Boiled Alive

--Troy's Perspective--

Upon returning to the bunker after a multitude of cleaning up the battlefield for everybody... it was in shambles as soon as I came back with Yonoa.

"What the hell happened here?" He asked, pushing through fallen support beams and bricks of brittle cement.

"It was hit with something, that's at least what I heard through the radio. Where's Hiyochi and the others?" Yonoa asked me. He pushed his hair back to move forward through the smoke and pebbles falling from the ceiling until we came across a large room, cut in half by what looked like a support beam.

Hiyochi had disheveled hair, leaning back against the wall with bloody tools in her hand, and shaking at every small vibration in the ground.

Something big was happening outside, something we couldn't see from the bunker, but we could feel it all too well.

"Hiyochi, are you alright?!" Yonoa yelled out. He slid down to her side, putting his hand on her forearm. She seemed shaken up at the moment, pulling her arm back and looking at him with absent eyes.

"What's wrong? Did something happen to you?" Yonoa asked her. She was fairly unresponsive and very distant.

"So many... so much blood... I have over four hundred casualties... I didn't know it was this bad, not until a few minutes ago..." She admitted.

Woah... four hundred causalities? That's such a large number for Zealous. We've never lost this many people in any attack.

"Why are you the only doctor here?! Nobody else can help you?!" I asked her. I started to raise my volume too, purely because I felt uncomfortable with coping with the deaths of so many people. In a way, it feels like I failed them.

"They're dead... Faith is injured... I can't touch her, I don't want to kill her..." Hiyochi absently mumbled, shuffling her feet back and forth while sitting on the ground.

Faith... I believe that was one of Sky's people, a person of great importance to him. We definitely needed her to stay alive for him.

"Can you diagnose her? What's specifically wrong with her?" I asked Hiyochi but got a blank stare.

"Head injury... it's in her brain, I can't get in there," She told me, lightly scanning the room with slow eyes.

"Hiyochi, I know things are tough right now, but we need you to-," I was cut off by a loud blast, and a ton of splattering noises coming from the blast's location.

The top of the bunker was blown off, causing more pebbles and other debris to fall on top of the bunker's glass ceiling. It started to crack at the very top layer, which meant that if it continued, we would all be crushed to death.

A clear, gelatinous substance started to ooze from some of the walls. It was thick and viscous, like maple syrup.

"Don't touch that, what the hell is that?!" I yelled out. From the corner of my eye, behind the corner of the bunker's several hallways, I saw several people run out toward Hiyochi.

"HELP! IT'S BURNING! AHHHH!!!!" Several of them all shouted the same thing. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things going on at once and froze in front of the crowd.

In the most genuine, terrifying way possible, I was watching people in front of me melt under the viscous substance that covered their bodies. It was like watching the heat turn up, just for their bodies. Their skin bubbled, and their eyes melted out of their head until they fell to the ground as they fell unconscious under the amount of pain they suffered through.

"What the... oh God..." I covered my mouth, trying to avoid throwing up in front of everybody. It was the most putrid, disgusting thing I've ever seen. I wasn't sure where it came from, but I wanted to run so badly.

"Troy! Come back here!" Yonoa yelled out toward me. The hallway became blocked with bodies and melted gelatin on the floor, trapping a ton of people in a separate room near the back of the bunker. I could hear them all suffocate, or trying to move over the burned bodies just to fall to the same fate. No matter where the gel touched them, foot, or head, they still burned to death and died.

"Don't come this way! We'll figure this out!" I shouted at the people. Over the blood-curdling screams of boiling alive and the shouts of despair, realizing that all was hopeless, I froze, just as Hiyochi had done. I couldn't move, couldn't fathom what was happening anymore.

Who launched this attack at the bunker? Why wasn't it stopped? What was going on?

"Where is comms? We don't know what's going on if the comms are silent!" Yonoa asked me. He had his head against the wall behind Hiyochi, trying to protect her from anything that came her way.

"Comms was above us... and now, nothing is left..." I muttered, staring up at the cracking glass.

I was worried it wouldn't stop, and that we would be crushed... but what the hell am I supposed to do if it does? Stop it? I'm powerless here... we should just run...

"Attention... Arkians... the bunker has been hit again! For all that can hear this message, do not interfere with the gelatinous substance spewing everywhere! It's like boiling water, and doesn't leave your skin unless you sever the wound! I was lucky enough to escape... well, for the time being. If anybody can administer medical aid, I'm right outside the bunker, by the giant hole in the mountain," The radio went off. Comms wasn't down!

"We have some hope... Yonoa, can we go get him?" I asked him. He nodded, letting Hiyochi down quickly.

"Avoid that gel at all costs, please," He told her, running to the opposite hallway from the boiled-alive people. He quickly ran, reaching the end, and finding the man named Jeff who came along with Sky's group, along with his severed arm.

"That hurt... so bad... can you please help me?" Jeff asked us. With a simple nod, both Yonoa and I picked him up and carried him back to Hiyochi.