His tingling fingers stabbed another button, and the next set of videos showed the staff attempting a series of corrective surgeries of some kind on the new host body. Some of the recorded playback showed the creature as fully anesthetized during the procedure, while another video revealed Proteus thrashing around while lying on top of the massive operating table, clearly showing signs of distress.
They were vivisecting it, he thought. Bastards.
The most recent archives showed Emeric Morgenstern in a more prominent role. Scenes of him arguing and even pushing the others indicated he was unhappy about something, but the sound was too muted to discern what the arguments were about. More than a dozen surveillance videos of the aquarium presented the security teams in their black uniforms, alternately using electric cattle prods and fire hoses whenever the creature fought back against the scientists who were trying to take samples of its flesh and blood.
Quentin could only stare dumbly at the screen. It’s like a caged animal. No wonder it went mad.
The door to the outside was slightly ajar, and Scott poked his head in. “Quentin, I was looking for you. Mom and Dad need help. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that was placed in front of the door, and it’s blocking us.”
“Be right there.” Quentin half-rose, only to find his legs had gone numb as well. He staggered sideways, leaning on the desk to keep himself from falling over.
Scott’s thin eyebrows shot up when he saw the blood on the floor. “Are you okay?”
Quentin nodded meekly. “I-I think so. Just… give me a minute.”
The boy’s eyes wandered towards the videos being shown on the monitor screens. He pointed at one of them. “That’s the crazy guy we found in the kitchen upstairs.”
Quentin turned back to look at the monitor screens. The last set of videos showed Emeric spending an inordinate amount of time near or at the aquarium. At one point he even managed to pet the creature on its head while feeding it chunks of what looked to be pork or beef.
Scott’s mouth dropped open. “He… he was the father of that thing, wasn’t he?”
Quentin let out a deep breath. It wasn’t Lauren Reeves’s carelessness that set it loose. Emeric freed it. He had full security access and must have gone crazy.
For a short minute, both Quentin and Scott could only stare in dumbfounded silence at the contents of the videos, unable to take their eyes away. Then they both heard screaming coming from the aquarium.
Grabbing the gun from the top of the desk, Quentin shuffled towards the door, past the petrified young boy and back out into the corridor. “Stay here!”
NICK WAS A MAN POSSESSED, and his adrenaline surge was enough to pull aside the heaviest pieces of furniture still blocking the doors. Heaving the last bulky table out of the way, he was able to force the right side of the double doorway open, and he managed to slip through.
Cathy did the same, pushing herself sideways until she squeezed past the narrow aperture, and her feet soon made it onto the sandy part of the enclosure.
Nick ran breathlessly towards the two huddled forms lying beside the water. They looked like two people on their sides, facing away from him. Both were completely covered by a thick film of greenish substance, like a mixture of slimy okra and wet leaves. Kneeling down beside them, Nick began to brush away the material. The horrific smell was intense, like a mixture of vomit and excrement.
Cathy gagged while kneeling down beside her husband, yet she quickly overcame the noxious stench and began to use her hands as well, employing her palms and nails to clean the muck away from whoever was underneath it.
The first clump revealed a middle aged Indian woman’s face. Her eyes were glazed and she began to babble uncontrollably the moment Nick wiped away the sludge from her mouth. It seemed like she was in shock.
Cathy leaned over and concentrated on the one beside her. Sure enough, Kim’s features became visible as her mother removed the slimy covering from her face. The young woman’s eyes were closed and her heaving chest seemed to indicate she was still breathing.
Cradling her daughter’s head in her lap, Cathy began to sob once more. “Kimberly! It’s me. Please… wake up.”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Kim stirred before slowly opened her eyes. Her mouth quickly contorted into a frown and she began to sob. “I’m… sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Cathy whispered in her daughter’s ear. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Nick shifted his crouching stance closer to the water’s edge. The strange slimy substance covering his daughter’s body seemed to extend all the way into the murky liquid surrounding the aquarium’s small islet, like a cord. While tearing at the muck, he realized the material seemed to have hardened along Kim’s legs, with the toughest parts of it sticking right out from the water’s edge.
Cathy ran her hands along her daughter’s cheeks, doing her best to calm the young woman down. “It’s going to be alright, Kim. You’re safe now.”
Unable to rip away the substance from his daughter’s legs, Nick concentrated on wiping away the more gelatinous stuff covering Kim’s chest, before making his way down. When he managed to pull back the still pliable semi-solid covering from her stomach, he yelled out in alarm after seeing her bare flesh.
Cathy looked down and shrieked in disbelief.
Kim’s stomach was bloated. It looked like she was in her third trimester of pregnancy.
Nick blinked half a dozen times while staring at his daughter’s swollen gut. “What in the world?”
The bulge in Kim’s belly started to undulate. It was as if their shouting had somehow stimulated whatever was inside of it into awareness. A few smaller bumps appeared, and the object beneath the skin began writhing back to life.
Kim started screaming. Her whole body began to convulse as the horrific pain became unbearable. The young woman arched her back, further exposing her bloated tummy into the air.
Cathy was crying uncontrollably. She reached out and tried to hold onto Kim’s trashing arms, hoping someone could somehow do something to help her stricken daughter.
Nick watched in wild-eyed frozen horror as the huge lump on his daughter’s stomach somehow doubled in size. Kim’s screams turned into moans and yelps as her body spasmed, then jerked up and down as if she was possessed.
The skin at the top of Kim’s belly finally broke into a long, crimson tear. A spray of blood exploded outwards, like a sudden, single burst from a fountain, hitting Nick’s glasses, blinding him with red syrupy liquid. Kim closed her eyes and stopped screaming as another, more high-pitched cry emanated from where her stomach had been.
Cathy wailed in terror as she saw a small, misshapen head emerge from the blood-soaked crater that had been her daughter’s tummy. The face of what emerged resembled that of a baby, but it only had a single eye, and its mouth and nostrils were fused into a single vertical slit along the lower part of its features. The pint-sized creature stared at its grandmother with the single yellow eye and emitted a gurgling howl.
Quentin pushed his way through the door and just stood there for a few seconds, his mind struggling to comprehend what just happened. The gun dangled from his right hand, and he almost dropped it before clenching it tightly.
Nick yelled in despair as he grabbed the baby thing by the back of its neck and pulled it up, away from his daughter’s body, as if trying to remove a cancerous tumor. Its skin felt coarse and even sharp in his hands, and he wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible. There was no trailing umbilical cord as Nick turned and threw the little hatchling onto the sand a few meters away from him.