Chapter IX

"Fucking door!" Watters roar his voice shredded by panic. He clawed at the unyielding door handle, yanking and twisting with desperate, futile strength, as the tormented figures contorted into shrieking, monstrous abominations before his widening eyes. 

The damned things shattered into shrieks of agony and rage, as their starved, skeletal frames twisted and splintered, becoming chitinous mockeries of their former selves. Each exploded with a gaping maw where a chest had been, rimmed with rows of serrated, blood-slick teeth. Their necks snapped backwards with sickening cracks, their distorted faces locked in silent, gaping howls. Fingers elongated into obsidian claws, ripping through air. With gruesome ease, the mutations tore free of their restraints, some snapping their own bones in the process, driven by a horrifying, nascent will. 

"MOVE!" Grimm bellowed, a thunderous command. He shoved Watters bodily aside, his massive boot a blur of motion as it connected with the door's edge. CRASH! The lock SNAPPED, the frame GROANED, and the door PANEL EXPLODED inwards, showering the passage beyond with splinters of wood and choking dust. Grimm seized Watters by the scruff of his neck, launching him through the ravaged doorway. "GO!" 

Watters, propelled by terror and Grimm's brute force, scrambled into the black maw of the tunnel, arms flailing for balance. Grimm, rifle now leveled and spitting fire, backed into the passage, each shot erupting with deafening force and tearing viscous chunks from the mutated horrors. 

But death held no sway over them. Each impact of Grimm's rifle was a mere sting, failing to halt their inexorable advance; if anything, it seemed to invigorate their monstrous forms. They lumbered on, unperturbed, their horrifying shapes looming larger with every backward step. Then, cutting through the oppressive blackness, a colossal aperture appeared, a multi-levelled cavern beckoning from the depths. 

Watters jabbed a trembling finger towards the chasm ahead. "Grimm—!" he gasped, his lungs burning with exertion and fear. Grimm's head snapped forward, his gaze instantly assessing the unfolding vista. "HIDE!" Grimm roared, pointing a rigid finger towards a shadowed overhang clinging to the upper level. Without hesitation, Watters sprinted for the indicated rockface, his boots pounding against the stone, his breath tearing in his throat, not daring to glance behind him. 

Suddenly, the mutant's ribcage unhinged, its scrawny legs still pummeling forward, as a grotesque medusa of tendrils erupted, spewing forth from the newly formed abyss in its chest. They clamped onto Grimm's right forearm, their grip vise-like. The creature wrenched his arm with violent force, ripping the rifle from Grimm's grasp and sending it spinning across the cavern. Grimm planted his boots, resisting with brutal strength, battling against the creature's monstrous strength, fighting to wrench free from the tendrils that urged him, with sickening insistence, towards that ring of teeth. 

Grimm's boots scraped against the stone, his legs skidding inch by agonizing inch towards the razor-toothed maw. His body leaned precariously close, he dug the heel of his left boot into the creature's slick flank, a desperate anchor against the relentless pull. Muscles corded in his arm as he wrenched against the constricting tendrils, the creature's fetid breath washing over him, thick with the stench of putrescence and decay. Its teeth, glistening with gore and viscous slime, loomed inches away. 

Desperate, with a final, explosive surge of strength, Grimm hauled back with such ferocity that the tendrils snapped free. But they did not simply release. Torn from their unholy anchor, they ripped out of the creature's flesh, dragging with them a grotesque length of glistening viscera, pulpy with raw muscle and studded with fragments of splintered vertebrae, now dangling obscenely from Grimm's forearm. 

Grimm wrenched and twisted, but the gory entrail clung like a second, sickening limb. Time vanished, consumed by the urgent press of mutated flesh. Another creature launched itself into the air, a grotesque parody of flight, its exposed chest cavity a gaping wound hungry for purchase. Instinct taking over, Grimm didn't hesitate. In a single, fluid motion, he snatched the trailing viscera, the slimy mass heavy in his grip, and hurled it back, a grotesque projectile, straight into the creature's descending maw. The mutant gaged, a strangled roar erupting as the unnatural mass clogged its exposed throat. Taking advantage of its momentary agony, Grimm gripped the pulpy intrail, using it as a makeshift rope to yank the creature downwards, his boot crashing into its emaciated frame, sending it hurtling backwards with sickening force. 

Without warning, two more mutants ambushed him from the shadows. One descended upon his right shoulder, jaws snapping shut, its inhuman strength crushing bone with a sickening GRIND. A roar ripped from Grimm's throat, raw agony exploding as razor teeth sank into his flesh, finding purchase with horrifying ease. Even as pain seared through his arm, the second mutant launched itself forward, a blur of distorted limbs and gaping chest. Grimm, reacting on instinct alone, snatched his pistol, unleashing a hail of gunfire into the charging horror's neck cavity. Six rounds tore through flesh and sinew, each impact a wet, sickening THUD, gouging massive chunks from its unnatural form. The creature collided with the stone floor, its mutated body collapsing into a lifeless heap. 

Not Lycans, Grimm registered, a searing brand of agony lancing through his trapped arm. He let his dropped sidearm clatter onto the stone, empty. Desperation fueled his reach into his jacket. There! A jolt of grim triumph as his fingers closed around the smooth, warm assurance of a fire orb. Muscles screaming, he hauled his arm back, a guttural roar tearing from his throat: "Die!" He unleashed the glowing sphere, a molten sun hurled point-blank at the creature mauling him. FASH! The mutant became an instant pyre, its screech escalating into a bloodcurdling howl as flames devoured its unnatural flesh, the stench of burning meat and something deeply wrong blossoming in the confined space. 

The mutant's grip slackened, its burning flesh loosening from Grimm's arm, but the fire, unleashed and voracious, roared across Grimm's jacket. Flames licked at his flesh, searing and biting, then climbed, hungrily, towards his shoulder, his face. Grimm arched backwards, a strangled cry escaping his charred throat, mirroring the mutant's own fiery collapse. Both figures crumpled, striking the stone with sickening, synchronized thuds. 

"Grimm!" Watters shrieked, his voice raw with terror. He burst from the shadowed alcove, fear propelling him forward, a hastily-removed coat clutched desperately in his trembling hands, racing towards his immolated savior. 

Watters beat at the flames with his jacket, a frantic flurry of motion, smothering the blaze with desperate force. Smoke billowed from Grimm's charred and smoking form. "Grimm!" he ROARED, his voice thick with panic and grief, dropping to his knees beside the broken figure. Grimm's eyes were mere slits in swollen, blackened flesh, his bandana burned away, revealing a face ravaged by fire and old wars, now split at the cheek, a grotesque grin of exposed teeth. His jacket was a smoldering ruin, and the sickly-sweet stench of cooked meat assaulted Watters' nostrils. Grimm gasped, each breath a ragged, whistling agony, trying to force words past scorched lips. "Vi… via…" A racking urg tore from his throat, a final, agonizing expulsion. His large hand twitched weakly, gesturing towards his breast pocket, a barely perceptible tremor. 

Bewildered, Watters leaned closer, straining to decipher the ravaged face, his own voice trembling with rising panic. "I don't… I don't understand, Grimm, what is it—?" His desperate plea was cut short by a sudden, jarring THRUST from below, a jolt that nearly threw him into the charred husk of Grimm's body. "VIAL!" Grimm CROAKED, the word ripped from his burning lungs, his gaze fixed, burning with desperate urgency, on his coat pocket. 

"Vial?" Watters repeated, a flicker of understanding igniting in his panicked mind, his fingers tearing at Grimm's scorched jacket. There. His gaze locked on the telltale glint of green glass, vials nestled deep within the breast pocket. He snatched the container, the cool glass strangely comforting against his trembling fingers. The liquid inside burned with an unnatural emerald light, unsettling and unknown. Bioluminescence? Some alchemical concoction? His scientific curiosity sparked, a fleeting, inappropriate distraction before reality crashed back. Grimm arched, his body convulsing in violent spasms, his breath rattling in his throat. "NO!" Watters roared, all thought collapsing into pure, desperate action. Lunging, he brandished the vial, the needle glinting cruelly in the dim light, and plunged it with brutal force into the vicinity of Grimm's heart, slamming the plunger home in a desperate gamble. 

A ghastly vapor hissed from the injection site, accompanied by an unearthly chorus of shrieks, seemingly BORN from the green depths of the vial itself. Grimm's eyes snapped wide, pupils dilating, a desperate, final SPARK of life igniting in their depths before… nothing. Silence descended like a shroud. His back thudded against the stone, his head lolling lifelessly to the side. 

Watters remained rigid; a statue cast in the cold mold of shock. His gaze strained, a desperate tether, between the vial's ethereal steam coiling in his grasp, and the absolute, brutalized stillness of Grimm's remains. What in God's name… what unholy thing just occurred? The question became a physical ache in his chest, echoing unanswered in the deafening vacuum of loss. 

Those… were those screams? The horrific query pulsed in his skull, a frantic, nauseating attempt to anchor to some semblance of logic amidst the impossible green fluid. And Grimm... Grimm, what is GONE? His mind recoiled, then RACED, a frantic animal trapped in the cage of grief, desperate for any semblance of finality, any escape from this agonizing limbo. "Grimm," he whispered, a breath of sound lost in the silence, his eyes fixed, pleadingly, on the ravaged husk before him. "Grimm!" he cried again, his voice breaking, a ragged tear in the silence, fueled by a desperate, futile hope. "H-he's… dead," the words tore free, raw and ragged, each syllable a fresh wound, a physical manifestation of his defeat. Then, the floodgates opened. The nightmare burst forth, the dead soldier rising unbidden in his mind's eye, his limbs angled grotesquely, his face a hollow void, a spectral twin to Grimm, a macabre reflection of the world's inherent, unyielding brutality now etched onto Grimm's lifeless form. 

Time stretched, each second a lead weight in the oppressive silence. Whatever the green vial held, it remained inert, a useless trinket clutched in his numb fingers, offering no salvation to the fallen giant beside him. Watters' heart plummeted, a stone sinking into an abyss of despair. Escape… impossible. The thought formed, cold and absolute, a suffocating shroud. He was utterly alone. No Order cavalry on the horizon. Grimm, his anchor, his protector, extinguished. 

Then, from the inky blackness of the shadows, a sound rippled outward, a low, malevolent chuckle that scraped along the stone, each syllable a chilling premonition, sending icy tendrils of dread coiling around Watters' spine. 

"So, it seems I've finally slain the immortal," the voice purred, laced with cruel amusement, as Mikkelson emerged from the shadows, his silhouette sharpening into focus, flanked by two towering Lycans, monstrous embodiments of brute force. Watters' eyes snapped towards the voice, burning with a furious grief, tears blurring his vision. Mikkelson's grin split the darkness, a predatory and chilling testament to his absolute command over the creatures. Mikkelson lifted a hand, a casual gesture of power, pointing towards Watters, "Take the doctor, and the immortal. I have… plans for him." The Lycans moved with chilling, synchronized precision, utterly implacable. One seized Grimm's limp form, hoisting the lifeless weight onto its massive shoulders with unnerving ease. The other advanced on Watters, a slow, deliberate stalk, its clawed hand reaching for his arm. "Get your filthy hands off me, you abomination!" he roared, his voice cracking with impotent rage, lashing out with futile punches against the giant wolf-creature, his blows landing like a child's against a stone wall. 

Mikkelson chortled, a sound devoid of warmth, dripping with dark satisfaction, "You should be grateful, Doctor. You are to be a privileged spectator, my esteemed… guest," his arm swept outwards in a mocking flourish, gesturing to the Lycan pair, "you are about to witness the dawn of the new world order!" With sudden, brutal efficiency, the Lycan backhanded Watters, its massive elbow CRUSHING across his skull, plunging him into merciful darkness.