After returning to the cabin of the aircraft, where Richard and Jericho had been looking at what's outside the open hatchet, Sawyer too sees it - the towering entity that's been chasing them down all this time. Its head was attached to the arched torso by a long neck, it was all the same color and texture as the sapling, yet, its face was shrouded by a ghostly shadow.
Its face inched ever - closer to the aircraft. Its large face is oddly like a person's, but twisted, uncanny. A mouth dangling open as if screaming stretched across its face and its hollow, oval eyes were slightly shivering. The entity was accompanied by the same strange low pitched groaning sound they had heard while running through the fog.
They were already around 900ft high and the cryptid showed no signs of slowing down or being unable to reach them. Fearing the possibility that the cryptid would get close enough to damage the aircraft, Sawyer shouts to Jericho, who's eyes were wide open attempting to proccess the sight, "You've gotta hold it back, don't let it get close!"
Jericho gritted his teeth and nodded, turning back to the cryptid, he kneels down and aims his rifle, and reloads the heavy ammunition.
"Back me up here!" Jericho says to Richard, "Hold me steady so I don't fly out…"
Richard holds him around the stomach with one arm, holding onto the railing on the wall with his other hand. Jericho pulls the trigger, and the bullet pierces the cryptid's head. The monster staggers slightly, tilting its head sideways and giving the helicopter some space. However, its injury is healed in a few seconds, and it continues its pursuit.
"Keep shooting, man!" Richard shouts at Jericho, while Sawyer's already gone back to the cockpit, entrusting dealing with the cryptid to them.
Reloading again, Jericho lines up his rifle with the cryptids face and shoots, being given the same result - the cryptid staggers but soon gets back to trying to reach them.
"Try to shoot the neck, shoot the neck!"
Richard shouts out again.
"I got it! I can hear you fine when you're right next to me, so stop yelling!" Jericho responds, this time taking some time to stabilise himself and shoot at the neck of the monster.
Meanwhile, Sawyer is in the cockpit with the pilot. "Seriously, what's going on back there?!"
The pilot asks, being met with a fairly non - informative reply from Sawyer, "My men are handling it. All I need your focus to be on is getting us to the lake as fast as you can."
The shooting at the back continues, and soon enough the aircraft reaches the nearby lake.
The helicopter shakes.
"Sweet lord!" The pilot looks at Sawyer with a worried expression and asks, "Will you tell me what's going on?!"
Sawyer answers him simply and rushes back to the cabin. "Close the hatch!"
The cryptid had gotten close now, with Jericho stopping his shooting as the hatch began to close. He and Richard backed up as Sawyer approached, once again face - to - face with the cryptid, now ever closer to the aircraft. But as the hatch was about to close Sawyer came face - to - face with the cryptid once more. It was like meeting eyes with the devil while closing the gates of hell. Its twisted smile, unwavering.
Just before the hatch closed, Sawyer took out a grenade from his satchel, pulled out the pin and chucked it through the gap past the hatch door at the pursuing monster as one last painful gift to it. The hatch closes, and a direct explosion is heard outside.
With the helicopter flying over the lake, the cryptid follows right behind it - sinking its legs into the water. But as the grenade explodes in its face, it stumbles. Tripping over its many legs, the towering cryptid extends its head closer to the helicopter in an attempt to knock it down. To no avail, it doesn't reach, and ultimately starts to fall into the water. Its descent is slow, considering the sheer size of it, but nonetheless as it gets deeper into the lake, the water suspends its movements and swallows the cryptid as it collapses into the lake.
Richard and Jericho cheer as the cryptid finally falls, watching it sink from the aircraft's windows.
"Stay down ya piece of shit!" Jericho exclaims.
But Richard stops cheering along with him, noticing something strange in the lake.
"Hey Sawyer, come look at this!"
Sawyer joins then, looking out of the windows.
"It's disappearing, like a ghost…" Richard's observation was correct. As the cryptid seemingly drowned in the lake, its entire body began degrading. Like dead skin peeling off, it began to wither away. Richard looks back at Sawyer, "Do all cryptids do that when they die?"
Sawyer answers, yet not as confidently as his usual manner of speaking, "I haven't seen one's body degrade so fast after dying. Death isn't black and white when it comes to anomalies… Either way, we're almost done here."
The helicopter turns back around to land on the hill where the sapling resided, unchanged by the events. The aircraft's hatch opened and a ladder was let down. The helicopter hovered right above the sapling, and Sawyer climbed down the ladder while a metal box was strapped to his back. Once he lands down on the ground, he takes the heavy box off his back and places it down next to the sapling.
"You'll be getting a new home." And with that he unsheathes his sword and cuts the sapling from the ground, placing it in the metal box and securely sealing it.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile at facility:Null, two researchers walk with a fast pace through the hallways of the underground research sections.
"Miller went in, just like he was ordered to! We understood the risk but Professor Dahlberg insisted it was safe… it all happened so fast."
The younger researcher tries to explain the situation to the other man.
"Dalhberg, where is he?" The other man asks, walking while only looking straight forward while talking to the young man at his side.
"I don't know, he left after his request." The younger researcher answers.
"This stays confidential, do you understand?"
"Yes, Professor Lavender." The young man continues to follow Professor Lavender - who was a man of average build, slight stubble, and long brown hair.
They reach a hallway of holding cells, each having paper sheets of notes pinned on the wall next to their corresponding door. The two men stop at a certain one, Professor Lavender takes the notes off of the wall and skims over them. It reads as follows:
Amalgam 095A
Code name: Pancake Boy
Threat level: Medper
Key behavioural traits: Will attempt to wield a sharp object to attack indiscriminately. Pancake Boy's holding cell must be empty at all times.
Lavender stops reading there. "What happened once Mr Miller entered the cell?" He asks
The other researcher responds in a shaky voice, "He went in for maintenance of the security camera, it went fine until the amalgam grabbed his arm. It wouldn't let him leave. Eventually it crushed his arm, and one of the bones was sticking out so it ripped it out and… I don't know what happened after that. The amalgam was so fast that I couldn't see what it had done to him."
Professor Lavender takes a keycard out of his labcoat and places it into the reader on the door of the holding cell. He inputs several codes and once it's done the door clicks open - and that's when the younger researcher realises what Lavender is planning to do. "You're not going in there, right?!"
"Just wait out here." Lavender responds, before going into the cell and closing the large metal door behind him. Another gate stands between the door and the holding cell of the anomaly to ensure it wouldn't run out as soon as the first door opened. Lavender gets past the security gate and steps into the cell.
The cryptid stood in the corner, staring at him. Pancake Boy's body was that of a young boy, though slightly flattened. The texture of its skin was like mud, the color a low saturation greyish brown. Its face gave it the code name "Pancake Boy", a head too large for its body seemed like it had been flattened and the individual features like its mouth and lifeless eyes were barely visible, sort of blending in. But Lavender didn't stare back, he simply walked past it and over to the corpse of the male researcher the cryptid had stabbed to death with his own bone.
Ignoring the monster that was in the room with him, Professor Lavender scooped up any broken - off parts and tossed them onto Miller's corpse. He drags the corpse by the legs out of the cell, still not paying the cryptid any attention. Though strangely, it lets him. Possible hostility in its stare, maybe, but no action, even considering this was a highly aggressive cryptid.
Professor Lavender makes it out of the cell with the dead body, placing it down in front of the young researcher, who by now was bewildered at the scene, and how the cryptid hadn't attacked Lavender.
"Clean this up before someone else sees it." Lavender tells the young researcher, before heading elsewhere - clearly having other things on his mind.