The Ooze Convergence

The morning had stretched into a grueling, surreal marathon. The team of officers, still cloaked in their cumbersome hazmat suits, had spent hours moving through the apartment complexes of Queens, a house-to-house sweep dictated by the pulsating red dots on their maps. Some homes, thankfully, had been filled with normal, terrified residents, their startled faces and panicked cries is a relief to the officers.

Other homes had been blocked by suspicious neighbors or defiant protesters, their shouts echoing the outrage filling social media feeds. These impediments, however, were swiftly rendered unconscious by the suited agent, who merely waved a hand, leaving the officers to wonder exactly what kind of unlisted capabilities their silent companion possessed. A significant portion of the homes, though, had been exactly as the map indicated: filled with the mimic creatures. Some had tried to attack, their human disguises falling away to reveal the writhing black ooze, but each assault had been decisively controlled by the suited man before the officer neutralize it.

Now, a brief respite. They had pulled back to a designated safe zone, their flamethrowers cooled, their Geiger-counter devices laid out. The air, even though their respirators, still felt heavy with the unspoken horrors they'd witnessed.

"What the hell is going on?" one officer muttered, pulling off his respirator and letting it hang by his side, his voice raw. "How much has the government been lying to us?"

"Didn't I tell you to stop asking questions?" the lead officer retorted, though his own voice held a tremor of profound unease.

"Sorry," the questioning officer mumbled, rubbing his temples. "I can't help it. You know, this whole situation... it's crazy."

"Let's keep the discussion of it later," another officer interjected, eyeing the suited man, who stood a little apart, silently observing them. "When whatever this is, is over."

A fourth officer, staring intently at his map device, pointed at the screen. Swathes of red dots were now turning to green, sweeping across the city with alarming speed. "It looks like we're about to be done in a few days, looking at our progress."

Suddenly, the suited man, who had been speaking in a low tone into a discreet earpiece, turned off his phone. His dark gaze swept over the group of officers as he walked slowly towards them.

"We're heading back," the suited man stated, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "It seems they are converging to a single entity. It's no longer safe."

Understanding the sheer, overwhelming seriousness of that statement, the officers exchanged grim glances. The word "safe" from this man carried a weight that terrified them more than any direct threat. Without another word, they gathered their gear, their break abruptly over.

Then, the world outside erupted.

The piercing, guttural wail of air raid sirens blared across the city, cutting through the urban hum. Simultaneously, everyone's phone vibrated, displaying an emergency evacuation order: "LOCK DOORS. REMAIN INDOORS. DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."

From the distance, beyond the maze of buildings, an impossible sight began to emerge. A flow of black ooze, shimmering and glistening under the sun, moved with unnatural speed, slithering over the asphalt and concrete. It was converging, funneling from countless hidden points across the city into a single, monstrous current. As more black ooze flowed in, the nascent form grew, churning and roiling. Slowly, with a horrific, faceless, slime-like entity began to rise, covering entire streets, then slowly crawling up the sides of nearby buildings, swelling into a colossal, living mountain of darkness. It absorbed more and more of its kind, getting larger, taller, its formless mass blotting out the sky.

Their vehicle sped down the streets, blue of now abandoned cars a testament to the city's sudden evacuation. Through the dust-streaked windshield, the officers watched in horrifying awe as the colossal mass of black ooze consumed entire blocks as it moves.

Overhead, with a deafening roar that vibrated through their suits, a jet screamed by, a dark silhouette against the smoke-choked sky. Moments later, its payload of incendiary bombs detached, raining down in a fiery cascade. Portions of the monstrous slime instantly ignited, a terrifying tableau of black and orange, the flames spreading rapidly across its viscous surface. But the triumph was fleeting. The mass of ooze rippled, shifted its incredible bulk, and then seemed to engulf the covering fire, absorbing it into its depths, snuffing out the inferno as if it were nothing more than a minor irritation.

Then, a low, whistling hum. Missiles, a streak of white against the grim backdrop, homed onto the towering mass. It plunged into the gelatinous form, seemingly swallowed whole, before erupting in a blinding flash and a thunderous explosion from within. The colossal ooze flung vast chunks of its black, glistening self across the immediate area, splattering against buildings and dissolving into the streets below. But even as the dust settled, the remaining core of the entity, though diminished, was still moving, still trying to reconverge to its original mass.

From their vantage point, they could see other nearby vehicles, similarly outfitted with flamethrowers, approaching those newly separated, smaller ooze spots, immediately lighting them on fire before they could coalesce again.

"Get close," the suited man's voice, calm and cutting through the din of distant sirens, came from the back. "We need to assist them."

The officer at the wheel, though his hands trembled slightly, mustered up a fresh surge of bravery. He pressed the accelerator, steering their SUV through the urban debris, speeding towards the main, still-heaving mass. His colleagues readied their flamethrowers, their faces grimly set.

They joined the other teams, unleashing their own torrents of flame onto the smaller, flailing fragments of the monster. Through their combined, relentless effort, the newly formed black ooze was noticeably smaller than before, its ability to re-form hampered by the continuous thermal assault. And before it could regain any significant coherence, more missiles streaked down, repeating the devastating process of internal explosion, neutralizing of separated part, and reconverging until it stopped moving.

The air filled with the acrid scent of burnt material and something indescribably alien.

A collective sigh of exhaustion, almost imperceptible through the respirators, went through the team. They knew the immediate, monstrous threat was over. But the suited agent's voice cut through the silence. "Search quadrant by quadrant. We need to ensure complete neutralization."

Their orders now extended to the very bowels of the city. They were instructed to search for any remaining, scattered blobs of the creature, no matter how small, to neutralize them completely. This meant even descending into the sewer system, a place normally synonymous with grime and stench. But as they prepared to enter, a strange realization dawned on them: the sewers, somehow, were completely clean, scrubbed bare of their usual filth by the very creatures that had resided within them. The monstrous ooze, in its parasitic existence, had left behind a chillingly pristine, yet sterile, emptiness.