The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)

Chapter 58

I keep my aim with Mathilda steady as I make my way past all the bodies in the lounge a second time. My breathing ragged, my pace hurried to return to the main shaft. I can't afford them waking up on me now, and I certainly can't afford running into the Tyrant if it got trapped in here.

Miraculously they still don't after having been bypassed who knows how many times by all of us. Maybe they're all legitimately dead, I ponder while rounding the corner. A door that'll take me who knows where waits at the end of the hallway for me. I'm just about to pass the wall where it juts out and hides the low-temp lab door off to its side—

A panel in the ceiling gives and through it drops a licker.

Every part of my body freezes. My legs, even my cells feel motionless as that thing blocks the doorway out of here.

"They go by sound not light," Madeleine told me back in the dog kennel room after killing two of them with her shotgun. At the recalling of that detail, I relax my breathing. Ignoring the jackhammering of my heart against my ribs from adrenaline. Trying to remain relatively calm as the licker puts a clawed hand out, then the other, and moves further into the corridor by a foot. A long tongue seeps out of the mouth and drapes languidly in the air. I know how dangerous that thing is alone, remembering how the other tore the dog's heart out with ease.

There has to be a way for me to sneak by. If it goes by sound, maybe I can cause a distraction?

Side stepping around the corner towards the low-temp testing lab's door. My eyes never stray from the creature as I try to recall anything in my pockets I can throw as a distraction. The first ID bracelet Ada found. I have a level two access so it's no longer needed.

Dragging in a quiet breath through my nose and exhaling calmly from my mouth. I grab the bracelet from the pocket I'd stuffed it into and stick my arm out into the hallway with it in hand.

Doing a test throw, swinging my arm once, twice. On the third swing I release it, unable to see how far it went. It clatters to the floor and the tongue at once retracts into the mouth. Its jaws opened wide and the menacing teeth of its mouth gleam in the light. It screeches, darting for the source of the noise. I tread as lightly as possible away from the licker, unable to breathe at how terrified I am.

The licker is about to head into the lounge—

The door to the lab and my bracelet ring like a bullhorn in the hallway as it opens for whomever stepped nearby to enter.

There's a scream and a clicking of those claws on the floor as it approaches to investigate. I'm already dashing like a madman for the other door though. My shoes making it clear now where that thing's prey is running off to.

Crashing through the door and spinning around, I brace it shut with my hands. Listening as there's another cry and the sound of metal tearing on the other side where the licker is. I don't wait to find out the source of it as I escape for the exit door at the end of this hallway. Closing that one gently before turning around. I shut my eyes, raking in a deep breath before reopening them. I'm in one piece and breathing, that's all that matters.

Climbing the staircase ahead of me, there's a dead body with a crushed skull within the first few steps. Did Claire come through here? At the bottom steps to the second floor is another body lying there lifelessly. I nudge it with the toe of my sneaker and find it unresponsive, she must've killed this one too.

On the steps of the fourth floor, I halt at the body of a woman lying face up. Or what I assume is a woman based on clothes and body shape, because the face has grotesquely been melted off. The state of the body tells me she's been dead a few days now, quashing the worry that she'd just died.