⚠️ Disclaimer:
This chapter contains intense psychological horror, body horror, and emotionally disturbing themes, including graphic violence and unsettling imagery. If you're sensitive to heavy content or have a weak heart, it's best to skip this one or take it slow.
In simpler terms: this chapter is Rated R+.
You've been warned. Now enter the dark.
I repeat
💀 Certified "What the Actual Hell" Content 💀
Listen. I could've made this chapter chill. I didn't.
This section contains:
Lab babies
Corpse football
A giggling locker
Possibly possessed plumbing
If you read this and feel cursed afterward… good. That's the point.
Don't blame me. I'm just the narrator.
You flipped the page.
chapter begins from here:-
"Now what?" 777 muttered, hand on his chin. "Someone already killed that bitch."
Rick rubbed the back of his head, staring out toward the charred clearing. "We came looking for Tobey and ended up digging through our own uncleaned mess."
"But…" 777's voice dropped, tone suspicious. "There were two of them. One's dead. Where's the other?"
Rick sighed, his expression blank. "No idea, man. My brain's fried. Look—the sun's rising."
The first sliver of daylight spilled through the fog. Pale. Ghostly. But it was real. A new day clawing its way through the nightmare.
"Yeah," 777 nodded. "Guess the worst part's over."
Rick didn't answer. His gaze lingered on the sky, then slowly drifted back to the lab.
"…Except now we've got a lab baby."
"Right." 777 adjusted the flamethrower strap on his shoulder. "How are we even gonna move her? Van or truck?"
Rick thought for a second. "We'll need more. Best call in autonomous transport. And cleaning units, too—no way we're dragging her through this hellhole manually."
"Jennifer," he said sharply, tapping the comm on his collar. "Send two autonomous trucks to our coordinates. Also prep a sanitation unit—code black level."
Jennifer's voice returned through the static, smoother than before. "Request acknowledged. Routing in progress."
Rick nodded. "We can't leave this place. Not yet."
"No way we're leaving her alone," 777 agreed, arms crossed. "Too much risk."
Rick glanced back at the lab entrance. "I'll head in. There might be more inside—files, logs, something to explain all this."
777 raised a brow. "You sure?"
"Nope," Rick muttered. "But I've already lost control of this shitshow. Might as well understand it."
"I'll stay outside," 777 said. "Watch the perimeter. Just don't die in there, alright?"
Rick gave him a half-smirk and turned back toward the darkness.
"No promises."
He stepped into the lab again.
Same scene. Same smell. Same graveyard.
Bodies still slumped like discarded tools—faces peeled, torsos hollowed. Some headless. Some worse. The air hadn't gotten any better—thick with rot and dust, like breathing through the past.
He entered the first room.
Nothing useful.
Just broken lights, an overturned chair, and a shriveled head in the corner.
Rick kicked it like a soccer ball.
It thudded against the wall with a wet slap.
"Man," he muttered, "I like football… but that ain't a ball."
Second room.
More wreckage. Broken tools. Burned-out terminals. Shelves wiped clean.
"No notes. No logs. Nothing," Rick muttered, eyes scanning what was left.
He stood in the center of the room, thinking aloud.
"I think when whatever the hell broke loose here happened, they evacuated with everything important. Every file. Every device. Probably some kind of emergency purge. A self-destruct that cooked all the gear."
He paused, staring at the far wall like it might answer him.
"Then why… was the baby tank still intact?" he muttered. "If it wasn't worth saving, why not destroy it? Unless… they couldn't."
He crossed his arms, pacing now.
"Maybe that mimic kept them pinned. Maybe they never got the chance. Or maybe…" he frowned, "maybe they didn't want it destroyed. Maybe it was the backup. A failsafe. Something meant to outlive whatever went wrong."
He glanced back over his shoulder.
"Unless…"
He hesitated.
"What if that mimic didn't die. What if it just wanted us to think it did."
He pressed a finger to his earpiece.
"777. You good?"
The line crackled, then:
"Yeah. What's up?"
"What are you doing?" Rick asked, already knowing he might not want the answer.
A beat.
Then 777's voice came back, dry as hell.
"Nothing major. Just cutting open that bitch."
Rick blinked.
Paused.
Then shrugged.
"…No problem. Carry on."
Rick sighed, rubbed the back of his neck, and turned down the next corridor.
"Well, he's doing his work," he muttered.
"Guess I'll do mine."
He moved fast but careful—steps echoing through dead concrete like whispers in a tomb.
Room 04
Empty.
Rusted tables, a shattered data pad half-fused to the floor, and one broken syringe embedded in the wall like someone had thrown it mid-sprint.
Rick stepped over a toppled chair and scanned the shelves—nothing but burn marks and decay.
"No logs. No tags. Not even a damn post-it."
Room 05
Smelled like formaldehyde and regret.
Old containment lockers lined the walls, most hanging open with claw marks scraped into the metal. One still shut.
He tried the handle. Jammed.
He kicked it.
Still jammed.
"Not today," he muttered, moving on.
Room 06
Flooded.
A busted pipe had burst somewhere near the ceiling—water pooled ankle-deep across the tile, reflecting the flickering lights like a glitch in reality.
Rick squinted at a console still half-lit on the far side, but every key he touched buzzed dead.
"Power's shot. Storage wiped."
He stood for a long second.
Let the silence breathe.
Let the emptiness echo.
"…They really erased everything."
He stepped out.
Room 07
Completely torched.
Black ash clung to the ceiling and every surface like the lab had been hit by fire and then vacuumed for good measure.
Skeletons here—three of them. Scientists, maybe. Hunched under a desk like they'd hoped it would save them.
Rick didn't touch them.
Didn't say a word.
Just kept walking.
After a few more rooms—nothing but silence and ruin—Rick circled back toward the AL5 corridor.
He pressed a hand to his earpiece again.
"777. Just checked everything. Nada. They scrubbed this place like it owed them money."
Static, then:
"Copy that. Still gutting our friend over here."
Rick leaned against the wall beside the AL5 doorway.
"Yeah. Maybe you'll get something useful. I sure didn't."
He looked back toward the baby's containment tank.
Then forward—into the dark hallway again.
"Whatever was here… it's long gone."
Rick stared down the dim corridor.
"But something stayed behind."
He turned from the empty rooms, the flickering failure of forgotten science, and headed deeper.
Past AL5, the hallway shifted—subtle at first.
Ceramic tiles faded out beneath his boots, replaced by thick, reinforced iron plates. They clanked with every step, heavy and deliberate. A change in architecture. A change in purpose.
Rick adjusted the flamethrower strap on his shoulder and muttered under his breath, "Now we're getting somewhere."
The lights were steadier here—faint, amber, powered by something that hadn't given up yet. A low hum filled the air, like the sound of machines holding their breath.
He passed through a thick bulkhead arch.
The walls weren't scorched here.
Weren't smashed or clawed.
Intact. Cold. Clean.
Except…
Ahead of him stood an iron security door. Not dented. Not broken.
Just… open.
Rick slowed.
"Every other place looked like it got hit with a bio-bomb," he muttered, eyes narrowing. "And this one? Nothing. No burns. No damage."
The door frame was sealed tight, pristine down to the locking bolts. It looked like it should've been airtight. Maybe even cryo-sealed. But now?
It was wide open.
He stepped inside.
Rows of lockers and storage pods lined the room. Some open, some still locked. A few blinking with low-power status lights. But what caught his eye wasn't the tech.
It was the bodies.
Guards, geared in full armor—helmets crushed in, visors melted from the inside. Rifles snapped in half. Most lay sprawled like they'd died in seconds.
Some didn't even have blood trails.
And the scientists?
One was slumped against the far wall, eyes frozen open, mouth mid-scream. Another hung from a cable—half-disintegrated from the torso down, as if something started eating and changed its mind.
Rick's jaw clenched.
"All I see is bodies," he muttered. "Guards. Scientists. This wasn't some back-alley operation—this place had funding."
He stepped over a fallen weapon, its barrel warped from heat.
"No broken doors. No breach signs. They weren't forced open."
His eyes flicked across the access panels.
Still green. Still unlocked.
"They opened them," Rick muttered, stepping forward.
Ahead, the hallway split in two. A small rusted sign hung above the fork—barely readable under the flickering overhead light.
→ Observation Room
← Subject Containment
Rick exhaled. "Yeah, I'm not walking into the monster pen today."
He headed toward the Observation Room.
As he moved, his mind wandered.
"How the hell was the town still safe… with that mimic crawling around out here? Was this whole forest some kind of border? A cage? Or did someone just clean up too well after it escaped...?"
He shook his head. "Focus now. Headache later."
The Observation Room door slid open with a low hiss.
Inside—it was cold. Still. And wrong.
The walls were lined with consoles, most dark. A wide reinforced glass panel stretched across the far end, facing the adjacent chamber.
But before any of that caught his attention—
HELP
—was smeared on the wall in what looked like dried blood. Sloppy. Jagged. Desperate.
"We got ourselves a classic horror-movie moment," Rick muttered, stepping over to the collapsed scientist slumped beneath it.
He crouched down, patted the coat, checked pockets. Nothing.
Just empty glassy eyes staring up like they died begging someone to open the door.
Rick stood.
His attention moved to the console directly in front of the window—still active, blinking low-power warnings. Something sat on the keyboard.
A key.
Not large, not ceremonial—just a small metal locker key. But the tag was hand-etched: LOCKER 02-21
"Same number as the only unopened one I passed earlier."
He grabbed the key and slipped it into his belt pouch.
Then—
He looked through the observation window.
The Subject Containment Room beyond it was carnage.
The glass didn't hide much. Blood had dried into rivers across the floor. One corner was scorched black—like someone tried to use fire, failed, and paid for it. A body had been torn in half near the center. One arm was still twitching.
"Oh God..." Rick muttered. "Good call not going that way."
A fresh chill slid down his spine. There were drag marks. Deep ones.
And they led out of the far door.
That meant something got loose.
Or worse—something had been let out.
Rick sighed, forcing his legs to move.
"Alright. Locker 02-21. Let's see what's so damn special about you."
He exited the observation room, footsteps echoing faintly down the hallway of iron and decay. The weight of dried blood and half-whispered memories pressed at his shoulders as he retraced his path.
Finally, he reached the locker.
He slid the key into the lock, ready for that classic click of resistance—
But the door creaked open under his hand.
Already unlocked.
He froze.
"Well… we got a full-blown WTF moment right here," Rick muttered.
He didn't move for a second. Just stood there, eyes sweeping the hallway.
"If anyone's here," he said louder, voice steady but sharp, "reveal yourself."
He gave it two seconds. Maybe three.
"I'm not in the mood to play hide and seek."
Silence.
No echo. No movement. Just the heavy hum of distant lights flickering like dying insects.
He looked back into the locker.
Inside: a weathered notebook, spine half-broken, stuffed with loose sheets. Scattered papers lined the bottom like someone had once tried to organize them—but gave up halfway through.
Rick reached in, gently pulled the book free, and flipped it open.
Handwritten.
Sloppy at first. Clean later.
The ink changed halfway through—maybe even the handwriting.
One page caught his eye instantly. The corner was dog-eared, and across the top in bold, jagged letters:
"PROTOCOL DELTA // SUBJECT ECHO"
Rick flipped the next page.
Diagrams. Blood samples. Notes scribbled fast—names blacked out, lines slashed in panic.
And one phrase, circled again and again:
"Do not allow her to mature."
He looked back toward the containment tank room.
His stomach turned.
The next few pages felt like ice in his hands. The ink had bled through, old and warped, as if the paper itself wanted to forget what it carried.
Then—
A page with no diagrams.
Just a line, written in blocky, uneven handwriting—almost childlike:
"The first one spoke before it had lungs."
Rick's chest tightened.
He turned the page.
More entries followed.
Scattered. Disjointed. Terrified.
"Subject ECHO exhibits recursive neural growth. Memory loops. It dreams while forming. It speaks in voices it shouldn't know."
"I heard my mother's voice last night. She's been dead for fifteen years."
"The subject called me by name. I never told it."
"It smiled at me today. I don't think it meant to."
"I requested termination. It refused."
Rick's hands trembled.
His throat dry, heartbeat slowing.
Then—
One last scrawled entry. The ink was rushed, like the author knew something was coming. Pages after it had been torn, violently ripped from the binding.
He read aloud in a whisper, barely recognizing the sound of his own voice:
"My wife… she was assigned to care for Subject One."
"She couldn't stand to watch her suffer."
"One day, she ended it. She killed Subject One."
"And for that—"
"—they blamed her."
"They said it wasn't mercy. They called it sabotage."
"They didn't listen. She tried to explain… tried to tell them the thing inside that tank wasn't right."
"So they turned her into the next test."
"They made her the new subject… for Project MIMIC."
"And I… I was the one overseeing the project."
"They made me test my own wife."
Rick blinked hard.
The words blurred.
"I resisted. I argued. I begged. But no one listened."
"They said if I truly loved her, I'd make her a success."
"I tried to free her. I waited for the right moment. But it never came."
"They brought her to the Subject Room for the final injection."
"I watched from the observation room, unable to scream."
"She cried out—once. Just once. And then… silence."
"I had one last vial. One final serum in my coat pocket."
The final line was smudged with something dark.
Not ink.
Rick read it anyway.
"I opened every door. Then I injected myself."
The page ended there.
Rick sat in silence for a moment.
The light from the tank flickered faintly behind him.
He suddenly understood why the observation room had been covered in blood.
He understood what the mimic really was.
Not just a lab-grown monster.
But grief, made flesh.
A nightmare born from love—and revenge.
And the baby in the tank?
She wasn't the first.
She might be the last.
But she carried all of it—everything that came before.
Rick turned the page and found a loose sheet tucked into the back. It was folded three times. Old. Yellowed. Nearly torn through the center crease.
He unfolded it carefully.
It wasn't typed. It was written by hand. And it was different from the clinical logs—this wasn't data.
It was a memory.
"They took us from Virginia."
"Middle of the night. No sirens. No warning."
"She thought it was a robbery at first—she clutched my hand and told me to play dead. That was always her plan in horror movies."
"They weren't thieves."
"They weren't even military."
"They had the kind of gear no country officially owns."
"And they had a name."
"'Phase Echo.'"
Rick's brows furrowed. His pulse kicked higher.
"We were sedated before sunrise. I woke up in a moving crate, my wrists zip-tied and mouth dry. My wife—Raina—was in the box across from me. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't even crying."
"She just looked at me and said: 'I love you. No matter what they make you do.'"
The handwriting got messier after that—slanted, frantic, letters smudging as the memory took over.
"They kept us apart after that."
"Told me she was safe. Working in medical."
"I believed them."
"They gave me clearance. A project. A lab with no doors and questions I wasn't allowed to ask."
"They called it behavioral mapping through synthetic replication. But that was bullshit."
"It was MIMIC."
"They were building monsters. Not just from tissue. From trauma. From memories they stole. They were trying to give these things a soul, and they didn't care how many real ones they crushed along the way."
Rick's hands curled into fists. He could feel the weight of the next sentence before he even read it.
"When I found out Raina was here... that she was Subject Two…"
"I stopped sleeping."
"I stopped eating."
"She had cared for Subject One—a young girl they grew in one of the first tanks."
"That girl started whispering things before she had lungs."
"My wife said she could feel it watching her dreams. That it copied her laugh. That it mimicked her smile before it had eyes."
"So one day—Raina shut off the tank."
"She let Subject One die."
Rick swallowed hard.
"They called it sabotage. They blamed her. Said she'd snapped. But she hadn't."
"She was trying to save me. Us. All of us."
"So they made her pay. Not with death."
"With transformation."
Then came the final lines.
Fewer words. Harder to read.
"They brought her into the chamber on the final day. I saw her through the glass."
"She mouthed something to me."
"'I'm sorry.'"
"They injected her with the first-stage mimic serum. She didn't scream. Just collapsed."
"I had the backup vial in my pocket."
"I opened every door I could."
"And then I took it."
"We died together. But not at the same time."
Rick stepped back from the locker, slow.
His skin crawled. His heartbeat wasn't loud—but it was there. A steady, untrustworthy thump in his chest.
He stared down the hallway toward the lab tank like it might've grown fangs while he was gone.
The notebook slipped shut in his hand.
Above him, somewhere in the pipes—
A shift.
Wet. Dragging.
Like something slick crawling through metal veins.
Then came the groan.
Mechanical. Ancient.
As if the lab remembered it was still alive.
Rick's hand tightened around his pistol.
He stepped into the hall, boots silent.
That's when the lights died.
All at once.
No flicker.
No warning.
Just darkness—thick and sudden. Like the shadows had been waiting for a cue to pounce.
Then—
Behind him.
Inside the locker.
A sound.
A giggle.
High-pitched. Breathless.
Childlike—but wrong.
Too empty.
Too knowing.
Mocking.
Rick spun, flashlight snapping up and sweeping the locker's hollow interior.
Empty.
No movement.
No child.
No monster.
But something had changed.
On the inside of the locker door—where there'd been nothing before—
New marks.
Fresh.
Carved.
Not written.
Clawed.
"She knows you."
Each letter dragged into the metal like someone used bone instead of ink.
Rick backed up.
One step. Two.
Pistol raised.
Flashlight aimed.
His breath was sharp. Focused.
But his voice—tight as wire—cracked the silence.
He pressed his comm.
"777," he said.
"We've got a problem."