Although the curiosity about the origin of that smashed at bothered , I knew that, honestly, it wouldn't do any good trying to see anything with all that thick fog obscuring the surroundings.
Besides, staring at that scene for too long would probably make others sick, who were still watching from a distance. Naturally, I felt nothing—not even the slightest bit of nausea. To be honest, I didn’t even have a stomach to begin with.
Looking at that fact with an indifferent gaze, Laura's voice echoed through the cara again, filled with discomfort: “Ugh... I don’t feel good... I think I’m gonna...” The sentence was interrupted by a dry, abrupt sound: “Blearghh!”
I blinked a few tis, trying to process exactly what was happening inside the facility. At that mont, Rupert's voice echoed through the speaker, full of disgust and indignation: “My God! That's disgusting! Why did you vomit on ?”
“Ugh... sorry, I swear it wasn’t on purpose...” Laura replied, her voice trembling and choked with tears. She looked like she was about to collapse, her face pale and hands shaking as if she were really feeling sick.
In the end, I decided to ignore the smashed at. Honestly, it didn’t seem like Laura would be able to look at it for much longer without throwing up. I lifted my gaze and observed the surroundings.
Despite the thick fog, I could still make out so elents around —like the tal structure ahead, clearly another warehouse. With slow, silent steps, I approached the building, while the soggy sound of at being crushed echoed through the air, making the atmosphere even heavier.
As I got close enough to see the warehouse in full, the first thing I noticed was that, instead of the usual tal wall, what greeted was a grotesque extension of the sa smashed at I had been walking on since entering. For precaution, I decided to use my special eyes.
Once they began to glow with rainbow colors, a new world unfolded before . Just as I suspected, all that slimy, sticky mass emitted a profusion of vibrant colors, as if it were alive, pulsating in a silent dance under my attentive gaze.
As I analyzed the at from different angles, Emily’s voice ca through the cara attached to my chest, filled with concern: “It looks like it's spreading through the warehouse... maybe it's feeding?”
As I listened to Emily's words, I cast a careful glance at the at spreading around the warehouse, watching as my eyes, once tinted with a variety of vibrant colors, gently returned to their usual golden hue. Just as Emily had pointed out, the at really did seem to be feeding, pulsating almost imperceptibly as it absorbed everything around it.
However, witnessing that, a troubling doubt arose: why wasn’t this thing approaching the warehouse where the underground facility was located? I an, if it were really hungry, wouldn’t it make sense to devour all the warehouses indiscriminately? Still, curiously, it seed to ignore that specific one, as if sothing there kept it away.
My first thought about why that at sli acted this way was simply the fact that Nekra and Althea were down there. However, as quickly as that idea ca, I dismissed it.
Now, I had a much greater understanding of anomalies than before. It’s true that my mory was still quite fragnted, but even so, I had access to much more information than back then.
This allowed to look beyond the obvious explanations. Anyway, anomalies, for the most part, don’t have their own consciousness. Therefore, they are incapable of feeling fear or even reflecting on what surrounds them.
Every now and then, rare exceptions arise—entities that display so rudintary form of thought—but they are so uncommon that it's hard to say for sure they actually exist. Honestly, I doubted that the shapeless mass of at fit into this rare exception.
In the end, besides not being able to understand exactly why that mass of at seed to avoid the warehouse where the facility was, I had no other reason to stay near the base.
Of course, it wasn’t like I had a specific destination in mind; I just figured that, if I kept walking around, sothing would eventually happen, as if the simple act of walking would bring so revelation or unexpected event.
With this thought, my steps led toward the entrance of the base. I kept my eyes alert to the surroundings as I walked, but despite my vigilance, everything was obscured by the thick fog, which seed to swallow every detail around . Visibility was zero. After walking a few ters, the massive base gate began to materialize ghostly through the fog’s shadows.
As I got closer, the figure of the gate beca clearer, slowly revealing itself as an imposing structure, almost as if the fog, for so whim, wanted to hide its grandeur. When I finally got close enough, I stopped, feeling the dense air around and the weight of the mont.
I blinked my eyes, trying to adjust my vision while observing the surroundings, filled with a growing sense of doubt. From the mont I passed through the gate, a peculiar sound began to make its presence known.
It was as if sothing large was sliding over a tal surface, the creaks echoing intensely, reverberating in the air and making the environnt feel even more silent and tense around .
“What is that noise?” Laura asked, her voice echoing through the device attached to my chest, vibrating softly as her concern beca clear.
“Sounds... like it’s coming from above?” Victor comnted, his voice filled with doubt.
As soon as Victor’s words reached my ears, I blinked and my gaze, almost instinctively, turned upwards. The place was shrouded in thick fog, hanging like an impenetrable curtain.
The dense mist made any clear vision difficult, even as I got closer to the gate—all I could see was a fragile shadow of the structure. Looking to the sides or higher up, the only thing I saw was the continuation of the fog, swallowing everything around. That’s why I didn’t realize sothing was hanging from the gate.
When I turned my gaze upward, the first thing I noticed were the legs. Not one, but several. Four, maybe? Two on the left side, two on the right, all moving with an agility that seed to contradict the grotesque nature of the creature supporting them.
I continued observing, taking my ti, as the thing slowly descended down the gate, its claws sinking into the wood with a sickening snap with every movent. The air around began to thicken, the fog crawling along the ground, as if the very atmosphere was being distorted by the presence of that creature.
Then, two more pairs of legs appeared, as if they were erging from so invisible nightmare. Two on the left, two on the right, their joints bending in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, and each step resonated like a threatening whisper in the midst of the silence.
“What the hell is that thing?” Victor comnted, his voice muffled by the device attached to my body, clearly confused and unsettled.
Honestly, I had no idea what that thing was either, but when I looked at its multiple legs, there was no denying it: a spider, no doubt. Its grotesquely elongated body writhed in the shadows, as if waiting for the right mont to reveal itself.
I stood still, eyes fixed on the gate, waiting. The wait was a silent torture, as if the air itself had grown denser, compressed by the presence of whatever was hiding. It didn’t take long before it finally happened: the mist ahead distorted, and, with a slow and deliberate motion, the creature’s head erged.
But instead of what I expected, a skull of human shape suddenly appeared before . However, upon closer inspection, I quickly realized its resemblance to a human skull was rely superficial.
What should’ve been the eye sockets were divided into multiple pairs: eight, to be exact. Four pairs on the left side and another four on the right, arranged in an irregular and unnatural pattern.
Each of these pairs was surrounded by a network of dark veins, pulsing faintly, as if they still held so trace of life. The discomfort this might cause didn’t affect , but the sight was disturbing, sothing you wouldn’t see in any natural being.
The eyes were completely black, and at first, I thought that was their natural color. But in the blink of an eye, the darkness was replaced by a reddish hue, as if they were igniting from the inside out.
In the center of this transformation, eight deep, dark pupils erged, as if they were growing from the very orbits, locking onto with a macabre precision. That gaze, filled with sothing impossible to decipher, stared at almost predatorily, but I didn’t move.
Around , the silence was oppressive, as if the air itself had condensed, immobilizing even the sounds. No noise was coming from the device on my chest, and I realized it wasn’t just them who were in shock. The scene, with its almost tangible monstrosity, seed to paralyze even words.
By the way, the base gate was huge, about ten ters high. The creature, in turn, covered just over half of that enormous structure. Of course, this didn’t an much beyond the obvious: if I were to be devoured, it certainly wouldn’t have any difficulty swallowing , given its size.
***
(POV - Emily Parker)
Emily, Laura, Victor, and Rupert remained completely silent, their bodies tense and still as they fixed their eyes on the massive screen. They watched, apprehensive, as the anomaly known as [Angel of Death] saw. The air felt heavy, as if even the act of breathing was a transgression.
None of them dared to make a sound, fearing that even the slightest sign of life—a breath, an involuntary movent—would be detected by that terrifying presence. The feeling that that thing could hear them, sense their existence at all costs, hung in the air like an imminent threat.
Emily wasn’t sure why, but perhaps it was because they were watching everything from the [Angel of Death]’s point of view. Sohow, this made them feel tiny and vulnerable, as if their presence was irrelevant in the face of that imposing being. It was as if, suddenly, they were nothing but prey—helpless and at the rcy of being hunted without rcy.
“What the hell is that thing? It’s huge!” Laura comnted, finally breaking the tense silence that had settled in the room, just after the anomaly appeared on the screen. Her voice trembled, a mix of disbelief and fear, as all eyes fixed on the monstrous image unfolding before them.
Emily had no answer to Laura’s question. She was as lost as she was, unable to comprehend what was unfolding before her eyes. It was the first ti she had witnessed sothing so grotesque and disturbing.
Those eyes... unsettling, they seed to be distorted mirrors of sothing human, and that only made the scene more unbearable. The creature, with its grotesque body and rigid exoskeleton, resembled an insect, but its head—a visceral distortion of what should have been human—made Emily’s blood run cold.
The features were humanoid, but cruelly twisted, as if the body had tried to forge a face but failed in a grotesque way. The contrast between the dark, hardened skin of the body and the human-like eyes, embedded and deep, caused a discomfort that seed to fill the air, making it dense and heavy.
The creature moved, its steps dragging with an agonizing slowness, as if each movent was made under the pressure of sothing much greater—sothing impossible to understand. The sound of its steps echoed in the room, reverberating off the walls and creating a weight that seed to suffocate any attempt at rationalization.
Each contortion of its body felt like a nightmare incarnate, and the sensation of being face to face with sothing that shouldn’t exist intensified with each passing second. Reality seed to bend around that abomination, making ti stretch, as if the air itself was intent on prolonging the agony.
As she got lost in her thoughts, Victor broke the silence beside her. His tone was unusually serious, as if every word was weighed: “I don’t know why, but my hair stood up the mont that thing appeared. I have this feeling that, no matter how advanced the technology we have might be, we’d be dead before we even got a chance to use it. In this mist, where seeing is nearly impossible, that creature has the total advantage, since it seems to be the type that waits for its prey—patient and relentless”
Emily listened to Victor’s words carefully, absorbing each syllable, when a strange noise cut through the silence, coming from the screen before her. Instantly, her eyes turned toward the source of the sound. Through the screen, she saw the [Angel of Death]’s body being lifted, a scene that put her on high alert. The cara attached to the [Angel of Death]’s body captured every detail vividly, as if it were right there, watching closely.
She followed the movent with a growing knot in her stomach, from the mont the spider-shaped anomaly lifted the [Angel of Death] into the air, to the mont it brought it near its face. Emily remained still, her breath held, eyes fixed on the screen.
The anomaly’s face drew closer, revealing its red eyes, nearly dilated, with thin veins crossing them as if they were about to burst. The black pupils moved frantically from side to side, restless and threatening, as if they were searching for sothing—or soone—to devour.
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