"The target's left the building! I repeat, the target has left the building!"
Chaos erupts as the building goes dark.
After the fire alarm had rung, the Layer-Mesh rushed down through several floors - before ultimately disappearing. Sawyer and Richard - who had fallen down the building together after the Mesh attacked unit 24, splitting them up - exit the building to find the members of the other units frantically gathering, anticipating further instruction.
Dawn Hill, who had been right outside the building due to needing to be close by to operate the drone, spots Sawyer and Richard and waves them to come to her side.
"Where are the others?"
"I don't know, we got separated. Where's the Layer-Mesh?"
Dawn turns a digital tablet to Sawyer, showing him a layered 3D map.
"The building has remained completely surrounded, and no one saw it leave. Most likely, it's gone underground. Coincidentally, the metro goes right under the apartment complex - giving the cryptid an open space to escape to."
"So it's somewhere in the metro? How far's the nearest station?"
"Virginia square subway is give or take 30 miles from here. There's an old shut down metro entrance literally one street down. Could be that it's run off there. We have people going to the square station to intercept the cryptid if it manages to reach there."
Dawn points at a point on the map which is very close by.
"That's the old entrance." The underground layer of the map shows that the old station must have been a route that was abandoned, as the main route cuts through it.
"Alright, let's go." Sawyer looks back to Richard to check if he's following, before running down the street with Richard in tow, still clutching his axe.
They reach the old entrance, ducking under a fenced gate and kicking down the wooden barriers that blocked off the stairs. Down the stairs, the area looks like a regular small metro station. Though it was closed off, a few lights still flickered, loosely illuminating the underground platform.
What they noticed first, however, was a stationary train still present in the abandoned section of the metro. For some reason, a passenger train still remained in the abandoned section of the metro.
As they approach the platform, the train carriage's doors open.
"I'll go check it out." Sawyer says as he steps into the train. He walks further down the carriage, searching for any signs of the target anomaly.
Sawyer hears the train creak. Anticipating the cryptid, Sawyer draws his sword.
Then, the train inexplicably turns on and the doors start to close.
This makes Sawyer jerk back, not expecting an entirely empty train to have an up and running schedule. He looks behind him for Richard, expecting him to have followed - but only when Sawyer looks out of the carriage windows does he spot him. Richard stands on the platform, unmoving and stiff.
As Richard appears to be unable to move, Sawyer calls out to him. "Richard!"
But Richard doesn't respond.
Before Sawyer can get in another word, as he's looking out the window he sees a clump of limbs and fleshy blobs spanning across the side of the carriage before quickly retreating as soon as Sawyer lays eyes on it. The familiar monstrous body structure makes Sawyer forget about Richard and rush up the train to the next carriage.
As the train doors slowly close, Richard is frozen outside. Standing in the dusty environment of the old underground station, his vision begins to blur in a way that makes him feel as if what he's looking at is multiplying itself akin to looking in a kaleidoscope. Suddenly, in the corner of his eye he sees a figure dash past him and jump into the carriage.
Lex had made it to the metro, paying no mind to Richard as he raced into the carriage, not letting the action escape him. He steadies himself and holds onto a metal pole as the train begins moving forward, the doors almost shut now.
However, another silhouette leaps past Richard and onto the carriage right before the doors close.
That tied up blonde hair could belong to nobody else but Claudia. She tumbles into the train as it begins moving, still stained in blood.
As she stands up straight in front of Lex, she's immediately barraged by thick clumps stemming from the top of the train.
She's slammed to the back of the train by the fleshy clumps as they attempt to crush her, and as they overwhelm her - she hears a small piece of glass breaking nearby.
Barely a moment after the glass is shattered, she's instantly freed. Looking up, she sees the protruding forms of flesh and muscles being pinned to the side of the carriage - a large worm now having appeared, impaling the clumps with its sharp needle-like spike which presumably served as the worm's head. Its smooth, oily body possessed a ring-like pattern and small, thin skin flaps that moved ever so slightly as the worm dug its needle head into the Mesh's outgrown clumps.
The worm seemed to have appeared right next to Lex, as the end of its body was missing - similar to the frog creature that Lex had spawned earlier - as if it was growing from the floor next to where Lex stood.
Holding his submachine gun up to the Mesh's clumps, he fires it continuously until it begins to retreat back up to the train's exterior. Taking Lex's action as a sign to get going, Claudia dashes past the worm and Lex's gunfire to move on to the next carriage.
As Lex immediately follows, Claudia turns back to him, "What was that?!"
"Lesser Death-Worm, the Augerino."
"Ah, o-ok…" She holds herself back from letting out a 'ew, gross' at the thought of the large worm creature.
A few carriages up, Sawyer hurries to find the Layer-Mesh as the train shows no sign of stopping
The route which this train ran on would most likely diverge with the main route eventually, causing the Layer-Mesh to essentially be delivered to the main route - either crashing into another train or allowing the Layer-Mesh to be released into the main metro station where thousands of people congregate daily.
Inexplicably
"Apparently the train you're on was meant to be delivered to the square to be redirected. The train tracks had been diverted towards the main route, sending you straight to the square."
"I figured."
"Why do you say that as if you're referring to something? Did you find the train operator?"
"I did, he's dead."
"You can't let that train get to the square while the target is onboard, you need to manually stop it."
Sawyer walks around the operator's corpse to the control panel.
"First you'll need to pull the brake valve handle, the emergency button right next to it should light up so-" Dawn stops talking as she hears a loud thud on Sawyer's side of the radio, followed by a familiar stretchy squelching noise.
"Sawyer? Come in?"
Before Sawyer could continue the manual train shut down, he was flung through the still-open doors of the operator carriage, being sent tumbling straight to the previous one. He immediately stands up to deal with the threat, keeping his feet firmly planted on the floor so as to not lose balance. A mold of appendages hurls towards Sawyer's face, and with his point-perfect reaction speed, he brings down his sword on it - cleaving it in half.
The Layer-Mesh had now brought its whole body down into the carriage, forcing Sawyer backwards. However, it had twisted into a different form than before - becoming thinner and more compact, now relying more on its legs and the sides of the train to move around. Its form shifts almost like old AI videos in which each frame is only slightly similar to the last.
Another arm like mold extends to strike Sawyer, this time from the side. As it quickly lunges at him, he takes a step back and plunges the tip of his sword into it. Being held down by his blade, the extended mold flails from side to side, causing Sawyer to grab it with his free hand and grunt as he uses all his arms strength to keep it from smashing him into the side of the train.
Sawyer manages to subdue the appendage in place, ripping his lodged blade out and slashing the mold. He immediately holds his sword close to his body, preparing to rush down the cryptid. The Mesh continuously expands its body forwards, keeping distance between Sawyer and its faces. As he begins his onslaught, Sawyer expertly dodges and weaves each attack and hacks off each outreaching clump.
Then, from the side of one of the clusters, several warped fingers latch onto Sawyer's arm, making him lose his focus. The cluster - now having grasped Sawyer - thrashes to the side of the carriage, slamming Sawyer against the train and dragging him along as he grits his teeth and tries to get a proper hold on the Layer-Mesh's molds, but is thrown across the carriage. The pain of hitting the floor throws him off, however, Sawyer rolls back on his feet and readies his gun, his finger going straight for the trigger and begins firing.
The sound of the gun's rapid fire clearly disoriented the cryptid. The gunfire didn't cease as Sawyer continued his advance, the bullets tearing through the Layer-Mesh's body, creating an opening to rip apart its face with the non-stop stream of shots.
Then, in a desperate attempt to kill Sawyer, the Mesh lowers all its defenses and drops flat, its legs going limp, as all of its limbs gushed forward like a wave. If it grabbed Sawyer, surely he would be crushed to death.
The moment he sees the carriage enveloped by these appendages of muscle and mold, Sawyer inexplicably drops his gun. Seeing Sawyer unable to counteract the enveloping attack, the cryptid crawls forward along the train's floor to expedite his death. Its flabby body moves to crush him, all of its extensions covering him from each side and the eyes on its flat, disheveled face flickering around skittishly.
At the second of impact with Sawyer, the Layer-Mesh sees that the man it had thought it'd crushed had simply disappeared, in place of him being a clump of bronze-colored silk-like substance which stretched in the general shape of Sawyer's body.
An Illusion -
Broken by physical contact. The Layer-Mesh had believed it had won, for all it knew this particular human dropped this strange material upon death. Though, Sawyer's sudden appearance above the entity turned its kill switch back on. Nonetheless, it was too late - as Sawyer had managed to crawl below the cryptid's last ditch barrage after constructing his illusion and was now standing with one foot on the Mesh. His gun had in fact been dropped earlier, but with his sword still in hand he slices at the cryptid's main face.
The Layer-Mesh squelches as Sawyer decimates it, his foot firmly on its body not intending to let go until the cryptid has been subdued. As he slashes away, pieces of the entity fly off, some even his face. Blood begins to streak down the side of his head. While being tossed around the carriage earlier he must've hit his head, but through the blood and the squirming entity's cut off chunks - Sawyer is determined to end this right there and then.
One more of its limbs dares to stretch out at Sawyer behind him, who immediately weaves out of the way and grabs it with his free hand.
"No fucking chance." He scoffs at the creature's attempt, lifting his sword from its body and cutting apart the limb that attempted to reach for him. Then, getting back to destroying the cryptid, he drives his blade into its face.
Finally, the Mesh slowly begins to cease any movement. Sawyer had ripped apart its face so deep that now a gaping hole resides where its face once was.
Just then, Lex and Claudia burst into the carriage to see Sawyer standing over the unmoving cryptid.
"It's gonna start healing soon, keep your eyes on it and don't stop firing until the train's stopped."
Claudia loads a new mag into her assault rifle before she and Lex follow Sawyer's command, shooting relentlessly at the Layer-Mesh's body.
Past the gunfire, Sawyer goes back to the cockpit to continue the manual brake as instructed by Dawn.
Soon enough, the train comes to an abrupt halt. Claudia and Lex stop firing their guns and hold on to whatever's nearest as the train brakes with great force. Once the train has completely stopped, Claudia breathes a sigh of relief that she'd been holding this entire horrific evening. Lex put his gun back in its holster as if firing away like some dispensable drone while waiting for Sawyer to stop the train was a hassle, sitting down on the carriage's bench and lighting a cigarette - one that was clearly well-needed judging by his ticked off expression.
Sawyer enters back into the carriage which Claudia and Lex waited in. Seeing that the Layer-Mesh was completely inactive, he sent a message over the radio to all active personnel involved in this mission as well as those back at the facility waiting for results.
"This is Ambrose with unit 24. The recently discovered cryptid codenamed - 'Layer-Mesh' - has been incapacitated at 23:27. Requesting immediate cleanup at my location. Over."