Operation Z The night air was warm against the skin of her face - this was her first operational mission since being "rescued" from her artic hell, staring down an angry Polar bear. It felt good to be back out in the field, even better knowing that her superiors trusted her with her first "real" job in nearly six months. Her orders were simple - cleanse the complex following the activation of the quarantine alert. As she crouched in the tree line she checked her MP5 once more. The silencer attached to the end of the barrel was attached securely. Once she was certain it was in order, she advanced on the complex. She recalled the format of the building from memory - a "ground" level and a more secretive basement laboratory complex consisting of two further subterranean levels that could be accessed via an elevator in the rear of the building. Her form-fitting bodysuit enabled her to blend in with her surroundings, however she was surprised that she hadn't encountered any external security by the time she'd reached the main door. It was locked as she expected. Her hands reached for a pouch on her belt - inside there was a small black box. Placing it against the digital lock she watched the display - a few seconds and the display changed from red to green with an accompanying click from the locking mechanism. The interior of the building was dark - which surprised her. She activated the night-vision lenses in her visor. She saw everything in a green-black hue. As her eyes adjusted to the light she saw the first of the security guards. He seemed to be standing next to a desk, swaying slightly from side to side - unusual behaviour, she thought as she bought her weapon up to her shoulder. She unleashed a short burst of three silenced shots, each of them striking the target around the head location. He fell to the floor without a sound. She continued to look around the corridor as she scurried across the floor to a cross section of corridors, pausing only to check that the guard was dead. She moved in the shadows as she sought out the other targets she expected to be moving around. The manifest she had looked at prior to insertion said that there were twenty staff here - eight security and twelve scientists. After twenty minutes she'd found only the one guard. Her knowledge of the facility was limited to what her superiors had deemed she needed to know - some sort of contagion had gotten out of control and someone had triggered the shut down process to prevent it from getting out of hand. Of course, she reasoned, the source of the quarantine could have already killed everyone else in the building. She made a sweep of the last two rooms on the ground floor and that's where she found two more guards moving around what looked like a canteen of some sort. She ducked back behind the door before either spotted her. Taking another glance into the room she could see that they were standing about eight feet apart from each other. Difficult, she reasoned, but not impossible. Years of training kicked in as she moved with grace and precision - the first burst from her MP5 knocked down one guard. Turning one hundred and eighty degrees, she bought the weapon to bear on the second guard. Three seconds later that guard was on the cold floor too. As she checked them something concerned her - even with the silencer attached, the weapon would make enough noise to provoke some sort of reaction in the second guard, even if it was only stunned recognition of what was about to happen to him, yet there had been nothing. She shook her head as she got up and made her way out of the canteen. Something about this felt wrong to her - and Tessa Howell had only felt like this once before in her life. The elevator was locked down, and the best efforts of her electronic lock pick did nothing to alleviate the situation apart from to open the doors. Rappelling down the central cable, it took Tessa less than five minutes to descend the two hundred and sixty feet. Landing as softly as possible on the roof of the elevator car she prized open the emergency hatch and looked inside - the doors were shut. Once she was safely inside she managed to repeat her earlier trick of getting the doors to open. Again, the corridor exposed to her was in darkness. She readied her MP5 and stepped out of the elevator. That was just about the time that someone hit her with a fire extinguisher, knocking her unconscious in the process. "...only four of us left, why don't we make a break for it?" "...finish what we started and stop this from getting out of hand." "...could already be too late..." The fragments of conversations going on around her seemed to lodge themselves in her mind as Tessa slowly regained consciousness. She sensed that the bonds tightly wrapped around her wrists and ankles were too strong for her to simply force her way out. He eyes opened and she managed a clear view of the people talking - there was a balding, overweight man in his fifties, a petite woman brunette who looked like she was barely out of college and a second middle aged, Hispanic man with glasses perched on the end of a hook-like nose. "Hey, she's awake." The Hispanic man said. "Please tell me you're with the rescue party." "Where are the others?" The balding man said. "Hey, give the girl some room to breathe." The petite woman said. The sudden rush of questions only served to add to Tessa's headache. She shook her head, hoping to gain some clarity. "She's not part of a rescue party," a fourth voice - someone Tessa couldn't see because it came from behind her. "She's part of the quarantine solution." The fourth voice came into Tessa's line of sight. "Sorry for hitting you on the head back there." He was a slight man who looked like he was probably in his mid thirties. His white lab coat had various red-brown stains on it. His hair seemed to be prematurely grey at the temples as he looked at Tessa. "However, there's something bigger here than you realise, and we don't need you running around shooting us before we get chance to fix things." "What do you mean Lyman?" the old, balding man asked. "She's here to make sure that no one gets out of here alive." He answered. The woman looked at Tessa. "Is that true?" then she looked at the other man - Lyman. "They can't do that...can they?" "It's true." Tessa answered, growing irritated by the situation. "Protocol dictates that where a quarantine situation exists in a grade five bio-hazard facility, all possible sources of infection are to be eradicated." "Shit..." the Hispanic man muttered. "No...no..." the woman whispered. "They can't do that..." "They can do whatever they want," Lyman said. "The important thing is to make sure that this situation doesn't go beyond this facility." He looked at Tessa. "What do you know?" "Nothing beyond my orders to ensure that the quarantine is maintained here and that all assets..." the term made the four scientists grimace. "...Are resolved. Then I'm to activate the purge mechanism and await extraction." "So how long before the air strike?" Lyman asked. Tessa shook her head, looking confused. "What air strike?" "I assume you have a window of time in which to complete your mission, yes?" Tessa nodded in response to Lyman's question. "Well, if you don't report in after that point there will be a co-ordinated precision air strike on this facility with the explicit intention of wiping it off the face of the Earth." Tessa tried to hide her shock as the words rolled out of Lyman's mouth. "So, how long have we got?" "Well, if you untied my hands then I could look at my watch," Tessa answered. "However, at a guess, I'd say about ninety minutes." "Whereabouts is the purge mechanism located?" Tessa asked as Lopez - the Hispanic man - handed her a bottle of water. The four scientists were crowded around a rudimentary map of the complex drawn on a notepad. "It's located next to the reactor and the emergency escape elevator." The balding man called Hawkins, answered. "Down here, past the hot rooms." "Hot rooms?" Tessa asked. "The labs - we call them the hot rooms because there's no air conditioning in them." Travis, the young woman said. "But that's where they seem to be congregating." "They?" Tessa felt like she was back in school, desperately trying to catch up with the brighter kids in class. All the scientists looked at each other nervously. "Look, will someone tell me what the hell is going on here." "You won't believe us." Lyman said. Tessa shrugged her shoulders. "Try me." Her answer made Lyman raise his eyebrows. Then he looked down at the plans. "One of the experiments had gotten out of control, hence the quarantine," Lyman said. "and it affected the other members of the staff. The experiment was based around an organism our sponsors bought in about a month ago." "An organism?" Tessa asked. Hawkins picked up the explanation. "It was something they'd dug up from the bottom of a lake or a cave - the details were pretty sketchy," he said. "We kept it in one of the labs in a rudimentary incubator. One night it...attacked Dawson. We tried to save him, but it was too late - the organism had inserted some sort of spine into his chest and he'd died." "Okay, so it's an aggressive organism," Tessa said. "Where's the problem with that?" "The problem was that six hours after Dawson died his body got up and started wandering around the complex." Lyman said. "In a few hours everyone apart from the four of us had been infected by this organism - that's when I triggered the quarantine shut down." "You must have made a mistake." Tessa replied matter-of-factly. "No, no we didn't." Lopez said. "We checked Dawson thoroughly and all his life signs were terminal. We put his body in one of the empty labs and the next thing we knew all hell was breaking loose." "How many guards were upstairs?" Lyman asked Tessa. "I counted three." "Notice anything strange about them?" He followed up. Tessa's eyes shifted from side to side. "They didn't seem to react to me the way I'd expected them to." She admitted. "It's like they didn't register the situation they were in." "Because they aren't thinking anymore - they're being controlled by that...thing in lab six." Travis said. "I take it that you didn't actually examine the bodies?" Lopez asked. "Only to ensure that they were actually dead." Tessa replied. "So you didn't see the grey colour of the skin?" Tessa shook her head in response to Hawkins. "Or the fact that the veins across the body had a rather unnatural green tint to them?" "I was using night vision lenses." Tessa said. "What do you mean by controlled?" "They seem to be working together towards some unknown purpose." Lyman said. "Maybe the creature wants to be free or some other prosaic aim like taking over the world." A hollow laugh escaped his lips. "We've developed a rudimentary vaccine that could prevent the organism from taking possession of the body following death, but it has to be kept at a constant temperature of thirty seven degrees at the minute." "Okay I think I get it now." Tessa said. "You want to get out of here with the vaccine and blow up lab with the revenant producing...thing still inside, right?" "That's about it." Lyman answered. Tessa nodded. "Right, we'd better get on with it - we've got about sixty minutes left." By the time they had reached the entrance to the laboratory area, another twenty minutes had elapsed. Lopez and Hawkins had tried to salvage whatever data they could from the computers while Lyman and Travis had made sure that the access to the upper levels were secured. Tessa had spent the time waiting in the second sub-basement for the others to arrive. This level - like the one above her - was still fully lit yet she felt uneasy, like there were others watching her. She took a few steps into the corridor, bringing her automatic weapon up about two thirds of the way forward. Her eyes scanned back and forth, sweeping the area like radar. It was on her third sweep that she saw them - there were two of them initially, both wearing the same white coats that Lyman had been wearing. Only there was something different about them - something wrong. Their arms seemed to be held loosely at their sides, yet moving almost independently from the rest of their bodies. Their skin had a grey, almost translucent quality to it and from here she could see the thin green veins that ran across their flesh. They started to stagger towards her. Their movements were equally awkward, ungainly even as they moved. Tessa found herself looking at the creatures and recalling the words of the scientists upstairs. Her reaction was automatic, she bought the weapon up and unleashed two short bursts, catching each shambling scientist in the chest. She watched them fall to the floor - and stood in disbelief as she saw them stand up again. "Not again..." Tessa muttered as she took aim again, this time more deliberate and considered. A single shot for each of them - to the head, like with the guards upstairs. The scientists fell down again, and failed to get back up to their feet. The ping of the elevator startled Tessa - the doors opened and the four scientists cautiously got out of it. "Trouble?" Lyman asked as he saw the two dead scientists in the corridor. Tessa shook her head. "Nothing I couldn't deal with." She answered. "Looks like you were telling the truth." "About which part?" he asked as Hawkins and Lopez moved off to a laboratory to the right. "The whole ‘walking around while dead' zombie routine." Tessa said as she moved forward, checking the next lab for any hostile threat. Travis pushed past her and entered the room through some sort of double door system. "Where's she going?" "To get the anti-viral prototype." Lyman answered as he checked a small datapad that was attached to the wall. "Oh no..." Without any further opportunity to speak, the sounds and screams from Lopez and Hawkins filled the lower level. Lopez came into sight first of all, then Hawkins. "It's...it's..." Lopez tried to speak between gasps for air while Hawkins looked back nervously over his shoulder. Lyman and Tessa stared at them as they stood at the other end of the corridor. "It's evaded the confinement..." Lopez's words were cut off by a scream. Hawkins suddenly fell to the floor as a dirty white pseudopod had grasped his ankle, violently yanking him to the floor. Lopez grabbed his hand, and a few moments later Lyman had rushed to help. As Tessa reached them she saw it illuminated in the overhead lighting. It looked like some sort of albino porcupine that resembled the size of a large dining room table. It seemed to gibber and cackle as it lashed out at its surroundings with two large pseudopods - one of which was firmly wrapped around Hawkins's ankle. Blood seeped from the wound as vicious suckers burrowed deep into his flesh. It tugged the flailing scientist towards its bloated, fleshy mass on several occasions until it's strength won out against the two men trying to save their colleague. Tessa watched, mouth ajar, as she watched the creature drag Hawkins close enough to impale him with one of the quivering spines that adorned its hide. He screamed - the sort of scream she'd only heard from animals as they were slaughtered - before it released him from its grasp. His body twitched uncontrollably as it hit the floor. She pulled up her weapon and fired out of some sort of primal instinct. The bullets tore into its corpulent hide and the creature howled once more. It's pseudopods swung wildly, just missing Lyman but catching Lopez on the side of his head. Tessa heard the sound of the bones in his neck breaking as his body was flung with force across the corridor. Lyman just evaded the second tendril and managed to drag the body suit clad government operative away from the beast. Travis was just coming out of the lab as she saw the beast drag itself along the cold floor. Lyman caught her arm as he ran past her. "Come on!" He screamed as he glanced back - behind the creature he could see the shambling figures of his former co-workers. Tessa blasted off another clip into the beast, only nothing seemed to stop its inevitable approach. Lyman dragged his colleague into a side room at the far end of the basement level, shortly followed by Tessa. He opened a small panel that contained a series of keys and switches and began to furiously activate them. Tessa secured the door to the small box room as best as she could before turning to see what the others were doing. "How long will that hold?" Travis asked, indicating towards the makeshift barrier. "Not long enough." Lyman replied. There was a grating noise and a bookcase slid away to reveal a small elevator. "Okay - this will take you both to the surface - I've set the purge program on a manual burn." "Why?" Travis asked. "Because the automatic process has a preset fifteen minute countdown and one on those things could still shut it down." Lyman said. "Once you're clear I'll trigger the sequence and hopefully blast that thing back to hell. Did you get the prototype?" Travis nodded but looked upset. "Yeah, but the container was damaged, so I had to inject it into the best available container to keep it at 37 degrees." She had a resigned smile on her face. "Me." "Jesus..." Lyman muttered. He looked at Tessa, who was now waiting impatiently at the lift. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and passed it to Travis. "If you see him, give him this - he'll know what it means." Then he pulled her close and kissed her on the lips before pushing her towards the lift. There was a dull thud against the door, shortly followed by another. "Go! Now!" The elevator had brought them up about four hundred yards outside the perimeter of the complex. As Tessa helped Travis out they felt the ground beneath them shake and churn, the shockwave knocked them both from their feet. Then there was an eerie silence. Tessa stood up and pulled a radio from her belt. She looked at Travis, who was retching. "You okay?" "No," Travis answered. "The prototype acts like a retro-virus. In small doses it's fine, but unless I'm got on ice in the next 72 hours then it will kill me and everything will be lost." "Great," Tessa muttered. "This is Howell, I need evac immediately for myself and one survivor." Three days later they stared at the frozen features of Lucy Travis inside a large steel tube. The two men examining her seemed to be in deep conversation when Tessa entered the room. "So, she's alive right? That's what you're telling me Hideo." "Basically, yes - frozen in a state of cryogenic suspension." Tessa detected an English accent in the first man and a Japanese one in the other. "Her vital signs are operating at a greatly reduced rate, but we can work on filtering out the prototype without risking her life." "Good, that's all I need to know." The Englishman said before turning to leave. The Japanese man stopped him and passed something to him. "She had this in her hand when she came in - she told me to give it to you Pryke-san." He unfurled the piece of paper and looked at it. There was one word written on it in black ink. GLAAKI. The Englishman shook his head in disgust. "What does it mean?" "It means we've got an Upper Volta situation," he muttered. "Only with Shoggoths instead of ICBMs." He walked out of the lab without another word and barely noticed Tessa as he left. As he moved past her she heard him speak quietly to her. "Good work Agent Howell." Tessa couldn't help but feel that things had just taken a turn for the worse.