“We have an outbreak over at section four, specific current location within sector four is unknown. Send troops to engage while we work on a feasible containment solution. Giving permission to fire, done. Send them in.” The man in the control room sighed, typing furiously into command boxes on his computer. He looked nervously at the cameras, watching each one carefully. He’d lost track of it visually at around the fifth corridor, but its tracking device claimed it was still moving, and going through walls. At this rate, it would be out and about before anyone could get here. He hoped it would just leave, he didn't like having to watch something like that over and over again. It would just sit there and stare in previous days, closing its eyes and waiting, tilting its comparatively large head back and forth, long limbs waving about the floor, feeling the darkness of the cell. It had a durable blue grey suit on designed to avoid being ripped since getting anything its size and proportions was pretty difficult. He thought it looked like a female child at first, but children don’t look like that. And if they did they certainly wouldn’t be capable of tearing through steel walls. It was a bit closer to a teenager.

“Confirm location again, no trace found at location specified.” Came a crackling voice through the radio. The man in the control room almost choked on his coffee, checking the tracking devices again.

“Target is in the middle of your group, whether above or below! Get out of there! You’re too close!” He shouted into the radio, checking the security cameras. Nothing was in their group. He checked the security camera on the floors below and above. Above showed a clean, gravel roof. Below, the lights were torn out and the occasional electrical flash illuminated the creature staring at the ceiling. “Target now knows where you are, if you haven’t moved, I suggest you move now!” He warned, typing in the lockdown commands. Not that it would help. After a while of doing this he realized they hadn’t talked back to him. He’d been keeping an eye on the tracking device and it hadn’t moved. He switched back to the cameras to check the outcome of the situation. He gasped and held in a scream. He wasn’t used to dealing with things like this. On the screen before him lay a bloody mess and a hole in the ground. Every member dispatched to take care of it was dead. He checked the tracking devices location once again. It was still there, even though the creature no longer was. He turned on all cameras and searched for movement throughout the entire system. Three cameras popped up after his specifications. All of the cameras that watched the door to the exit. The three foot thick steel door was being carved through steadily by a barrage of repeated hits from the creature. Its own blood was building up on the floor from every hit, along with a few bits of its own body. It could regenerate quickly, but if it kept up like this it was going to die. He turned on audio for that camera, wanting to know what it sounded like.

“Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!” It chanted, stomping its feet with every word and gouging deep into the door on every out. Eventually one of its appendages had had enough and snapped off, leaving it with seven more. It held the stump of where one of them had been and curled up on the floor, sobbing gently as it regenerated slowly. Eventually it got back up, still clutching the slowly healing limb and pounding half-heartedly at the door. He kept watching it for a while, eventually satisfied others would get here to take care of it. He once again didn’t like how human it looked, and how human it acted. It would rather die trying to escape than just die in a white cell.

“I hope they get here soon, I don’t think I can watch this anymore,” He sighed. For quite a while he sat and waited. No responses through the radio. Hours passed. The generator was going without fuel. The emergency generator kicked in. That died too, eventually. The lights went out, and so did the camera and audio feed. The man looked at his water store. He’d last until they got here. But he couldn’t get out now, the building automatically locks down. He’d have a hard time getting out. They would be able to get in. Eventually that creature would carve its way out. Probably. He hoped it would, because he could survive in the surveillance room for a while. He had food, water, and a bed. That thing didn’t have that. There wasn’t any other food or water in the building. They intended to starve it, but what if it tried to break into the surveillance room? He had a shotgun, but that thing was armored beyond comprehension. He heard a loud bang out in the hallway and the sound of someone running.

“Is anyone here?” Came a familiar voice. The man stopped himself from responding and picked up the shotgun. He wasn’t stupid. It was that thing. It had probably given up when the power went out and was looking for someone to get to open the door. He moved away from the glass so he couldn’t be seen. He heard a loud metal scraping, and he prayed to god that he wouldn’t be found as he quickly gathered most of his water and food into the closet. Right as he got into the closet the door crashed to the floor. He shut the closet door in the noise and locked it. “Hello? If you come out now I promise I won’t kill you, even if you don’t I don’t want to kill you!” It sighed. He could hear it moving about the room, occasionally knocking stuff over. “I hate it when I knock stuff over, it’s not my fault I’ve got eight ten foot long… things!” It said to itself, moving back and forth between the computers and the bed. All the man could see was a shadow on the bottom of the door against the flashlight he left there. How stupid! That meant it knew someone was still here, after all a light didn’t usually stay as bright as that one was after around six hours! Someone had to turn it on!

“This is ‘Armored tank’ to ‘Watchdog’ come in watchdog!” Came the static crackle of the radio. The thing moved towards it. Another radio message started to come through. “’Watchdog,’ can you hear-” Started another transmission, but it was quickly cut off as the sound of bits and pieces of a radio falling to the floor ended it eerily.

“So there IS someone here still… I wonder, where did you run off to without a flashlight?” It chuckled. The power came back on and he heard a confused reaction from the creature. The man watched, holding his breath as its shadow became clear in front of the closet door. The door started to slide to the side. He leveled the shotgun, but when the door opened there was no one there. He stepped out cautiously, heading towards the computer. He looked around the room and noticed nothing. He picked up the computer’s radio.

“‘Watchdog’ to ‘Armored tank’, do you read me?” He called into it. He heard a noise from above him and froze.

“‘Armored tank’ to ‘Watchdog’, I read you!” Came the coo of the creature. The man looked up on a particularly horrifying sight. It resembled a girl, and was strong enough to dig her hands into the high ceiling and hold herself there. The appendages he’d seen so much looked much more threatening in person. If someone had grown their hair out to ten feet and stiffened it, making sure it had the proper color gradient, as well as much thicker hair towards the ends, it would be a pretty good cosplay. Its eyes were a little too big to be human, and its mouth was a little wider than normal, too. The creatures face was distorted, mouth full of needle like teeth and eyes much wider with the excitement of a kill. Its face split into sections for a moment before it dropped down and tore into him, not even using its appendages, which it had 7 and a half of due to regeneration.

If you had the stomach (or smarts) to watch closely, you would’ve noticed that she never actually took a bite as her teeth would imply. Nor did she actually injure him, but to the newly repowered security cameras she looked very dangerous falling in to view, and apparently disemboweling her target. What she was doing, however, was making sure he didn’t use his shotgun. After her game of pretend was over, the man was left unconscious with a few bruises, but no cuts whatsoever. She took the shotgun from him and ran back to the steel door, tucking in the appendages as tight as she could to get through the narrow doorway.

After a few failed attempts of getting through, she smashed the sides of the door until she could fit without scraping her limbs, which were really only durable on the ends. She ran down the dark halls, skipping over the occasional dead body or hole in the floor. Eventually she dropped through one to ground level and continued to the door. She had already dealt with the entrance to the steel door. By the way, if it helps to imagine this, this room is a garage to the outside. A very big vehicle hanger with many small doors to it. She went back to carving through the steel door for quite a while, focusing on the edge where she’d made the most progress. Eventually a sliver of daylight peered through and she gained new hope for escape. After a little more work she could fit her hand through, as dull and pale as it was from lack of sunlight. She started to yell for help, clawing desperately at the crack, wedging it wider and wider with each frantic jab into the opening. Finally, as the sun began to set, it was big enough for her to crawl through.

The moment she got her head out, however, bullets began to fly. The real ‘Armored tank’ had arrived. She peeped out through her less than small opening in the door, and pulled back quickly, moving to the other side of the steel door. A brilliant blaze shot through the hole and exploded at the other end of the room. At this point, she realized she’d have to go through the roof. She’d hate to have to do that, but if she could get out beneath one of the turrets she’d have more time.

There were nine turrets on the roof, each one automatically guided based on current protocol and fired tracer shells, big slugs of hot, glowing metal that hurt like the devil (they may not be tracer shells, but she didn't know what to call them). It would be difficult even when she got out, but if she could get off the roof quick enough she’d be okay. The problem with leaving on the edges was that they pumped scalding liquid, not water, (water doesn’t dissolve your skin in addition to being superheated) through the pipes on the ceiling. The hard part about leaving through the middle sections was that once you were airborne, the tracer slugs would just keep you suspended to a certain point, eventually breaking her limbs. She had eight of those and nine turrets to deal with. She decided to carve slowly and carefully until she found the edge and corner. Cameras were back on, so she’d have to cut the power.

“Simple enough,” She claimed to herself, walking through the door and pulling herself up through another hole into the second floor. Not two seconds later a loud explosion shook her to her bones. She looked around, noting that the roof down the hall had conveniently collapsed. She ran towards it, preparing to launch herself out before she heard something that interested her. A second explosion made some of the gravel roof pour in, and it became clear now what was happening. A helicopter flew into view and fired at the building, presumably another hole formed. Turret fire began targeting the helicopter.

She took this as her time to evacuate, darting quickly up the rubble and towards the edge of the building, grabbing a few slabs of concrete with her appendages as both a shield and weaponry. She remembered the shotgun, and after firing it twice to no avail, she stuck with the concrete slabs. Helicopter and turret fire refocused quickly once they realized their target was escaping. She looked back, realizing pretty quickly the three total explosions she’d heard were the turrets being blown up. Another explosion and five turrets remained although they continued to target her. Positioning two pieces of concrete as momentary shields, she let them take the blows while tossing a third and fourth slab across the roof into the turrets. They exploded in a fiery blaze and a few bits of shrapnel. Three left, and they weren’t worth the time, she was just going to have to leave. Helicopter fire woke her up from her momentary victory, and she tossed one of her two remaining concrete chunks at it. In a fiery storm of unburnt helicopter fuel and unlaunched rockets, an Apache helicopter crashed the ground, blocking the view of one of the turrets.

“Two birds with one stone!” She shouted happily, no longer worried about the turrets as yet another explosion declared a turret dead. There was one left, but she could dodge its bullets. She started to run again. Finally, the helicopter on her side started targeting other helicopters. She didn’t know who it was, but she was happy. She looked back for a moment and smiled at it. Her smile died quickly, but not with any real sorrow as the helicopter was shot down by a rocket. It crashed beside her and she didn’t bother slowing, just jumping up to dodge debris. The only thing that worried her now was that they were back in the pipelined section, and so she began running for her life as a fog of acid trailed behind her. She didn’t bother looking back, if they died they died, and if she tried to help so would she.

“If you leave, you’re going to die. Without your medication, you’ll slip into a coma, all alone in the woods, and die. Came a voice that echoed across the compound. The girl never slowed, ignoring it entirely. “You can hear me, don’t play deaf!” The voice snarled. She jumped off the roof. She had made it to the edge. The gas had reached its limit and began to dissipate.

“I can hear you, but I’d rather be skinned alive, burned, starved, and finally die a slow and agonizingly painful death before I come back and do what you tell me!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. She tore up the ground in front of her and left a dusty cloud in her wake. When it settled, she was gone into the woods.

“Drat that beast, I want it, dead or alive we’re not losing that specimen…” The voice hissed to someone in the background. The audio clicked off the moment he realized it was still on.