On the narrow path of black asphalt next to the walls of short single story building which seemed to tower above the tiny hairless bipedal creatures garbed in black, shone moonlight which revealed the little faces with folds of skin drawing lines leading into a spot between their eyes.
"We don't have enough space to react if anything bursts out."
"How do we deal with this? This is the same lab that invented the uniform strength virus right?"
"Yeah why?"
"Well, I was just thinking, how strong are those things inside to be able to provide us with such a boost?"
"I wouldn't know, but it seems like they specialize in a variety of things from their main webpage."
"Oh? Like what? What are we facing up against?"
"We shouldn't be facing up against anything! None of what was inside was supposed to break!"
"Geez, chill, just tell me how strong the stuff inside is."
"Some kind of bear I think. Tall enough to break the security cameras just by running through, fat enough to need to break the walls."
"Ya think? Why else do you think this place is classified as a high security threat?"
*bzzzzzt bzzzt*
"Yeah? Ah, the two are here. Good, good, maybe we'll finally know what's in there."
The two men turned back and strolled back to the open field of asphalt. Waiting there was several black vans and about a dozen men covered in plates of armor that stood taller than anyone else that wasn't in armor. Besides them were John and Leonard, dressed in a red and pink shirt respectively and reeking of alcohol.
"Hey glad that you two could come, I'm the captain and this is my vice captain, we hope you can tell us what's in there. You two seen the footage yet?"
Leonard stood forward to shake the hand that was extended towards them by the captain.
"Nah not yet, you don't have to worry about the smell on us either, we're fine."
The four men walked to the van that was furthest away from the loading dock and opened the back doors, revealing that one side of the van was fitted with a desk and computers while the other side was empty.
"Hey Leonard, that's too big to be one of our animals right?"
"Maybe it was that mole? We never saw it stop growing right?"
"It shouldn't have gotten out of the cage though!"
"Did the cages fail?"
"017999 would've gotten it then."
Seeing this, the captain interjected.
"Hey you guys got any cameras down there?"
"Nah, the air's basically humming with energy. It would disrupt any signals through wires even. Speaking of cameras though, did you check the ones on the second underground layer?"
"Sure let's look."
The captain, who was leaning by the side awkwardly to see the screen, selected a camera for the main room and opened it. Upon seeing the screen, both Leonard and John fell back at the same time, leaning against the side of the van pinching their cheeks. Leonard was the first to open his mouth.
"Am I dreaming John?
"You see the same thing as me, right Leonard?"
On the screen showed that the bright yellow green had invaded the entirety of the room and formed bright yellow tubes to each prism and eaten each creature inside.
Without knowing anything about the tubes, the captain inquired about them.
"What's that?"
John, seeing that Leonard wasn't about to reply any time soon, stepped in.
"Well you see, that's 017999. We're screwed."
"Do you have a better name for it? Just some numbers is kinda lazy naming isn't it."
"Well, we call it a slime since it came from a slime mold you see."
"Hah! You mean that weak thing in webnovels?"
"Heh, yeah."
"What about the others?"
Leonard, seeing this was going nowhere, shouted out.
"Oh, don't worry about that, be prepared to fill the entire place with thermite and burn it down!"
"What?"
"The slime, as you would call it, will kill everything! And we don't even know if that'll kill it!"
"What?"
"Yeah! Be prepared to shove a nuke down there!"
"What?"
"What do you mean 'what'! We're gonna die that's what!"
"Why do you say that?"
"There's a reason why we called it 017999. It was one of the first to be made, back when they randomly mutated genes under high radiation. They did the equivalent of x-raying your body millions of times over a large area! It's one of the oldest beings! That faint glimmer you see there? Hard as diamond. Can't even scratch it. Probably drew out the carbon dioxide in the air and split out the carbon. That liquid in there? Don't let it fool you, it can move!
Back then, they simply irradiated an area and searched for life after a few days. You know how rare it is for life to survive that? Low! And what's the possibility that a lifeform survives that and mutates properly? Even lower! You know how big a slime mold is typically? Smaller than your palm! But after a few days, it became larger than your head! I heard they just took the entire rock it was on because they couldn't get it off!
I heard the first time around it killed the transport group! They tried to kill it by just dumping napalm on it and burning it, but after the napalm burned itself out, the slime was still there! Just smaller! That was the only reason why we even managed to get it!"
"Hey Leonard, let's not scare them so much shall we? They just need to dump a couple tons of thermite down there and turn that place into a living hell!"
"That's a lie and you know it! The thermite will burn through the ground before the slime dies!"
Worried, the captain inquired about the slime.
"Well how do we kill it then?"
"Dump thermite on it of course! Or drop a bomb down there!"
"Well we can't just drop a bomb! We're in the middle of the city! Besides, they haven't given us that many explosions, just barely enough for breaching!"
"Hey Leonard, what about the other animals?"
"What other animals? They're all gonna be dead from the slime anyways!"
Letting out a dry laugh with only despair in mind, John could only lift up the mood.
"Hey look at the bright side! We only have to deal with one!"
"And how exactly are you gonna deal with that one, John?"
"I dunno, probably level the building up here first for more space, then start dropping in exos with flamethrowers and burn everything to the ground. Then when the flames are gone, burn it some more."
"Do we want to retrieve our data?"
"That's for our boss to decide, heh."
"A shame, you were doing some nice work on that cockroach weren't you."
"That worm looked pretty good on your end though, pretty amazing how it managed to form a metal shell. Would've been quite nice to have self regenerating exos."
"Should we go home and sleep now? I feel like we've done everything we can so far."
The captain looked up from whispering with the vice commander.
"Sure why not, We'll give you a call if anything goes wrong. We'll call your boss later, don't worry."