008

I had a hard time sleeping last night, perhaps it's because Haya is always actively using a huge portion of my brain. But the day opened up with a blaring alarm clock. "TURN THAT OFF!" Haya yelled aloud inside my head as I smashed the clock off and sat up.

The day started normally, breakfast, self made; toothbrush, writing down the previous day's events, etc. Suddenly, as I was writing, the ground shook hard and a call came through.

I clicked to answer immediately, and I was greeted by Commander Cecil yelling at me, or all of us, "All agents in the area! Proceed to the bottom of the Mall! I repeat, all agents in the area, proceed to the Mall! We need your assistance, pronto!" She said between hushed breaths. There was no video, but that audio was enough for me to rush out of my room and into the Mall across the street.

As I run through the street, I see the mall discharging its energy through the cosmos. The ground shook hard as I reached the entrance of the mall and looked down into the abyssal center.

The concealment is gone, and the visua-mortem inactive. From below I see the flame glimmer from the cleanup crew's flamethrower, the glint in each of the commander's shots, and the thousands upon thousands of corpses rushing them.

"If you jump you have a 60% chance of surviving." Haya proclaimed. I went over the railings and breathed deeply. That's almost a 400 meter drop.

"Patch me up with the commander, I'll take those chances." I stepped into the abyss, and fell. I pointed my staff towards the ground, blasting the air in front of me to slow my descent.

"Agent Pollus?" I hear the commander.

"Agent Pollus coming down." A final powerful blast sent the surrounding undeads out of my way. Rays of light shone through the cloudy sky as I softly landed, "Showtime."

"Show-off." Haya remarked as I pointed my staff at them and started to chant,

Blessed by God

These flames, from inferno

To heaven, be cleansed!

I strengthened my grip, bracing myself for the eventual impact, and then,

Cleansing Flames!

Powerful flames blast out of my staff, sending me aback, yet resisting the massive impact. The heat was intense, sweat falling down my pores, muscles tightening, hard to breathe.

Then, it stopped. And I breathed heavily, falling down to my knees. "You okay, partner?" I hear Haya ask.

"Yeah," I tried to stand up, but it seemed like I exerted too much out of me, "Commander Cecil?" I looked behind me, and saw the Commander and her cleanup crew.

"Good job, Agent Pollus." She went out of her cover, with her crew following behind, she approached me, "Get this man up, he exerted himself too much." She ordered her crew as they carried me up and sat me down by the cover.

'It's not over yet, is it?' I asked Haya. I observed the pit, it was wide, as wide as the mall was. Multiple flood lights lit up the area, and as I touched the ground, I noticed that it's made out of dirt. Seems like the burials here were more formal than I thought.

"Yeah, I detected multiple heat signatures… below you?" I saw a hand come up from the ground below one of the cleanup crew members, and dragged the poor man underground. His screams echoed through the silent abyss.

"OUT OF THE DIRT! NOW!" Commander Cecil yelled at his crew as they ran behind the cover. One of them grabbed her heels, to which she shot twice at it.

I saw a pile of dirt creeping towards me from below, and maybe it was the adrenaline rush, but I jumped up and behind the cover with all the energy I could muster. In steel, in safety.

"More heat signatures coming in." Haya says, "I don't know how else to support, but I'll try to keep the lights on at least." I hear a dozen more undead jump out of the dirt and ran at us towards the cover. The extraction team's flamethrowers burned them to a crisp, but they kept on coming.

I see the Commander lean her back on the metal cover. Desperately calling on every able agent for help, she even flashes the camera to me saying, "Injured agents in here!" But I only hope more of them come through.

"Why are there so many of them!?" I yelled over to her, she merely looked above into nothingness, then back down, sighing.

"The mall's management neglected basic safety procedures." She looked straight at me, "Don't dump corpses near Terrium disposals. It would've been forgivable if it was only a few people who fell here, but they turned this place into the entire city's graveyard!" An undead went past the cover and attacked the Commander. I tried to get to her but she shot it twice, dead, "Tch." She fell back down.

"Fuck." I went over the cover and shot my staff at them with strong, contained blasts. Blasting their insides gone. I would've used flames, but my entire body is too sore for it still.

As I was blasting, an undead slipped under all the firepower and rushed towards me, jumping over the cover and pinning me down. Its salivating spit falling down my face. I grabbed the pocket knife hidden in my outfit and stabbed it. Kicking it away and blasting it dead.

I breathed heavily, and heard Haya speaking from inside me, "More of them. Coming up, weird, they're all so closely packed together."

"Wha-!?" Before I could finish my words, the ground shook, sending all of us down to our knees. The undeads stopped in their tracks, thankfully. But not for long. For a behemoth of broken bones, dissolved corpses, and outstretched muscle fibre rose from the ground.

Its height almost stretches 60 meters, not enough to reach the ground level, but high enough to tower over all of us. It stepped onto the undead below it, rose its head up into the air and ROARED!

The cleanup crew quickly stood up and opened fire at the beast along with the Commander. Bits and pieces of corpses and muscle fibers fall from the beast as it gets damaged.

The beast, in anger, grabbed onto a piece of metals that made up the walls of the mall, ripped it off. And with relenting force, threw it at all of us.