Vita - Chapter 6: War - Part 5

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Manhunt 2 Soundtrack - Mentality
Part 5: Underground Truth
Jacob woke up with the feeling of something crawling along his face. Using his paw, he slapped the cockroach that was on his cheek away before opening his eyes and rolling on the hard cement ground under him. Jacob wore nothing on his body but his pants, the hard floor making his body sore the longer he kept laying on it. Eventually, he got up, but not before staggering and slamming himself against a nearby wall. As he looked around, confused and somewhat scared, he realized he was in a very cramped cell, however, one that couldn't be in prison. His right arm stung, causing him to let out a few grunts of pain. As he turned his head to look at it, he noticed how it had a hole in it, not a bullet wound, but a small hole that seems like only a syringe would make. His mind then started to go fuzzy as he felt his stomach to starting to mess up inside him, before he threw up on the ground and covering his own chest with his vomit as well, before backing up on a wall, coughing and gagging as he spat out what remained of liquid in his mouth. Jacob felt weak and limp and just simply sat down, laying against the wall as his cell door was right in front of him. The cockroach from earlier began to crawl up on him again, and the last image he saw before passing out was the cockroach crawling along his leg aimlessly.
...
Jacob later woke up to the sudden loud buzzing sound of an alarm. The room outside flashed red as he heard footsteps and distant yelling. The coyote stood up and staggered towards his cell door, grappling onto the steel bars as he looked out to see a medium sized place with a pillar in the middle, and all around it, were four cells. The cell in front of Jacob's cell was empty, but it didn't mean he was the only one there. Suddenly, he heard what sounded like beeps coming from the left. A pair of double doors, with some sort of keypad to the right of it opened. The doors were kicked open as a familiar rabbit went through them, wearing only his trousers as well, he looked around the room before seeing Jacob, "JACOB!" He exclaimed before running over to his cell, "Oh, thank god..."
Jacob coughed and cleared his throat a bit before speaking, "...What is going on...?"
"I have no idea, but I don't fucking like it." He had a keycard on his hand, covered in blood, "All I know is all I've been doing for the past 20 minutes is shooting and running away from guys wearing suits with body armor over them, looking like FBI or something..." Ronald inserted the keycard in a keypad next to Jacob's cell, unlocking it. The coyote staggered out of it, "Christ, you smell horrible...here, take this." He handed him a pistol, "Aim for the head, legs or their crotch. Body shots won't do shit." 
Jacob nodded, "So what's the plan?"
"What do you think? We have to find the exit! Come on, follow me." The rabbit wandered off to the right, still having holding the keycard. As he went past a cell, a sudden loud bang from the cell door startled him, as a crazed fox shook it, "GET ME OUT OF HERE! THEY'RE GOING TO GET ME! THE DEMONS, THE MONSTERS, THEY'RE AFTER ME! YOU NEED TO LET ME OUT!" 
"Jesus!" Ronald exclaimed as he stared in horror at the fox. His face was all scratched, one of his eyes was closed as blood leaked from it. He was thin to the point his ribs could be seen and his limbs looked like broomsticks from how thin they were.
As that happened, Jacob looked around the room once more. He noticed something next to the pillar. Some sort of computer terminal, green text on it as a small square flashed slowly at the bottom of the screen. Jacob got closer to it and on it, at the top of the screen, right in the middle, the word "SUBJECTS" was written, and more to the left, one on top of each other, were the names, "Aaron Naylor", "Jacob Howard", "Samuel Payne" and "Quentin Miller".
Jacob knew little about computers. He only saw people using them but never actually touched one. Usually, those came with a mouse, but this one had none. Jacob pressed keys on it until the arrow keys highlighted the first name. Jacob blinked and pressed the same key to highlight his own name and then, assumed that the "Enter" key was the right one. He was right. Pressing it made all the names disappear and the screen be filled with text.
"Name: Jacob Howard
Age: 32
Height: 5'9
Weight:120 lbs
Notable features: Blind left eye, athletic body, loads of scars across torso, bad breath, redneck accent.
Notes:
04/8/1992
We finally got this faggot! He was pretty popular in jail until that Michael Phillips from that other jail in Dreber proved to be more violent than him. After he got released and got affiliated with the Devils and then, the Jokers and the Alphas, he started making a name for himself again on the streets. 
After raping one of our guys, we declared personal war against this guy. We got him raped, but he got spared because the idiot who did it had some sort of change of heart, maybe became in love with him or something. Anyway, that idiot's dead and this guy was roaming around doing jobs for the Alpha Jokers, killing our men and women and just further increasing our hatred towards him. Eventually we found out that he had a boyfriend who we tried to kidnap so we could make him spit out where we could find him, but we failed and we only lost two more of our people. Then, later, we sent one of our best guys to get him at the hospital, but he found Jacob there. Guess what? He got his skull bashed in and the fucker managed to escape again, only to get arrested and broke out of prison. At that point, we were absolutely pissed. And then came the domination over that mall we had. Then we decided it was enough.
We tried to kidnap his boyfriend one more time. We found out he was living with two girls for some reason. We managed to get one who we tried to make her talk about Jacob, but she refused to cooperate. We just decided to make her another subject for the Quadricaine experimentations.
But now...we got him! Pretty much all of our guys wanted to beat the shit out of him, but, the boss said no. He wants to use him as a subject too. What the hell? That was our nemesis! And you want to use him as just some other subject!?
Anyhow...we got this idiot. I hope he fucking suffers."
The note ended there. Jacob had many questions. Quadricaine experimentations? Subjects? What the hell is this?
"JACOB!" Ronald shouted, "What the fuck, man, are you coming or not!?"
"I'm reading something, hold on!"
"WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ, WE GOTTA GO!"
"Fucking...fine!" He left the terminal there and headed to Ronald. Both of them walked out of two double doors after using the keycard, only to see a long hallway with paths to the left and to the right.
"We're going left. Come on." Jacob followed the rabbit down the hallway, two double doors at the end of it. A camera followed their movement. Jacob heard a door open behind them, four suited guys were now coming down the hallway, aiming submachine guns at them. Immediately they both started firing at them, forcing them to hide behind a box as one started to fire back, standing still. Ronald crouched down to avoid the bullets while Jacob panickedly shot at the wolf, hitting him in the throat and making him drop his gun as blood sprayed from his neck, tainting his paws and his suit. 
Immediatelly, Ronald turned around and shoved the keycard in the keypad. Opening the doors, both went in and made a left, running down another hallway before two more wolves showed up at the end of it, making them make another turn to the right and go through another set of double doors. As the doors closed and locked behind them, they were looking down a long, barely lit hallway. They ran down it without thinking twice and went through one door, this one that had no keypad or wasn't even locked in the first place.
When they through it, they stopped and looked. A wall was in front of them not very far away, and from left to right, this wall had beds. Each bed, with a body on it, and next to each body was a terminal. They were in some sort of morgue. Both felt uneasy the moment they saw the cadavers, a cold chill up their spine.
Ronald noticed a door on the right with yet another keypad on it. He tried to use his stolen keycard but it made a different, ugly sounding buzz and the door refused to unlocked, "Are you fucking-" He tried again, "Damn it!"
As Jacob made his way to Ronald, he could not let his eyes go off the corpses. Eventually, he saw he recognized. He approached it and saw it was the lady that took him home and almost had him turned into meat.
Her body was cold. Jacob looked over to the terminal. At the top of the screen, "DECEASED" was written and again, dififerent names could be seen stacked on top of each other. The terminal listed each person who once had their corpse laid on this bed before having something done to it. To waste less time, Jacob highlighted the last name, "Abigail J. Silva". He hit Enter, showing two paragraphs about what happened to her.
"Name: Abigail Jones Silva
Age: 29
Height: 5'4
Weight: 140 lbs
Notes:
02/8/1992
Abigail never was really liked by our people. She was annoying to many of us and most of the time and could barely hold a weapon straight. The only real use we had for her was her smooth voice and charisma, good for convincing people to spend time with her before she'd knock them out and bring them home to cut 'em up so we could apply Quadricaine to the meat for later selling. Quite ironic how this is what we're going to do to her body now.
We injected her with Quadricaine during her sleep as a form of revenge for letting Jacob get away. Some could say that's a little bit exaggerated, but it was her last mistake. She let other people run away in the past and we had to silence them before they'd go on public to snitch about our experiments. This time, Mayor Briggs wasn't so forgiving as he usually is and just told us to poison the bitch. Since her meat already has Quadricaine on it, we're cutting her into pieces and immediatelly selling it on the black market for potential buyers so our tests on how strong the drug is on the population can continue."
Jacob felt sick after reading that. It all made much sense now. The Clockers were not only comercializing Quadricaine at first, but using their cannibalistic food trade to poison buyers with it, all to experiment on them secretly. The drug was not foreign, it was being made by them. But why? What was the point of this drug other to cause hallucinations and eventually perish? And what did Mayor Briggs have to do with this?
Jacob heard Ronald kick the door down. At the same time, Jacob could hear a loud bang coming from the way they came, as if the sound echoed in it. The wolves were coming. Jacob quickly ran to Donald and followed him through the kicked open door. What they saw were three large hospital beds absolutely covered in blood with surgical tools next to them on trays. The coyote assumed this was where the dismembering happened. The stench of the blood made them gag as they covered their noses. The door in the morgue was opened, four wolves running in with a blood lust in their eyes.
Not wasting time, Jacob and Ronald ran over to the door at the other side of the room, going through a door with no keypad and going down a short claustrophobic hallway and making a right, only to see another door which required a keypad. Ronald, sick of those, simply kicked the door twice, the second kick busting it open. As both went in, Ronald closed the door and barricaded it with the nearest object he saw by dragging it towards it. A filing cabinet.
As he did that, Jacob looked around the room with a stunned expression in his eyes. It was a laboratory. Terminals, microscopes, beakers, a chemistry kit and all kinds of other stuff were present. For once, Ronald was able to catch a breather by laying against the closet, his eyes closed as he panted in exhaustion. Jacob's curiosity, however, was at its limit. He headed to the terminal first, it being turned on, but requiring a password to be typed in. Jacob put his gun down next to it as he tried to type in the first thing that came to his mind, Quadricaine. It didn't work. Next up, Briggs. Went as well as the last attempt.
"STOP RIGHT THERE!" A sudden voice yelled from the left. Jacob turned to its direction, immediatelly seeing a cat wearing protection goggles and a white lab coat. Ronald pointed his gun at him, making the cat only grow more and more nervous.
"Heh, you're the only scientist I've seen in this whole place so far." Ronald commented, grinning.
"Everyone else was evacuated but I stayed. I'm not letting my years of work be thrown in the trash by two hoodlums!"
The moment he said that, Ronald simply shot him in the shoulder. As he let out a high pitched yelp and dropped his gun, Jacob turned to him, "Fuck! Dude, don't kill him!"
"Why?" Ronald asked, looking at the coyote. Jacob, then, walked to the fallen over scientist and grappled him, pulling him up and throwing him towards the terminal's direction, making him hit the table next to it, before grabbing him by his labcoat and also the gun. Jacob put the weapon next to his head, aiming directly at his temple.
"What's the password?!" He shook the cat, his arm wrapped around his neck.
"Go to hell!" 
"See? He's useless!" Ronald exclaimed before turning around as he heard bangs on the door, "Shit! Come on, J, just shoot the fucker and let's keep moving!"
Jacob, however, was not going to give up that easily. He removed the cat's goggles, exposing his green eyes, and shoved the gun right under his right one, the barrel only a meter away from his eyeball, "I'm shoving this thing in your eye and make sure half of it is inside your damn head before I pull the fucking trigger! WHAT'S THE PASSWORD?!"
"Aaack!" The cat yelled, wetting his pants already, "The password is Euphoros! Euphoros! E-U-P-H-O-R-O-S, please don't kill me!" 
Jacob threw the cat away. Ronald went ahead and executed him with a bullet to the head as Jacob typed in the word he had said, fist pumping as the password was accepted. Not wasting much time, Jacob immediatelly selected the first thing that came to his attention. The date 09/3/1970.
"After the construction of our base under this abandoned ravaged gun factory, the american government is now counting on us to develop a drug to 'boost' our soldiers in battle in case the ruskies ever attack, by making them feel stronger, more agile and just better in general. We're beginning the development of this drug shortly. This is it for now."
Not satisfied, Jacob pressed Enter again, showing again the dates. He selected a much more recent one. 10/6/1989.
"Everything's going well!  Also. to cover our operation even more, the mayor managed to buy out the Clockers to work for us and help us with our next step with this drug. Experimenting it. To do that, we're soon going to have them deal the drug to public so we can see the effects of it in action. We came up with a neat backstory for it too."
That was it. Jacob's curiosity was going out of bounds. Next date, 09/8/1989.
"Apparently, the government thought that dealing the drug wouldn't be enough, as analysis would be more difficult that way according to them, so now they're making us kidnap people to test the drug on. Holding cells are being made as I write this. I do not know if I want to be part of this project anymore but I certainly cannot quit, as they'll have my head stuffed and hung on their wall since these paranoid assholes don't want anyone spreading information about this project on the street, even though they just won't be believed and be passed off as some crazed conspiracy theorist like any other. Fuck."
"Jacob, we don't have time for this!" Ronald yelled.
"Hold the fuck on, okay?! Last one!"
"When we're out of this mess you better tell me what you're reading there."
"Why don't you come over here and read it as well?"
"You know what? Fine, what are you reading?" Ronald looked at the screen as Jacob selected the date 11/9/1991.
"I can't freaking believe this! Now that meat got blacklisted across the state, they want us to take our test subjects, kill them and then take their meat to sell it on the black market, meat containing the drug on it for 'more research'. Tell you what, we've done enough research on this shit, it hasn't been going well since 1990. We only made something that turns people into mindless, vicious crazies after a couple of hits from the drug and then slowly kills them. I regret being part of this project. I'm telling my friend Leonard to take over the research and then I'm getting the hell out of this country and getting a new identity. Fuck Mayor Briggs, fuck everyone involved with this project. Goodbye."
"The hell...?" Ronald said once he finished reading, the filing cabinet on the door now really starting to shake, ready to topple over any time now.
"I'll tell you more once we're out here. Let's go." Jacob said, grabbing his gun and proceeding to the next door.
End of Part 5.
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