Linn and Mary cautiously enter the door which had the spyglass symbol above it, the door creaking slightly as they walk through it.

The room they saw before them was a long hallway. The floor and the ceiling was a pristine white, no windows and regular square office lights.

To the left and to the right on the walls from the entrance of the hallway to the very end of the hall there were rows and columns of cabinets.

The cabinets were all colored, the first, lowest row, the ones that was coming in contact with the ground were all colored a bright green. The rows of cabinets above were colored a bright yellow, the rows of cabinets above the yellow ones were colored a bright orange, the row above the orange ones were red, the rows above the red ones were purple, the rows above the purple ones were black, and above them all, the highest rows of cabinets which were coming in contact with the ceiling were a pure white.

Linn looks around curious.

-“I’m not sure what to make of this…but it’s surely not what I expected from a selvim hive…”

Mary still looks around nervously, but she looked calmer now.

-“I don’t know if this is a really good trap made to lower our defenses….or just a plain room…that looks like a kindergarten…”

Linn walks ahead, carefully sliding one of the cabinets on the bottom row with her foot.

Mary’s eyes go wide in worry.

-“CAREFUL!”

-“Relax, it’s fine, no hidden bomb trigger or anything of the sort.” Says Linn calmly.

Mary exhales deeply.

-“There’s a fine line between bravery and recklessness you know?”

-“Sometimes you have to overstep it.” Says Linn as she leans down and looks inside the drawer.

Inside she sees folders with papers inside of them, many folders, all of them being colored the same bright green as the cabinets themselves.

She pulls out one of the folders, and takes out the papers inside.

-“None of this makes any sense…” Says Linn as she looks at the papers, but the characters used on it were not belonging to any language she knew.

-“Hey can you read this?”

Linn hands the papers over to Mary.

Mary takes the papers from Linn’s hand and looks at them closely, rotating them around.

-“Not a chance, I don’t know if these are just random encrypted characters or an actual language that we simply don’t know…”

Mary flips a bit more through the pages given to her by Linn.

As she slips through the pages, she finds a page with images and diagrams on it.

Her eyes go wide as her expression turns to a serious one.

-“What? What did you find?” Says Linn as she walks over to Mary to see what was on the papers.

Mary doesn’t say a word, she just turns the pages around so Linn can see them.

On the page which was above the rest of them, there was an image of someone’s scalp and snowdrops implanted into it. Next to the image there was a simplified diagram of a human body which had points on it, coming in pairs of 2, these pairs of points spanned from the top of the head all the way to the lower back.

Mary flips through the next page as her and Linn look closely at them.

She finds more images with text next to them. The next image shows a diagram of a snowdrop plant itself, the stem, the petals, as well as the unnaturally long roots spanning from it’s base. The image below it shows a real autopsy photo of a snowdrop being pulled out of someone’s skull, the roots being coiled all around and inside the brain of the person. The next image was from the same autopsy, it showed an image of another snowdrop being pulled out of a person’s upper back, the roots coming out from their central nervous system inside the spine. The third image from the autopsy showed the snowdrop alone on a large tray with its bloody roots which reached around 8 meters long.

Mary’s hands begin to shake as she drops the papers and begins hyperventilating.

-“I don’t wanna be here anymore Linn…they know…how do they know about the snowdrops? How do they know about their biology? They…someone…someone else had snowdrops like mine?! AND THEY WERE DEAD?! WHAT KILLED THEM?! THEY KNOW LINN THEY ARE STUDYING US AND DISSECTING US LIKE RATS!!!”

Mary turns around to run for the door.

Linn quickly walks over to her and grabs her wrist.

-“Mary, stop. Look at me.” Linn grabs Mary’s other wrist.

-“You’re fine. I’m right here, nothing bad’s going to happen. We are together. Even if anything comes, together we can overcome it. Sylvia and Fedora are just a wall away, what’s a wall of concrete to them anyway? So breathe for me okay?”

Mary looks at Linn, shaking her head left and right.”

-“Easy, breathe, breathe, maybe this is simply a building which belonged to the Kola and it got abandoned and they occupied it as their own nest, you saw those creatures, they cannot even speak let alone be capable of such intellect, am I right?”

Mary’s breathing was starting to gain a slower pace.

-“Y-yeah…maybe…but how come there was a dead body of someone with snowdrops…someone with many more snowdrops than me…?”

Linn looks at the pages on the floor with a thoughtful look.

-“I’m going to be honest Mary, I don’t know…But what I do know is that now you ARE safe with me and Sylvia and Fedora right here, okay? Come on, this seems to be some sort of important database, help me search ‘kay?”

-“A-alright…” Says Mary after a heavy exhale.

-“Good.” Linn turns around. “You can look in any drawer you can reach, look for the documents with images attached.”

They both begin searching around the cabinets, through the yellow row, then through the orange row, but they could not find any folder with images even after looking through most of the rows.

-“Let’s move higher…this won’t get us anywhere, we’re just wasting time…” Says Mary.

-“How do we reach the higher cabinets? There isn’t anything around here that we can use…” Says Linn as she looks up at the red row of cabinets and then around the hallway.

-“The line between bravery and recklessness is a fine one isn’t it…” Says Mary as she opens the doors of one of the green cabinets, climbs on it, then the opens the door of one of the yellow cabinets and so on, climbing them like a staircase, a very unstable staircase.

-“Stay right beneath me to catch me if I fall!” Says Mary as she finally reached up to the top cabinets.

-“I’m right here.” Says Linn looking up at Mary from underneath her.

Mary starts opening all of the doors of the red cabinets which she could reach, pulling out every folder she could grasp and throwing them on the floor.

She climbs higher to the purple, black and white rows and does the same thing.

-“Catch me?” Says Mary as she looks down at Linn.

-“Yeah be careful.”

Mary closely watches Linn’s extended arms, calculating her fall.

She jumps, and Linn easily catches her in her arms.

-“Huh, you’re much lighter than I thought.” Says Linn lifting Linn up in her arms.

-“Or maybe you’re just really strong.” Says Mary as she jumps out of Linn’s arms. She looks at the big pile of multicolored folders on the floor, pages mixing everywhere. “Guess we got a lot to do…”

Linn and Mary begin searching through every folder on the floor one by one in search of anything meaningful.

Time passes, and eventually, Linn finds something.

-“I found something!” Yells Linn happily as she lifts a red folder above her head.

Mary quickly walks over the pile of papers and next to Linn as she flips through the pages.

The first page showed a picture of roses on someone’s neck, going from the sternum to the shoulders in two lines, like an upside down pyramid, then another picture, showing the roses going up the back of the person’s neck to the base of their skull in two lines, like a pyramid.

The next image showed a diagram of a human body, with points in the same places where the roses in the picture were found.

Mary lifts her gaze from the papers and looks at Linn with an intrigued look.

-“Sylvia…”

Linn flips to the next page, which makes them flinch.

Again, autopsy pictures, showing a corpse with arms and crushed which looked like they were shattered by some sort of impact.

-“Jesus…” Says Linn in a whisper.

She flips to the next page and this time these were pictures of places and objects, broken walls, cars bent like a stem, holes in tungsten carbide cells, tanks with huge holes in them and bent barrels.

-“I really wish I knew what these words say…” Says Mary quietly.

Linn flips to the next page.

The first picture they see was one of a sunflower. Next to the picture of the sunflower was again a diagram, this one showing dots on the legs, going down in a spiral which coiled around each leg.

Linn flips to the next page.

They again see autopsy pictures in which there was a completely burnt corpse, the image next to it showing a slice through their skin which showed that the body was nearly entirely carbonized.

Linn flips to the next page.

The first picture they see was a picture of a half molten aircraft carrier washed ashore. To the left of that was a picture of a large field which was all black, seemingly burned. The picture below it showed what appeared to be a fireball mid explosion, and the picture next to it showed the completely destroyed and burnt remains of a city.

-“I don’t know what to make of this…” Says May as she stands up and walks to the other side of the pile.

-“Me neither…but maybe Catherine will.” Says Linn as she pulls out a folded net backpack out of her coat, unfolds it and puts the folder they just flipped through inside the backpack.

Mary rummages through more folders, until she finds a purple one with some images in it.

-“Linn, come here, found something.”

Linn steps over the pile and crouches next to Mary.

Mary flips to the first page.

The first picture showed an image of a large net of dodder vines laid on a tray, tens of meters long.

The diagram with the human body had no dots in any specific part of the body, just a large transparent red circle enveloping the entirety of the body.

-“This has to be the creepiest one so far…” Says Mary as she raises her eyebrows.

Linn agrees, nodding.

Mary flips to the next image, and she immediately drops the folder.

-“I’m sorry I just can’t look at that…go ahead and look without me.”

The first picture showed an autopsy of a corpse split in half vertically, with thousands of small yellowish-orange tiny vines in every orifice and cavity of the body, as well as under the skin and muscles, between the organs and inside them.

Linn flips to the next page.

The first picture she sees was what appeared to be a person, with hundreds of these small vines coming out of its body and expanding everywhere around it.

The person was somewhere in a dark concrete room of what appeared to be an abandoned damaged building.

Around that person there were multiple dead bodies, the vines entering though their mouths, noses, anuses, eyes and ears, through any orifice they could find.

The person in the middle was standing in a weird manner, leaning forward with their eyes closed and mouth open.

-“My gosh…this one’s really bad…” Says Linn as she turns the page around trying to show it to Mary.

Mary quickly extends her hand and turns away.

-“I KNOW! This is why I said I don’t want to look.”

Linn flips to the next page where she finds a picture of a dahlia, but no diagram to the left of that picture.

She flips to the next page, but nothing, next page, again, just text in the language they could not understand and no pictures.

Linn closes the folder and puts it in her backpack.

-“Alright, let’s keep going.” Says Linn as she goes back to searching.

Time passes, Linn finds another folder with images in it, this time a black one.

Mary hurries next to her to watch as she flips through the pages.

The first picture she sees on the top right was a picture of a sundew plant, to the left of it was the diagram of the human body, with 2 dots placed on the front of the neck.

Linn flips to the next page, and she sees a picture of a corpse with an unnaturally large neck, easily the size of 2 fully grown humans, as in the picture of the autopsy the skin of the inside of the neck was laid out flat, spread.

Next page, on the top left there was a picture of someone actively eating a corpse. The person with the sundews on its neck had its massive mouth open as wide as large the neck was in the autopsy photo. The person was on all fours, eyes bulging out of its head, and halfway inside its mouth was another person, a corpse, half of its head was blown off. The picture appeared to be taken in the middle of a street, which was heavily damaged, broken roads, carcasses of cars, half demolished buildings.

-“I think I’ve seen enough…really…you can keep searching…I’ll go look further ahead…”  Says Mary as she stands up from next to Linn.

Linn puts the folder inside her backpack and goes back to searching.

-“Alright, be careful.”

Linn searches through the pile a bit more, and she sees a white folder which was on the floor further away from the pile.

She picks it up and opens it.

Inside it, the first page had only two pictures, the one in top left which only showed what appeared to be a close up of a bunch of long, sharp white feathers arranged together like they were attached to a wing or to a body but not showing any bodily part, and the picture in the top right just showed a diagram of a forearm and hand reaching up.

Just before she can flip to the next page, Linn hears Mary’s shaky voice.

-“Linn…come here right now…”

Linn tosses the folder into the pile and walks over to Mary who was standing at the end of the hallway in front of an open door.

-“Oh…my god…”

Linn looks inside the room, and what she sees makes her freeze.

Hundreds of incubators, laid out in rows on the floor inside a dark room, all with thick feeding tubes, tubes for changing the liquid inside the incubator, and tubes to remove waste.

Inside each incubator, there was one of those creatures that nearly killed them all back at the church.

-“Mary…slowly close the door…as quietly as you can…and we’ll walk out…slowly…”

Mary swallows hard, and with her hand shaking she slowly, slowly closes the door.

Once the door makes a faint clicking noise, they both exhale deeply.

-“Okay…now we’re just going to head out and wait for Sylvia and Fedora to come out as well…we did everything we could here…” Says Linn, now whispering.

Mary swallows hard, taking in deep breaths.

-“Okay…okay…”

They both slowly walk past the pile of folders, down the hallway, out the door with the spyglass symbol above it, and out through the large main doors.

Once outside they both exhale deeply once again.

Linn turns around and looks up at the large building with a thoughtful look.

-“I wonder what Sylvia and Fedora are doing…”

-“Me too…” Says Mary.

 

Once past the door with the tree symbol above it, Sylvia could not make sense of what she was seeing.

In front of her there was a large expanse of land, actual soil with grass, trees, and other types of vegetation growing on it. Somewhere in the distance there was a bright yellowish light simulating an artificial sun, and on the ceiling, which was a gray metal made out of many plates joined together, there were hundreds of circular structures. The space itself must’ve been huge, somewhere around 2 by 2 kilometers in diameter. She turns her head to look to the left, and she can see a large pond somewhere in the distance.

The door through which she had entered was at the same level as the soil, but there were a few large rocks just in front of her.

-*This is odd…the structure was by no means this large from the outside…yet this enclosed space inside the building is much larger than the building itself…how is that even possible…*

Sylvia walks forward and climbs over the rock.

Her eyes go wide, and she immediately takes cover behind the rocks.

The field beyond the rocks was full of selvim, so many of them, and they were all just standing straight like mannequins.

Sylvia takes a deep breath.

6 out of 14 roses wither around Sylvia’s neck.

She accelerates from behind the rocks with immense speed, in less than 0.3 seconds being able to blow up 47 selvim with her punches.

She moves fast, chasing every single selvim that was within her line of sight and killing them with no more than a single punch.

She keeps killing and killing, but she notices something was off.

She slows down, and stops moving for a second, her coat drenched in selvim blood and the fabric around her forearms completely destroyed from the shockwaves.

None of the selvim were attacking her, in fact, they were moving as fast as they could to run away from her.

She watches as every selvim runs to the gray metallic walls of the enclosed space, some of them falling into the ponds. Those who reached the walls were frantically clawing at the metal with their huge claws.

Sylvia looks around confused.

She walks a few steps forward towards one of the corpses of the selvim whose head was still intact and picks it up.

Its pupils were tiny black dots instead of the usual large dilated ones.

She tosses the corpse back down and looks around at the selvim which were clawing at the walls, climbing over one another.

She launches herself at immense speed towards one of the walls, a single punch of hers easily killing multiple selvim at once due to how they were piling up on top of one another, some killed by the impact of the punch itself, some killed by the shockwave, some accidentally killed by other selvim as they were frantically clawing at the wall.

A few minutes pass, and Sylvia was now drenched in selvim blood from head to toe, her hair matted down on her scalp, blood dripping off of her 4 ponytails.

The sleeves of both her coat and her pants were now fully destroyed.

She slowed down again, walking through the middle of the field, taking pictures of the scene with her smartwatch.

Suddenly, something warm and weirdly soft drops on top of her head and then falls to the ground.

She suddenly turns around, startled, but as she looks down, she sees the corpse of a goat, its throat cut open and bleeding heavily, its muscles still twitching here and there.

As she lifts her gaze, out of every single one of those hundreds of circular structures the corpses of different animals were dropping.

She looks around her as the corpses were falling from the sky, the room’s ceiling was easily 100 meters tall.

Pigs, cows, sheep, various domesticated, freshly killed animals were dropping from the sky like a visceral rain.

Sylvia looks around on the field, the lively green grass was now covered in the remains of the selvim and the corpses of these animals.

Sylvia turns around and begins taking pictures of this as well.

-*Someone was feeding them…a breeding ground?*

Sylvia keeps walking around, taking more and more pictures, and then heads for the door through which she came in.

-*I wonder how everyone else is doing…*

She walks out through the door which had the tree symbol above it, and then out through the main doors.

Hearing the door Mary suddenly turns around.

-“SYLVIA!”

Mary runs towards Sylvia and hugs her tight, smearing blood all over clothes, her face and arms.

-“ARE YOU OKAY?! THERE’S SO MUCH BLOOD ON YOU!”

-“Don’t worry, it’s not mine.” Says Sylvia as she gently pats Mary’s head.

-“You got yourself all dirty silly.”

-“Doesn’t matter, I’m happier this way!” Says Mary with a smile.

Sylvia smiles as well and looks over at Linn.

-“So? Did you find any selvim? And what’s inside the bag?”

-“It’s…a long story, I’ll tell you all about it.” Says Linn.

Sylvia looks around her.

-“What about Fedora? Is she not out yet?”

-“No, we came out first I think…to be honest I’m a bit worried.” Says Linn.

 

Fedora entered the room, and the first thing she saw were a narrow corridor and some stairs leading up which were just as narrow.

Before she even climbs the stairs, her body tenses up slightly.

2 out of 10 dahlias wither on the back of Fedora’s arms.

She lets out a sharp shaky exhale.

-“Alright, what kind of fucked up shit do y’all have in store for me today…”

Fedora walks up the flight of stairs but notices nothing unusual, it was just a tiny room without any furniture, a mirror leaning against the wall in the back, a window in the other corner of the room, and a door to the left.

She walks up to the window.

-“Holy fucking shit…this is one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.”

The sun’s golden and magenta rays were falling on the remnants of the abandoned city, on the lively grass and vegetation down the cliff in the distance, and further away, in a large lake, the water was like a mirror to these rays. The small room itself was illuminated by these golden rays passing through the glass of the window.

-*Well, guess the only way’s to the left through the door.*

Fedora opens the door and walks through it, she is met by an identical looking room, nothing different.

-*These must be these cheap apartment complexes where the rooms are so tiny but a dozen of them*

She keeps walking through the doors to the left, she walked through 5…10…15…30…40, eventually she stopped,

-*What the fuck? Like half an hour passed but the sun is in the same spot, plus, what the fuck is up with that wall?*

She looks over to the wall across the window, after every door she went through, one more mirror was in the next room, smaller or bigger.

The tiny room was dead silent, she swallows hard, this entire thing making her feel uneasy.