Worse Than a Stalker

Inside the indoor fire hydrant, a hidden ladder waited in place of any firefighting equipment.

The passage was so narrow and deep that a grown man could barely force himself into it, and the single steel ladder bolted into that shaft made for a surprisingly novel sight.

Most people would have expected an elevator that carried you to a floor no button could ever reach, or a secret door opening onto some basement level that wasn't supposed to exist. But that sort of thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would have been far too easy for anyone with a sharp eye to find. Hiding an entrance somewhere completely unexpected like this was bound to happen sooner or later.

The problem was they'd put it somewhere this damp and gloomy.

"Rock-paper-scissors?"

When I proposed a manly, fair contest, Lucy snorted and thrust out a fist without a second's hesitation.

"Looks like I won."

"No you didn't. If I throw paper, that's game over."

"I still think my fist would win, though."

"Ah."

If you stopped to consider why Lucy, and not me in my Modular Exo-Suit, had ended up taking the close-combat role, the answer presented itself pretty quickly.

In the end I had no choice but to go down first, swallowing my tears as I committed myself to the ladder. I had the distinct feeling that a leader's dignity and gravitas had climbed down ahead of me.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

After about five minutes of descent, the ladder ringing out with that inorganic clatter, I judged we had come down a good several dozen meters. At last, solid ground met the tips of my toes.

It's damp.

In most underground spaces choked with nothing but dust, even the air feels dry and stale, and the ground underfoot ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is firm with a slight drag. A damp floor, though, has that distinctive grit and slickness all its own.

The environmental data on my gas mask goggle HUD confirmed it. Compared to the somewhat cool air outside, the temperature and humidity down here ran a little high. I had assumed I was just sweating from the long climb, but my body, sensitive as it was, had already registered the change.

Lucy came down after me and fanned herself lightly, as if she found the air a touch muggy.

"It's rather humid down here, and a bit warmer too. Could it be connected to the sewers?"

"Maybe."

The internal explosion would have ruptured every pipe running through the underground, which meant tap water and raw sewage had almost certainly poured in unchecked. Factor in the ground and soil that had heaved up and then slumped right back down, and the air-circulation system in this facility was completely shot.

"Check your oxygen filter on a regular basis. The atmospheric contamination down here is a little worse than up in Ground Zero."

"We've nearly used up the Glow Sticks. I suppose we can start using lights now?"

"No choice. Keep the intensity as dim as you can, though."

The moment we stepped indoors, Lucy and I naturally swapped positions again.

Baton in one hand, silenced pistol in the other, Lucy took point, sweeping the way ahead with the light mounted under the barrel. I followed about three paces back with the shotgun, covering the flanks and rear.

The shaft we had climbed down seemed to be some kind of secret escape route for this suspicious underground facility. There was nothing of note in the immediate vicinity. Instead, a stretch of narrow corridor brought us to a thick bunker door that had been left half-open, as if to welcome us in.

The face of the door was a mess of gouges — something had raked it with sharp claws — and pocked with bullet impacts. And there, wedged in the gap of that half-open door, sat a dark-red glob of mucus whose nature I couldn't immediately place.

It showed none of the drying or decay you would expect from human blood. If anything, it felt closer to a hunk of flesh.

No. It's subtly different from flesh, too. This is more like…

The instant Lucy brought the light in close, I dug through my memory and finally placed it.

Ah. Right. This was shit.

Biological waste. The illegal dumping of a meal some creature had failed to fully digest, expelled into the world at large. I had only been late to recognize it because the gas mask was too damned good at its job — I couldn't smell a thing.

"Lucy. That's a contaminant. Don't touch it. And you can turn the light all the way up."

"…May I ask why?"

"The things we're about to deal with don't have eyes."

"I'm not particularly doubting you, but how can you tell?"

"It used its own waste to mark its territory and set a trap in a place like this."

"By 'a place like this'… you mean somewhere it can't come and go, but humans like us can?"

"Exactly. Think of it as a mouse hole inside a human house."

The corridor we had just come through was extremely narrow, and so was the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠emergency ladder shaft — barely wide enough for a single grown man. Meanwhile, whatever had dropped this load had to be at least the size of a delivery truck.

"It knows humans use these small, hidden entrances. That's why it laid the trap in advance."

"Could this also be an effect of the Survival Theme?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say it isn't."

If you thought a Survival Theme only ever produced trap gimmicks that sat naturally in the environment, you were badly mistaken. We had already run into one before we even entered the mixed-use commercial building — a Giant Protospecies lying dead still, camouflaged as a utility pole or a traffic light.

That was closer to an ambush, strictly speaking. But it triggered the instant you touched it, so a trap is a trap.

Whatever was waiting somewhere in this underground facility was the same kind of animal. It knew how to hunt humans.

A headache even without the Survival Theme — and it just had to spawn in one, so now it's even craftier.

We hopped carefully through the gap in the bunker door, making sure none of the waste touched us, and entered the interior.

One way or another, the surest and safest extraction point would be right here, at the dead center of the city. We needed to strip this place clean and get out before any more dung flies came swarming in.

The interior beyond was lined, wall to wall, with white tiles packed so densely that an hour in here would have been enough to drive anyone insane. And something about the layout felt familiar.

"…A prison?"

I nodded at Lucy's offhand murmur and began examining the iron doors set at regular intervals among the white tiles, one after another.

Some of those doors were in rough shape. A few had been ripped clean off by some brutal force; others had simply rusted through and fallen away on their own. A glance through the openings showed rooms that were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠neither too large nor too small — maybe thirty square meters, give or take, though the occasional chamber ran larger than that.

The other notable detail was that, unlike the relatively clean corridor, some of the rooms were damaged far beyond reason. Traces of filthy mucus smeared and pressed into the surfaces. Mold blooming across the walls in the high humidity. In one room, an entire wall had been physically destroyed, leaving the imprint of something that had once been embedded there.

Anyone looking at this would have assumed some severe human-rights violation had been carried out on the premises. It almost certainly hadn't. A human-rights violation, after all, implied an inhumane act committed against a human being.

If the subject was neither a human we would recognize, nor an animal, nor a plant, then it didn't qualify as a "violation."

It was simply inquiry. Research.

Which was precisely why this place had so much worth taking.

"Prioritize rooms with no suspicious mucus and no mold."

Lucy took the hint and moved ahead, sweeping the view beyond each iron door in a quick pass.

Rooms piled with that suspicious mucus were spaces the thing preferred — cozy, maybe, or just its idea of a wastebasket. The mold was almost certainly a sign of leaks that had sprung after the internal explosion. Wandering around with that alien mildew-stink all over you would have been insane.

The rooms we picked our way into, one by one, had mostly kept their useful contents intact. Research instruments of a kind I had never seen in my life. Document charts whose contents I couldn't read — the gas mask goggles had them blinded out — and medicine bottles of unknown composition.

That familiar feeling. That familiar taste. High-value items, scattered everywhere in heaps.

In an ordinary Dark Zone, this many high-value items would never have spawned concentrated in a single location. I was reminded, all over again, of what a Survival-themed Dark Zone was capable of.

The next iron door opened onto a space considerably larger than the labs and testing rooms we had been through. A long, wide table. Sofas and bookshelves arranged along the walls. And a large X-ray light box occupying an entire stretch of wall, which made quite an impression.

Power no longer reached the light box, though, so the few X-ray films hanging on it showed only as dull, darkened sheets. To read an X-ray film properly you needed the even, intense illumination of a light box — but I brought the flashlight in close anyway, just in case.

Yeah. I knew it would be you.

What emerged from the blurry film was unmistakably a vertebrate I knew well — and yet a creature to which no one in this world would dare assign a scientific name.

No one but me.

The thing that appeared at the last possible moment, when convicts were trying to finish their farming and extract in one piece, and sabotaged them with ghostly precision. The lunatic that then used the convicts it had snatched as bait, setting traps to reel in still more. A creature of such infamy that when the main extraction in a Survival-themed Dark Zone spawned underground instead of on the surface, its appearance was all but guaranteed.

Players of EFD used to trash it as an even filthier camper than a Stalker, filing complaint after complaint with the admins. Is this thing even actually AI?

I snatched every last X-ray film off the light box. Of everything we had acquired today, these films would be the single highest-value take.

And right then—

The entire underground facility began to shake violently, as if an earthquake had struck the heart of the city.

"An earthquake?!"

"No! It's starting to move!"

More precisely, it had begun tightening the snare it had set in advance, ready for dung flies like us to come swarming in.

We burst out of the conference room. The corridor lights were flickering with an ugly, ominous stutter, and that told us everything we needed to know — someone had already come in by another route and put their hands on the facility's power room. That, apparently, had served as a trigger, and it had pissed the thing off.

The facility was already half-collapsed from the internal explosion. The ground itself was never that solid to begin with.

The sector we were in was only a fraction of the underground complex. Cross into any other zone and it would be overflowing with spilled soil, building debris, and the sewage that had flooded in from outside. If this was the creature I knew, it had claimed the entire facility as its territory a long time ago.

"I told you the important thing in a Survival Theme is extracting as fast as possible through a limited-capacity route. This is why."

"Because after a certain amount of time, even the sector with the extraction point disappears…!"

"Right. And it isn't just time — the number of convicts who've entered the zone is a trigger too."

There was no more time to hesitate.

The ones trying to farm and extract. The ones trying to plunder the ones trying to farm and extract. And the thing trying to hunt every last one of them.

The worst three-way war imaginable had just begun, here in the middle of this damp, pitch-dark underground facility that could come down at any second.

We raced past tile walls that were already beginning to crack, and ran for the next sector.

From this point on, we were ready to kill every living thing we met. No hesitation.