The water came up past their ankles now, black and thick with everything the horde had left behind. Severed limbs drifted in it. Pulverized bone ground under their boots with every step. The emergency lights along the corridor ceiling strobed erratically, dying in slow motion, throwing everything into a stuttering, sick yellow flicker.
Elizabeth moved through it like she was clocking out of a shift she hated.
The water wasn't just blood. It was a thick, stagnant chemical soup. Shattered glass vials, crushed syringes, and soggy P.A.C.I.F.I.C. stationary floated against the walls like dead fish. The bunker's massive air cyclers had completely failed during the breach, leaving the corridor smelling heavily of rotting marrow and raw surgical bleach. Elizabeth's peripheral vision loss made the claustrophobia aggressively worse. It felt exactly like looking down a rusted, narrowing pipe. She had to turn her entire neck just to track the movement near her boots.
