Exterminator : The Dark Beneath

“Numerous systems throughout the Arcology, from sealable doors and security checkpoints, to cameras and automated security drones, allow the control room and security forces to ensure the safety of its staff and citizens”

-How the Arcology ensures your security and wellbeing , article by Arcology information centre

“If one is not careful the very defences devised to protect can turn against you. Castles become prisons, fortifications traps, and bunkers tombs"

-Unknown

Once they’d breached the lift shaft the creatures swarmed through the lower levels of the ARC, the low grade workshops and mass production labs offering little to impede the black tide of bodies that poured up from the depths, consuming the defenceless workers as they were caught unawares, before flowing up stairwells and open shafts towards the Apartments and living quarters above.

Alarms were triggered and scattered security offices tried heroically to halt their path, firing round after round from their security side arms into the swarms, rounds felling the occasional creature. But light hand weapons picked to deal with the almost non-existent level of crime in the ARC did little against the wave of bodies that poured out from below, and the officers were quickly pulled down under the mass of black scaled bodies and torn apart by ravenous mouths.

High below the peak of the ARC in the main control room, staff were bombarded with information, automated alarms as security systems detected small arms fire and injured humans, partially heard Com’s carrying reports of monsters rising up from the depths, pleas for help and demands for orders. They tried in vain to stem the chaos, but now, with no one knowing what was going on, and the ARC’s integrity compromised by damaged systems, most of their commands and queries went unanswered.

Looking over the room, Mr Cheliyan issued orders in a attempt to regain calm whilst Mrs Carter watched in mute horror as warning signals from the lower levels sprang up over the display. One technician looked with silent tears flowing down her cheeks as life sign monitors redlined across the board.

Carter had a sick suspicion of what was coming but kept silent, part of her still trying to understand how things could have gotten so out of hand. Rinehart’s failure to report in hadn’t worried her initially due to the risk of being overheard, but as she sunk down into a chair and watched the frantic actions of the control room staff it was clear he had failed.

In the end Mr Cheliyan ordered security doors around the ARC to close, imprisoning hundreds of people in the lower levels, most likely to their deaths, in a attempt to prevent the unknown invaders from spreading, hopefully buying time the ARC’s controllers could come up with a plan to counter the unknown threat.

Blast doors were lowered to halt the advance, the heavy metal barriers locking into place designed to resist explosions, small arms fire and even partial depressurisation. Unfortunately, the complex design of the ARC made service shafts and ducts a necessity, and the creatures rapidly started searching for routes around the obstructions. Most areas were separated by slightly armoured versions of basic pressure doors, but key areas, such as the control room, environmental controls, power relays and production rooms, alongside upper ARC executive areas, had additional security provided by automated sentry turrets and guards.

Remaining Security officers began fortifying the upper levels, retrieving riot suppression weaponry and donning protective soft-suits they’d never had to wear in combat. The control rooms triggering the activation of riot control drones to assist them, their hulking boxy bipedal forms looming over the human guards as they stared in fear and confusion at the doors and entranceways they were guarding, unsure as to the threat that had overrun the lower levels.

On the other side of the locked doors handfuls of people remained alive, some desperately trying to force their way through locked areas whilst others attempted to hide in their apartments or sealed rooms as the creatures smarmed through the corridors around them.

In their apartment Artemis and her mother heard the slamming of bulkhead doors from where they huddled in their small apartment, still obeying the last command sent over the network, to keep calm and wait for assistance. They could hear distant screams and cries for help from the corridors, but Artemis’s mother covered her ears and rocked Artemis on her lap as she whispered over and over.

“It’s OK baby, every things going to be fine, you’ll see. Every things going to be fine!”

In her upper ARC apartment Michelle watched in shock as she used her smart pad to access the security feeds, watching as people were torn apart and eaten by scuttling horrors.

Tears began to fall silently down her face as she realized Karl would never be returning to her. Whatever was happening in the lower levels had must have started below. All the workers must be dead, taking him with them.

She didn’t know how long she knelt to the bed but slowly she pushed the grief and horror down inside her, crushing it with her rising fury, until it was compressed into a cool fire of hatred, a white diamond of wrath nestling in her chest.

She stood and moved on wobbling legs over to a nondescript wall and placed her hand on a panel, triggering her safe room to open, revealing stacks of rations and a few weapons that security would have frowned upon. She removed off her Cami and started to clamber into an armoured bodysuit, her sorrow put aside as her rage burned.

Whatever these things were, they’d taken the only man she loved away and she’d be damned if she just let them take her life as well.

Holden walked along the corridor, passing by a tatter of cloth and bloodstains that, judging by the blue of the cloth fragments, was all that remained of a security guard. He walked past open doors leading to manufacturing rooms and workshops, the automated robotic arms mindlessly continuing their tasks, ignorant for the tattered remains of the workers strewn between the conveyors.

There was a sudden eruption of hissing from a nearby doorway as a group of his avengers poked their heads through into the corridor, black scaled snouts red with blood and offal. They streamed towards him, hissed rising to a terrifying crescendo before they suddenly cut off and froze a few meters from him, their heads waving in the air as they sniffed. Almost as one they flattened their bellies to the floor and began to back away, carful to keep their eyes on his legs until they disappeared around the corner.

He smiled in satisfaction and patted the pheromone emitter on his belt before walking onwards; the tailored chemicals the small boxlike emitter produced simulated the smell of the alpha, intimidating the animals into ignoring him.

Holden ambled through the empty corridors of the lower ARC, occasionally stopping to inspect a body or peer at a creature examining an interesting mutation. He was almost giddy with excitement and satisfaction at how well the plan was progressing, and this was only the beginning.

He reached an intersection leading to several closed lifts and found the area crawling with creatures, a constant of crunching and tapping claws filling the widened corridors as they feasted on the remains of people who’d been trapped outside the locked elevators.

Holden he lent back against the wall and smiled as he observed them, the scientist in him absently noting several interesting specimens.

Soon his creatures would change and mutate even further as new generations of the plasmodium underwent its own mutations, each subsequent generation removed from the primary specimen exhibiting further genetic shift and variation.

Soon these new mutations would move upwards into the ARC seeking new prey, bringing God’s judgment to all who lived there.

In a little under 2 hours the most prosperous, advanced and secure human habitation on Ares was under siege by the creatures, one of mankind’s most advanced habitations turned into a prison of Glass and steel.