The Dawn of the New World

A silence fell over the room when Hao Xuan stopped moving.

"How is this possible? How am I the only one like this?" he inquired in a low voice.

Mr. Hyde was floating beside him as usual, peering out the window they had come in from. His gaze was locked in the direction where the mist was the densest outside the building. It was like a wall that nothing could pierce through.

"I told you, don't try to make sense of what you see in this place. Do what you came here to do and leave quickly, you are not the only one walking around," he warned seeing as Hao Xuan was relaxed enough to still ask stupid questions like this.

Hao Xuan threw him a dirty look before walking towards the door. He craned his neck to peek into the dark corridor. There was nothing there other than a layer of black organic mass that grew all over the floor. (Keep in mind that Hao Xuan is upside down and is walking on the ceiling, so the floor is above him).

He slowed his breathing and listened closely as best as he could but there was no ambient sound whatsoever.

Even the faint noises that could be heard outside didn't manage to breach the structure's confines. He slowly moved further in, softly and carefully. Crossing the long corridor he ended up in an open space with multiple staircases leading in six different directions.

Hao Xuan took in a deep breath and managed to pick up Tasgall's trail again. The dark grey/black streak of color could be seen moving across one of the staircases that was going straight down.

But even following it proved to be quite a chore since he was on the ceiling. In such a wide-open space he couldn't even jump to it because he'd be sent back down again.

Hao Xuan looked around him for any decorations or objects to hold onto and extended his right hand to grab the nearest one but suddenly stopped.

As he had extended his hand Hao Xuan noticed his hands, or specifically his fingers visibly elongated. They became longer by almost 1.5 times right in front of his eyes and the nails became much sharper.

Hao Xuan opened and closed his hands and they returned to normal.

'It's happening unconsciously at this point. I just hope it doesn't get too extreme,' he prayed inwardly. Although it sounded pretty cool in concept, it was far too large of a physical change for Hao Xuan to welcome it with open arms.

**

It took Hao Xuan another three to four minutes to follow the streak all the way to its source. He was three levels underground, standing outside what appeared to be either a basement used for storage at some point or a parking area.

He was looking at the floor above him which was littered with the same black organic matter that was in the first corridor. In fact, he now realized that that wasn't the first time he had come across it.

It was remarkably similar to the veiny webbings that were all over the walls within the pyramid. Only these ones were harder to the touch, darker, and had a more wooden feel to them rather than that of the organic luster of the previous ones.

These almost looked like tree roots at first glance but a closer inspection revealed the pulsating movements of each branch. They were alive, ranging from a few millimeters to almost half a meter in width, connecting with one another to create a dense fibrous network that pumped some kind of a liquid through the system.

The sides of the room were lined with hundreds of oval protrusions that looked like giant fruits sprouting from the branches. Some of them were just a meter across but there were many that were tens of times larger if not more.

A much softer fleshy material surrounded the outer structure of these oval fruits. They would occasionally make slight movements that showed there was something living inside them.

Hao Xuan reached out his hand to touch one of them when Mr. Hyde's voice rang in his mind.

'Stop! Do not touch those if you want to get out of here undetected.'

Hao Xuan looked around but couldn't see him anywhere, 'What? Why? And where are you?'

'Never you mind where I am. Do not touch the pods. They are all interconnected, if one is disturbed they will all wake up.'

'The pods? Like birthing pods?' Hao Xuan quickly pulled back his arm.

'No. Think of them as living jail cells, prisons of flesh created by one host creature to milk its prey.'

'Its prey? So all these are people?!' Hao Xuan took another looked at the numerous pods hanging all along the floor. The room was far too big for him to see how big it actually was but just from what he COULD see, there were hundreds upon hundreds of these pods, if not more.

'No not people exactly, not anymore. Depending on how long they have been here they would have lost what little sanity they had left to become something else entirely. This is a factory, and you don't want to wake up the workers.. Quickly find the one you came for, touch none of the others.'