Chapter 7: The Nest

Chapter 7: The Nest

The words on the screen glowed with the finality of a tombstone: No viable reversion therapy.

Nikki made a sound like a small, wounded animal, collapsing against a metal cabinet with a clatter that echoed in the sterile silence of the vet’s office. The fight drained out of her, replaced by a hollow, abject despair. “It’s over,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “There’s no cure. We’re just… waiting.”

Reagan stared at the screen, her mind a maelstrom of fear and a strange, cold fury. Waiting wasn’t an option. The twitching, alien growth on her back was a constant, horrifying reminder that her body was a ticking clock. “No,” she said, her voice low and hard. She forced herself to look away from the death sentence on the screen and back at the labyrinth of files. “If we can’t find a cure, we find the source. We find whoever is responsible for Lygenesis Corp. We don't just roll over and die, Nikki.”

Driven by a desperate, last-ditch surge of adrenaline, she kept digging. She clicked through encrypted folders, her movements quick and certain, guided by a new, predatory intuition. She found a sub-directory labeled ‘FIELD TRACKING.’ Inside was a program that opened to a map of the local area, dotted with faint signals.

“What is that?” Nikki asked, pushing herself upright and peering at the screen.

“It’s a tracker,” Reagan breathed, her eyes wide. “The Progenitor Strain… it must have some kind of bioluminescent or energy signature. They wanted to monitor their experiment.”

There were three active signals on the map. Two were faint, mobile blips, one centered on their current location at the vet’s office. Us, Reagan realized with a fresh wave of nausea. But the third signal was different. It was strong, stationary, and burning with a malevolent red light. It wasn’t a new infection. It was a nexus. A focal point.

Her finger traced the location on the screen, and her blood ran cold. The address was brutally, sickeningly familiar.

“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

Nikki leaned closer, her eyes following Reagan’s trembling finger. Her face went slack with horror. “It’s the store,” she choked out. “The signal… it’s coming from Petropolis.”

The drive back was a journey into the heart of their own private hell. The cheerful facade of the Petropolis, dark and silent under the moonlight, now looked like a mausoleum. They hadn’t escaped the nightmare; they had only been on a brief, horrifying detour. The source of the infection hadn't left with Butters. It had been there all along. Or it had returned.

“Jamie,” Reagan said, the name tasting like ash. “Their call was cut off. They never left.”

They didn’t bother with the front doors. Reagan led them around to the back, to the employee entrance. The key slid into the lock with a click that sounded like a chambered round. The air that hit them as they opened the door was wrong. The familiar smells of kibble and cedar shavings were still there, but underneath was something else. A thick, cloying miasma of damp earth, rot, and a sweet, gamey odor like old meat. It was the smell of a burrow. A den.

The tracker on Reagan’s phone led them past the empty, silent aisles, past the spot where they had performed their grim execution. It led them past the locked stockroom door and toward a small, unassuming door Reagan had only ever used to check the circuit breakers. The door to the basement.

She pushed it open. A wave of damp, foul air washed over them, so thick Nikki gagged and stumbled back. The smell was ten times stronger here.

“I can’t,” Nikki whimpered, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her heightened senses were turning this into a physical assault. “It’s… I can taste it.”

Reagan could taste it too. But mingled with the revulsion was something else, something deep within the wiring of her changing DNA. A faint, horrifying pull. A flicker of recognition. Home. She shoved the thought down, crushing it with cold terror. “Stay here if you have to,” she whispered, her voice tight. “Just… watch the door.”

She switched on her phone’s flashlight and started down the narrow wooden stairs. The beam cut a weak swath through the oppressive darkness, illuminating concrete walls weeping with moisture and thick cobwebs that looked ancient and undisturbed. The air grew colder, heavier. The only sounds were the drip of water and a low, chittering hum that vibrated through the soles of her shoes.

She reached the bottom. The basement was larger than she’d thought, a cluttered cavern of forgotten stock, broken equipment, and discarded holiday displays. Her light beam swept across the space, and then froze.

She was not alone.

Dozens of tiny pairs of eyes reflected the light back at her. They glowed with the same milky, blind rage as Butters’ had. From the shadows of overturned shelving and rotting cardboard boxes, infected creatures watched her. Hamsters with unhinged jaws. A garter snake, its scales flaking off to reveal glistening pink flesh beneath. A lone, mangy guinea pig that hissed, its teeth long and needle-sharp. They were the forgotten sick, the returned, the unwanted—all of them now soldiers in this subterranean kingdom.

And at the center of it all, in a clear space on the damp concrete floor, was the nest.

It was a grotesque construction of shredded documents, gnawed electrical wires, and soiled animal bedding, all woven together and cemented with streaks of that horrifying, faintly glowing green slime. It was a pulsating, living structure. And on top of it, enthroned like a monarch, was what was left of Jamie.

The transformation was absolute. It was a thing of nightmares, a hideous fusion of human and vermin. Jamie’s limbs were elongated and thin, bent at unnatural angles. Their skin was a pale, leathery grey, pulled taut over a frame that was both familiar and horrifically altered. Their face was the worst part—the jaw was distended, the nose and mouth pulled forward into a nightmarish snout, from which a thin line of green ooze dripped onto their chest. They were still wearing the tattered remains of their blue Petropolis polo.

Reagan’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of pure terror. This was the endpoint. This was Jamie, hollowed out and refilled with the single, ravenous instinct of the Progenitor Strain.

As she watched, paralyzed, the creature stirred. It raised a long, three-fingered hand and brought a piece of something to its mouth, chewing with wet, crunching sounds. Reagan’s light beam followed the movement, illuminating the creature’s meal. It was a thick piece of smoked Gouda, the waxy rind still attached.

The sight sent a jolt through Reagan, a wave of primal craving so strong her mouth flooded with saliva. The itch on her back flared into a burning fire, and the alien part of her brain, the part that was no longer hers, screamed with a desperate, terrible jealousy. Hunger.

The creature on the nest stopped chewing. Its head snapped up, and its eyes fixed on Reagan. They were not the milky white, blind eyes of Butters. They were black, wet, and filled with a terrifying, lucid intelligence. It saw her. It recognized her.

A low growl rumbled in its chest, and the small, infected animals around the room tensed, their hisses and chitters rising in volume.

This wasn't a mindless beast. This was a queen in her court, and Reagan was an intruder.

Then, the worst thing of all happened. The creature opened its ruined mouth, and a sound came out. It was a wet, distorted, rasping noise, a mangled attempt at human speech.

“Rrrrrr…ay… gunnnn…”

Her name, spoken by the monster her friend had become.

The sound shattered her paralysis. She took a stumbling step back, her hand searching for a weapon, anything. Her fingers closed around a length of rusted metal pipe. It was heavy, solid. It felt grimly familiar in her hand.

But as she raised it, a war erupted inside her. The human part of her screamed in terror and grief. The burgeoning, verminous instinct clawed at her mind, whispering a different story. It didn't scream of danger. It whispered of power. Of dominance. It saw the nest not as a horror, but as a throne. It saw the creature that was Jamie not as an enemy, but as a rival.

The thing on the nest tilted its head, its intelligent black eyes tracking the pipe in her hand. It rose slowly to its full, unnatural height. It wasn't preparing to attack. It was issuing a challenge.

Can she stop the spread? The question felt impossibly distant. Right now, standing in the dark, surrounded by monsters, with a monster inside her clawing for control, the only question that mattered was far more terrifying:

Which one of them was she here to kill?