The Jeep wound its way up the twisting mountain road and finally stopped halfway up the slope.
An enormous alloy door sat embedded in the mountainside, almost perfectly blended with the rock.
The door had been violently bent outward, edges torn and shredded like something had burst through it from the inside.
Thick fog was still pouring out from the breach.
Soren stepped forward, grabbed the jagged metal edge with one hand, and casually bent it wider. Without hesitation, he ducked through the opening first.
Andrei, Clancy, and Amanda followed close behind, exchanging nervous glances. All three looked hesitant.
The quiet old lady shook her head at the younger group.
"You kids these days… your guts are smaller than mine," she muttered, then slipped through the gap after them.
The moment they stepped inside the base, the thick stench of blood hit them like a wall.
Surprisingly, the fog inside was much thinner than it was outside.
The entrance opened into a three-way intersection. Straight ahead was a corridor ending in a vertical elevator shaft.
Sandbag barricades had been hastily set up along the hallway. Spent shell casings and abandoned weapons littered the floor.
The bodies of soldiers and monsters lay tangled together, their dried blood turned black.
Clancy fought back the urge to vomit and kept filming the hellish scene.
Soren scanned the battlefield. His gaze stopped on a body slumped against the corner wall.
The corpse wore an orange hazmat suit with a massive hole torn through the chest. A crowbar lay nearby, along with a dead, turkey-shaped meat parasite lying on its back.
Soren eyed the crowbar—it looked like it was made of some special material—and bent down to pick it up.
Right as his fingers brushed the metal, the "corpse" suddenly shot out a hand and grabbed his arm.
"Ah!" Andrei screamed behind him.
Soren glanced back at the panicked man.
The man in the hazmat suit slowly lifted his head. His face shield was smeared with blood.
"It's out of control… lower levels… you have to cut the power… or destroy it…"
Before he could finish, his head lolled to the side and his grip went limp.
"He's… he's dead?!" Andrei stammered.
Soren expressionlessly pulled off the man's face shield and checked for a pulse.
"You passed out and decided to be dramatic about it?" he muttered. Shaking his head, he pocketed the crowbar and quickly searched the body.
He found a black-and-red metallic keycard with a barcode on it—clearly a security pass.
"Hell yeah! A 5.56 assault rifle! My favorite!" the old lady laughed loudly behind them.
Soren turned to see her expertly racking the slide of a military rifle and checking the magazine.
When she noticed everyone staring, she raised an eyebrow.
"What? I served in the Army when I was young. This beats the shit out of whatever sticks you kids are carrying!"
Andrei gave an awkward smile.
Soren continued forward to the elevator at the end of the central corridor and looked down. As expected, the elevator car was stuck halfway, with broken glass scattered everywhere.
He walked back to the intersection and pointed at the two branching hallways. "Left or right? You guys pick. My luck's usually garbage."
Andrei stared down the two dark corridors and hesitantly pointed right.
Soren stared at him for a second, then nodded and walked left.
The left corridor had multiple rooms, most of the doors closed. Faded signs were posted on the walls.
Soren pushed open a slightly ajar door. Inside were just regular office desks and scattered paperwork.
"Most bases like this keep administrative offices and logistics on the first floor," the old lady said, rifle at the ready. The familiar environment seemed to have woken up old instincts in her.
"To keep secrets safe, the labs and containment areas are usually lower down. We should look for the emergency stairs."
Soren nodded. After searching for a bit, they found a fire door that had been jammed shut. One hard kick later, it flew open, revealing stairs leading down.
The second underground level had a completely different layout and smelled strongly of rotten eggs.
There were no individual rooms—just one massive hall filled with dozens of large glass containment tanks.
Inside the murky liquid floated the corpses of various bizarre creatures.
Some had their upper bodies split open with bladed arms. Others looked like oversized facehuggers—fleshy worm-like parasites.
A few of the tanks were shattered, their contents missing.
Soren ignored the specimens and stopped in front of a still-powered terminal.
On the screen was an encrypted log file marked with a symbol of three overlapping circles.
He memorized the icon for later investigation.
He swiped the keycard he'd taken earlier through the reader.
Beep—
The file unlocked. Lines of cold text appeared on the monitor.
[Specimen Code: X-89, Parasitic Head Crab]
[Description: Poultry-sized organism…]
...
[Specimen Code: X-42, Hound]
[Description: Three-legged canine lifeform…]
...
[Classified Update: Testing Phase]
[Begin first-round testing on twelve live specimens including X-13 and X-42…]
...
[Test Record: Extradimensional Lifeform Fusion – Failed]
[Result: Severe cellular breakdown in host body. Extremely low viability. Unsuitable as stable descent vessels.]
[Conclusion: Organisms from subspace lack certain human qualities and show no adaptability. Must expand the spatial rift and locate other test subjects.]
[Additional Observation: Environmental Dependency]
[Test Record: All subspace specimens can only maintain vital signs within the abnormal mist produced by the spatial rift.]
[Component Analysis: Inconclusive]
[Rejection Reaction: Upon leaving the mist or exposure to normal atmosphere, subjects undergo violent rejection, resulting in instantaneous cellular failure and death.]
Soren's brows gradually furrowed as he read.
These lunatics weren't just using humans as demon vessels anymore—they were now trying to turn subspace creatures into containers too?
His mind flashed back to the red seal on the demon core inside Michael Myers' brain.
That kind of advanced sealing technique wasn't something normal people could pull off. It was almost certainly the work of sorcerers or something similar.
But the efficiency was terrible.
Very few humans had natural exorcism talent, and even those who did might never encounter anything supernatural in their lifetime.
"So they're trying to mass-produce viable demon vessels using these otherworldly creatures?"
Even if these things could work as hosts, how the hell would they get past the Angelic Council's detection?
Soren was still puzzled.
On the bright side, the experiments here had clearly failed. Once the rift was closed and the mist dissipated, any creatures that had escaped the base would die.
"Stop filming, Clancy! Are you trying to get us all killed?!"
Andrei's panicked shout came from behind him.