Being the strongest also brought unwanted attention not just from other specimens but also from their captors. This brought about more tests on them.
The smartest action to carry out would be to row on a low-key but Gabe almost lost his life. Them being the strongest did not mean they were the strongest by a huge margin, in fact in terms of raw power they were behind a few, but just a few. It was their battle IQ that gave them the edge over the others.
A specimen that seemed to have a grudge with Cole approached the area the duo were controlling, he had spikes on his body running from the top of his head to his waist. The spikes were also retractable as the popped out only when he got to the area his target was operating. The serum he took gave him the abilities and physiology of a porcupine beastman, making him a wereporcupine.
Whoosh!!
Spikes cut through the air at breakneck speeds.
'Now I've got you, you are dead meat, a goner, and everyone will know it was I, Pete, who put you down, hahahaha', he thought.
He was already high on the thought of hearing the death cry of his target and even went as far as closing his eyes for a moment but the target in question was not an easy one.
Cole dodged the spikes while still causing havoc, killing specimen and beast alike.
Pete on seeing this sight was terrified and angry at the same time. Common sense begged and reasoned with him to clear the area but his judgement was already clouded by reasons that were unknown.
He began shooting spikes continuously thinking one was sure to get the job done. He didn't notice Gabe had already circled around and was making a beeline towards him.
Shunk!!
That was the sound of someone getting stabbed. Before Pete could react Gabe had stabbed him at the back with a bone gotten from a demon beast. It went in his back, through his heart, and out his chest. Seeing this, those who were hoping to have a jump on either Gabe or Cole cleared that thought temporarily and made sure not to be in anyway close to the duo.
This in turn added more pressure on them, having to watch out for demon beasts and specimens, not to add the fact that the ones on top were all over the pit grounds, so no one was safe at all.
"Those two think they can hog the spotlight with me around, hmmm" said a brawny man.
"Oh my, now I have to put in more effort" a slender lady spoke.
"Huff! Now I have to go all out 'cause these punks want to get all the points, what a pain" said a guy about five feet tall.
All these who had just spoken were the top dogs in the facility.
They thought Gabe and Cole just wanted the most points in order to live comfortably for the whole month not knowing that these boys had a plan.
The role Cole was to play in their escape plan was to culture a type of fungi that caused zombification, and when hell was loose they would use the resulting pandemonium to escape the facility.
With the advanced medical practices in the world now the fungi was not a big deal to handle, so what Cole was betting on was the element of surprise, the idea that their task masters would never see any of it coming.
Gabe and Cole had already taken the vaccine and then laced their whole bodies and clothes with the cultured fungi. The methods employed in this venture were crude but it was amazing how they were even able to reach that point.
How they passed checks and scans without any alarms going off due to the discovery of traces of foreign bodies on them remains a mystery.
The duration of the battle royale was twenty four hours. Also if two thousand specimens were left and the time was not yet up, the brawl would still be over.
The battle didn't take long and it was finally over. They were about fourteen thousand specimens in the facility and only about ten thousand usually participated in the slaughter fest. Doing the maths, if two thousand specimens killed five people each, the brawl would not last long but that was easier said than done as all the specimens were skilled in both the art of slaughtering and the art of preservation of their own lives.
What made this very battle short lived was the fact that certain people with insane strength compared to other specimens, turned the pit into their own personal slaughter house. With bodies piled up like mini mountains, stage one of the plan was complete.
One of the shocking things about the facility was that after these amounts of lives were lost, before the week was over the dead specimens would have completely been replaced, making one wonder just how deep and broad the power and backing of the facility was.
Usually after the pit fights, the bodies of the dead specimens and demon beast were still taken to the labs for tests and experiments. In this place, the dead we're almost as valuable as the living, you can imagine the implications of this notion. This was when the next phase of Gabe and Cole's plan began.
Two hours later various alarms went off and the whole facility was becoming rowdy, just as how two cunning young men envisioned it the whole place was becoming a mess with zombies popping up everywhere and because everything began in the labs, there was no time for vaccines or magic portions to be whipped up.
Against witches, dark elves, and even the specimens, these zombies were nothing, but the zombies had one overwhelming advantage at the moment and that was their numbers. They were all over the place and more zombies were been created due to the confusion everyone in the facility had at the moment. It made it very easy for them to get bitten by a zombie, become infected, and then become zombies too.