Countd0wn

Chapter 33: First Strike

It had been a few hours since the news had been made public. Personnel all around the facility were talking about the thousands of hypermorphs that were surrounding the base at the moment, right above their heads. Although Mossberg said that they had nothing to worry about, they knew otherwise.

It was around a day or so after the base had become boxed in, and every member of the Reservoir staff was doing their work. Soldiers were patrolling and guarding the areas, scientists were researching the DNA samples that they had, and several of the test subjects were training in the hologram rooms or simply were relaxing in their rooms, along with Wren and Sparrow. But no one could possibly prepare for what was coming next.

It started in the Zoo. The large containment room located several miles beneath the surface of Reservoir was relatively calm. The doctors and biologists present were scanning every single infected and mutated subject, including the larger, unknown one that had been encountered in the hologram room a few days prior. 

Then, one of the biologists noticed something odd. Every single hypermorph was technically dead, since all of their higher brain functions had ceased, except for their primal ones such as eat and kill, but they still had a pulse, albeit one that was extremely fast-paced, and too quick for a human heart to keep up with. The pulse of the hypermorph that the doctor was looking at, however, suddenly seemed to go dead.

The doctor was shocked at this unexplained and unknown set of data. He leaned in closer to take a look at the now flat line that was on the hypermorph's heart monitor. Then, he heard another low beeping tone from another screen. He rushed over to look, and saw that yet another hypermorph had no pulse. 

As he stood there in awe and confusion, all of the screens started to blink and flash as the pulses of every creature that they had captured began to go silent. The doctor then turned on his feet and rushed over to Joshua Howell's desk. He arrived out of breath, and tried to speak as clearly as he could. "Dr...Howell...hypermorphs...all going offline..."

Joshua stood up, his eyes wide. He ran over to the heart monitors with the doctor, and confirmed what he had just heard. He pressed a button on the console, and an alarm with a red light began to flash in the room. "Attention! All test subjects are going into cardiac arrest! Administer cardiovascular shock immediately!"

When Mossberg began to capture live hypermorphs, she wanted to keep them as well-contained as possible, but also make sure that they could never die while they were being held. So, Joshua had created a special intravenous system that was in their pods that allowed them to remotely deliver a shock that could restart the hearts in case they began to die from any sort of cause, unknown or otherwise.

The doctors in the room rushed to activate the machine, and managed to fully charge it up. Joshua diverted the electricity in equal amounts to every single hypermorph in the room. It would drain their power with such a big charge, but they had no other choice. He grabbed the lever to administer the shock, and yelled out across the room. "Clear!"

He yanked the lever down, and he could see the hypermorph's bodies jerk around in their pods from the massive amounts of electricity that were no doubt surging through their bodies. Then, the lights and the alarm suddenly began to dim, and flash in and out. Joshua and the other doctors looked around confused, and then he looked at the hypermorphs, and suddenly understood in one terrifying moment. 

The hypermorphs weren't jerking around from the electricity. They were jerking around so they could break through their restraints, with newfound, unknown strength. Then, still harnessing the electricity, they were using their indestructible bodies to create an electrical feedback loop, causing every single electrical item in the room to be short-circuited. Including the security systems.