Red Mist Jakarta: Second Chance

Buried Alive in the Capital

“Keep your heads down and your barrels forward!” Budi’s voice cut through the cavernous gloom of the historical museum lobby like a razor-sharp blade, cold and absolute.

The heavy steel blast doors behind them groaned as they settled further into their reinforced magnetic locks, sealing off the torrential Jakarta downpour outside, but bringing no safety with it. The air inside the sprawling subterranean exhibition hall was stagnant, smelling faintly of ancient dust, ozone, and the coppery tang of fresh gore. Emergency red strip-lights flickered along the baseboards, casting long, writhing crimson shadows against marble pillars carved with bas-reliefs of Indonesia’s ancient kingdoms.

“Movement! Level two balcony, left side!” Wawan hissed, his knuckles white as he gripped his battered assault rifle, his boots splashing in the shallow puddles of condensation pooling on the polished marble floor.

Before the words had even fully left Wawan’s mouth, a heavy glass display case shattering overhead sent a cascade of razor-sharp shards raining down around them. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.

“Contact!” Budi roared, already moving with a speed that defied human anatomy. His boots hit the slick marble, sliding two yards into a crouch behind an overturned bronze statue of a nineteenth-century colonial general.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound of massive, barefoot strides slammed against the upper stone balcony, echoing with a sickening, heavy thud like raw meat dropped onto concrete. Then came the screech a high-pitched, harmonic wail that sounded like tearing metal mixed with the dying scream of a beast.

“They’re jumpers!” Maya yelled over the din, her glasses fogging up in the damp, freezing air as she dropped flat onto her stomach behind a heavy mahogany reception desk. She fumbled desperately with her ruggedized field laptop, her fingers flying across the backlit mechanical keys. “The localized seismic vibrations from the breach it woke them up from the lower strata! If they interrupt this extraction before the decryption hits one hundred percent, the entire local network will lock permanently, and we’ll be sealed in this tomb forever!”

“Then don't miss your keystrokes, Doctor!” Budi snapped back, lifting his weapon. His tactical heads-up display, projected directly onto his retinas via Adiwangsa’s stolen neural architecture, flashed a bright crimson box around the dark, erratic silhouette crouching on the elevated balcony twenty feet above them.

Target acquired. Biomass anomaly: Class-Three Jumper. Agility rating: Extreme. Recommendation: Center mass suppression.

Budi didn't hesitate. He squeezed the trigger, and a blistering stutter of suppressed gunfire tore from his muzzle, punching hot orange holes into the darkness.

The bullets struck home with wet, meaty thuds, but the creature didn't fall. Instead, the impact propelled the mutated human violently backward into the shadows, letting out an enraged, guttural shriek that rattled the glass in the remaining overhead skylights.

“Wawan, set up the choke point! Use the overturned cases!” Budi barked, chambering a fresh round as a second silhouette detached itself from the gloom of the mezzanine, leaping effortlessly across a ten-foot gap to land squarely on top of a marble pillar with terrifying balance.

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Wawan shouted, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps as he scrambled to drag a heavy, shattered display case into position near the central hallway. He kicked a stack of bronze historical plaques across the floor, creating a makeshift barricade. “Ageng, get your ass over here and help me brace this thing! They're coming through the vents too!”

Ageng stumbled forward, his face pale as chalk, his eyes wide and bloodshot. He dropped his heavy ammunition crate with a deafening clatter that echoed through the hall. “I I can't see! The smoke, the red lights it's too much, Wawan, I can't breathe—”

“Ageng, snap out of it!” Tuti yelled from the rear flank, her own shotgun leveled steadily toward the darkened corridor leading deeper into the museum archives. Her hands were remarkably steady, though a thin line of sweat trickled down her temple. “Grab that support beam or I swear to God I’ll shoot you in the foot myself and let the things take the weight!”

“I’m moving! I’m moving!” Ageng whimpered, lunging forward to grab the heavy metal frame of the display case just as a massive, elongated shadow dropped from the ceiling rafters directly into the center of the room.

It landed with a sickening crunch, four-point-landing on hands and elongated feet that ended in blackened, overgrown nails. The creature was humanoid, but its proportions were entirely wrong its arms were too long, dragging against the marble floor, and its jaw was unhinged, revealing rows of translucent, needle-sharp teeth dripping with viscous, glowing blue saliva.

“Fire!” Budi screamed.

The hallway erupted into a deafening cacophony of gunfire. Muzzle flashes strobed violently in the darkness, painting the combatants in strobing shades of orange and blood-red. Wawan’s rifle spat a continuous stream of lead, chewing into the creature’s chest cavity and sending chunks of blackened, mutated flesh spraying across the pristine white marble.

Yet, the jumper lunged forward with supernatural speed, ignoring the bullets tearing through its torso. It vaulted over Wawan’s makeshift barricade with a single, explosive bound.

“Look out!” Wawan shrieked, falling backward over a stack of bronze plaques.

The jumper raised a massive, clawed hand, aiming a lethal swipe straight down at Wawan’s face.

Before the claws could connect, Budi was there. He intercepted the blow with his left forearm, taking the full, bone-crushing force of the strike. A horrific sound of tearing leather, fabric, and flesh ripped through the air. Budi grunted, his teeth gritted so hard a thin line of crimson blood spilled over his lower lip, but he didn't give an inch. With his right hand, he pressed the muzzle of his rifle directly under the creature’s shattered jaw and pulled the trigger.

The heavy-caliber round blew clean through the back of the jumper’s skull, showering the marble wall behind it in grey matter and dark, steaming blood. The creature went instantly limp, collapsing heavily onto Budi’s boots.

Budi shoved the dead weight off him, gasping for air. He glanced down at his left arm. The deep, jagged gash torn open by the creature’s claws stretched from his wrist to his elbow, exposing white bone and bubbling, dark red tissue beneath. Adiwangsa’s underground neural tech wired into his nervous system flared violently, sending a white-hot jolt of artificial adrenaline through his veins as the nanobots in his bloodstream hissed, desperately trying to knit the shredded muscle back together. The pain was blinding, a white-hot spike that drove straight behind his eyes, but he forced his hand to close around his rifle grip once more.

“Budi! Your arm!” Tuti called out, her voice cracking with sudden horror as she fired a devastating buckshot blast down the corridor, dropping another jumper that had been creeping along the ceiling. “You’re bleeding out!”

“It’s fine,” Budi hissed through clenched teeth, his voice trembling slightly despite his iron will. “Keep shooting! More are coming!”

From the darkness of the upper galleries, a chorus of answering shrieks echoed down, followed by the terrifying sound of a dozen pairs of heavy, clawed feet sprinting across the marble floor. The swarm had arrived.

“Wawan, reload! Ageng, hand me those magazines!” Tuti shouted, pumping her shotgun with frantic rhythm, the spent shells ejecting with a sharp, metallic ping that was instantly swallowed by the roar of approaching beasts.

Ageng scrambled frantically for the ammunition crate, his trembling fingers slipping over the slick, rain-soaked steel of the spare magazines. “I I dropped it! It’s stuck in the mud no, it’s under the box”

“Ageng, hurry up!” Wawan screamed, firing his last three rounds into the chest of an incoming jumper that stumbled but kept coming, its glowing blue eyes locked entirely on Ageng’s terrified face.

“I can't my hands won't work” Ageng sobbed, paralyzed by sheer, unadulterated panic as the creature leaped over the barricade, its jaws snapping open wide enough to swallow a human skull whole.

“Move!” Budi roared, lunging forward with a burst of speed that tore fresh agony through his wounded arm.

Before the jumper could land on the frozen Ageng, Budi threw his entire body weight into the creature’s side, tackling it mid-air. They crashed hard against a massive marble pillar, shattering a decorative urn and sending ceramic shards flying in all directions. The jumper thrashed violently, its long limbs wrapping around Budi’s torso like steel cables, trying to drag him toward its snapping jaws.

“Budi!” Maya screamed from the desk, her eyes wide with terror as she tapped the final sequence into her keyboard. “The d******d is at ninety-eight percent! Hold them off for five more seconds or we’re all dead!”

“I’m a little busy, Maya!” Budi strained, his face turning a deep, dangerous shade of purple as he used his good arm to force the creature’s snapping jaws away from his neck, his muscles vibrating under the immense physical strain. The wound on his left arm split wider, dark blood pouring out to soak the creature’s matted fur.

“Ninety-nine percent!” Maya shrieked, her fingers hammering the enter key with frantic desperation.

The jumper reared back its head for a final, fatal strike, its claws sinking deep into Budi’s shoulder. Budi let out a low, feral growl, his eyes flashing a momentary, unnatural silver as the neural link overclocked to its absolute maximum threshold. With a sudden, terrifying surge of artificial strength, he grabbed the creature’s upper and lower jaw with his bare hands and pulled in opposite directions.

CRACK.

The sound of snapping bone echoed sharply through the hall. The creature went instantly rigid, its body shuddering once before going completely slack in Budi’s grip.

Budi threw the carcass aside, collapsing heavily onto one knee, gasping for oxygen as his vision swam with dark, pulsating spots.

“Ninety-nine point nine... One hundred!” Maya yelled, her voice breaking with triumphant hysteria.

Suddenly, a loud, heavy mechanical chime echoed through the entire subterranean complex.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Above them, the massive secondary blast doors of the museum’s inner archives began to slide downward from the ceiling with unstoppable, hydraulic force.

“Get in here! Now!” Maya screamed, waving frantically from the security office doorway as the thick steel shutters descended like a guillotine.

“Move, move, move!” Wawan grabbed Ageng by the collar of his jacket, practically dragging the paralyzed man across the floor as they scrambled underneath the closing steel barrier just as a dozen more jumpers surged out of the shadows toward them.

Budi pushed himself up from the bloody marble floor, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, dripping blood onto the stone. He threw himself forward through the narrowing gap just as the heavy steel shutter slammed shut into the floor with a deafening, earth-shattering crash.

Outside the reinforced glass of the security office, the mass of mutated jumpers slammed frantically against the metal barrier, their claws scraping and screeching in a frenzy of frustrated violence.

Inside, the room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the ragged, wheezing breaths of the five survivors and the steady, rhythmic hum of the master terminal downloading the data.

Ageng slid down the wall, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with ragged, broken sobs. “I I almost killed us. I couldn't move. I’m so sorry... I’m so sorry...”

Wawan leaned against a metal filing cabinet, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor next to Ageng, staring blankly at the blood staining his own boots without saying a word.

Tuti immediately dropped to her knees in front of Budi, her face tight with grim determination as she ripped open her medical kit. “Shut up, Ageng, and save your tears for when we’re actually safe. Budi, sit down before you pass out. Give me that cloth hold still, this is going to hurt like hell.”

Budi sank heavily into a steel office chair, his chest heaving as he stared blankly at the pulsing red light of the terminal. His arm throbbed with a dull, agonizing ache that even his enhanced physiology was struggling to process.

Maya stood beside the glowing monitor, her face pale as she stared at the scrolling lines of cascading data appearing on the screen. She didn't look back at the group. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely a whisper, completely drained of color.

“Guys... you need to see this,” Maya said, her hand trembling as she pointed a finger at the master tactical map projected on the central screen. “The anomaly isn't just spreading across Jakarta. Look at the expansion vectors. It’s expanding in concentric circles at an exponential rate.”

Budi narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to focus through the pain. “What are you saying?”

Maya swallowed hard, turning her terrified eyes to meet Budi’s gaze. “I’m saying the seismic anomaly isn't a natural disaster. It’s a cascade event. And according to these containment protocols... the military isn't planning on rescuing anyone. They’ve already initiated total structural quarantine.”

She paused, letting the heavy, crushing silence settle over the room before dropping the final, devastating revelation.

“They’re launching a total containment strike on the city in less than forty-eight hours. Every bridge, every tunnel, every exit out of Jakarta is rigged to blow. They’re going to bury the entire city and everyone left inside it under five million tons of concrete and high explosives.”