Hi! I made the deadline! I also experimented with some new art supplies so the cover art is kinda crappy but I was running out

Alain ducked out of the way as the beast rushed down the hallway toward him, dragging his friends with him. The monstrous skeleton ghost thing rushed past them as they all began to get away as quickly as humanly possible.

“What the hell is that thing?” Rika hissed. “It came out of nowhere, and just attacked us? Is this place haunted or something? Why hasn’t anyone else mentioned it?!”

Alain looked back to check for the monster and replied, “F**k if I know, but I’m not letting it catch me alive. Or you two, for that matter.”

The three of them turned a corner and rushed into a closet, cramped and filled with cleaning products. Shutting the door behind them, they began to catch their breaths, when they heard cries of pain and gunshots just outside. Was it the guards fighting the monster? Was it something else? Alain, Rika, and Ned all stared at the door in anticipation of something, anything. None of them dared to make a noise.

After a few minutes, the noises stopped, and they cracked the door open to look outside. As they looked down the hall, all they saw were the bodies of guards and a few lab workers. Alain’s eyes widened, Rika put a hand to her mouth, and Ned looked away. They sat in silence for a moment, processing the mangled bodies lining the halls.

Just as the three of them were about to slip back into the closet, a voice that sounded mere inches away made a sort of giggling noise, startling them. A voice began to speak, its tone somewhat flat. “You know, I can’t blame them for running, but the guns? Really? They ought to show some respect to me. I control the entire east wing of this damn building!”

Towering over them was a robot with long snakey limbs like wires and a boxy monitor for a head. A wide green smile crosses its screen face and two glowing eyes— one of them labeled with a “6” that seemed to stay upright as the robot tilted its head. “Hello! My name is Main Console Operator 6,” it started, “but you can call me O6-“

A small voice interrupted. “O6, just introduce yourself as what you want to be called so you can make introductions shorter. You’ve done this five times already.” A small creature that looked to be a small blue tadpole on legs peeked at the trio of humans from behind O6, its timid eyes shining with something comforting. Friendliness. Benevolence. Also behind O6 were two bipedal lizard creatures, one of them grey and the other green.

“Well they always politely wait for me to finish my sentence before running and screaming, so I figured I would repay their kindness by giving them a few seconds extra before I shot them down.” O6’s words shot a chill through the trio, but the small tadpole remained unfazed.

“They don’t look like scientists, so they probably haven’t done anything wrong. They probably don’t even know what’s going on! Don’t kill them,” the tadpole sternly ordered.

“As is your command, Hoplash.”

Hoplash was about to say something back when the skeletal beast from before came into view. It screeched, and began to rush at the two groups, and O6 shoved Hoplash and the lizard creatures into the small closet with the trio of humans, closing the door as he prepared for battle. The door shut with a slam; more gunfire and screeching could be heard outside.

Everyone sat in the closet in silence, fear turning into a tense awkwardness that filled the air between them. The green lizard creature broke the silence, saying “Welp, I suppose that we should introduce ourselves ‘cause it looks like we’ll be here a while. I’m Sapliz!” He wrapped his arm around the grey lizard creature, bringing them closer together. “This is Coaliz, and you know Hoplash!”

Rika was suddenly beaming, glad to have a distraction from the horrors that could be awaiting them just outside. “I’m Rika, this is Ned, and this is Alain. We were supposed to be interning here, but that thing your robot friend is fighting attacked us at the end of our first day.”

All of them kept up a friendly conversation about what was happening. Apparently, Hoplash’s group had broken out of containment and freed many of the captive creatures throughout the lab, but then they released a few specimens that weren’t too friendly. Then they heard the shouting outside. “Somebody, help me! My friend is hurt, and I need to get them out of here.” It sounded like a young man, probably around Alain, Rika, and Ned’s age.

Rika shifted toward the door a little. “We should help them, they could be other interns that got attacked, like us!” she suggested. “They probably were just minding their own business. Before anyone could object, Rika shoved her way to the door, opened it and left shouting, “We’re right here! We can help you!”

When she was out of the closet, Rika saw a brown haired intern in a bloody lab coat; he was half-carrying, half-guiding a blonde haired intern with a massive gash pouring blood out of his chest. Relief crossed the brown haired boy’s face when he saw Rika. They had met and worked together briefly earlier on in the day, when they were being introduced to the lab. He knew she was friendly.

“Thank god, finally someone else!” He sighed. “Please help, this was the only person I could get out of there. We were in the lab and an alarm went off, and there was this big explosion from maybe two rooms over. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt too bad for being flung across a room, but he had something sharp fly into his chest. I made the awful, awful mist of pulling it out. Anyways, when I dragged him out there was someone else, they started killing everyone..”

Rika’s eyes widened, his words drowned out by the sense of alarm shooting through her brain, with her silently pleading for the boy to look behind him, to notice the beast walking past him. It looked like a goth lizard or amphibian creature of some sort; dark circles lined its eyes, its arms a darker shade of purple like sleeves, and its hands had weird holes near the wrists. It didn’t seem to notice them. They had time.

Rika ran up to the brown haired boy, covered his mouth and tried to whisper as he fought back, “There is something behind us. Do not make any loud noises, do not catch its attentio-”

The boy dropped the injured intern, ripping Rika off of him, and turning to face her. “What are you doing?!” he screamed at her, before falling silent as he now noticed the goth lizard with its attention aimed directly at them.

Title end: of ideas sooo-

ALL CHAPTERS (I forgot when I first posted this)
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bro was ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎.

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