Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 27-Jourmungand

When we made it back to the lounge, I couldn't help but notice that the lights in the stairwell and on our level were back in operation and the few security cameras we had were once again online. James, Allen and Tyler were standing outside of the lounge door waiting for us and seemed a little shocked at Alcatraz's condition.

"Jesus", Tyler said, "what happened to you?"

Alcatraz yawned, "monsters, rouge security guards, Martin's little range day, lack of food, water, sleep, low battery, take your pick. Exo is starting to hurt too."

"Come with me and I'll help you out", Tyler said, "leave your stuff here, Skyline will bring it by later."

Alcatraz set down his pack and sniper rifle and then followed Tyler down the hall and into Sarah's lab. When they disappeared around the corner, I turned to James.

"What happened with the lights?", I asked, "they're on again?"

"I sent Allen and Jacob down to the Generator room", James said, "Allen reported that they had their cables cut. The cuts were clean too, it was done on purpose, by who, I don't know, but once we got power back, I called up Martin, against my better judgment, and asked him if he had lost power."

"What he say?", I asked.

"He asked me how I managed to cut his cables without frying myself or getting torn to pieces by his security forces", James answered, "also..."

"Also what?", I asked.

"Jacob found something I think you should see", Allen said, "come with me, Mike, you too."

Mike and I followed Allen down the hall to Jacob's lab. Allen opened the door and we stepped inside. The layout was almost identical to Sarah's lab, but lacked the Autopsy table. There were two stacks of cabinets against the left hand wall with a counter running along the top of the lower stack that was loaded with all kinds of chemistry equipment as well as a lot of the stuff that Sarah had. Jacob's setup looked a lot more specialized though, like it was more geared towards Bio-Mechanical research, rather than just standard biological. On the right hand side of the wall was a giant, stainless steel object that looked almost like a moonshine still. There were two stainless barrels with a computer that seemed to be going at full steam ahead. Copper wiring and blue and red tubes were connecting the barrels and what sounded like a small pump was causing the set up to emit a faint hum. Jacob was sitting in front of a laptop reading numbers on a blue screen, readout from whatever that machine was. Also in the back of the lab, something I almost missed, were two bodies covered by white sheets.

"Jacob", Allen said, "they're back."

"Not a moment too soon", Jacob said turning around from the computer, "guys, I think you should see these."

Jacob walked to the back of the lab and pulled the sheets of two dead guards. There upper torso's were nearly gone and the left half of their bodies were practically split off, like someone had struck them at an angle with a extremely sharp sword, or perhaps an energy weapon. The hole in their torsos looked to be from a 20 millimeter sniper rifle at maybe a hundred yards or so, and if that was the case then it was a miracle that they still had bodies to recover in the first place. I didn't see any bones other than the broken ends of what little of their rib cages remained. There were weird marks on their skin that almost resembled acidic burns. l. For the life of me, I couldn't think what reason Jacob and Allen might have had to drag them back.

"Martin's playing with his 20mm again", Mike sighed.

"That's what we thought at first", Jacob said, "but the deeper I went, the more I found."

"What do you mean?", I asked

"I ran a Biopsy on both bodies and what I found was that the men died within ten minutes of each other", Jacob said, "what intrigues me was that I found they had the same blood type, A Positive, but that might just be a coincidence. They both had each others blood on their skin and each displayed similar chemicals within their circulatory systems, it seems to be a kind of breeding fluid, but if it is, then it's from a species I've never seen before, Sarah couldn't figure out exactly what it was either. The deeper I went, the weirder things got."