The Thing 3: Assimilation✔️

Chapter 01: Back To Basics

"You said you were at Thirty One."

Blake glanced over. Since the test, neither man had said anything. It had been almost half an hour. He'd been dozing. After all the hell he'd been through, all the horror and screaming and blood and death, it had felt good to just...sit the fuck down for more than thirty seconds.

"I was, it was why I was called in," Blake replied, trying to clear some of the fog from his mind. He wanted to sleep for days.

"Did you find any bodies?" MacReady asked. He continued to stare out over the vast antarctic wastelands, his eyes hidden behind his big blue shades.

"Yeah, a few. Only one intact."

"Black? Bald? Big guy?"

"Yeah. Nametag said Childs."

MacReady sighed heavily. "Damn. He was dead?"

"Yes."

"You test him?"

"No, we didn't even know about testing back then and...besides, I haven't gotten into the habit of testing dead bodies."

"Yeah, fair enough. Damn." A moment of silence passed.

"So what happened to you? How the fuck did you get from Outpost Thirty One to here?"

"You go first."

Blake figured it was fair enough. So, he spent the next ten minutes giving a truncated version of his bloody campaign across Antarctica and his struggle against Whitley and the Thing. All the people that had died, the rebellion against Gen Inc.

When it was over, MacReady told his own story.

"This all started with some Norwegians. Two of them showed up in a chopper, shooting at a dog. They ended up getting killed and we got the dog. Turned out to be infected. We checked out their outpost, Dronning Maud-"

"I was there, too."

"Nightmare, wasn't it?"

"Yep."

"So...well, long story short, lots of people died. We ended up burning down our base as a result. As far as I knew, Childs was the only other one who made it. We ended up in a half-collapsed shed passing a bottle of booze back and forth. I ended up passing out. Hadn't had more than an hour of sleep in three damned days. When I woke up, he was gone. I went looking for him, couldn't find him. I managed to get one of the tractors working, took it a Russian base. I tried to convince them about what was going on.

"They thought I was nuts but they tried to, you know, take care of me. I was there for about two weeks, trying to get a signal out. I had at least got across to them that my damned outpost had burned down and people were dead. And that's when the men in black showed up. Well, the guys in gasmasks and black combat armor. They attacked the base, took everyone. They were Gen Inc. We were all kidnapped and brought to some huge facility. Gen Inc. worked fast," MacReady explained.

"Any idea who they are?" Blake asked.

"Not sure. I know they're a corporation into genetics and all sorts of medicine. Also, they've got a fucking standing army of mercs. And they're run by a lunatic. A real rat bastard called Graves. I think he's former military. They kept me there for about two months, running all kinds of tests on me. One day, they had a power failure. I managed to escape. A few test subjects did, too. Thing creatures and people. I gathered some survivors, we broke out, grabbed some guns and snowmobiles and took off. Found an abandoned base and set up shop. Today, I saw an opportunity to grab a chopper, this chopper. I did, flew out to the spacecraft site and found you."