[4-14] The Town

[Karl Jak]

Face to Face
Amber, Arturia, Carmelita vs the Scientist

Could something absorb some much punishment?

As Amber stumbled away from ‘Fleshy,’ the shifting, mutating human continued its wretched screams as it lurched back.  The three women tensed, expecting their adversary to come at them once more—to rise up from the precipice of death as it had done in the past.

Instead, ‘Fleshy’ pitched sideways and crashed against a pile of debris.  Like a cracked egg on a hot sidewalk, the creature’s flesh started to sizzle and pop.  Its malleable flesh bubbled like boiling water as it slid off of twisted, gnarled bones and became more akin to liquid than a solid mass.  What was left beneath the skin of the creature quickly started to lose structural integrity and boil away as well, until there was nothing left but a blood-stained Razorback resting atop a pile of broken ceiling tiles and chunks of concrete and drywall.

“Did… did we do it?”  Amber asked as she started toward the wreckage.  She collected her weapon and glanced around, but when no killer puddles rose from the ground around them, she let out a sigh of relief.

Carmelita smiled and moved forward, her focus immediately turning to the broken door that had been on the other side of the long-since destroyed lounge.  When he had been just a man, Fleshy had come stumbling out from somewhere.  Although it took some effort to clear a path, the three women made their way through the wreckage of the basement room and traversed a reinforced metal hallway en route to a single steel door.  Fortunately for the winded, battered threesome, here wasn’t a number pad or a fancy place to scan a handprint.  All they had to do was press a button and the door slid into the opposing wall with a pneumatic hiss.

The room that they stepped into was a ransacked laboratory.  Whoever he had been, Fleshy must have tried his hardest to tear the place apart before stumbling out into the employee lounge.  Computer monitors had been overturned.  Lab equipment lay in twisted masses throughout the room.  Shards of broken glassware dotted the landscape like twinkling snowflakes.  Chemical stains marred the walls and floor, and at first glance, it genuinely looked like the room was a dead-end.

“This is what we fought for?”  Amber muttered as she clutched a hand to the side of her head.  The adrenaline had served to numb the fever and the discomfort, but with the battle fading into the past, those uncomfortable feelings started to resurface.

“Can’t be,” Carmelita whispered as she walked into the center of the lab and tried to spot something—anything—of value amid the chaos.  The fox, her own head feeling warmer than it should have, stumbling toward a desk and nearly lost her balance.  Arturia was the first to reach her.

“You’re burning up,” the knight spoke softly as she rested a hand against her companion’s forehead.

“I’ll be fine,” Carmelita replied as she stood back up only to make it a few paces and fall once again.  When her knees hit the ground on this occasion, her weary eyes spotted something lying under a nearby desk.  Although buried under a busted piece of computer equipment, Carmelita spotted object clear as day.  Reaching forward as her two companions moved to help her, she pushed away the equipment and saw that the hidden item was a briefcase.

“What is it?” Amber asked as the fox pulled the case from the wreck and glanced down to see that the clasps were open.  If someone had been trying to stow the briefcase, they’d obviously been in too much of a hurry to lock it properly.

Without answering Amber, Carmelita lifted the lid and saw that there were three syringes wrapped in a piece of paper.  Once the paper was pulled away, they could see that all three of the syringes were filled with a murky blue liquid.

“The paper has some writing on it,” Arturia remarked.

“‘I think I did it!  May have finally solved issue of omnilium corruption.  May have isolated corruption agent.  Contained here are two samples of former, one sample of latter.  Self-administered remainder of inoculation agent.  Already feeling sick and can’t risk corruption.  Need to get to research lab immediately.  Situation in town untenable.  Need prepare for worsening of general situation.’”

Carmelita looked over the syringes and saw that none of them were labeled.  Whoever the scientist had been, he or she had been in too much of a rush.

“So… so it’s a cure for this?”  Amber remarked as she clenched a hand over an open sore on her forearm.

“I’m not sure,” Carmelita whispered as she looked over the vials.  “An inoculation is a lot different from a cure.”