(Luka)
Morgan was thrown in a cell, in what looked like a hospital otherwise.
The building looked old from the outside, but it's ultra modern inside.
I'm thrown in the next cell. Artom is brought in shackles to meet the boss of this place. Someone called Rob or Robert.
I feel defeated as I wait in that cell, still with handcuffs.
I hear a little Morgan complaining, moaning, about her beatdown. She was really injured.
There are now monsters everywhere, and still, humans are the worst... It's awful. Maybe it's better if we just all burn.
I hope Yura is alright...
And painful time passes.
The door open, and someone walks near me.
~
I'm hungry. My wrists hurt. This water tastes awful because of its disinfectant. I have an awful feeling brewing inside of me... It's hard to explain. It's more than my shitty situation, all my failures or humanity's failures.
Something else is bubbling deep inside.
And I think they know it.
The head scientist of this place comes to check on me every day.
He takes some droplets of blood from a vein in my arm. He whispers a few words.
The man looks tired more than anything else, even more tired than me.
L - Why are you doing this... Stephen?
S - In the past, it was to reach eternity. We've had breakthroughs... Now, it's about the only way. The only chance for us to survive, is to find something greater. It's in your blood. It's in everyone.
L - Why don't you let me go? I want to help. I won't run.
He sighed.
S - Rob and the council won't take the chance... And I don't control the security of this building. I can't promise you anything, but...
L - But?
The man scribbles a few words the camera can't see and the walls can't hear. I gawk.
S - I'm sure you'll be fine.
The weird man goes away, to study the samples I guess.
I get some medicine like Artom and Shan to help me hold on. Everyone is surviving on these now I guess.
Like Morgan I don't want to take them. But eventually I'm too afraid to become a monster and I take them. We talk across the walls and vents between our cells.
M - You think Artom is still alive?
L - ... He probably joined them. But isn't allowed in this building to betray them.
M - I'm reaching the end...
Morgan's body is changing. She still is herself inside, but her body no longer is human. It's painful in every way.
She takes the painkillers that Stephen also provides every day. It helps.
M - Are we going to die here Luka?
I look up to the ceiling. I imagine the sky beyond. I think of the broken world we've fled down. I think of these pockets of remaining power in organised manner... I see more and more how it all falls.
I get growing visions of how it all will burn and fall.
No matter what we do, there is no fate and there is no escape.
Even if we were released right now, it will all end the same.
L - I... I think we are, yes. Their researches won't suffice. It's too big now. It will blow.
This corner of the world is going to blow. And I think Stephen knows it.
His few words are false hope. Yura is close, he said.
He tries to help, even though it's a pointless attempt along the fall, the ineluctable fall.
I can feel it even in my blood now. It fluctuates in new ways. And my some fluids in my veins avoid the prickles when Stephen takes a sample each day. He thinks the blood is homogenous, but this thing can shift differently, and all the samples I give are becoming less and less representative of what's really going in me.
We wait. Morgan changes visibly. I do it hidden. I tell lies aloud, so our captors get surprised when the time comes.
We're all going to die here. But we're leaving our cells soon, and we'll burn everything along with them tonight.
~
The electricity shuts down in the cells and the main corridor besides.
Explosions and gunshots are rapidly heard. Someone runs by to open our cells. Yura gets a hug from me.
He is terrified but also gets a warm hug from the monstrous and deformed Morgan too now.
Y - Artom is holding them back, come on, let's go!
L - Wait! Go with Morgan! I'll burn this place first.
Y - Don't worry about that, it's planned. Come on!
We run through dark and futuristic looking corridors.
We pass by a room where we see deceased monsters being dissected and studied.
It's fascinating and ominous at the same time.
M - What were they doing Luka?
L - Trying to control it... Its potential.
I clench my bubbling hand. I hold it down.
Y - It's worse than you think. Frieleg is going to blow entirely before tomorrow. We have to go!
We run away, but then the ground breaks. Then the ceiling collapses.
A monster from a floor below just blew them apart to escape through above. And it yelled louder than us while we fell down.
Our way out was just destroyed. And there's growing chaos in the hospital we're in we can hear.
We head for another way to exit this place we don't know that well.
And it goes worse, every step of the way.
~
Yura and Artom's plan went sideway, but their diversion through the release of some monsters usually kept sedated was a little too efficient. They broke havoc rapidly.
Over the days, Stephen told us details. He spoke to me more than he should have. We can piece what happened then.
One peculiar aspect of the transformations, from even before the end of days, he referred to it as paradise engineering.
The more an animal suffered, the more an organism was stressed; the worst and stronger it reacts and changes. The faster and worse it transforms.
That's why he gave painkillers to Morgan. To reduce her symptoms and rate of her body growth.
Even though she looks inhuman now, hideous and asymmetrical, she's still okay.
When Artom cut the electricity, Stephen must have loaded the feeding tubes or intravenous injections to inhibitors of painkillers, if not even antagonists causing more pain. He used his knowledge from peace engineering to unleash violence instead.
The monsters went from humane to berserk, and were then unleashed in the middle of the base.
We passed by an office where without surprise, Stephen had been shot and was dying there. Yura and Morgan kept going, but I went to check on him.
Hell is getting loose. Everything will burn. I want my friends, my last friends to survive... As much as likely or possible.
But I also know there is more to see and more to come. Sadly we haven't reached the bottom yet.
~