Postmortem Ch1 || Into the Unknown

It was eerily silent in the Morpheus facility, now that most everyone had fled. Greeted the light that spilled into the entryway when the great doors had finally opened. A few still remained. Little scavengers that wanted to pick over those that hadn’t been so lucky as to make it out alive, either trampled by their fellows in their frantic attempts to flee or purposefully slain by those that they had once been forced to share a space with. Something...about the entrance prickled at the back of Tobias’ mind. Something strange had happened there, perhaps. A lingering ghost that prickled at his subconscious, but like everything else that sparked the feeling, he couldn’t quite explain it. It simply was.

But now he was here. He’d been drawn to walk the facility ever since the doors had opened. Before he’d even heard that the Morpheus facility had opened itself to the world, he had travelled this way.

Tobias paused. No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t quite remember what he’d been doing, before he had come here. Perhaps it was nothing of import.

The air was still cold when his thin chest expanded with the breath that he took, caught for a moment in time when he exhaled and his breath lingered as a ghostly fog. Lower down, he knew, it would be warmer. The air was only cold now because the doors had opened. So many things had changed now that those massive beasts were out in the world. What terrible things they must’ve done to survive in here for so long, where neither the moon nor the sun could truly reach them. The air still held a hint of stagnation. Beneath it, the scent of blood. Death and decay.

That was the scent that he had to follow. Trace the steps, follow the path. What was drawing him here would be found at the end of the trail, he just had to pursue it. Let it draw him forward.

But the path was meandering, and it was difficult to concentrate in here. There were so many corridors, so many cubbies, so many dead ends, so many things scattered here and there. It was so easy to lose his way.

He had started in the entryway, where only a few odd human things remained. Large furniture, mostly. Containers that had once held plants that now only held dust and dirt that hadn’t tasted water in so long it had almost turned to stone. Canisters that held all manner of odd things, stained and might have once reeked of decay and rot that now simply...smelled like not much at all. Cardboard and plastic. Signs that pointed you this way and that, if you could understand them.

He had blinked, and found himself somewhere else entirely. A much smaller, more confined space. Metal containers lined the walls, portions of their tops looking as though they had been cut cleanly by some great claws - all completely horizontal, perfectly spaced. The metal had begun to rust. Many soft things lay scattered all over the ground. Backpacks, fabrics, pillows. An even wider array of miscellany - knick knacks, silverware, books, disks. On some of the beds lay flat pieces of metal and plastic. Some of them were whole, some looked as though they’d been split and opened up to face a pillow or out towards the room.

When Tobias blinked again, he was in a similar space, but lacking in the soft materials of the other location. Tables that had a ratty, once-soft covering over the top of them, with curiously round and colourful stones scattered over their surfaces and black triangles here and there, along with long, smooth sticks. Metal towers with colourful decorations plastered to their sides, glass screens that he could see his reflection stare blankly back at him. How strange. A stretch of countertop with a wall of shelving behind it, full of glass of varying shades of green, brown, and clear. Most, if not all of them, still had liquid inside.

When was the last time that he’d been thirsty?

“Are you lost?”

A voice drew him from his question. Tobias turned his head slowly, his focus eventually following. Standing in the doorway that he presumed he had come from was one of the new faces. An albertosaurus, with a pattern spread across her hide that was reminiscent of broken pottery, or the scales on a turtle shell. He stared at her for a moment, trying to remember the answer to her question.

Eventually, he decided that he wasn’t lost, but nor did he know if he was going in the right direction. “I need to go down,” he replied simply.

The alberto studied him for a moment, then rocked her head from side to side in a motion that seemed to be a depiction of indifference or nonchalance. Another one wanted to see the second level. Far be it from Ginseng to stop him. Besides, “need” to go down seemed like he was on a mission.

“You’re definitely lost,” she said as she turned. There was amusement in her voice. “The stairwell is on the opposite side of this level from here.”

Tobias followed, his footsteps almost silent on the smooth, polished stone floor, save for the click of his claws as he walked.

“You’re a little late,” she continued, glancing downwards towards him. “Almost everyone is gone now, and all your friends came as soon as the wall opened up.”

The wall. Yes, it probably would seem like a wall from the inside if no one had seen it open before. What friends did he have?

“I didn’t need to go down before,” he replied, his voice calm and near-monotone. “Now I do.”

Ginseng regarded him for a moment. What an odd creature. She made a sound in her throat as she turned back towards the path, a sort of deep and rumbling chuckle. “That was the rec room, where you were,” she went on. “You’re lucky that-”

Tobias didn’t catch the rest of what she said. He stared down the corridor that they’d come up on, splitting off from the main hallway. Water stood on the ground in large puddles, dripping down from a ruptured pipe somewhere. Lights in the ceiling flickered on and off, bathing a recycling bin in brief bursts of light further down the hallway. Litter was scattered across the ground, mostly swept to the sides over time. A splash of blood on the tile. Scarlet eyes, spider eyes, the eyes of ghosts that screamed as they curled along her side. Teeth gleaming in the dark as her jaws opened wide and split the air with a shriek -

Tobias blinked, and Ginseng was staring at him again. When he looked back down the corridor, the eyes were gone. Only ghosts remained.

“Not that way,” he said plainly. Ginseng tilted her head, studying him again. It was faster to get to the stairs through that corridor, but it wasn’t like she was in any great rush. She wasn’t keen on being on the receiving end of a dacen’s tail spikes if a latecomer finally hobbled up the steps on their way out into the sun. She turned her head to face back along the main corridor and continued on.

Despite being long closed off from the world, there were still so many smells down here. Scents of life. Water, rats, albertos, dacen, acros, eggs. Scents of those that had come before. Metal, plastic, rust, rubber, cardboard, something burnt and acrid. Scents of death. Mould, fungus, blood, rot, decay. Sickness, the aging and the ailing that couldn’t yet make it out of the facility, and those that would never leave.

A bump from Ginseng’s head brought him back to reality once more. “If you don’t watch your step, you’ll fall in. The edge here is taller than most of us, you’ll hurt yourself going in from this side.”

Her voice echoed around the space, which had a taller ceiling than the rec room and the dormitories and a great, deep depression across most of the floor. It became more and more shallow at one end. Once, he believed, it had held water. Humans, the ones that came before, would swim in it. He could almost see it. But now it was empty, save for the few scattered towels, pool toys, and bones that lay strewn across the floor. Only a few puddles remained.

“We’re almost to the stairs, just cutting through here because there’s a spikey blockade in the main hallway right now. Are you going to be okay by yourself? You seem...a little out of it.”

Tobias dipped his head almost imperceptibly. “I need to go down,” he said again. It was important that he get there. How long had he been trying?

Ginseng looked at him doubtfully, but again, who was she to disagree? He clearly had somewhere to be.

True to her word, they reached a stairwell shortly after. The staircase plunged into the darkness, a red light flashing slowly to illuminate the gloom.

“The main light died some time ago,” Ginseng admitted with a sigh. “But the emergency light should be enough for you to see by. I think the staircase is intact, anyway, so you just have to take the stairs carefully so you don’t slip and break something.

“Be careful,” she said, turning towards him. “Not all of your friends have come back from below.” She suspected that the dacen were the result of at least a few of those casualties. “When you get down there, it’s better to stick to the shadows. I doubt that anyone down there would be happy to lead you as we have, if you need to go any further.”

Tobias tilted his head, eyeing the abyss. He would try to keep that in mind. “Thank you,” he replied, and he took his first steps on the cold metal grate that would lead him down below, descending into the darkness. This was the right path.