Nightshift 49: Animal Test Subjects Kennel
[warped in from here.]The minute Endrance stepped through the door, he felt the pit of his stomach drop. He recognized this place from one of the first nights he'd been there, and he had hoped never to wind up there again. "This place
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While Peter had been waiting for the impact of his feet meeting the soggy ground on the other side of the wall, he instead felt a particularly severe bout of that disorientation, and then he was suddenly back inside -- dripping wet, but inside. What had just--?
Even the walls triggered the teleportation, then. Peter shook his head to get the water off of his face and out of his hair (as much as possible, anyway), and then noted that his bag and shovel were down next to his feet. At least those had moved with him. Frowning, he picked them both up and then tried to squint through the darkness and figure out where they'd ended up.
As his dizziness cleared, he realized that he heard shifting, rustling, breathing. He paused, caught his own breath, and then rifled through his soaked pillowcase for his flashlight.
When he turned it on, he was met by a series of gleaming eyes. Peter's immediate reaction was to take a half-step backward, but then he noticed the cages that the things were being kept in. Were they animals or monsters or something in-between? His inability to answer that question was probably what freaked him out the most.
He glanced over to Sam, expression uncertain. "This must be where they're kept until Landel sics them on us," he hypothesized. As much as he didn't want to think about it, that had to be the case. Though on the other hand, some of them looked pretty close to what they had probably started as, with just a few things that were out of place. Almost like the process wasn't finished yet. Either way, it was enough to make his stomach turn. This whole thing was just wrong, plain and simple.
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-And since when was a wall considered a frigging portal? Never mind that there shouldn't have been any portals existing in the first place, but at least the doors had contained a kind of logic to them. So, what, was the institute simply divided up into borders and zones? Cross one and fall into another area?
Sam let out a breath. Well, at least he knew that your stuff went with you as long as you hopped through the same...entrance. Even if you chucked it through beforehand.
He bent down to pick up his flashlight. His fingers had just grasped the handle when he met a pair of glowing eyes and a snap of teeth.
He started. Holy-
From the looks of it, Peter wasn't exactly expecting this sight, either.
"Maybe the ones left behind are the prototypes." Sam couldn't think of another reason why they'd be kept locked up when they could be out there chewing on people.
He adjusted his grip on the gun. A sweep of the flashlight assured him that nothing was loose in the room despite the few empty cages. Though he could hardly call that a comfort because-God. What the hell were these things? He was no stranger to monstrous-looking creatures, but they were always recognizable in their own way. Things he could put a name to, assign one or two facts about at least.
These looked like they came straight out of some fictional experiment-gone-wrong horror cliché.
Though it made sense, he realized. Kind of. That these things were purely manmade, it made sense. Not in terms of how, but it solved the issue of the supernatural infestation they had going on. That just left, what. The spirits? Pretty much. And those could simply be a byproduct of what this place did to people. Possibly.
Maybe.
Of course, the zombies and the way the nurses had transformed were a whole other issue altogether, but it was still something to consider.
He wandered over to one of the clipboards tucked by each of the cages. Something that looked like a balding rottweiler stared at him and he frowned. This was creepy.
"You know, what I still don't get is why the mortality rate is so low," he said, thinking aloud more than anything. He lifted up a page from the clipboard to reveal more indecipherable scribblings. "I mean, we're looking at less than one percent. The rest are just disappearances."
Reports from the inmate population wasn't accurate, but when it came to deaths, Sam had a feeling they were the more accurate compared to other reports. Few people seemed to have died alone; there were always witnesses. Someone who stumbled on a body. The institute wasn't very large, after all.
It occurred to him-way too late-that he probably shouldn't be bringing up deaths and disappearances given Peter's brother. He cleared his throat and pulled the notes off the clipboard, pocketing them. He wasn't sure if better lighting would help him read them, but he might as well take them and see.
"Anyway, should we-?" He gestured at the door. There didn't seem to be supplies here and unless Peter wanted to spend some more time looking at deformed science experiments, it was probably time to go.
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The fact that Sam could walk up to them without a second thought took Peter by surprise. Granted, his roommate had never seemed to be anything other than fearless. Even on his first night, he'd kept it together surprisingly well. Sam's past wasn't particularly normal, but neither was Peter's, and yet this was a bit too much for him. He had always known that a lack of ethics had to be involved in pretty much everything that Landel did, but having to stare it in the face like this...
Well, it was going to make monster fights a little tougher in the future, that was for sure.
He considered Sam's question about the lack of deaths. It was something he'd considered vaguely before, but now that he put more thought into it, he had to agree it was true. Landel didn't want them dead for one reason or another. "Maybe they're somehow trained to only maim," he said, though he wasn't sure how that would be possible. Maybe the occasional death was a result of when the training failed.
In any case, Sam seemed to be safe enough despite getting closer, and so Peter sucked it up and followed after him. He drew near to one of the cages which happened to be housing a cat that had a rotted leg and a deformed eye. It tried to meow, but the noise it made was more threatening than anything else. Peter jerked back again, and decided that it was definitely time to leave. As much as he wished he could help, there wasn't anything he could do for the creatures.
"Yeah, we should," he said, tone thin as he turned away from the cage and nodded to his roommate. He brushed past the other man and tried not to rush for the door too quickly. At this point, he didn't care where they ended up so long as it had nothing to do with food storage, wasn't outside, and didn't involve zombies.
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If there was anywhere Sam had expected to land, it most definitely was not back where they'd come from. Which was already a strange enough thought in and of itself, but that was beside the point.
Honestly. What the hell.
"This can't be right."
He glanced back at the door, then at Peter, then at the door. Okay. This was weird. How did that work? He'd say that each door only led to one specific destination, except they'd gone through the same doors before, and each time, they'd been transported somewhere else altogether.
Dammit, as if the entire situation wasn't already baffling enough. It really didn't help that he could feel the eyes of the things in the cages watching him, quiet snarls coming from some of them. He didn't need to be in this room twice.
Hesitating, Sam pulled open the door again, though this time he peered out first. And-wait. Weren't they there just earlier, too? Like the second room they'd been tossed in or something? Why would...
Oh God, he could feel a headache coming. Couldn't they have just had a nice, normal night, walking pitch-black hallways and dodging hungry over-sized house cats?
He shut the door. "I have no idea what's going on," he confessed.
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For a second, he considered just giving up and spending the rest of the night in here, but he didn't think he could handle those eyes on him for so long.
He had to go onto his tip-toes in order to see over Sam's shoulder when the other man opened the door, but he caught a glimpse of the room where he'd found the medical supplies. Including one of the beds. That looked extremely comfy right about now.
"Me neither," he admitted as he pulled back down. "I say we just go through. Maybe we'll get through to that room, and we could at least rest there."
When Sam nodded, Peter opened up the door again, took a deep breath, and stepped through.
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