Chapter 28: Slaughter

“Stay on my back.” Kai ordered as he and the other slipped an ear bud into their heads. They would no longer be able to see the screens, but he could hear the people on them.

“Be careful.” he heard Kyma say. “There might be some surprises.”

“Roger that.” Kai said. “We're pulling up next to the door.” A glance out the window and he saw the mini-sub. The sub room from the Dragon told them to wait as they connected to the door on the base.

A few minutes later. He got a confirmation that they were connected and clear to enter.

Kai nodded to one of his men. That man opened the hatch to the small tunnel that led to the base door.

The 'tunnel' was barely two feet long and another man ran ahead of Kai to open that door.

The men with Kai were very well trained, experts at what they did. But he was too, and he fit in with them like a glove.

In a move that was almost completely in sync, Kai and the men raised their guns and pointed it at the door.

Kai nodded to the man waiting to open it.

He turned the giant wheel on it and a loud clang reverberated through the air, then he pulled the door open.

Without missing a beat, Kai and his men ran forward, turning with their gun barrels, checking around them for any sign of a threat.

“Uh...guys...” Ilia's voice came over the ear buds.

“Not now.” Kai cut her off.

“This is kind of important. You'll want to hear this.”

“Later, Ilia.” Jack's voice cut her off this time.

“But...” she hesitated but Kai could hear her desire to tell them. Ilia was silly most times, but when it came to her job, she performed flawlessly. If she thought it was important enough to tell them now, it was probably important.

“Give us a minute to clear the area.” he told her as his men branched out to explore the different areas of the base.

The room they came out into looked like it was just an office with an incredible view out of the windows. There were three desks, one turned over on its side, and all three chairs that went with it flipped around the room. The floor was coated with papers, ripped and shredded, and the dust marks on the two upright desks outlined where computers had sat.

Kai and the two men that had followed him, advanced on a door.

Again, one of the men behind him opened it, allowing him to point his gun without being hampered by doing it himself.

The door led to a tunnel that led to another door. Kai nodded and a man ran ahead to open that one.

“Kai, seriously! You need to see this!” Ilia interrupted again.

“Not now, Ilia.” Kai snapped. He nodded to his man.

This time, when the door opened, Kai found himself pointing his gun at a man.

“Freeze!” he ordered the man who put up his hands, showing he had no weapons of his own. “What's your name?”

Instead of replying, the man began moving his hands erratically. “I don't read sign language.” Kai said out loud.

“It's okay. I do.” Jack told him. “Point the camera more at his hands.”

Kai let one hand off his gun and adjusted the camera.

“Right there.” Jack said.

“Say it again.” Kai told the man.

Once again, the man moved his hands around.

“He says his name is...Crispin. He was kidnapped and brought here a while ago.”

The man, Crispin, stood up and tilted his head back. He tapped a collar around his neck, then began signing again.

“He says he's a siren and that they put a shock collar around his neck to keep him from speaking.” Jack translated.

“Alright.” Kai looked at the man to his right. “Take him to the submarine, but keep the collar on his neck. At least until we can confirm his story.”

“Yes, sir.” the man advanced on Crispin, grabbed his arm, and began leading him out of the room. As he was leaving, he signed one last thing.

“He said thanks.” Jack said.

“Kai, please!” Ilia broke in. “This is majorly important!”

“Ilia!” Kyma spoke over her. “What is so important?”

Kai ignored them as he and the man left with him left the cell, after they confirmed it was indeed empty, and returned to the first room.

“This!”

Kai didn't know what happened, but the cry from Kyma, both horrified and disgusted, caught his attention. It was followed a moment later by a cacophony of cries and outbursts from the others on the call.

“Kyma? What happened?”

He got no response.

“Sir!” one of his men came around the corner. He was pale and looked sick. “You should see this.”

Pretty sure he was going to find out what had the others so disgusted, Kai and the man with him, ran after the other guy.

They passed through another tunnel and came out in what, Kai assumed from the size, was the center room of the base.

Though he barely noticed the size.

His attention was more directly focused on the table in the center.

It had all the amenities of a modern surgery room, including the table in the very center of the room with three giant flood lights pointed at it. All three of the were off.

But it didn't matter, because he could all too plainly see what was on the table.

“Oh...God...” he heard Kyma's voice gasp. He didn't know then that her moan of disgust wasn't about what was coming through his video feed.

He advanced on the table, towards the woman on it.

She was dead, thankfully for her, but judging by the bullet wound in her head, it only happened recently.

Her pregnant belly had been ripped open, not like a caesarean section surgery. The flesh had literally been torn back and Kai could clearly see the dead, almost fully formed baby, inside.

He felt sick and had to turn his head.

“There's a bullet hole in her head and...” one of the men, the first few to find the room, tried to say. “One in the...baby.”

The floor around her bed was coated in blood, more blood than a dead person would release. Her belly had been ripped open while she had been alive.

Kai couldn't look, the coppery smell of blood overwhelmed his nose, even the duller sense of smell he, as a merman, possessed couldn't handle it.

Finally, one of his man unearthed a sheet and threw it over her body.

“Jack, did you see that?” Kai asked thankful that the sight, at least, was gone.

“I was a bit preoccupied with something else.” Jack told him and, to Kai's surprise, even the hardened older man sounded sickened.

Just then, one of the mini-subs was maneuvered in front of the window of the room.

“Kai.” Ilia spoke up. “ Follow the sub.”

Kai, curious as to what they knew that he didn't, did so.

He, and the others as they didn't want to stay in the room, followed the mini-sub across the room to another door.

“Did anyone check out what was behind this?” Kai asked.

“No, sir.” came the reply.

Kai indicted with his head for someone to open the door for him.

One of his men, came forward and did so.

The smell hit him first.

His men, humans all of them and much more sensitive to it, began retching and groaning.

As a merman, the sense of smell he possessed was incredibly insensitive, but the scent of rotting flesh still hit him like a brick wall.

Outside of the windows, both of the mini-subs were floating, recording a live image that was being sent to the others.

Piled inside the room, one on top of the other, were the dead and decomposing bodies of almost three dozen bodies. Not including the many tiny bundles of unborn, ripped out fetuses. The bodies had been bled out so there wasn't much blood pooled around them..

Most of them were females with their bellies torn open, but there were a few males among them. Everyone was naked, which made the sight all that more horrid for some reason Kai couldn't figure out. And it wasn't all humans, though there were a few of them. He saw his own kind, the dull flash of dead scales, along with many other mythics. A few green-brown ogres, more than a few elves and fairies, and one centaur female who had been almost completely covered by other bodies, her brown coat streaked with blood.

But it was the dead babes, the half formed fetal forms, that were dotted amongst the bodies that really made Kai's stomach heave.

This place, this evil place, whatever it was, had been operating for far too long. The body count was far too high.

Even as Kai was backing up, resisting the urge to puke, while a few of his men were doing the same, he heard Kyma in his ear, “Ilia, turn it off!”

Followed by the others on the call each talking over each other, every one of them sounding horrified and repulsed.

“The hell is-”

“-those poor people-”

“-the children were-”

“-why did they-”

“Who would-”

“-going on!”

“Sir.” one of his men, his skin a sick pale-green, touched his arm. “What are we going to do about this?”

All the voices were resounding in Kai's ear, he had a feeling the people on the other end of his ear mic weren't even talking to him anymore, but the sound of their voices was interfering with his concentration.

He pulled the mic out of his ear and turned to his men, all of them were carefully avoiding looking into the room behind him.

“We can't do anything about this now.” he said. They had neither the equipment nor the training to handle all of those decomposing bodies. Even as he spoke, he saw the relief come onto their faces. “We'll leave this for the Phoenix, let's finish going over the base and-”

“Self-destruct in progress.” a computerized, female voice said over a loud speaker, freezing all the muscles of the men in the base. “Commencing in 10...”

“GO!” Kai shouted over her.

This, they had been trained for.

Feeling just a bit of remorse for the poor dead whose bodies lay cold and forgotten in that evil room, Kai and his men turned and ran from the room, their training taking over.

“...8...”

Even though the others, who had branched out to investigate the other ends of the base had not heard him, Kai saw the rest of his group running as they approached the open door of the sub. There was a man already there, the one who had escorted the siren to the sub, who was waving at them to hurry with one hand on the door, ready to slam it shut.

Self-destruct was a rather vague term, and Kai didn't want to stick around to find out what it meant exactly.

“...6...”

Kai being the team leader, stood outside the door and counted as his men ran past him and into the sub.

“...4...”

“Move, move, move!” he yelled as the last man ran inside and he followed just a step behind him.

The door slammed shut just as the female computer said, “...3...”

A second later, Kai was at the controls of the sub. He didn't know if the sub room of the Dragon had heard their predicament, so he manually took over control of the submarine and manually detached it from the base.

A piece of his was worried that 'self-destruct' meant 'explosion', but as he pulled the sub away, it's flood lights pointed at it along with that of the two mini-subs, he was relieve to find out he was wrong.

'Self-destruct' was no such explosion. Instead, Kai was alarmed to watch the roof of the base's center room open, just a tiny bit, but that was all that was needed.

The incredible ocean pressure at this depth took over and, within moments, not only was the base flooded, but the pressure differences from within and without caused the metallic structure to completely implode on itself. The sharp echo of wrenching and tearing metal reached even into the sub.

As if it was a living beast, Kai watched as the metal folded like wet paper. Bent, mangled, and ripped as a giant air bubble was expelled almost violently from inside.