Purgatory, 10: Gifts of the Forsaken World
15 Jan 2024Meowers
Warning: cruelty, violence, graphic descriptions.
"The end justifies the means, they say. And, I think, the more you rely on these words in order to explain yourself, the farther you are from any justifications."
T + 48h 30min. Let's start the show.
Three rockets hit the guard towers, now blazing debris. Another three made a big hole in the fence, imitating a full-scale attack. Waiting for more mercs to gather there. I too have something funny for them...
Phah, they certainly didn't expect it, not from that side. Sent a few long bursts their way to support the distraction group. Too far to do any serious damage but I saw some figures thrown onto the ground, wounded writhing and crawling, others kissing the dirt only to end up picked one by one. Smith blew up the front gate, sharpshooters cracked the searchlights, we're ready to take off. Okay, three, two, one...
Go, now!
Building at the right, front doors, focus your fire!
Crates, one o'clock, small group behind... Yeah, there, there! Nailed you losers
Dammit more snipers! Smith, on my tracers, delete that fucker! Damn... How bad? Get him out of the road!
Move and shoot, move and shoot! Make them keep their heads down!
Heavies, second floor, take cover! Okay now let me show you how to use that thing...
Rest in pieces you moron
48-36 we're on the territory, shit it's so open... Run, run dammit! Covering!
More around the corner... Take that you shits
Dammit. Reloading! Navarrete, cover me!
Get the door out of the way! Everyone, inside!
48-38. We're inside. Blasted the side entrance open, entering the building. Have to be quick. Seems like the guards figured out that rockets were a distraction. Heard some mines exploding though... Minimal resistance inside the building, most of the mercs took our bait.
Civilians? Scientists? Screw them, you know what to do. "I just work here", fuck you... Next!
Spread out, grab everything that has any text on it, fast!
Human subjects, confirmed. That was obvious. Shit, that's gross... Yeah. Definitely some Thargoid-related research, the place reeks of alien acid. Both heavies and second rifles are keeping the mercs away but they can't do it forever. Have to be fast.
Okay, there's a guy in a coat... What the f... Leave her alone you shit... On the floor, now! Look into my eyes you sick bastard...
Shit this is awful. A man in a lab coat and some kind of a torture-testing machine on the ceiling... Ended him. In an ugly way. Got a couple of datapads to read. Going further.
Bloody damn shit, these vats... With people inside. Fuck they're mad.
Now that's really... Okay. 48-45, autopsy room. With one subject still barely alive. Dozens of dead bodies, signs of experiments, removed organs. Okay, pictures can wait, I have to get that shit done.
48-50. That's all. Have some stuff to read later, ordering the group to wrap that up and retreat. Second team is on the run already.
Explosions? What the?..
Run goddammit, or they blow that place to bits! Shit. Mercs brought their rocket launchers here, retreating now.
Hostile ships! Everyone, get into the woods!
* * *
49-03. Damn they're tenacious. Saw dropships with troops arriving, and... More explosions? I've no idea what's happening there, but those bastards chased us quite tightly. Had to dump two more mags at them to tell them that's a bad idea. My folks are doing their best but we can't just disappear in that forest. Casualties, again... Fuck.
T + 49h 21min. Looks like we're clear. Sent Foster, Hawkins and Topalidis back a little to observe and let us know if they're coming again.
That godsdamned shit cost us a lot. Friggin mercs got Chavez and Broekman on the approach and then showered Navarrete's gun spot with explosives, she's wounded in the shoulder and Simmons, her assistant, is dead. Romano and Stetina are going to have some new scars but they're okay mostly. Second team reported Novak took a bad hit in the stomach, he's alive but out of combat. Ffffuck.
Someone told me that my plate on the left forearm doesn't look right... Pfff. That's why I wanted to scratch it all the way. Removed the plate for our techs to wrench-bash it and make it flat again. Projectile hit, damn thing struck the plate and ricocheted away, and wearing something with jagged edges turned inside is neither my usual choice nor a personal recommendation. Only if you aren't an Azimuth freak. If you are, then wear everything with torn steel going inside, it will suit you. Ah, okay, a little bandaging adds to this mighty pleasant coffee'n'smokes break, just the way I like it.
T + 49h 42min. Hawkins returned and brought four mercs with him. They told me they'd rather surrender to us instead, being found by their fellows from the dropships definitely wasn't the way they wanted to go. Azimuth is wiping the place clean like it never existed, along with the subjects and their own workers, and the troops on the ships aren't reinforcements, but an elimination squad. That's interesting.
So... They didn't pursue us. They ran towards us to surrender, with another Azimuth squad shooting them in the backs. And none of the guarding mercs had any rocket launchers, those explosions were an airstrike. Okay, all their ammo and stuff are ours now, every little bit helps I guess. Will take a look at their maps and datapads later, twenty minutes more and we're heading back to the defence point to lick our wounds and inspect the stuff we've found.
* * *
T + 50h 41min. Okay, we're back. So, where do I start...
First, those surrendered mercs. Not exactly super helpful. Some ammo, shield batteries, snacks and cigarettes, nothing more. They didn't know any directions or specific names, their maps didn't have any new marks and roads, they didn't even expect their employers, Azimuth, to send that cleansweep squad instead of reinforcements.
However, just guarding the place wasn't their only responsibility. Some of the prisoners, those in good physical shape, were offered an option to join the ranks, with a near-zero rejection rate I guess, considering the alternative. Mercs gave them combat and physique training, obviously, on top of the examination and treatment done by scientists, and some trainees were ready after a short introductory course. Though, not every one of them. And the path of that other group was a little more curious, they were isolated in another building for a couple weeks and then sent... Somewhere else. And the mercs had no idea about that part. Secrets, more secrets.
Anyway. Damn that place sucks... Like, really sucks, if the concentration camp is awful, that one is atrocious. So atrocious that no one said a single word against when I took those mercs to their own trench-trap at gunpoint and shoved them face down off the edge, straight onto the steel spikes. Still had to shoot two of them though, I didn't want to hear them screaming for hours.
One of the rooms... An old guy in a lab coat was busy zapping a living subject again and again, targeting some kind of an odd tumour on her abdomen, with a big remote controlled device hanging from the ceiling. She was strapped to the table, unable to move, unable even to say anything with all that tape on her mouth, and the bastard sent a deadly jolt once I slammed the door open and pointed the rifle at him. Even her burnt flesh smelled odd. With all the gunfight outside, they kept doing that mad shit. Or maybe they didn't hear anything at all? Maybe those walls were filled with sound suppressing stuff? People tend to, you know, scream. What a pathetic hypocrite anyway, begged me not to shoot him, told me he's doing what's better for the entire humanity and blah blah blah...
Who am I to refuse such a polite request? Of course I didn't shoot him. I grabbed him by the collar and dropped on the floor, face up, and, looking into his eyes, stomped on his ribcage forcefully again and again. He shrieked in pain, loudly, each sound more and more gurgling as the blood bubbled from his agony-twisted mouth, with deep gasps for air interrupting the screams. Jagged broken bones pierced through the skin and clothing fabric, a pool of blood formed on the floor beneath him and then, shortly after, the screams stopped. I ceased only once I heard pieces of his broken spinal discs scratching the floor.
Bastards. I knew Azimuth is up to some crazy shit, didn't expect to see it though.
Going through the building, once I wandered into a large hall, each side lined with dozens of large glass experimentation vats, human sized, each standing about a metre above the ground on black-painted steel observation platforms, with a few steps for access on the right hand side, and a handrail around the outside of each. Monitoring screens stood glowing softly in front of each platform, such that the user stood at them on the ground would be looking up at the vat. The lighting in the hall was on, but dimmed, like it was set to 'night mode', though each vat was well illuminated by separate observation lighting.
Vats were filled with a green-coloured Thargoid ooze, with the ones closest to the entrance being topped off with a thick, dense layer of yellowish froth. As I began to progress through the hall, along the line of vats, I noticed that both the acid and the yellowish layer became progressively thinner and more dilute, and I could see flakes and chunks of some kind of tissue floating around in the fluid. And, as I moved further, and the chunks became larger, I saw that there was equipment hanging from the underside of the lids, down into the liquid within. It was hard to make out what the equipment was at first. But very soon I realised that these vats contained human bodies at different stages of being dissolved or digested by the Thargoid liquid, with breathing masks still attached to the skulls of the more complete ones.
As I reached the end of the hall, it was clear that the final victims had died just a few hours ago, in an excruciating pain. Their skin, slowly detaching from the bodies, showing clear and complete chemical burn coverage, revealed openings in the flesh, with the same chemical burns visible within the wounds, some of which were deep enough to see all the way to the bone. And, oozing from these wounds, and surrounding the skin, clinging to it in a fine layer, like thin aura surrounding the victim, was a faint yellowish substance. The substance that the Thargoid liquid was converting them into. The same yellowish substance that topped off each of the previous vats. In the end, it was, or was to be, all that remained of each victim.
And then the next hall. It was similar in size to the last one, but was more well lit, with cold white lighting being cast downward from points on the high ceiling. This hall did not contain the vats that the previous one had, but was instead lined with large prison-cell-like cages, primarily made up of chrome-coated steel bars. Each cell was large enough to openly contain up to about ten people easily, without them being crammed in like cattle.
The roofs of the cells blocked the light from above, enshrouding their occupants in darkness and shadow, but, from my position at the hall entrance, I could make out the emaciated and dishevelled figures within them, contrasting against the backdrop of the pale grey floors, and of the walls in the distance beyond. Some were standing, some sitting with their backs against the bars, some laying down. A few of them walked slowly around their cells. Some remained motionless even after they saw me. None made any noise beyond whispers or quiet murmurs.
As I moved towards the middle of the room and proceeded along between the cages, I could notice thin, twenty to thirty centimetres long antenna-like metal spikes protruding from the bodies of the prisoners, in different places on them and in different quantities, ranging from one or two to maybe a couple dozens implanted into some of the people. And the implanting had been done crudely, with no care for the prisoner shown. Dried blood covered the places around those spots that the implants extended from. Mostly at least. Some of the prisoners still continued to bleed from the sites, enough for there to be visible stains on the floor.
The prisoners were alive mostly, with only maybe two or three dead amongst them. And only recently dead, none 'left to rot', as I had seen in the camp before. Of the living; most were completely crazed, devoid of any signs of a human soul still remaining in them. Some of them lay on the floor, hitting it with their foreheads monotonously with empty stares. Others just stood or sat there staring vacantly in different directions, without looking at anything in particular. Some walked around their cages in circles. Some subjects were trying to speak, uttering, in hushed tones, various noises ranging from incoherent streams of sounds to nonsense gibberish made of random words.
As I moved past the cages, headed towards the opposite end of the hall, a few prisoners tried to reach me, stretching their trembling, thin arms out between the bars. There was no aggression or malice behind their attempts, no anger or hatred. They were reaching out to try to get me to help them. To touch me. Not hurt me. Maybe not being fully aware of their own actions, not having complete control over them. Like a thin, weak shade of consciousness, brutally beaten into the corners of their minds, had shown itself, mustering all the strength it had left remaining, in a desperate last effort.
One prisoner stood up as I approached, and reached the front side of the cage, moving unnaturally, soullessly, repulsively robotic. He locked onto my eyes with an intense and piercing stare. Still present, still there mentally, he knew what he was trying to achieve. As I got close, he asked me to kill him, with the shaking, quiet, erratic voice of a person struggling to punch the words through the thick shroud of insanity clouding his mind. I looked at him for a moment, and granted him relief, as clean as it could've been done at that time, with a pistol shot to the head. None of the other prisoners in his cell reacted, like nothing had just happened.
Then I proceeded further, eventually finding myself in a smaller hall, yet still a hall, not a room, brightly lit, with metal tables placed in several rows.
It was a literal chop shop, with lowered temperatures inside and dead, dissected bodies on every one of the tables. Some of them looked like they had been undergoing a regular autopsy, abandoned before completion, but many of the others, mutilated by experiments, with deformed, even mutated limbs and internal organs, had more equipment placed around them. Tumours, calluses, crude stitches, bruises, lesions, signs of necrosis were covering the bodies, telling about the cruelties these people were subjected to in the last days of their lives. In the corner was a large metal container, filled with biomaterial, organs, skin and severed limbs. Partially covered by a shapeless lump of flesh, there was a half of a human head, the face of a young male, about twenty years old. Mouth slightly opened and deformed by a vertical laser cut, the head hopelessly stared at the wall of the container, its only remaining eye, hollow, bleak and lifeless, slowly melting and leaking away.
Some of the bodies, and some of the separated bodily remains had a distinctive greenish Thargoid tint, ranging from barely visible blots to almost glowing. Mostly, affected organs were removed from the bodies and placed next to them, presumably for further examination.
I noticed that a person on one of the tables, with their body cut open and surgical instruments sticking out of their abdomen and chest, was, barely, still alive, quietly gargling gasped agonised breaths and scratching the table with their fingernails. Poor human being was irreversibly disfigured by the countless deep pockets of greenish pus pressurised under a thin layer of detaching epidermis; there were so many of them that the body itself appeared deformed and bloated to almost twice its original size. I couldn't even determine their age and sex. Only the skin colour, it was unnaturally pale. The blood was so diluted by the chemicals Azimuth had pumped into the victim that it didn't look like blood anymore, a thin, yellowish liquid that somehow kept that poor human alive. They couldn't even open their eyes to see me. There was nothing that could've been done, not on that stage.
Except for another pistol shot that echoed through a silent room, marking an end of one more human life.
* * *
Next part: #11: Of Mind and Matter
Next part: #11: Of Mind and Matter