Szeth's heart came to a stop.
His head ached like hell. The continuous beating had left him tethering on the edge of consciousness. Unable to move his own body, he was left reeling in pain and gasping for air.
Those weren't his biggest concerns at the moment.
"ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL OUTBREAK: 8 MINUTES!!! HEAD TO THE NEAREST SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!!!"
The droning, robot-like voice screamed over and over again, leaving Szeth in a state of shocked disbelief. They announced the end of the world, as he had wished for mere moments ago.
Be careful with your wishes, one corner of his brain that wasn't muddled by numbness or dazed by the current events whispered to itself.
A Level 3 Blight rain.
A xenos outbreak would swallow this sector of the city in less than eight minutes.
Once that happened, hell would be a preferable alternative to staying on this place.
"Run… I've got to run…!"
Finally controlling his irregular breathing, Szeth managed to stand on his feet with the help of his shaking hands. He shot one brief look at the sky, already envisioning the nightmarish sight that awaited.
The Dead Moon stared down from the cloud-wreathed sky, like the repulsive eye of an outer god. From it, turquoise-veined black tears dropped, growing as they closed the distance to the surface of the Earth quicker than Szeth would have liked.
Not for the first time in the day, Szeth ran.
He abandoned all other thoughts, putting his very soul to the task. These weren't bloodthirsty thugs. If he tripped or slowed down, he wouldn't be spat, or called abominations, or be pummeled until he passed out. The Blight didn't think. It didn't hate, or enjoy pain. It was programmed to do two things: eat, and breed. And it would do so with terrifying efficiency.
It was the incarnation of death and corruption.
"ESTIMATIMATED TIME UNTIL OUTBREAK: 6 MINUTES!!!"
Damn it! Already? Shelter… Where is the shelter?!
He racked his mind, trying to find the location of the nearest Blight shelter in the area. Shelters were specially built fortresses, made solely for the purpose of withstanding a xenos infection and keeping the people inside alive long enough for the Watchers to arrive to the scene and take care of the outbreak. This of course meant not only an abundant stockpile of food, water and medical supplies, but air recyclers and hermetic seals to prevent the risk of contamination.
On one hand, this meant the survival of evacuants was almost completely guaranteed.
On the other, it meant they were expensive, which translated to a low number of shelters in many sectors of the city. That those sectors were more often than not residential districts for middle-low class citizens was no coincidence either.
It also meant that shelters needed to close before the outbreak spread. And since predictions made by Athena, Paragon's A.I. powered defense system, weren't perfect, they would close two minutes before the estimated time for the start of the infection.
In other words…
I'm not gonna make it!
Despair filled Szeth's heart as his breathing turned ragged and hot. He ran like a possessed, tripping over empty cans or half-eaten food that people had no doubt dropped as soon as the alarm sirens started blaring. His legs burned. His head throbbed. His lungs were on fire.
But none of it mattered anymore.
"It's pointless…" he told to himself as he came to a sudden stop.
He had come out to the open streets. Now deserted, he didn't need to worry about people screaming at the sight of his blackened face. Those who would call him specter and run away or try to hunt him down were now too busy running before the real xenos caught up and taught them what a real monster of the Blight was like.
He could still see some stragglers running for safety. The desperate look on their face told Szeth that, like him, they had given up on the protection of a shelter. The only difference between Szeth and them was they were still running wildly.
As for him…
He sat on the pavement.
"ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL OUTBREAK: 4 MINUTES!!!"
Szeth heard Athena's warning, but he didn't get back up to run.
He wasn't however, giving in to despair.
Four minutes.
I have four minutes left. Considering this is a Level 3 Blight rain, the city will be overflowing with xenos in another ten minutes. That gives me an average of less than ten minutes, assuming a Blight shard won't fall directly in front of me.
Five minutes. What can I do in five minutes?
Unlike the people around him, Szeth had spent almost his entire life in danger. He was familiar with high-risk situations where running blindly would only get him a knuckle sandwich and a sore face for days after. So, instead of panicking, he carefully considered his options as fast as he could.
Running to the closest shelter is useless. There's less than two minutes left for the gates to close.
That leaves me with one of three: running, fighting, or hiding.
Running in his current state was unrealistic. With his whole body throbbing in the pain of being thoroughly beaten down, he would lag behind in no time. Besides, trying to outrun a Blight outbreak was folly in the first place. With Blight shards falling randomly around the place, one would be overrun with xenos from all sides before long.
Fighting is equally impossible. If the threat level were lower it might be a different story, but a Level 3 Blight rain wasn't something one fought unarmed. The most a regular citizen could hope of defeating without weapons were Termites, the basic builder-type xenos that spawned at the beginning of any outbreak, and that was assuming they were alone and their virulent fluids didn't touch any exposed skin. With this threat level, the sector wouldn't only be teeming with hordes of Termites, but probably hunter-type xenos would immediately spawn as well.
Which leaves me with hiding, Szeth thought to himself, standing up. Another half minute had passed since the flying billboard had announced four minutes for the nightmare show.
Think. What do you know about xenos in general?
They detect food by smell and vibrations. They will prioritize cleaning an area and stockpiling resources to build a nest. The hunter-types will probably stay back and defend these areas while the Termites start exploring and gathering food, which is people. They can eat through mostly anything, including concrete and glass, but they can't digest metal…
That was the public information constantly repeated by both the Watchers and the government of Paragon, in hopes of raising the survival chance of anyone left outside a shelter by the time an outbreak started. Someone like Szeth.
In other words: find some place with metal walls, away from the direct impact zones. Preferably with food and water, since purging a Blight infection can take days at best…
A place with food and water protected by metal walls. Which meant…
"A warehouse!" Szeth's feet dashed as soon as he made the conclusion, his mind already having found a place that both filled those specifications and was close enough to reach before all hell broke loose.
The howling wind rustled his filthy hair, throwing flying papers and used napkins at him. He didn't even bother trying to swipe them away, completely focused on reaching his destination. His missing eye pulsed with anticipation.
"ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL OUTBREAK: 2 MINUTES!!! BEGIN SHELTER LOCKDOWN!!!"
Szeth felt like he was running on the fumes of his life as he desperately rushed to the warehouse he had chosen as his own shelter.
"ACTIVATING PLASMA UMBRELLA!!!" the sirens screamed.
Immediately after, the air started humming. Powerful vibrations could be felt through the air, as if a terrible demon were waking up from their slumber. Only, it wasn't a demon.
"The anti-Blight defenses?! There are shards in range already?"
"Plasma Umbrella" was the nickname given to the giant mounted energy cannons spread all across the city. The massive anti-air weapons had a single purpose: to lighten the Blight load falling in the city as much as possible.
Now, another kind of hell would rise from the ground.
Szeth didn't even need to look as he felt the colossal plasma lances fire one after the other. The air throbbed, and the temperature rose notably, even this far away from the guns. Though not powerful enough to completely erase the turquoise-veined shards, scalding-blue lines turned the meteor shower into a less powerful, though still deadly, hail storm.
Szeth released a sigh as the last of the explosions fell silent. Less than a minute remained.
Come on, come on, come on…!
He turned around a corner, racking his brain for the exact location of the warehouse.
It was supposed to be around here…!
AHA!!!
Finally, as he turned a corner, he saw the warehouse's enormous door. Luckily for him, they were wide open. The employees probably forgot to close it on their panic…
Just as Szeth celebrated his luck, a shadow passed above him.
"Oh, hell!!!"
He looked up, even as he ran, fearing the worst. If life had taught him something, it was this: whenever something good happened, something ten times worse was coming right after.
He saw it close enough to tell every revolting detail, to his disgust.
The blight shard looked half way between a mold colony and a droplet of tar. The difference being, neither mold nor tar seethed like lava, just more actively, and more… alive. The sickening, dull turquoise bubbled up and disappeared, now in lines, now in sores, completing the nightmarish vision.
It was like staring at a disease in the eye.
The blight shard arced, probably deviated from its original trajectory by the Plasma Umbrella, and disappeared in the city's skyline. Judging by the distance, it wouldn't be long before a sea of Termites invaded this place.
"So long to staying away from the main outbreak points, huh?" Szeth muttered to himself as he entered the warehouse. The steel-lined walls projected a certain feeling of safety, but Szeth knew not to let himself be fooled. "I've got to close that door first. Or else this place will become a deathtrap."
He searched hastily for some kind of switch or lever, hoping this wasn't the type to open from another room. Fortunately, he found what he was looking for: a simple control panel with a big lever in a side of the entrance.
"Alright, time to shut ourselves in!" he said, yanking the lever with all of his might.
The giant gate rumbled for a moment before letting a slab of steel fall down, completely sealing the entrance.
"Well, that takes care of that!"
Finally able to relax, Szeth lost all his strength. All of the pain and exhaustion he had been ignoring until then hit him like a physical strike, and he collapsed at the far end of the room like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"Maaan, that was close. A few more minutes and I would have turned into xenos sludge."
He looked at all the containers and boxes littering the room. Though cardboard and plastic had both been replaced by rubber steel, a malleable and strong silicone compound popularized by the study of Custode technology, the packaging designs had mostly remained the same. He didn't doubt many of the shiny-black crates contained food and water. He wouldn't want to rely on the local water supply: experience had quickly taught humans those were one of the top priorities for the xenos the hard way. Since the warehouse wouldn't be hermetically sealed, he'd need to depend on canned food and bottled water.
Contamination through exposure was another preoccupation. Though the Blight gathered around the initial strike zones once xenos hatched, airborne microscopic loads were still a hazard in an infection zone, especially on a Threat Level Charlie outbreak, where enough matter had originally landed as to instantly spawn hordes. Fortunately for Szeth, he had something normal people didn't: the black lines running from his empty eye socket.
He was a specter: someone who had beaten the Blight before it ate them from the inside. It was doubtful his body would be defeated by something it had encountered and killed before. If he got infected, it would be either by direct contact or through contaminated food. And his current location mostly ruled out any chance of those occurring.
Mentally patting himself in the back for being such a genius, Szeth allowed himself to drift into sleep. He would worry about the future later. Right now, having survived was what mattered. The Watchers would come and clean the scourge soon after, as was their job. He didn't believe for a second that they would save him, marked by the Blight as he was. But if they purged the city that was good enough.
And if they didn't… well, that would be a thought for another time.
He woke up to the sound of metal.
Szeth jumped up in panic. Did the xenos breach through somehow? But a moment later, having scanned the room with his now somewhat rested eyes, he could see that wasn't the case.
Of course it's not, he chided himself. If it were, I wouldn't be having these thoughts, would I?
Just as he was about to search for the source of the noise, it came again.
"In… Let me in…!"
Someone was calling from beyond the steel gate.
They were beating against it desperately, as if death itself was on their tail.
"I know you're there! Let me in, please!"
Szeth recognized the voice.
It was the same man who had left him at death's doors not too long ago.
Well well, how the turntables. He couldn't help but grin at the terrible irony.
The person who had tried to kill him before was now begging for salvation. It was such an amusing thought that Szeth couldn't help but laugh tiredly, though he was careful enough not to reveal his presence.
His eye caught the sight of something moving in the corner of his vision. Startled, Szeth moved out of the way to face the unknown threat, but it turned out to be just a holo-tablet lying on the floor. It was apparently connected to several security cameras around the warehouse: probably belonged to the security staff.
In one of the bigger screens, Szeth could see the giant steel gate from outside. Of course, that included the man beating desperately against it as well.
Turquoise blue veins were running down both his arms and his face.
"Ptfff… Ahahah… Hahahahahah!!! Irony? No, this goes beyond that. This is definitely karma!" He laughed to himself at the sight of the man who had called him xenos before suffering that same fate, only without the luck of a 'specter.' The dull blue pulsing on his muscles was the normal color of the lines that grew from Szeth's left eye, and they were the symptoms of good health.
For the termites hatching inside the man, at least.
"Please!!! I'll do anything! Just let me in! Don't let those monsters find me! I saw them kill Rick… They ate his head and dragged his corpse away! Please, just let me hide here until they go away…!"
What are you saying, pal? They already found you. They're right beneath your skin, waiting to burst out as soon as they grow large enough. The signs that the moment wasn't far were showing already: the man's arms showed lumps that moved up and down, as if something was crawling inside them. Probably because it was.
Of course, Szeth wouldn't open the door. It wasn't that he hated the man, though he had to admit he couldn't care less if he died a terrible death on his front door. This world had done him wrong enough that he wouldn't mind watching strangers get killed by a xenos outbreak, but in another situation he might have been willing to help that stranger, increasing their hopes of survival.
It wasn't even that he wanted revenge for the beating. It was just that the man was already dead. He was a walking corpse, much like Szeth usually thought of himself.
"Open up… OPEN UP!!!" The hits grew frantic, enough that he should have broken his bones against the immovable door. He probably did, Szeth thought. It's just he doesn't have enough pain receptors inside them to feel the pain.
Shit, he's too loud! Can't he shut up already? Other xenos will come!
Just as the thought flashed through Szeth's mind, the man started to scream. This wasn't a desperate scream of fear, but the wailing of a person going through a hell of a lot of pain.
"IT BURNS!!! IT BURNS!!!! AAAAGHHH" the man fell to his back, rolling in the floor, trying to ease the fire inside him. His arms were throbbing like bubbles on the surface of a carbonated beverage.
With a final scream, the man stopped moving. Szeth wanted to tear his gaze away from the gruesome spectacle that would follow, but he was enthralled by the horrible sight.
It didn't come with a fountain of red, or the sound of bones snapping and flesh bursting, like people often imagined it. The things' birth was terribly silent. They ate away the skin that separated them from the outside world, emerging from a pool of disgusting blue and red. The sprang from the man's arms, his legs, and even his torso. Szeth's brain distantly wondered how the poor bastard had remained alive until that point.
Termites spawned from the corpse of the dead.
The Blight was essentially less of a single 'alien' and more of a group of lifeforms, all born from the same mother cells and all working in perfect harmony to devour all life they found. The thing that oozed from the Dead Moon was nothing more than its simplest form: unorganized, dormant cells, put to hibernation by the lack of food.
When it detected biomass near it, the Blight followed three steps.
First, the cells would consume the nearby organic matter, and use it to replicate themselves.
Then, when the number of cells reached a critical point, they join together to form the eggs of the basic xenos type: the working Termites.
Then, these Termites would continue to seek out nearby biomass, turning it into sludge that they later used as 'building material' for their nests.
These nests would spawn more xenos, who would in turn find more food, and the cycle would repeat itself until all organic life in the environment had been exhausted, at which point the xenos would collapse back into simple, dormant cells, waiting for a new source of food to start the nightmare.
The only reason no xenos had attacked the screaming man was that they didn't see him as 'food' anymore, but as the 'eggsack' of their brethren. Whether because he touched a xenos, consumed infected food or water, or merely due to the airborne Blight, the man had been doomed from the moment it had entered his veins and turned his meat into Termite eggs.
Szeth retched, but held back. Wasting precious food and liquids on this situation was idiocy. Instead, he forced himself to look away from the holographic screen. Controlling his breath. Finally, after calming down, he sighed and talked to himself.
"I know I said I didn't care about other folk, but that's a death even I feel bad seeing…"
He definitely didn't want to go through the same thing anytime soon.
Man, I'm so glad I found this place…
Just as he thought those words, a rasping sound came from the side of a wall.
"What now? Another walking corpse…?" He grabbed the tablet he had left on the floor, doing his best not to look at the bloody mess that had been a person not long ago.
The sound, it turned out, came from the very Termites that had spawned from the corpse.
They were now digging through the wall.
"Hey, what the hell?! You aren't supposed to eat metal!!" He pulled the device closer, as if trying to convince himself he had seen nothing but a trick of the light.
Sadly, Szeth's world was a world of unfairness and absurdity.
"It's… concrete?!"
The inner walls of the warehouse were lined with steel. Szeth had seen as much when had peered at it from a distance, the first time he found it. He had confirmed it after holing himself in the place.
They were lined in steel. Not made of steel.
The Termites were eating through the outer layer of concrete, doubtlessly having sensed a juicy morsel on the inside. Since Szeth was in an industrial zone, there wasn't a bigger chunk of organic matter laying around, which meant he was the top priority of the xenos in the vicinity.
"Oh, fuck."
Little teeth hard enough to bite down concrete started biting against the steel plates.
"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck…!"
There was an awful sound, like fork being scrapped against a plate or chalk scratching a board.
"You've got to be kidding me…!"
Then, with one final push, a hole opened in the wall.
Living, scuttling nightmares poured from it.
"GOD DAMNIIIIIIIT!!!!!"
Szeth started running.