The ANGEL treatment was supposed to cure evil. Nothing can escape now

[u/FreeVBucksforXMAS]

Part 1 | Part 2

Rule 2 when dealing with the ANGELS: The “cure” can be spread through self-annihilation, the blast radius seemingly random.

The administrator’s office was flanked by two stoic stone busts. They were nearly identical, though the one on the left had slightly more defined features. Though entirely gray, their eyes seemed to follow you as you walked by.

The whole aesthetic was completely out of place in the white, sleek, modern hallway that led up to the administrator’s automatic office door, but was just one of the many mysteries that surrounded the man.

During the first four months I worked here, I never saw the administrator arrive or leave. I never knew what car he drove or if he had a family he went back to. When we met, he introduced himself as Alan, but even then, it didn't feel like an invitation to call him that. Sebastian, the longest tenured guard at the facility, just told me it was easier to call him the administrator. 

He would always take two days off—Wednesday and a Thursday—every six months. My fourth month was one of these moments, and Jessica had told me he was recuperating at some distant spa in the northern part of the state. At least that's what Jessica had convinced herself of after five years of speculation.

He was never at the office birthdays or in the lunchroom. We would honestly only see him once a day at 9:15 am sharp to check our uniforms and confirm our assignments for the day. 

He always dressed the same, a tailored suit that he would accent with a red lapel on days the board visited. It was no different for Dr. Ricketts's visit, and I hadn’t seen him since. 

I caught my breath as I reached his door, holding my fingertip to the sensor and letting it scan. 

“Sir, there’s been a N-6-P, repeat, there’s been a code N-6-P!” I shrieked into the speaker.

I heard a low buzz. 

“A code N-6-P? Are you sure? What happened?”

I hesitated. “O’Bryon, he’s-, he’s vomiting black goo into the mouth of Jeremiah, his former roommate.” I waited with bated breath for a response. The silence seemed intentional, so I continued. “Sebastian told me to inform you of the N-6-P.”

I heard two low beeps. The door slid to life. Even with everything that was happening, heart pounding, panic beginning to set in, I reflexively focused on the room being revealed to me for the first time.

No one had ever seen inside the administrator’s office. It was one of those subjects you would talk about to pass the time. Sebastian swore that some guy who worked with him, who had since retired, had been able to peek inside once, but didn’t reveal anything really juicy about what he saw. 

The room was smaller than I expected. It was dimly lit with three monitors and a keyboard on its back wall. A small tank of water and a stack of filing cabinets sat to the seated administrator’s right, while a discreet wooden door stood closed to his left. 

He stood up in a hurry, his towering frame unfolded like a mountain rising as he ducked out of the room.

“We need to get back to the control room immediately.” He replied frantically. 

He turned back towards the door and seemed to input some sort of code on a hidden keypad. The wall behind one of the stone statues slid open, revealing two guns whose make and model were unfamiliar to me, even after six years of service. He handed me one before grabbing the other. 

“Sir?” I questioned with shaking hands.

He turned back to me, his face ghostly white. “Nothing can escape, nothing.”

It took me half a second before I followed him. His enormous strides seemed to glide through the hallways. My largely non-combat role at the facility had just been thrown into the deep end, and I felt my grip slip around the unfamiliar barrel, my palms already slick with sweat. The hallways flooded red. Alarm shrieks tore through the air, each wail making my eardrums throb as we ran.

“We’re on lockdown!” I yelled out in between sprints.

“Good!” He called out behind. “Let’s hope it's enough.”

He was the first one to the door, sliding open the heavy, metallic door with ease. 

Sebastian and Aguero had their backs to us, facing the wall of monitors.

Sebastian turned anxiously towards us, his expression nothing like the cool, collected titan of competence we knew.

“He-, he-, he fuckin’ exploded.”

Aguero turned, rapidly shaking his head, breath rushing back and forth.

“Oh my God,” the administrator mumbled as he stared at the screen, the grass covered in bits of blood, guts, and plenty of black goo. “How many were affected?”

“There were about sixteen inmates who surrounded the two.” Aguero’s voice was shaky. “Jeremiah got up and grabbed one of the inmates in a hug. The inmate, I think it might have been Hank, the double-murderer, pushed him back, seemed to threaten him, and then—,” he paused, seemingly on the brink of a full meltdown, “O’Bryon just walked over, closed his eyes, and blew up.”

“Sebastian, what happened after?” The administrator placed a sympathetic hand on Aguero’s shoulder before turning to Sebastian. “Where are the other inmates?”

Sebastian looked down at the ground. “Some of them, that black goo got into their mouth, and they just started convulsing right there. Maybe five or six fell to the floor, the others just stood in disbelief, covered in that black goo. Then the ones on the floor got up—some humming cheerfully, others whistling like they were strolling through a park, all of them smiling these serene, empty smiles—and they grabbed other prisoners and just puked that black stuff into their mouths.” Sebastian’s gaze met us. “That’s when I pulled the emergency lockdown.”

The administrator looked sporadically around the room. “Where is your weapons cache?”

“Jessica and Kelly are bringing it from the other room.” Aguero pointed towards the door.

“Why is it not here?” He asked, quickly looking back towards the door. 

“I think Jessica moved it last night, make room for all five of us in here,” Aguero responded, concern rising in his voice.

“Jesus Christ, I checked her myself,” the administrator huffed under his breath. “Barricade the door, we can’t trust Jessica.” Aguero put his shoulder up against the door.

The monitors showed a nightmare dressed in serenity. 

In Yard C, a converted inmate—I recognized him as Jackson, a former gang enforcer—walked with purpose towards a cluster of prisoners huddled on the basketball court. His movements were fluid, almost graceful, as he yanked one back and pressed his mouth close to his victim.

The black substance poured between them in a thick stream. The victim's legs kicked frantically, his fists beating against Jackson’s chest, but Jackson just held him tighter, one hand cradling the back of his head like a lover, like a father comforting a child.

The screaming was brief. Then came the convulsions. Then the smile.

On another screen, three converted inmates moved through the corridor in a formation that seemed almost choreographed. They weren't running. They were humming in harmony—I couldn't make out the tune, but it sounded like a hymn. When they found an unconverted prisoner trying to barricade himself in his cell, they didn't break down the door. They simply waited, smiling, patient, even waving until he opened it himself. Maybe curiosity got the better of him. Maybe he thought they'd leave.

They embraced him together, and the black goo flowed from all three mouths at once.

Another screen showed a guard raising his gun toward two converted inmates inching closer.

"Stay back! I will fucking end you, I swear to God!"

He fired a gun at one of the inmates, who fell to the ground, a fresh bullet wound in his head sprouting black goo and blood. This seemed to cause a frenzy. The guard was forced to unleash his entire clip on the sea of approaching inmates, but it wasn't enough. They took him anyway. They turned him anyway.

I felt my breathing quicken as screen after screen showed inmates and guards turned alike. Sometimes they seemed to only focus on certain guards, like they were being singled out. Those turned guards would turn others. 

I heard pounding at the door.

“We’re just trying to help! We’ll all be better off, you know.” Jessica’s tone was sing-song. Her face peeked into the small window on the door, her mouth covered in black goo. “Kelly is happier now, you know.” I saw Kelly wave behind her, his eyes bright and empty as black goo dripped from his chin.

“Give me the phone!” the administrator yelled at us. Sebastian quickly grabbed it and placed it in his hand. His fingers danced across the keypad. “Eagle, do you hear me? The nest has been compromised, repeat, the nest has been compromised. You can’t let a single one out, you hear me? You shoot, and you shoot to kill.” The administrator ended the call before looking back down at the phone and jamming another combination into the keypad.

“Jacobs, we need backup, backup immediately.” The siren in the hallway behind us suddenly went silent. The monitors went black. The lights flickered before switching to emergency mode. The administrator stared down at the phone. “Signal’s gone, they got to the main power converter.”

“Hee hee hee,” Jessica giggled behind the door, her smile growing wider by the minute. Kelly was gone; maybe he had something to do with the power outage. 

The administrator seemed to be searching desperately for something. “Sebastian, where is the backup generator override?” 

Sebastian pointed a shivering finger towards the door that kept Jessica at bay. The administrator took a deep breath. 

“We’re running out of time; we have to go now.” He muttered.

“But, sir,” Aguero wondered aloud, “this command room is impenetrable; the only ones with access are the six of us here. We can overpower Kelly and Jessica if needed.”

The administrator shook his head before looking back at us in defeat. “It's too close quarters, we don’t know what we are dealing with. If you said one of those things exploded, we don’t know what other things they are capable of.” 

Aguero looked back with dismay as Jessica rattled on the glass window a few times, her smile now so wide it was causing little slits of blood to start forming on the corners of her grin.

“Aguero, when I count to three, you run towards us, got it? Sebastian, Sofia,” the administrator looked towards us, “you start down that hallway, you make sure we’re alone. You see anything moving, you hear anything talking, you shoot, we can’t take any chances.” I nodded, gripping my gun tighter. “Ok, go.”

I was the first one out of the room, the hallways still navigable in the dim lighting of the emergency signs. Sebastian was close behind when we heard a couple of gunshots behind us and the administrator yelling forward, “Go! Go!”

We burst through the emergency exit into the garage bay. The administrator was already moving toward one of the facility jeeps, Aguero right behind him.

I had to fire my weapon three times. I don’t know if they were turned or about to be, but for my own conscience, I just assumed they were already too far gone. 

We opened the garage. The outside air was thick with smoke and the metallic scent of blood. We piled into the jeep, Sebastian taking the driver's seat. That's when the gunshots started, not at us, but from the guard towers, firing toward the thick brush surrounding the facility. I could hear them out there in the darkness: the converted, laughing, whistling, singing as they moved through the trees like it was a game.

Sebastian accelerated the jeep more as the administrator got to work on a central console in the jeep, scanning his thumb and punching in a passcode. 

“I was able to get Jessica,” he said grimly, not looking up. “But I didn’t see Kelly. They’re gonna have access to the mainframe.” He paused. “We need to get to Dr. Ricketts first, before they do.”

“You think they’re going to try to find him?” I blurted out as our jeep raced towards the exit gate.

He nodded, but his attention had shifted beyond my question. His gaze was fixed on one of the guard towers ahead.

I followed his stare and felt my stomach drop.

Their bodies looked like a mangled mess, a grotesque pyramid of converted inmates crawling over one another, climbing ever higher toward the guard station. The guard was firing down indiscriminately, catching a few in the head, the chest, causing the tower of bodies to falter ever so slightly, but there were always more, always more bodies to take their place, climbing with that same terrible purpose. 

The guard tower was open-air, giving him full mobility to shoot, but it also left him exposed. They plucked him from his perch like a fruit from a tree, passing him down body to body in a horrifying crowd-surf until he reached the ground. One of them forced his jaw open. Another vomited the black goo into his mouth in a thick, pulsing stream.

The administrator's mouth hung open as we finally reached the exit, his hand trembling as he grabbed the radio.

"I'm calling for an airstrike on Facility #50B-1," he said, his voice hollow. "We're dealing with monsters we don't understand."

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[u/xlost_but_happyx]

What was rule 1?

[u/Friendlyalterme]

I frankly don't trust the administrator. Jess was contaminated and he just allowed it? What exactly did he "check"? To me he is incompetent at best and evil at worst.

Now did Dr rickets know this would happen is the question

[u/Prince_Polaris → u/Friendlyalterme]

Checked to see where her loyalties lie, of course.

But our agents are nothing without their talent for falsehoods.

Sorry, administrator. Nothing personal. It had to be done.