"come now children, do not go near the tomb. why? haven't you listened to your parents advice? to disturb hysteria is to bring ruin upon us all"

-Unknown

she looked down at her feet at she walked, admiring the metal wraps around her calf. platinum bools clanked as she walked, leaving imprints in the soft mud of the tunnel.

jess knew on some level that the boots and wrapping weren't fashionable, but she couldn't help the way she felt about them. they looked so...clean? clean design wise, they had mud and blood caked on Afterall. wrappings lead into shiny knee pads, gleaming thigh armor, and finally flowing into a firm carbon fiber that hugged and flexed with her stomach, but was still harder than the black mesh carrying wires that was underlined the armor. Her forearm, bicep and tricep are all covered in more metal, the armor getting more dirty and soddened with rotting blood and caked on dirt as you went closer to her hands. jess laughed, finding the blood on her mesh covered hands to be exhilarating. it gave her a sense of control.

her breast plate had scratches on it from a recent encounter, the damage being sewn shut by millions of microscopic...things? she wasn't sure, they just appeared whenever her armor was damaged. it never cleaned itself, only repaired damage done to it. 

however, what was most interesting about her chest piece was the pulsing purple fragment, shoved into the middle of the breastplate roughly and without care. she caressed it, her facial expression softening as she stopped walking and looked down. her long and unkempt black hair fell around her shoulders, reaching almost to her hips. she really should learn to braid it...

she remembered how short it used to be, back when she was still just at the lab being studied. she was an athlete once. she played... what was it, soccer? the memories started to blur together after being here for so long. she glanced at her left forearm, the letters "127 days and 7 hours since suit activation" displayed on it in pale blue. yeah, it had been a long time.

she glanced around her surroundings, taking in the familiar dirt tunnel. it was double her height and wide enough for 2 cars, the same length and width as every other tunnel. whoever had dug these tunnels was very unimaginative, she thought. it made her remember her first time seeing these tunnels.

when she'd first awoken in this place, she'd sat up while grumbling, dazed and confused about everything. who am i, where am i, why am i here? looking around, jess found a peculiar creature gnawing on her calf. it was a mass of tentacles, concentrating on a simple white mask. in surprise, she reached out to slap it away. the creature jumped backwards, moving it's entire tentacle body in one motion and backflipping away from her. she stood up, hands assuming a somewhat shaky fighting stance. she had a few questions as the creature screeched and lurched its slug like body at her. one, why was her calf not hurting when half of it was missing, and 2, what the fuck is that thing?

she braced for the creatures lunge but fell on her back roughly anyways as dirt and rock scraped against her armor, the acceleration of dozens of tentacles too much to handle. she wrestled with it on the floor, its masked crack around its mouth allowing it to bite. in a rush of clarity and focus, jess grabbed it's mask, tensed every trained fiber of muscle in her body, and as the creature wailed she shattered it's mask against a rock. the tentacles fell limp and it's separated, leaving a slimy mass of flesh on her feet.

for a minute, jess just sat and stared. then she burst out crying. wet, hot tears streamed down her face as she couldn't remember a damn thing about who she was or why she was here. all she could tell was that this place was unnatural. or maybe it was overly natural? it seemed too complex for it to be organic, and yet why would any creature make it?

after an hour of crying jess calmed down, chalking up the strange feelings about this place to be from her own panic. with a few tears still leaking out of her swollen eyes, she inspected the tentacle monsters corpse. It had no organs. no heart, brain, lungs, or even eyes. just a mouth tentacle along with 50 or so non mouth tentacles attached to a mask. picking up the broken pieces, she felt... regret? the broken fragments racked her with guilt. why? 

pushing the guilt down,  she got up and observed her surroundings. she was in a tunnel, soft almost muddy dirt covering it's entirety. in some spots, thorn bushes sprouted out, and next to where she had awoken, a puddle sat. she kneeled down and drank greedily from it, tired from her encounter with the tentacle creature.

after wards, she lay on the ground tired, her body and mind strained. but as she lay there she started to feel strange. she looked down at her chest and for the first time she realized she was wearing armor, a seemingly modern set at that, and in the middle of said armor was a pulsing, purple shard. it was out of place, but it felt comforting. she could feel energy flowing from it into her body and armor with each pulse, powering the regeneration of her strained muscles and repair of her armor through a swarm of little gray bugs that crowded the scratches on her armor from the tentacle creature, sewing a webbing of nanometal into the damaged material.

it felt safe and comforting. her only relief in this foreign land.

jess was brought back to the present by a shift in the air. the wind which had no source seemed to stop blowing, the chink and crunch of her armor moving and feet stomping the only noise she picked up.

then a gong rang out, reverberating off the walls as it was hit repeatedly. a multitude of screams rung out in response. jess grimaced. she knew what this meant.

as the first "screamer", as she had come to call them, flung it's rippling tentacle body around the corner, jess drew on the familiar energy coursing through her body, gathering it around her fists. she would never get used to this. her fist flung out, smashing the creature's mask to pieces. the shard in her chest sped up it's pulsing as jess drew energy into her arms and legs. more screams rung out as a horde of the screamers shot around the corner.

she was going to kill whoever was banging that fucking gong, that she promised.