Of Monsters and Humanity: The Genesis

Chapter 65 - Xander

The United States District of Health and Medicine's Project X Masquerade Ball

The Loading Deck was silent.

A dozen soldiers were in the room, scanning the area with the flashlight on their large black automatic weapons. They crept low to the ground, their boots nearly silent against the floor. They inched around the four unmoving bodies on the ground, looking for the person who knocked them unconscious. The air was heavy and full of tension. They would shoot at whatever moved, though the room was silent. They crept and searched thoroughly for the person responsible leaving the civilians immobile.

But that person was no longer in the room.

The room was silent.... Completely silent.

Until the elevator doors started to tear open, the strength of the metal screaming and groaning under long, pale, clawed fingers.

The soldiers called out to one another, crowding around the elevator doors and pointing their weapons at the fingers.

The doors flew open.... But just for a moment. For if one of the soldiers blinked, they would have missed the doors even parting.

The doors were left slightly ajar. The dozens of white lights and red lasers coming from the weapons of the soldiers poured through the opening between them. The only thing they could see was the empty metal shaft. No elevator. No one inside.

"Prop the doors open," one commanded to others.

Three soldiers huttled around a small metal podium in front of the doors. They pressed a blinking red button, and the doors slowly parted, groaning along the way.

The shaft was completely empty.

"What the hell...?" several soldiers wondered aloud, scanning the elevator shaft with the lights of their guns.

One soldier shined his upwards in the shaft and nearly dropped his gun in fear. He gasped in shock. "Captian! Captain, the elevator has been compromised!"

"What?" one of the soldiers asked, shoving past his men to stare up the shaft. His face, too, reflected the fear. "Holy God. Check the cams. Where is Experiment X?"

Every soldier turned around to face the monitors above the control board. Each screen displayed different views of the Pit. The only thing inside, though, was the metal throne.

"No, no, no, no," the captain gasped, rushing to the control board and moving the cameras around. "This can't be happening. Where is he? Was he taken to a lab?"

"The elevator was torn apart, captain! He's missing! All of the doctors are upstairs at the ball!" one soldier started to yell. His heart raced and he was hyperventilating. "There are four people unconscious! He got out! Didn't you see the fingers opening the elevator door?"

The captain spun around and stormed back towards the tall, metal, cylindrical elevator shaft. "He has to still be inside the shaft, then. Shut the building down. Evacuate everyone. This is a code yellow. Experiment X has escaped the Holding Pen--"

"Not so fast there, champ," I called down.

The soldiers all looked up in horror.

I dropped from the rafters of the room and landed perfectly on the concrete flooring. The sound of my shoes hitting the floor echoed between the four walls.

I rolled my back so I stood tall as I cracked a smile and cocked my head to the side.

"Shoot, shoot, shoot!" the captain yelled just as a plethora of bullets came flying at me. The bullets shot across the room and hit the wall, falling to the ground and hitting nothing but glass jars full of my old body parts. The liquid within them splashed on the ground and filled the room with a sickly chemical smell.