Thankfully, nothing broke out during this time. The amount of employees had to be doubled since they had to expand the underground to properly study the Corruption. Ten more stories were made a kilometer deeper than the rest of the underground and it was made three times as wide as the average floor. Many scientists rushed to be transferred to the system to help study this new thing so over the course of the months there, many new people were coming into the facility. Among these, a sizable group of scientists who were certified to have clones were accepted and now the second lab can only be accessed by the clones. This was to keep casualties low and allow for an alarm to be rung as soon as a problem starts. The elevator down to them was rigged with multiple explosives and the entire area was wrapped in a barrier to stop them from spreading via tunnels.
To most of the other employees, there wasn’t much of a difference other than the increase in people in the area and stricter control on who gets into the other ground. Vegis was hanging out in an event the guards and clone managers were holding to get to know each other with the large influx of people. Among the new guards, he heard a familiar voice and turned to see Josh. “Josh! It's been a while, man. How are you doing?” (Vegis) “Oh, it has been fine. You know, it was going fine until last month when a large lay-off happened and I was out of a job for a week. I had to ask my parents to pay my rent for the month and I went job hunting. After a couple of rejections, I asked my dad if he knew anyone who was hiring and he directed me to a government office and I got put here.” (Josh). Vegis threw out a thoughtful look and said, “Must be nice to have proper combat training. I have been through some bullshit here and man would I have loved to have been trained to deal with it”. Josh chucked at this before saying, “It was nice talking to you after all this time but it seems someone needs me,” and headed out of the crowd of new and old employees.
Time passed and their stay in the northern labs had ended so they took a boat back all the way to home. During this break, several breakthroughs were made about the corruption and put the threat level even higher than before. The first thing they discovered about the Corruption was that it was completely cut off from the Hive’s collective consciousness. It seemed to still have a connected mind but it was separate from the Hive. The second thing they discovered was that the corruption seemed to have the ability to affect the code of things if it was in a certain radius of it. They shoot out spores that can interact with the circuits of something while having both the intelligence and the knowledge to interfere with the electrical signals in the wires. With this ability, they can control simple machinery and computers. The third and most dangerous thing they discovered about the Corruption seems to be the ability to consume and assimilate any material. The Hive can only assimilate organic things or specifically, carbon based life forms. With their high understanding of biology, they could create other noncarbon beings but they didn’t have any control of them. The Corruption was consuming metals and rocks while forming skeletons and tools to do more things. Thankfully, it was fully contained for now, but they never know when more could appear.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Vegis decided that the group should spend some time in the archipelago since he hadn’t been there in almost a decade. Vegis sent a message to Drake about this and got an almost immediate response of yes. Vegis rented a boat to sail all the way to them. Along the way, they passed by Sanctuary. A massive ring island that contained a lagoon and another island. Entry to it was heavily restricted and towers surrounded the entire thing. It took 3 days to get to the closest archipelago island to their home. It was one of the more secluded islands that held a small town and nice clear beaches. Some of the residents were new to Vegis like some children and a newly married couple but most of them were the same as the ones he had seen when he visited last time. It was a fun time on the beach and interacting with new people instead of being cooped up at home. They headed to the southern lab from the island and the clones came on a separate boat with all their stuff. When they arrived back at the southern lab, a large noise came from the mountains in the distance, forcing them to run inside with all their stuff. When inside, the gates slammed shut and a large forcefield formed around the walls.
Far from this world, in the quarantine zone, something starts to shift inside the Corruption. At first, it was only a metal skeleton sloppy covered in flesh. Days passed, and the meat started to refine their form to better cover the bones. Eventually, a cocoon of skin and leaves envelope the skeleton. This intrigued those who were studying it so they focused on it. What they couldn’t see was the fact that underground, there were more of these cocoons, gestating something. Some of the Corruption was separated from the rest and placed on another meteor. There, they grabbed a rift generator and began to subject them to the unfiltered energy of the immaterial plane. This forced the Corruption to make crystal structures to block the raw power pouring over them. When they closed the rift, the crystals were shot out of their bodies as they started to release an immense amount of heat and burned their flesh. A couple of these crystals were grabbed to be studied at a later time and they continued to observe this new thing.
