Chapter 637 - Grinning Sneer

Afton creeps through the dark hallway cautiously with his Ultra-Chainsword at the ready, though, not yet ignited to prevent drawing attention. The sound of skittering and something moving somewhere keeps him on edge as he walks, yet he hadn't spotted anything at all...

A shutter door sits on the left side of the hallway ajar, the metal door halfway closed, leaving the door at around knee-level... Afton drops to a knee and takes a peek inside... And comes face to face with the blank-eyed star of a bearded man!

"Wah!" Afton exclaims as he falls backwards, shocked at the sudden jumpscare!

...

Fortunately, there wasn't any eldritch creature chasing him, nor was the man on the other side getting up and moving like a zombie... Why would his movement make him a zombie? Well... The large puddle of dark red liquid the head was lying in made it rather obvious that he was deceased... Plus those blank eyes and Afton was sure something had murdered the man...

He shakes his head as he gets up, "Nyx, are your proximity sensors picking anything up?"

"Negative." she dutifully reports.

"You sure there's nothing on the other side of this door?" he asks again, not wanting to get jumped by a Xenomorph... Sure his danger sense would help him out, but he'd rather not be in the situation in the first place.

"No movement has been detected since we arrived to this floor, Sir."

...

He slowly nods to himself and bends over, gripping the bottom of the door with one arm while readying his Chainsword in the other.

"Haup!" he grunts as he forces the door up and crumples the metal rim to prevent it from descending again.

Once the room is revealed Afton is easily able to see the end that befell the corpse... The upper body was completely fine, but everything below the belly button has been... Torn apart. To say the least... Examining the wounds closer, he spots that the wounds seem to have been inflicted by many clawed digits, similar to the ones the creature Usanagi was operating on had.

There was a long winding red trail of blood where the lower body looks to have been taken... Afton cautiously follows it, but feels as if he was about to walk into a dragons nest... No, wrong game... A Deathclaw nest.

The room itself seemed to be some sort of laboratory, fitted with an observation room, operating room, and a bedroom? Most likely for overnight supervision judging by the projects this place was researching.

The trail of blood led through the observation room and into the bedroom... Afton pokes his head through and quickly spots where the trails leads... A vent... The metal grating of the vent had been torn apart and blood smeared around its rim, as well as under it on the wall where the corpse's lower body had been pulled.

"Great... 'They're in the walls'." he mutters, quoting a movie he vaguely remembered... If that was even the right quote...

Shaking his head he leaves the room and enters back into the hallway, he could have tried to strip out of his armour and crawl through the vents, but that was probably a very stupid idea... And so elected to just continue as he had been, though, this time much more wary of the air vents.

He passes by a couple more rooms but upon further investigation, they hold nothing aside from a few blood splatters... Obviously whatever had been hunting in this place had already cleared out the people working down here.

Soon enough though, Afton finally reaches the end of the hallway where a large metal door sat... Blood was literally pooling from underneath it, so it was fairly obvious that this was his intended destination... Hopefully, Macka wouldn't be dead inside, otherwise, he'd have come down here for nothing.

He fingers the button next to the door and it gives a click... But doesn't actually open the door...

*Crash!*

The air vents behind him suddenly explode from their fixtures, and Afton is greeted by the sight of many... Grey mutants? Creepers? Test subjects? Whatever they were called, hundreds of them were flying out of the vents and crawling towards him, trapping him against the door and the exit... Seems as if this was a planned ambush...?

Afton ignites his Ultra-Chainsword but doesn't charge the enemy... Instead, turning around and cutting an X into the door before slamming his shoulder into it.

*CRRAAASH!!*

The weakened metal door isn't strong enough to withstand his attack, and cracks open like a can as he forces himself through it. Once inside the room, he uses his wrist shield to block the new entrance he'd made, stopping the creatures from reaching him as he examines the place.

It seems to be the place where they were keeping the creatures... Cages dotted the walls, each filled with blood stains, food scraps, bones, and other disgusting things. There were also a couple more Test subjects skittering around the place, but none were trying to attack him like the others yet...

*Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.*

Afton looks over and spots a man giving an irritating slow clap at the end of the room. He was tall with powerful muscles that looked as if they were building from his clothing... He wore a stained doctors coat, he looked young with black hair, black eyes, and reading glasses. The thing Afton immediately noticed however was the fact he remained unmolested from the creatures skittering around him.

"Well, you managed to get through the door without dying. Mark me impressed, Afton." he drawls in a typical troupey villain's tone.

Afton just continues maintaining the shield blocking the door while quietly observing the man, "... Yeah, wasn't all that hard... I guess I have you to think for the warm invitation, Macka?"