickly moving on. God, they were all the same; the huge claws long enough for them to use as crutches, the bent backs. At some point we got to see the horrors of that x-ray in all their fucked up glory; black bled through their abdomen and up their spines like something was poisoning them from the inside, their jaw shattered by the force of those thick appendages that jutted out of their jaws like tentacles. I guess the only solace I could cling on to when looking at these monstrosities is that they looked tranquil, curled up in the frost. Hopefully the people they once were passed peacefully.

“He is giving me a chance to repent. To be more. His son was betrayed by one of his own, yet through that betrayal, we received salvation for our sins. That sacrifice is what He is expecting of me now.” Bertrand said, sounding so sure of himself. “I’m to be His sword and His might. I’m to cure the world of these demons by turning them into such and exposing them to the world.”

Brent’s steps slowed as the phone’s flashlight moved to face forward again and started traveling up, higher and higher as it caught the red and black exoskeleton of whatever that was in front of us. The chamber was at the end of the hallway and double the size of the others with the little crab-guys — but it needed to be to hold that creature. It was doubled over, reinforced arms being used as forelegs as it glared forward, three eyes on each side of its elongated head. It looked like something out of a horror movie, especially with its mouth open like a lotus, three long pincers coming together over a row of razor-sharp teeth. You could barely see the skin of the human it used to be under the exoskeleton of its hard shell, just as grayed and veined as the other crab-guys only an evolved form. Was this the end stage? Two segment claws as long as my arm and knees facing the wrong way?

“I’m meant to be the cure to the monster Kessler saw in his visions, the Beast that will burn the world to the ground,” Bertrand affirmed to himself. “I’ve done it, and watched them be hunted like the vermin they are. I’ve built the Militia to help track them down. These Conduits are not human, and they won’t be when I’m done with them. We are in the end times, and I am one of the disciples God intends to help salvage the world.”

Brent and I stepped closer to the frosted glass, standing on either side to get a look at just how tall, how wide this thing was. It had blades that ran up its elbows like knives, one elbow nudge away from spearing through someone. “Let them devour New Marais like a swarm of locusts. Let them see the monsters that are hiding among the meek, and let me be their savior. Let me lead them away.”

As I was looking at the jaw ripped open with tendrils of tissue holding the bones together, a volt of electricity shot up my spine when I realized the thing was staring back at me, blinking ice off of its translucent eyelid.

“Let them ravage the world and get rid of the sinners, and may God help those that fight against them.”

“Jean,” Brent warned when he saw the head of the creature, the ‘Ravager,’ snap sideways to look at him.

We both took a half step back as the Ravager’s elbows flexed and it stood straighter, looking down at us from behind the glass. The three pincers on its mouth flexed open so it could give off a garbled scream that even the thick glass couldn’t keep silent, making me flinch and move to cover my ears. Its limbs moved lazily as it awoke from whatever hibernation the frost had it in before its super thick and long claws slammed into the concrete ground, shattering it with each rake.

It was trying to dig its way out.

“Run,” Brent said as Dad’s voice yelled something from the lab. “Go, run!”