The inside of the warehouse was wrecked to such an extent that the sight of it evoked imagery of ancient Greek ruins in Viktor’s mind. Rusted industrial shelving units lay strewn across the floor, some fully horizontal and some clustered together like they’d been knocked over domino-style; boxes dotted the space as well, crushed and bleeding packing peanuts; the parts of the walls he could see had an unidentifiable substance splattered across them; and to cap it off there was a horrible rotten stench permeating throughout it all. He’d have thought the damage was done by the cruel hands of time as is the usual case for buildings like it if it weren’t for all the dust swirling through the air around him. The disoriented android could only vaguely make out these details using the limited glow from the light source shining up through the broken roof of the place, which he could now make out was coming from a medium-sized industrial spotlight lodged in the back right corner on one of the rafter beams. He also could’ve sworn he saw a blinking red dot on the wall behind him, extremely similar in form to the one he spotted in his room with Vivienne the other night. He shook off the urge to try and find its source after assuring himself of its unimportance at the current moment.
The sight of the light reminded Viktor of the objective of their mission. Fortunately, there looked to be a heap of shelves right under the rafter in question. He did his best to locate the path of least packing peanuts and made his way cautiously towards the light.
The shelves seemed to sit solidly stationary enough when tested, so Viktor climbed to the top, jumped upward, grabbed the rafter beam and pulled himself up with only a few swift and graceful motions. The first thing he noticed when analyzing the surroundings below him was a peculiar group of small, dark blobs scurrying from under the shelf heap toward the wall opposite him. They made squeaking sounds like rats, which the wary android didn’t find too out of the ordinary for a place like this. Still, just to cover all his bases, he figured using the spotlight he just gained access to for a little bit wouldn’t hurt.
Shining the light their way revealed to him that they were indeed rats. What was out of the ordinary was the sheer volume of them moving in the same direction at the same speed. As a matter of fact, none of them broke their strides or even flinched after getting the high intensity beam aimed right at them. Viktor suddenly remembered the private comms channel and had a sudden urge to connect to it. He brought up the menu on his Heads-Up Display and selected [COMMS-PRIVATE]. The signal for a successful connection appeared after a few seconds.
“Maria, Jane, come in. Are you there?”
A short noise that sounded like someone was fumbling with the controls on the other end was the only thing Viktor could hear as an immediate response.
“Vik! Did you locate the parasite?”
Maria’s voice sounded urgent and stressed. The fumbling sound continued.
“Hi, it’s Jane, I’m here too. What have you found?”
The android tried his best to describe his surroundings as clearly as possible as things were happening.
“I managed to separate myself from my teammates so they could investigate a corpse we found in the alley next to the warehouse that was irreversibly mutilated in several areas. It left a trail of blood leading right up to the warehouse doors. When I got in I found that the light source was an industrial spotlight stuck on one of the rafter beams and I was able to climb up there and grab it. That’s my current position. I’m now using the light to track what appears to be a large congregation of rats sprinting to the left wall of the building.”
“Rats? Vik, are they acting in an unnatural sort of way?”
She started talking away from the microphone.
“Jane, you don’t think…i-it would be just like we predicted…”
“Uh…they seem like they’re…moving in sync?”
More fumbling.
“In sync??? Shit…Vik, listen to me. You need to look out for any evidence of the rats, uh…behaving in ways that wouldn’t naturally benefit them. The parasite would most likely wanna make its hosts as strong as it possibly could, and in ways that you could never predict. What are they running towards?”
Before Viktor could aim the spotlight up to the wall something pummeled him square in the jaw, sending him and the light flying backwards.
“Vik? What was that?? Hello???”
The dazed android wouldn’t have been able to see much from his vantage point carved into the crumbled wall had it not been for the angle the spotlight fell in next to him. The beam shined forward and to his left perfectly to reveal the culprit for a few seconds before it lurched forward and crushed the light mechanism into little pieces.
From what little Viktor saw of the thing during the small window of time it was illuminated, he had no issues recognizing it as a threat worse than anything he’d ever faced. It towered over him, a hulking brown mass that he had just then realized was the source of the horrific smell wafting through the building. Not to mention the force with which it clobbered him. He would’ve easily been dead had he been a human like the corpse outside. He could hear the creators’ voices in his ears slowly getting more and more clear until the world seemed to orient itself back to normal.
“Vik!! Come in!!”
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“U-uh…right…sorry about that. Something just came out of nowhere and laid me out. It’s gotta be the parasite’s doing, it’s just…the thing knocked out the only light source I had. I couldn’t really make anything specific out in the little bit of time I had to look. I still have no idea what it even is. I’m fairly sure it has to be related to the rats, though. I don’t hear them anymore at all.”
“Oh? You don’t? Wait…they were all sprinting to one place, one mass clobbered you…Maria, you don’t think it’s already figured out how to–”
Before Viktor could react and move out of the way, he felt a quick gust of wind at his left side and then several sharp stabs into his torso. He tried to get a hold of what was latched on to him and noticed that all he could feel was damp, coarse fur. His suspicions seemed all but confirmed.
The mass of rats let out a loud and concurrent hiss like pistons in a well-oiled machine. Viktor was up in the air and being yanked forward in the blink of an eye, too thrown off by the baffling amount of force the creature was exerting to think about ways to escape its clutches in time. It pulled and pulled until suddenly stopping a few feet away from itself, its stench fully occupying and consuming the android’s olfactory processing sensors. Viktor had no idea why the thing was holding him suspended in the air in this way, but all he cared about in the moment was that it gave him an opening. He whipped his right arm back, grasped and pulled the hilt of his sword from the sheath at his back, and made his best effort to thrust down at his left side.
The blade connected with the creature with a wet and meaty splurtch. The rats let out a blood-curdling shriek and the appendage that had a hold of Viktor began flailing wildly, yet again rendering the android too far off balance to do anything but withdraw the sword from its freshly cut wound. Thick blood splattered all over him, limiting his vision even more than it already had been from the lack of any substantial light. He used the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe the mess off of his eyes to the best of his ability and considered the available options he had while being tethered to this strange flailing thing. He could scream for help, revealing the true nature of the mission to his two teammates and potentially jeopardizing the safety of the rest of the people living on the block; he could try swinging blindly and risk not only missing but also potentially injuring himself; or…
Viktor closed his eyes tightly and tried to focus through the stress of his situation to clearly think of the phrase that would activate his companion.
Stop thinking…stop thinking…
He felt himself heating up again. It might’ve been the fastest and most extreme rise in temperature he’d ever experienced. There was just no time to dwell on it.
“A-Agh…”
Come on…COME ON…
A faint popping noise that Viktor could just barely hear sounded. Suddenly, he was on the ground, dazed. The sound of something sizzling filled his ears as he opened his eyes and came to. The creature seemed to have let go, and the appendage that once had a hold of him recoiled sharply. From the sound of the rats’ shrieks, he could tell he was on its right side.
Now was his chance.
Charybdis! ON!!
As he stood up, the companion began emitting a faint glow and then snapped itself free from the chain around his neck, floating higher and growing larger until it was back to its regular size and resting spot over Viktor’s left shoulder. Playing through the demo on protecting from bullets was the only time he’d been able to get a feel for how the thing worked, but he had an idea for how to use it in this situation that he had no choice but to put all his faith into.
He stood up and readied himself, sword in the optimal starting position, and closed his eyes once more.
The focused android felt a familiar tug on the left side of his face, this time at a much greater intensity. The rats let out a confused and disjointed melody of squeaks as, slowly but surely, the creature’s right appendage began lifting uncontrollably towards the source of the pulling. He could hear the squeaks getting closer and closer to him. He had to time this right, or else the creature would surely find some way to interrupt the process…
The second he heard the squeaks directly in his left ear, he threw his arms downward and jabbed the sword directly up and to his left. The blade connected with more damp flesh, but Viktor knew he needed to react faster this time. He took a step forward and pivoted to his left, blade still in hand. Pulling the sword out of the gash caused more blood to gush everywhere, but he didn’t care this time around. He had the creature right where he wanted it.
He raised his arms up and brought the sword down from over his head in a quick and decisive slashing motion. The blade cut a viciously clean path through the appendage, lopping a huge bundle of rats off the creature’s total mass. More disgusting wet sounds rang out as the detached rats hit the warehouse floor.
Viktor hoped for a short-lived couple of seconds that he had killed them all, but sure enough, he could eventually hear frantic pitter-patter steps moving back across to the main body. Thankfully, it seemed to be a significantly smaller amount of rats, though the curious android wondered what that would mean for when they reconnected. He figured he only had a small window of time to relay a message back to the creators before he’d have to be on high alert again, so he quickly unmuted and began.
“Alright, I’ve managed to completely sever a cluster of rats from the whole mass. From what it sounded like, a majority of the disconnected group didn’t survive, but some are still alive and being recalled as we speak.”
“Great work so far, Vik! We knew you could do it! The parasite seems to be just as resourceful as we thought, though. We have no clue how to advise you here, y’know other than to say ‘If all of them die, the parasite won’t have anywhere else to go’, but…that’s not much help, is it?”
Viktor subtly shook his head.
“Don’t worry so much about giving good advice. You guys made me for this exact purpose, right? Besides, I think I’m starting to get a feel for–”
Out of nowhere, Viktor felt the stabs again, this time on his left leg. There was no sound of exertion to clue him in on the act this time around. Before he knew it, he was off his feet and tasting cement.
But his attacker wasn’t done. It spun one hundred and eighty degrees to face the wall behind it and pulled back the arm Viktor was attached to. In an instant, the arm became a slingshot bent back to the point of highest tension, literally screaming to release the immense potential energy it stored.
With another piston-like hiss, the creature flung its arm forward. Viktor didn’t even have time to blink before his body hit the wall. He could hear himself crumple slightly upon impact. The arm retracted. He was still conscious. This seemed to greatly displease the creature. Another bout of hissing and he was hurtling in the same direction again.
He only had time to think about the sheer immensity of his failure before he hit the wall and blacked out.
