The hallway curved sharply, funneling them into a wider chamber illuminated by a row of trembling ceiling lights. Damon skidded to a stop, chest rising and falling rapidly. The others nearly collided into him.
The room was wrong.
The air was too warm. Too thick. Every surface—walls, floor, pipes—seed to pulse faintly, as if responding to their arrival.
Shadow growled low.
Ember backed close to the girl, tail tucked.
Lira touched Damon’s arm. “Why... does it feel like the room is alive?”
Damon didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat tightened as he scanned the chamber.
Old equipnt lay scattered—dical trays, overturned stretchers, cracked tanks leaking thin trails of mist across the floor. tal scaffolding hung above them, creaking with the slightest vibration.
A faint dripping sound echoed sowhere in the distance, steady and rhythmic. Drip... drip... drip.
The moans of the approaching dead grew louder behind them.
“No ti,” Damon said. “Find an exit.”
The far wall held two doors—one sealed shut with a rusted lock, the other standing slightly ajar in a pool of flickering light.
He pointed. “There!”
They hurried forward. As they crossed the chamber, the warm pulse in the walls seed to intensify, like a heartbeat speeding up.
Lira noticed it too. “Damon... this place. It wasn’t just a station. Sothing else happened here.”
“Later,” he muttered. “We’ll think about it later.”
A tallic shriek cut through the chamber as zombies rounded the corner and spilled into the hallway behind them. Their silhouettes staggered into view—twisted, charred, so dripping blackened fluid from their broken jaws.
The girl scread.
Damon yanked the half-open door harder. It resisted.
Locked from the other side.
He wedged his crowbar into the gap and pushed with every ounce of strength he had left. “Co on... Co on!”
The door groaned but didn’t open.
Shadow sprang forward, barking wildly at the zombies closing in. Ember braced beside him, snarling with feral defiance.
“Damon!” Lira called out, gripping the girl protectively. “Hurry!”
The heartbeat-like thrum in the walls intensified—faster, heavier. Sothing was responding to the fear, to the noise, to the undead presence. Damon felt the vibration through the floorboards.
Then—
The ceiling vent above them rattled.
Once.
Twice.
Then it tore open.
A long, sinewed appendage dropped down—muscular, veined, glistening with so viscous substance. It slamd onto the floor with a wet slap.
The thing wasn’t undead.
It was sothing else entirely.
Lira scread. The girl clung to her.
The zombies entering the chamber paused for a mont as if confused... then lunged again.
Damon grit his teeth and drove the crowbar deeper.
tal snapped.
The door burst open.
“GO!” he shouted.
Lira grabbed the girl and dashed inside. Damon whistled sharply—Shadow and Ember sprinted through the doorway just as the sinewed limb flung itself toward them with a violent whip-crack.
Damon dove through the door and slamd it shut behind him.
Sothing crashed into it from the other side—a sound not human, not zombie, but sothing breathing, sothing hunting.
Damon backed away, trembling.
“What... was that?” Lira whispered.
Damon shook his head slowly.
“I don’t know.”
But deep down, he feared one thing:
Whatever that creature was...
This facility had made it.
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