"I still can't read it, though, so here, you have some fun, too," Konrad said, dumping all the documents on Dmitry. "Anything else we should worry about, or, you know—"
The parallel brain lured him down here with a promise of getting his magic back.
And so far, all they saw were ruins and a half-abandoned facility.
Which didn't add up, by the way.
Why did everything seem so old and dilapidated, when the surface had fresh signs of combat?
Those vehicles were still smoking when they found them, and the inside of this place—
'They researched magic here,' the voice confirmed. 'But not sure how far they got. Controllers, for example, didn't exist when I was still here. They might have found the answer since, but—'
"Hold on," Dmitry interrupted in the perfect moment. "Are you shitting me?!"
And he had only started reading those documents.
"What is it?" Konrad turned to ask, seeing a scowling Captain.
"You mean to tell me that this big-headed thing I killed in the woods was one year old?!"
Blink. Head scratch. Blink again.
"Excuse me?"
That was a grown-ass man with crazy Psyonic energies. What was he even talking about?
'Well, that's how things go down here,' the parallel brain claimed. 'Those researchers were not the patient type. They wanted results, and they wanted them fast.'
That still didn't make any sense.
"Here it says on the header," Dmitry grunted. "The project started last year."
"Wait. How?"
'Growth acceleration,' the voice pointed out, as if that were a thing. 'It is a thing here. You have all the radiation and tools you couldn't find anywhere else on Earth.'
Well, if that was actually the case—
No wonder that thing looked so deformed and disproportionate.
"Any mention of how many mutants they've created?" Konrad asked, imagining an army of babies would be out there, and about to strike. "And where are those tools you mentioned?"
"Dude, this is like a hundred pages," the Captain complained.
But turns out, the Poltergeists kept tabs on everything.
'The tools are all destroyed. Twelve Controllers survived the initial phase. But three died during the battle for this place, and one more in the counterattack.'
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on," Konrad protested, raising a hand. "Battle? Counterattack?"
"Don't know what your voices are telling you, but did you miss all that blood and wrecks outside?" Dmitry grunted, flipping through the pages. "That's at least a full company wiped out."
Right. Right.
But that didn't make him feel any better—or better informed, either.
'As you can imagine, the Controllers got loose, and took over this facility,' the parallel brain claimed. And yeah, he could imagine that, but he'd rather not. 'Then the researchers came back.'
Konrad could feel the dry air crackling around him as a Poltergeist came closer.
A discarded, rusted pistol floated in the air, looking both brand new and ancient at once.
Something wasn't right with this place.
"When did this counterattack even happen?" he asked, poking at the floating gun. "Things look like they've been here, unbothered for at least a decade."
'Hmm, you're right,' the voice agreed, and that fact alone gave him the chills.
More rusted things floated towards them, not at a hurling speed but—
"What am I to do with these?" Konrad scowled, grabbing a broken circuit panel.
'Those are parts of the destroyed accelerator. I see now. So it's still having some effects here.'
Ugh. So the entire facility was aging?!
"He should get the hell out of here," he muttered, listening to the creaks and skittering.
For some reason, he wasn't even happy that his hearing finally returned.
But those invisible things that tried to chase them away before—
Now they blocked his way out.
"W-what is it now?!" Konrad demanded, feeling like he was pushing against an invisible wall.
And since he'd have to climb up into the corridor above without stairs—
'They want you to help them,' the voice claimed. 'The Controllers had killed most of the test subjects and researchers. But they still hold some of their kin hostage on the lower levels.'
"What?! No. No, no, no," Konrad protested with everything he had. "They would kill us, too."
"Who would?" Dmitry looked up, missing half the conversation.
Also that part where their only escape route from this half-submerged room was, um—
Disappearing?
Did they freaking wall them in now?!
'They're hiding you,' the parallel brain explained. 'A Controller is on its way here.'
Oh, things kept getting better and better.
"The Wolves," Konrad whispered, pressing against the cold, concrete wall. "They're about to come down here, and have no idea. Damn it, I knew we should have skipped on this place, too."
"The Wolves would kill us?" Dmitry repeated, reaching the wrong conclusion.
Sigh. It took him another minute to bring him up to speed.
But then, the Captain finally agreed.
"We're screwed," he gritted out in a whisper, listening to the new voices.
And oh boy, there were plenty of those.
'One Controller and a few Dwarves,' the voice commented. 'So those guys are still alive?'
Now Dwarves, too?! Things kept getting worse—
Especially once he caught their grunting and heavy steps.
'Another type of mutants,' the brain stated the obvious. 'A different take on the Poltergeists. They have every limb intact, sprinkled with growth acceleration, and—'
That was as far as he got when that haphazard wall above them exploded.
A deafening scream followed as a dark, hooded monster leaned in to look straight at him, and—
BANG.
Okay. He no longer had to worry about those voices, because he had lost his hearing again.
Not that the terrors would end there.
This had to be the first time the Captain's Gepard didn't erase something from existence on the first shot. That mutant—the Dwarf—created a telekinetic barrier around him, and—
It took three more maddening bangs until the first heavy bullet got through it.
That was like watching fireworks shot at a heated cellophane membrane.
And if that made no sense, no problem; Konrad couldn't understand shit, either.
But he knew two things.
Another Dwarf appeared above them, even more upset than the first one, and—
Dmitry had to reload.
'If you touch it, I could take over—I guess,' the voice offered, but didn't sound confident.
And Konrad spotted the third Dwarf, too, blowing a hole through the actual concrete wall.
That's when the first lightning bolt crackled through the submerged room, and—
It seemed like the Poltergeists had joined the fight, too.
"Touching it. Okay," Konrad grunted, head back in the game, trying to jump, but—
All he could do was reach the closest Dwarf's feet.
And it was huge and disproportionate. But it seemed to have worked?
'Got him,' the voice claimed, and the mutant finally turned around—
Only to explode into a literal volcano of blood a split-second later.
Did they have something else there, too?!
The ground was shaking, for sure, and the pressure inside his head was building up fast, but—
BANG.
BANG. BANG.
That, he could still hear.
"One down," Dmitry yelled, though his voice felt like a whisper. "But they're flanking us now."
Flanking? Here?
There should have been only one exit from this room, but—
It seemed like the entire lab was about to collapse.