“It felt like it was resisting,” Wood said, looking back.
Brice’s reply was cut short, replaced by wide eyes and gaping mouth. Wood saw the reaction and turned toward the containment unit. The Tsuchi’s legs were all still splayed wide, but the long tail and its needle-tipped stinger hovered in the air like a coiled snake.
Wood withdrew the hand that had been holding the leg, but when he pulled back the other, the Tsuchi’s eight limbs snapped closed like a bear trap, not puncturing the gloves, but applying pressure. “It has me!” He tugged his arm hard, gripping the top of the unit, his face inches from the glass.
A sharp crack, like a suppressed gunshot, silenced Wood’s panic.
“What happened?” Brice asked, trying to look around his counterpart’s now still body. He gripped Wood’s meaty shoulder and turned him around. The first thing he saw was the glass, a spider-web crack emanating from a small hole. The second thing was a hole in Wood’s temple, a single drop of blood leaking out.
Wood looked stunned, like he wanted to say something but now lacked the mental capacity to do so. Instead, his face twisted, as though in slow motion, into a mask of pain, followed by the most ear splitting howl Brice had ever heard. He understood what was happening, even if Wood did not.
“Sneaky devil,” Brice said to the Tsuchi, still clinging to Wood’s arm. The creatures weren’t dead. They’d set a trap. He glanced at the Tsuchi dome and confirmed it. The other two were up and about, hopping around, trying to find a way out, perhaps sensing a shift in the action outside the glass dome.
Cracking glass brought his attention back to the contained Tsuchi. It was stabbing at the glass, shattering it. It would eventually be able to break free.
“Not quite sneaky enough,” Brice said, lifting a plastic cover on the side of the containment unit. His finger hovered over the now visible red button. He turned to Wood, appeared serious for a moment, but then laughed. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that I was about to tell you that you were fired, and now I have to do this. Would have been like an 80s’ action movie.”
Wood’s only reply was more screaming.
“Levity is lost on the dying, I suppose.” Brice pushed the button.
The inside of the containment unit filled with white hot flames.
Wood’s scream rose several octaves and was joined by a shrieking, melting Tsuchi. The glass shattered and the flaming creature dove out, but fell still upon hitting the floor.
The large scientist, on the other hand, ran. The flesh of his left arm had melted away, leaving his radius and ulna bones protruding from charred skin, the bones of his arm dangling limply on slowly stretching connective tissue.
“Stop!” Brice shouted, but the man’s mind was lost.
Wood ran the hundred fifty feet toward the exit, gripping his head. Brice followed as best he could, but the last time he’d run anywhere was as a child, some forty years ago. He shoved through the double doors a few seconds behind Wood. When he entered the hallway, he found the other, much heavier man, running for the far end and the elevators. If Wood escaped, the results could be catastrophic. Brice couldn’t catch the man, but he could head him off at the pass, digitally. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, accessing the building’s digital security measures. He quickly tapped in a code, locking down the elevators. Next, he locked all the stairwell doors. Last, he alerted security to a containment breach. Within thirty seconds, there would be an army of heavily armed men capable of dealing with the situation. And if Brice was right, that’s about the same time Wood’s body would...give birth.
Brice began backing away, intending to lock himself inside the incubator, leaving security to handle the messier, and more dangerous, work. But he stopped short when the lumbering, screaming scientist barreled straight past the elevators and the stairwell door.
What is he...oh no!