Anomaly

As if it weren’t enough for Laura to have just heard a name she had never heard in her life, watching on the monitors as the anomaly response team fought for their own lives against something unknown sent a cold sweat down the back of her neck.
Normally, scientists weren’t that close to field agents: while they worked in technically controlled environments, shielded by protocols and layers of security, the response team faced the unpredictable, out in the field, head-on.
It wasn’t uncommon for many of them to die over time, a statistic accepted with cold detachment in the reports. Laura, however, was an anomaly in that regard.
Against all odds and unspoken recommendations, she had formed real bonds with those who went out to face the unknown. Some of those bonds had names, faces, and stories, among them, Rupert and Victor.
“I–I mean... isn’t this, like... a really bad situation?” Laura asked, her voice slightly shaky as her fingers tightened around the edge of her lab coat: “This... Scyrrath...” She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry, and shot a quick glance toward the monitors: “She looks... pretty dangerous for me”
“Hmmm...” the anomaly murmured, slowly tilting her head from side to side. There was a brief pause before she spoke again in a low, thoughtful tone: “I even imagined that there might still be a chance that Scyrrath would recognize her older sister... but I suppose that, to someone who only sees what’s inside, she must look very different from the last time she was in Scyrrath”
Laura’s expression went pale the instant she heard that. Her lips parted for a second before she forced a casual tone: “Huh... this is just so I can collect some data, but... exactly how long ago are we talking here?”
The angelic anomaly drifted gently through the air toward Laura, as though the air itself were holding her aloft. Her golden eyes, warm and almost human, met Laura’s for a brief moment. Then the anomaly let out a low, reflective sound.
“I’m not sure...” he murmured, his expression growing more and more distant: “But it was almost certainly shortly before an asteroid struck Earth, wiping out about seventy-five percent of all life”
Her face darkened, and the light in her eyes seemed to falter for a moment: “Although I can’t prevent events like that...” she continued, a clear sadness in her voice: “no mother likes to watch her children die”
Laura froze for an instant. She didn’t know how to react to those words, she was talking about dinosaurs, right? If that was the case, then millions of years had already passed. A chill ran down her spine as she was once again confronted with the terrible truth: the Virtues were timeless beings... and, apparently, terrible with numbers.
Lost in thought, Laura barely noticed Emily stepping closer and stopping at her side. Her expression was hard, unusually dark. After a brief silence, she murmured: “So, in short, they’re at the mercy of their own luck”
Laura blinked, as if searching for courage, then asked in a low, cautious voice: “Chief... did something happen? You seem... angry”
Emily sighed at Laura’s question. She couldn’t blame her, after all, Laura couldn’t see the ghost that haunted her, hovering just behind her shoulder: “It’s nothing” Emily said in an exasperated tone, looking away as if trying to shake off an invisible annoyance: “Just an irritating fly buzzing in my ear nonstop”
Laura didn’t quite understand what Emily meant. She couldn’t see any fly around her, and yet Emily’s expression suddenly darkened, as if something unseen had just passed nearby.
That only left her more confused. In fact, Laura was almost certain there were hardly any insects in that part of the facility: they were deep underground, and the maintenance systems kept the environment so tightly controlled that things like that simply didn’t happen.
Victor was breaking out in a cold sweat as his breath came in ragged bursts. His feet burned with every step, and his lungs felt like they were on fire, punished by an effort they could no longer sustain.
Every muscle in his body throbbed with a dull ache, as if it had been ground from the inside out. His throat still burned, raw and sensitive, a cruel reminder of what had happened hours earlier, when he had been forced to swallow lava.
The metallic taste still lingered in his mouth. If anyone asked him what the worst day of his entire career in the organization had been, Victor wouldn’t have to think for a second: he would answer without hesitation that it was today.
Victor’s feet wanted to stop right then and there. Every muscle screamed in protest, burning with each step, begging for rest.
And yet, whenever that thought threatened to overtake him, a thunderous crash would erupt behind him, the brutal sound of stone being crushed by something immense, boulders tearing free from the canyon walls and shattering on the ground in dry splinters.
The echo shook the air, tightening his chest. It was enough to rip him out of any drifting thoughts. If he stopped, he would die. That raw, merciless reality stayed etched in his mind, as clear as the sound of rocks being pulverized behind him.
As he ran, his thoughts drowned out by the sound of his own breathing, Rupert, just a few steps back, threw up an arm in an exasperated gesture. His sweat-soaked, tense face looked just as exhausted as Victor’s: “I take it back!” he gasped: “Running was a terrible idea!”
“It was you...” Victor shot back, his voice broken by heavy breaths, his chest heaving with effort: “Did you... have a better idea, or what!? You’d rather stay here... and fight!?”
“That’s also... a terrible... idea!” Rupert snapped, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw actually trembled. Sweat streamed down his face in thin lines, stinging his eyes, as his body leaned farther and farther back, rigid, tense, like he might lose his balance at any moment and collapse onto the ground.
Victor turned to Arthur. Unlike the others, Arthur didn’t exactly have an athletic build, his shoulders were narrower, his movements less explosive, but there was still something surprising about him: his stamina was remarkably solid, nearly on par with any member of the anomaly response team.
Victor cast one last glance over his shoulder, straight up at the sky swallowed by thick fog. He couldn’t see anything, no shape, no movement, not even a shadow. And yet the feeling that they weren’t alone pressed in on him.
Heavy footsteps, dragging through the canyon, echoed like a dull warning as rocks broke loose from the slopes and shattered on the ground around them. If it weren’t for those sounds, Victor would have sworn there was no one else there but them.
He exhaled hard, the air leaving in a ragged breath as his lungs screamed again, begging for a rest he simply couldn’t afford. Still, going on like this wasn’t an option either.
His arms and legs felt like they were about to give out, and it wasn’t just a figure of speech. He truly felt as if his limbs might detach from his body: heavy, numb, almost no longer under his control.
Instinctively, Victor lifted his eyes to the entity ahead of him, a figure caught between adolescence and young adulthood, hands outstretched.
Ironically, it was an anomaly, an anomaly that might be his only way out from the other one hunting him, the one that wanted, without hesitation, to kill him.
“Please... tell me you... have a plan!” Victor shouted, his voice thick and broken. He stumbled over a loose rock, nearly kissing the ground before wrenching himself back upright with visible effort: “Running... clearly isn’t... getting us... out of here... We’re all going to die... if you don’t... do something!” The words came out torn, each one weaker than the last. The air burned in his lungs as his vision began to blur at the edges.
His legs no longer answered the way they had before, his steps grew uneven, shorter, slower. With every second, he felt the others pulling ahead, as if the entire world were moving forward... and he was falling behind.
(I’m thinking about it) That was all Victor received in response from the anomaly. Even so, the way he felt almost instantly calm after those words was, at the very least, unsettling, an unnatural relief, as if something had been gently pressed inside his mind.
He chose not to comment on it for now, not that he had much of a choice, with something colossal brushing the back of his neck, hot and wet, as if it were a single movement away from devouring him.
Victor no longer knew how much longer he could hold out. His lungs burned with every breath, the muscles in his arms and legs throbbed as though they were about to tear, and his vision grew increasingly cloudy, stained with dark spots at the edges.
He felt that two more minutes would be enough to make him simply pass out. It was as that thought formed that something changed: the world in front of his eyes suddenly dropped away. One moment he was running, the next, he was staring at the ground.
His body rolled a few inches before coming to a stop, kicking up dust. With effort, Victor raised his head and only then realized what had caused the fall, a small stone in the path, trivial and almost invisible, that he had likely tripped over.
He tried to get up, but his muscles burned as if they were on fire. His body had fully entered shutdown mode, no matter how hard he pushed, he simply couldn’t get off the ground. That was when his senses went on high alert. A chill ran down his spine, he knew, in that same instant, that it was above him.
A vision burst into his mind: his body being crushed by a giant crab claw, bones snapping under inhuman weight. Without time to think, Victor’s body reacted on instinct, focusing every last shred of strength he had left to roll to the side.
The anomaly’s strike came immediately after, heavy, lethal. The claw sliced through the air where he had been a second before, passing just inches from his body. The impact sent Victor spinning across the ground until he slammed hard into the narrow canyon wall, the breath knocked from his lungs.
He felt his muscles burn with every movement, his weak, uneven breathing echoing in his chest. If before he’d been short of breath from exhaustion alone, now it was different: his lungs were on fire from the inside, as if they were being scraped by flame. It was no longer the ordinary fatigue of exertion, but a deep, dry pain that made every breath a deliberate, punishing act.
His eyes opened once more, one last time. His vision returned blurred, but it was still enough to see six crab claws tearing through the air toward him, gleaming under the canyon’s diffuse light.
In that same instant, the next prophetic vision forced itself upon him: his own body being hurled backward, bones giving way under brutal pressure, flesh crushed without mercy by the claws closing in around him.