The Ripple of Progress

One of the screens caught my attention immediately. A group of Sunod was on it, their grotesque, deformed bodies tearing through a barricade with terrifying efficiency. The sight was almost surgical—precision that no mindless creature could possess. Another screen showed survivors huddled in a corner, their faces pale and hollow, eyes wide with fear. They weren't just afraid—they were already resigned to the inevitable. I couldn't look at it for long, my mind reeling from the implications of what I was seeing.

Marisol stood beside me, her gaze unwavering, as she scanned the screens. "We're running out of time," she said, her voice a sharp whisper. "I can only keep this lab secure for so long. The Sunod, they'll learn how to breach this place too. And then..." She trailed off, her jaw tightening. The terror in her eyes was palpable, a reflection of the same fear gnawing at me.

I didn't need to hear her say it. We were already too late. The world outside was collapsing. And I was too far gone to stop it.

"Why did you call me?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended. The words tasted like acid as they left my mouth, but I couldn't help it. "You could've contacted anyone from our team."

Marisol's gaze never wavered. Her eyes, usually so calm and calculated, now flickered with something else—something darker. She leaned against the console, the dim light from the monitors casting shadows across her face. "Because you're the only one who knows the formula of Salus," she said, her voice quiet but resolute. "You're the only one I entrusted with it. That's why it was you I called when I was studying and synthesizing Salus."

I felt the words hit me like a physical blow. My heart tightened, my chest constricting. Her admission, that I was the one she had trusted with the key to Salus, hung heavy in the air between us. I couldn't breathe. How could I fix this? How could I fix something that had gone so far beyond repair? Salus was supposed to push the boundaries of human biology—extend life, cure diseases—but it had turned into a nightmare. A mutation, a monster we never saw coming. A monster I never stopped.

"I didn't come here to be a hero," I muttered bitterly, my voice cracking. "I came because you said it was linked to me. So, tell me, Marisol. What the hell did you find?"

She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she turned, her fingers flying over the console with the precision of someone who had done this a thousand times. The monitor beside her flickered before it came to life, the static buzzing in my ears. My eyes narrowed as I looked at the screen. The video feed was grainy, shaky. The room was chaotic—people running, shouting, the high-pitched scream of alarms blaring, drowning out everything else.

But then, amidst the madness, I saw him. Or at least, I thought I did. My breath hitched in my throat as I saw a figure in the center of the chaos. It was me—or at least, it looked like me. But the man on the screen was different somehow. His eyes were wide, feral, and full of fear.

The other "me" was older, his face weathered by time, streaks of gray running through his hair, eyes sunken with the weight of years. His expression was frantic, desperate, as he shouted into the phone, his words drowned beneath the chaos that surrounded him. But even through the distorted, flickering video feed, I could read his lips. The message was unmistakable.

"Don't synthesize Salus! Marisol, believe me! You don't know what you're unleashing!"

My legs went weak, and I stumbled back, my hands shaking as I gripped the edge of the console. My breath came in short, ragged gasps. "What... what is this?" I choked out, my voice barely above a whisper, a mix of disbelief and horror crashing through me.

Marisol didn't answer right away. Her gaze was fixed on the screen, her lips pressed tightly together as if she were trying to hold back something—something too horrible to say. Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet but heavy with the weight of what we were seeing.

"That's what I've been trying to figure out, I guess you succeeded in travelling back in time and decided to not tell the world about it" she said, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "I thought it was you who appeared six months ago, warning us about the outbreak."

"But that Ethan who appeared here six months ago told me he was from the future and mentioned using Chronos, the project which I believed you decided to cancel and worked on Project Salus instead."

I froze. My heart skipped a beat. "How did you know that it wasn't me?"

Marisol's eyes flicked up to meet mine, and there was a flash of something sharp in them—something like anger, something like fear. "Because the Dr. Ethan Carter I know of would fuck me in my laboratory bathroom instead of warning me," she shot back, her words biting, cutting through the tension in the room like a knife.

The sharpness of her tone caught me off guard, and I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could form a response, the room suddenly filled with the sounds of jeers and mocking laughter. It was faint at first, like whispers at the edge of consciousness, but then it grew louder, more real, echoing from somewhere deep within the building.

My breath caught in my throat. "What the hell is that?" I whispered, my grip tightening around the baton instinctively.

Marisol didn't answer. Her eyes were wide now, searching the shadows beyond the door, her body tense as if bracing for something. And then, it came—an earth-shattering roar, so deafening it rattled the walls. The monitors flickered violently, the screens distorting into bursts of static, before plunging the room into complete darkness. My pulse thundered in my ears as the roar reverberated, an unnatural, guttural sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the lab.

I heard Marisol curse under her breath, and then a cold beam of light sliced through the darkness as she grabbed a flashlight from the desk. The beam wavered in her hand, casting erratic shadows against the walls as she swung it around, her expression grim.

"They've found us," Marisol whispered, her voice tight with urgency. "We need to move. Now."

The words sent a jolt of panic through me, and I spun around, scanning the hallway ahead. It was pitch black, the only source of light the flickering beam of Marisol's flashlight. Her hand gripped the flashlight tightly, the light cutting through the dark, casting long, jagged shadows that seemed to writhe and stretch, like the hallway itself was alive, reaching out to claim us.

The air was thick with tension. Then, from the darkness, came the sound—the unmistakable shuffle of footsteps. Wet, slithering, like something crawling just beneath the surface. The low, guttural snarls began to fill the space, a primal sound that made my stomach twist. My breath caught, and my throat tightened as I peered into the dark, my pulse racing.

And then, I saw it.

A figure emerged from the gloom, its small frame twisted in ways that defied logic. At first, I thought it was just a child—too small, too fragile—but the horror that followed was far beyond anything human. Its limbs were elongated, unnaturally so, stretching out in impossible angles, its bones creaking like old wood. Dark veins pulsed beneath its translucent skin, like the blood had turned into poison, feeding something dark inside.

Its mouth was a twisted mess of jagged, bloodied teeth, hanging open in a grotesque grin. But it wasn't the teeth that froze me in place. It was its eyes—milky and hollow, vacant, yet fixed directly on us. It tilted its head, its neck cracking with a sickening pop, and I realized in that moment—this thing had been a child. A child we had failed.

I swallowed hard, fighting the bile rising in my throat. But Marisol didn't flinch. She was already moving, fast, calculating. She didn't even hesitate as she pulled a modified stun gun from her belt, the cold steel glinting in the dim light.

She fired.

The crack of the stun gun echoed in the silence, followed by the sound of the Sunod's shrill scream. The child-turned-monster convulsed, its limbs spasming violently as a high-pitched wail split the air. The thing collapsed, twitching on the ground, its body still, but the damage was done. The scream had already attracted them.

From the corners of the hallway, from the shadows, they started to emerge—more Sunod. The sickening sound of their ragged breath filled the air. The flashlight beam caught their grotesque forms as they crawled from the darkness—some slithering on all fours, their spines bending unnaturally, their fingers scraping across the floor in disturbingly fluid motions. Others were more human in shape, but their mouths hung open wide, releasing bone-chilling wails that sent a shiver down my spine.