Deep Dark Blues

Chapter 19- Angler Fish

"W-What do we do? We can't just move them out of their rooms alone."

Isabella's eyes were jumping all over the place.

"How do you even know it's down there?"

"I... I don't... Ryan said something about weird noises! It's got to be it-"

"This could be literally anything-"

"I have a hunch, okay?!" Reed yelled out.

There was no time to explain... No time to wait... It all could be just a coincidence, but she was past the point of ignoring whatever was happening around her.

Reed bolted past Isabella and down the corridor, racing through the bowels of the Vault like a wild horse. Her heart hammered in her chest, adrenaline pumping in her veins. The air around her burned like fire, charring her lungs but she wouldn't stop. Not until she reached the Radio Room.

But no matter how much she wanted to reach the room in time, she couldn't ignore the cramping pain in her side. She slowed down clutching her stomach, every breath triggering a new wave of pain.

That's why you do a warm-up before the sprint...

She thought bitterly.

"Oh God... Oh Shit..." she breathed, dragging herself a few extra meters before finally pulling the door of the room open.

She practically threw herself onto the office chair, feeling the plastic groan under the weight of her body. Reed would only devote a few seconds to catching her breath, allowing the dark spots to disappear from her vision.

It didn't take long for the screen to light up, the sound of typing filling the room.

"C'mon... C'mon..." she muttered, going through multiple security checks before she was finally able to access the cameras. She clicked through the sets, various windows popping up until she found the right one.

The outside of the Lab complex looked eerily calm, the debris drifting lazily through the murky water of Noctis. There was no movement besides the gentle current, the Vault standing in the abyss just like it had been for the past few weeks. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary...

And yet, Reed's heart kept racing in her chest.

Had she been wrong?

Was that spike in anxiety she felt so irrational, that it forced her to almost cough out a lung while she ran? Perhaps the more terrifying question was... Could it be a symptom of the infection progressing? She just found out about it and yet there was no reason for it to stop progressing in just a few days.

Alex's yowls echoed through her mind like a broken music box, repeating the animalistic grunt over and over.

Was she losing her mind?

Reed leaned away from the monitor, back resting against the chair. She rubbed her face, feeling the grogginess set in with the fading adrenaline. Isabella could be right... Whatever was wrong with her brain had been fixed by the foreign cells...

"Fuck..." she muttered, fighting off the urge to bawl her eyes out.

Would she wake up swollen tomorrow? Try to kill somebody like Alex did?

She growled, feeling the helplessness morphing into irritation.

"Stupid fucking thing..."

Reed was about to turn the whole screen off, but a tiny movement made her pause. Right there... By the edge of Alex's room...

Reed frowned, leaning closer to the screen...

Something was moving there... Something dark and... Bony... Like fingers of a hand...