Chapter 29: Button

The pair ran on the tracks through all its twists and turns. The fixtures above them provided light, but it was authentically dim where the subway trains typically lit things up with their headlights. Occasionally they saw a non-functional door on the gray walls to their sides, but otherwise every tunnel all seemed to blend together.

It wasn’t long before they heard her. Delta was visible way at the back of the rather straight tunnel they were in now. Rather than feet, her body walked on myriad bladed legs like a centipede. The metal ends made sparks against the concrete as they came down in their constant clacking.

They could make out a few more details of the horrifying ‘travel-shape’ she took to come after them. In the dim distant lights they saw tentacles sprouted from her back with thorns or teeth on them. Right below her bosom as a gaping maw, vertical and lined with teeth just like, but not exact, the one that sucked in Melvin. They didn’t look to make out any more details, but the sounds coming from that terrifying, amazon-scale monstrous form of hers made them think some things were better left to imagination.

They cleared the tunnel, the sound of her blade-legs clackering grew closer and closer. Finally, something changed. The end of the subway tracks just cut off, and they found themselves leaving a dark-gray tunnel that curved at the top into light-gray and wider hallways with squarer features. Even better, there was a weapon rack on the wall. It was lined with rifles that looked like something out of one of the old shooter video games of history’s past, only with graphical quality like everything else in Paradise: real-world tier. There were also a few pistols, already on belts which everyone eagerly strapped on.

“Jeez that’s a lot of firepower, they must’ve planned to allow weapons in Paradise early on. Perhaps, in a default realm mode or something?” said Barney.

“We shouldn’t dally for long, she’s still coming!” shouted Clare.

The three ran down these new hallways.

‘This must be the development area’, Frank thought.

“Keep going, we have to be getting closer!”, he yelled.

So was Delta, though. As they turned another corner, she was right behind. Her monstrous form had changed again. Her upper body was mostly intact, but her lower body had grown too many bladed-spider limbs to count. Her entire front was a wide open maw that lashed with tendrillic tongues.

They kept running, but Barney paused. Frank noticed the sound of running feet died down and he turned back.

“What the fuck are you doing Barney! C’mon”

The man faced Delta and aimed his rifle.

“You know I can’t, she’s too close. I’ll buy you both some time!” said Barney.

“You’ll die Barney, don’t be an idiot!” said Frank.

Barney chuckled as he pointed right at Delta, who licked the lips of her mouth: both of them, actually.

“If you get to that button, I’ll be back. You’re my best friend Frank, I always believed in you, so trust me back when I say I have to do this!”

Barney started firing and Delta lashed out with her flesh.

“No!”

Frank didn’t turn away in time. He saw Delta’s monstrous flesh-form briefly recoil at the bullets, but her flesh was too plentiful, her limbs too numerous. He saw those writhing, fluid dripping tongue-tendrils grab at Barney’s limbs. Restrained, the man was powerless to resist as she brought him forward into that thousand-toothed maw. Before he fully sunk in, Frank saw a bit of his flesh already start to melt.

Despite his best efforts to hold it back, Barney let out screams of anguish that drifted through the halls as the last two kept moving.

“Dammit! She got Barney!”, said Frank. He grit his teeth.

“We have to keep going, the button has to be here somewhere! We can bring him back if we just find it!” said Clare, reminding Frank of his mission.

They darted through more hallways, each time the sounds of Delta grew louder. Her body was shifting, changing to get more efficient and horrifying no doubt. Every passageway was lined with relics of Paradise’s development past. Unused Nexus building models sat on tables, shrunken down of course. There were even immobile monsters: goblins and skeletons that were bereft of AI of any sort. They were just object models essentially, and posed like letter T’s. They had a somewhat cartoony style.

“This place is weird, eerie even.” chimed Clare as the two kept running.

“We can read up on the history later, once we’re out of this dump of a reality.” said Frank.

“Of course.”

A few passageways from there and they made their way into the strangest area yet. They followed a hallway into a room, lined with unused flower models of all sorts. One bunch of flowers, resting on grass, caught his eye in particular. Just under a light were a bunch of perfect looking daisies. Frank paused.

“Frank, what’s going on?” said Clare.

“Sorry, it’s just, those were Isobel’s favorite.”

Clare placed her hand on his shoulder. “That’s funny, they were mine too.”

Frank shuddered at the touch.

“Sorry.”, he said. “You just remind me of her a bit is all.”

Clare smiled. “I’m sure she was a great woman, and she was lucky to have you. You’ll see her again Frank, we’ll see everyone we care about again-”

There was a wet roar coming from the hallway they just ran in from. Delta had arrived, and she was now big enough to take over the entire hallway. She had no problem spilling into this garden of a model storage room. Her tan flesh was as flexible as slime now, sans her upper body, which moved in amorphous body-horror bulk like a figurehead on the prow of an ancient boat. As usual, her eyes were yellow and that hair had her well-known circuit pattern. Even as this monster she kept some things the same.

There were numerous tentacles and myriad maws. It was clear Delta wasn’t holding back. Her body’s mass crept along the walls and ceiling as she began to consume the room. Acid spilled out from one of the many open and chattering circular maws of hers, and it melted everything it dripped onto. Nothing her flesh crossed over persisted afterwards: she consumed it all.

“I’ll stop you two here and now!” Delta said, speaking through most, though not all, of those monstrous mouths dotting her body.

“Go!” shouted Clare to Frank. She faced the monster and pulled a grenade from her belt.

Frank grabbed her shoulder to try and stop her, but she turned around in an instant, face wet with some tears.

“I said go! You gotta do this for all of us, for humanity!”

“I-”

“Go you moron! Isobel needs you!” She punched him in the side and he ran.

Against his better judgment, he turned back. The room was becoming Delta more or less. Clare ran forward with a grenade primed and tossed it into the big maw at Delta’s center. There was an explosion that jostled slime and thinner fluids around. Delta let out another monstrous roar, then moved a giant mass of flesh towards Clare like an amoeba's pseudopod. It exploded open at the end, shooting out a barrage of fluid-flesh that engulfed the woman before tugging her inside Delta’s mass.

Frank left, hearing Clare’s screech and the horrid laughter of Delta.

The room after the one with flowers was a hallway. He ran, approaching a stark white room at the end. As he reached the halfway point through the tediously long corridor, he heard the rushing of something behind him. Delta was coming closer in a tide of flesh. He saw her amazon-scale upper-body at the forefront of an approaching mass of flesh of all sorts.

The form had parts tan like her exterior, and others red like insides. A myriad of yellow eyes dotted the mass too, and one of her maws belched out some green slime in his direction as a thin stream. It sizzled on the ground and he sprinted even faster.

Up ahead, he saw it at last: a pink button on a pedestal. It was in that stark white room. He just had to reach it.

Frank had a good enough lead to keep ahead of her and reach the new room. Only the button was there. This was it, it had to be. Frank thought of the other members of his crew, the other rebels depending on him. His pace hastened. Delta entered the room and screamed. He dived towards the button, but stopped! A tentacle had coiled around his leg. For a moment it seemed hopeless. The maw in front of him roared, but he closed his eyes and thought of his wife who needed him: who he could save!

He grabbed his pistol and shot the foul appendage. Delta’s grip slipped. His leg was now free, though burning with pain from the limb’s corrosive fluid. Frank wasted no time. He used all his strength, hoisted himself on the pedestal and slammed the button.

The last sight he saw before everything went black was the wide-eyed face of that horrifically transformed Delta.