What are these shapes... what is this information... why are my limbs so monstrous? What has happened?! --2.4 Seconds Post-Integration.

  What was happening?! His screaming for help did not result in help coming. And the AI helper was nowhere to be found. Furthermore, he was in pain. And around him -- all where he looked -- a dark smear had seeped its way into the mock storefront which lined the edge of the room. Like a kind of mold which grew faster than any mold he had ever known in his life, the strange dark smear sank deeper into the wall until the whole mock storefront was coated in a grim film.

  "SIMP?!" he yelled again. Nothing.

  Moments later an alarm sounded from far away. The normal lights faded out; in their place an emergency red light flashed from a nook somewhere in his training room. I can't stay here, he told himself.

  He ran out of the room and entered the hallway leading to the atrium. Outside his training zone was no better. Around him, infecting the corridors was the odious mold. He shouted again for SIMP but found no reply.

  Soon after he entered the hallway, the sound of possessed doors opening greeted him. From two nearby rooms came two other Augustford employees. In fact, now that he had a moment to gander at each of the newcomers, he thought they looked familiar. He remembered them from the entry lobby. Where he filled out his final paperwork -- blond boy and broad-shouldered lady!

  "What on earth is going on?!" the blond boy yelled.

  "Looks like the abyss is finally spilling over," the broad-shouldered lady said, calmly. "I trained for this moment, praise the lords."

  "Yeah. Whatever this is, it doesn't have to do with your cultic prophecies, ma'am--"

  "Your words lack the faith of your tongue, boy," was all the lady replied.

  Clark got the idea the two of them would have argued all day if they had the time. "Neither of you knows what is happening, then?" he shouted.

  Both of them shook their heads. Great. Two fellow new hired don't know what is going on either. Which means, whatever is going on, is out of the ordinary. Not how I wanted my first day to go...

  Ground shook underneath their feet before the screaming started. Then, blare of an alarm, followed by the roar of an unknown machine. Such chaos dominated their ears as it roared to life. United, the trio of sounds broke his previously muted mental muffle as he attempted to figure out what was happening.

  They hurried into the lobby where they passed underneath the statue of Sire Augustford. Clark wondered if the statue would turn to talk to him like last time. Though he felt pulled to the statue, it did not talk to him as before or look alive.

  They stopped next to one of the four multi-storied water fountains to catch their breath.

  Clark saw the two fountains from earlier in the distance, the ones whose columns culminated with an anatomically correct heart and a cross, respectively. Leaning against the fountain to pant and catch his breath, moldy corruption infested all aspects of the once beautiful atrium. Out in the lobby, something seemed off. The corruption, the mold... Clark thought it was writhing, like a mass of worms. An odor infested the air like a damp basement. It took little guessing to discover the source.

  "Where are we going to go?" blond boy asked, fear creeping into his voice.

  "SIMP? You available, SIMP?" he asked.

  "The AI is down. Something I have never heard of happening, before," the broad-shouldered lady said.

  Clark took a minute to think, hard to do during such an emergency. He racked his head trying to come up with a plan of action. "If the tubes work, we can go straight back down one of those things which brought us up. Did you guys watch the same video as me?"

  "Oh! The escape tubes -- that is right, lad! But we can't return using the tubes we came in upon. Those tubes will be locked. I think on the other end of this chamber are emergency drop pods," the broad-shouldered woman said, motioning across the room.

  Clark loved the idea of rushing to the escape tubes. Only problem was between their current location and destination was confused and panicked people scurrying over the atrium's floor like a horde of mice-snakes.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Speaking of Clark watched helplessly as, in the span of a blink, a strained and protracted roar cackled throughout the atrium. It was followed by a brutal metallic ripping. The odious cacophony brought all movement in the atrium to a stop.

  Clark and friends were near one of the four water fountains which flanked the statue of Sire Augustford, and so they had a perfect view of the destruction: in a monumental crash, an avalanche of girder beams, concrete, glass, plastics, and many other materials besides, fell from the vaulted ceiling, causing something like the office-job equivalency of a cave-in: the debris multiplied itself through the taking of many intersecting crystalline walkways and office space cubes. To Clark, it looked as though the heavens themselves were crashing down. He could do nothing except watch as the destruction overtook everything.

  The riot ended -- but only when it demised itself against the atrium's ground level, taking with it the livelihoods of many executive workers.

  The destruction finished -- his ears ringing and probably bleeding -- he couldn't believe his eyes; the blissful atrium, wrecked: its thrashing akin to an animal in its death throes.

  Now, silence.

  Clark looked to his feet. Debris... The cascaded garbage plume engulfed and buried some of the huge fountains Clark passed under earlier. So large was the collapse, trash tendrils which had overflowed ended mere inches from the tip of his boots.

  "Not that way, I guess," Clark whispered.

  Silence reigned before the roar of trouble reasserted itself -- this time it was an emergency klaxon coupled with the dynamism of huge humanoid machines bearing gatling guns and heavy armor.

  Through the miracle of industrial-strength ventilation, the debris cloud gradually cleared. "Look!" the Blond Boy yelled. Bulbous goo welled up from within the massive hole in the ceiling left in the wake of the atrium's collapse. Gradually, the goo grew ever larger until, raindrop shaped, it took up a large part the chasm. It grew yet more until it detached from its birthing wound and plummeted to the ground.

  "Take cover!" he screamed while seeking refuge. Water fountain nearby, he had not time to find a better hidey-hole and rushed near it so as to use it as cover. The blond-boy and the broad-shouldered lady took refuge with him and in the nick of time, too.

  Moments after they joined him, their backs pressed flat against the smooth marble surface of the multi-tiered fountain, the goop raindrop slammed into the floor and splattered a river of jet-black ichor; the black slime raged wildly in every direction, clearing away all -- people or machine -- which unluckily was caught in its splash radius: his limbs shook as he caught sight of at least half-a-dozen folk pleading to their god for mercy as they struggled against the noir slim river. I hope they will be alright, Clark intoned, too shocked to even choke out the words.

  Away, other violent sounded churned out the once peaceful atrium: war-machines blasted bolt guns while slimes screeched shrill war-cries -- roars which rocked his core as he had never seen such 'liquid beasts' before, let alone those capable of making such beastly lamentations. Yet another klaxon alarm blared which forced Clark to pull his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the screaming cacophony.

  His gesture did little to help.

  "BREACH DETECTED!" a mechanized voice sounded from on high. "BREACH DETECTED! ALL PERSONELL REPORT TO ESCAPE POINTS!"

  The message repeated several times as Clark formulated a plan. The black water, slime... whatever the big teardrop-looking thing was, had exhausted itself, its once 'coursing river' now a trickle. The floor was soaked with the dark goopy stuff. "Let's get over there!"

  "W-what?!" the blond boy yelled. The broad-shouldered lady did the same. He repeated himself and pointed diagonally across the room, to where the atrium hadn't yet totally collapsed in on itself.

  Clark pushed and prodded his co-workers to be quick. Both of them were terrified. He was afraid as well. But he knew from experience how lethal it could be to stay put in a time of crisis.

  As they walked across the floor, their boots and shoes made distinctive plopping sounds somehow audible above the thunder of conflict. Clark felt the sticky pull on his footwear like it were the offspring of glue and chewing gum. Good thing I buckled my boots tighter than a maiden does her britches, he joked, lamely, as a way to distract himself form the terror.

  Stumbling but otherwise alive, the trio, made their way to the other side of the room. There, they were far-enough away from the fighting to ensure their eardrums weren't blown out; of course, when Clark considered the nature of the spectacle to his back -- the clash of highly mechanized warriors against... Strange Black Goo, he was not sure the word 'fighting' could be applied. "We should be safe here, away from all that," so Clark said to the kid and woman. He was frantically working out the next step of his survival plan when danger struck up like a snake from the grass --

  "What is that?!" the boy shouted as he pointed in disbelief.

  He turned around to behold horror. All throughout the chamber shapes welled within the goop before bursting from the slimy black membrane. Each of the beastly shapes were different yet each bore a common uncouth demeanor, complete with misshapen claws, red-tinted fangs, and bat-like wings. They clawed their way from the sludge like zombified skeletal warriors working their way through grave soil.

  "W-what do we do?!" the blond-boy gasped, hyperventilating.

  He caught eyes with the broad-shouldered lady whose name he still didn't know. She looked at him and nodded. They both were looking to him for what they should do. But what could he do for them? He learned only the most basic survivalism.

  Sometimes, it is the basics which are enough -- Clark remembered his mother said so when he was young. And other times, you need help from the gods. Basics? Gods? "Wait! Gods! I beseech, thee, help me!"

  Within him, a surge of radiance the likes of which he never felt exploded.

  White light erupted from him as magma from a long dormant volcano. None of the monsters survived the light; all were reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye.

  He couldn't believe it. "Was that -- me?!"

  Goodness!

  Monster Plague: Nuisance or Misunderstood?