Chapter 2

After crawling along air ducts for some time, Cameron peered down
from her hiding place. She broke the grill and dropped down to a well-lit
corridor. She continued along dodging security cameras and came upon
an opened security door. She looked inside. A laboratory of sorts, it
was a large room with small cages lining metal walls. The stench of
waste and urine assaulter her senses and a cacophony of madness
sounded throughout the room. Inside each cage was a creature.

The only feature they all shared was their humanoid form and small
size. One with a snarling dog face, yet another with glowing green eyes,
and one with no eyes at all. These creatures were covered with either
weeping sores, patches of ragged fur, or covered with hair. Some had
tentacles, pincers, wickedly curved claws, human hands with too many
digits or other, even weirder appendages.

The mutants shook the bars of their cages and mewled, cried,
screamed, growled, roared and some even laughed insanely.

On the far side were four men dressed in lab coats. They were working
on large computers whose screens emitted a dull green light. Two
guards stood speaking to the scientists to which they replied
something and handed some papers to the guards. In the cage closest
to Cameron, a creature with a forked tongue and large eyes stared at
her, saying a single word over and over.
The word it sounded like....

One of the guards started walking back and Cameron hid behind the
entry door's archway to draw her knives. The man walked past her
then suddenly turned, started to raise his gun and opened his mouth to
say something. Lurching forward, one of her knives cut through his
carotid artery in one slash and whatever he was going to say turned
into a wet gurgle. He fell to the floor, clutching the wound. His
companion heard the gurgle and the body hit the floor. He came running
in and calling his name. He got stabbed in the stomach for his troubles.

Cameron drew her gun and went into the lab. The already pale
scientists staring at the doorway became paler still.

"Nobody move!" Cameron snarled and aimed the gun at them.

The closest to her, a bald, elderly fellow with bony hands drew a
sidearm. She shot him in the head. The man next to him pressed a
button and an alarm went off. He too, was shot. The third man
got up and started running.

"Stop!" she called out and aimed.

The man kept running and started pulling a lever on the wall. She shot
him in the back of the head blood and brains splattered the wall. His
body weight slowly finished pulling the lever down. She aimed her gun at
the fourth and last man.

"What does that do?"

The man stammered something and looked at the cages. The doors
to the cages opened. The swarm of two dozen small freakish
mutants crawled out, all of them hollering and hooting. The man
whimpered, got up, looked at Cameron and started running for the exit.

A little thing, mostly tentacles and a mouth, caught the scientist's ankle
and tripped him. Another beast, with long canine teeth and golden fur
jumped on him and started tearing long cuts on his face with its claws.
Then all of them were on him, tearing and biting his thrashing form. His
frantic screams were muffled under the shrieks and growls of the
creatures.

Cameron aimed and shot one of the small mutants. The shot rang out
and the creature fell back, mewling piteously. It curled up where it was
and laid still. Two dozen mutant eyes fixed on her, their mouths
dripping blood. They looked at each other, then started moving towards
her as a pack. The man's ruined form lay behind them, bloodied, broken
and quite dead. His intestines had been torn out of his body and laid
about in long ropy clutches in the pool of gore.

She backed up as they moved to the sides to encircle her. The smell of fur and filth mixing with the scent of freshly spilled blood was in the air . They moved silently towards her with mad animal hunger in their eyes.

Keeping her aim steady on the closest one she kept backing up towards the door. They were hesitating seeing who would go first.

Then the closest one leapt at her, clawed stubby arms stretched. She shot it in the throat. The mass of critters being oddly silent until now erupted into screeches and high pitched roars as they surged forward.

Cameron flicked on the one shot flamethrower on her arm and unleashed a gout of burning napalm at the howling surging mass of mutants. The effect was immediate more than a dozen of them caught fire. Their small flailing alight bodies contacting with others and igniting them too.

The surviving mutants broke and ran hiding behind anything they could find. A few ran back into their cages.

The burning ones screeched horribly as they died the smell of burning flesh, hair and fat filled the air and an acrid rose from them setting off the fire alarms. The extinguishers on the ceiling flicked on and doused everything with cold water.

Inanimate charred lumps dotted the floor. A few badly burnt ones twitched and mewled. The alarm stopped sounding but the water continued to pour. Cameron started plugging into a console to download the schematics to the installation. She was lost early on and it was a maze.