Postmortem Ch8 || Skulker

Prototype cocked her head, eyeing the shadowy contents of a rusted container. Not entirely shadowy. There was a hole in the bottom, she could see the floor through it. She lifted her foot from the container and let it fall away with a snort of disgust. Nothing in there was of use to her. The rat she was chasing must’ve gone out the bottom and gotten away. She gave a long sigh, her head shifting in small movements as she looked around the room and listened.

She made no other sound, standing perfectly still. Unfortunately...nothing else in the room made any sound either. No scrabbling, or scratching, or scurrying of any sort. Her prey was well and truly gone.

Footsteps.

Prototype darted out of the room, disappearing down a shadowy hallway. She ran almost silently across the tile, keeping her toes flexed just so to keep her claws from clacking against the hard surface. Sound was everything down here. She’d learned a long time ago how to move quietly through the halls, how to disappear into the shadows, where all the narrow little gaps were that she could escape through that the larger inhabitants of their small world couldn’t get past.

And - she hooked her claws on the metal rungs of a slowly-degrading ladder - where all the best spots to observe the other laboratory inhabitants were. The ladder likely wouldn’t last much longer with the metal rusting away and becoming brittle with time, and one day she’d need to find another way up, but for now...it worked well enough, and it gave her access to the catwalk above the cargo hold in Zone B.

She slunk along the walkway, high above the ground. This used to be a dangerous place to be. The dacen liked to house themselves here, sheltering inside the numerous open and empty cargo containers, or those that had been made to be open and empty. They didn’t like visitors, particularly those with sharp teeth, but that hadn’t stopped her from exploring and wandering all over the dacen’s level.

With as much vegetation as they grew in the greenhouses, the rodent population was high in this zone. Really, she was doing them a service by hunting them down. They might have even thanked her - if she didn’t occasionally nick eggs from them, or lead the larger carnivores here to do her work for her. The dacen worked marvelously well as spiky road blocks to dissuade any would-be pursuers from chasing after her.

Now, of course, Zone A had opened up and exposed the laboratory to what was supposedly a whole new world of opportunity. New species poured into the facility, flooding the zones and going down and down and down until they had encountered Nidhogg. The one dinosaur in the laboratory that she had never dared to cross, and the strangers had fought him in his own den. It was...fascinating, really.

With Nidhogg’s defeat, many of the inhabitants of the facility had left, leaving a nearly-empty husk behind with only a few Morpheus-born dinosaurs remaining. The old, the sick, the weak...the stubborn. So the fact that there were new footsteps, new voices now had piqued her curiosity.

She sunk down low to the metal grating that she had crept along, peering just over the edge. Predictably, there was a dacen. One that she recognised, actually. She’d watched him tend to injuries and wounds many times, and even stolen from his supplised to tend to her own bumps and scratches. Peculiarly, though, he was in the company of a carnivore. One of the new kinds of dinosaur that had come from beyond Zone A, lean and thin with a crest that rose above their eyes and across their head rather than alongside it like the crests of the acros and albertos. And so small. Taller than her, of course, but nowhere near the size of the other carnivores that she’d seen. He was dwarfed by the dacen. They walked in tandem with one another though, as though they were old friends.

Prototype followed them until the catwalk ended, listening and watching. The dacen was chatty. The cryo...less so. He just seemed to listen. He almost even looked at her. But there was no way that he knew she was there! She hadn’t made a sound, and the whole place reeked of dacen.

She didn’t have long to consider it, though. Soon enough, the dacen left the cryo alone, and the cryo disappeared into the stairwell to descend into the depths. Fascinating. It was the only peaceful interaction between a dacen and a carnivore that she’d ever seen. What made the newcomer so special?

She had a while to wait before she could find out. The dacen lingered at the mouth of the stairwell before he moved off, and then she had to wait a while longer to make sure that no one else was coming around. Then she could descend into the dark depths and follow the newcomer.

Traversing the lower levels was even easier than going through (and across, and over) than Zone B. The acros were dangerous, of course, but the lower levels were dark and shadowy. There were many places to hide, many walls to sneak behind and many cages that were built for much larger creatures that she could slip through. She did despise the freezer. It was an awful place, where those less fortunate than her had been locked away in ice forever. And it was cold. Wretched place.

She hopped over a fallen shelf and ducked inside of a large cage. The previous occupant was still there, though had perished long ago. Its door had never opened, and it had never been freed. All that remained now were bones, left in the shape of what was once a giant. It now served as excellent cover as she spied on the stranger.

He’d found himself a pair of acros that stubbornly remained in their zone, who still acted as gatekeepers, though the threat of Nidhogg had been neutralised as far as Prototype was aware. The stranger must have been persuasive, though - the large female was showing him the way, leading him further down. She didn’t even seem to be eating him, just tired of his company. That made sense. Prototype had been around Rime a few times - she was endlessly fun to tease and evade, and the massive acro always seemed to be in a poor mood whenever Prototype had watched her from the shadows.

She watched for a while longer, then waited again to follow the stranger further down. So much of living in the labs was just waiting. For the old to weaken and die, for the young to get too curious and wander off, for the smaller creatures that she preyed upon to believe that she had gone and it was safe to return. She cast her pale gaze towards the stairwell from her hiding spot. Waiting for it to be safe for her to come out. She was too small and weak for this world of giants. Perhaps...she would take the risk. Leave the labs and see what there was beyond the walls for her to discover. Maybe there was room for someone small and nimble and quiet. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice her.

Rime didn’t take long to retreat back to her guardian’s side, leaving an entrance for Prototype to sneak into. She placed the balls of her feet on the stairs, letting her claws hang over the edges as she descended. Quietly, quietly.

It felt wrong to be in Zone D. There was nothing good down here, nothing but beasts and pain and death. What had brought the stranger down here, now that even Nidhogg had been defeated?

She followed his scent through the corridors, always staying far enough back that she was sure that he wouldn’t catch her. Though his gaze...still haunted her, when she thought he had seen her in Zone B. She was intensely curious what he was doing down here, though. He followed the same path that all the other newcomers had, but there was no goal this time. Nidhogg was gone, what was there left for him to be doing here? Sight-see? It seemed unlikely. There wasn’t anything down here but junk and...well, the flashy screens and buttons on the control panels were interesting, at least, but only for a little bit. After a while, it made your head hurt to stay down in Zone D for too long, and turned your stomach.

After a while of following the stranger’s scent, it finally became apparent what he’d come down here for. At the bottom of the reactor room was another stranger, a long-snouted and pale creature that lay in a mangled pile. She sniffed under her breath. The dark stranger had wasted his time, coming down here for a corpse.

Only...it appeared that the sucho wasn’t a corpse. He was alive, if only just. The cryo helped him to his feet and lead him - oh they were coming directly towards her if they came back up the stairs from the pit. Prototype turned on a dime and raced away, around a corner where she could disappear into a control room and wait in silence. They would never know that she was there, not if she was quiet enough and waited until they passed her by.

She studied the screens as she waited. Some of them were black, though they hummed with the same life that the other screens did. Some of them were full of static, some actually had numbers dancing across them. She didn’t understand what any of it meant, of course, but it seemed like it was good that it was still functional. If the screens died, so too would the lights, and the entire facility would be plunged into darkness. Maybe the door would even close again, and they would be locked...in here forever. She didn’t like that idea much. The thought of exploring the outside world became that much more appealing.

Had it been long enough? The sucho would be moving slowly - it was a miracle that he was still moving at all, honestly - but she was rapidly growing tired of sitting and waiting some more. Her entire life was composed of waiting, and now she wanted to move. She wanted to see what would happen next. Did the strangers know each other? Did the cryo know that the sucho was hurt? He’d been moving awfully slowly to come to the sucho’s aid if he did know.

Prototype pushed herself to her feet, stepping carefully over the tangle of wires that lay strewn across the floor. She’d watched a fully grown alberto fail before because it had trod on a live wire. She wasn’t keen on making the same mistake. She would not be feeding the remaining residents with her corpse.

Even to her eyes, so accustomed to the darkness of the Morpheus facility, it was difficult to see down here. Dark, dingy. The lights that were on were either dim, or flickering, or flashed an emergency red hue that didn’t exactly help her see. Fortunately, a near-blinding white suchomimus was relatively easy to see, even in the dark. His pale hide reflected whatever light there was down here, and she could spot his body left at the foot of the stairwell from a great distance away.

Why had the cryo gone such great lengths to find the sucho, only to abandon him? He wasn’t dead, she could see the slow rise and fall of his ribs.

Her mouth watered. He would be such an easy meal, basically a carcass already. She’d be able to just...tear out his throat and he probably wouldn’t even struggle.

But no, no. She wanted to see what would happen, if the cryo would come back. If he didn’t, or if the sucho died before he did...then she could pick apart his carcass. Waste not.

The cryo did come back, after a short time. Prototype heard his arrival before she saw him. Or rather, she heard her arrival. Rime had come down with him. To...collect the sucho’s body? What had he said to her to convince her to help him? She’d never seen the acro so willing to help someone that wasn’t another acro. It was astonishing, really. Dumbfounding, almost.

Just as quickly as the duo appeared, the now-trio disappeared, swallowed up by the darkness of the stairwell. Which, of course, meant more waiting for her. She didn’t want to be caught in the stairwell at the same time that they were. Rime was ill-tempered enough when she wasn’t stuck in a tight space with no room to turn around. The thought of being caught by the acro’s quills...was not exactly pleasant.

Prototype sighed and found a sheltered spot near enough to the stairwell that she could keep an eye on it, but far enough back that she wasn’t in immediate danger of being spotted if someone surprised her by coming down to this life-foresaken place.

It was oddly damp down here. She owed it to the heat of the reactor room combining with the frosty chill of the deep freezer, melting off whatever ice tried to creep outside of the sub-zero confines out into the rest of the zone. The damp made it stink of mildew and rust and other unsavoury scents. It was a good thing that most of the walls were made of concrete down here. The plaster on the walls of Zone A would not survive, and any wood would long ago have rotted away. Although...She glanced up, her gaze following the source of a steady drip coming from the ceiling. Part of the acro’s territory was flooded. Perhaps some of the dampness came from there.

When she was certain that long enough had passed that the odd trio had exited the stairwell, she made short work of her ascent. She only slowed when she was near to the entrance, listening intently from within the stairwell to make sure that there weren’t any resident gatekeepers that she’d have to dash away from.

Silence greeted her. Since Nidhogg had been defeated, many of the oh-so-honourable acros had abandoned their post. There wasn’t much reason to keep others from descending anymore, not now that the labs were so empty.

She slunk through Zone C, now following the scent of blood on top of the stranger’s scent. It made it even easier to follow them. She paused briefly in front of a plexiglass containment unit, studying her broken reflection past the algae that grew inside the tank. Was there plexiglass outside the facility, she wondered? Were there tanks of water, or was it free and unconfined, like the water in the acro’s nesting grounds? Were there tubes of ice that contained bodies never to awaken, wires and tubes all over the place? From what she’d seen past the mouth of the doors, it seemed unlikely. It seemed...more and more appealing to leave this place behind.

But she had a quest to complete first. She wanted to follow the odd trio, to see them through. Maybe, maybe even meet the strange cryo that had somehow managed to walk past the dacen unscathed and to convince Rime to walk with him. To help him, even.

It was even more astonishing when she found that the cryo not only had convinced Rime to help him, but that he managed to keep the acro and dacen from tearing each other apart when they encountered each other when they had made their way up to Zone B. They made their way through Zone B, their trio becoming a quadruplet. Had the cryo convinced Rime to come with them all the way up to the top? All the way to the entrance?

It was both easier and harder to follow them through Zone B. The foliage that grew up and around this level was easy to hide behind and camouflage herself in, but it could also be hiding dacen that hadn’t left yet. The catwalk was inaccessible from this side of the zone - the ladder was locked in place, high at the top of the room and had never been released to reach nearer the ground. She stuck to the edges instead, following from a distance and using the various shipping containers, crates, and odd bits of machinery as cover to hide herself when there was no foliage to shelter beneath. She wasn’t worried about losing them; she had a pretty good idea of where they were going now, and she could always follow the scent of blood.

The dacen had actually tended to the sucho’s wounds, which was hardly surprising behaviour. He was a strange sort, and had tended to carnivores before - albeit rarely. He probably would have tended to her wounds when she collected them, if she’d ever let him. It was just easier to be self-sufficient than it was to rely on the good graces of murderous herbivores. They might just decide that you’d make for a good fertiliser.

The dacen hesitated when they arrived at the ascending stairwell, as she had predicted he would. What dacen would ever want to climb to Zone A? Nevermind that most of the albertos had gone and left the top floor open and empty. The dacen were cowards. They liked their little patch of green, what dacen would ever- oh he was also ascending, now?

Prototype almost couldn’t believe her eyes, yet from behind the cover of an impressive thicket of parlour palms, that was exactly what she saw. The dacen was leaving the safety and comfort of his tiny little world behind to join the carnivores and make the ascent. This was truly an interesting day. She was glad that she hadn’t killed the sucho now. He would’ve made for several good meals but...she could find more prey. She couldn’t always find...whatever this was.

It was...surprisingly cool in Zone A, especially near the wall that had become a door. It almost felt like the freezer from far below had been brought up from the depths, and opened up to pour its frozen fog into the foyer that she had followed the blood-scent to.

There were many corridors and rooms and staircases that she could access and use as hiding places or quick escapes here. Zone A was always the most habitable of all the levels in the laboratory, with some of the most comfortable denning material in the whole facility. There were all manner of odd instruments and items here as well, even miniature screens that were not unlike those found in the control room far below. These little domesticated screens, of course, hadn’t shown any signs of life the entire time that she’d been alive.

The voice of one of the zone’s residents caught her attention, and reminded her why she didn’t spend more time here amongst the comfortable nesting materials and the more well-lit and less decrepit levels. The albertos had acted so kind to the newcomers, but it was a farce. A façade. They were just as cannibalistic as the acros were, they just didn’t want to scare the newcomers off. If they were good hosts, perhaps the newcomers would be cheritable and share their world with them.

Prototype stalked around the edge of the upper floor of the foyer, watching as the group - unsurprisingly - began to fall apart and argue. Rime being belligerent and hard-headed was almost a relief. If the acro acted any more agreeable, she was afraid that the world might truly be ending. But no, she was as cold as always. Thank goodness for consistency.

She hopped up on a cushion-topped bench, which would be a suitable perch for her to observe from while the weird little party struggled to not spontaneously combust. The cushion was...not exactly in perfect condition, but it was a lot softer than the floor, and that was good enough.

Except, she couldn’t get comfortable, not yet. Not this far back from the edge, anyway. The sucho was taken from Rime’s back, the dacen scurried about, and the cryo...seemed to be looking at something. For something, even. What else did he have to look for? The sucho he’d apparently come for was behind him, and there wasn’t any great danger here so long as he had one of the biggest acros in the facility beside him -

What was that? A shadowy figure moved slowly across the floor overlooking the foyer, on the opposite side of the space as her. Small, and covered in feathers. Smaller than the sucho, smaller than the cryo...even smaller than her, she thought. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but was that...a killclaw that she could see past the broken glass?

Her attention jerked back to the activity on the ground floor of the foyer when she heard another voice. The cryo was looking up, not at the entrance which opened up into a yawning, inky blackness that was as deep and dark - darker, even - as the darkest parts of the facility. He was looking up at the floor overlooking the foyer. Those pale, empty eyes were looking at them.

His voice was cool and soft and familiar, but not. “We’re not alone.”