Chapter 2
Continuing his way around the lab… he kept himself hidden and out of trouble as much as possible, but a few times some surviving lab guards and staff spotted him before they were eaten by Honkai beasts.
‘Shit… this is bad…’ He thought to himself as he carried what weapons and ammo he could as well as items he can use to heal himself… this isn’t a game, and if he dies here, that’s probably it for him in this life. “How on earth do I get out of here…? They’ve got to have some map…” He looks at one of the walls, “I should probably go to their office first… see what I can find and gather…”
Raising his pistol and knife, he makes his way to the side hallway, hugging the shadows and moving low to the ground. The hum of damaged lights above and the faint groans of collapsing infrastructure cover the soft sound of his footsteps.
He passes the remains of more guards—some torn apart, others burned from energy discharges. His hands tremble for a moment, but he breathes deep, keeping his focus. No time for fear.
Eventually, a metal plaque on the wall reads:
RESEARCH PERSONNEL BLOCK – ADMIN WING
Bingo.
He slips through the partially open blast door. Inside, the office is in disarray—papers strewn everywhere, glass shattered, monitors blinking with static and half-loaded data. But most importantly—no Honkai beast in sight. Not yet.
William quickly moves to one of the desks, yanking open drawers and checking for anything useful. That’s when he sees it—a small data stick, blinking faintly blue, still plugged into a shattered terminal.
He snatches it without hesitation, stuffing it into a side pouch. Could be research data... escape protocols... passwords. Anything.
Next, he spots a dead lab officer slumped over a console, a security access card hanging from his coat. William carefully retrieves it, checking the tag:
LEVEL 3 ACCESS – RESTRICTED SECTIONS, EVACUATION PATHS
A goldmine.
Suddenly, static crackles through one of the wall monitors. An emergency evacuation map flashes briefly—corrupted, flickering—but long enough for William to memorize the general layout.
“East sector… maintenance tunnel… evac shuttle bay?” he mutters. “If that’s still intact, that’s my way out.”
Another explosion shakes the building. Lights flicker again. A distant shriek echoes through the corridor behind him. Honkai. Closer now.
No time.
He pockets what intel he can, rips a half-burned map off the wall for reference, and bolts out of the office, weapons ready.
Pew pew! Some sort of automated turret sparks to life down the hallway as William sprints past—half-broken, erratic, but still dangerous. He ducks low, sliding behind an overturned gurney just as a few stray rounds slam into the wall behind him.
The shriek comes again—closer.
Then he sees them.
Twisted figures stumbling through the hallway. Lab coats drenched in blackened ichor. Their skin pale, stretched, corrupted with violet crystalline veins crawling across their bodies. Eyes glowing faintly with Honkai corruption. Once scientists. Now monsters.
William doesn’t hesitate.
The first one lurches toward him, clawed hands reaching out with jerky, twitching movements. He pulls the trigger. Bang!
The shot hits center mass—slowing it, but not stopping.
"Of course it wouldn't be that easy," he mutters.
The creature screeches. He lunges forward, ducking a wide swipe and driving his knife deep into the base of its jaw. With a twist and a grunt, he pulls back. The thing collapses, twitching.
He grabs its dropped syringe belt without thinking—half-full vials of who-knows-what, but if it looks like it heals or burns, he’ll take it.
Another two round the corner.
He fires again—two headshots, both clean this time. The recoil makes his arm ache, but he keeps moving, stepping over their bodies as the hallway grows more distorted, more unstable.
Emergency klaxons blare. Smoke seeps through the vents.
He swipes the Level 3 card through a wall-mounted scanner. The red light flickers, then turns green. Access granted.
The door hisses open.
“Come on…” he breathes, stepping into the restricted maintenance sector.
It’s darker here. Quieter. But something’s wrong—the air is colder, heavier.
He glances at the map again. If he can cut through here, he can reach the evac shuttle bay.
Problem is… those evac shuttles require a pilot and a key…
“Gotta make a detour… better find someone who’s a pilot, but still alive—if that’s even possible…”
William creeps forward, each step echoing slightly in the dim corridor. The emergency lights barely function here, casting everything in a harsh red hue. Steam hisses from cracked pipes, and sparks drip like embers from overhead wiring. His grip tightens on his pistol.
He checks a nearby wall panel—status: Shuttle Access Locked
Key Authentication Required.
Personnel ID: Flight Officer Tier or Above.
“Figures,” he mutters. “Of course they’d lock it down.”
He exhales sharply, then looks at the cracked schematic he'd peeled off earlier. One route branches off toward a flight crew dormitory and personnel wing, deeper in the facility—but it’s marked as high-risk. Whatever containment breach happened here… that area was hit hard.
But it’s the only shot he has.
As he moves deeper into the maintenance sector, he begins noticing signs of struggle—bullet holes, blood smears, shredded uniforms. He steps over a broken helmet. The visor is smashed. The person inside wasn’t so lucky.
Suddenly—clang! A loud metallic crash from up ahead.
William dives behind a supply crate, peeking out just in time to see something huge lumbering through the smoke-filled corridor.
A Honkai-mutated brute, formed from the remnants of a security exo-suit—except it’s fused with flesh now. A grotesque mix of alloy plating and muscle, tendrils pulsing where wires once were. One of its mechanical arms ends in a buzzing sawblade, the other a cannon fused into its twisted shoulder.
It hasn’t seen him. Not yet.
William breathes slow. Calculating. If he wants to reach the flight wing, he’ll either need to sneak around it… or fight it.
His eyes flick to a nearby maintenance panel. Loose wires. Power conduits.
An idea begins to form.
He stays low, heart hammering in his chest. The mutated brute pauses, its twisted metal frame shuddering with each breath. That cannon arm hums ominously—charging? No. Just pulsing. Idle.
Still time.
He eyes the maintenance panel again. Sparks pop and hiss from a frayed conduit running along the ceiling and into a junction box overhead—right above the brute’s patrol path.
William creeps back, silent and focused, until he finds what he needs: a length of steel pipe and a disconnected power cable trailing from a wall unit. He traces the wire—still live. Dangerous. Perfect.
Using what tools he’s scavenged, he rigs a makeshift tripwire across the hallway and runs the live cable through it. Carefully. Deliberately. One wrong touch and he could fry himself.
The plan is simple: lead the brute through, let it stumble into the wire, then trigger the junction box above to drop a live arc of electricity straight onto the metal-and-flesh monstrosity.
One shot. That’s all I’ve got.
He flicks a nearby wall panel and sends a short override command with a spare access stick—jury-rigged for temporary control. The box above flickers to life, now primed to discharge.
Now, the bait.
William breaks cover just long enough to whistle—sharp, loud—then disappears behind stacked debris, out of sight.
The brute roars.
Its cannon fires blindly down the hall—BOOM!—blasting chunks of wall, sending fire and smoke into the air. William ducks, shielding his face as the tremors rumble through the floor.
The heavy footsteps begin. Metal scraping concrete. The brute charges, just like he wanted.
Step. Step. SNAP—ZRRRAKK!!
Electricity surges up the brute’s leg, arcing across its torso as the ceiling conduit blows open, raining sparks and liquid flame. The creature lets out a distorted, mechanical howl, convulsing as the charge courses through its twisted form.
William doesn’t wait.
He sprints from cover, leaps, and drives the stun baton directly into the exposed joint where flesh meets metal, overloading it with a brutal second shock. The brute spasms again—and collapses in a smoking heap.
William stares, panting, the air thick with burnt ozone and blood.
“…Still alive,” he mutters, half to himself, stepping back from the sparking wreck. “That actually worked.”
He loots what he can from the brute’s remains—an intact keycard clutched in a blackened fist beneath the plating. Flight Officer Tier. Just his luck.
He slides it into his pocket, looks down the dark hallway ahead… and moves on.
The flickering emergency lights guide William deeper into the corridor. Smoke drifts through the air, mixing with the coppery tang of blood and scorched flesh. He passes what used to be a guard post—now a mangled ruin, half-collapsed, walls dented from the brute’s rampage.
Then… a faint cough.
He stops.
There—tucked behind a scorched desk, barely moving—a person. A pilot judging by the half-torn uniform, the fractured visor of their helmet flickering with dying HUD readouts. Blood pools beneath them.
William approaches cautiously, keeping his pistol ready, just in case. But the figure doesn’t resist.
“Y-You…” the pilot wheezes, eyes glassy but aware. “Thought you were… one of them…”
“Relax,” William says, crouching beside them. “I’m trying to get out. You’re a pilot, right? Evac shuttle?”
The pilot chuckles weakly, then coughs hard—red splattering against the wall.
“You’re damn lucky…” they rasp. “I… I locked down shuttle A-2… remote override’s on my data stick… it’ll work with the keycard… but the system—corrupted… you’ll have to reboot it manually… bridge terminal…”
William’s heart sinks. That meant fighting through whatever might be waiting on the upper level.
The pilot groans again, shifting slightly. “Take it… just… get the hell out of here…”
They weakly hand him a cracked but functional data stick, barely holding together with some emergency tape. The light on it still blinks blue.
“And kid…” the pilot murmurs, voice fading. “Don’t… look back…”
Their eyes glaze over. Still. Silent.
William stands, clutching the stick tightly. The hallway looms ahead—dark, uncertain. But now he had a way out. A real way.
“Thanks…” he whispers, barely audible.
And then he moves on—deeper into the facility, toward the bridge… toward the unknown.
‘I never got his name… but he seems decent than the rest of the people here…’
The bridge wasn’t far now.
William moved like a shadow, sticking close to the walls, footsteps silent on scorched tile. Every few meters, he paused—listened. The ambient hum of power grids barely functioning, crackling sparks from torn wires, the distant drip of some unknown fluid. But no roars. No screaming.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that made your skin crawl.
He slipped through another blast door—half-open, jammed by debris—and entered a wide maintenance hall leading to the upper bridge. The walls were lined with cracked pipes, leaking steam that hissed softly into the cold air. Visibility was poor. Shadows danced with each flicker of the ceiling lights.
His grip tightened around the stun baton in one hand, pistol in the other.
A soft squelch underfoot.
He froze, looking down.
Blood trail. Fresh. Still warm.
And then—
Clang.
He snapped his head toward the sound.
Nothing.
But something had moved.
He ducked behind a nearby support pillar, breath shallow. Watching. Waiting.
The shadows seemed to shift near the far end of the corridor. Something massive scraped against the wall. Heavy. Breathing. William could feel it more than hear it—the rhythmic exhale of something alive. Predatory.
The brute.
But it wasn’t charging. Not yet.
It was hunting.
William’s eyes scanned the room—pipes overhead, loose wiring, sparking electrical panels, and… an old fuel valve.
He grinned. Just a little.
Time for payback.
He crept along the side, keeping his profile low, reaching the exposed panel. With a flick of his knife, he cracked open the power relay junction, rerouting current into the overhead lights. The flickering grew violent—strobing, erratic.
He moved to the fuel valve. Twisting it open, he let the liquid trickle onto the floor, just enough to coat the path near the brute’s direction.
Another step. Another scrape. It was coming closer.
William backed away, taking cover near an electrical box.
Three… two…
The brute emerged—a hulking, mutated scientist, body twisted by Honkai corruption, dragging a misshapen arm like a club.
One.
He hit the switch.
ZAAAP!
Electricity surged into the valve's trail.
WHOOSH!
The fuel ignited in a blinding flash. The brute screamed, caught in the firestorm, stumbling and thrashing wildly. It wasn’t dead—but it was burning. Weakened.
William burst from cover.
CRACK! Stun baton to the leg.
BANG BANG! Two shots to the chest.
The brute roared, flailing blindly—just long enough for William to dive past it and sprint through the corridor toward the lift.
He didn’t look back.
But he didn’t need to.
He could still hear the creature’s agonized wails echoing through the flames.
The bridge loomed ahead.
Doors sealed. Reinforced. But not untouched—one was pried open just enough for someone his size to squeeze through.
Smoke curled out from the opening.
William slowed his breathing, approached with measured steps. He pressed his back to the wall, peered through the narrow gap.
The bridge was a wreck.
Consoles fried. Bodies slumped over terminals. Blood smeared across shattered glass. And at the center—bathed in the emergency red lights—a figure stood hunched, twitching, muttering nonsense.
Another corrupted crew member… or rather, what was left of them. One side of his face was intact, wearing the pilot uniform. The rest? Blackened with Honkai veins, eyes glowing faintly purple. But he wasn’t mindless—not yet. A semi-aware mutant, locked in the in-between.
William’s stomach twisted. He needed the evac key.
And it was still clipped to the pilot’s belt.
He whispered under his breath, “…This day just keeps getting better.”
He sheathed his knife, holstered his pistol, and gripped the stun baton tight. This had to be quick.
He slipped inside, crouching low behind a wrecked console, keeping to the blind spots. The pilot-creature twitched again, muttering like he was reliving a memory.
“Can’t… let them… out. Protocol-09. Protect the project…”
Closer…
William reached the side railing. Just a few more steps.
Suddenly—
CLANK.
His knee brushed a loose metal panel.
The pilot’s head snapped toward the sound.
William dove behind the next terminal.
Too late.
“INTRUDER!” the pilot shrieked, voice distorted by Honkai infection.
CRASH!
It lunged at the console, swinging a mutated arm like a blade, shredding through circuits.
William ducked, rolled under a chair, and jabbed upward—CRACK!—the stun baton slammed into the creature’s side, sparks flying. It reeled back, howling.
He pressed the advantage.
A shot to the leg. Another to the chest.
The thing stumbled—but it was fast. Too fast.
It slashed wildly—cutting wires, slicing through panels. The whole bridge screamed with energy discharges. One lucky strike hit a power conduit.
BOOM!
A surge of force threw them both back. William slammed into the railing, dazed, ears ringing.
But the key—the key had flown loose.
It skidded across the floor, landing between the two.
They both saw it.
William moved.
He dove, grabbed it, and in one smooth motion, jammed the stun baton into the creature’s chest and pushed. Voltage screamed through the beast’s body, lighting up every inch of its Honkai-infected flesh.
It convulsed, shrieked, and collapsed.
William didn’t wait to see if it stayed down.
He snatched up the data stick from the pilot’s belt, then ran to the console and shoved the key into the manual override.
Warning. Emergency shuttle release initiated.
“Open, damn it—”
FWOOSH.
The emergency exit on the far side of the bridge slid open with a hiss of steam and airlock release.
The tunnel to freedom.
He looked back once—at the chaos, the bodies, the flames flickering down the hallway where he’d come from.
Then he bolted. The shuttle bay door slid open.
Freedom was inches away, but as William crossed the threshold, his pulse raced—not from the relief of escape—but the sudden drop in temperature. A heavy, unnerving presence filled the air, almost tangible.
No…
He halted, his eyes scanning the shadows ahead. A growl echoed through the dimly lit tunnel, vibrating in his chest.
And then he saw it.
A creature unlike any he’d fought before.
This wasn't a mutated scientist or an average Honkai beast. It was a massive brute, its body a grotesque combination of sinew, jagged armor, and glowing veins, every inch pulsating with corrupted energy. Its eyes—too many eyes—all gleamed a sickly violet.
It stood there, towering, blocking his only way forward.
William’s fingers tightened around the rifle he’d stolen, his breath shallow. His heart was pounding so loudly he could hear it over the crackling of the emergency lights.
The creature roared.
A terrifying, animalistic sound.
“Shit…” William muttered under his breath, quickly raising the rifle from a nearby dead soldier. He pulled the trigger.
Pew! Pew!
The energy blasts hit, but the creature barely flinched.
Nothing.
His heart sank.
Another roar, and it charged. He scrambled to get out of the way, but the creature was faster, its claws like serrated blades. It swiped, knocking him back with the force of a freight train.
He crashed into the wall, pain shooting through his ribs as his back hit with a sickening thud.
Damn it…
He spat out blood, his vision blurred. The rifle slipped from his grasp. His head swam.
Then it happened.
The pain in his chest ignited. A wave of white-hot heat spread through his body, making his skin burn. He gasped, eyes flashing wide as something surged in his veins—something wild, primal.
He didn’t know what it was, but it felt... right. As if his body knew what to do.
His hand shook as he reached for the fallen weapon, but it wasn’t the rifle that caught his attention.
A low hum.
A faint, ethereal glow—like light filtering through the darkness of his mind.
The Honkai that had thrown him into the wall raised its claws again, ready to finish him off.
But this time, William didn’t retreat.
With a roar that felt foreign in his throat, a surge of power exploded from deep within. His body moved without thinking—swift and brutal. He wasn’t just dodging; he was anticipating every movement, every strike the creature made. His reflexes had become… inhuman.
He lunged.
The creature’s claws slashed through the air where he had been, but William was already behind it, his own body reacting to his instincts. He slammed his foot into the beast’s back, using the momentum to spin it around and slam it into a nearby support beam.
The creature shrieked, disoriented for a moment.
In that split second, William’s hand shot forward. His fingers closed around the creature’s throat.
Energy rippled through him.
His vision went white again—just for a moment. And then he felt it. The surge of raw power running through his body. His eyes flickered, a fleeting moment of clarity—something long forgotten, buried under years of pain.
And then—
The creature’s body twisted and convulsed, its many eyes wide in horror as it tried to escape. But it was too late. The light left its body, and it crumpled, lifeless.
William collapsed to the floor, his breath ragged.
He couldn’t remember how the fight had ended. All he knew was that he was exhausted, drained beyond belief.
As he closed his eyes, the last thing he saw was the shuttle bay doors creaking open…
Footsteps.
Then darkness.
-
To be continued.