Project Zero: Evolution Protocol

Behind the Glass

The door above him gave way with a scream of tearing steel.

Cyrus didn't look back. He took the next flight in two jumps, hit the landing hard, and felt his left ankle fold under him like wet cardboard.

"s**t! f**k!"

Something popped. Pain flared white and hot, and then it went out like a snuffed match.

He stood on it. It held.

He stared at his own foot for half a second, a man looking at someone else's property. Then the stairwell above him filled with the sound.

Bare feet slapping concrete. Dozens of them, out of step and far too fast. And under that, a wet, clicking chatter, like a mouth full of teeth trying to remember how to be words.

Pale blue letters flickered in the corner of his eye.

[BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURES: 14]

[ABOVE: 9]

[BELOW: 5]

"Below," Cyrus said. "Of course. f*****g below."

He leaned over the rail. Three floors down, in the dark, something pale lifted its head and looked up at him.

Then it ran.

His heart hammered in his ears. Stairs above, stairs below, and no weapon but a fire axe he'd barely learned the weight of.

Hunger above. Hunger below. Between them, one gray steel door standing half open on the landing, light spilling out of it, and a stenciled sign: OBSERVATION DECK B.

He went through and put his full weight against the door. His hands found a deadbolt and rammed it home.

The first body hit the other side a second later. The whole frame shuddered. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

"Okay," he breathed. "Okay. Okay."

Then he turned around, and the hair rose on the back of his neck.

It was a long, narrow room, dim and cold. One wall was a single sheet of glass, looking down into the lab he'd just left. A desk sat in front of it. The rolling chair beside the desk was still turning, slowly, like someone had just stood up.

On the desk, a coffee mug.

He touched it. Warm. Steam curled off the rim.

Whoever left it had been in no hurry. Somehow that was worse than if they'd run.

"Hello?" His voice cracked. He raised the axe. "Anyone?"

Nothing. Just the slam of bodies on the door behind him, and under it the soft hum of a camera in the corner, its red light glowing.

He crossed to the glass.

Below, the lab was empty except for one thing. It crouched on all fours beside his tank, gray and stretched, a man once, maybe, with its nose pressed to the glass where Cyrus had puked. It was licking it. Slowly. Like a dog with a bone.

Then it lifted its head and looked straight up at the observation window.

Straight at him.

The glass was one-way. It had to be. Cyrus had stood behind enough of them to know.

The thing smiled anyway.

"f**k that," Cyrus whispered.

Its mouth opened too wide, and kept opening, until the corners of its lips split and wept something black. It tilted its head, listening to a sound only it could hear.

Then it dropped to all fours and bolted for the far door, and Cyrus understood it wasn't leaving. It was circling. Coming for the stairs.

He stepped back.

His eyes landed on the desk. A notebook lay open beside the mug, a pen resting in the crease. The ink on the last line was still wet.

He read.

06:12. Subject stirring. Fluid draining on schedule.

06:13. Eyes open. Pulls the tube himself. Good hands.

06:14. First word: "Fuck." Voice steady. Pupils equal.

06:16. Checks the ribs. Twice. Says nothing. (They always check the ribs.)

06:19. Finds the tags. Doesn't look. Interesting.

06:21. Console. System online. "f**k you. I don't take orders from my own head."

He argues with it. Good. They all argue.

06:23. Axe from the case. Smart.

06:24. He is reading this.

They always check the ribs.

Cyrus had checked his twice, alone, in the dark, and hadn't told a soul. Somebody had been in the room for it.

He read the last line three times. What the actual f**k.

The pen was still warm.

He looked up at the camera in the corner. The little red light stared back, patient as a held breath.

Whoever wrote that had watched him do every single thing, and had written it down while he did it.

He turned a page back. Then another. Then he flipped faster, and his stomach dropped through the floor.

The pages went back further than he wanted to count. Same format. Same first line. 06:12. Subject stirring. Different times. Different details.

Subject wept for eleven minutes before he moved.

Subject took the elevator.

Subject did not make it to the stairs.

Subject did not make it out of the tank.

Subject asked who was listening. Subject was polite about it. Subject did not make it past the second landing.

"Faster than the last one," Cyrus whispered. "Jesus f*****g Christ."

The last one. Not the first. Not the only.

The door boomed. A hinge cracked. The deadbolt bent like a paper clip.

He ripped the notebook off the desk, jammed it into the waistband of his scrubs, and ran for the back wall, where a second door sat in the shadows, gray and blank, with a keycard reader blinking red beside it.

The dead tech's keycard. He slapped it against the reader.

Green.

Behind him, the deck door tore off its hinges and fell into the room.

The first one came in low and fast. A woman once, maybe, in torn scrubs with a lanyard still around her neck, her jaw hanging unhinged and her eyes bright as a dog's at night. She hit him in the chest before he had the axe up.

They went down together. Teeth snapped an inch from his face. Her breath smelled like a slaughterhouse floor.

Cyrus got the axe haft across her throat and shoved, and for one ugly second he felt how strong she was, how much stronger than a person had any right to be.

Then something in his own arms answered back. Hot. Quick. His elbows locked, and she flew off him and hit the wall.

He didn't think. He swung.

The blade went through her skull with a sound like a melon dropped on a kitchen floor. She twitched once and went still.

[HOLLOWED ELIMINATED]

[SAMPLE: NOT COLLECTED]

[EVOLUTION POINTS: 0]

He didn't have time to read it.

Behind her, three more came through the broken door.

The first grabbed the axe haft in both hands and wrenched. Cyrus let go, drove his elbow into its jaw, and felt teeth c***k. He tore the axe back as it staggered, and the blade bit deep into the side of its neck. It dropped, still reaching.

[HOLLOWED ELIMINATED: 2]

"Not now," he snarled at the letters.

Two left. One went for his legs, one for his face. He caught the second in the throat with the butt of the axe, kicked the first off his shins, and the room tilted. Through the haze he saw the back door, the green light, ten feet away.

"Nope," Cyrus said. "Nope. f**k that. Nope."

He hit the back door with his shoulder and spilled out into a corridor lit red. He slammed it behind him and threw his whole weight against it, panting, as fists hammered the other side.

They weren't screaming. That was the worst part. Just the wet clicking, and the thud, and thud, and thud, in an even rhythm, like something that had all the time in the world.

Bare concrete walls. A painted arrow. EXIT, in cracked letters, and below it, a long, flickering stretch of dark.

His hands were shaking. He looked at them. Blood on his knuckles. Not all of it his.

He counted, because counting kept him upright. Weapons: one axe. Ammo: none. Allies: zero. Dead men's tags around his neck: four. Time since waking: eleven minutes.

"Fractured," he said. His voice came out thin. "Functional. Continue."

Eleven minutes. In eleven minutes he had killed two things that used to be people, and a stranger in the walls had called him by name.

The notebook dug into his ribs. He pulled it out and flipped to the last page.

The ink had dried. 06:24. He is reading this.

Nothing after it. Nobody was writing anymore.

Above him, the wall speaker crackled.

"You took the notebook."

The calm voice. Fond, almost. Almost impressed.

"None of the others did."

"How many?" Cyrus said. His voice scraped. "How many were there, you son of a b***h?"

Nobody answered.

The speaker clicked dead.