"No, he's not responding." Dawn - who had been attempting to contact Lex and had been on standby the entire time - communicated with Sawyer via radio.
"And Claudia and Jericho?"
"Them too."
"God damn it."
"They could be dead." Richard chimes in as Sawyer cusses out the situation.
"I've been circling the building with a drone and found nothing so far."
"Alright Dawn, call me back if anyone comes up."
"Roger."
Sawyer and Richard continue up the stairs, hearing the rustling of a large entity in random intervals. However, they stopped in their tracks as the loud rustling and distinguishable sound which could be likened to somebody running across soggy carpet came from where the elevator was located on the floor they were currently on.
The entity characterised by its strange bodily noise travelled up the elevator shaft past their current floor as they approached the closed elevator door.
"This is unit 12, the amalgam is on the move up the building. I repeat, the target is advancing up the complex!"
Sawyer stands in front of the elevator door as the warning from a member of unit 12 had been sent out to his transceiver.
"This is unit 24, the target has advanced past the 7th floor. All responding units remain in your positions."
By now, everybody involved in this mission was aware of the cryptid's way of moving up and down the building without using the stairs - opening the elevator door to slip into the empty shaft, and reclosing it to cover its tracks and traverse the complex without being easily followed.
"Hey, let me try something." Richard moved in front of the elevator door as Sawyer stepped back. It had clearly been forcefully reclosed before judging by the busted up door. There was a small dented section where Richard could put his hands, so with all his might he attempted to pry the door open. However, this yielded no result and soon Richard had grown tired from trying to tear it apart.
"Fuck, man. Guess I'm not that strong."
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two floors above the unsuspecting Sawyer and Richard, the Layer-Mesh lay chase to Jericho and Claudia, and had now hurled their new acquaintance, Micheal Roth, out of the apartment complex's window. As it rushes towards them its body twists and alters to become thinner as it coils around the building's corner - or even sprouting longer limbs to micromanage the happenings on either the floor below or above respectively, mindlessly flailing for any soldiers to crush to death.
Jericho had no time to process what even had happened to Micheal, as the bulkier, more flabby side of the cryptid slammed down next to them, prompting him to swiftly aim his rifle and fire once at the entity's front face, before firing again.
The impact of the Mesh taking Jericho's heavy sniper bullets straight to the face caused it to slightly disorient it, stumbling to the side, rubbing up against the wall - barely missing the man-shaped frog which lacked an upper half and hung from the ceiling by its own intestines.
A frog? On the ceiling? Am I seeing this right? What the hell…
The mutilated frog-faced creature that had seemingly appeared from nowhere is lowered further down in front of the Layer-Mesh.
"You might wanna get outta there."
A familiar voice warns them over the radio - Lex Dyrral's.
They take his warning without hesitation, turning back around and disengaging in their fight with the Mesh to run around the corner.
The moment the Mesh tries to pursue them, the frog-like entity explodes from the inside - not in the way in which the Gumberoo was neutralised, in which it was ripped apart from the inside by another cryptid - rather, it exploded as if a bomb had gone off inside it.
What remained of its rough-skinned body dropped down onto the floor, and an oozy, rancid clear liquid which now painted the walls.
Escaping the explosion of the strange hanging frog - which had temporarily blinded the Layer-Mesh and given Jericho and Claudia a chance to race for the stairs - the two of them see Lex on the next floor awaiting their arrival. Though, there is no time for a reunion as they hear the entity had snapped out of its stun by now and was now moving around below them.
"This way."
Lex ushers them into one of the apartments. They follow him in, closing the door behind them.
"Where've you been??" Jericho leans against the wall, questioning Lex as he wipes sweat off his forehead which had accumulated during the chase.
"Observing. I'd be dead if I engaged it head on, but the thing went batshit and blocked the stairs down with a broken-off piece of its body - so I had to get y'all upstairs."
"So that thing… hanging from the ceiling, was yours?"
"Sure was."
"Listen, it could be that the dented walls and broken elevator on the ground floor were caused by the cryptid reacting to the fire alarm. It would make sense why it hadn't moved up floors and made itself visibly present to people up until the evacuation. If it reacted like that to the fire alarm's ringing then we could use it again to draw it out once reinforcements arrive."
"And kill it." Lex adds onto Jericho's assessment, seemingly agreeing with the fire alarm theory. It wouldn't be BS that a cryptid which has been hiding out all this time had a violent reaction to the high-pitched ringing.
As they talked, the door had suddenly burst open from the outside and Claudia - the one closest to the doorway - was grabbed by several fleshy molds reaching out into the apartment.
She's yanked back into the hallway past the broken door, letting out a shriek as the two men still in the apartment become alert to the incoming threat. The Mesh had elongated its limbs, breaking through the floor above and stretching them into the apartment towards Lex and Jericho.
Soon, Claudia was out of sight, and the limbs had come so close to them so quickly that they had no time to defend themselves.
Mere inches away from grabbing Lex and Jericho, the Mesh's appendages suddenly halt completely and drop on the floor.
In the hallway, two figures rush in - one being Sawyer, who slices the flesh molds in two clean slices of his sword. The other - Richard - his axe tearing apart the muscly molds which had burst out of the floor and were the things connecting the limbs to the main body on the floor underneath.
Claudia drops to the ground, now free from the grasp. Standing over the cut apart pieces of the cryptid, Sawyer and Richard look into the apartment to see Jericho and Lex simply standing there.
Now reunited, the members of unit 24 hear the Layer-Mesh scuttle away underneath them, possibly to a lower floor.
"Listen up, the building's on a complete lockdown. Every possible exit available for the target is to be sealed up or heavily guarded, which includes rooftop access. Our current objective is the guard the rooftop so that the cryptid has no way out, understood?"
Sawyer's unit gathers themselves after the sudden ambush and affirms their understanding of the mission.
As the unit follows Sawyer up the main stairs, Jericho remembers his bizarre encounter with a certain apartment room.
"Sawyer, we ran into a room full of the Mesh's discarded chunks that were still sentient - moving about and violent."
"I'm aware. The cleanup of that area has already been initiated."
Jericho is surprised to hear this, as they were in that room mere minutes ago.
Who reported it? Claudia was with me the whole time, so it must have been Micheal. Then, I assume he's alive.
Exhaustingly enough, the group reaches the top floor. The door to the rooftop is in view right away and Sawyer attempts to open it once getting to it.
"It's locked."
"So? Have you seen the thing, it can break down doors."
"We'll be stationed here to the time being. On the ground floor are-
Responding to Lex, Sawyer suddenly stops talking as he notices Richard's strange position - appearing as if he's using his axe as a metal detector pointed to the floor.
Suddenly, Richard blurts out, "You're all gonna wanna watch out!"
Lex scrunches his face in confusion.
"What? I don't hear shit."
Richard takes a firm stance aiming his axe as if he's gonna swing into the floor. As he does so, the floor under their feet slightly starts to shift, and then without warning - the Layer-Mesh bursts through the ground.
The cryptid made up of several fat and muscle molds with protruding twisted limbs breaks the floor they stand on, causing everyone to helplessly fall.
A moment later, Claudia opens her eyes to see that she had subconsciously grabbed the ledge of the floor below, now hanging over the hole below made by the Layer-Mesh - which, had gone down too as Richard had wrestled it to the bottom of the hole. The others had all fallen down too, lost in the dust cloud of the impact.
Now separated once again, Claudia lowers herself to the floor below, narrowly falling past the hole and onto stable footing.
Having no idea on the whereabouts of the cryptid, Claudia head down the stairs to find her fellow unit members, gun in hand and staying vigilant.
Soon, her descent is interrupted by hearing a weak but desperate voice on the 8th floor. She remembers the boy she had rescued telling her about another person that may have not been able to evacuate, so she rushed through the hallway searching for the source of the voice.
At the end of the hallway, she finds a door half opened and goes to investigate. There, she finds the aforementioned old woman pinned under a shelf at her doorway. All the furniture in her apartment had been knocked over, most likely due to the Mesh barging past the area causing destruction in the surrounding apartments.
Claudia immediately grabs onto the shelf, trying to see if a slight lift of it would free the woman.
"Ugh, I - I can't…"
The old woman groans. Claudia then stands over the woman with her back against the shelf, using all her strength to make the shelf budge. Sure enough, it tilts backwards and Claudia grabs the woman's hand to bring her up and into the hallway.
"Are you alright?"
"Ah, yes, thank you so much. What… what's going on?"
"I'm sorry, I can't really explain right now. I'll get you to safety." Claudia lets the old lady grab her arm to assist her in walking towards the stairs, and as they do - a loud blaring noise fills the building.
The fire alarm had went off, most likely to ward off the Layer-Mesh wherever it was fighting the facility's field operators. However, the woman had no need for all that information, so as her startled face met Claudia's, she simply gave the woman a reassuring nod as they kept walking to leave the building.
"I think tha-
Claudia's vision goes completely black.
For a few moments, she experiences near nothingness.
Then, ringing in her ears. The ringing slowly gets louder as she regain her sight and physical sense.
To her, all her senses had been cut off without warning mid sentence, and now, they were slowly coming back.
Her vision slowly unblurs, followed by a dizzy, sickening feeling of being hit by something fast.
As she tries to slowly stand up, the first thing she notices is the murky feeling of fresh blood dripping from her hands. Her sight has almost fully recovered by now, but the ringing in her ears refuses to end.
Claudia looks around for the old lady that she was before she blacked out. Then, she slowly becomes aware of the blood covering her, the horrible smell filling her nostrils, and when a piece of flesh that was on her back fell down as she stood up - the mere left overs from an obliterated corpse.
She realises why the old woman is nowhere to be seen.
The person she had been looking around for was on the floor, the walls, and even splattered on her.
Not one main, solid piece of the old woman was left from the collision. Claudia assumed that she herself had been in a terrible state too, the only reason she hadn't ended up like the woman is due to her anomalous healing factor.
The hopelessness and abhorrence of what had just happened slowly set into Claudia's mind. Completely alone in the hallway, her lip began to quiver - yet, she couldn't bring herself to cry.
At that moment she felt a true kind of fear and despair. Not the way she did back at the facility, because this time she wasn't weak and clueless. This was the kind of despair where she felt it was her responsibility to protect somebody that she had completely failed.
Before the sight of the corpse's remains could make her vomit -
The lights in the entire building shut off, leaving Claudia in complete darkness.