Evacuate

The corridors felt longer.

This was not architectural. It was emotional.

Every step echoed too loudly. Every turn seemed to require consensus. The frozen trail of the Amarok lingered along the floor and walls like the memory of a boundary—not advancing, not retreating, simply existing. It stopped precisely at doorframes. It curved around corners with deliberation. It respected geometry.

That somehow made it worse.

They reached the hangar doors.

They were sealed.

Of course they were.

Nova slapped the control panel. “Override?”

The panel responded with a pleasant beep and a message that might as well have said you should have planned ahead.

ACCESS DENIED
LOCKDOWN: INTERNAL
AUTHORIZED BY: COMMAND

Lin blinked. “We locked ourselves out.”

Nova nodded weakly. “During a drill.”

Mason stared at her. “Why didn’t we unlock it?”

Nova shrugged helplessly. “Drills end.”

The ‘Cutter’ alien roared closer.

Hayes exhaled through his nose. “Alternate route.”

The ventilation shafts were, inexplicably, large enough for human passage.

This was not questioned.

Mason climbed in first, rifle scraping metal. “These ducts were not designed for—”

“For people?” Lin said, following.

“They were designed for air,” Mason replied. “Air doesn’t have elbows.”

Nova crawled behind them, muttering something about OSHA violations and corporate optimism. Hayes brought up the rear, one hand on his weapon, the other on the assumption that nothing would collapse.

The duct collapsed anyway.

Not all of it. Just enough.

Lin dropped through with a startled cry, hit the floor hard, and lay there staring at flickering lights and her own breath fogging the air.

Above her, Mason shouted her name.

“I’m okay!” she called back, scrambling to her feet. “I think.”

The corridor was empty.

Then it wasn’t.

The Amarok stood at the far end, half-emerged from mist and cold, its presence immediate and absolute. Ice traced the floor beneath its paws but did not advance further. Its eyes fixed on Lin—not hungrily, not aggressively, but attentively.

Lin’s heart hammered.

“I’m not alone,” she said quickly, too quickly. “They’re right there. I didn’t choose this.”

The Amarok tilted its head.

The ice crept forward half a meter.

Then stopped.

The creature turned away.

Lin sagged against the wall, breath shaking.

Then something landed behind her with a wet, triumphant sound.

The Cutter did not hesitate.

It never did.

Lin ran.

This was incorrect.

Narratively, emotionally, statistically—this was where she was supposed to die. But the facility had already exceeded its kill quota for the runtime, and the universe, apparently, was pacing itself.

She sprinted down the corridor as walls shattered beside her, alarms blaring without purpose. She reached a sealed door and slammed her hand against the panel.

“Open!”

The panel chirped.

ACCESS DENIED
MAINTENANCE MODE: INDEFINITE

Lin laughed—a sharp, hysterical sound that startled even herself.

Behind her, claws struck metal.

The door buckled.

Then gunfire erupted.

The Cutter reeled back, shrieking in outrage rather than pain. Hayes’ voice cut through the chaos.

“MOVE!”

The door finally gave way—not inward, but outward—as Mason kicked it down. Lin stumbled through, grabbed hard, yanked back into the group as the Cutter slammed into the collapsing wall.

They ran.

Together.

They reached the emergency stairwell.

It was blocked by ice.

Not random ice. Not accidental ice. Ice that had been placed, layered, sculpted. A barricade.

Lin stared at it. “It doesn’t want us to leave.”

Nova swallowed. “Or it wants us to leave correctly.”

The Cutter roared behind them, heat rippling the air.

Mason glanced between the ice wall and the screaming thing charging down the corridor.

“We are failing some kind of test.”

Hayes didn’t argue.

They ran back into the facility.

This was the only direction left.

The alarms screamed. The walls trembled. Somewhere deep inside the structure, two predators moved toward the same point from opposite philosophies.

Cold rules.

Hot violence.

Lin panted. “They’re going to meet.”

Mason let out a thin, nervous laugh. “Monster versus monster?”

Hayes tightened his grip on his rifle.
“No,” he said. “That’s the finale.”

They barricaded themselves in the command center.

Four survivors.

Enough to continue.

Ice crept along the walls and stopped, respectful but insistent.

Outside, the Cutter prowled, impatient.

The Amarok howled once—low, disapproving, vast.

The lights went out completely.

In the darkness, Nova spoke, voice hollow but steady.

“Anyone else feel like we’re being punished for knowing how horror movies work?”

No one answered.

The facility held its breath.

They decided to explain the situation.

This was a mistake.

The command center had been designed to survive nuclear fallout, electromagnetic interference, and internal incompetence. It had not been designed to contain four exhausted humans attempting to rationalize monsters that operated on better internal logic than they did.

Frost clung to the walls like a patient infection. Emergency lights pulsed weakly, casting long shadows that felt accusatory. Somewhere outside the sealed doors, something heavy paced. Somewhere else, something colder waited.

Nova activated the main console. The holographic display flickered, stabilized, then dimmed as if embarrassed to exist.

“Okay,” she said, voice too loud in the quiet. “Let’s define the situation.”

Mason groaned. “This is where people die in flashbacks.”

Lin rubbed her temples. “We need rules.”

Captain Hayes nodded gravely. “Rules keep people alive.”

The facility hummed, unconvinced.

Nova began projecting diagrams. They were abstract at first—arrows, loops, color-coded heat maps that overlapped and contradicted each other.

“They’re fundamentally different entities,” she said. “The Amarok operates on a cryo-symbolic predation model.”

Mason squinted. “That’s not a real thing.”

“It is now,” Nova snapped. “It enforces cohesion. It punishes isolation. It stabilizes entropy through—”

Lin interrupted gently. “—selective thermodynamic narrative enforcement.”

Nova blinked. “Yes. That.”

Hayes frowned. “Translate.”

Lin exhaled. “It freezes people who act like idiots.”

Mason nodded immediately. “That tracks.”

Nova switched displays.

“The second organism,” she said carefully, “does not do that.”

The projection devolved into jagged shapes, heat spikes, and warning symbols layered on top of each other.

Mason leaned forward. “Let me guess. Loud.”

“Extremely,” Nova said.

“Fast?”
“Yes.”
“Moist?”
“…Unsettlingly.”

Lin added, “It metabolizes momentum.”

Hayes stiffened. “Meaning?”

“The more panic,” Lin said, “the more lethal it becomes.”

Silence settled.

Mason looked around the room. “We’ve been sprinting.”

No one argued.

The intercom crackled to life without invitation.

“In the event of anomalous coexistence,” a prerecorded corporate voice intoned, “personnel are advised to observe and document.”

Mason stared at the speaker. “Observe what?”

The Cutter slammed into a nearby wall.

Documentation shook loose from the ceiling.

Lin activated the whiteboard.

This, in retrospect, was hubris.

She wrote in thick marker, the board squealing in protest.

AMAROK
– Cold-adaptive
– Solitary apex predator
– Selective lethality
– Enforces unity
– Possibly sentient
– Definitely judging us

BUDGET CUTTER
– Heat-generating
– Hyper-aggressive
– No observable restraint
– Kills whoever is closest
– Not judging
– Just angry

Hayes studied the board. “Can they interact?”

Lin hesitated. “Theoretically—”

Mason groaned. “Never say theoretically.”

Nova cut in. “Their thermal signatures oppose each other.”

Lin nodded. “Order versus chaos.”

Mason tapped the board. “Ice wolf versus murder blender.”

Hayes folded his arms. “Which one is worse?”

No one answered.

Outside the command center, ice crept closer, stopping precisely at the threshold. From the opposite direction came scraping claws, heat distortion rippling the air.

The building groaned, caught between two incompatible philosophies.

Nova swallowed. “If they share territory, conflict is inevitable.”

Mason frowned. “So, they’ll fight.”

“Yes,” Lin said softly.

Hayes exhaled. “Good.”

Nova stared at him. “Good?”

Hayes gestured vaguely at the walls. “Because if they’re focused on each other, they’re not focused on us.”

Mason nodded. “Classic ‘let them fight.’”

Lin winced. “That never works.”

They attempted a simulation.

This was worse.

Nova input parameters rapidly, fingers flying, confidence returning in the presence of numbers that pretended to mean something.

The model crashed instantly.

“Too many unknown variables,” she muttered.

Mason leaned over her shoulder. “Add ‘humans make bad decisions.’”

Nova typed it in.

The model rebooted, recalculated, and displayed a single blinking warning:

CATASTROPHIC FAILURE: INEVITABLE

“Well,” Mason said. “At least it’s honest.”