"The footsteps of the cryptid, they started to sound like it was moving away from us, possibly in the opposite direction on the highway. But it's stopped now, there's nothing."
They share a look of worry, except Gale who questions the situation.
"What? What is it?"
"It could be headed for the city." Sawyer replies.
"Anyone seeing that thing is the last thing we can let happen. We're lucky that the thick fog is hiding the cryptid to people far away, but sooner or later it'll get to the city and do whatever it wants."
Richard seems the most calm and unafraid of the group, rattling his mind for any possible solutions. "Communications still don't work, Sawyer?"
"The fog's somehow jamming out radio signals and any sort of phone service, so we can give up on calling for backup. We need to stop that thing before it gets too far so let's get moving!".
Sawyer leads the way, jogging across the highway, with Richard following right behind him.
"What happened to the other guy that was with us?" Gale asks.
Jericho pushes out a mellow response before following Sawyer. "He died."
Understandably, Gale feels fear rather than sorrow, considering he knew Erik for only a few hours, he instead hopes for this to soon be over. Nonetheless, he follows the group.
A few minutes of jogging along the highway later, Sawyer stops and looks into the distance.
"The city's this way… and no sign of it."
"Fuck, man. What's the point of this?" Gale says, catching his breath.
Richard stares up at the hill next to the road, where the sapling - like entity likely still resides, a fair connection to be made between it and the giant many - legged cryptid that seemed to appear and disappear out of thin air.
"Hey, boss." Richard turns to Sawyer. "Checking out that thing on the hill might be worth it."
"You think it's connected to the cryptid?"
"I do."
"Agreed." He turns to the others. "Let's get going, no time to waste."
They once again make their way up the hill, exhausted from the constant back and forth and a hammering sensation of being watched in the back of their minds. Returning to the sapling made of skin, the group senses no sign of the towering cryptid - or so they thought.
Jericho seems to be investigating the ground around the sapling, kneeling down and brushing the grass before announcing his discovery. "The grass here's been trampled on, but not by us. It's not individual footsteps, more like a large print fully around the sapling. I can assure you that it wasn't like this when we were here before."
Sawyer comes to his side. "I'm surprised you noticed that, it's subtle but it proves the connection between the cryptid and this rooted anomaly. The cryptid showed up out of nowhere after we poked around the sapling for too long, chances are once it chased us far enough away, it just returned here. Either it's a sort of guardian locked to this thing, or it literally IS this thing, having changed forms instantaneously when it is in danger - we were all too focused on running away we didn't notice if it was two individual entities."
All of a sudden, Richard grips his head, gritting his teeth and dropping his axe.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Sawyer asks.
"It's… saying something…"
Gale looks around, making sure no one else is behaving strangely, "What's with this guy? Seriously."
"It said… if we wanna live… to remove your skin and feed you to it…"
Gale grips his gun, "Are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of joke to you?" In an impatient burst, he begins to walk towards the sapling. "I've heard enough, we rip this piece of shit outta the ground, take it back and be done with it."
But as soon as Gale's hand makes contact with the sapling, it grows, its branches made of human skin rapidly extending in several directions. A single branch bursts out in Gale's direction, and impales his chest.
His corpse is lifted up by the branch, his feet dangle in the air. Blood spews out from his back onto the ground, and in a matter of a second all movemet from his body stops. Before the others can put together some sort of reaction, the same ground - shaking and wailing noise returns. A few branches lash out in the direction of the other, but are swiftly cut down by a slash of Sawyer's sword.
Jericho was taken aback from witnessing another no - warning death in front of his eyes, but there was no time to observe the situation, as Richard and Sawyer were already high - tailing it out of there. As he sprinted to catch up with them, he found it funny - now he was the only seemingly normal person left alive in the group.
However, very quickly Jericho started to realise the feeling of the ginormous cryptid's presence stalking their back was different from before. He called out to them, "Sawyer! Richard!", but they were too far ahead to hear him.
He stopped, holding his rifle and quickly changing the barrel from the rapid - fire barrel to a different one formally attached to his person. Locking it and then switching his current light bullet magazine to a heavy sniper bullet one, he peered down the scope and aimed in the direction of the distant Richard and Sawyer.
Each field operator working for facility:Null was designated specialised bullets for dealing with Cryptids. Due to the average healing factor of an anomalous entity, neutralising one with regular ammunition would take a tedious amount of time, therefore the facility's specialised bullets contain a small trace of gunpowder, causing them to explode on impact causing the bullet to burst open and leave a larger crater. The larger the damage, the more time it takes for a Cryptid to regenerate, giving the field operator an easier chance to destroy parts of it, such as limbs or the head. Though of course weapons are also effective on entities who are capable of regeneration, made obvious by Sawyer's sword of choice - which could fairly be described as just a long hunting knife, and Richard's axe.
Before Jericho was reassigned from the military to facility:Null, his role was a long ranged sniper. His steady hands and legs paired with his great attention to detail and far away formations gave him quite the reputation as a talented sniper, along with his high kill - count. Therefore, he kept an interchangeable barrel to switch out for long ranged combat, putting his skills as a soldier to use in going up against anomalies.
Jericho steadies himself while aiming, seeing Sawyer and Richard's silhouettes in the distance masked by the fog, but also another figure near them, a large shape coming down from the sky. That was his target without a doubt, so he pulled the trigger.
The heavy sniper bullet zipped through the air and past Richard and Sawyer, the noise from Jericho's rifle causing them to halt. Though, the bullet didn't hit them - it hit the object above them.
One of the many legs from the towering cryptid was descending down to crush them, now stunned mid - air from the shot. The wound quickly regenerates, but it gives Sawyer and Richard enough time to turn around and run the opposite way, several legs behind them already hot in their trail.
They meet back up with Jericho, who also starts running with them through the fog on the hill.
"We need to find the helicopter!" Sawyer shouts.
"I thought it was gone when we went back down." A confused reply comes from Jericho.
"Right after the sapling started spazzing out, I got a faint radio signal to my earpiece. It was the pilot repeating the words "Where's the hill?". He must've gotten out of the helicopter to look for us but couldn't find the hill on the side of the highway that we're on."
Sawyer continues, running out of breath due to talking while sprinting.
"The signal came from the direction where we previously ran to, to find the helicopter, but it was nowhere to be seen even though we kept running far. If the pilot couldn't find the hill by just walking straight forwards, there's only one conclusion I could come to, and it's that not only is the fog blocking radio signals, but it is also messing with our perception of distance."
"And after we find the chopper, then what?" Richard asks.
"Then we-" Sawyer's response was cut short due to several legs of the towering cryptid slamming down in the ground just behind them, barely missing them and causing the earth around them to rumble. Trying to keep their balance from the chaos, they continue barely outrunning the descending limbs and make it to the highway.
The three of them dodge out of the way as a single leg crashes down onto the road, causing rubble and debris to shatter into the air.
Once again, they run in the direction where the helicopter is supposedly waiting for them, the gigantic entity hidden above the thick fog still hell - bent on chasing them.
After a while of running across the highway without a break, the group was clearly at their limit from exhaustion. But a spark of hope appeared, Sawyer's radio mic picked up a faint signal.
"Start the helicopter! Do you hear me? We're coming! Start the helicopter!"
Sawyer was met with a hazy response, the voice on the other side of the receiver barely comprehensible, "What? Start the… hear what?." That's all the response they were given, so they began to yell, feeling they're getting closer to where they landed at the start of the mission.
"Start the helicopter! It's us! Start the helicopter now!" And to their luck, they began to hear a faint sound of a helicopter propeller starting up. Through the thick fog they finally saw the shape of the aircraft in front of them, already preparing to lift off. They dash into the open back entrance, yelling at the pilot to start flying.
As they take off, the fog swirls around them. Sawyer goes to the cockpit to talk to the pilot,
"What the hell's going on back there?!" The pilot shouts at Sawyer.
"The lake, back the way we came from, do you remember where it was?"
"Huh? Yeah I do, why?"
"I need you to go straight to it, and hurry!"
The pilot gives an unsure nod, but does as Sawyer says. Jericho's voice is suddenly heard from the back, a shout of fear and panic. "Sawyer!! Come see this!"
Sawyer returns to the cabin, where Richard and Jericho hold onto the walls to keep their balance. The loud noise of the rotors and wind slam Sawyer's eardrums, due to the open hatch.
But what met his eyes was much worse.