Project Goblin: Unleashed
Alarms wailed.
Gunfire echoed through the corridors as federal tactical forces breached the outer layers of the facility. Screams and chaos followed in their wake. Smoke. Blood. The stench of gunpowder and desperation.
General Thaddeus Ross paced like a caged animal, his lips curled into a sneer, eyes burning with rage.
"Alpha team is down. Echo's flanked. We're bleeding, sir!"
Ross ignored the comms chatter. He turned to the reinforced steel vault at the back of the room, protected by biometric scanners and six-inch titanium locks.
[PROJECT GOBLIN – AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY]
He yanked the keycard from around his neck, slammed it into the reader, and shoved his thumb against the scanner. The machine whirred. Clicked. Then hissed as steam vented from the seals.
"Sir, what the hell are you doing?" barked a colonel at his side. "That wing is sealed for a reason. You can't let them out. Our men are still out there."
Ross pulled his pistol and shot the man in the head.
"No one questions me," he growled.
The heavy door slid open.
A wave of cold air swept over the area, and with it, the scent of rot. Chemicals. Death.
[Inside: Subterranean Vault | PROJECT GOBLIN]
Rows of containment pods lined the chamber. Frosted glass. Tubes and wires. Each pod held a human-shaped figure, malformed, twisted, barely alive.
They were the G-Serum rejects. The failures Ross had never discarded. Mutated, rabid, kept sedated and contained in the deepest level of the base. Broken things made from broken science.
Some had extra limbs. Others had exposed bone, unformed jaws, or eyes that glowed the wrong color. Their minds were gone, but their strength? Off the charts. Ross planted explosives inside their brain, so if they fall, they will explode and take down the enemies with them.
Ross pulled the emergency override lever.
A klaxon blared.
[PROJECT GOBLIN – CONTAINMENT OVERRIDE: INITIATED]
Pods hissed. Liquid drained. Locks disengaged.
"What the hell are you doing!?" someone shouted over Ross' earpiece.
Ross answered calmly, like a man lighting his own house on fire to spite his enemy. "I'm leveling the field."
The first pod opened.
A low growl echoed.
Then another.
Then another.
Snarling. Twisting. The sound of claws scraping metal and bone cracking into new shapes.
Dozens of creatures began to move. Some limped. Others leapt immediately to the walls.
The hallway lights flickered.
Then failed.
Darkness swallowed the interior of the base until glowing eyes began to appear in the black.
Low, wet snarls echoed down the corridors. Then came the screeches. Mutated throats tearing through the silence like banshees.
The creatures of Project Goblin were awake.
And hungry.
They poured out of the vault, malformed limbs carrying them across walls, ceilings, and floors with horrifying speed. Flesh sloughed from parts of their bodies where regeneration had failed. Muscles twitched violently beneath transparent skin. Teeth jutted from jaws at impossible angles. Bones cracked audibly as their bodies re-adapted to motion after years in suspension.
The first soldier they reached didn't even have time to scream. A claw punched through his chest like wet paper. Blood exploded from his mouth as the creature tore his body in half, each chunk flung into opposite walls.
One of the beasts pounced onto a group of federal agents, its body a blur of motion. It grabbed two men by the heads and smashed them together like coconuts. Skulls shattered. Red mist sprayed across the corridor.
Another creature, hunched and oozing black bile from its back, dragged itself forward on arms twice as long as its torso. It lunged at a squad, and its spine extended mid-air, stabbing through three men in a single motion like a fleshy harpoon. Their screams were short, their bodies convulsing as the creature jerked its spine back, pulling them into a bloody pile.
Panicked gunfire erupted. Muzzle flashes lit the darkness. But bullets barely slowed the monsters. One soldier unloaded an entire magazine into the chest of a snarling goblin. The thing didn't stop... it only screamed louder, then grabbed the man by his jaw and ripped it clean from his face.
Blood sprayed the walls. Boots slipped in the gore. Radio comms filled with terrified screams and static.
"Fall back! FALL BACK!"
A soldier rounded the corner too late. A beast the size of a bear slammed him into the wall, again and again, until the only thing left was red pulp and shattered armor. The thing sniffed at the ruin, then let out a low, pleased growl.
In the mess hall, survivors tried to regroup, barricading the entrance.
It didn't matter.
One of the goblins hurled itself through the reinforced window, body twisting mid-air, claws outstretched. It landed in the center of the group and erupted in an explosion of claws and teeth. Flesh hit the floor in chunks. Organs spilled like burst fruit. A soldier tried to crawl away with no legs. The creature dragged him back, chewing through his midsection like a feral dog.
Elsewhere, a camera feed caught a goblin skittering upside-down along the ceiling, then dropping silently into a communications room. The operators inside didn't notice until it was too late. Blood painted the monitors. One man's scream was cut off as his entire upper half vanished into the monster's maw.
Ross moved through the lower passageways as the slaughter spread. His boots echoed against the metal floor, the wails behind him growing louder. He didn't flinch.
Behind him were four of his remaining loyalists and special operatives in full combat armor. They dragged encrypted drives and portable black boxes filled with damning intel, ensuring that if Ross escaped, the truth never would.
He reached the secret hatch, a blast door hidden behind an old generator housing. One of the men keyed in the access code. The door hissed open.
Ross turned one last time to listen to the chaos he'd unleashed.
Screams. Roars. Gunfire turning to wet gurgles.
He smiled.
"They wanted monsters," he said. "Now they get them."
He stepped into the dark tunnel beyond. The hatch sealed behind him.
And back in the base, the final screams were fading, replaced only by the sound of flesh tearing, bones snapping, and the relentless growls of horrors that were never meant to see the light again.
[A few minutes later...]
The skies churned with smoke and flame as Tony hovered in midair. Beside him were Yelena and six Widows. The HUD in his helmet flickered with red alerts—casualty markers, bio-sign scans, hostile signatures. Below, the black site was a massacre.
Bodies were strewn like broken puppets. Blood slicked the walkways. Some creatures still tore through the remains, screeching, their bodies slick with gore. The air stank of iron and charred flesh.
Tony's eyes narrowed as the scanner pinged targets.
50 hostiles. Genetically unstable. Enhanced durability. Neural detonators embedded. 30 friendly tactical assets. Condition: critical. One confirmed escape: Ross. Submarine class-V6 breaching east tunnel.
"Shit," he muttered.
He opened the comm line. "Yelena, Ross is running like the coward he is. He just left in a stealth sub through the east tunnel. Intercept him. Now."
"Copy that," Yelena's voice snapped back. "I'll gut that bastard."
Her armor adjusted in-flight, boosters flaring as she peeled off toward the cliffs where Ross's sub tunnel emerged. A faint sonic boom followed her.
"No. We need that bastard alive," Tony continued to scan the area.
"Tsk. Fine," Yelena replied.
Tony turned to the rest of his team.
Six Widows hovered beside him in perfect formation, their stealth-class nanite armor rippling with light distortions and bristling with advanced weapon modules.
He pointed down.
"There are thirty survivors. Fifty targets. And these freaks got bombs in their head. One headshot too hard and they'll take everyone around them with it."
He adjusted his visor.
He adjusted his visor, recalibrating the kinetic thresholds for controlled engagements.
"Two of you stay in the sky. The rest follow me. We'll fling them up in the air, and No. 1 and 2 will blast them with full power. Simple, right? Let's go," He dropped from the sky like a meteor.
The Widows followed.
Tony hit the ground with a bang, repulsors flaring to cushion the impact. The concrete cratered beneath his boots. All around, the mutated goblins shrieked, drawn by the noise, their malformed limbs twitching in anticipation.
"Tactical forces... Fall back. Leave these monsters to us," Tony's voice boomed.
The soldiers had no choice but to fall back because they knew their limits and saw what those monsters could do. Their weapons have no effect on those monsters' bodies. And considering their situation, they decided to do as told just to survive.
"Fall back. Team: F." The leader yelled.
"Target acquisition," Hermes activated the auto target mode.
Fifty red markers lit up.
"Light 'em up," Tony growled.
The Widows dropped in behind him like ghosts with guns. As the creatures rushed, Tony fired a wide-beam repulsor blast at the ground in front of them... pure kinetic force lifted four goblins straight into the air. Then he fired multiple repuslor beams to push them further into the sky.
"Now!"
Two Widows targeted the airborne abominations with guided micro-missiles. The explosions lit the sky in bursts of orange and green flame. Goblin bodies disintegrated midair, raining burnt meat and bone fragments.
Another pack charged. A Widow in red pivoted, tossing a pulse grenade that stuck to one goblin's chest. The blast launched it skyward, where Tony met it with a double repulsor blast, shredding its midsection.
Another Widow activated her anti-grav boots, skating across the blood-slick ground. She slid beneath a lunging goblin, stabbed a plasma blade into its stomach, and kicked it up toward her teammate, who finished it with a high-yield explosive dart straight to the head. Boom. Gone.
Tony's systems locked onto another cluster. Eight of them, forming a semi-circle around trapped survivors.
"Clear the field," he ordered.
Three Widows flew toward them. Their suits shifted to Brawler mode. Their gauntlets turned bright red, and the suits' defense increased five times, and their speed increased by two times. In the blink of an eye, they punched those monsters into the sky.
"Mid-air... engage!"
Tony and the other three took to the air. Missiles streamed from their gauntlets. Each strike was surgical: blast-to-dismember, detonation timed just before impact to avoid triggering the neural bombs. The monsters burst like overripe fruit.
Another creature tried to charge the wounded soldiers behind Tony. He didn't hesitate. He fired a high-density sonic pulse. The goblin collapsed, ears and eyes bleeding, twitching violently. A Widow flew toward it with a glowing plasma sword and severed its head before kicking it into the air as Tony blasted it with his repulsor blast.
Lift, blast, repeat. Toss them up. Blow them apart.
One Widow caught a creature mid-air with a grappling tether, spun it like a flail, and slammed it into three others before detonating a thermite charge on its corpse.
Within two minutes, all the monsters died.
Tony looked around. Even though he saved the remnant of the tactical force, there were so many who didn't survive. Many injured and well... Too much blood and gory.
'Tsk. That lunatic. To think he has a horde of monsters like this. There was no information about this in the system or his personal files. Probably analog storage or files. Limitation of technology, huh?'
Tony activated his bio-nanites...
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