Chapter 3: Gaze of the Hollowed
The thump-thump-thump wasn't just sound anymore. It was vibration. A physical pounding in the floor beneath their boots, traveling up their spines, perfectly synced with the frantic hammering in McCall’s chest. It charged down the corridor towards them, impossibly fast, closing the gap in seconds. Reyes’s light jerked wildly, illuminating only the thick, glistening blackness coating the walls, the ceiling, the floor – a tunnel of pulsing flesh.
McCall raised his rifle, finger tightening on the trigger. The beam cut through the gloom, searching for the source. Nothing solid. Just the oppressive, breathing darkness. The pounding footsteps stopped abruptly, right where his light met the deepest shadow, maybe ten yards ahead. Silence crashed down, heavier than before. Only the wet, rhythmic thud-thud of the walls remained, echoing their own trapped heartbeats.
Then the wall directly in front of them ripped.
It wasn't a crack or a tear. It was a deliberate, wet parting. Like thick curtains of rotten meat being peeled back. Reyes gagged, stumbling back a step. McCall held his ground, rifle unwavering, but his knuckles were bone-white.
Behind the parted folds of glistening biomass, embedded deep within the fibrous wall, were faces. Dozens of them. All identical. All Dr. Aris Thorne.
Pale, waxy skin stretched tight over skulls. Bald heads gleaming under Reyes’s trembling light. Thick-rimmed glasses, miraculously intact, perched on noses fused seamlessly into the pulsating black matter. But the eyes… the eyes were voids. Deep, empty sockets filled with the same inky blackness that coated the walls. Not blind. Watching.
Every single face was turned towards them. Perfectly synchronized. Expressionless. Silent.
McCall’s breath hitched. The sheer wrongness of it, the impossible multiplication of horror, slammed into him like a physical blow. Thorne’s silent scream upstairs was burned into his retinas, and now… this. A gallery of the dead, hollowed out and repurposed.
"Oh god," Reyes whimpered, the sound barely escaping their throat. Their rifle dipped slightly. "The eyes… it’s using them. Like cameras. Phase Three… full assimilation." Their voice cracked on the last word, thick with remembered dread.
The wall pulsed. A low, wet groan emanated from the mass, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Then, the faces moved. Not individually. As one. Their mouths, fused shut by the biomass, didn't open. Yet sound emerged. A dry, rasping chorus, layered and overlapping, emanating from the wall itself:
"Derek… Reyes…"
It was Thorne’s voice. Distorted. Stretched thin. But undeniably his. The chorus spoke with perfect synchronization.
"You shouldn't… be here…"
McCall fired.
The crack of the rifle was deafening in the confined space. The round punched into the wall just below one cluster of faces. Black ichor sprayed. The biomass recoiled, the faces momentarily twisting in a grotesque parody of pain before snapping back to their fixed, watchful positions. The chorus didn't falter.
"Resistance… futile…" the Thorne-wall droned. "Join… the observation… Become… clarity…"
"Shut up!" Reyes screamed, firing wildly. Their shots tore chunks from the pulsating mass, splattering thick, viscous fluid. The faces recoiled, reformed, eyes tracking the muzzle flashes with unnerving precision. The chorus continued, louder now, more insistent.
"See… through us… Know… everything…"
McCall grabbed Reyes’s shoulder, pulling them back. "Cease fire! Conserve ammo! It's baiting us!" Panic clawed at his own edges. Shooting the walls was useless. Worse than useless. It felt like feeding it. The pulsing intensified, the thud-thud faster now, matching their escalating terror. The corridor seemed to narrow, the walls breathing inward.
"Gotta move!" McCall barked, shoving Reyes towards the path ahead, past the horrific gallery. "Lab's close! Move!"
They ran. Boots sank into the ankle-deep muck, pulling free with wet, sucking sounds that seemed obscenely loud. The Thorne-faces tracked their progress, heads swiveling smoothly, unnaturally, as one entity. The chorus followed them, echoing down the corridor.
"Running… wastes energy… Surrender… simplifies…"
McCall ignored it, focusing on the dim outline of a heavy, reinforced door ahead, partially obscured by the encroaching biomass. The Main Lab entrance. Hope, thin and desperate, flared. Get inside. Seal it. Find the core.
Reyes stumbled, catching themselves against the pulsating wall. Their hand came away coated in sticky black slime. They retched. "It's… it's warm. Like skin."
"Don't touch it!" McCall hauled them upright. Behind them, the wall where they’d fired was already healing, the torn flesh knitting back together seamlessly. The Thorne-faces watched, impassive.
They reached the lab door. It was massive, thick steel, designed for containment. But the biomass had flowed over it like tar, sealing the edges, warping the frame. The electronic access panel was dark, buried under a pulsating mound of black tissue. A small, reinforced window set into the door at head height was smeared opaque with the same glistening gunk.
McCall slammed his fist against the steel. It rang dully. Solid. Sealed tight. "Damn it!" He scanned the frame, looking for a manual override, a weak point. Nothing but the suffocating growth.
Reyes pressed their face close to the filthy window, trying to peer through a smear. Their breath fogged the grime. "Can't see… wait." They wiped frantically with a gloved hand, clearing a small patch. "There's… light inside. Faint. Greenish." Their voice dropped to a horrified whisper. "And… bodies. Suspended. In the walls… like Thorne."
The chorus behind them swelled, suddenly louder, closer. McCall spun. The Thorne-faces lining the corridor they’d just fled were leaning forward, straining against the biomass that held them. Their empty eye sockets seemed to bore into him. The synchronized voice rasped, tinged with something new – a chilling eagerness.
"Access… denied… Derek McCall…"
The biomass coating the lab door began to move. It bulged, rippling violently. Tendrils, thick as arms and glistening with slime, began to extrude from the surface around the sealed edges. They didn't lash out. Instead, they writhed and coiled, thickening, taking shape. Forming rough outlines. Humanoid outlines.
McCall raised his rifle, backing away, pulling Reyes with him. "What now?"
The biomass sculpted itself with terrifying speed. Two figures coalesced from the dripping blackness, fused to the door at their waists, just like Thorne upstairs. But these weren't Thorne. McCall’s blood froze.
The figure on the left solidified into a bulky frame, tactical vest molded in corrupted detail, a familiar scar distorting the cheek. Corporal Jensen. Their demolitions expert. Killed in the initial surface breach when the ground swallowed him.
The figure on the right was leaner, younger. Private Choi. Their comms specialist. Vanished screaming into a ventilation shaft during the chaotic retreat topside.
Their faces were waxy, distorted copies, eyes replaced by the same bottomless black voids as the Thornes. Their mouths, however, weren't stretched in screams. They were slack, slightly open. The biomass pulsed within them, visible through translucent patches on their necks and cheeks.
The Jensen-thing turned its void eyes towards McCall. Its mouth moved. Not in sync with the Thorne-chorus. Its own voice emerged, a wet, gurgling approximation of Jensen’s familiar gravelly tone, layered with the same dry rasp of the wall.
"Hey… Skipper…" it gurgled. "Took you… long enough…"
The Choi-thing tilted its head, a grotesque parody of the kid’s nervous habit. Its voice was higher, choked with fluid. "Why… why did you… leave us… down here… Derek?"
The words hit McCall like a physical blow. Loyalty warred with revulsion. He saw Reyes flinch beside him, their face pale, eyes wide with horrified recognition. The pulsing thud-thud of the walls surged, vibrating the floor, syncing perfectly with the frantic, trapped drumbeat pounding behind McCall’s ribs. The air thickened, tasting of decay and despair and that cloying, alien sweetness. The door was sealed. The dead were speaking. And the thing that watched through them was very, very hungry.
The Jensen-thing’s wet gurgle hung in the thick air, a grotesque parody of camaraderie. "Hey… Skipper… Took you… long enough…" Its void eyes, pits of absolute nothingness, locked onto McCall. Beside it, the Choi-thing emitted a choked, watery sound, its slack mouth trembling. "Why… why did you… leave us… down here… Derek?"The words were jagged glass scraping McCall’s nerves. Loyalty screamed they’re gone, but the twisted facsimiles before him, fused to the pulsating door, made his trigger finger itch with a sickening mix of rage and grief. Reyes flinched violently beside him, a strangled gasp escaping their lips."Jensen?Choi?" Their voice cracked, disbelief warring with horror.
The biomass pulsed violently, a wet throb that vibrated up through McCall’s boots and synced perfectly with the frantic hammering in his chest. The air tasted like decayed fruit and ozone, thick enough to choke on. The door was sealed shut, armored steel warped and swallowed by the living blackness.The dead were speaking with stolen voices. And the thing that watched through them was very, very hungry.
The Jensen-thing’s biomass neck bulged obscenely. "Join us… Skipper…" it gargled, a thick strand of black ichor dripping from its slack jaw. "See… clearly…" Its hand, a crude approximation molded from dripping slime, began to lift towards McCall.
McCall’s rifle snapped up, the red dot laser painting a trembling circle on the Jensen-thing’s forehead."Don’t!"His voice was raw gravel. Reyes mirrored him, aiming shakily at the Choi-thing, their breath coming in ragged pants. The Thorne-faces lining the corridor behind them remained eerily silent, watching.
Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed from the darkness to their left, near a junction obscured by thick, dripping tendrils hanging from the ceiling like obscene stalactites. Both McCall and Reyes jerked their weapons towards the sound, beams slicing through the gloom.
A section of the pulsating wall bulged, then split open with a wet, tearing sound.Not violently, but deliberately, like a curtain parting. From the gaping darkness beyond, a figure stumbled out, tripping over a loop of glistening biomass on the floor.It was a woman.
She caught herself against the slime-slick wall, leaving a bloody handprint. Her lab coat was shredded and stained dark crimson, barely hanging onto her frame. A name tag, miraculously intact, read 'DIANA E ALBERTSON'. Fiery red hair, mostly wrestled into a messy bun with pins askew, had strands escaping wildly around an oval face smudged with grime and blood. Her eyes, wide and impossibly bright amber in the gloom, locked onto McCall’s with desperate intensity.
"Don’t shoot!" Her voice was hoarse, strained, but cutting through the wet thrum of the corridor. She pushed off the wall, swaying slightly, her gaze darting between the soldiers and the grotesque figures fused to the lab door."Don’t listen! Don’t look at them!"Reyes kept their rifle trained on her, suspicion warring with shock. "Who the hell are you?Where did you come from?"Their voice trembled slightly.
Diana Albertson ignored the question, her amber eyes fixed on McCall. She took a shaky step forward, flinching as her boot sank into the ankle-deep muck. "You can’t get in that way," she gasped, jerking her chin towards the sealed lab door and its horrific sentinels. The Jensen-thing let out a low, wet growl, its void eyes shifting towards her."It’s sealed.Fully assimilated. But I know another path.To the core."
McCall’s gaze flickered between her terrified face, the bloody coat, the impossible escape route through solid biomass, and the hungry voids watching from the door. Every instinct screamed trap."Another path?Through that?" He gestured sharply at the dripping, pulsing walls surrounding them."How?"
"Service tunnels," Diana breathed, her chest heaving."Older infrastructure.Less… infected. Mostly."She wiped blood from her lip with a trembling hand."It’s watching. Through them." She nodded towards the Thorne-faces, then the Jensen and Choi horrors."It knows you’re here.It’s pulling everything in. We have to move now!"The biomass coating the lab door surged. The Jensen-thing’s crude hand shot out, faster than McCall expected, a glistening pseudopod aiming not for him, but for Diana.She yelped, stumbling back.McCall fired without hesitation. The round tore through the extending pseudopod inches from Diana’s face. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it hit the floor. The Jensen-thing recoiled with a wet shriek, the severed limb flopping grotesquely before being absorbed back into the mass."Go!" McCall barked at Diana, already shifting his aim back to the door monstrosities, putting himself between her and them."Reyes, cover her!Move!"Diana didn’t hesitate. She turned and plunged back into the dark tear in the wall she’d emerged from, vanishing into the dripping blackness beyond. Reyes hesitated for a split second, their rifle sweeping between the horrors on the door and the ominous opening Diana had disappeared into."Reyes, now!" McCall roared, firing another suppressing shot at the Choi-thing as it began to extrude its own grasping limb.The wet impact echoed.
Reyes cursed, low and fervent, then sprinted after Diana, vanishing into the pulsating maw in the wall. McCall took one last shot, shattering a Thorne-face embedded near the doorframe, then spun and lunged after them, the wet, hungry sounds of the biomass closing in behind him like a suffocating tide.
McCall plunged through the tear in the wall, the slick, yielding biomass closing behind him with a wet schluck. Dank, frigid air replaced the cloying sweetness of the main corridor. He stumbled, boots slipping on uneven grating beneath a thin layer of viscous fluid. Reyes’s flashlight beam cut erratic patterns ahead, illuminating Diana’s blood-streaked lab coat vanishing around a tight bend. "Move!" McCall rasped, the word echoing oddly in the cramped metal passageway. The thrumming pulse of the main biomass felt muted here, buried under layers of steel, but the sensation of being watched remained, clinging like cobwebs.
"Where the hell are you taking us?" Reyes demanded, their voice tight as they rounded the corner after Diana. The service tunnel was narrower, older, lined with dripping pipes and thick cables snaking through rust and patches of that same black, weeping growth.
"Quieter!" Diana hissed over her shoulder, not slowing. "Sound carries. And it uses sound." She ducked under a low-hanging conduit thick with pulsing black nodules. "Crew quarters are this way. Less… active. For now." Her amber eyes flashed with desperate urgency in the reflected light. The path twisted sharply left, then descended a short flight of corroded metal stairs. The air grew colder, drier, smelling faintly of stale coffee and old paper underneath the pervasive decay.
Reyes shot McCall a wary glance. "Less active? Define 'less active'. Like Thorne-on-the-wall active, or Jensen-pretending-to-be-Jensen active?" The memory of those void-eyed figures fused to the lab door tightened their grip on the rifle.
"Just quieter," Diana repeated, pushing open a heavy, unmarked door at the bottom of the stairs. It led into a wider, blessedly dry corridor with standard issue doors. Fluorescent lights flickered erratically overhead, casting jumpy shadows. Relief warred with suspicion on Reyes’s face. The oppressive pulsing was almost gone, replaced by the mundane hum of failing lights and distant, unseen machinery. Diana hurried to a door marked 'A-14' and swiped a grimy keycard. The lock clicked.
Inside felt jarringly, impossibly normal. A small crew cabin, neat and tidy. A narrow bunk with a tightly tucked gray blanket. A functional desk. On it, arranged precisely: a copy of Good Housekeeping, an issue of Time, and Archaeology Today. Beside them, a thick binder labeled 'Recipes & Meal Plans'. The mundane ordinariness of it hit McCall like a physical blow after the flesh corridors. It felt like a museum exhibit of sanity. Reyes lingered in the doorway, rifle half-raised, scanning the corners, the ceiling, the vents.
Diana sagged against the desk, catching her breath. Her hand, still smeared with dried blood, brushed the recipe binder. "My space," she murmured, a ghost of pride in her exhausted voice. The contrast was profound – the bloody, terrified scientist amidst these domestic tokens. "It… it doesn't like coming here yet. Too sterile. Too human."
McCall stepped fully inside, the door hissing shut behind him. His gaze swept the room – clean lines, no visible biomass. The magazines mocked him. "Okay, Albertson," he said, his voice low, demanding. "You got us here. Talk. Fast. What the hell is 'it'? What happened to Thorne? To my men?" He moved towards her desk, his shadow falling across the magazines. "Start with that core you mentioned. How do we kill it?"
Diana looked up at him, her amber eyes wide, filled with a terrible, knowing sadness. Her bloody finger lifted, trembling, and pointed not at him, not at Reyes, but directly at the surface of her desk. "It doesn't need to come here," she whispered, her voice suddenly thin, fading. "Because it already..." Her form shimmered, like heat haze off asphalt. Not violently, but dissolving. The edges blurred, losing cohesion.
"Albertson?" McCall reached out instinctively. His fingers passed through the fading image of her shoulder, encountering only cold air where her lab coat should have been. Diana’s form collapsed inward, dissolving into faint motes of light that winked out before hitting the desk. Gone.
Only the magazines remained. The recipe book. The silence. And the crushing weight of her unspoken words hanging in the sterile air.
Reyes’s sharp intake of breath cut through the quiet. Their rifle lowered, pointing uselessly at the spot where she’d stood. "Derek…what the hell just happened?" The name was barely a whisper, thick with dawning horror.
McCall stared at the empty space, then down at the desk she’d pointed to. Nothing. Just polished laminate. His own reflection, distorted and pale, stared back from the surface. The silence amplified the frantic thudding of his own heart, a counterpoint to the distant, almost forgotten pulse of the facility. The normalcy of the room now felt like a cruel joke, a meticulously staged trap. The magazines, the recipe book – props in a terrifying play. And Diana Albertson, their desperate, bloody guide… had she ever really been there?
He slammed his fist down on the desk. The Good Housekeeping magazine jumped. "Damn it!" The sound was too loud in the confined space. "What was that pointing supposed to mean? The desk? The magazines? What?" He scanned the surface frantically, looking for a hidden switch, a scrawled message, anything. Just clean laminate and mundane reading material.
Reyes took a hesitant step into the room, their eyes scanning the walls, the ceiling vents again. "It watched through Thorne. Through Jensen and Choi. Through the walls." Their voice was low, shaky. They looked at McCall, then slowly, deliberately, pointed at the surface of the desk Diana had indicated. "Derek… my notes wrote everything down