Breakout
Dr. Skirth had to be fucking with him. “You’re talking about aliens? Like…aliens? ‘E.T. phone home’, aliens?” Eddie Brock would have laughed himself sick if he wasn’t already nauseated by the prospect of what he was doing. He was already here, after all, riding the elevator to hell; if even a fraction of what she’d told him, or what he’d read in those case files, was true? They were both about to end up at the bottom of a landfill.
“Yes.” The look on her face was chilling. “…but we don’t call them that.”
As they passed through sterile hallways, eerily unoccupied, she gave him the rundown of the space mission, the comet, the experiments…it was the kind of over-the-top nuts that would be right at home in a trashy tabloid. Maybe a cheap sci-fi novel. There had better be some damn good proof.
With a beep from the blue pad that scanned Dr. Skirth’s palm, the doors to the laboratory slid open—just in time, as the sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway. The two of them hurriedly slipped through the doors before they shut, holding their breath for several long moments until they were certain the security guard had passed. Dr. Skirth silently gestured to the room, and Eddie took the cue to proceed.
The laboratory was dark, though blue light illuminated various windowed chambers. The powerful smell of bleach did its best to smother the kind of odors that were better left unnamed. Eddie paused at various points, taking photos—each image more haunting, and more damning, than the last. A yellowish mass of goo was splayed over the edge of an overturned examination table in one chamber, like the world’s biggest, nastiest blob of snot. A man lay as still as death in another, staring at nothing—the readout lit up on the window with the words ‘CURRENT STATUS: STABLE’ and ‘DAYS IN HOST 4’ and, terrifyingly, ‘190 degrees’. Dr. Skirth muttered something he didn’t quite catch, apart from the phrase “feeding on their organs”. Eddie was very, very sure that he didn’t want to know—and equally sure that he needed to interview this woman for everything she had, provided they made it out of there in one piece. As he saw more of this macabre little zoo, that was feeling less and less likely.
Dr. Skirth frowned at the readouts of his next subject, a woman who was curled up on the floor of her chamber and rocking gently. Eddie wondered if there was something off about them and moved to examine them more closely. They were both so preoccupied that they failed to notice the woman moving until she began pounding the window of her chamber, making them both jump.
“Eddie!” the woman said hoarsely, her movements frantic.
His eyes widened with shock as he recognized her face. “Maria?!” It was the homeless woman who had charmed him into “buying” a newspaper from her the other night. She continued to beat her hands on the window and begged him to let her out.
His eyes darted over the chamber, searching for a way to set her free, before he remembered his companion. “Dr. Skirth! Well don’t just stand there, get her out of there!”
She stammered. “I, I can’t, she has—we have to—” That was as far as she got before Eddie took matters into his own hands. His rapid attempt to use the touchscreen keypad resulted in the lights in the laboratory turning red and a high pitched alarm going off. Maria shrieked and covered her ears at the sound. Dr. Skirth backed away, utterly panicked at the sight of him shattering the window with a fire extinguisher—and the sudden shift in Maria from fearful to aggressive.
Maria leapt from the chamber and knocked Eddie to the ground. When Dr. Skirth moved to help him, Maria snatched up the fire extinguisher and hurled it in her general direction. It missed—and shattered the window of another chamber. As Maria began furiously choking Eddie, another set of too-strong hands grabbed the doctor from behind.
Black tendrils flowed from Maria’s arms into Eddie, seeming to soak into his skin and disappear. She rolled off of him to the floor, all semblance of life suddenly gone from her face. Eddie stood, trembling and disoriented.
Dr. Skirth was on the floor next to the man from the other chamber—the one he had been absolutely, 100% certain was dead. If he hadn’t been before, he definitely was now. The doctor was hyperventilating, her face twisted into an expression of horror. About that time Eddie’s survival instinct kicked in, and he yanked her to her feet. “We have to go!” She looked at him without seeming to really see him, and he shook her. “Come on!” She seemed to collect herself a bit as the sound of security approaching registered to both of them. and nodded. They ran.
The escape from the LIFE Foundation was a delirious blur that neither of them would remember clearly afterward. Flashing lights. A tree absurdly smashed into tiny pieces. Men with guns swarming over the woods like ants. Clinging to a tree, and each other, for dear life.