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When Alinar had pictured going on a fetch quest to an experimental facility to get a crystal in exchange for their freedom, this was not what they thought they were volunteering for. For starters, the contract they’d signed had very conveniently left out the fact that their diving gear was rigged to explode if they tried to leave the grounds prematurely, or if they just stayed in one location for too long. They still shuddered whenever they remembered the wet popping noise one of their teammates’ heads had made as his PDG detonated, and the chunks of flesh that had stuck to their own suit in the aftermath. He’d been injured by a wall dweller the team hadn’t heard approaching, and Alinar had naively told him to hang back and staunch the bleeding while they and the other two prisoners looked for a medkit. The group had been silent for hours now, the stakes of this mission suddenly very evident; nobody said it aloud, but the atmosphere had shifted.
Alinar had killed a man. A fellow Expendable.
Orthosie, the new “head” who’d replaced the dead guy – how had they already forgotten his name? – didn’t kick them off the team, thank fuck. All she’d said about it was, “It was an accident. A very idiotic accident, but an accident nonetheless. Don’t let it happen again, or you’ll be left to fend for yourself.” Now, they’d been effectively demoted to bait and door tester , being the last one to get a locker if an angler was coming, and the first to open main doors in case the “Good People" were waiting just beyond the threshold. They followed Orthosie and Chiara (who had been resolutely avoiding even looking at Alinar since their fourth member died) quietly and obeyed orders when they were given, but otherwise the trio just walked and looted and fought off their respective imminent mental breakdowns.
At some point, the walkie-talkie strapped to Chiara’s belt started crackling, startling her into actually looking at Alinar in panicked confusion, before quickly turning to Orthosie for guidance. She unstrapped it from her belt and held it not unlike one would a dead rat, passing it to Orthosie like it physically burned. Back on the submersible, they’d had the option to buy one item each to have delivered to the drop-off point; the box the items came in had a walkie-talkie resting on top of it, but they’d all assumed it was just for the PA system to reach them if a part of the facility’s intercoms were broken. Orthosie held the crackling device closer to her face, holding down the button and speaking into it. “EXR-P Group #7, radioing from door twenty-two. Is anyone there?” she asked, before releasing the button and looking at Alinar and Chiara.
Everyone was still as they waited with bated breath, though Alinar didn’t know what they were supposed to be hoping for. Another Expendable group? The last group they’d run into wasn’t the friendliest; down here, it was survival of the fittest, and the shitty conditions bred a lot of hostility. Especially since only one group could get the crystal and earn their freedom. Honestly though , they thought, shifting their weight off their left leg, which had started to lock up from the non-stop running from monsters. I don’t know which I’d prefer: Expendables finding a way to communicate with us, PA Guy finally deciding to give us some actual guidance down here, or other Urbanshade personnel being on the other line.
“Oh,” the walkie prattled, making everyone jump at the unfamiliar voice on the other end. Chiara hummed uncomfortably, saying something about how that didn’t sound like PA Guy or any of the Expendables they’d heard before. Nor did it sound like any of the Urbanshade armed guards that roamed the other Divisions’ halls and the submarine docks they’d left that morning. Alinar nodded, though Chiara was staring at Orthosie, apparently back to ignoring them. Orthosie held up her hand to quiet Chiara, hesitating for a moment before pressing the walkie-talkie’s button again.
“Who is this?”
Silence was the only response, the radio crackling and hissing ominously. Orthosie sighed in frustration, holding out the device for Chiara to keep again, but she refused it, taking a step back. “We shouldn’t take it with us. It could be tampered with,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “We’ve already seen that Urbanshade rigged our diving gear to explode if it’s tampered with; what if that explodes too?”
“It was left with the items we ordered,” Alinar protested, making eye contact with Orthosie. “I think we should take it with us. I can put it on my belt if Chiara doesn’t want it, but I don’t see why Urbanshade would plant a walkie-talkie with our items if they were just going to use it to kill us. They’re more creative than that.” Chiara glared somewhere over their shoulder, clearly upset that she was being outnumbered. Her expression soured even further when Orthosie gave Alinar the walkie, muttering that they had a point and it was better to just keep with them in case it talked again. Alinar tucked it into their belt beside their flash beacon, and the group started walking again.
Door twenty-three opened up into a long corridor with windows spanning the entire left-hand side, and the second Alinar entered they felt the hairs on the back of their neck stand on end. Orthosie and Chiara seemed to have a similar response, the women slowing down and eyeing the windows warily. The far wall showed the next door, and the right side of the hallway had two lockers, one of which had a void-mass inhabiting it – none of them have been brave enough to open one of the lockers with purple eyes inside; the last one they saw at door eight had a half-dissolved corpse slumped against it. It’s so quiet , they thought, shuffling forward since Orthosie and Chiara clearly didn’t feel so inclined. Even the pipes’ hissing and the walkie-talkie’s crackling seems to have gone silent .
Chiara gasped from behind them, grabbing onto Orthosie’s arm and pointing frantically at the window. “I saw something, something big . Let’s turn back, I don’t like how exposed we are,” she begged, tugging at the fabric balled in her fist. “It was glowing , and I don’t want to find out which of Urbanshade’s abominations is waiting for us to be too far from the door or a locker to hide.” Alinar and Orthosie both followed her finger’s direction just in time to see a green haze disappearing below the windowsill. Chiara kept muttering to Orthosie, but Alinar had stopped listening, stepping towards the window to investigate, driven by a strange curiosity that seemed to override their body’s urge to turn tail and flee.
“I don’t see anything, Chiara,” they grumbled, making a show of turning their back to the window and outstretching their arms, before pointing at the void-mass locker. “Unless you count the sentient stomach acid over there, we’re alone. Let’s just keep moving if the sight of the ocean gives you the creeps.” Chiara threw something at their head, the object bouncing off their chin and hitting the floor with a clatter. They rubbed the sore spot and glared at her. “Did you just fucking throw a USB stick at me? Real mature, Chi. Not my fault you’re afraid of some silly seawater.”
The intercom above them suddenly switched on, interrupting whatever response Chiara would’ve had – and another attempt to throw something else at Alinar’s face, preferably something a lot heavier. Preferably something that would give them a concussion. PA Guy’s voice cut through the unnatural silence of the room. “New objective: look into its eyes,” he said, distorted and uncanny. The green haze returned and intensified as a shark covered in eyeballs rose up and pressed its snout against the glass. “Look into its eyes, and you can see your friends and family again.” Orthosie, who’d been staring out the window the whole time Chiara and Alinar were bickering, screamed and turned her head away so fast her neck popped, bringing her hands up to her face to claw at her eyes.
Chiara turned her back to the window after seeing Orthosie’s reaction, immediately dragging the other woman towards the uninfested locker, a protective arm over her shoulders. Alinar stood frozen in place, their head turning to the side every few seconds against their will before they made themself look straight ahead again.
Look into its eyes.
It beckoned to them, its voice sounding so warm and welcoming, a balm in this hellish place.
I know you saw me.
Alinar stared at the void-mass’s beady eyes through its locker’s grate.
I know you can hear me.
Orthosie and Chiara closed their locker’s doors with a slam, and Alinar got an idea – a reckless, possibly stupid idea. When they felt their head turn again, they didn’t fight it, instead letting their body follow as they grabbed their flash beacon and aimed it in the general direction of the window.
Look into my eyes.
They squeezed their eyes shut and pulled the trigger.
A wholly inhuman, wailing shriek echoed into the air, reverberating through their body. Then the facility’s normal sounds returned: pipes hissing, creatures moving around and vocalizing on other floors, the void-mass’s breathing behind them, the walkie-talkie’s staticky popping. Orthosie and Chiara emerged from their hiding spot. “What. The fuck. Was that?” Chiara asked, summing up Alinar’s thoughts perfectly – which was nice, considering just a few seconds ago their thoughts weren’t theirs , but they’d dwell on that later. They knew the kinds of nightmares that awaited them. Alinar shook their head, not yet putting away their flash beacon or turning from the window, instead just motioning that hey y’know we should probably leave this room before that thing comes back because I highly doubt a bright light killed it can we get out of here k thanks .
When they’d all piled into the next room – windowless, yippee – and Chiara had coaxed Orthosie’s hands from her eyes, Alinar put the flash beacon back on their belt. They watched as Orthosie blinked blearily, as if just waking up from a dream. Her eyes were red like she was high, and her nose was bleeding in thick streams down her chin and dripping onto the ground. Alinar looked at their boots, finding the filthy leather more appealing than their teammate’s blood at the moment. “I’m so sorry,” they mumbled, crossing their arms. “I should’ve listened to you, Chiara. I almost got us killed, just like…” Strange. They forgot what they were about to say.
“Don’t.” Orthosie cut them off, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “This wasn’t just your fault, Alinar, though it was a dick move to make fun of Chiara’s unease like that. Look, let’s just… keep moving. I want to get as far away from that room as possible. Please.”
She walked ahead, leaving Chiara and Alinar to follow in shamefaced silence, like toddlers caught hitting each other. As the adrenaline spike slowly subsided, and Alinar felt less like they were in a fight-or-flight response, the pain in their leg came back with a vengeance. From their toes to their hip came lightning arcing across their muscles, every time they put their weight down sending a wave of numb-tingle-ache through the limb. Usually, they had minimal trouble with it. Usually, they weren’t miles underwater in a laboratory overrun with manmade monstrosities. Chiara eyed them as they limped, slowing her pace so they wouldn’t fall behind. Neither said anything, but they nodded in acknowledgement of her gesture of truce.
— — —
The walkie-talkie stopped crackling around door forty-five, and while Chiara seemed relieved, Orthosie and Alinar shared a worried glance. Its constant white noise had become the norm as they’d trekked through the Blacksite’s halls, and without its background static they were left feeling off-kilter. Plus, they still hadn’t figured out who was on the other end; the fact the line suddenly went dead was not very reassuring. “We aren’t walking into a trap, are we?” Alinar joked, forcing out a laugh that sounded awkward even to their own ears.
“No clue,” Orthosie responded, ever the beacon of hope and leadership. “Not like it matters for Chiara and I, since you would walk into the trap first.”
Alinar squawked, opening their mouth to retort before they noticed the teasing smile curving Orthosie’s mouth. Their laugh came easier this time, the tension lessened slightly. Chiara kept glancing at Alinar, though, and it was beginning to make their skin crawl. They’d been getting slower and slower over the past hour and a half or so, their leg becoming more painful the longer they went without resting it properly. Chiara and Orthosie had already slowed down dramatically to stay together, and they could tell the two were worried – it was entirely unfounded, in their opinion. They had been dealing with this and worse for years now. “Stop looking at me like I’m gonna keel over any second, Chi,” they grit out, rolling their eyes when she hit their shoulder with a loose fist. “I’m alright, just a little sore. My leg’s just unhappy I’ve been on it for so long. But if you’re so bothered by my speed, be my guest and walk ahead.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I’m not bothered by your speed , I’m just making sure you don’t attract a wall dweller or some shit. You looking weak is gonna draw attention.”
“Oh, my looking weak? And what about you, back on door seventeen when you screamed so loud it scared away the Squiddle that had startled you in the first place?”
“Hey! That was different! It came out of nowhere after the angler blew the lights out, and I couldn’t see it until it lit up and growled at me!”
“I’d still say that was pretty weak of you.”
“I’ll show you pretty weak when I shove my foot up your–”
Orthosie stopped in her tracks and yanked each of their ears, making them both yelp. “Shut the fuck up! Chiara, Alinar’s limping is attracting less attention than you two shouting at each other. And Alinar, you screamed too , or have you conveniently forgotten? You screamed louder than Chiara, in fact; don’t act all high and mighty,” she scolded, then smirked, which was not comforting. “If I recall, you jumped halfway into my arms in your attempt to get away from it, and when Chiara tried to do the same and grab your arm, you screamed again because you thought she was another Squiddle.”
Alinar buried their face in their hands, groaning. Their ears burned as they muttered something along the lines of “Alright, alright, point taken, feel free to stop anytime , fuck you too.” Chiara and Orthosie laughed at them, but they found they didn’t mind. Their shoulders shook when they started laughing too, and soon all three of them were doubled over cackling, spurred on by the mental strain they’d been under all day. Hysterical? A tad. But it felt nice to let loose and just breathe for a moment.
When everyone had calmed down, Orthosie gestured to keep walking, saying she thought heard an angler a few rooms over that sounded like it was probably headed this way, and she wanted to find lockers before it arrived. Alinar and Chiara agreed easily enough, the mood significantly brightened as they walked in companionable silence. Chiara found some lockers, and the trio waited for the angler to get closer before jumping inside. The lights flickered, and they each climbed into their own separate lockers, prepared to wait it out as usual.
Then, a metallic bang and a yell echoed from Chiara’s locker – closest to the angler’s direction of approach. The doors shook, but when Alinar peered out the slats of their own locker, their line of sight was obscured by what they could only describe as a very angry ballsack with dozens of eyes. They gasped, then outright shouted in panic when it tried to pry open the doors to get to her. She hooked her fingers through the slits in the doors and pulled back, playing what was possibly the most terrifying game of tug-o’-war in history.
Tug . Alinar swallowed, whispering under their breath for Chiara to hold out.
Tug . The door cracked open a bit before she managed to slam it shut again.
Tug . Chiara’s blood dribbled down the outside of the locker; Alinar’s ran cold.
Tug-snarl-shriek . The not-angler disappeared as fast as it’d come.
Alinar practically fell out of their locker, sprinting across the hall as fast as their leg would allow, Orthosie hot on their heels. “Chiara! Jesus Christ, you alright?” Orthosie asked, pulling Chiara into a bone-crushing hug the second she opened the locker. “Fuck, I didn’t know anglers knew how to open doors. Are you okay? I saw blood, where are you hurt?”
“I’m okay, I think. Just give me a minute.”
“Of course, we can take as long as you need,” Orthosie promised, taking out a rag she found who knows where and ripping it to wrap around Chiara’s raw and bloody palms. Alinar didn’t bother correcting her that they only had about a half-hour, as long as their PDGs would allow; they could all use a breather. They merely sat down against the wall and watched as Orthosie rubbed a comforting hand up and down Chiara’s back, waiting for her to come back to herself a little.
— — —
A vent grate flew across door fifty’s room, the metal hitting the opposite wall with a resonating clang drowned out by Chiara’s shriek right in Alinar’s ear. “Psst, hey! In here!” a voice called from inside the crawl space. The three Expendables all looked at each other, uncertain, before the voice called out to them again. “Come on, I got somethin’ for you,” it said, sounding vaguely familiar, though Alinar couldn’t place it.
Chiara punched Alinar in the shoulder, waving to the vent expectantly. “Well, door tester ? Go on.” They glared at her, but obliged, unstrapping their flash beacon just in case and dropping to their hands and knees. The second they poked their head through the other side, they were gasping and ducking backwards at the sight of three glowing teal eyes, hovering so far off the ground they just knew the creature was massive. The esca on its head lit up, illuminating the small room and letting Alinar get a better look at this humanoid fish-snake fucker. Before they had time to ask questions (or whatever else they could do in this scenario), it opened its mouth and started… monologuing?
“Welcome, welcome! Don’t be afraid, I’m not gonna hurt you, despite what you have seen, heard, and/or been told. My name is Sebastian, your only friend . If I’m correct, your supervisors have told you to secure loose assets – documents, vials, whatever. However, if I can make it worth your while, I’m gonna ask you to cut a deal: you give me any research you might have on you, and I’ll give you some of these items I’ve scavenged. Here, you can just pick it off my tail. These would be far more useful to you, compared to some silly data, no? If you don’t ask questions, I won’t either; you get yours, and I get mine. And if you already have anything that might be running low on juice, you can buy batteries on the table next to me. Whenever you wanna get going, the keycard to the next zone is by the radio – free of charge! No strings attached.”
When it – he? It’d probably be rude to continue calling him an it now that Alinar’d been given a name – finally finished, looking at Alinar expectantly, they just stared back. The awkward staring contest only concluded when Alinar put away the flash beacon (which Sebastian had been glaring at so intently they half thought it’d catch fire) and reached back behind them to knock twice on the vent’s interior, signaling for Orthosie and Chiara to come in. Though, they probably already heard Sebastian’s speech; he’s not exactly a quiet talker , they thought, moving out of the way when they heard the girls’ footsteps. They had about the same reaction as Alinar did: a gasp and a flinch backwards before cautiously entering the space half taken up by the giant fishman.
Once they had their team with them again, they felt vaguely safer, though by the looks of Sebastian, if he wanted to he could most likely take all three of them down no problem. Fun. Alinar leaned against the wall, gesturing at Sebastian’s wares, then asked, “You got a business card listing your prices and how they scale compared to surface currency, or are we just gonna get scammed?” Orthosie shot them a look from the corner of her eye, but Sebastian just chuckled, the gravelly sound sending a shiver down their spine.
“Even if my prices were unfair, I don’t think you’re in any position to haggle, hmm? After all, based on the stench of blood wafting off you three, I’d wager you need my medkits more than I need your research.” He clasped two of his hands together, bringing his third – third? Does this guy just have triple of everything? – up to idly examine his claws. Unfortunately, Fish-Snake Fucker was correct, and they could really use a medkit to properly clean and wrap Chiara’s hands (and if it had any painkillers, Alinar would very happily down a whole bottle of those right about now). Besides, the files and USB sticks crammed into every pocket and inner compartment their diving suits had was starting to weigh the group down. They looked to Orthosie, raising an eyebrow for confirmation.
“We may not be able to haggle, but I think you overestimate the value of your scraps,” Orthosie huffed, putting her hands on her hips. She ignored the irritated twitch of Sebastian’s eye at his wares being called ‘scraps,’ pressing on unphased. “We’ve found medkits before in the halls; we can do it again. Talking down to your potential customers isn’t good business either, so if I were you, I’d be a little more open to friendly price negotiation – we aren’t trying to cheat you out of your research, since we honestly don’t have much use for them anyways, but I’ll sooner feed everything to a void-mass out of spite before letting you take advantage of us. And anyway, it was your voice on the walkie-talkie, wasn’t it? Clearly you want our research more than you let on.” Oh , Alinar thought, blinking in mild surprise and glancing at the silent device at their waist. That explains why Sebastian’s voice sounded familiar.
Fish and woman stared each other down for a few seconds, before Sebastian unclasped his dominant hands to brush his hair from his face, chuckling. “Very well then, there’s price tags on each item. I’m sure we can come to an agreement. Files are weighed by their contents; information on Urbanshade’s experiments, personnel, technological procedures, what have you – I’ll take anything off your hands, but if you try to give me nothing but reports on the stability of the plumbing down here, you won’t get much other than a few batteries,” he explained, gesturing to the table at a singular file in the middle. “I have copies of all the monsters’ documents, including my own – which you can purchase, though I’m sure it’s too pricey for you right now – so I don’t consider them quite as valuable. USBs I don’t care the contents of, I have my uses for them even if they’re just gigabytes of yodeling or something similarly worthless.”
Orthosie nodded along, though Alinar had long since stopped paying attention, and they could tell Chiara was tuning out the conversation as well, if the glazed look in her eyes was any indicator. They busied themself with pulling out whatever loose USB sticks they had in their pockets, elbowing for Chiara to also hand over any files she’d paper-clipped together and tucked away. They noticed that Sebastian was now eyeing them, clearly excited to get his hands on the data they were holding, but his attention was still more or less on Orthosie. When the two stopped chatting and nodded at each other, seemingly having come to an understanding, she waved her hand at Alinar to give them permission to make the transaction.
They stepped forward, holding out the stacks of files in one hand and the USBs in the other, dropping the data into Sebastian’s hands when he leaned down to grab them – his claws brushed the backs of their knuckles, and they tried not to let their flinch be too evident. Though, with the way his ever-present grin widened to show off his sharp teeth, it was obvious he’d seen. Alinar dropped to their right knee with a grunt, working off the belt-like fastens holding the medkit to Sebastian’s tail, before tossing it over their shoulder so Orthosie could start patching Chiara up. “You have enough for a blacklight too; Squiddles aren’t bothered by them as they are by lanterns and flashlights,” Sebastian said over their shoulder, tapping a claw on the gold band around one of his third hand’s fingers.
Alinar grabbed the blacklight and stood up, aiming it at the ground and testing it worked before strapping it to their belt and walking over to the table for extra batteries, since their flash beacon was running low after the green shark. When they had pocketed everything they needed and turned back to Orthosie and Chiara, they paused. Chiara’s hands were bandaged, but she was sitting on the ground next to the vent grate, looking about ready to pass out; Orthosie wasn’t much better off, though she hid her tiredness by fiddling with the medkit’s contents. Alinar sighed through their nose, digging out whatever leftover data they hadn’t spent and looking up at Sebastian. “How much to rest in here for about twenty minutes?” they asked, offering the files to him.
Sebastian tilted his head, humming in thought before snatching the files and pointing to the opposite side of the room. “Don’t touch anything you can’t afford to break or buy, and don’t come crying to me if a wall dweller tries to rip your throats out in your sleep.” Condescension dripped from his every word, but Alinar paid him no mind, just limping over to the desk with the radio on it and crawling underneath it. They flopped on their back, crossing their arms behind their head, and were only dimly aware of Orthosie and Chiara getting settled before they lost consciousness.
If Sebastian brought the fluke of his tail to rest in front of the vent and block anything from entering, and let his esca flicker off and bathe the room in darkness to let his guests sleep better, then the only witness to it was himself. He merely began reading over the documents in his hands, more unbothered by the soft snores and rustling of clothes on concrete filling the air than he thought he ought to have been.