The Tales of the Legendary Mimic : Momo

side dish

Max felt the air change before he heard anything.

The corridor narrowed as they followed Lorne’s lead, walls closing in with old stress fractures and black scorch marks. Emergency lights blinked along the ceiling in slow, uneven pulses, painting the squad in alternating red and shadow.

Goo shifted in his pouch at Max’s hip, forming a slight bulge against the fabric. The mimic quivered, not in excitement, but in a subtle, uneasy ripple.

“Easy,” Max muttered under his breath. “If you’re nervous, I’m nervous.”

“Eyes front,” Jane said quietly. “Chatter minimal. We’re not alone in here.”

"I agree, with her we have to maintain utmost vigilance, whatever is here won't accept us with open arms.'Garfield reasoned wisely,

“Definitely not,” Lorne agreed.

He moved with the calm economy of someone who’d spent too many years following trails left by people who never came back. His flashlight remained low, not sweeping wildly, but tracing deliberate paths—corners, ceiling seams, floor edges. The rifle rested against his shoulder, muzzle already aligned where his instincts expected trouble.

They stepped around a corner, and the smell hit them.

It was faint, but distinct: something coppery buried under a sour, organic rot.

Sarah swallowed. “That… isn’t from the cafeteria.”

“Blood and something else,” Lorne said. “Old. And new.”

Jane raised her hand, signaling a halt. The team formed a loose diamond around her, rifles up, overlapping fields of fire.

“Sarah,” Jane said, not looking back. “Range on your tracker?”

Sarah glanced at the portable scanner hanging from her chest rig, fingers tapping the side of the device. “Too much interference. The whole lower level’s like a scrambled egg. I’m getting power fluctuation, density anomalies, and… uh… something that looks like a moving bio‑mass, but the readings keep glitching.”

“Glitching how?” Max asked.

“Like whatever’s here refuses to be measured,” she said. “Every time it shows up, the signal splits and reverses on itself. It’s not just moving. I think it’s… phasing.”

Jane’s jaw tightened. “How lovely.”

They moved again, slowly ith garfield protected in the middle, as for Max, it was a no-brainer that he could care for himself more than the rest even.

As they went deeper, the walls changed. The clean lines of concrete and steel gave way to sections where the structure warped, as if something had melted and reformed it. Metal struts bowed inward at strange angles, coated in a thin film that caught the light in a wet sheen.

Garfield brushed the back of his hand against one patch and jerked it back immediately.

“Don’t touch that!” Sarah hissed." It could be dangerous sir."

Jane frowned and so did lorne but they both understood the enthusiasim to work, it was probably the profffeseur instinct as a scientist that bodded.

“I apologize, just felt like it gave a familiar feeling,” embarrassed,Garfield explained, rubbing his skin on his sleeve. “Feels like… silicone and spit.”

Max felt a tug. Goo stirred, pushing against the pouch again, curious.

“Not for you, buddy,” Max said under his breath. “You’re on a diet.”

Lorne stopped again without warning.

“Hold,” he said.

Jane came up beside him. “What do you see?”

He angled his light down.

At their feet, the dust pattern broke. For several meters behind them, footprints overlapped: their own fresh treads, Henrik’s heavier boots, Rios’ more careful steps. But ahead… the marks smeared and vanished.

“Trail ends here,” Lorne muttered. “Like they walked into nothing.”

“No side passages,” Jane observed. “No doors. No vents big enough to crawl through.”

Sarah adjusted her glasses, frowning. “Unless something took them up.”

They all looked up.

The ceiling above them was a rib of pipes and old cables. At first, nothing seemed out of place.

Then Max’s flashlight caught it: a faint, translucent strand hanging straight down, thinner than a wire, glistening where the beam hit.

He stepped closer.

“Don’t,” Lorne warned.

Max stopped, just short of the dangling filament.

“Okay,” Max said slowly. “So we’ve got mystery slime that hangs from the ceiling, devours soldiers, and leaves no bodies. On the bright side, that means Henrik and Rios might be alive. On the not‑bright side…”

“It means we’re already inside its hunting ground, sir Garfield. It's necessary that we bring you back safely. I selfishly plead you let Sarah bring you back with maximus” Jane finished.

"No need, I think Max and I can take care of ourselves, plus it would be a shame not to witness the retrieval of the first ever acquired nest core." Seeing that this old scientist was just as stubborn as ever, she could only sigh in defeat.

The radio at her shoulder crackled faintly, then went dead again.

She tapped the side. “This is Captain Jane to any remaining team. If you can hear this, respond. We have confirmed a hostile, unknown type under the facility. Avoid isolated corridors and overhead vents. Repeat: avoid overhead—”

Static swallowed her voice.

“Signal’s tanking,” Sarah said. “We’re below the primary relay grid. If the thing nests down here, it probably likes the interference.”

“Good,” Jane said briskly. “Then we’re close.”   

Garfield gave her a sidelong look. “You have a very specific definition of good, Captain.”

“What can I say, Alive teammates, take priority over my personal safety,” she replied. “Faking a smile is the least professor.”

They reached a heavy door set into the wall at the end of the corridor. The hazard symbol on it was half peeled away, streaked with old claw marks and fresher gouges that didn’t look like any tool Jane recognized.

“Locked?” she asked.

Sarah stepped up, fingers already moving over the manual overrides. “Give me a second.”

“Don’t open it all the way,” Lorne said. “Just enough to see.”

“Doing my best impression of caution, Lorne,” Sarah muttered.

There was a grinding clunk, then a hiss as the pressure seal disengaged. The door slid open a hand’s width, stale, cool air spilling out.

A smell rode the draft—thicker now. Wet, organic, like something halfway between a slaughterhouse and a swamp.

Jane nodded.

“Lights off,” she ordered quietly.

One by one, their flashlights clicked out until only the weak red of the corridor remained. Jane slipped a small flare from her belt, thumbed it on at its lowest setting, and rolled it through the gap.

The flare spun across the floor and came to rest a few meters in, casting a dim, reddish halo.

Shapes loomed at the edge of the glow.

Suspended from the ceiling and clinging to the walls, translucent pods swayed gently, like grotesque, oversized cocoons. Some pulsed with a slow, internal rhythm. Others hung still and dark.

Sarah’s breath caught. “Oh… hell.”

"Are those.....?" Max was unable to complete his sentence, as an old fear crept up

“Cocoons,” Lorne said softly. “More than a few, I believe, young master isn't still with spider traumas, right?"

“Yes,” max wasnt sure how  to feel

 "Such an amazing work of nature. The mutants are the future of modern science. "Garfield exclaimed

"Hopefully, we found the missing men," Jane pushed the door open farther.

The flare’s light expanded, revealing more of the room. It wasn’t just a chamber; it was a nest. Organic strands webbed the corners, stretching like veins across the vents. The floor was slick in places where the fluid had pooled, reflecting the dim red like old blood.

Goo tried to surge forward in its pouch.

“Stay,” Max whispered, one hand clamping over the bulging leather. “You’re not tasting any of this.”

Sarah’s scanner beeped, a harsh, frantic rhythm.

“Captain,” she said, voice tight. “Massive bio‑signatures. Multiple. Some of them… human range. Some of them definitely not.”

Jane stepped through the doorway.

“Lorne, with me. Max, Sarah—cover the entrance, watch our backs. If anything comes in behind us, I want it dead before it touches the doorframe.”

Max opened his mouth to argue, saw her expression, and shut it.

“Copy. We’ll hold the line.”

Lorne and Jane moved into the nest.

Each step made a faint, unpleasant sound, like walking on wet cloth. Jane’s boots left dull prints in the slime. Her rifle tracked slowly across the hanging husks.

“See any movement?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Lorne murmured. “But they’re not empty.”

He nodded toward one of the nearest cocoons.

Inside, the silhouette of a person hung, curled inward. The membrane was cloudy, but thin enough that Jane could make out the shape of limbs and the slow rise and fall of a chest.

“Alive,” she said.

“For now,” Lorne added.

A shadow shifted deeper in the chamber.

Jane swung her weapon toward it, finger tightening on the trigger.

Nothing.

Just a slow, pulsing wall of flesh where concrete should have been.

She exhaled slowly. “If this is the nest, then somewhere in here is its core. We take that out, maybe we cut its grip on everyone it’s taken.”

“Assuming we live long enough to find it,” Lorne replied.

She allowed herself a thin smile. “We’ve had worse odds.”

“Debatable,” he said.

Behind them, at the doorway, Max scanned the corridor. Goo pressed flat against the inside of the pouch like a nervous animal. Sarah hunched over her scanner, glancing up every few seconds, fingers trembling but steady enough to work.

“Anything?” Max asked.

“Yeah,” Sarah breathed. “Something’s moving. Large. Coming from below us, not the corridor. Like it’s… swimming up through the structure.”

Max tightened his grip on his rifle. “Tell me before it decides to say hello.”

“In this place?” she said. “It doesn’t say hello. It skips straight to dessert.”

"I believe you mean, side dish," Garfield interjected, bringing down the tensed atmosphere with humor. 

"Actually, it's a dessert, but if the professor says so," max who didn't get the meme, said dryly 

"Yh hurry!!"