by Ramy Vance
All the sprouts were closed, not unlike the first batch Suzuki had seen when he first got into the cave. Still, the area was filled with that syrupy sweet smell. It was so strong it made Suzuki’s head swim, as if he had been baptized in the scent. He was feeling dizzy. He wanted to sit down, to try to gather his thoughts. Suzuki wondered if the rest of the Mundanes were being affected so strongly. “Hey, guys, do you…do you feel that?” he asked.
Beth nodded as she stared at the sprouts. “That’s why we called you guys over here,” she said. “This didn’t seem like something to ignore. There is definitely something going on.”
Diana crouched in front of one of the smaller sprouts near her. “Very true. Coming across these in the tunnels earlier seemed like a minor inconvenience and seeing them as we’ve gotten farther into the cave led me to believe they are naturally occurring plants, albeit annoying ones. But this? These make it unlikely. Even if they are naturally occurring, this right here is intentional.”
“What do you think they’re for?”
Diana scratched her chin and pushed her glasses up. “What do we know so far?” she asked. “Suzuki inhaled a substantial amount of the pollen and coughed up a black substance. It doesn’t seem to have had any long term effects on him that we can see. But since Suzuki inhaled that dust, he’s experienced the most distortions of reality since we’ve been here. He was also able to slip into the place between realms easily. The sprouts also seem to react to him. None of us inhaled any dust, and none of those things have happened to us.”
Stew watched the sprouts as if he were expecting them to jump out and attack him. “That’s not true,” Stew countered. “I inhaled a bunch of that dust shit too, remember? I was coughing up a lot of shit, but none of it was black like Suzy’s. So, what the fuck does that mean?”
Diana shrugged as she left the sprouts. “I don’t know. I need more information. We should check inside and see if we can find anything that explains this,” she said.
The Mundanes left the black sprouts and their odd, purple hue and walked back to the front of the facility in silence. Each of them trying to piece together a puzzle without knowing what the final picture was going to look like. All Suzuki knew was whatever was going on was deadly. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the sprouts had something to do with why the facility was abandoned. Checking inside the facility was the best idea. They’d already figured out they didn’t know shit about what was going on. Might as well start trying to make sense of something.
As Suzuki walked, his chest clenched. It was an odd pain that started in his torso and then moved on to his back, around his spine, between his shoulder blades. He had to stop walking as he grabbed his chest and hacked up a black loogie. The rest of the Mundanes stopped to see if he was okay, but Suzuki kept coughing. There was something large in his throat, and he needed to get it out, or he was not going to be able to breathe. He fell to his knees and finally coughed out a hardened black thing. It fell into his hand, and before he could get a good look at it, Diana had levitated it toward her.
Diana looked at the thing. It reminded Suzuki of an insect’s carapace. Diana didn’t say anything, though. She just placed it in a vial that she tucked into her robe. “We should see what we can find inside,” Diana said as she walked away. The rest of the Mundanes followed her until they arrived at the front door.
The door was locked, and no one was able to pry it open, not even Stew. Finally, Suzuki turned to Chip and asked if she was willing to interface with door. It didn’t take long to convince her to give it a try. Suzuki could tell she was excited about using her technological gifts without them backfiring on her.
It took a few seconds for Chip to find the proper bypass protocols, but the door slid open. The Mundanes gasped at what they saw.
The door opened to a dark corridor with a flickering light. The ground was covered in rust-colored stains. There were guns strewn about the floor. Six corpses were pressed against the wall, wearing some kind of uniform Suzuki had never seen before. Their bodies had been ripped open, and entrails lay scattered across the floor. The dead had been there for some time, but the smell of rot still filled Suzuki’s nose. “What the hell happened here?” Suzuki asked.
Stew knelt next to one of the bodies. “Looks like someone got knocked the fuck out.” Stew laughed. “These guys got the shit tore out of them.”
Kinda miss the polite Stew, Suzuki thought.
Beth took a knee next to Stew. She grabbed one of the corpses and looked at its uniform. Then she picked up one of the guns and turned it over, looking for some kind of identifying mark. There was none. “These guys aren’t military,” Beth finally said. “Or at least not our branch of the military. If there’s another shadow military out there trying to fight the Dark One, right now would be the time to let me know about it, vets.”
Diana and Chip both shook their heads. “No, there isn’t,” Diana said. “Years ago, there were multiple armies fighting against the Dark One, but as our losses became too great, we banded together. MERCs are built up of nearly seventeen different armies that had been wiped out. The military is predominately the remnants of a large human military. As far as I know, we are the only people who are fighting the Dark One.”
Suzuki had an idea, but he wasn’t sure if it was bat-shit crazy. He was already trying to make sense of everything that had been dumped into his head over the last couple of days. “We’re the only ones we know about in this plane,” Suzuki ventured. “What if there are other realities fighting the Dark One as well?”
The rest of the Mundanes looked at Suzuki as if he was crazy, all but Diana. “All right, dude, it’s time you lay off the magic beetles,” Stew joked as he clapped Suzuki on the back. “Or stop having so many near-death experiences. I’m not sure that shit is good for your head.”
Suzuki laughed to cover up how embarrassed he was. “Yeah, yeah, that’s too fucking out there,” Suzuki admitted. “We gotta focus on what we can actually see, what’s in front of us. And what we have are a handful of people who were butchered. So, let’s start there.”
The Mundanes walked farther into the facility. The main hallway split up into two separate paths. “Looks like we’re splitting up again,” Suzuki said. “Beth, Stew, you’re with me. How’s that sound?”
Stew pumped his fist in the air. “Hell yeah, just like back in the glory days when we didn’t know shit and were always almost getting killed,” he exclaimed.
Beth rubbed her temples and sighed. “I’m so glad I wasn’t around for that clusterfuck.”
Suzuki ignored both of them and spoke to Diana and Chip. “We’ll stay in contact with our familiars and meet up if we find anything,” he said.
Chip and Diana exchanged glances that made Suzuki slightly uncomfortable. He had forgotten the two had known each other so long that they hardly ever needed to speak when it came to planning missions. He could see why it had initially been hard to trust them. “Yeah, we’ll make sure to stay talky-talky on the proper channels.” Chip chuckled. “Holler if you find anything or feel the need to get extra stabby. Also, try to get Beth to keep using that bow. Maybe take a minute to run through some of her abilities or something. Not like I’m telling you how to do your job, but…” Chip smiled as innocently as she could. “See you guys on the dark side.”
The Mundanes split into two groups. Suzuki, Beth, and Stew took the left path, the lights overhead flickering fast enough to look like a strobe light. Yeah, just like a fucking B-horror movie, Suzuki thought to himself. He moved to the front of the group and recalled his axe. It didn’t come at first, and Suzuki was left awkwardly holding his hand until he could hear the axe ripping through the steel of the wall.
Beth whistled as Suzuki put his axe away. “No matter how many times I see you do that, it never stops being hot,” Beth said. “But speaking of axes, I have been wondering. Stew, where do you get all of your weapons? I’ve never seen you pick one up before, yet you are constantly chucking shit at people.”
Stew smiled shrewdly, the way one smiles when they’ve been sitting on information for a long time. It’s unclear whether the person is happy to finally have an audience or if they just want validation for having kept a secret for so long. “Well, it’s something I figured out a little while ago,” Stew started. “Our weapons only load back into our HUDs if we’re holding them or sheath them. If we leave them on the field, they never come back. Well, I found out if you have a default number of weapons and leave them out, your HUD sends an automatic requisition order back to MERC ‘s main inventory, and they just load a new version of the weapon onto your HUD. You never know how good a weapon it’s going to be. Like, I got these throwing daggers once that were enchanted, but you know, you kinda throw throwing daggers.”
“So, you’re getting free loot boxes?”
“Basically.”
“Damn, Stew. That’s genius.”
The Mundanes turned a corner. This one was better lit but still felt wrong. It was obvious, the farther the Mundanes walked through the facility, that something terrible had happened here. There were no bodies yet, other than the first ones they had seen when they first came into the facility.
Suzuki held his axe up to the light, looking at the enchantments etched into its hilt. “Yeah, Stew, that is pretty smart. Do they know you’re doing that?”
Stew’s booming voice broke the dread with laughter. “Oh, yeah, of course, dude,” he explained. “And it drives everyone fucking crazy, but there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s not even an inconvenience for them to smith something and pop it out. Honestly, the dwarves said they’d been going nuts because they were so bored until I started giving them work every day. You should have them take a look at some of your shit. Both of you. I mean, they aren’t the best with enchantments and shit like that, but they can improve the overall quality within seconds.”
Beth drew her daggers and tried to balance one of them on the tips of her fingers. “Maybe I’ll stop by and give it a try. At first, I wasn’t sure about this whole class switch, but it’s actually a lot sicker than I thought. I mean, I hardly use my shield anyways. Feels like I’m casting off dead weight. Also, fuck, it’s just nice to have a change. You know, put that whole military thing behind me. Start fresh.”
Beth tossed her dagger into the air and caught it. “Also, it’s pretty sick learning how to be a sneaky assassin,” she continued. “Really fucking sick.”
The Mundanes walked past an open door. It was dark inside. Suzuki tilted his head toward the door and asked, “You guys wanna check it out?”
Stew emphatically said yes and Beth agreed as well. As they walked into the room, Suzuki flipped a light switch next to the door frame. The lights flickered to life and illuminated a cafeteria. The cafeteria could have easily held over two hundred people. There were tables and seats everywhere, thrown about as if the people eating had left in a panic. There were plates still on the table, covered with rotten food. Roaches had scattered at the fresh light.
Suzuki stepped farther into the room. He picked up a plate of food. It looked like it had been there for a long time. Long enough to rot but not long enough to turn to ash. Whatever happened had just recently taken place. "What the fuck happened here?" Suzuki wondered aloud.
Beth was walking the length of the room, trying to pick up clues. She pointed to the ventilation system. The vents had been broken, and the sides of the vent had been clawed. “Looks like whatever got through was pretty vicious,” Beth said. “Must have been a lot of them for people to have left so fast. Plus, those guards we saw earlier. Whatever they are.”
Stew stood underneath the vent, his hand resting on his short sword. “Either a lot of them or something really fucked up,” Stew posited.
Suzuki was looking through at the kitchen of the cafeteria. The food had been left, and it smelled disgusting inside. He jumped over the counter to see what else he could find. In the corner of the kitchen, propped up next to the oven, was a body. It was slumped forward, its back to Suzuki. The corpse’s back had exploded outward, its intestines trailing down the open wound, its shoulder blades bent outward, much like the angel the Mundanes had come across earlier. Suzuki pulled the corpse away from the stove.
The corpse fell forward. Its face had been chewed off. All that was left was a broken skull and traces of brain matter. “Hey, guys, get over here,” Suzuki called.
The other Mundanes came to Suzuki’s side. Beth grimaced when she saw the body, but she still knelt beside Suzuki and pulled the body back to lean it against the side of the stove so she could see the damage that had been done. “It’s the same as the angel,” Beth murmured.
“Yeah, it is. Whatever happened to that guy happened to this dude as well.”
“But the other corpse was so much older. What happened to the angel happened a long time ago. This is a week at most. All the corpses. This just happened.”
Stew kicked the corpse and groaned with boredom. “Guess it pays to know how long it takes for something to turn to maggots,” he said.
“You come across enough slaughtered villages, you start to get an idea of how long ago someone died. And stop being an asshole. Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean you can treat them like that. This was a person. A fucking living, breathing person. Show some goddamn respect.”
Beth turned and stormed off. Stew gave Suzuki a look that said, “Well, someone is overreacting,” but Suzuki shook his head. “What did I do?” Stew asked, exasperated.
“Maybe try not treating the dead like they’re a stuffed animal your sister left in your room.”
“Dude, you know I don’t have a little sister.”
“Goddamn it, Stew.”
As Stew and Suzuki left the kitchen, Suzuki’s HUD binged. He hit the side of it and opened his walkie talkie. It was a specific kind of magic the MERCs had worked on years ago for individual MERCs to use their familiars to communicate with each other over short distances. “Heyo, boyo,” Chip sang. “Just heard back from the bigwigs about your boy Cameron. Turns out he was onto something. Him getting the boot wasn’t quite a unilateral decision. Didn’t sit well with most, but he did get axed.”
Suzuki thanked Chip and hung up his HUD. Great, he thought. Interplanetary aliens and a big bad who might be a whole fucking dimension. Fucking wonderful.
The Mundanes continued to explore the facility. It was even larger inside than it looked from outside. Obviously magical. Suzuki hoped it would still be easy to navigate. He had heard rumors from other MERCs about places that were cursed so they would stretch on forever in hopes of confounding whoever had broken in. Hopefully, this wasn’t the case. It could have been a spell that was meant to benefit the people who lived and worked there. More space for work without having to continue to build sections.
As the Mundanes continued to walk through the abandoned areas, they stopped to look through most of the rooms they passed. There were barracks that still had fresh linens, and a few smaller kitchens. A mess hall had three dead bodies, each of them with their backs popped open like the angels they had seen before. They spent the most time in what looked like a computer room for the folk who lived there to be able to communicate back home. There were three corpses in there, their bodies ripped open, a pair of feet hanging from the ceiling in a purple mucous membrane.
Stew walked under the membrane, took out his axe, and cut away at it until the feet fell. He held up his axe for Suzuki and Beth to see. “What the fuck is this shit?” he asked, his face turned up in the universal scowl of disgust.
Suzuki didn’t want to take a good look at the mucous. He thought it was beyond revolting, almost like a giant piece of snot, but he knew they had to start trying to piece together the pieces of what happened. When he looked closely at the mucous, he saw it was the same hue of purple as the black sprouts they had seen in the garden outside. It was also the same color as what he had been coughing up.
Probably better not to worry too much about that, Suzuki thought. But this d
oes not bode well…
For another hour, they stumbled through the facility, unaware of where they were. Occasionally they texted or called Chip and Diana. It was the same situation. None of them had been able to find something like a directory. But there were bits and information they were slowly uncovering. The facility was definitely some kind of research facility that also doubled as a type of school. Even though the Mundanes had come across guards at the entrance, there were hardly any other armed individuals. Whoever was working here hadn’t been prepared for an attack. The odds were they were just scientists. And that narrowed down what the Mundanes were going to be on the lookout for.
Tech was the focus now. Whatever the Mundanes could get their hands on could let them know what they were up against, could help them piece together what happened. Suzuki already had his own ideas. The theory he thought was most likely was that the scientists here were experimenting with the different animals they found on and beneath the island. Whatever they were experimenting on must have gotten out and massacred the workers. Realistically, it might have been the creature they had fought before making it to the facility. That creature had the speed and viciousness to have easily disbanded a facility of unaware scientists. And the creature also had moved far from the facility. All Suzuki needed was proof of what was going on.
It did not take long for the Mundanes to find just that.
After another twenty minutes of wandering around, they took a right turn and found themselves in a long hall. This hall was different than the rest they had come across. The walls were lined with lights and glass windows. As the Mundanes walked past, Suzuki peered inside and could see the rooms were filled with the black and purple sprouts that had been outside. These were even larger, and many of them had opened in the same way Suzuki had seen while he was climbing into the chasm. All around the sprouts was purple grass, growing up even taller than the sprouts. A thick haze floated over all of the plants, almost a purple cloud.
