His fingerprint opened the door and suddenly, the creature turned its head and darted for him, moving faster than she thought possible.
Her idea of what a reanimated corpse could do had been shaped by Hollywood, and this was a thousand times more awful. It seemed as if he was more sentient than she would’ve thought, with deductive reasoning.
The idea of a mindless hungry automaton was terrible, but put human cunning behind it with only a primal need to feed, and the possibilities were the stuff of nightmares.
It knew she was there. It still had no interest in Polidori, only that his fingerprint could open the door.
John made it into the decontamination sally port and, after he’d been rendered safe, he stepped through to the observation room where she waited.
With dawning horror, she watched as the creature put his finger up to the door as Polidori had, mimicking his actions to open the door. He splayed one hand on the window while he pressed the buttons with his other.
“He’s trying to talk!” John exclaimed.
Elizabeth fumbled with the controls on the comm and set it to record. This would all be transmitted back to the Bureau 7 mainframe for study and observation.
Proof, really.
His voice echoed with a death rattle, long drawn out exhales of what had to be putrid breath from dead lungs.
What he said made it all the more horrible.
“Help me,” he hissed in that singular voice. “Help me.”
“You know there’s no help for him, right?” John looked at her.
“Of course there is. It’s a one-two shot to the back of the head.”
He laughed. “I’m glad you’re not on about putting him down humanely. I don’t know that anyone should get that close.”
“I don’t know that it would work.” She wasn’t sure if it was fear or bile crawling up the back of her throat. “And a bullet to the cerebellum is pretty humane.”
He pressed himself more fully against the glass, his dead, white eyes fixed on her. They seemed to bore under her clothes, under her skin, and deep into the meat—meat he wanted to mash between those awful jaws.
As they watched, he began to bash his head against the door with all the supernatural strength in his reanimated body.
Smash after smash against the door bloodied his head. There was an audible crack to his skull, but it didn’t stop him. He licked at the gore on the window, devouring those bits of himself with a manic glee. All the while, he continued to watch Elizabeth.
She could practically feel his teeth tearing into her.
And he smiled. He grinned, a stretched maw, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
For all she knew, maybe he did.
“What’s going on with the other subjects? Were they all injected with PrPM3 before transport?” Elizabeth tried to pull up the vid feeds on the comm.
“No, only three of them. They were part of another study at the installation in Athens. Or that’s what it’s showing in the file.”
“So can we pull up the vids of what happened on transport? Why was this man killed?”
Polidori began typing, entered his clearance code and the vids from the transport came up. They showed nothing out of the ordinary until she saw a woman she recognized from her case files.
“Oh my god, stop it. Stop it there!” She pointed at the screen. “Zoom in on her. Dressed like security detail, but look, just there at the back of her neck.”
“Fuck,” Polidori hissed. “If that tattoo is any indication, she’s X.”
X was a group of paranormal militants that wanted to lift the veil, wanted to stop hiding in the shadows. They wanted to bring all of their kind out into the light so to speak.
That would induce a mass panic and anarchy that the world wouldn’t survive. At least, not the world of humans.
Leaving a vacuum for the paranormals to step in and take over. Humans would be used as slaves and livestock—the various secret organizations who worked within this world to protect humankind fought a constant battle.
They continued the playback and watched as the woman injected their test subject with something and then broke his neck with a quick snap. She looked up at the camera and smiled before injecting three other subjects.
She’d still be in containment with them.
How many others had she injected? What was that shit?
“Damn it,” she growled.
“We have to get a sample,” John said what they were both thinking. “I’ll go back in. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“I’m going to call security and let them know we have a breach.”
“Let me get the sample first. Whatever this stuff was, we need to know. If we call for a lockdown, we’ll never know, but that crap will still be out there, a ticking bomb.”
“You’re right.” Elizabeth scrubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “Okay, so you’re going back in. What can I do?”
“There’s a secret compartment behind the cabinet.” Polidori pointed. “Open it.”