“Papa!” I cried out in a choked voice.
But the screeching shout of the Soldier inside the room with us buried my voice. My head jerked towards him only to see a bladed dart impaled in his cheek, having missed his eye by only a couple of centimeters. Curling herself into a perfect ball, Brees rolled at high speed towards the Soldier, knocking him off his feet before he could react. His partner immediately began firing his blaster at Brees, but the shots bounced ineffectively off her scales.
The other Creckels surged out of their cages and furiously raced towards both the Soldier that had shot my father and the second one standing next to him. Terrified, the Kryptids turned tail and started fleeing towards the lift at the end of the hallway.
The one Brees had knocked down attempted to get back on his feet. Frighteningly long and sharp, chitin bladed-pincers grew from his forearm as the Kryptid initiated the shift into his battle form. But the Creckel female cut him off. Unfolding herself, she struck him with three violent blows of her wide, flat tail, shattering the chitin plates that covered his thigh. Without missing a beat, she spit some of her acid into the open wound.
I thought my eardrums would burst from the shrill sound that tore out of the Soldier’s throat. Thankfully, with a couple of swift swipes of her talon-like, vicious claws, Brees smashed the armor around the Kryptid’s neck before slashing his vocal cords.
The other Soldiers never made it to the lift. Like a hungry swarm, the Creckels had knocked them down and were tearing them limb from limb. But I had no time for the bugs. After helping my mother up, we both ran to my father’s side.
Being both biomedical experts, my parents had started sharing some of their scientific knowledge with me from a young age. According to my mother, despite only being eleven years old, she believed I would qualify for pre-med school. After all, there had been nothing else for a child to do in this base. But I’d certainly learned enough to know my father’s wound was a critical one.
“Go get the hover stretcher so that we can get him to the lab,” my mother ordered, while attempting to stanch the bleeding by applying pressure.
My stomach churned at the sight of the organic membrane on the floor greedily drinking my dad’s life blood. If we didn’t get him off the floor soon, the membrane would consider him as organic waste and digest him to maintain and repair itself.
I ran inside the lab located a few doors from where my father had fallen and rushed to the hover stretcher. I set it to manual navigation so that I could get back to my parents faster and hurried back out of the room. Just as I was turning into the hallway, the chime of the lift returning startled me. The door slid open, revealing a tall, black, cone-shaped device sitting in the center of the lift. I had no idea what it was but knew at a visceral level that it would harm us beyond words.
A second later, a small hole opened in front of it, projecting a yellowish smoke that immediately wilted the membranes covering the walls alongside the lift.
“MAMA!” I shouted.
“RUN!” my mother yelled before jumping to her feet to come towards me. But at the same instant, a blinding light exploded before my eyes, stabbing so hard at my pupils I believed white hot daggers had been impaled into them. A thundering roar deafened me as a violent explosion rocked the base. I flew backwards then landed on the floor with a loud thud, stunned but screaming in excruciating pain. My eyes felt as if they’d been ripped right out of my skull.
Half-delirious with pain, I felt a Creckel snout against my cheek before sharp teeth closed around the collar of my t-shirt and dragged me into the great hall. A sulfurous scent reached me, making my lungs instantly burn. But even as I writhed in agony, I felt countless Creckel bodies surround me, and moments later, my mother’s warmth. She pulled me into her arms, the wheezing sound of her breathing confirming she’d inhaled too much of whatever that gas had been.
A few more explosions shook the base as the Creckels formed a protective dome around my mother and me. By the time the noise and shaking ended, I knew two things beyond the shadow of a doubt. First, we’d been entombed in this secret lab. And second, I would never see normally again.
1
Janelle
My dried, parched throat ached at the sight of the somewhat murky water sparingly raining over the vegetables in the greenhouse. There was enough for me to drink, but I couldn't afford getting sick again. Boiling it didn't do as much good as it once used to. My stomach hurt just at the thought of the spoiled liquid inside my belly. That my damaged eyes could clearly see the wrongness of the water’s color spoke volumes as to its current state. It had been getting worse over the years, but we were now truly reaching the tipping point.
Even the vegetables were a shadow of what they once had been. The glorious greenhouse Mom had built within the base decades ago was such a distant memory that sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it. The spinach leaves hung pathetically, looking almost wilted. It wasn't all that surprising considering the soil was exhausted. And the fertilizer provided by the membrane had become as terrible as the water.
Putting down the watering can, I blindly reached for the basket in which I collected the few greens that were mature enough to be consumed. Everything smelled bad: the water, the food, and especially the membrane. It was too old, rotting on the walls and on the floor it had been meant to protect. The organic tissue had once been a healthy burgundy color. Its soft, cushiony texture had covered most of the base except for the ceiling that had the ventilation membrane pockmarked with alveoli. The membrane had kept the base clean and in good functioning order back when we still received food and steady supplies. It consumed soiled water and organic waste, using them to repair itself or recycling them into clean water or fertilizers. There was a time, it even produced a protein paste that could have replaced a meal.
But now, lack of fresh food for the membrane had taken its toll. What parts remained had a greyish hue. Or rather, it did back when I could still see colors clearly enough. Now, with the increasingly faltering optical aid Mom had built for me after the explosion, I could only see blurry shades of grey. As my other senses picked up while my sight dwindled, the sickly-sweet scent that rose from the membrane explained much and more. There was none of it left beneath my feet. I’d begun wondering if the membrane had eaten part of itself to survive. Beyond the sections burnt and destroyed in the explosion, why else would such a growing portion of it have disappeared over the years?
The Kryptid underground laboratory where I was born had been my home, my shelter, and my prison for the past thirty-one years. And in the next few weeks—a month at best—it would become my tomb.
I dragged my feet down the hallway to the hatchery to feed the larvae. My parents had initially raised them for some properties of the slimy mucus they produced, which they used for their experiments. Today, the larvae constituted our only remaining source of protein.
The stench that welcomed me made my stomach churn. Directly carved into the stone, the walls of the medium-sized, semi-circular room were lined with glass tanks once filled with larvae. Now, only the largest one in the middle still teemed with life. Or rather, writhed with the last few weak survivors. My heart sank at the sight of at least two dead larvae. It had been happening more and more frequently, no doubt due to the bad greens I was feeding them, or whatever the contaminated water did to them.