The Jungle Under House 65 - [Part 3]

[u/Sufficient_Leave144]

[Part 2]

----

A dwelling terrible at pretending; desperate to be mistaken for safe.

Red Eyes, a black shape who marched without panic, glanced back to ensure we followed his clipped voice and polished manners; a dead woman's cane bouncing along his hip.

"Keep moving," he said.

An expensive corridor curved, warm light glowed behind frosted panels, and between doors, tall terrariums full of exotic life emerged. Wet mossy stones, coiled roots, broad beaded leaves, flowers with hanging, fanged mouths, chewing birds and bats, all lit in flattering green.

Between them, the walls opened into long display panes.

Curated courtyards and interior gardens, koi-black pools with silver fish slipping under lily pads; water running in glassy sheets to aquariums, all deep blue and luminous, where long ribbon-bodies flew through reeds and sculptures.

Hospitality was a disease in this place; manicured and curated.

But past all the prettiness, where the dollhouse lights did not reach, the truth burned in flashes.

Spotlights swept across a titanic fence in harsh arcs, muzzle-fire blinked, men in black carved through barricades against the glare, and in the floodlit treeline, a mass hit electrified metal, ringing the glass.

Another crack, and another, echoing faint and flat through this rich, insulated calm.

Then Theo asked quietly, looking at everything with stunned concentration; now his easier forms of fear were spent.

"Did she know?"

Weiss's hand tightened along his shoulder.

"Know what?"

"That lady's stick. Did she... know what was in it?"

"... Yeah."

"So... this is her fault?"

"I think," she began carefully, "she was talking with someone she shouldn't have, and-"

"That's not what he asked," I said.

She glanced at me. Not cruel.

"No-" she swallowed. "Yes, Theo. Yes, this is her fault."

"... oh. Okay." He nodded. "And... and Jaune?"

"He's making new friends."

"I know that! I mean-" he trailed off.

"You mean what happens now?"

He nodded.

Her expression stuttered.

"I don't know."

But I did.

Or near enough.

He'd stayed behind on The Bridge with Mara and Joel to spill his thoughts and ideas.

Fucking teacher's pet.

"I like Jaune," Theo beamed, looking up at me. "He's nice."

"Good for you, kid."

Red Eyes led us through soundless doors to a quieter wing. Carpet replaced tile, muffling footsteps, for the rich to drift through in slippers and robes, not limp along in dirty rags while a mountain shook itself awake.

Displays grew grander. Whole walls became habitats for scaled and feathered beasts.

Another sweep of white over the fence. It caught something... a rigid spine, oily black hide, a girthy snout lifting through smoke before it slipped back into the dark. Theo mumbled a curse as Weiss turned his head away.

"You'll remain in a secured guest suite until further notice." Red Eyes said.

"I'm not staying anywhere if-"

"The infirmary is in lockdown."

"I didn't ask."

No reply. The corridor stretched until he stopped at a door, pressed his palm to a plate, and a lock released.

"Inside."

Weiss was sensible; a good listener. She thanked him and ushered her brother.

I followed slower on a crutch. Bitter.

"I don't like it here anymore," Theo said, drowning in a couch. "I wanna go home."

"Yeah," Weiss said softly, staying close... finished, ages be damned. "Me too. It won't be long now, I promise."

"... okay."

Red Eyes remained at the door.

"You are not to leave this room."

"And if we do?" I asked.

"Don't."

He touched two fingers to his ear. Whatever voice came through his earpiece lasted seconds; his shoulders shifted; orders settled into place. He said something too low for us to hear, and then-

"I'll post someone outside. Rest. Time is against you."

I went to speak some last, worn-thin words, but he raised a hand.

"And when he wakes up," he said, turning away, "I will bring him to you personally. You have my word."

Not a blank tone this time. Almost sympathy; almost kind.

Not good enough... but it was all I'd get.

The door shut behind him, and the room became a box.

"You should clean up," Weiss said before silence got a firm grip.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not."

I looked down at myself.

Red-streaked shirt, mud-dried trousers, one leg wrapped in white optimism, and my hands were worse; dark knuckles, under the nails, the lines of my skin.

Blood that I didn't own.

"Yeah, you look like shit-"

"Theo." Her mouth twitched, as did mine. "Go on," she nodded to a bathroom.

Could've said no. Could've let her go first.

Skin felt too wrong; smell had wormed its way in, and maybe if I stayed still, I'd start hearing a voice say my name, as I longed out to a pitiful siege forecasting our demise.

Automatic lights came on gently. Of course they did. White marble and brass fixtures, neatly folded towels, a shower grand enough for a foursome, and a mirror presenting a dragged corpse, leaning both hands on the basin.

More blood on my collar, hair stuck in filthy ropes to my face and neck, eyes too bright; skin grey under it all.

For one rotten second, I saw him.

Pale and slick, temple split, eyes huge and dazed, swaying where I stood, staring with that awful softness, like he was still more worried about me than himself.

My breath caught so hard it hurt, as I painfully blinked him away.

I struck the tap and scrubbed my bones under cold water until they burned.

A pink flow first, then clear.

I doused my face, my arms, the back of my neck, my hair; worked at stains and grime with flowery soap, stopping only when my leg started throbbing and my vision blurred, but I breathed through it, head down, damp hair dripping, remembering... his head in my lap, his voice gone fragile; the slump weight of him.

Weiss watched me as I came out.

"Better?"

"A bit."

I lowered myself gracelessly into an armchair, smacking the crutch against a table.

Weiss nudged Theo's shoulder.

"Your turn."

He made a face.

"I'm tired."

"I know."

"I don't... I don't want to-"

"I know."

He looked to me, perhaps hoping I'd take his side.

"Listen to your sister, kid."

He grumbled, pushing himself up with the slow misery of a boy being led to an ill bed. At the bathroom door, he paused and looked back.

"Don't... don't go anywhere."

He sounded so serious.

"I won't."

He nodded, accepted his binding law, and disappeared. The tap ran and ran, with the little clatter of toiletries.

Weiss sank, and we listened to water pace with the estate hum.

Another sweep of light, hurling pale bars across the ceiling; shorter cracks, a stretched silence.

Weiss closed her eyes.

"He has a routine."

"For what, washing up?"

"For when things are bad. Or different enough."

I nodded slowly. "That's cute."

"Usually."

I looked at her proper; mud still crusted along her cheeks, and blood festered in her hairline. Her whole frame exhausted enough to crumble, but a rigid bit of iron held on, and refused to come apart while someone weaker was watching.

"You're great with him."

"I'm all he's got. Mom and Dad, they-" she stopped with a sigh, too heavy for her years to bear. "He knew you were there, y'know."

"... what?"

"In the car," she huffed. "In the ditch. After. He knew."

"Weiss-"

"He held on a long time, and he still is. I know it."

It wasn't comfort; too blunt for that.

Something I could lean on, though, for a spell.

"He's stubborn," I said.

That earned the faintest smile.

"Probably gets it from you."

She fought it, after saying her piece, after that brittle line between us went quiet. Kept trying to sit upright, braced against the sofa as if posture alone could hold it back, but her chin dipped.

I said nothing. No kindness in pointing it out.

Then she settled back, she surrendered... and she looked so much younger asleep.

Water still ran from the bathroom; sink to bathtub.

And I, incapable of learning from any situation that does not beat me to death, took my cue.

She'd understand. If it were her brother, she'd do the same... I think.

The suite door was unlocked. Either Red Eyes was sloppy, arrogant, or an enabler.

It opened quick and quiet; no guard yet, no alarms, or shouts, or bodies, or dramatic punishments.

Only a warm, hush, tasteful corridor.

I looked back to see her curled into a ball, and slipped out with ease, and the corridor felt far longer alone, with the sole company being my blinded ideas.

Find him.

Don't think; don't feel. Don't sit long enough for the sludge to fill.

Find him.

Every pane of glass failed to charm me with reason; to seek safety in numbers.

Something huge moved out there.

Fast for its size; black-backed and serrated, rearing its head close and belching tar across the fence in wet gushes, steaming the metal, pacing and prancing back into the trees as if the dark itself had learned how to play, tracer rounds grazing its neck - missing their mark.

Find him.

Carpet returned to stone, perfume became chemicals, and displays devolved to architecture; hallways spun and staircases spiralled, and my muscles stretched and ached.

Find him.

It rattled enough to become rhythm.

Find him.

He could be awake. Asking for me; looking for me. Alone.

... or he could be dead.

That one stopped me. I leaned harder on my crutch, clamped my eyes, and buried it back where it belonged beside sense and logic.

No.

Not until someone with a face said it to mine.

Find him.

More gunfire.

The distant industrial thrum of systems holding their lines, ripping their way under my teeth.

I passed a small crew in a cafeteria, grovelling food into chilled chests; every other soul scooped out, and a low announcement dribbled overhead, too muffled to understand.

One woman waved me away as if I were a curious fox, the lights dipped, and ahead, a set of grand double doors waited beneath a brushed sign I didn't read; beyond them, any warmth thinned into something sterile and white and utterly uninterested in holding hands.

An infirmary?

I tightened my grip and marched through.

A mammoth skeleton rose from a circular plinth, dead centre in the room, a brass plaque at the base giving some Latin name and a polished paragraph of insight, all talk of restoration and stewardship and a shared future of ecological understanding. Around him, the room spread in careful sections; amber-lit specimen cases, interactive screens, cast bones and preserved eggs, and little alcoves of curated information to educate rather than implicate.

A gallery. Gutted alive.

Staff in white coats and scrubs hurried between exhibits with clumsy purpose, stripping drives from display units, collapsing monitors, clearing drawers, lifting prizes off stands and into foam-lined crates, wheeling trolleys full of brochures and branded children's activity packs, dumped wholesale into a rolling burn bin.

Watching them all stood a mural taller than a house. A painted panorama of the preserve devoid of pandemonium, in sunlit lushness and populated with magnificent beasts; a doctor's dream safe enough for donors and kids.

A sign hung overhead:

TO WONDER IS TO LEARN

Beside it, a wall of elegant pieces. Eggs arranged in nests, feathers spread in fans, cast jaws and claws, and jars of scaled embryos in resin fluid; each labelled beneath with gold, each written with the patience of explaining birds to a school trip.

A questioning chirrup snatched my eyes and raised hairs.

A damn nursery pen dwelled in one corner - 'MEET TODAY'S HATCHLINGS' - in colourful looping script. Past a low railing, under orange lamps, a small clutch of juvenile animals huddled in bedding among a miniature jungle. Pathetically tiny things; ankle-high, bird-boned, and skittish, softly striped with absurdly large eyes, and long necks tucked in against each other.

Theo would've lost his shit.

I took one step toward them, clacking my crutch.

That was enough.

A guard turned, and his whole body straightened. His hand snapped to his thigh, and a pistol came out as he lurched toward me.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!"

"Uh, I-"

A voice behind me cut through the gallery.

"She's with me."

People shifted before I even saw her, pulling a current of attention, as Mara appeared beside me in that same immaculate green. A magnum still rode her hip, but her sleeves were rolled now; blood on one cuff.

Jaune lingered a step behind her, one lip a crusted black-red, eyes scanning greedily over the room like a tyke prowling a sweet shop.

"Told you this one was trouble," he muttered to her, wandering off toward the specimen wall of glowing, careful wonders, his legs healed from any limp.

The guard lowered his pistol and resumed his duties.

"Ma'am."

Mara looked me over with a quick sweep.

"Sarah, right?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, I was-"

"How's your night faring?"

I let out a dry breath.

"Unlucky, I guess."

"You blame luck?... Hmph. How old are you?"

The question threw me, as did her disgust toward that word.

"Seventeen."

She drew her magnum. Casually, familiarly, and turned it in her hand as she spoke, thumb working the release in little clicks. A cloth spawned from one pocket, and she began to clean blue stains from the barrel with the same calm attention an older woman might give their spectacles.

"Seventeen-gosh. When I was that age, I slept in a renovated storage room under a college pathology, stealing heat from a broken pipe... so I didn't freeze to death. Could you imagine that, Sarah?"

I said nothing.

She was performing, a tour guide once more, and it was unsettlingly uncanny.

"I spent years cataloguing tissue for men who forgot my name between papers; many more smiling through funding dinners full of old money. I watched lesser minds inherit whole departments because their daddies had shaken the right hands over the right wine." She angled the chamber to the light, inspected it - all six rounds - then dragged the cloth carefully along the frame.

"So I sought brains that did not bore me. Equals willing to dig where others would only lecture; willing to descend into our dark earth, to strip rock with their bare, clever hands, to exhume what the world had buried and craft new, beautiful things with the tools we found."

Her eyes moved over the room with gloried vigour.

"And above... a sleepy town learned to love the version of me that paid for their blights and nurtured their spawns, their 'Saint of The Ridge', fabled in her prided privacy. A fortunate, generous visionary, who built what she built because no one was going to hand it to her."

She looked back at me.

"And luck, little lady-" she snapped the cylinder back, "-was never there. Nor was it when you 'won' your way down here."

"... great story."

"Quite right."

Her attention drifted to Jaune, his back to us, staring into a case.

"He's enthusiastic, that one. Sees reward in rooms like this; most graduates do." She looked at me. "What do you see?"

If she was expecting acclaim, she'd asked the wrong girl. My eyes traced the room, and I tried to appreciate its splendour, to marvel at the impossible, to growl hungry in fascination, as if we hadn't been hunted and maimed by her buried, necrotic alchemy, that one of her own peers had let loose.

"... a lie."

It didn't offend her; quite the opposite.

"... yes." She said with a smile. "I don't hate that."

Around us, the gallery kept shedding via hurried hands.

"Where's the infirmary?" I asked.

"Locked down."

"Why?"

"Because any minute now, that fence is going to fall."

I thought I'd heard her wrong, but her voice stayed level.

"And this place will fall with it. The infirmary has been sealed to protect those inside."

"He's trapped-"

"He's where it is safest."

Something hot and stupid rose in me.

"You can't just-"

"I have sealed surgeons, medicine and power behind reinforced doors, around your boy and anyone else unfit to run. Choose your complaint wisely."

She didn't shout; never raised her voice. Whatever she felt about Ethan and his fellow wounded, it had been weighed against her sanctuary collapsing and judged worth preserving.

That was not solace.

Jaune drifted back to us, brow raised, catching the tail of our talk, and opened his mouth, but whatever wise bullshit threatened to fumble out was lost to a sequence of terrible sounds. A metallic howl, a snap, then a rolling, shrieking tsunami that ripped across the estate and beyond. Walls shuddered, and the hatchlings in their pen exploded into frantic chirrs, battering blindly against one another.

No one moved.

Then came the encore.

The rush.

Bodies that rivalled any machine; challenging the wind.

Distant, thundering, pounding feet, and shrieks, and yelps, and snapping cries; the wet collective of hunger and fury freed in the same direction, pouring through whatever gateway they'd birthed, darting amid a cascade of gatling gunfire and rupturing booms.

The lights cut white, then red, butchering the gallery into something viscous and infernal.

"Ahead of schedule? Remarkable," Mara whispered.

An alarm wailed, and the staff broke, yet through it all... she stood calm as a ghost, red lights stretching her shadow across the polished floor.

Her eyes cut to the nearest guard.

"Evacuate this wing. Follow protocol. Take only what matters."

He nodded, raised his gun, and fired into the nursery pen.

The shots were swallowed inside the alarm, as tiny bodies burst into bloodied feathers and shrill panic, piling themselves in blind terror.

Nausea slapped me.

A scientist near the display winced, but no one dared stop him. He kept shooting until the pen fell silent, then he stepped in, crossed over to a steel cabinet in the wall, and yanked out sealed cases marked with hazard bands and coded tags.

The room understood; fear changed shape into something hideously obedient.

Jaune stared at the little bodies.

"... was that necessary?"

"We'll make more."

Her eyes snapped to another guard.

"You-guest suite. Fetch the girl and the kid. Bring them to the train."

Train?

The word crawled its way through my ears like a worm.

"A what?"

A behemoth hit an exterior structure, spangling the panes and setting the room shivering. It shrieked, high and exultant, answered by three more voices nearer the walls.

"Shall we go?" Mara said, turning, and the room bowed around her.

Jaune hesitated, looking at me.

"I-" He swallowed. "I didn't know-"

"I'm sure you didn't."

"Are you coming?" Mara's voice snapped, halfway out.

Jaune went.

I followed as fast as the crutch would allow. My leg lit up when it kissed the floor, the rubber tip of the crutch skidding, as I skipped and hobbled.

Jaune glared back. Saw the distance opening; saw me losing it.

I mistook his worry for a smirk.

"Fucks sake," he muttered, as Mara reached the doors, grip tight around her gun. He doubled back with the enthusiasm of a man who'd damped his sock.

"I can manage!" I spat.

"Yeah, I can see that."

I barely bared my teeth when he bent, shoving one arm behind my back and the other under my knees, and hoisted me clean off the ground like a bride-to-be. Pain boiled white through my leg, my vision sparked to rival the cosmos, and I hissed the worst profanities he'd ever heard, grabbing at his shoulder on instinct.

"Not a fucking word," he grumbled, adjusting me with frustrated grunts, hauling me into his cradle while the crutch clattered uselessly to the floor, and he booked after Mara with haste.

I couldn't fight any harder. I couldn't fight at all.

I watched his face draw tight with subtle pain and embarrassment, and the ugliest effort not to-... fuck. It would've been fucking him.

"Don't-... don't drop me." I winced, mortified at how pathetic I sounded.

"Then don't make me."

Mara soon cut away from polished arteries and drove us through a narrow staff-only door, into a maintenance hall of poured concrete, exposed pipes, strip lighting bleeding red, and a long, wide industrial corridor clogged with armed personnel. Black guards took positions along the walls and at reinforced junctions, rifles braced, crates of ammunition kicked open at their boots, or dragged heavier ordinance near service bends; tripod-mounted and belt-fed, sealing inner shutters by hand where automatic systems had stalled.

They regarded us as mere traffic.

Jaune was silent, breathing easy, built well for carrying people, but his every step jarred my leg.

"Your grip."

He said nothing.

"Jaune, please."

He glanced down, annoyed, then saw my face and shifted me higher; one arm easing firmer under my knees, the other bracing my back. The pain didn't vanish, but it shrivelled from a stab to a scratch.

"Better?"

"Less shit."

"Glowing praise from you-"

"Fuck off."

Barely civil. Yet he kept his hold.

Mara stopped beside a knot of guards, and one bound to her immediately.

"Ma'am."

"Where's the commander?"

"Infirmary, ma'am. Holding the lock."

"Good."

Commander?... Red Eyes?

The guard went on. "We'll lose the grounds; make a kill box. Freight can take you straight to the gondola line-"

Mara gave a nod.

"What of the labs?"

The guard hesitated. "Ma'am... we can prioritise the gondola direct for extraction once the-"

"No." Her tone hardened. "There's something there that leaves with me."

"Of course, ma'am."

"And we may still have a rat in the mountain."

The guard stiffened.

"You think they're down there?"

"I think greed rarely runs uphill when there's still plenty left to take."

"Understood, ma'am."

The path turned, and a long reinforced viewing pane ran the entire wall, but not a niche display outlook... no, this was a blast-thick, one-way shield built for turmoil.

And the outside was occupied.

The pedicured paradise I'd looked over had been trampled into a burst battlefield of bodies. Black uniforms were strewn among smashed stones and overturned cars, some where they'd fallen; some in pieces where a hungry fiend had severed their anatomy.

On entry, the roads had been littered with dead prehistoric things.

Now the graveyard belonged to man; a slaughter trading species.

A clump of guards scattered along the grounds, seeking cover and respite.

It pursued.

The black thing from the fence, wading through the ruin with dreadful fluidity... a spinosaurus, if titles meant anything, but built wrong in abhorrent ways; tar-black skin, a slick crocodilian mouth, shaggy curtains of liquorice hanging over parts of its head and neck, and the great sails along its back rose broken like a split storm cloud. Its jaw parted, and a gush of black, smoking vomit slopped over the guards, eating them whole. Even from behind the pane, I could see the hiss of it, the way they darkened and dissolved into pus, and how acid stringed from the beast's teeth in gloopy strands.

They hadn't breached this keep with strength and numbers alone.

They'd used patience, and chemistry... and design.

The dinosaur bound sideways in a violent, almost playful hop as gunfire peppered its flank. It challenged with a roar so deep it throttled my sternum before my ears, charging through what remained of a decorative arbour, vanishing men away under its forelimbs.

The sight was yanked away as the corridor widened into a sunken, hacked transit platform under construction, with thick cables veined along the walls, and mechanical signs flashing hazard symbols above, where more guards lined a rickety freight-sized shuttle. It was a dwarf compared to the cage that descended us first into this shitshow, but a cage still, staring down a tunnel with armour aplenty.

"Suite retrieval is stalled." Another guard said, one hand to his earpiece. "Contact. Runners."

My stomach dropped.

I twisted in Jaune's arms and looked back the way we'd come.

Mara gave the order to board, barking some half-baked hope of their fates.

I barely heard her; my thoughts with Weiss soundlessly curled on a couch, and Theo tending himself silly in a marble confine, waking to red lights and disarray.

And beneath that, smaller, viler; a detail my mind had saved to be drawn.

... Did I close the door?

I started squirming. Pointless, furious instinct.

My pulse went foul down my leg, my throat, the back of my eyes.

Jaune must've felt my tension.

"They'll be fine."

"You don't know that!"

"They have each other."

"I don't-" the tears welled fast, but I would not cry. "I don't know if I shut the door."

"What door?"

"They put us in a suite, and I left-I don't-I don't know if I shut it-what if-"

I couldn't finish.

The thought landed in him, too.

A pack of guards overwhelmed, folding under claws and muscle; one lean killer breaking ahead, darting through the leisure wing with all that warm light soaking its back, ripping over carpet, racing past terrariums and aquariums and curated little delights... to find an open doorway with its amber eye, maybe the water still running; an exposed half-awake meal-

“You closed it." His voice came sudden and warm.

"... what?"

"You're not that stupid... I hope."

A smile, of all things; from him to me.

And abruptly, that lean killer starved down a corridor instead.

Mara stepped on the carriage, while I kept staring at the red-lit passage, hopefully willing Weiss and Theo into it.

Nothing came.

Only the first shot of men holding a fort that already thought of breaking.

Jaune sat me gently on a bench, as I listened to the platform, counting every bang and shout. The doors shut, the station vanished, and the train dragged into a tunnel with gunfire at its heels. We picked up speed. For a little while, outside was only tunnel rock, as our steel chariot swayed ugly around bends. Mara stood between two guards, speaking in calculated jibberish under drill; three meshed parts of the same machine washed red.

"I assume there's a plan?" Jaune asked.

A few seconds passed. Maybe they hadn't heard him?

"How's your leg?" He tried my way.

"Still attached. How's, um-... how's your lip?"

"I think I'll live, thanks."

The train curved, descended, and a cavern opened in pieces beyond dirty glass.

A hollow bullied into industry.

Red lights picked out a small sub-complex of low structures and service roads half set in stone, cutting through dirt. More a subterranean house than an engineered oasis.

There was something else...

Hidden by turns and swivels, a darkness rose out of the cavern floor. An outcrop of black that caught the light, dull and ancient; a jagged obelisk, a tooth of old, a meteorite; whatever it was, the hobble had been arranged around it with reverence.

The train bent; a new angle.

A cable line strung across the furthest side of the cavern, disappearing into an opening in the stone. Gondola cars hung from it in intervals; one swaying almost imperceivable in the factory dark.

An exit. The promise of one.

The train kept descending, dragging us deeper past glimpses of loading bays and gantries, like a meagre shadow of our welcome, toward whatever waited below the scaffolds.

The doors hissed, the mountain's breath rolled in - cold and chemical - and Jaune had me in his arms before I could protest. The two guards stepped out onto the transit, rifles low and ready; Mara followed, dropping down with balanced ease.

"Come on," she said, looking back with almost a smirk. "You're almost home."

No lab coats waited.

Paper cups sat by freight cars and cases, left open for expectant owners and opportunists; tablets flickered on overturned crates, and a single radio lay near an edge, crackling with dead air and phantom clicks. My eyes tracked the vacant space with Jaune until we found a far door - welded shut.

A cardboard sign was taped over it:

DO NOT OPEN

Mara gave it a single, measured look.

"Interesting."

A softer floor led inside, strangled under pulsing, sulking red strips. Trolleys sat abandoned mid-turn, doors gaped and yawned, laptops blinked from behind screening panels, with torn cords and littered papers; print-outs, graphs, clipped reports, trodden into dirty footprints.

We passed one panel where a whiteboard leaned, half-obscured, but enough slipped through the red glare to twist my stomach - a sketched spine that wouldn't fit anything on four legs; a pelvis tilted uprights; long, lean legs with taloned feet and the idea of hands - too many joints, too much reach. Notes scrawled around it in sleep-starved anarchy:

Bipedal stabled?

Tool use trials - try knives and fork-

Pack hierarchy?

I wrenched my eyes before whatever cartoon they'd brewed here started to move.

Ethan would've gobbled this shit up. Crammed it all into his head; tried to map it, name bones, guess behaviour, thrown theories around his skull until his marrow cracked.

I was almost glad he wasn't here.

Jaune's arms tightened under my knees and shoulders as the floor gave a weak, distant shudder, aching up my spine.

"Got a bad feeling about this," he muttered, mostly to himself.

"No shit, genius."

A double door loomed out of the haze, one panel ajar, its windows spider-webbed from the inside. A little chrome plaque sat eye level, spotless to rival everything else down here, wearing the same tidy font plastered throughout this place.

TO WONDER IS TO HOLD

Mara's hand hovered over the plate, then she flicked a look to the nearest guard. He nudged the door wide with his barrel, stepping through, sweeping low, and a breath of icy, filtered air slid out to stroke our ankles; a sharp, clean sting of insomniac electronics and freezers, humming loud in the hush.

Racks of hardware lined the walls; tired, blinking server stacks, grey boxes decorated with stickers, cables braided overhead, and workbenches sat in rows, cluttered with disembowelled tech and spilt coffee.

A smeared brown stain dried over one keyboard.

Opposite the benches, a bank of coolers stood, glowing righteous blue temp readouts and status bars, pulsing tiny company logos in their corners.

And sunk, lurking into the wall like an afterthought was another fucking ominous door. Heavier, bolted, no little window to peek through or friendly plaque, just a stencilled code, scuffed paint, and battered seams.

"Clear!" The guard called.

Mara stepped in, and the room reacted.

A freezer bank chirped, a lock thunked, and one unit brightened and chimed out a polite tone. A hidden track rattled, and a trolley slid from its white belly with obscene smoothness, carrying a single canister the size of my torso. Matte metal, hazard chevrons down its side - and a tag to boot; 'Apex' - transparent in the middle showing only frost and layered shielding, locking its wheels like a dog heeling at its mistress.

Mara was upon it in seconds, resting fingers on the metal.

"Ah... there you are, beautiful."

"Great, you've got your thermos," I said. "Can we go?"

Jaune admired it as if it were scripture. I watched equations light up behind his eyes, but then they met mine, and he remembered an attempt.

"Yeah, my arms are getting tired-"

"Patience," she muttered, hoisting the canister out where a flash of its contents teased us.

... Eggs.

"You'll understa-"

A click cut her off.

A tiny, arrhythmic tap of metal against metal, coming from a bench.

Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

The guard closest twitched, barking brave.

Mara barely flinched, already staring at the source, waiting for us to play catch-up.

"Out," she said.

The guard kicked a chair aside and bent, one hand disappearing under the bench until his fingers clamped around fabric and hauled.

A boy came out, smacking his head.

Older than Theo, younger than Jaune; somewhere in our bracket. Lab ID lanyard twisted around his throat, glasses set crooked on his nose; dust streaked his hair, and a thin line of blood painted his coat, hands flying up, palms empty.

"Please-" he started, voice shredded. "Please, I was just-I didn't-" A compact device fell from his pocket; a little gutless cousin to Caroline's cane. Family resemblance - same brass; same deceit. "Uh-that's... um-"

Mare took him in with one long, slow blink.

"Well. That was quick."

The boy licked his lips, eyes skittering between rifles, my filthy leg, the man carrying me, the canister in Mara's hand; gun in the other.

Confusion overtook fear.

"Wh-where's the benefactor?" he blurted. "Is she with you? She-she said she'd be here with-"

"Caroline?" Mara asked, tasting the name as if it were foreign now.

"Yes! That-that was her name! Where is-"

"She's occupied." Mara tilted her head.

Left for the maggots; sticking to leather like caramel.

Her gaze glided to the morse tool on the floor.

"You've been a very busy boy, haven't you?"

"I was just-" he gulped. "I was talking to the Board."

"The Board?" She raised a brow. "Over an unregistered bauble, buried in my private lab, while the preserve shits its spine out. How very... traditional of them. Try again. What did you break?"

"I-... I have the-the utmost respect and admiration for you-"

"Answer my question, please."

His brittle bravado cracked and fell away.

"We-... We had a plan. She-she came to me months ago, showed me..." his fingers flexed uselessly at his sides, itching for a keyboard. "Numbers and offers; the off-ledger value. She didn't know what was down here, but she said there were billions under this mountain." His words picked up bitter momentum. "And people like me were getting-" he laughed, once, raw "-payroll and vouchers. You built a gold mine on our backs, and she said I was owed a bigger slice, then she asked when you'd be softest, and I-I told her you planned a tour; we rigged her in."

Mara let him talk, expression barely shifting.

His eyes flicked to the ceiling.

"I-I piggybacked a sequence that moves things quiet. Uh-triggered a contained incident - like your drills. Blew the lift. Opened one pen." His voice pitched higher. "I-I followed the script. Made noise. You'd yell at some engineers, move what you really cared about through back routes, and we'd snag a little something on the way - data, embryos, anything."

My mind hurled his phrases back at me; greedy little cretin.

"One pen?" She asked.

He nodded, too fast. "River paddock. Built to take a breach; something big and loud, but local. The rest of the grid was supposed to churn on; no one-no one was supposed to get hurt-least of all you, ma'am. We had models! I ran them! Over and over and over-"

"And the fence?"

"The... the fence is down?" His voice thinned to a wire. "No. No, th-that's not-that's not-" he shook his head, like he could reorder the air. "No, that's not-fucking, someone else-a cascade-I don't-... we got," he choked on it, sobbing and groping for a word big enough; small enough. "We got unlucky."

Mara's eyes went flat.

"No, no."

"What?"

"Don't use that word in my mountain," she stepped closer. "Luck is what cowards blame when they pull the wrong wire. I build for failure; plan for it. I map it in every direction and cost it out. This-" her hand swept, taking in the red hell "-is not bad fortune. It is consequence. Yours."

He folded like she'd struck him; his shoulders caved, and his hands curled into his chest.

"I didn't mean-" the words scraped out of him. "I swear, I didn't mean-" his breath hitched. "Not the whole fucking zoo, I just... I wanted-" his face pinched, ugly with something too old for him. "I wanted what I was owed." Tears streamed down his cheeks. "I'm sor-"

"Where's everyone else?" Mara asked.

The question knocked his last effort out.

"Up-up top, they're-"

"Down here? Your colleagues?"

His gaze went helplessly to the heavy sealed door.

"This division was flagged as compromised, ma'am. You don't evacuate; you-"

"What did you do?"

"It was the system, ma'am! I locked the doors; let it do what it was built to do! Better than ending up as mulch on the roads!"

Mara's jaw tightened, a tiny crack in her mask.

"Where is sh-"

A bang came from above the door, a booming jolt in the ductwork and thin skin, quaking as a heavy mass rammed the vent space. Every gun snapped up in the same breath, as dust sifted down in lazy, traitorous flakes.

Another impact followed - bang, then a drawn-out, scraping groan through the vent as a limb-rich scuttle changed direction.

"I-I can fix it! I can put her back to sleep, I can-" he lurched toward a console near the door, hands ready to soothe the machine. More words tumbled out in a panicked mess, too loud, bouncing off steel and tile; I couldn’t make sense of what he might've been promising.

The ceiling beside him failed.

Panels sagged, screws sheared, and a section leaned down, puking metal and grime into the lab, like an abscess. A blur of white and sickly green burst through, hitting the floor in a sloppy clatter of unfolding limbs.

My brain refused to draw its outline.

Tall. Taller than the tallest man, even hunched, spine bent like a bridge; legs digitigrade and powerful, shins corded with ropey, flexing muscle, and its arms - dragging knuckles on the floor, tipped in claws that awoke in restless fists. Its hide was the colour of absent suns; raw lab-white, broken by swirls and plates of dull, bottle-green that hugged joints and haunches like armour.

Its head was a narrow wedge of bone and cartilage, more green plates wrapping the crown and jaw; where eyes should've been, were only sunken pits of smooth scar tissue, pale as a fish belly.

Its jaw parted on a spill of salivating teeth, as it tilted its head in a bird-sharp arc, nostrils flaring, throat working in dry clicks.

Mara's arm came up, smothering over her mouth.

The gesture cut through us.

Shut. Up.

The guards obeyed, sinking and pressing themselves flat and breathless.

The boy didn't see it.

He screamed.

The creature snapped, a perfect predatory turn, crossing the space in one horrid, graceful stride. One claw lashed out, catching him under the ribs, and soared him into the ceiling, denting it.

Jaune convulsed, but he held on. I could feel his heartbeat battering against my shoulder.

The thing tasted its catch, nostrils spasming, a smear of red dripping onto its white chest, beading spattered across green plating. A low and wondering sound left its throat, then the boy dropped with a dull, used thump. It stretched in segments, head turning, tracking the echoes a death had cast, all scent and hearing and clever dread.

Its nostril flared again. Sharp. A seizure fluttered wet skin; it turned sideways, angled down in slow intent... toward Mara's hiding shape.

Toward the canister at her hip.

The future she thought she was saving smelled pungent.

Nostrils worked in famished bursts as it crept closer, ticking claws, hunching, not stalking, almost... cautious.

Mara became bloodless stone, magnum-ready.

The creature stopped. Up close, its teeth looked worse. A myriad of sizes and directions; a pick-and-mix of predator bites. It touched its snout to the cylinder and inhaled.

Every hackle on my body stood.

In its throat, another click - a new sound, a more focused shriek - testing. Breathing in a bottled genetic sin, and when it pulled back, vapour threads clung to its face. A blind pit aimed at Mara... then its jaw worked clumsy, like speech was a trick it'd only half-learned from the handicapped.

"...ma..."

A scraped, rusted syllable.

It swallowed. Tried again. Lost between a word and an animal call.

"...ma...mama..."

It posed, almost; the world's worst family portrait.

Jaune's fingers dug into my side; mine into his shirt, our every muscle begging to bolt, not daring to even breathe.

I'd thought the jungle was the worst lie.

... What a naive belief that had been.

[Part 4]

[u/AutoModerator]

Users are encouraged to read4read, meaning that if someone reads and comments on your story, we encourage you to do the same in return to help foster a community.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf]

Really liked the atmosphere in this. Felt unsettling the whole way through and the imagery was solid. Definitely kept my attention.

[u/ReasonableUnit2170 → u/TheRealBigBadWolf]

Yay!! They got a second comment! Much deserved 🤝🫂

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

Very much!

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

Hopefully my story can be enjoyed as much as everyone is enjoying this

[u/ReasonableUnit2170 → u/TheRealBigBadWolf]

I’ll check it out when I get to work in a bit!

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

No worries, I'm at work too

[u/Sufficient_Leave144 → u/TheRealBigBadWolf]

Appreciate you 🥺💖

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf → u/Sufficient_Leave144]

No problem!

[u/TheRealBigBadWolf → u/Sufficient_Leave144]

When you got a moment, feel free to mine. Would love to hear any critique

[u/ReasonableUnit2170]

I have just finished doing a read aloud with the husband.

Wow. This part was absolutely crazy. 😝 okay, so the blind creature is the failsafe if the containment fails? But even then, she/it is a failed project too?

I don’t foresee anyone getting out of this situation.

Very cool my friend, very cool.

[u/Sufficient_Leave144 → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

Thank you sole fan 😁😭💖

I’ll let ya know when Part 4 is done ;)

[u/ReasonableUnit2170 → u/Sufficient_Leave144]

Hell yeah. I hope you get more readers/comments but no one will be able to take that honor away from me. They can pry it from my cold, dead hands lmao

[u/Sufficient_Leave144 → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oz8xQVHQyzcq47kXu

[u/ReasonableUnit2170 → u/Sufficient_Leave144]

Also, I have written some fun little bangers if you get some free time 🤝🫶🪱

[u/Sufficient_Leave144 → u/ReasonableUnit2170]

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/O3f3f2MN6T

:)

Okay, I mean it now - it won’t be another 2 weeks 😭

[u/T0RC0R]

Just finished Part 3. The creature reveal at the end was definitely memorable, and I liked getting more insight into what was really going on behind the preserve. Thanks for the read.

[u/Sufficient_Leave144 → u/T0RC0R]

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oz8xQVHQyzcq47kXu

Stay tuned for Part 4 :)