Chapter Text
An endless, deafening alarm rang through the Hadal Blacksite. The sound shook the entire facility as Z-13 rolled past containment after containment, releasing each of the unholy abominations housed inside. The key pads let out a satisfying beep each and every time his stolen access card touched them.
It was the sweet sound of revenge. The sound that ensured Urbanshade would get what it deserved.
The guards arrived far too late, and their numbers were nothing in comparison to the monsters’ vendettas: or, in some cases, their plain and simple nature.
Of course, not every experiment was there fighting. Some were lurking in dark corners, hiding from the lights and attacking only when bothered. Some were oozing into the reinforced lockers, turning it into their new home and protective shell. Some were burrowing into the walls, lying in wait of prey to catch off guard and consume.
Some were hiding in the ceiling rafters, curled up in a tight ball and praying that the guards wouldn't find them. That they wouldn’t find him.
He may not know what was going on, but Z-98 knew that these other creatures were way more powerful than he was. He might be durable, and he knew better than anyone that he could regenerate, but he wasn’t invincible.
He was so painfully vulnerable, and all it would take was one well-placed bullet.
Even so Z-13 carried on his rampage, and Z-98 continued to cower in fear. Their paths had yet to cross.
o o o
At first when Z-98 opened his eyes, only confusion greeted him. The room was dark, which itself wasn’t all that unusual for him. Usually the people running this place would turn off the lights in his room to allow for proper sleep (and give him time to recover after particularly rigorous testing). Although, unlike his room, whatever he was laying on was hard and cold to the touch: very different from the dense, slightly soft cot in his room.
Usually, lying on cold metal meant that he was in the surgical room. But the groggy sensation of fading drugs used to put him under was missing, as was the blinding light of their equipment before they—
Z-98 tightly closed his eyes, willing away the chilling train of thought. Not the time to dwell on that, he had to figure out where he was.
Now with the added clarity of being awake, he shifted his frosty gaze around him, immediately pausing. The ceiling was way too close for comfort, now that he was paying attention. He reached up and easily pressed his palm against it. The ceiling was maybe two feet above him, and even that was being generous.
He started to reach around him, panicking slightly after realizing just how tight his surroundings were. He let out a squeak of shock when his floundering nearly sent him over a ledge. He took a couple seconds to settle his breathing, and then carefully peered out of his little alcove.
The area below appeared to be a hallway, bathed in faint red emergency lights. There were dents in the walls and a lot of scrapes and… blood. At least, that's what the dark stains all over the floor looked like to him. The door nearest to him had a small sign next to it, labeled with a very familiar name: Z-98.
Slowly, his memories caught up to him. Some big creature, too fast for him to study, had unlocked his door. There were sirens and gunshots and a lot of screaming, and in his panic Z-98 had dug his claws into the wall and scaled it, doing so with alarming ease for a first attempt.
Goes to show how far adrenaline could get you.
The real shock was that he had, apparently, fallen asleep somehow. Despite all of the noise, he had simply dozed off. He… wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Based on the lack of a racket, Z-98 could easily guess that… things had gone in the creature’s favor. Whatever had let him out of containment had probably let those other experiments loose too, and now…
Now what? What could Z-98 do now?
Was he… free? Finally?
Carefully Z-98 slipped over the edge and, once he was fully dangling over it, let go. He stumbled when his feet (were they feet anymore? Actually, no thanks, he would still be calling them feet, even now that they were little more than flattened stubs) hit the ground and had to use the wall to balance himself. He straightened up and looked around, quickly spotting a broken metal door.
It was jammed open thanks to the huge chunks of broken debris filling it, but there was a gap there that Z-98 was pretty sure he could fit through. It took some finagling (especially when it came to his tail), but eventually he managed to pop out on the other end-
And immediately step into a puddle. His brow furrowed as he looked around for the source. A small, repeated dripping noise drew his attention upwards, where his eyes widened.
The ceiling was a giant window that looked out into a pitch black ocean. There were huge, far-reaching spider web cracks, beginning from one minuscule point in the middle: the center of the dripping. The water appeared to tower way over the facility he was inside. Considering how much pressure it had to be bearing, that glass must be unreasonably thick.
(And yet it was still broken.)
“Am I… underwater?” he murmured, voice breaking from disuse. He quickly cleared his throat.
If that was true, then he was still trapped. There was absolutely no way he would be able to swim through that high of pressure without being crushed. Unless his bodily changes had somehow increased his durability?
The only way to know was to test it, and Z-98 didn’t feel like being crushed today, no thank you.
An involuntary shudder ran through him, strong enough to cause his teeth to chatter. The sensation of his unfamiliar facial structure trembling made Z-98 want to sob, but he didn’t have the energy.
Maybe, despite all these things outside of his control, he could at least accomplish one task of his own: get some proper, non-medical clothes.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too difficult.
o o o
Over the next several days (weeks? Z-98 wasn't sure, there wasn't a good way of telling time down here), Urbanshade had sent guards down into the Hadal Blacksite in swarms. They arrived in submarines, guns cocked and loaded, rearing to destroy. To reclaim Urbanshade’s property.
Z-98, for his part, always avoided them. Hiding in the rafters or on top of ceiling pipes had proved to be a very effective method of staying out of sight, so he used that tactic repeatedly.
Of course, in the process, his instincts would sometimes rear their ugly head. Since both of his new “parent genes” were stealth-based hunters, the act of hiding elicited a strange sort of thrill. The desire to jump down and tear open the throat of his prey taunted him constantly.
Luckily, his very rational fear of weaponry (and his instinctual knowledge that taking on too many prey at once was a bad idea) won out: he certainly wouldn’t have survived this long otherwise.
Despite the occasional interruption, Z-98 didn’t let anything dissuade him from his mission: get clothes.
It took some time, but eventually he managed to locate some employee uniforms, however tattered they might have been. He didn’t really care about the clothes’ poor condition, because at least they’d provide him with more warmth and coverage than his current outfit. (Plus, the hospital gown had already been torn in one of his frantic escapes from an oncoming angler, so it wasn’t that much of a quality change).
Clothes in hand, Z-98’s first order of business was to modify them. The shoes were the first thing to go, as his feet wouldn’t fit in them properly anyway, and were coarse enough on their own.
Next, he adapted the pants for his tail by carefully slicing a circle in the back for it to slip through. For once in his life, his plan appeared to work: the pants fit seamlessly, and his alterations didn’t seem to mess up the clothing piece’s integrity (not more than it already was, anyway). The snug, long-sleeved shirt felt somewhat stuffy on him after wearing only loose-fitted hospital gowns for who knows how long, but he welcomed the change.
Even with his mission successfully completed, Z-98 was still stuck hiding and lurking in the Blacksite as operative after operative cycled through. Each and every one of them met a gruesome fate: every single time. Despite their large numbers, their insider knowledge, and their intimidating weapons, the creatures lurking inside always won.
Z-98 only watched. The sight of so much blood was disturbing, no matter how guilty the victim was, and the image of so much red was already seared in his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
Besides, the knowledge of what to look out for could really help him with surviving in the long run, as long as he played his cards right. He already had quite a long mental list of different ways one could die down here, and the number of fates only continued to grow.
That was, until the operatives stopped coming. The loading bays were totally silent for a long period of time. The building was left mostly uninhabited, outside of its “native” occupants.
This left them time to think. To wait. To grow hungry.
Z-98 had certainly become the latter. He’d been surviving just fine on vending machine snacks and soda, but he knew that it wouldn’t last in the long run.
Another thing he couldn’t ignore was the matter of his spliced up DNA. Usually his genetics tended to be at odds with themselves, warring between his human traits and non-human ones (he still wasn't sure what exactly they had made him into. Most of the conversations he had overheard were through the fading influence of anesthesia, and their words were largely drowned out by drugs and pain). Even then, his animalistic traits were often at war with one another too.
But on the matter of hunger? All of his animal DNA was without a doubt carnivorous, and even as a full human he had enjoyed meat. This all added up to some very unpleasant desires. Ones that burdened him heavily.
Still, even with so many corpses littering the building, Z-98 refused to eat them. He already looked like a monster, he didn’t want to behave like one too.
He’d find some other means to sustain himself.