Who’s the worst, most despicable person you can think of?
Jeffrey Dahmer? Ted Bundy? Luis Garavito? Pol Pot?
Of course, you could make your own arguments for any one of them, or anybody else for that matter.
Yet, all of these people have one thing in common. They’re human.
Preposterous people trying to act like monsters, either due to lofty, ridiculous ideals or some primal urge to revolt against society as a whole. It’s quite the bizarre phenomenon. Yet, none of these admittedly sick people have truly fallen into the abyss. Perhaps they’ve stared down into it. Dipped their feet in. But none of them have taken the plunge as a whole. Despite their efforts, they weren’t able to separate themselves from their inherent humanity.
But that’s a good thing. That’s they were relatively easy to take down.
The bad news is that every once in a while, ‘special’ cases will arise. In our circles, we call these individuals “the Void people”, or just the “Voids”. Individuals so far gone that they can hardly be considered humans anymore.
The cause behind entities like these? Well, I wouldn’t know. Nobody really does. Maybe they were born with that latent potential. Maybe they underwent some obscure supernatural transformation. Maybe they’re experiments gone awry. Aliens from another planet. Shit, maybe they’re literal demons from hell brought here by some fool who just had to conduct some fucked up ritual. Who the hell knows? The only detail that matters is the fact that they exist. And dealing with them is more than a bitch.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of “Max” security prisons.
Places where drug kingpins, terrorists and prolific serial killers etc. are sent. The places meant to contain the worst amongst humans.
Well, those are a joke compared to where the Voids are kept. At a pair of undisclosed coordinates built in the underground of a tiny island somewhere deep in the Atlantic, there exists a prison unlike anything you could imagine.
We simply call it “The Chasm.” A penitentiary for pure, unbridled evil. A collective evil that would surely yield humanity’s extinction in a couple of months if it were allowed to run rampant in the world.
Let me emphasis this a bit further. The individuals that require being held there are not merely “criminally insane.” They are criminally absolutely out of this universe fucking bonkers.
Of course, you wouldn’t know about any of this. Why would you? The government would probably sacrifice 1000 children before they’d divulge a single detail about the place to a person without high enough clearance.
But you know, that’s just how they are.
Before I came, there were exactly 32 being confined there. Save for two that were still being actively pursued through the Brazilian underground and Russian tundra respectively, that was about all of them in the world. At least, we assumed that was all of them. Can’t be sure about anything these days.
Each holding cell was fortified to hell, specifically designed to counter and contain the respective Void they were holding. If they managed to escape, there were 8 drones armed with Gatling guns, blades, grenades and rockets waiting for them within a larger chamber.
If they managed to break through THAT, then 20 guards in mechanized suits would have to step in.
However, everybody understood the futility of that protocol. Those guards were getting slaughtered in seconds, regardless of the Void they went up against. Maybe minutes if they’re really skilled. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why any of us regular guards are stationed here at all. Bureaucracy, I guess? Who knows what the government’s thinking.
If the situation were to ever get too drastic, then there was really only one feasible counter-measure in place. A last resort, so to speak. The higher ups would have to call in something known as “Task Force Void Nova Hammer”, or TFVNH for short. I’ve never seen them in action before, nor do I know much about them. Not that I really want to, though. If you ever find yourself witnessing them in person, then that must mean you’re having a bad, bad day.
So why am I disclosing all of this uber-classified information that would either get me killed or thrown in the deepest hole conceivable for the rest of my short life? Well… I’d estimate that there’s about a 90% chance that I’m going to die by the end of today. And even if I do make it out of this fiasco, my life’s never really going to be the same.
So fuck it. Here we go.
My day started out more or less normal.
I was part of the unit guarding somebody named Jim Heninger. Well, that was his real name. Doesn’t evoke a lot of fear, does it? That’s why he had to call him something else.
Since he used to be some psycho surgeon or something, we’ve dubbed him The Surgeon. Really creative stuff, I know.
Standing at 5’7 (171 cm), 135 lbs (61 kg) (We were all required to memorize their physical stats), he doesn’t look like much. However, if you ever find yourself in the same room with him… no matter how big and tough you are… you’re getting dissected or something.
The main danger surrounding him stems from the fact that he seems to be able to teleport on will. One second you’ll be staring at his dark, lifeless eyes, and after one blink, he’ll disappear in a cloud of black haze, only to end up breathing right down your neck. For that reason, there’s gotta be at least ten sets of eyes on his monitor at all times. There’s no way around it. If he’s not being watched, he will escape.
He’s also kind of unkillable. No matter how many bullets you put through his head or blades you plunge into his chest, the guy just won’t croak. And once he gets a scalpel in his hands… oh boy.
Of course, he’s just one out of 32, and comparatively speaking… on the tamer side.
With that said, my guard shift ended without any incident. Routine stuff. Following that, I went on break in the lunchroom with my buddy Sandhu. Our conversations were usually pretty dry, but at least I can talk to the guy. It’s hard to get along with any of the other guards. They’re all just… weird, in one way or another. Anyway, lunch was usually the most enjoyable part of a working day in the Chasm.
What I didn’t enjoy was the blaring fucking alarm and deafening, repeating automated voice blasting the word “BREACH” that went off right as I was about to take my chili out of the microwave.
I could see Sandhu’s face drop at the disturbance. “You’re fucking kidding me.” He mouthed.
Now, I’d only ever experienced one minor breach up until that point, and it was from the Surgeon. I guess none of us were paying any attention that day. He made it about 8 miles off the coast using a stolen boat, racking up a total body count of 145 in his wake. It took 3 full days to wrangle him back, and 4 more weeks to fix all the damage he’d done to the infrastructure.
That was all just one prisoner. If we were dealing with 3 or more, then our combined efforts as guards wouldn't have stood a semblance of a chance.
There had only ever been one major breach in the Chasm’s history, in which 8 Voids had broken out nearly simultaneously. It was also apparently the only time that TFVNH had to step in. This was all around 12 years ago, long before I became a guard myself. The aftermath of that? I don’t have high enough clearance to know. But I’m willing to bet that it was nothing fun.
We did have a breach procedure. It was a lengthy document, outlining exactly what we were supposed to do and where we were supposed to go. I’ve read it before, and its fucking garbage. It’s essentially predicated on the idea that we’re cannon fodder, and that we’re obligated to do whatever we can to contain the prisoners. If anybody actually followed the procedure, they’d die instantly.
“Well, what the hell are we supposed to do?” Somebody asked.
They only got shrugs in response. Except for Sawson, that is.
I fucking hated Sawson. The guy seems to believe that his life’s an action movie and that he’s the invincible main protagonist.
“Are ya’ll pussies or what?” he screamed at the top of his lungs, with a stupid grin plastered across his face. “We never get any fucking action! Let’s fucking go!!!”
Before anybody could stop him, he picked up his rifle and swung the door open like the giant fucking dumbass he is.
Since the alarm was blaring, we could hardly hear anything that was going on outside in the corridors. For that reason, we all rather shocked upon seeing Morgi the Corgi standing right outside.
Imagine some guy walking around wearing a dirty, giant, creepy dog costume. Now imagine that this guy is 7’2 (218 cm), with a voice that’s simultaneously deep, raspy and childish.
That’s Morgi the Corgi for you.
I could see the bravado leaving Sawson’s face the moment he laid eyes on the abomination in person. We’d only ever seen him through a screen before.
”RUFF!!”
I always hated it when people tried imitating dogs. But hearing it coming from Morgi was a bit different and a lot worse.
Before Sawson could even put his finger on the trigger, his head was mashed into pulp. Morgi began pouncing on other guards, effortlessly crushing limbs with his oversized “paws”. He’d switch between running around on his feet and crawling on all fours. The last thing I saw before running out of the break room was Morgi forcing the remaining, horrified agents to play fetch with him using a stray arm.
But of course, it’s not like I managed to escape anywhere better. The entire place was in a fucking tizzy. The squad leaders were frenetic, attempting to scrap together some kind of suppression force.
I couldn’t understand why they were so delusional.
Are we guards supposed to be badass? Fuck yeah. Due to our field prowess, we were specifically selected from the existing pool of CIA agents and military personnel to be dropped into this godforsaken place. Put us up against a trafficking militia, terrorists etc., and we’ll smoke them.
But what we can’t deal with… are things that aren’t supposed to exist in the first place.
We watch creature-features and slasher flicks with the inherent understanding that we’re watching fiction. A type of visual catharsis for our inherent fascination with the dark and grim. It’s not supposed to be real, and we have no idea how to act once we find it standing right in front of our faces. Not even us so-called ‘elite’ agents. Like I said, I’m not sure why they even bothered keeping guards in the chasm to begin with.
These were the thoughts that ran through my head as I bolted through the hellish corridors. At one point, I stumbled upon a crowd of guards leering over some rails. Shockingly, they didn’t seem concerned in the slightest.
“What the hell are you guys looking at?” I asked them.
A guard I recognized as Fenton turned around.
“This is gonna be sick.” He grinned, gesturing for me to look below.
I didn’t even know where I was going, so I didn’t realize that I’d wandered into the level right above the weight room.
It was a sprawling gym with an abundance of the best equipment obtainable. But there was one guard that used it the most…
Branko Petrovic
A Serbian-American whose oversized frame hardly makes any fucking sense. I swear, when I first met the guy, he couldn’t have been over seven feet. He’s around 8’2 (249 cm) now. I’m not quite sure what kind of bizarre experiments they ran on him, but they sure as hell overdid it.
Despite the alarms, he was in the middle of overhead pressing what appeared to be an ungodly amount of weight when one of the escaped Voids wandered onto the weight room floor.
It was Luze, standing at 6’2 (188 cm), 205 lbs (93kg). Like all the other prisoners, the guy was a complete mystery. His mostly bare body was comparable to that of a bodybuilder’s, save for the hundreds of gnarly scars decorating his skin.
The more disconcerting part of his aesthetic was the fact that he only had one half of his face. The other half consisted of his exposed skull, with some kind of red, electrical current running through his cranial bones. He had that same current running through his hands, which allowed him to savagely electrocute whatever organic material he touched, quickly rendering it into a pile of steaming, black mush.
I guess that my fellow agents didn’t bother reading up on the prisoners they guarded, because Branko never stood a chance. It didn’t matter if you were superior to Luze in terms of strength. One touch and you were gone for. The only practicable way to take him down was by using ranged weapons. And even then… that task was easier said than done.
Branko grunted like the dumb meathead he is, before grabbing an Olympic weightlifting plate and chucking it like a Frisbee at Luze. It connected, seemingly shattering his ribs. But it wasn’t nearly enough to take him down. As soon as he rushed forward, the ‘fight’ had been decided. Branko attempted to tackle him, a mistake so horrible that his whole body began twitching as his skin made contact with Luze’s fingertips.
The electricity spread through his giant frame, causing his vitals to shut down within seconds. In no time at all, he was reduced to a heaping mass of scorched flesh on the floor. He didn’t even have time to scream. I could see the respective faces of my stunned colleagues drop as they witnessed what they likely deemed an improbable outcome.
Idiots, that’s what they were. But truth be told, I was also an idiot for even bothering to stay. Not long after, the sounds of cracking bones and heavy footsteps began emanating from an adjacent walkway.
Along with the rest of the agents, my gaze shifted towards what was sure to be another incoming menace. The locked, metal door to the corridor was suddenly dented from the other side. A big fucking dent, mind you. It only took one more blow to blast it off its hinges completely.
Standing at 6’6 (198 cm), 242 lbs (110 kg) and arriving in a haze of blood, guts and limbs was the slasher-flick-esque killer colloquially known as ”WireHead”.
In congruence with his name, his entire head, save for a single eye, was wrapped in rusty barb-wire. He wore a decrepit, old leather jacket and jeans, complete with a large pompadour on top, like an 80s (or whatever) high school delinquent.
Everybody’s main concern was the weapon in his hands – a large, iron bat wrapped in the same barb-wire on his head. If you didn’t die from the impact (unlikely), the subsequent infection would surely get you.
And don’t ask us why we didn’t take his weapon away when we contained him. We did. But somehow… someway… he got it back. These things really can’t be helped.
What the hell is going on? I thought. Breaches happened, sure. But it seemed as if every single fucking Void had somehow escaped. How is that possible?
In any case, I couldn't afford to think deep into it at the moment.
As WireHead began mowing down the mystified agents in his way, I found myself accidentally making eye contact with Luze from below.
I nearly had a heart attack as I began pushing through the crowd. Even though I was implicitly certain of the fact that no other location within the chasm would’ve been much safer, I was still being driven ahead by my fight-or-flight responses, away from the immediate threat.
It was kind of funny. I'd been through so many life-or-death experiences that my reaction to adrenaline coursing through my veins had been dulled. Well, it sure as hell got invigorated today.
I guess that I wasn’t paying enough attention to my surroundings, because right as I was about to climb a staircase, I felt an over-sized arm slam into my chest, knocking me over in the process. I looked up to see another guard – Cade leering down at me.
Sure, I was happy it wasn’t one of the Voids, but Cade wasn’t much more pleasant.
“What’re you running for?” he shot me a smug grin. “This is a breach, isn’t it? Why don’t we do our jobs here and fix it?”
“Oh, fuck off!” I spat at him, before trying to duck past. No luck there. He caught me by the collar and slammed me into a wall. He certainly had the weight advantage.
Still, I didn’t practice hand-to-hand combat just to be rag-dolled by some asshole. I slammed my elbow down on his wrist, which managed to loosen his grip. I followed up with a knee to the stomach and then attempted to strike his neck.
But then he caught my wrist mid-punch.
“Nice moves!” He said, in an obnoxiously sarcastic tone.
He took his palm and rammed into my chin, nearly causing me to black out. In the meantime, WireHead was getting closer.
“Guess we’ll have to take this up another time,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta work around here.”
I had no idea what he was thinking trying to take on one of the Voids, but I wasn’t trying to see his delusions through in person. Still in pain from his palm-strike, I pulled myself up and began running once more, all while the sounds of carnage escalated around me.
But there was a glaring issue. I had no idea where I was going.
The exits were surely going to be blocked off from the inside.
Do we have some kind of safe room? I thought to myself.
No. Of course we didn’t. We were entirely expendable. They 100% expected us to fight these things head-on, even though there was zero fucking chance of victory on our side.
There was only thing I could do here. Survive until TFVNH showed up. Obviously, that wasn’t any kind of guaranteed reprieve, but my options were slim.
Nevertheless, something rather surprising transpired. Amidst the cacophony of frenetic orders from our superiors, a familiar voice snuck in through my radio.
“Hey… Jason… you… alive?”
It was Sandhu. I picked up my radio and isolated his transmission.
“Yeah. Where are you man?”
“Block C. Got lucky and found something weird. It might save us though. Come on!”
Obviously, there wasn’t much information there. But it was better than running around aimlessly. Thankfully, Block C was fairly close, so I was able to make it without running into another Void.
However, when I got there, it was still as chaotic as ever. I swiveled my head around, trying to spot Sandhu. I yelled into my radio, but his response was drowned out by everything around me. As I searched, I began sensing a perplexing, sinister pressure that made it feel as if I were sinking into the concrete beneath me. I hardly had to guess the source.
It was Dyaxek – 9’5 (287 cm), ???? lbs (????kg).
Dyaxek was comparable in appearance to something you’d see in the corner of your room during sleep paralysis. A hulking, faceless figure wearing a sweeping black robe that jerked around in unsettling motions as he (or she, who knows) walked.
I wasn’t sure how he actually killed people, mind you. As soon as anybody got within a certain distance to him, they’d freeze in place and begin bleeding from their eyes. And then… they’d just stay that way forever.
Obviously, that wasn’t something I was looking forward to. As I looked ahead, I could see some unfortunate guards already getting caught in his death zone. In an attempt to avoid a similar fate, I turned the opposite direction and began running.
And then I nearly shit myself.
Standing about 10 feet away was the Undead Nazi – 5’8 (173 cm), 143 lbs (65 kg).
His name essentially told it all. A man wearing a dirty and tattered SS uniform, with a cracked gas mask covering his face. In one hand, he gripped his signature kampfmesser 42 blade that was inexplicably unbreakable, no matter what the hell we tried doing to it. In the other, he held a flamethrower hose connected to a massive tank on his back, which sprayed out some kind of scorching, black flame that would supposedly yield pain beyond comprehension if you were ever to come into contact with it.
You could say that I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place here. The only other way out was taking the plunge over the rail in front of me, onto mass of scrambling bodies fifty feet below.
Before I considered simply saying my prayers, I felt a hand tug at my sleeve from the side, giving me another heart attack. But this time… it was good news. For once. I looked over to see Sandhu poking his head out from what appeared to be some kind of hidden door in the wall.
“Let’s fucking go!” He whisper-shouted, before pulling me in.
He closed the door behind him, plunging us into complete darkness.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked, hardly expecting a detailed response.
Sandhu illuminated his face using his phone’s flashlight.
“Couldn’t tell you. But it’s kinda fucking crazy.”
I could hear the Nazi beginning to spray his flamethrower from out in the corridor. I suddenly wondered whether or not Dyaxek’s “power” would apply to other Voids. In any case, it was better not to be in such close vicinity to them, so I followed Sandhu.
He led me down some kind of hidden hallway. The walk was rather long – maybe around 8 minutes, and I eventually found myself in what appeared to be some kind of surveillance/control room.
It was still dark, but there was an array of monitors giving off enough light to comfortably navigate around. But here’s the strange thing… the place looked kind of haphazard. No chance it was being used by the higher ups. The monitors were scattered around, connected by a mess of wires to multiple outlets spread throughout the room. There was also only one chair.
“I guess this is beyond explaining.” I said.
“Yeah. No shit, huh?” Sandhu replied, before gesturing towards the monitors. “Check it out. What the fuck did we just find?”
I took the suggestion, letting my eyes drift over to the screens.
What I saw would’ve been normal… in any other scenario. Each monitor was streaming a different section of the prison, all displaying the utter carnage that was going on outside. The guards were being ripped to shreds. Some tried fighting. Most were running. But what they had in common was the fact that they were all being utterly obliterated by the Voids.
I could see the Surgeon giving somebody a (forced) lobotomy, grinning like hell while doing so. At the same time, Morgi was chewing on a severed head like a toy.
But then I caught something interesting on a screen below.
It was WireHead and Luze, staring each other down. That’s when a rather obvious revelation hit me.
Of course the Voids weren’t only going to kill the guards. They were sure as hell going after each other as well. That much should’ve been apparent from the beginning. I grinned, feeling some kind of obscure hope creeping into my system.
That hope was only bolstered when I saw the Nazi utterly dousing Dyaxek with a relentless wave of black flames, with the latter struggling to move forward as a result.
Guess these bastards can be hurt after all. I thought to myself.
But of course, my hope was merely transitory.
I wasn’t gonna kid myself. Even if only one Void was left standing at the end of everything… that just means it’ll be the strongest one out of them all. And we can’t stay in here forever.
At this point, my future is uncertain at best. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Probably not.
But in the meantime, I suppose I’ll enjoy the show. See how things turn out.
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