ENEMY BELOW

Jiro came upside down, acrid smoke filling the battered VTOL cabin. Emergency lights washed the interior in strobing red pulses revealing the true aftermath. He immediately spotted Lt. Ito’s mangled remains still partly strapped into the cockpit controls, the man’s head now just pulped meat and bone fragments.

Jiro craned his neck painfully towards the rear. The rest of the containment squad didn’t look much better off tossed about like discarded battle dolls, limbs bent at odd angles. Was he the only one that somehow survived?

With great effort, Jiro disentangled himself from where his gunner harness hung him battered but intact in the ceiling bay. He grimaced against waves of nausea, quickly taking stock with a tactical flashlight. Based on the structural damage, whatever organisms had slammed into them mid-flight must have been practically kamikaze.

He hadn’t even seen Protean’s latest terrible iteration firsthand, but the Clinical Corps battle archives spoke horrors. Some monstrosity had emerged from the ashes, Patient Zero’s last vengeful gift. A mutant strain—dubbed Xeno-5—so virulent and protean it adapted instantly to any attempts at suppression, absorbing biomass and skills from anything it consumed.

Jiro shoved grim speculation aside, securing his mask and checking weapons systems. Priorities first. Survive. Signal. Complete the mission. Face the nightmare when you have to and not a second before. His lessons at the edge of the world after The Fall had taken root deep.

Jiro toggled the squad’s emergency transponder, relieved to hear it was still active with location pinging. That bought some time at least. Any Recovery teams in range would home in once the disturbance got flagged for investigation.

Now for the worst news. The crash shredded their intended entry point into Crypt 6. Based on schematics, they had landed along a mid-rise habitation block— former corporate employee housing back when megacorps reigned before the people finally dragged oligarchs into the streets.

Jiro clicked his tactical visor through detection spectrum filters, assessing the malformed creature still skulking somewhere below. His blood ran cold. According to the dispersal patterns and thermal reads, this particular anomaly had grown nearly two blocks across the entire square—an undulating mass of quivering tendrils and tumorous mounds dotted with misshapen bone fragments.

This couldn’t be pure Protean...could it? Something more nightmarish seemed grafted into the viral soup, perhaps a teacher or baited trap. Was it protecting the Crypt? Feeding somehow? Jiro couldn’t afford assumptions. He had to know what they faced here. Knowledge foraged paths to survival—harsh lessons etched into his bones young dodging horrors in the shell of Old Detroit.

Jiro toggled the squad laser comms, relieved to find them intact. "Shokin Recovery Omega standing by. Attempting to establish Crypt entry and mission-critical sample extraction. Survivors were negative about my position. Transmit all relevant biological precautions and protocols for engagement."

He received garbled fragments in response:

"...Xeno-Strain... only... Crypts impenetrable... no extraction needed... initiate Sterilization Directive..."

Jiro blinked as the full message repeated from Shokin Central Command, tone rising sharply. They couldn't be serious.

"Negative!" He shouted back. "We have no eyes on the core site interior. I'm not authorizing clean strikes that could destroy mission-critical intelligence!"

This time the response came through focused and ice cold. "You have no context for what's happening down there, Recovery. We're tracking accelerated mutations and behavioral shifts by the minute on Xeno-5. Presume Crypts 6 through 9 fully colonized and convergence accelerating."

Jiro glanced back at the recovery squad's remains, voice hardening. "Then give me context. We deserve that much. Lives require it."

A pause on the comms. Then finally, "You saw Old Detroit fall. This could be worse...”

Jiro flinched instinctually. No one spoke lightly about the unspeakable days the Michigan dead zone collapsed. Entire regiments lost trying to enforce hollow quarantines against citizens turned inside-out by an earlier mystery cataclysm. The night his father withered to red froth in Mother’s arms while little sister shuddered mute in a corner. Jiro still remembered the hollow promises evacuation transports would return stamped across military automatons while they ushered more labeled “hopelessly infected” into gulags.

Jiro shook off old ghosts unwilling to be preyed upon further by faceless controllers. "All due respect, we are not invalids you can guilt into compliance with vagueness and historical trauma. Tell me what we face here. Directly."

This time only ominous silence followed. So that’s how they wanted to play negotiations? Jiro set his jaw, resolution calcifying. "We do this on my terms or not at all. I need to know what we know. Or linked comms get severed now."

He braced for whatever bureaucratic threats or manipulation got hurled back, prepared to start cutting wires. So Jiro blinked when finally the voice returned more... resigned than combative.

"Recovery Omega, be advised... Xeno-5 represents an advanced mutation of the Protean Xenocore Stem previously restricted to classified Crypt laboratories before this catastrophic outbreak event. Early physiological analysis indicates..."

Jiro listened and watched the gelatinous mass below, resolve wavering as each new gruesome capability and observed atrocity got listed in chilling detail—self-guided tendrils that quivered to life with predatory hunger guided by a single coordinating nerve node, liquified internal structures easily reassembling into wings, armor plates, acid injectors, humanoid corpus forms when requiring more precision to access security doors during initial building breaches.

This couldn’t be real... yet the thermal scans streaming to his wrist display perfectly mirrored behavior patterns described from the Crypt outbreak ground zero. Jiro tried to ignore rising panic as the mass below undulated eagerly as if responding to scrutiny by an apex predator. Could it hear his elevated heart rate somehow? Since his biochemical outputs? Either way, he refused to become paralyzed prey.

Jiro steeled himself, turning back to the comms with imitation calm. "Understood, Command. Our imperative stands—penetrate the Crypt interior via recovery squad transports, forcibly if required. Send all anatomical analysis and documented workarounds."

This time the voice radiating utmost resignation and pity, the worst omen. "Negative. No countermeasures exist. You have no context for this enemy...”

Jiro squared his shoulders, checking his weapon with focused precision. "Watch me."

He severed the comm link before second guesses crept in, turning to face the mountainous alien horror below. Jiro couldn’t know what sanity-breaking truths slumbered inside Crypt 6 and at this point, the outcome hardly mattered beyond pulling anything useful from the ashes.

Jiro initiated the squad transport’s emergency hatch detonation sequence. "Want humanity’s secrets, beast?" He whispered coldly. “Come and claim them."

The breaching explosions echoed like thunder as Jiro toggled his mimetic camouflage armor and prepared to slide an anti-materiel rifle and ammo packs toward the shattered exit. He had studied Crypt response protocols in detail during mission briefings. Predicting operational contingencies calmed nerves.

Direct frontal assaults met overwhelming automated fail-safes and lockdown measures, but indirect coercive entry vectors remained vulnerable—using B.O.W.s to manipulate security priorities, for example. Jiro banked this monstrosity's appetite proving equal to the task.

He watched the thing react to the external explosions with unsettling alertness, temporarily restructuring into a dripping pillar formation to analyze the transport wreckage with closer scrutiny. Jiro held his breath, willing his hunter's focus to remain fully trained upon the opening through his scope.

"Come on, you pustule. Take my bait...” he whispered.

As if responding to his coded urging, the Protean horror suddenly mobilized towards blown-out squad transport entry points with a decisive purpose. Jiro almost grinned before uncertainty seized him. Where was the boundary between strategy and disastrous underestimation here? Such power and coordination seemed to suggest this thing's capabilities far outpaced documented encounters...

No time for doubt. Now or never. The second the creature committed to infiltrating the transport like a hellish amoeba pouring into an open wound, Jiro bolted from cover straight towards the towering habitation complex glowing on his tracker with an emergency stair icon. Please let the old maps still hold accurate.

Behind him echoed an unearthly shriek of multiple voices raised in fury at losing expected living meat puppets to manipulate. The sound raised primeval neck hairs as Jiro double-timed it up crumbling stairwells toward the pre-marked rooftop maintenance crawlspace. Risky providing higher exposure to airborne viral loads, but necessary for proper glide entry angles.

Another inhuman roar nearly stumbled Jiro as he blew past Warning signs onto the rooftop helipad access with a war cry. A blur of monstrous limbs and talons burst through a wall in close pursuit. Jiro toggled his grips, rapidly gaining airspeed toward Crypt 6 emerging from twilight smog.

He prevented panicked glances backward, instead embracing the strange adrenal calm washing over him. Like some ancient phoenix allowed fully to spread wings at long last. Forces that weaponized fear only claimed those who faltered by looking down...

Jiro kept the glide wings at sharp descent angles, spotting the damaged Crypt 6 entry point of interest—a partially shattered external bulkhead door blown off the day everything turned for the worse. He angled the anti-materiel rifle forward, allowing himself 3 carefully lined-up AP rounds.

The reinforced exterior barely slowed projectiles sized to pierce future tanks, exposing the Crypt laboratories to open air for the first time in decades. Jiro braced himself as he crashed through the opening in a hail of carbon fiber shards and mechanical shrapnel. He had envisioned the controlled dive landing many times in simulations—7 feet to the left, tucked in a roll, weapons systems ready for 360 ambush detection.

Instead, Jiro immediately lost all sense of up and down amidst sickly flesh-colored tendrils dripping alien enzymes engulfing the room framed by four familiar walls turned inside out in a biological frenzy. Hellish architecture cycled out of recognizable angles filled with glints of jawbones and rib fractures. He flailed against the digestive embrace seeking to slowly bond Jiro to the labyrinth.

His HUD blared with swarms of microbial threats while two dozen searcher tendrils methodically shifted through debris toward him. Jiro swept the growing appendages with targeting vision, spraying anti-personnel flechettes that briefly halted their quivering advance. But based on thermal readings, he knew the truth with despair. This Protean cluster stretched orders of magnitude more massive with so much reserve biomass that sacrificing forward appendages proved trivial.

It was learning, adapting with devious intellect. But Jiro had survived worse beds of devilry before. And forced nightmares to learn well not to feast carelessly on his soul’s meat...

He silently repeated his father’s words over the hissing and skittering growing closer through the warped cavity: No fear finds cracks in disciplined places. Inhale chaos, exhale precision...

Jiro closed his eyes, more shapes and symbols than man now. He tapped the emergency tranq delivery injection at his belt designed to counteract volatile biological infiltration for asset preservation missions. Probably futile here but who knew? Once chest spasms passed, death or clarity followed. He hoped enough mission priorities held embedded within whatever came next.

The flesh forest embraced Jiro, thousands of exploring tendrils turning him into an extension of its nerve will as alien cells infused his body down to DNA. Memories and old screams vied for control as biological immersion took hold...

***

Isaac drifted through fever spaces filled with golden glowing spheres like infant suns bobbing across an endless neural voidscape, trusting while his physical shell underwent emergency protective stasis after the Crypt 6 meltdown calamity. He only hoped his final digital synaptic snapshot retained enough continuity to allow monitoring whatever came next.

General Buntaro and clinical teams seemed confident about managing accelerated Protean mutation trajectories and the fallout after security systems detected the initial containment event. But engineering radical biological phenomena bred equal parts peril and promise walking tightropes. One unstable variable was introduced without proper safeguards and suddenly an entire species of jeopardy entered the ledger, balanced on a scalpel’s edge.

The General believed every scenario modeled plus failsafe countermeasures left ample preparedness for managing unstable epochs ahead. Isaac remained less sanguine after Protean relapses defied previous response routines, evolving too rapidly almost as if analyzing where strategic deficiencies took root to exploit again. They were dealing with forces beyond human comprehension almost playfully toying with feeble control fetishes.

But the greater Tokyo containment zone had survived total collapse thus far thanks to Crypt subterranean fortresses and quick response teams who contained breaches before alien biomass assimilation targets reached unrecoverable thresholds. Buntaro liked reminding Isaac that the Shokin Emergency Recovery Forces represented future strategic security imperatives protecting national citizens from darker foes within and beyond.

Still, observing Simulation parameters showed shocking hostile accuracy in predicting entry vectors and environmental weaponization. How much of Protean machine intuition simply mirrored embedded military behavioral models and data sets? An unsettling question Isaac preferred not goading the General about directly lest contracts get reassessed.

Thus Isaac felt immense surprise seeing a Priority One breach alert suddenly appear in his floating astral overview display as things had stabilized days earlier. He willed an emergency signal to activate his real-time stasis chamber uplink so he could understand events on the ground again. Isaac only hoped Protean proliferation hadn’t reached beyond Crypt perimeter zones though Simulation trajectories suggested things turned uglier quicker than projected at current rates.

Isaac’s remote optic link filled with frantic activity as medical response teams in Hazmat suits shouted commands, dragging a seizing body covered in strange ossified biomechanical carapace marked Shokin Recovery with black warning tape wildly fighting restraints despite intimate Protean/Human interwoven complexity. Isaac’s heart fell realizing the alien outbreak wasn't safely contained any longer. Based on the dramatic cellular grafting and augmentation crystalizing across the man’s body, widespread assimilation vectors are already activated outside laboratory zero point confines.

This raised impossible questions—had some military recovery team breached Crypt 6 quarantine zones? Proteans treated human populations as consumable materials and toy subjects at best. So what perverse survival impulses drove advanced assimilation attempts with an outsider? How had they even managed to temporarily adapt to Xeno-Strain 5’s metabolic demands enough to signal for help? So many mysteries that demanded investigation—exactly the sort of rare specimen requiring closer study!

Isaac commanded the med team to move the infected soldier to an adjoining containment cell for immediate evaluation while opening a comm channel to General Buntaro’s private command station. This perplexing development no doubt carried significance meriting elevated surveillance. Especially if foreign powers had somehow engineered a decoupling technique for Protean integration candidates. Unlikely, but the theory still took focus pending more data.

While the med team prepared exploratory surgical approaches likely futile for long-term viability given the extent of debilitating alien cellular grafting throughout the patient’s system, Isaac had them administer anesthetic and amnesiac compounds to ensure the subject remained docile. No need to give Protean conduit modes any enhanced neurological advantage through experiences rousing fight impulses— a misguided variable complicating clinical environments during early Crytp mishaps. Pacification ruled optimal for study.

Through the containment room monitors, Isaac traced the intricate vestigial circuitry patterns etched across the seizing man between emergence termination injection cycles. Such immaculate patterning bespoke improbable Protean synaptic fusion is rarely evidenced in prior assimilation evaluation autopsy records. Where had blueprints for such foundational symbiotic connectivity without liquefaction taken initial root? So many ripe mysteries that might just redeem Isaac’s legacy if properly cultivated...

***

Jiro awoke slowly this time to a familiar sharp chemical scent of antiseptic filtration accompanied by the low thrum of unseen ventilation fans. Some type of underground medical isolation chamber or holding pen by the feel of cool surfaces pressing against exposed skin. Flickering overhead lights barely illuminated smooth edges with a recessed door barely distinguishable from the same obsidian material. No obvious surveillance was mounted. Odd.

Jiro tentatively lifted himself, body sore but without evidence of major injuries or limb removals. Another positive sign. His mimetic suit and equipment looked meticulously arranged on a nearby chair almost respectfully. Someone wanted him intact for study. Jiro preferred that agenda to immediate dissection at least. Captors revealed aspects of their character by degrees when believing subjects were safely neutralized. Pride frequently preluded downfall.

Jiro cautiously donned the combat gear, ready to re-engage the enemy on terms affording any slim advantage. A better understanding of one’s opponent held the surest path to victory against statistically overwhelming odds. The horror somehow integrated bits and fragments with his deeper identity structures for inscrutable purposes. But Jiro knew himself a viral mutineer now with insider secrets worth extracting in return.

Glancing around the cryptic cell provided little further insight into current positionality beyond oppressive depths hinted by the monotonous background vibration and pervasive damp chill. Vertical interrogation chambers? Some encrypted research installation clearly, but minimal clues if topside aligning with Shokin recovery forces or another faction observing the carnage unfold.

Jiro focused on stilling breath and bodily cycles to sharpen sensory faculties while mapping the confined space with meticulous care in case visibility got compromised later. He noted the room's focal point—an armored black mirror along one wall that failed to fully conceal certain electromagnetic hums and faint thermal signatures indicating sustained activity behind the sheen. Surveillance or one-way viewing window? Impossible to deduce yet. Better assume eyes tracked from some ops center regardless.

Jiro stood motionless for untold minutes more, playing prisoner while watching for any reaction or patterns to exploit. But the dark glass concealed all secrets. Very well, no outputs given freely; Jiro mentally switched tack to crafting an internal battle plan accounting for unknowns holding the superior position:

Priority—escape undetected to complete the original Crypt 6 infiltration and specimen recovery objective for Shokin contractors awaiting status updates.

Second, plant or detonate remote explosives at key structural junctures identified through earlier architectural analysis to ensure nothing here ever got weaponized outside