Hello all! New month, new story! This one is called foundations it is a "next" story in an anthology I am creating about a world of weird and powerful objects. Four or Five months ago I came up with the first notes of this story. Just a paragraph or two of ideas but this month I took it and turned it into something real. So without further ado:
Foundations The construction site changed instantly. On orders of the foreman, the group that found the weird rock formation had finally cracked it open, and one stepped inside. The screams of the workers were silenced all at once as the entire site was covered in a thick wall of concrete. Where once was a work site, it was now a long, flat obelisk of grey. This was the sight that Daniel Artora was greeted with when he walked up to the field tent only hours later. Daniel cursed as he straightened the cuff of his suit. It was miserable out here in the summer. Cities shouldn’t exist in deserts, or at least he shouldn’t be tasked with them. His badge hung from his pocket, the only thing that didn’t feel like it stuck to his skin. The armed guard outside the tent scanned it, and his tired eyes widened. “Field Commander Artora, I am so sorry; I didn’t recognize you. They’re waiting for you inside.” Daniel shrugged him off and passed through the flap of the tent. He was still uncomfortable with the attention that the title field commander brought him. He wondered if he was happier just an agent. He was so lost in thought that he almost ran into the mousy frame of the man before him. The man turned and nodded sharply. He turned back to the others gathered. Daniel recognized them, Simon and Zayir, who were recently promoted along with him after the Boston incident. Still, they both opted to move out of the field and into a research capacity. He cast them a disdainful look, cowards. If Simon noticed, he didn’t react. He said, “Ah, Daniel, good to have you here. I hope your flight wasn’t bad.” He didn’t stop for Daniel to answer, “Nonetheless, we have quite the situation on our hands here.” “I noticed. I haven’t brushed up on construction lately, but a giant concrete slab doesn’t quite seem like what they were going for,” Daniel responded. The mousy man spoke excitedly, “Based on the few surface scans we have collected, it seems as if that cube is still there.” Daniel turned to the man. “And you are?” The mousy man flinched before saying, “Oh, apologies, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Alec Thomas, field research.” Zayir said, “Yes, Alec has been assigned to this case. He will be accompanying you on your mission.” Daniel glared at Zayir, “Oh hell no, I will not have an underqualified lab jockey following me into that.” He gestured vaguely to the construction site. Zayir stared back, unflinching. “Artora, this is not a request. This is Institute protocol, and this thing seems dormant. We do not expect you to face much resistance.” Daniel sighed. “All right, what are mission parameters.” Alec pulled out a small tablet and read off the screen. “Our main objective will be descending into what looks like the only breach in the surface of this mass. We must navigate through whatever is underneath and find out what is in the box.” Alec looked up nervously, making sure everyone was still listening. Zayir waved him to continue. “The secondary parameter is to verify the condition of any remaining construction workers. We will not be burrowing a hole as we cannot confirm specifics on bio readings and do not want to injure innocent civilians. Surface scans show that there are passageways and rooms that should connect us to the box. While many snake through, they all seem to lead to it eventually.” Daniel nodded and was pointed to the armory. He grabbed extra ammunition for his service weapon, body camera, and shoulder-mounted flashlight and descended the steep, loose dirt that led to the giant, smooth concrete slab. He strode across it to the figure of Alec, standing near a small opening on the flat surface. As he walked up, he did a final check on his weapon and faced Alec. “Don’t die on me in there, all right? Would be a pain in the ass.” “Thank you?” Alec responded, tapping his fingers on his tablet. “Well, sunlight’s burning.” Daniel looked over the side of the hole and saw it was only about eight feet deep. He sat on the side and slowly lowered himself into the hole, letting himself drop the last couple of feet into the darkness. He switched on his light, illuminating a long corridor of that same grey concrete sloping slightly down. Daniel was thankful it was cooler here than in the scorching sun. “All right, lab jockey, safe for you to come down.” They only made it halfway down the corridor before the sound of scraping concrete caused them to swing their heads to the opening they had come through. To Alec’s horror and Daniel’s annoyance, they watched as the opening they came through slowly sealed behind them. It closed with a thud, and they were now surrounded by inky darkness. Alec began to sputter a question, but Daniel cut him off by walking further into the hallway. As they came to the end of the hall, the sound of raspy breath reached their ears around a sharp right turn. Daniel motioned for Alec to stay still, whipped around the corner, and was greeted by the sight of a man sitting propped up at the end of another long hallway, a large spike of rebar blossoming from the wound in his chest. Daniel crouched by the man. “Can you hear me? What happened to you?” The man looked at both of them with wild, wide eyes. “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have come here.” The man gasped and winced. “I’m dying, and I’ll become part of it, won’t I? Daniel snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face. “What happened here?” The man coughed, and blood started to dribble down his chin. “You don’t understand that I will become part of it when I die.” He leaned forward, the wound in his chest squished against the metal he was impaled on, and the fabric on his shirt became newly soaked with fresh blood. In a last act of fear, he grabbed Daniel's shoulder and managed to sputter out, “It walked among us.” The man’s hand went limp, and he fell back, dead. Daniel stood up and, without a word, motioned for Alec to follow him. The pair turned the next corner and found themselves at a set of crooked stairs, each step skewed in at a slightly different angle. The pair carefully started to make their way down. Daniel put himself in front, testing each step as they go. Daniel checked his watch; it had been an hour since they entered the concrete. He turned to Alec and was about to say something when his foot, expecting to meet the next crooked stair, hit nothing but empty air. Alec grabbed Daniel as he pitched forward. He braced himself on an upturned step and pulled with all his might. Daniel’s fall slowed to a halt, but he realized he was now dangled over a pit filled with rebar jutting out of the concrete. His flashlight reflected off multiple high-visibility vests mottled with blood. Alec began pulling his compatriot back slowly, his skinny frame almost balking from the weight of the larger man. “You have to be more careful,” Alec quietly said behind him. “Yes, sorry about that. Thank you for the save.” Daniel took a deep breath. Alec returned to a subdued silence. The excitement he had been practically brimming with back at the tent had abandoned him completely. Daniel took stock of his surroundings and found that the continuation of the stairs had been cut into the wall next to them as if whatever had built this maze was experimenting with human architecture. The pair carefully stepped onto the hewn stairs and made their way further down. As they finally reached the bottom, they found the stairs ended at a wall with a small opening barely big enough to squeeze through. They both squeezed through, Daniel helping Alec through the small hole. Daniel pulled Alec to his feet, and Alec looked around the room. Alec froze, and his face went white. He pointed over Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel turned around and saw what had rendered the researcher speechless. On the wall of the large square room, half of a body stuck out of the wall. Daniel approached it, and as his flashlight illuminated the torso, he saw it was fused with the wall. Flesh and concrete amalgamated into a rocky red mess. As he approached, the mouth of the body started to move. A scraping, wheezing sound emanated from its lips as if the air passing through was scraping against stone. The head of the body slowly looked up, accompanied by the sound of grinding concrete. The body stared at him with lifeless eyes and began to speak in that same rasping voice. “I am it, and it is me. It lives as I live. It breathes as I breathe. We have become one.” Daniel clutched his weapon and motioned for Alec to come closer. The researcher did so timidly. Daniel turned to the body and echoed what he had asked the previous construction worker, “What happened to you? Who are you?” “I was working, I think, and then it swallowed me. I could feel it pushing into my brain, tendrils of steel. It hurt, but it does not anymore. I am not that person anymore. I taught it everything I know. I taught it everything we know.” The body gasped a breath that sounded as dry as the wind in the desert. Behind it, the flesh haphazardly hybridized with the concrete flexed slightly as if it was the crude semblance of a human chest rising and falling. Daniel couldn’t stop his body from shuddering as he drew his weapon. Alec shouted from behind him, “Commander, don’t we might be able to learn more from—” Alec’s voice was cut off by the loud crack of a shot from Daniels’s weapon. Where the bullet hit the body, a viscous dark grey liquid poured slowly. The body was bleeding, bleeding liquid concrete. The body slumped over and stopped moving. Daniel stared at the body. “That thing said it. This place was learning from it. I couldn’t let that happen. Besides, it was a mercy.” Alec’s response died in his lungs as the sound of grinding concrete filled the room. Daniel gripped his weapon, looking around for the source. Alec held out his tablet with the camera open to get a picture of the body in the wall. The grinding became deafening as rebar pipes shot out of the wall. The first sprung at Alec, barely missing his face but slamming through his tablet, shattering it in his hands. The others shot out around the room. When they reached the opposite wall, they burrowed into it, and the grinding sound began again. “Run!” Daniel shouted as he grabbed Alec by the wrist and pulled him out of a small doorway opposite the hole they came in from. The two sprinted down yet another downward slanting hallway, the sound of grinding concrete and rebar hot on their tail. “Duck!” Daniel yelled out. As the rebar exploded out of the wall again, Alec ducked his head as rebar smashed through the wall above them, barely missing the top of his skull. The two careened down the hallway as it stretched into darkness. Daniel turned to encourage his compatriot further, only to see a thin piece of rebar bury itself in Alec’s thigh. Daniel grabbed Alec. He began to pull him down the hallway as Alec hobbled his best next to him, red blood gushing onto the concrete floor. The rebar slowed slightly like a predator that realized its prey was injured and took the time to savor the kill. Daniel looked back to see the rebar pull back and was reminded of a cobra he had encountered in the jungle preparing to strike. The two men slammed into the hall’s back wall as Daniel looked over his shoulder. With all the wits of a seasoned field agent, he quickly recovered and pulled Alec out of the way. He pulled himself along the wall as the rebar lunged forward, barely missing him, and burying itself in the wall. Whether the hunt was over, or the rebar was at its full extension, Daniel didn’t know, but either way, the grinding noise stopped. Daniel slung Alec’s arm over his shoulder and helped him hobble further down the hallway. Daniel put his arm out to steady himself on the wall, but his fingers didn’t meet the concrete. Instead, he touched something warm and soft. He turned his flashlight to it and, with a start, realized that the concrete of this wall was interspersed with pulsing flesh. Daniel pulled his hand back, and the two entered another large room. The walls of this room also boasted patches of pulsing flesh. However, more interesting than that were statues made of concrete and rebar scattered around the room, and each emitted a muted voice. Alec hobbled up the closest one and pushed his ear against it. “Commander, come over here. It’s talking.” The words from the statue were still too quiet for Daniel to make out. Daniel looked around the statue, wary of touching it, and finally got to its face. He stared at it, the vague shape of a human face made of rebar. Where one of the eyes would have sat was a small space in the rebar. Daniel looked closer at the inside of this statue until the darkness was replaced with the white of an iris. Under the rebar, an eye had opened, and it was staring around wildly, crazed like a wild animal. Daniel grabbed Alec and pulled him off the statue. “Alec, that’s a person in there. They are all people.” Alec looked back at Daniel, his eyes unfocused. “Commander, my ear feels funny. It’s too heavy.” Daniel looked down at the man and saw that his ear, which had touched the statue, was now a light grey, spreading over his skin. As it spread under his hair, Alec’s eyes filled with terror, and he grabbed at Daniel’s leg. “Daniel, I can feel it. I can hear it. It hurts.” “I’m so sorry, Alec.” Daniel leveled his weapon at the other man. “Do it fast, please, please, oh god.” One of Alec’s eyes streamed with tears, the other already taken by the quickly spreading blight of construction material. The sound of a shot cut through the babbling of the statues in the room, and Alec lay still. Daniel pried his leg out from the body’s grasp and kept making his way through the room, careful not to touch any statues. He made his way to the other side of the room and found the wall there was different. This wall had a smooth, almost obsidian-like texture and was reflective and black. A statue stood with a jackhammer in hand, and in front of it was a roughly hewn opening in the obsidian wall. From inside the obsidian came a loud, rhythmic thumping noise. Daniel gave the statue a wide birth and pushed into the room. The room was a large cube of obsidian and, from the ceiling, suspended by meaty musculature, sat a massive human-like heart, beating loudly enough that Daniel could feel it in his chest as if it was his own. Large construction flood lights pointed at it on either side of the heart. On the other side of the room sat a man dressed in high-visibility clothing with long sleeves and gloves. Daniel held his weapon up to the man, but the man held up a hand and motioned him to come over. Daniel carefully made his way over, weapon still trained on the stranger. The stranger removed his glove, and Daniel saw his hand was made entirely of rebar. The stranger flexed it, and Daniel saw it had the same mobility as a human hand. The stranger turned back to Daniel and said, “It is learning. It will soon no longer be bound to steel and stone. Imagine the world will be united, and we will all be one. We know that this test was not perfect, but soon, soon it will be perfect; it just needs to learn more.” Daniel squinted down the rifling of his weapon, “I don’t think so. I sure don’t plan on being part of whatever it is.” The stranger laughed, “Oh, now, don’t you see? You already are,” The man lunged forward. Two shots tore through his shirt and buried themselves in the concrete underneath. His rebar hand stabbed into Daniel’s chest. “And you are our final piece. You have so much knowledge in that head of yours. With you, we will rebuild this world in our image.” Daniel yelled and kicked the stranger off him. The stranger laughed as it fell backward and onto the ground. The weakened concrete of its chest gave way, split in half, and the laugh was silent, but the heartbeat was on. Daniel’s chest felt tight and heavy. He looked down to see the grey concrete spreading across his chest. He turned slowly as he felt the weight slowly spreading across his chest and fired the rest of his clip into the heart. The pain started seeping into him, and the infection spread, but with clumsy hands, he reloaded his weapon and lost two more clips into the heart before finally succumbing to the crawling blight. *** Incident 3321 Supplemental Concerning site [REDACTED] Field notes: We lost two good men today. Body cam footage is secure. It seems the bodies have disintegrated. In fact, the entire structure is slowly degrading with the heart dead, so few will know of his bravery. The site will stay quarantined for now. I’ll sight burial ground or medical waste. Some days, I hate this job. - Simon J. 4932
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Author: gage GoldmanGage is an aspiring creative writer in the Full Sail Program ArchivesCategories |