text: By : No One of Consequence I started my career as a run of the mill soldier, but I somehow managed to find myself stationed in a top-secret underground government facility. For security reasons I won’t go into too much detail, partly because most of what they do there is hard to follow. On a daily basis I have interactions with scientists that constantly refer to me as a layman. For the most part, I guard people who work with whiteboards, reference books, and complex mathematical equations that would give average scientists a headache. In order to even get into these offices, one has to adhere to a retinal scan. However, that’s just the upper floors of the facility. Teamwork isn’t a word these people are entirely comfortable with. They tend to work within their own minds, and alienate those around them, especially those they think of as inferior. Not so much because they’re assholes, their brains just function differently. Now, put a bunch of these people together, and the results can be disastrous. So far, over the last five years, there have only been minor dustups. Well, minor might not be entirely accurate. One incident did end with several scientists being taken to the infirmary. Nothing too serious, a few stitches here and there. I hadn’t wanted to break up the fight, it was too hilarious to watch. I’ve been confined to the facility for a few years now, getting leave isn’t the easiest thing. High security clearances come with some serious drawbacks, but the large paychecks are hard to pass up. Technically I still get paid as a Private First Class, but I also get a sizeable ‘hazard’ pay. Not that I’ve seen any real hazards, it’s more of a way to classify the additional pay to the bean counters. Government work is loaded with all kinds of double talk and misleading information like that. Honestly, I don’t understand why a particle accelerator needs to be this secret. They’re more common than people think, some thirty thousand exist throughout the world. Maybe it’s because this one is larger than the Large Hadron Collider. The work is largely complicated, and I can’t begin to comprehend it. The one bit of science I do know is the controversy behind the work they’re doing. Certain people in the science community think they’re going to open a black hole and destroy the planet. The likelihood of this happening is like fifty-million to one. With such long odds, you’d think there wouldn’t be death threats, but there are. After years of research and fine tuning the science, they’re ready to turn on the accelerator. I’m in one of the control rooms when they start the sequence. I have no idea what’s going on, but they say all the readouts are within the predicted ranges. That is until alarms start blaring. All the readouts begin to spike, and next thing I know, all hell breaks loose. Monitors begin flickering, the scientists start panicking, and literal sparks begin flying as electrical components are overloaded. The power spike surges even more, and suddenly everything goes dark, but not silent. If anything, there’s more conversation now than ever before. Emergency power comes online, but most of the equipment is fried. The smell of burnt wires and melting plastic fills the air, wisps of smoke drifting from all over. Engineers scramble around attempting to get things back online, but with this much damage there’s little hope. With all the computers down, my radio is the only means of communication. The scientists work to assess the damage when we hear it. Thanks to movies, TV shows, theme parks, and deployments to active combat zones, I have noticed there are different kinds of screams. Even though they generally sound the same, there are subtle differences that can be detected. What I hear over the radio isn’t anything like what you hear at theme parks from people riding roller coasters. The closest I’ve heard came from a secret mission when an insurgent was caught off guard before a knife went between his ribs. The man on the radio died painfully, but never saw it coming. Following it are the panicked ramblings of those in close proximity, trying to figure out what just happened. More of them start to die, and the remainders lose their shit. Three soldiers with automatic rifles come into our control room, and sweep the area. They ask me if I’ve seen anything non-human, and after the typical ‘are you kidding me’ reaction, I tell them I haven’t. On standard guard duty, a guard is armed with a pump action shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds, and a 9mm sidearm. These three having M-4s and a full basic load of ammo would be a cause for concern, but more so when they hand me boxes of buckshot shells. Panicked conversation over the radio punctuated by gunfire fills the silence as I load my shotgun with lethal rounds. No one knows what the hell is going on, and in a military run secret facility, that’s a really bad sign. Finally, news comes on over the radio. It’s the base commander, “There is a containment breach within the facility. A level five quarantine is about to go into effect. All personnel must evacuate the facility immediately. Once the blast doors close, they will not be opened again.” Basically, if we don’t get out of here in the next five minutes, we’re getting locked in with whatever is killing people. Even if there are four of us armed, I don’t want to find out what is loose in here. With those screams still fresh in my mind, I’m trying to keep my imagination from running wild. I bring up the rear as we escort the scientists to the exit. Rear guard is important so enemy combatants can’t move in behind you and catch you unaware. The corridors are normally so brightly lit that nothing can go unseen. However, with only emergency power running, the lighting is extremely sparse and flickering. I sweep the areas behind us as I walk backward, the flashlight on my shotgun shines on overturned and discarded equipment. It looks like a fucking hurricane blew through this place. Even if a hurricane hit, we wouldn’t have felt a thing. The facility is several hundred feet underground, and impervious to everything short of an earthquake. In this part of the country, earthquakes aren’t a concern. As we near the exit, bodies start littering the ground. The wounds that I see look to have been made by some kind of blade, or some kind of sharp implement. At one point, it looks like something had been gnawing on one of the bodies. I don’t know what kind of teeth make damage patterns like that, but the amount of clear liquid around the wound appears to be saliva. I have been all over the facility in my time as a guard. There isn’t a single room I haven’t inspected at one time or another. So, I know for a fact that there’s nothing in this facility that could be responsible for what did that kind of damage. We carry on in silence, or the closest we can for the amount of people in our group. For me and the other soldiers, it’s the silence of concentration while moving through hostile territory, keeping an eye out for the enemy. The scientists, it’s the silence of people scared shitless. None of them signed up for gunfights, and deadly situations, outside of an experiment going very wrong. Me, I had been in combat a number of times by this point, but even I’m a little scared. Seriously, I couldn’t think of a single thing on this planet that could chew on an arm like that. Predators tend to have sharp teeth so they can tear through flesh. What I saw looked more like blunt teeth that crushed the limb with such tremendous force that the flesh split apart. I catch sight of movement behind us, and fire off a shell before I get a good look. Traditionally, you identify a target before shooting so you don’t accidently hit a friendly. This wasn’t a concern at the moment. The movement I fired at wasn’t on the ground, but the ceiling behind us. Something small scurried out of a open vent, and I didn’t want to risk letting whatever it was to get close. No one could tell us what was killing people. In my book, this was a ‘if it’s not human, kill it’ kind of situation. By the time we made it to the exit, there was only seconds left before the lockdown would commence. We get all of the scientist through, and the first soldier. The other two were getting panicy at the sound of the alarm, and trip over each other trying to make it out. I’m forced to stand there and watch as they fall into the doorway, and are crushed by the blast doors closing down. Up to this point it was the worst thing I ever saw, but the day isn’t over yet, and I’m still inside the facility. A buddy of mine, Gordon, had been on the other side of the blast doors when they closed. He calls to me on the radio, letting me know I’m the only one still inside. The only way the top brass is going to open these doors is if I managed to close the containment breach. Since no one has told me what the breach was, I have no clue how to close it. There was so much confusion after the spike that I don’t even know where to find the breach. Gordon says he’s going to try to get me some information to work with. In the mean time, my best bet is the cooling system. It’s the first place he knew of that suffered any casualties. The cooling system is located on the other side of the facility. Having only emergency power is going to make it difficult to get to. The flashlight on my shotgun is only helping so much, what I would give to have full lighting. However, the spike blew out more than half the electrical systems in the facility. There is no way a grunt like me is going to figure out how to restore power. Tripping on the third body I hadn’t seen, I’m getting really tired of the subpar lighting. Just when I’m about to express my frustration with an ill advised scream, something moves in front of me. My shotgun speaks instead of my mouth, and a splatter of fluid paints the wall. With the light trained on whatever it had been, all I see is a small mass of flesh, completely unrecognizable from the buckshot enema. The only thing I can tell, it had been small. About the size of a infant, but the damn thing moved with the speed of a predator. The fluid on the wall is a dark blue, but there appears to be copious amounts of a clear substance. For something so small, it sure as hell does drool a lot. On my way to the cooling system, I duck into a security checkpoint. Normally there’s a rack of weapons, stacks of ammo, body armor, and other assorted supplies. Most of it is gone, but what I do find will help. I take an NBC mask bag, attach it to my thigh, and fill it with the flares that no one thought to take on their way out of the facility. In order to get to the cooling system, I have to get to the emergency stairwell. I’ve already seen these things crawling on the ceiling, so a narrow space like the stairwell is going to be a nightmare. If these things are intelligent in anyway, I could be walking straight into an ambush. Popping one of the flares, I open the door and immediately toss it in. The blinding light illuminates everything as I sweep the area with the 9mm. Nothing moves, so I proceed inside. The stairs continue on for several flights down, but thankfully I only need to go down one level. Not surprising, the door is locked, so I try my keycard. It doesn’t work, which isn’t that surprising. As a security guard I don’t have clearance to go into restricted areas, but I escort those that do. Calling on the radio, I ask Gordon if he can get the base commander to override access points for the entire facility. With the power issues there’s no guarantee it’ll work for everything, but he promises they’ll do what they can. As I stand in place, shotgun constantly searching for anything that needs to be shot, I hear something odd. It’s an echo of sorts, continuous and wet sounding. Not so much like water dripping from a leaking pipe, but like slick bodies squirming in the mud. It’s the last thing I want to do, but I do it anyway. Popping another flare, I drop it down the shaft. I watch it descend each floor, until it lands on the bottom. The flare doesn’t land on the floor, but the squirming mass covering the entire bottom level. I’ve snuck into this stairwell many a time over the years for a smoke break. At the end of each I would flick my still smoking butt down the shaft, and watch it’s descent to the bottom. I know there’s a floor missing under that mass, and I feel my chances for getting out of here diminish. It’s hard to pinpoint what each thing looks like, there are so many, and they’re swimming around each other. It's like a cross between a slug and shrimp, with varying sizes from a Chihuahua all the way to a Doberman. That mouth opens to let out thin tentacles that act as feelers, but there’s no teeth. Just a solid bridge of blunt bone designed to crush and grind. An electronic click sounds behind me, and I quickly open the door. In the span of thirty minutes, those things swarmed in from wherever the breach is, and flooded the entire bottom level. The room I end up in is only slightly better than the stairwell. Bodies litter the entire area, at least I think that’s what they are. Mangled and crushed all over, it’s hard to determine one body from the next. On the upside, the coolant tanks are intact. Liquid helium isn’t combustible, but the freezing capabilities still make it a hazard. Maybe there’s a way I can use that to my advantage. In my search for a source of the giant slugs, I find an open access panel to the center of the accelerator. Climbing up, I see a few of the slugs, and blast them into oblivion. As quick as I can, I fire shell after shell, stopping only to reload as the slugs just keep coming. There’s a break in the action where there appear to be no more slugs coming, and I survey the area as I reload my shotgun. In the center of the open space, I watch as a slug falls from a spot seven feet off the ground. Blasting the slug right away, I get as close as I dare, but there’s nothing to see. My flashlight shows nothing, but empty space were the slug fell from. Popping another flare, I toss it into the space they appear to be coming from. I watch as the stick of burning red light goes into the spot, and completely disappears. Seconds later, the flare reemerges in the mouth of another slug. Another blast from my shotgun, and the slug is nothing more than a mass of dead flesh. Standing directly underneath, I put the end of my shotgun to the spot. Extending my hand out completely, I see the front end of the shotgun with the flashlight completely disappear. Pulling it back, it comes back as if nothing happened. Aside from calling this the source of the breach, I don’t know where to begin explaining this. Gordon talks things out with me, trying to understand what I’m seeing, but I don’t just stand idly by. There are small, portable tanks of liquid helium in the cooling room. I drag one of these tanks through the access panel, along with a ladder. Opening the ladder up, I put it directly underneath the breach, and place the tank on the very top. Half the tank is on the other side of the breach, and I get as far away as I can while still being within firing range. With the 9mm, I pop off a few rounds. The bullets rupture the helium tank, sending the ladder crashing to the floor, and a cloud of frozen liquid explodes out. Watching with the shotgun at the ready, I hope my quick thinking pays off. For five long minutes I wait for a slug to drop down, but none do. Just as I key up the radio to tell Gordon the breach is closed, half a dozen slugs drop to the floor. Instead of the wet plop I’ve heard from previous slugs, they land with a loud shatter. The helium didn’t freeze the breach closed like I had hoped, but it did freeze the next slugs coming through that space. Before firing off at the next batch of slugs falling to the ground, I watch as they skid off. Following them with the flashlight’s beam, I see them disappear down an access shaft I hadn’t realized was open. At least now I know how they got to the bottom level. My choices are extremely limited at this point. I can either stay here and keep killing the slugs until they get the better of me, or I can use the ladder to go through the breach, and try to take them out at their source. Either way, I’m probably not going to see the light of day again.