Descending to the bowels of his own personal hell reminded Caleb of his dreams.

  Since he was little, and every time he found himself alone and unwanted, Caleb drifted to a land - not unlike the one he found himself in.

  Crowds of screaming, terrified citizens fled legions of snarling dogs, unable to fight back against the horde. Men, women and children alike stumbled and fell, immediately falling foul of hungry gnashing teeth.

  Caleb stood tall on a rocky outcrop, watching the chaos unfold. He wore a chainmail cloak, its steel skeleton covered in the thickest bat hide. He rested on the heavy obsidian hilt on his sword, its unendingly sharp tip dug deep into the stone beneath.

  In this fantasy, a ruined city stood before him. Flame plumed from once-proud skyscrapers amid the soundtrack of harried shrieks.

  Caleb surveyed the lay of the land, nodded once, then jumped into the fray.

  He sped forward, hitting the horde of feral dogs at full force. The pack splintered, reduced to a broken collection of crying puppies.

  He reached out the crowd, effortlessly catching the injured and sweeping them up out of harms way atop a bus stop.

  When the path was clear, he separated the dead from the dying, the dying from the injured, the injured from the physically unharmed but mentally traumatised. Then, one by one, with his holy touch, he saved them all. His power wasn’t Godly in any known theological conception, but Caleb knew it emanated from the very heart of humanity’s creation.

  That night, he slept amid his thankful crowd, his fingers caught in the shining red hair of a local-

  “Hey!” Dave shouted. “I said, are you still with us back there?”

  “Sure am,” Caleb said, clearing his throat.

  “You have to concentrate, man. It’s life or death at every step.”

  He nodded. “I know, I know. Sorry. Guess I’d rather be anywhere but here.”

  “I get it.” Kayleigh said over the continuous whir of the hand-cranked torch. “So let’s focus on getting out of here. My wrist hurts.”

  They descended in silence, until the steps beneath them stopped clicking as metal underfoot does, and started bending and creaking like wood.

  “Do you feel that?” Caleb asked, testing the next step carefully before relying on it to take his full weight. “Something’s different.”

  Kayleigh shone her torch at the staircase itself. It was spindlier, yellowed now. Not metal any more.

  “Are we standing on bone?” Oliver said, panic rising again.

  “Looks like it…” Caleb considered the morale of the group. “Let’s not think about it too hard. At least we haven’t heard any more shrieks, right?”

  Right on cue, a low rumbling growl emanated from what must have been the bottom of the staircase.

  “Group pact: we didn’t hear that.” Kayleigh announced.

  “Agreed,” the group replied in disjointed unison.

  Kayleigh’s light hit the floor.

  Finally. Solid Ground.

  The group pooled at the bottom of the staircase until Caleb reached the end too.

  They were in a vast, echoing room. Too big to even see the sides. Kayleigh’s weak torch bounced off cylindrical tanks that bubbled softly in the silence.

  “I guess it’s some kind of lab?” thought Caleb aloud.

  Dave headed to the nearest tank and peered inside. “It’s pretty murky in there,” he pressed his nose up against the glass and squinted through the green jelly.

  A cow’s head bobbed into view. “Shit!” Dave leapt back.

  Caleb, Oliver and Kayleigh gazed into the laboratory tank. A severed cow’s head danced across the tank. There didn’t appear to be a wound, the bottom of the neck was sealed and covered over with fur. Its huge furry tongue lolled out of its mouth and its eyes were crossed.

  “Looks like it was grown inside.” Kayleigh murmured, in a voice not entirely her own, still cranking the torch handle to get some semblance of light.

  The hero’s voice again, Caleb thought. So it’s not just me.

  “I told you earlier to quit that weird voice, Kayleigh.” Dave playfully punched her harm and she reeled back in mock anguish.

  “I told you it wasn’t me!”

  The cow uncrossed its eyes, blinked and took a long, deep and rumbling moo. The other experiment tanks shook, the jelly inside them sloshing. The staircase trembled.

  “So that explains the noise.” Oliver said, laughing. “I’m kinda relieved actually. That thing isn’t going to harm anyone.”

  Caleb started to wander between the bubbling tanks.

  More like Unnatural History Museum, he thought.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Kayleigh turned to Oliver and Dave. “You two stay there,” she said. “I don’t want anyone losing sight of the way back out.

  She followed Caleb, shining her torch. “Wait up,” she said, “You’re not going far without this.” She held the torch out. Without her constant input, it flickered and started to die. “Sorry,” she said, then started to crank it again.

  “Don’t apologise for anything,” Caleb said. “Ever.”

  She snorted nervously. “It’s not that deep.”

  A few moments of silence passed. “So, it’s a lab, right? You think those Scrapers were made down here?”

  Caleb chuckled. “Scrapers?”

  Kayleigh’s cheeks turned a deep shade of crimson. “It’s from a- don’t worry about it.”

  “No, no.” Caleb said, happy to find a like-minded friend. “I thought that too, actually.”

  “Oh.” She said, nodding. “Cool.” A little smile crept over her lips.

  “This one’s a different shape.” Caleb said. Kayleigh cast her light over the rectangular tank.

  They watched for a moment. Nothing but green. Although the same hue, the substance inside wasn’t jelly. It swirled, like a fog. An inky black creature darted past, from left to right.

  “Woah.” The pair leapt back.

  The creature swam from right to left this time, too fast to really see what it was exactly.

  Kayleigh’s sweaty hand found Caleb’s. He squeezed it in reassurance, even though his heart was beating like crazy. Their eyes met and she shrank back.

  The creature unfurled to try to grab the glass wall with its beak.

  “There’s your razor-sharp volcanic octopus,” she said.

  Caleb noted that the inside walls of the tank had been deeply scratched by the rage of the creature.

  Now that Caleb could fully see the creature, he could see how accurate his initial assessment was. Its hide was deeply studded with needles that thickened into trunks as they sprouted from the octopus's hide. Its jet-black hide shimmered with crimson like an oil spill.

  “What are you?” He whispered as the Octopus drove its beak again and again into a single spot of the tank.

  “It’s trying to get out.” Kayleigh said. “I always hated going to the zoo. The monkeys and tigers always looked like they were plotting.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t much like the idea of being cooped up in here, either.” Caleb said. He turned back to Kayleigh. “Let’s explore some more.”

  Caleb directed Kayleigh to run the torch across the entire length of the rectangular tank, but there was no plaque, no access ports, no power supply, no controls, no features of any kind. The tank seemed entirely sealed - its cover was just as glass as the rest of it.

  “How did you get it there?” Caleb mused.

  “They were definitely grown in these tanks” Kayleigh shook her numb fingers off then continued to work the handle.

  Slithering footsteps echoed through the vast hall - something was coming down the stairs. An alien chittering accompanied it.

  “Glad I found that typewriter earlier.” Caleb said in the hero’s voice. “By the sounds of that, we’re in for one hell of a fight.”

  A black blur hit Kayleigh’s hands with laser precision. The torch scattered to the floor, its light dimming immediately. The razor octopus skidded back and leapt for the duo.

  “Shitshitshit-” Caleb grabbed Kayleigh’s hand in the half-light then pulled her back towards the stairwell.

  “Oliver!” He shouted. “Get ready to shoot this fuckin’ thing!”

  Caleb tasted blood as he ricocheted between tanks. With each hit, whatever was inside screamed for attention. The place soon became a funhouse mirror petting zoo of modified animal abominations.

  “Now!” Caleb locked eyes with Oliver, who was fumbling with the safety lock on the m19.

  Caleb twisted back to see the Octopus sink its beak deep into Kayleigh’s shoulder. She stumbled, shrieking as the octopus opened its beak inside the wound, covering Caleb in fresh hot blood.

  BANG BANG BANG

  Oliver had started firing indiscriminately. Caleb felt a new type of blood, stickier, hotter…

  Much hotter…

  Burning, in fact. He ripped his shirt off and wiped away the acid blood of the octopus.

  Not a gunshot wound, thank fuck.

  Kayleigh sat bolt upright on the floor, crying out for help. Her shoulder was ripped open like a flower of meat. The octopus, covered in bullet holes, was still firmly trapped within the wound.

  Dave wrapped the smouldering remains of Caleb’s shirt in his hands and yanked the dead monster off of Kayleigh. He crushed it in his hands, then pelted it as hard as he could at the nearest cylinder. The glass cracked like a spider’s web out from the point of impact.

  Oliver reloaded from the ammo box, as Caleb wiped the gore from his eyes and pulled Kayleigh to the bottom step.

  The parts of her that weren’t covered in red or black blood were sickly white, almost green. Her eyelids flickered and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her whole body shook from the trauma.

  Dave reached into his pocket. “I spawned with this,” he said, offering up a white aerosol spray with a red cross etched upon it.

  “Oh, thank god.” Caleb said, grabbing the health spray and immediately tending to Kayleigh’s wounds. He sprayed the fine green mist across the length of the massive gash and watched it knit itself back together, scar over then disappear.

  Caleb collapsed back, letting the stairs jab him in the spine as he gave up.

  “Wha? What happened?” whispered Kayleigh as she faded back into consciousness.

  “You’re safe now.” Caleb said. “Oliver shot that thing and Dave was hiding a health spray from us.

  “I wasn’t hiding it.” Dave kicked the bottom of the damaged tank like a stubborn child. “I didn’t know what it was.”

  “Oh,” Kayleigh still sounded far away, like she was high or just disassociated. “I thought I was a goner for a moment there.”

  “We all did,” Oliver peered up from the smoking barrel of the gun.

  “I didn’t realise you were such a deadshot,” Dave said, with a hint of admiration in his tone.

  “My dad took me to the range a couple times when I was a kid.” Oliver shrugged. “A couple times every weekend for the first 18 years of my life.”

  The squad laughed together.

  “We should probably take stock. Has anyone else got any items?”

  “Found this on the dead alien ballsack.” Dave said, holding up the top half of the octopus’ beak. It glowed green in the light of the tanks.

  “Could be useful, I suppose.” Caleb said, not wanting to piss him off too much.

  “I’m empty.” Oliver turned out his pockets. The empty ammo box lay at his feet. “The ink ribbon came in with me and I just reloaded the gun with all the ammo in the box.

  “I’ve still got a silver skeleton key,” admitted Caleb. “But I already used it in the first room. I don’t know if it’ll be useful again.”

  Kayleigh coughed. “And all I spawned with was the torch. It’ll still be on the floor over there somewhere. That octopus was smart. It knew we wouldn’t be able to see too well without it.”

  Oliver smiled, then pointed at himself with both thumbs. “I guess they didn’t account for a guy who hunts deer without night-vision goggles.

  Oliver’s a real dark horse, Caleb thought. Next we’ll find out he used to be a Navy Seal or a bounty hunter.

  “I’ll go get it,” Dave said. “Right where you ran from, right?”

  Kayleigh nodded.

  The spider’s web crack on the tank behind them grew bigger, before the entire thing shattered. A great cloud of verdant gas erupted from the jagged edges of the tank, and something black, sharp and much bigger than the baby octopus chittered with anger.

  Momma’s home…