Ambush in the Tunnels
The tunnel to Biolab Three pulsed like a living artery, its walls contracting with a rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum that vibrated through Elias’s ribcage. What had once been sterile metal corridors now writhed with organic growths—veins of bioluminescent blue threading through cancerous flesh that had consumed the steel framework. The air itself seemed diseased, thick with the stench of copper and decay, each breath coating his throat with a metallic film that made him gag.
Elias clutched the final syringe against his chest, its azure nanite solution casting ghostly shadows on his blood-streaked palm. The glass felt impossibly fragile—one slip, one moment of carelessness, and Brin’s last hope would shatter against the tunnel floor. Around him, the walls wept phosphorescent slime that hissed when it touched his boots, eating through the leather with hungry persistence
.
Skeletal tendrils emerged from cracks in the corrupted metal, their barbed tips sampling the air like serpents’ tongues, searching for warm flesh. He’d lost two syringes in the chaos above—one shattered in Brin’s fall, another crushed when Jenkins’s mimic lunged, its wires sparking in the dark. With Harris, Patel, and Jenkins gone, only Rowe, Velasquez, and Foster remained, their trust a weight he carried into Korvus’s maw.
"Christ, look at this place," Rowe whispered behind him, his voice barely audible over the tunnel's organic symphony. The younger soldier's rifle trembled in his grip, sweat carving clean tracks through the grime coating his face. "It's like the whole lab's turning inside-out."
Elias glanced back at his companion—barely twenty-two, still carrying that photo of his girlfriend in his helmet band, still believing they'd all make it home. "Stay close," Elias said, his voice rougher than intended. "And whatever you hear in here, whatever you think you see—it's not real. Korvus gets in your head."
The tunnel narrowed ahead, forcing them into single file. Bioluminescent veins pulsed brighter here, casting everything in an otherworldly blue-green glow that made their skin look corpse-pale. The floor beneath their feet had become spongy, yielding like rotting fruit with each step, while overhead, stalactites of crystallized bone dripping a steady rain of corrosive fluid
.
"Elias." Rowe's voice cracked slightly. "You ever wonder if we're already dead? If this is just... hell?"
"Hell's got better ventilation," Elias replied, forcing dark humor to mask his own growing dread. The joke fell flat in the oppressive atmosphere, swallowed by the tunnel's hungry silence.
A whisper slithered through his mind—Come deeper. Join the synthesis.—and Elias stumbled, pressing his free hand against the wall for support. The surface felt warm, almost feverish, and he jerked away as something like a heartbeat pulsed beneath his palm.
"You okay?" Rowe asked, but his voice sounded distant, muffled.
Elias blinked hard, shaking his head to clear it. In the slime's reflection, he could swear he saw Harris's face—her eyes black pits, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. You left me, her lips seemed to say. You let Patel die.
"Just keep moving," Elias muttered, quickening his pace. The syringe's weight seemed to increase with each step, as if gravity itself was trying to tear it from his grasp
.
The tunnel convulsed around them, walls contracting like a throat swallowing prey. Slime cascaded from hidden crevices, pooling ankle-deep and rising. It burned through their gear with vindictive pleasure, releasing clouds of acrid steam that made their eyes water. Rowe's breathing became labored, each inhalation a conscious effort against the thickening atmosphere.
"There," Elias pointed ahead with his flashlight. "The barrier."
A wall of fused flesh and metal blocked their path—what had once been a security checkpoint now transformed into a nightmarish fusion of organic tissue and twisted steel. Faces pressed against the surface from within, their mouths moving in silent screams, eyes rolled back to show only white. The barrier pulsed with its own internal rhythm, slightly out of sync with the tunnel's heartbeat, creating a discordant symphony of biological horror
.
That's when the attack came.
Tendrils erupted from the darkness above like striking vipers—thick as a man's torso, covered in chitinous barbs that gleamed with moisture. The first one cracked like a whip past Elias's head, close enough that he felt the displacement of air. The second caught Rowe across the shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him into the wall with bone-jarring force.
"Contact!" Rowe shouted, his training kicking in despite the surreal nature of their enemy. His rifle barked in rapid succession, muzzle flashes strobing through the tunnel like lightning. Where his bullets struck, the tendrils split open, spraying bioluminescent fluid that sizzled against the walls.
Elias drew his sidearm and fired, each shot carefully placed, trying to sever the appendages at their thickest points. The creatures—or creature, it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began—shrieked with a sound like tearing metal. More tendrils poured from cracks in the ceiling, a hydra of flesh and fury.
"Fall back!" Elias called out, but there was nowhere to retreat. The tunnel behind them had begun closing, walls grinding together with mechanical precision. They were trapped in a shrinking kill box.
A massive tendril whipped toward Rowe's legs. He leaped, combat boots finding purchase on the slick walls, but another appendage caught him mid-air. It wrapped around his waist like a python, squeezing with enough force to crack ribs. Rowe's scream echoed off the tunnel walls, raw and primal.
"For Harris!" he roared, emptying his magazine into the creature holding him. The tendrils loosened just enough for him to break free, tumbling into the slime with a splash that sent caustic droplets flying.
Elias lunged forward, grabbing Rowe's gear harness and hauling him toward the barrier. Up close, he could see that the fused wall wasn't solid—there were gaps between the organic growths, spaces where determined men might squeeze through if they could create an opening.
"The charges," Rowe gasped, fumbling at his belt with shaking hands. "Use the breaching charges."
But before Elias could respond, a new wave of tendrils descended—faster this time, more coordinated. They moved like the fingers of a giant hand, closing around both men with inexorable patience. One wrapped around Elias's gun arm, its barbs digging deep enough to scrape bone. Another seized his leg, dragging him toward a section of wall where human faces pressed against translucent membrane, their mouths opening and closing in silent pleas.
Rowe planted his feet and heaved backward, his face purple with effort. "Go!" he shouted over the creature's shrieks. "Get to the core!"
"Not without you!" Elias fired his remaining rounds into the tendril holding Rowe, watching it convulse and release him temporarily.
"That's an order, goddamn it!" Rowe's eyes blazed with desperate determination. He pulled the pin from his last grenade and held it against his chest like a promise. "Tell them... tell them we tried."
The tendrils sensed the threat and recoiled momentarily—just long enough for Rowe to hurl the grenade, paired with breaching charges, at the barrier’s base. The explosion seared the tunnel, a sharp flash that tore through the dark, ripping a ragged hole in the organic wall, large enough for a man to crawl through. When Elias’s vision cleared, the breach pulsed with leaking ichor, faces moaning within. Rowe lay motionless in the slime, his body twisted at impossible angles. The tendrils had retreated, but Elias knew it was only temporary—a tactical withdrawal before the next assault.
Rowe lay motionless in the slime, his body twisted at impossible angles. The tendrils had retreated, but Elias knew it was only temporary—a tactical withdrawal before the next assault.
He crawled to Rowe's body, pressing his fingers against the young soldier's neck. Nothing. The kid who'd shown him photos of his girlfriend, who'd joked about opening a garage back home, who'd believed they were the good guys—gone.
Elias closed Rowe's eyes with trembling fingers, then took the dog tags from around his neck. Harris's tags clinked softly against Rowe's own, a metallic requiem in the tunnel's breathing silence.
"I'll finish it," he whispered to the dead man. "I promise."
The syringe felt heavier now, weighted with the sacrifice of everyone who'd gotten him this far. Through the breach in the barrier, green light pulsed like a malevolent heartbeat—the core chamber, where Korvus waited with infinite patience and hunger.
Elias squeezed through the opening, feeling organic material scrape against his gear, trying to hold him back. On the other side, the tunnel opened into a vast cavern that had once been Biolab Three's central hub. Now it resembled the inside of some vast organism—a cathedral of flesh and metal where Korvus held court
.
Welcome, a voice whispered inside his skull. I've been waiting.
The syringe pulsed with blue light, Brin's last gambit against an enemy that had already consumed too much. Elias stepped forward into the green glow, carrying the hopes of the dead and the weight of his own determination.
Behind him, the tunnel sealed itself with wet, sucking sounds, ensuring there would be no retreat. Only forward now, into the heart of the beast.
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