Parasite Lost

by Kyle Aho

  Visibly deflated, Dante turned as four surgical drones poked out of various hallways and split up to pursue the team at either end of the facility spine. Dante raised his shotgun to blast the surgical drones out of the way but with Bren and Alistair closing in he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t take some of the blast as well. Both Bren and Alistair shared this fear and violently shook their heads and hands in dissent as Dante’s shotgun leveled in their direction. Instead, Dante flicked the switch for his chainsaw bayonet and revved it as he advanced toward the two oncoming surgical drones. Hopefully he could buy Apate more time. Bren and Alistair simultaneously let out a breath of relief once Dante pointed his gun away from them. That moment was short lived once the two surgical drones heading in their direction activated their surgical saws.

  Alistair hit the ignition on his torch sword and adjusted the dial, concentrating the flame to a white-hot blade once more as he held his opposite hand out and gestured at Bren to keep his distance. Twin saw blades swirled on their bearings and separated on tiny arms with the intent of decapitating Alistair before he could swing. A sidestep followed by a quick thrust up dissected the first oncoming drone vertically and forced Bren to jump over a saw blade falling in the path of his shins.

  The second drone dodged Alistair’s backswing and slashed with a mass of scalpels in the shape of a hand. It scored fine grooves into Alistair’s armor and sliced open fabric and skin in the gaps where armor was foregone to allow movement. A hiss of pain escaped his lips as Alistair hacked toward the second drone, his torch sword roaring through the air chewing up oxygen but unable to find purchase. Bren wanted to join the melee but a reckless swing from the torch sword would maim him into uselessness or possibly kill him. Forced to just watch the skirmish in front of him, Bren glanced back at Dante as he shredded one of the attacking drones in a spray of sparks and metal fragments. Dante’s hungry and enraged visage loosened Bren’s bowels momentarily and he thanked the gods for allowing Dante to be his ally.

  With a glance back to Alistair, Bren watched as the drone tried to maneuver past the flaming weapon flicking through the air toward it. Alistair squared off with the drone at each movement, waiting for the AI to over commit and give him an opportunity to destroy it. A buzz and crackle rumbled over Bren’s shoulder. A second quick glance confirmed that another energy gun-wielding drone had found them.

  “Crap, do these things ever end?” Bren shouted. He ran full tilt down the hall away from the charging weapon. He ducked his head as he ran under the drone Alistair fought and hoped to everything holy that Alistair didn’t choose that moment to swing. Air hissed as an energy bolt barked from the new drone’s weapon and flew down the hall. It impacted with the surgical drone Alistair was fighting and sent a mess of molten metal and energy careening out from the drone.

  Alistair shielded his face with a forearm in time to protect his eyes from any of the searing shrapnel but he still took a bit of superficial damage to his skin and armor. The blast knocked Alistair against the wall and Bren to the floor. Both men barely had enough time to scramble to their feet before another charge loosed itself down the hall toward them.

  Dante noticed the bright flash from the first impact and grabbed the remaining drone with both hands. He ignored the lacerations as the scalpel hands tore into his forearms. Like an angry discus thrower, Dante hurled the drone down the hall and into the oncoming energy bolt.

  “It’s open!” Apate shouted down the corridor as she slipped inside the security bay door. Her three compatriots used their last reserves of endurance to follow her.

  They heard the buzz and crackle of another shot readying itself as they ran through the threshold of the security bay. Alistair slammed a button to force the door closed and the two sides hissed together as an energy bolt whipped down the hallway. Their eardrums almost burst as the shot impacted against the closing door. The outer layer turned to slag and made the inner layer of the door glow red-hot.

  “We don’t have much time!” Dante shouted, leveling his shotgun at the glowing door as Apate pressed the controls frantically trying to disable the security drones.

  Close enough to hear the buzz and crackle of another shot charging, the rest of the team braced for the impending slag implosion. Their weapons were pointed at the glowing door. Sweat stung their eyes and the minor flesh wounds everyone had endured. Their hearts pounded in their chests and threatened to explode. Their lungs ached with exhaustion. Gaining steadily in pitch, the buzz and crackle left everyone’s nerves screaming in anticipation. Any moment now the door would erupt in molten metal and there was nothing they could do about it. Then, much to their disbelief, the pitch slowly wound down. Everyone held their breath and watched the door. A moment later Dante risked a nervous glance over his shoulder at Apate.

  “They’re disabled,” she said as she slumped into a nearby chair and brushed the hair out of her eyes.

  All three men relaxed their weapons. Bren collapsed to the floor, Alistair leaned against a wall and Dante just stood there, his enhanced and artificial organs supplying him with the oxygen and blood he needed without much effort. Bren pulled open a locker and found some supplies inside.

  “Anything good?” Dante asked.

  “Eh, some shock rifles,” Bren rummaged through the locker, “medi-gel, and it looks like a few power bars.”

  “No shit?” Dante asked, looking over Bren’s shoulder and grabbing the half empty box from the locker. He immediately ripped a bar open with his teeth and ate it whole. Alistair loaded a medi-gel canister into his dispenser and applied it to his wounds. Dante stuffed another energy bar into his mouth as Bren held up an old issue of Nubile Nymphos and let the centerfold spill out.

  “Dayum,” he said as he looked the centerfold up and down. The back of his head started beeping but he was too mesmerized to care. Dante cradled the box of energy bars and took a step back as he stuffed a third bar into his mouth.

  “Can I get one of those mate?” Alistair asked.

  “There’s only three left,” Dante said as some crumbs fell from his mouth.

  “Great, that’s one each,” Alistair said, pointing to everyone but Dante. Dante looked hurt.

  “C’mon boys, you have to share,” Apate said.

  “But I’m so much bigger than you all,” Dante said.

  “You can have mine,” Bren said as he thumbed through the magazine. Dante ate another bar before Bren changed his mind and put the box on a table between them. Alistair picked both bars up and tossed one to Apate. Dante sighed and licked his fingers as Alistair peeled open a bar and took a bite. Apate reloaded her weapons as she watched some floating status icons spin in front of them. She pulled out four security cards from a small box on the floor and ran them through an encryptor. She punched in new access codes on a nearby computer.

  “Ok, these should give us access to the rest of the facility,” she said as she handed a card to each of them.

  “Should?” Bren asked, finally pulling his attention away from the magazine.

  “I haven’t been here for a while, I granted us access to everything I can remember but they may have set new protocols since then, I don’t know.”

  “Good work lass,” Alistair said. He took his card and put it in a spare pocket.

  “I’ll upload a map of the place to all your holo-pads, give me a minute.”

  Apate worked to get them as much information as possible. They all hoped the rest of the mission would be less life threatening than what they had endured up till now. With the security system turned off and complete access to the facility it looked like most of their problems were solved. The team sat in silence while Apate worked, tending to their wounds and gear. The silence was quickly broken as the collective scream of hundreds of mutated animals roared through the facility, so loud that even in a locked room in the basement there was no question as to what the sound was.

  Wide eyed and horrified, Bren looked over to Apate and shuddered.

  “You let them out?”


  Chapter X

  “It must be some mistake, I never opened the doors in that wing. I didn’t open any doors, I just gave us access to them,” Apate stammered as she checked the monitors frantically for what could have possibly gone wrong. Flashing icons poured into the hallways and turned into a mass of blinking red. They stared in disbelief as the floating display in front of them exploded with warning messages. It didn’t take long before it was impossible to distinguish specific icons.

  “What is your problem? First you ‘forget’ to tell us about working for this facility, then you fail to mention that you are trying to save your kid instead of help us complete the mission and get out of here alive and now you are actively trying to get us killed?” Bren roared as he watered the seeds of distrust Apate had planted. “How did you even get accepted for this mission? Wasn’t your name in a ‘do-not-let-this-crazy-chick-enter’ list or something?”

  Apate remained silent for a moment as she struggled to focus on what could have gone wrong and how she could fix it. She met Bren’s accusatory glare with stoicism and tried to forget that her former colleagues had left her for dead and probably erased her and her family from any formal documents to cover their tracks.

  “It was a mistake,” she said in the calmest tone she could manage in hopes that Bren wouldn’t go off on another tirade. Both Dante and Alistair exchanged nervous glances.

  “Mistake or not, the fact remains those creatures are loose. We need to move. Now,” Dante said, his voice no more alarmed than if he were ordering a meal at a cheap insta-food joint.

  “Agreed, let’s get on with it,” Alistair said as he lifted his weapons in preparation.

  “Fine. How do we get to the data banks?” Bren asked.

  “We might be able to get what we need in the lab we found those women in,” Apate said as she stood up from the console. Dante and Alistair grumbled. Apate looked around and wondered how to buy herself some trust. It wasn’t going to be easy but maybe if she could keep them alive long enough to reach the main lab they would trust her enough to not let her get eaten alive by the mutant monstrosities currently en route to their position.

  “They are in the main lab. All of their research passes through there at some point before being backed up in the data banks. It’s entirely possible that they have information in that lab that hasn’t been backed up, assuming they can even still make backups to the server,” she explained. None of the men seemed convinced. “They will also have supplies in there and I know for a fact I’m almost out. What about you? Do we have any medi-gel left?”

  Everyone patted down their pockets, gear and holsters. Resources were sparse. Whether she had an ulterior motive or not, Apate was their best chance of getting where they needed to go and getting out alive. Maybe the lifted quarantine was a mistake and she truly was innocent. They weren’t getting any closer to finding answers arguing in the basement of a facility swarming with things trying to kill them.

  The team quickly gathered what was left of their belongings and left the security bay. Together they jogged back down the long hallway from whence they came. Everyone hoped that the mutated creatures wouldn’t have time to fan out and reach the basement. If they were lucky they could get to the laboratory that was their next objective unmolested. As they approached an intersection with a sign directing them to the elevator their spirits rose. A second wind took them and they all moved faster, Apate’s promise that the elevator exited close to the main lab fueling their flight. That hope was quickly shattered when a crescendo of scratching claws and enraged howls echoed around them.

  “Anybody got a bright idea?” Bren asked as the noises suffocate the hallway. A pair of large mutated dogs jumped out of the stairwell at the end of the hallway. Hungry teeth gnashed and their bodies twitched and convulsed as if there were a separate beast inside each of them fighting to break out of the spiny black carapace encasing it.

  Apate fired a burst down the hall and darted left to an adjacent corridor. She didn’t bother to watch as her bullets split through the lead dog’s spiney armor and ejected a stream of black ichor through its ribs. Alistair curled his lip in disgust and followed Apate around the corner, panting as he struggled to keep up with her lithe gait. The second mutated dog sprung away from its fallen comrade. It eyed the corpse for a moment before turning back to pursue its prey with renewed ferocity. Saliva dripped to the floor as the mutated canine barreled forward and quickly gained on the team while they searched for a way up to the main level.

  “Follow her?” Dante suggested as he aimed his shotgun and fired at the second mutated dog. As if it read Dante’s mind the creature jumped out of the way and Dante’s bullet hit the ground.

  “Nimbly bimbly little pup, ain’t he?” Bren muttered to himself as he picked up the pace to catch up with the others.

  Apate made another quick turn and arrived in front of the elevator. She slammed her fist on the wall and mashed the ‘up’ button as if the harder she hit it the more likely it was to complete its function. A score of creatures fled in from all sides. Dogs, cats, small monkeys, badgers, lizards and a few arachnids were encased in spiny bone-like armor and were two or three times their normal size.

  A bead of sweat stung her eye as Apate looked up at the glowing display, waiting for it to read ‘B’ for basement and open the doors in front of them. Although their ammunition was low they had little choice but to take shots at anything they could. It seemed a useless effort to try and slow the tide given the amount of creatures crawling out of every corner and crevice but to do nothing meant certain death.

  With a deafening howl, a carapace armored spider monkey jumped off a canine in front of it and latched on to Dante’s shoulder. It clawed at Dante’s neck and its fangs dug into his flesh as it gnawed furiously. Dante looked at the creature as if it were a stain on his shirt and swatted it away. His brute strength sent the monkey careening through the air. It crunched against a wall and fell to the floor with a limp thud.

  Two more took its place and a large lizard-like creature crawled up his leg. Dante smashed the lizard’s face in with the butt of his shotgun and lowered the barrel down to finish the creature. He was rewarded with the click of a dry fire instead of a spray of gore. He patted his ammo pockets and fingered the hollow grooves in his ammo bandolier, swatting the mutated monkeys away. “I’m empty!” he shouted, instead using his shotgun as an impromptu club to keep the horde at bay.

  Alistair and Bren had similar trouble as the confined space and close proximity of so many creatures made it difficult to use their weapons freely. This forced them to use more vicious melee methods instead. Bren took a bad scratch to the face that split open his cheek and almost gouged out his eye before he threw the offending creature down and stomped it into a puddle of boney meat and viscera.

  A scorpion-like creature with a long tail barb impaled Alistair’s leg. He screamed in both pain and rage as the venom filled barb punched clean through his leg and oozed toxins out onto his armor. This agony was followed by the horrific weight of a large bird as it slammed into him from behind and knocked him to the ground. The fall caused the impaled barb to break off in his flesh, still pumping venom but thankfully onto his armor and not into his blood stream.

  Apate fired a few bursts into nearby creatures as she bobbed and weaved through the attacking horde with much more finesse than any of the men. She did her best to keep the largest threats at bay so they could handle the smaller ones that broke through her defensive fire. Bren stooped down to help Alistair up, squinting through his own blood as the furious melee consumed them. He blindly stabbed his harpooned fist at anything that got close enough and simply hoped it wasn’t one of their crew.

  With an anticlimactic chime the elevator doors opened and Apate dipped inside. “Come on!” she shouted, holding down the button to keep the doors open as she fired small bursts at anything that tried to get inside the elevator.

  Dante roared in frustration as he flipped a creature off his back and s
lammed it into the floor. Its spine cracked in several places. He then started grabbing the creatures he had killed, ignoring the lacerations to his hands from their spiny growths, and hurled them at the remaining creatures like spiky murderballs. It worked better than anyone expected. The corpses of their assailants impaled the creatures attacking them. Bren hooked one arm under Alistair’s shoulder and used his free hand to punch back whatever got close enough. Once inside the elevator, Dante kicked a mutant cat down the hall and stepped in after them.

  Talons and spiny limbs poked into the narrowing space as the elevator doors shut, a quick boot from Dante or a stab from Bren forced them out with furious shrieks. The safety mechanism on the doors that prevented them from closing on a tardy scientist or the arm of a polite colleague kept forcing the doors open before Apate had time to override them. This caused the whole ordeal to drag on much longer than anyone wanted. Bit by bit the doors closed before finally sealing shut.

  The whole crew struggled to catch their breath, apart from Dante who’s enhanced lungs didn’t seem bothered by the effort.

  “We don’t have much time, its only one floor,” Apate said as she reloaded her weapons.

  “There’s gonna be another horde when those doors open,” Bren said. He used a grimy sleeve to try and clear the blood from his eye while not tearing his own flayed flesh any more. Alistair gritted his teeth and tried to push the barb through his dense thigh meat but the pain was too crippling. “He’s gonna need a band-aid pretty soon,” Bren said with a wry grin.

  “You guys ever watch Dead Man Walking?” Dante asked as he moved to the middle of the elevator and pressed his back against the wall.

  Bren blinked at the seemingly random question. “That holo you did with Aphrodite Summers? The one about an evil corporation that created a regenerative medication that accidentally turned people into zombies?” Bren asked.

  “That’s the one,” Dante confirmed. “Remember the scene where I ran out of that burning building with all those zombies on the outside?”