Every evening, my son begged us to take off his cast: “There’s something moving inside…” We thought it was just fear… We were wrong.

"Run!" I roared, grabbing Victor by his collar and sprinting toward the silver vault door at the end of the hallway.

Behind us, the egg-sacs on the ceiling burst open with a wet, squelching sound. A rain of dark, segmented parasites cascaded onto the floor, squirming and leaping toward us with terrifying speed, drawn by the heat and movement of our bodies.

Jordan fired the industrial thermal spray unit behind us, sending a roaring wall of superheated, fire-retardant foam sweeping across the hallway floor. The parasites shrieked—a high-pitched, terrifying clicking sound that vibrated straight through the concrete soles of our boots—as the intense heat vaporized them instantly.

"The code, Victor! What’s the code?!" I yelled, slamming Victor against the electronic keypad of the cold-storage vault.

"It’s... it’s 8-8-4-1!" Victor screamed, his face covered in sweat. "Hurry! They're coming through the air vents!"

My gloved fingers punched the numbers into the stainless-steel pad: 8 - 8 - 4 - 1.

The vault door hissed, the heavy hydraulic latches disengaging with a deep clunk. I threw the door open, shoved Victor inside, and slammed it shut just as a tidal wave of black, writhing organisms slammed against the reinforced glass window of the portal.

Inside the vault, the air was freezing, hovering near zero degrees Celsius. The walls were lined with racks of sterile glass vials, steel canisters, and cryogenic storage units.

"Which one is Compound 9?" I demanded, sweeping my light across the shelves.

Victor scrambled toward a blue metallic freezer unit in the center of the room, tapping his forehead against the digital latch until it opened. Inside sat four small, stainless-steel auto-injector syringes filled with a clear, glowing blue liquid.

"This is it!" Victor gasped. "Compound 9! It binds to the parasite's neural pathways and forces them to evacuate the host's body within minutes to avoid cell collapse! You inject it directly into the tissue adjacent to the infection site!"

I snatched all four syringes, securing them safely into the padded interior pockets of my tactical vest.

"We got it," I told Jordan. "Let's get out of here."

"We have a problem, Aaron," Jordan said, pointing his flashlight at the vault door's control panel.

The glass portal on the door had cracked under the pressure of the horde outside. A thick, dark sludge of smashed parasites was seeping through the frame, and the electronic locking mechanism on the interior panel was sparking violently, melted by the acidic secretions of the creatures outside.