MF1.0 - 28 - Laughter in the Dark

The next room was amazing – the first few feet was simply the same white-gray floor as the previous rooms had been, but a few metres in, it blended into concrete and broken tiles. The outside of a warehouse was visible, and above, there was a night sky.

Ryan stood at the point where the gray floor began to segue into concrete. Stef smiled as they approached, and kept the expression there, even after she noticed the guns in his hands.

‘The building,’ he said, ‘is split into two halves. There is a door on the left and a door on the right – in each half there is a creature. I expect you to consider the situation, and take appropriate action.’

She accepted the weapon as he handed it to her and looked to the doors. ‘Left is always right,’ she murmured, then made her way over. A long tone was sounded, then the doors clicked open.

The weapon in her hand wasn’t an uncomfortable weight, but it was a strange one. It wasn’t heavy – that in itself was a little surprising. It was a tool of death, yet it weighed less than some of her peripherals.

She wished she had a holster, but one didn’t appear, so she tucked it awkwardly into her waistband. This was yet another thing they made look easier on television.

Television was evil.

The building was lit well enough, but all of the pipes and large metal containers reduced the effective visibility.

Having seen the beast, it worried her a little as to what other things existed. Ghosts, werebunnies, mermaids, vampires. She hoped there weren’t vampires – simply so she didn’t have to make it a personal vendetta to exterminate every single velvet-wearing emo one of them.

A laughter rang through the room – it wasn’t a particularly evil laugh, but at the same time, it was vaguely unnerving. Not human. The voice behind it was too melodic, too modulated.

That erased the possibility that they were using existing recruits in sheets to jump out and say boo.

Gunshots broke through the relative silence of the building. The lack of a bloody hole in her posterior told her that it was buzz cut.

Something screeched overhead and she spun. A dark, fuzzy shape ran across some pipes and jumped down behind a metal shipping crate.

She heard a shout from across the divide, and more firing, but she fought the urge to reach for her own weapon.

Assess the situation meant have all the knowledge before making a move. It didn’t mean shoot first and ask questions later. There might be girlish screaming and a mad fumble for a gun, but that didn’t…

Her mind went blank as she saw dark, glittering eyes staring at her from a pool of shadow. The shape laughed again. Up close, the laughter was unsettling – it was the exact kind of laughter you didn’t want to hear coming from a dark alley at night.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">No badge. No back up. No frame of reference.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">A lack of data always managed to piss her off.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">‘My name is Spyder. I…’

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">It lunged at her.