Imposter System

Chapter 58: Black Sheep

Matt was crouching around the corner of a hallway that two guards were patrolling. He waited until his Detect Life was available again and used Martha for remote surveillance. Once the two guards got next to each other they would stop for a bit and chat. The moment then turned was when they were the least aware. Matt quickly ran up the hallway at the exact moment of the turn and with his new bonuses from Improved Reflexes quickly took out the first guard.

His weapon was practically silent due to its design, so the guard walking away didn't even notice what happened immediately. As the first guard was falling to the ground, Matt got close enough to the guard walking away to disable him with another shot from his gun. He didn't intend to commit a slaughter if he could avoid it so his weapon was set to a low strength. The bullets he employed utilized a shock to knock his targets unconscious. Once the two guards were down, Matt quickly disabled their communicators and guns.

Using her invisibility, Martha scouted ahead and discovered another set of guards patrolling. There were several more guards and their pattern were erratic. The hallways on this floor were designed like a maze, or at least it felt that way. The ship plans didn't properly reflect this floor's layout so he assumed this was an intentional reconstruction.

The whole situation had Matt's blood pumping and he could feel his instincts get stronger. The thrill and excitement of being a hunter was slowly getting to his head. He quickly moved to the next target once his Detect Life was up and he was able to intercept an isolated guard. Using the gap in their patrol as a springboard, he reached the next guard without any trouble. However, the gap between Detect Life and a single moment of Martha not watching a certain path left a hole in his stealth operation.

One of the guards had changed from his patrolling pattern to visit the bathroom. His path was perfectly on an interception course with Matt. As the guard turned the corner of the hallway, he walked almost all the way to the fallen guard before noticing what had happened. He was so focused on his tablet and going to the bathroom that when Matt came around and put him in a choke hold, he didn't even know why he went down.

With two people down in the same awkward spot next to an intersection, Matt didn't have any choice but to go after the other guards patrolling near the area. He had intended to slip past while leaving the unconscious bodies in places the other guards never go but he wasn't that lucky. He took out the last guard and realized just how heavily this floor was guarded.

This was the second most game-like thing he had ever experienced since waking up in this reality. The floor was a maze filled with various guards on certain patrol paths. This reminds him of a certain game he played in his previous life. The only thing it lacked was an obnoxious exclamation mark above the heads of the guards. Martha discovered a hall that had four guards standing sentinel around a single door. This seemed to be an important section of the floor, but the door didn't look like the door he saw in the man's dream.

Matt approached carefully and confirmed their positions with detect life. Unfortunately, there were two more guards on the other side of the door. Just as he started figuring out a way to break through their defense, Martha popped open a wall panel and began to bite her way through cables. Electricity occasionally discharged, but Martha was unphased. Eventually, she cleared open a small space for Matt to crawl through. This little electrical panel seemed to be filled with several smaller cables and three large thick cables running along the bottom.

Matt recognized these cables as being the same as the ones he saw in the large room. He followed Martha through the small space and after biting through some more wiring, she took them out into a small electrical room. Matt looked around and realized that this was not just an ordinary electrical room. He exited the small closet and discovered he was inside of a specimen room.

There were ten large glass vats filled with people at varying levels of decay. Their bodies seemed to be taken over by some sort of black infection that was eating away at their tissue slowly. However, all of the vital signs showed every person was alive. This meant that despite losing over sixty percent of their body, they were still being kept alive. Matt only thought these fellows were very pitiful. He recognized the black infection as the living metal. These must be part of the group of experiments for the Cyborg program. They naturally failed.

Matt continued on and activated his Detect Life when it came up. He saw that each experiment was glowing two different lights. One smaller light and one larger light. It seemed as if the smaller light was slowly devouring the larger light. As he moved to the other side of the room, he saw a vital force that far surpassed any other life he had ever seen. When he entered the room, there was only a single tank.

Inside the tank was a beetle suspended in blue cryogenic fluid. Matt's heart dropped at the sight of this lifeform. In the game, there was an alien that was more like a side-quest or an easter egg by the developer. In a hidden room in the biology lab was a small beetle. This beetle seemed perfectly normal, until a player tried to kill it. Then, it would trigger a frightening reaction. The beetle, which seemed to be some random earth beetle, began to multiple endlessly.

This was considered a neutral enemy that threatened both the parasite and the human players. In order to defeat the beetles, a secret weapon needed to be developed. This weapon was named Excalibur as an obvious reference to the legendary story from mythology. Earlier, when he had seen Martha's species name, he remembered this weapon. However, he didn't think he would encounter the enemy it was meant for.

In the game, in order to create the Excalibur, one needed to collect some impossible-sounding materials. The reason Matt didn't think about it until this moment was because the materials seemed made up. First, a branch of the world tree was needed. This seemed to be related to Martha, but that was his only connection to this mythical weapon recipe. The next was the Halo of an angel. If that weren't enough, the heart of a dragon was also needed.

For now, he decided not to touch this frightening beetle alien and continue on his mission. He never expected to run into this hidden room like this. Matt began to think of the other hidden spaces in the game that led to powerful items or research. He never put stock in them before since they sounded ridiculous and only included as a game feature to excite the players. However, his reality was constantly being tested by his memories of the game.

Matt reached the other end of the long lab and saw another wall panel. After some more messy cutting and crawling, the two of them exited out into a long hallway that led to a large pair of double doors. Matt very clearly recognized this room as being the one that contained the cables which converged to the center. His Detect Life hadn't shown anything within a hundred meters so he approached the door carefully.

When he stepped within a few meters of the door, the light above it turned green accompanied with a buzzing sound. The door swished open and remained that way as if inviting Matt in. He slowly walked inside and saw the hundreds of cables going toward the center. The room was poorly lit and he couldn't see very well. His Detect Life came back up and he turned it on.

What he saw was a Life force similar to the experiments. However, instead of being devoured by the black, the black spots were spread throughout the bright light. Overall, the life force of the subject was very strong compared to a human, but just very small. Matt wasn't sure what that meant, but it was possibly related to life span. Some of the older people were like this, and that is all he had to go off of.

Matt stopped walking when he began to hear clicking sounds and a loud thud. Some of the cables in front of him shook as if they were hitting the ground. A voice began to speak from the center which sounded mostly robotic. However, something about the voice sounded really familiar to Matt. He couldn't quite place it though.

"You're finally here, Matt I've been waiting for you."