Author's Note: Here's the next chapter. I just slammed my hands against the keyboard a few times and this is what came out. Enjoy or don't. Whatever fuck you. I love you

Chapter Twelve

I wake up at around one in the morning. Putting on a black outfit, I begin to make my way back towards the town my team was in the day before. I carefully make my way through the camp, stepping lightly over a few sleeping soldiers and past the bonfire now filled with ashes. I am going back to the enemy base to investigate on my own. I may not be able to kill the red-eyed man waiting for me at the entrance, but I am also pretty confident in my ability to survive any of his attacks.

I am making my way through the town. Its atmosphere is very different at night. The unlit streets make seeing anything a few yards ahead of me almost impossible. The empty houses, with their pitch black interiors, make my journey through the town that much more uncomfortable. I get the feeling that I am being watched from every building I pass.

I eventually make it back to the area of our previous conflict with the man, the entrance to the base. As I near I run into the dead bodies of Rick and Peter, both in the same location they were previously. The blood on the ground is still wet from the wounds they suffered. As I reach down to grab the extra ammunition they have with them, two glowing red dots appear in the distance. The red lights shine through the darkness giving a warning of the attack that was sure to come. I prepare myself for the man’s attack only to notice that the eyes remain motionless. I slowly begin making my way towards the red glow, each step being slow. I know what this man is capable of and I am ready for his attack. The second the eyes disappear I will begin my counterattack.

The eyes continue to remain where they are. I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t he begin attacking me? I am now much closer to the entrance than the two men who died earlier were, but the man still has yer to move. After a few more minutes of cautiously moving forward I reach the man. I finally get a good look at him and I’m not sure if he can even be considered a human anymore. His eyes are not the only part of him that is glowing. A faint red glow can be seen coming from beneath his uniform on both his arms and legs. Whatever this thing is, it must not view me as an enemy.

As I step directly next to it, it turns its head towards me. Those shining red eyes are now directly looking into my own as if it is waiting for me to give it orders. I just continue to wait for it to make some other sort of movement and after a while it turns around and walks back into the base. Without knowing what is going on I choose to follow it. I am already curious about the base and what this monster is. I figure following it will lead me to some answers.

We pass through the entrance, two big wrought iron gates stand open leading into a large, unkempt lawn. We walk along a crumbling stone path the looks as if it could be hundreds of years old. Weeds and a variety of other flora are overgrown and are filling in the cracks along the path. We are walking towards an old, rundown building that is very obviously devoid of life. The door is hanging loosely on one of its hinges which Mr. Red-eyes shoves to the side as we enter the building. The inside of the building doesn’t look any better. There isn’t a single piece of furniture within the foyer and the wallpaper is peeling off in many locations and bugs can be seen crawling on the walls in more than a few locations.

We are heading toward a door hidden directly behind the large staircase that slowly rises from the middle of the room up to the second floor. He opens the old, wooden door and we big to head down a set of stairs that almost seem like they will fall apart with each step. The thin pieces of wood they are made out of bend under my weight every time I step on one. I reach the bottom only to be met with a solid steel door, its modern exterior standing out greatly against the decrepit interior surrounding it. The man walks next to the door and stands perfectly still almost as if waiting for me to do something.

I walk up slowly and am greeted with a panel suddenly flipping out from the middle of the door. I walk up and press my finger into the scanner presented and feel a prick as my blood is drawn from an unseen needle. A robotic voice speaks out of the panel in front of me in a dull, monotone voice.

“Welcome Mr. Ellsworth. Please come in.”

With that the door opens to reveal a pure white room. Once I walk in I finally get a good view of what is inside. A laboratory, but one unlike I have ever seen before. The room is filled with stainless steel operating tables. Very old blood stains cover the floor as if this place hasn’t been used in a long time. I begin my tour of the lab, the red-eyed man remained outside. I travel room to room looking for anything that might help explain what this place is and what was being done here.

I finally find something worthwhile in the last room I enter. Large military crates are stacked four high, filling the entire room. There must be almost sixty crates in here. On the end of every single one is a large cursive E. I recognize this symbol. It is one that has been around since my childhood. It is the symbol of the conglomerate of Ellsworth companies. My father took over multiple businesses over the years and eventually put them all under one name. This also gave him a great legal overhead for anyone who began looking into him. These all belong to my family and I am not as surprised as I should be. I should have expected this after all the other shit that has happened so far.

I walk up to the nearest crate and unlatch it, slowly opening the lid. The room is immediately bathed in a bright red light. These are all the same type of crystals I helped extract from the mine a year ago. I understand what is going on. My family is experimenting with these crystals and are obviously attempting to create controllable human weapons. Based off the guy outside, they must have succeeded to some extent. If they actually succeeded these crystals still wouldn’t be here and the lab would not be left unattended. I need more information.

With that I move onto the floor below. This offers a lot more as far as explanations go. The entire floor is filled with cells. Each one barely large enough to fit human inside, but that is what they have been used for. Decaying corpses can be seen in many of the cells and a few of them have almost completely decomposed. It smells like ass, but that is to be expected with the current surroundings. I move closer to get a better look at a nearby corpse. It has scars covering its body. The incisions are primarily along the arms and legs. His eyes are completely gone, but it appears it was not caused by decomposition. A scar runs along both of the corpses eyes almost as if they were replaced with something else. The rest of the floor contains many more cells and corpses, but nothing new to actually discover. I do find a phone back on the first floor of the laboratory and decide to place a call.