The Experiment
November 15th, 2012
The hum of the facility was constant, a low mechanical breath that filled the mountain’s hollowed belly. Fluorescent lights hung in long rows, humming faintly, their pale glow turning the tiled floor into a sheet of ice. Every surface gleamed with the reflection of stainless steel and glass; a place scrubbed clean of everything except obsession.
Dr. Alphonse Mephesto had built his empire here, far beyond the town of South Park’s edge, where the snow swallowed sound and the wind carried only silence. To some, he was a visionary… The man who regrew a human arm from a salamander cell, who had flirted with reversing necrosis itself. To others, he was a butcher in a lab coat, a monster who believed ethics were a form of cowardice. The deeper you went into his lab, the less the work looked like science and the more it resembled a crime scene.
Along the back wall stood glass cases filled with his trophies: famed journal covers, national science medals, half-finished models of cloned organs suspended in amber liquid. National Genetics Prize, BioFuture Medal of Distinction, Regeneration Symposium Keynote 2007. Each was a relic of triumph and shame alike; proof that genius and guilt often shared the same face. He’d earned every single one of his trophies, but most people said he should have been imprisoned for what he did to earn them.
The facility was never silent. Even in the absence of movement, the low hum or electricity filled the halls; a sterile, artificial heartbeat.
Dr. Alphonse Mephesto stood by the central console, the glow of monitors casting a thin blue sheen over the stainless steel. Every surface gleamed, though the air carried the sharp sting of disinfectant and metal. Behind reinforced glass, a vat of murky fluid pulsed in mechanical rhythm. The creature within was sedated, motionless except for faint, twitch-like spasms that looked disturbingly conscious.
Terrance Mephesto leaned against the nearest console, arms folded, watching his father through the glow. The light caught the angles of his face; too symmetrical… Too precise.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Terrance said, “A system that doesn’t just kill… It undoes. You hit one target, and it keeps spreading. It learns the pattern and carries it forward.”
Alphonse’s voice was level, tired, “You’ve built a contagion.”
“A proof of concept,” Terrance replied, “Humanity’s too crowded. Too arrogant. I’m giving it a reset button.”
“You’re making extinction sound like innovation.”
Terrance smiled faintly, “Innovation is just extinction with better marketing.”
Alphonse turned, the light glinting off his glasses.
“You’re playing god without understanding the weight. This thing doesn’t think. It doesn’t reason. It spreads, it eats, and it erases.”
Terrance shrugged, “That’s what nature does. I’m just helping it along.”
Alphonse’s tone sharpened, “You call that helping? You’ve weaponized instinct. You’ve stripped it of control, of balance. That thing will consume everything it touches.”
“Not if I tell it not to.” Terrance said simply.
Alphonse blinked. “You think you can control it?”
“I built it.” Terrance replied, “It responds to neural frequencies, biochemical cues… My cues. If it spreads too far, I can stop it.”
“You’re delusional,” Alphonse said, voice rising, “You’ve created something with a nervous system that isn’t wired to obey anyone. It doesn’t recognize you, Terrance… It only recognizes stimulus. Once it learns movement, it won’t stop simply because you told it to.”
Terrance smirked, “You’ve spent your whole life telling yourself that control is impossible. Maybe that’s why you never changed anything.”
Ignoring his son’s arrogance, Alphonse took a single step forward, eyes hard.
“You have no control over this, over it, or over yourself. You will destroy it.”
Terrance’s smirk didn’t waver. “Doesn’t matter if you do,” he said, “You can’t unmake what’s in motion.” He tapped his temple lightly with one finger, eyes gleaming, “The knowledge lives on in here. Even if you drain the tank, it lives on.”
Alphonse stepped closer this time, his shadow falling across Terrance’s face, “You’re done here,” he said evenly, “Pack up whatever you think belongs to you and get out of my lab.”
Terrance blinked, surprised for the first time.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely.” Alphonse folded his arms, “I’ll handle the disposal myself. And if you come back through these doors again, I’ll have security drag you out.”
The faint, arrogant smile finally slipped from Terrance’s mouth, “You think you can just erase me?”
Alphonse’s jaw tightened, “If that’s what it takes.”
Terrance tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
“You’re getting old, father. You won’t make it without me.”
“I built this facility long before you existed,” Alphonse said, his tone cold and clinical as it cut, “And it’ll run long after you’re gone.”
The words echoed too long. Guilt hit him instantly… sharp, immediate. His throat tightened, his expression flickered, the weight of what he’d said hitting like impact trauma.
Terrance just stared at him, silent. His gaze softened for just a moment; not forgiveness, but confusion… Maybe recognition. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, almost absent.
“Right,” he said, “Never quite lived up to his expectations, did I?”
Neither of them spoke after that. The hum of the machines filled the gap between them. Then, Terrance straightened his coat, smirk back in place but empty now, “Then I suppose my work here is done.”
He turned and walked out.
Alphonse didn’t follow. He just stood there, listening to the sound of the door sealing behind his son. His eyes shifted toward the vat; the thing inside moving faintly, slow and deliberate.
He told himself he would destroy it in the morning. But he didn’t leave. He turned back to the monitor, eyes scanning through the data Terrance had left behind. Neural resilience. Cortical enhancement. Adaptive motor response. The numbers didn’t just represent mutation; they represented strategy.
And for the first time that night, Alphonse Mephesto felt something worse than fear.
He felt curiosity.
You’ll destroy it. He had said.
But as the hum deepened, his hand hovered over the controls instead.
The wind came down from the mountains in long, hollow breaths. Snow drifted between the trees, catching the dim light of town far behind them. The woods were quiet except for boots crunching through the crusted snow and the occasional burst of laughter that didn’t belong in a place this still. Four boys moved together through the dark. They had no business being out here, but that never stopped them before.
Stan led the way, flashlight beam swinging wildly with each step. He looked relaxed; too relaxed, like someone pretending he wasn’t cold or afraid. Truth was, he didn’t care what happened tonight. He just wanted to be out of the house, away from Randy’s voice and the weight of routine. Breaking something felt like control.
Kyle followed beside him, shoulders hunched, hands buried deep in his coat pockets. He’d been muttering half the walk, about how this was illegal, how Mephesto was probably still alive in there, how this was a bad idea. But he hadn’t turned back. He never did. The guilt made him quiet, but the momentum of the group kept him moving.
Cartman trudged behind them, his breath loud in the cold. He wasn’t thinking about right or wrong, just what he might find inside. The guy had to have good stuff; electronics, medicine, maybe even cash.
“Science freaks always hoard.” he said under his breath, grinning to himself.
Kenny brought up the rear, hood drawn tight, eyes scanning the trees. He didn’t talk much. He never did. He was listening: to the wind, the snow, the rhythm of the other’s boots. He noticed things they didn’t. The way the forest seemed to thin too neatly around the path, the faint hum under the silence.
They climbed a low ridge, and through the trees they saw it: the Mephesto Laboratory.
It sat half-buried in snow, lights flickering under frost-covered windows, smoke rising in a thin column from a rear vent. The whole place looked asleep but never at rest, like something breathing just under the surface.
“Jesus Christ,” Kyle whispered, “He still lives out here?”
Stan smirked, “Yeah. Thought we’d stop by, say hi. Maybe wreck a few million dollars’ worth of science while we’re at it.”
Cartman grinned, “Now that’s the Christmas spirit.”
They started toward the perimeter fence. The air grew colder, the kind that tightened skin and burned lungs. The silence got heavier too; the kind that made you want to whisper without knowing why.
Then Kenny stopped walking.
“Hey.” He said quietly.
The others turned. He was standing at the edge of a small clearing. A black iron gate sat crooked in the snow, the words barely readable under a coat of ice:
MEPHESTO FAMILY PLOT.
Beyond it, rows of stone markers leaned like bad teeth.
“Holy shit,” Cartman said, breaking the silence, “Who builds a graveyard next to their house?”
Stan’s expression didn’t change when he looked over, but it was obvious by how rigid he stood that he was affected by the sight.
Kyle frowned, stepping closer. The nearest grave had a clean new headstone, edges sharp even under the frost. He crouched, brushing snow away from the engraved letters.
TERRANCE MEPHESTO - 1988-200*
The final number was carved out. Deep, straight gouges split through the granite, too sharp for erosion. Someone had tried to erase the year.
Stan frowned, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Kyle stared a little longer, “Maybe it’s vandalism.”
“Yeah,” Cartman muttered, “Or maybe he changed his mind about dying.”
Kenny didn’t laugh. He crouched, tracing one gloved finger over the damaged surface. The grooves caught bits of snow. They were fresh. The grave wasn’t old.
He blinked, uneasy… Because he’d seen Terrance Mephesto three days ago.
Alive. Walking across the bridge near Stark’s Pond, coat collar turned up, face half-hidden, but it had been him… Unmistakably him. Kenny remembered the slight tilt of his head, the way his breath smoked in the cold air. He hadn’t imagined it.
So why was his name here?
Why did the grave look used?
Could they be hiding something under that slightly raised mount of dirt?
He looked up, but the others were already walking toward the fence that surrounded the lab. The gate creaked open at Stan’s shove, the sound swallowed fast by the cold air. Kenny followed after, glancing back one last time at the stone. The wind pressed against his hood, and for a second, he thought he heard the faintest sound beneath it; like a low exhale through frozen dirt.
He turned away before the thought could settle.
The facility rose from the treeline like a bunker mistaken for a laboratory. Its outer walls were poured concrete, what was once painted yellow now the color of old bone. Floodlights mounted along the roofline cast pale cones through the fallow snow, illuminating nothing but the empty yard. The place didn’t look abandoned; it looked contained.
Stan was already halfway up the fence, the metal clattering under his boots. “Come on,” he whispered, glancing back, “We’ll freeze if we stand here.”
Cartman followed, grunting, “You first if it’s electrified.”
“It’s not electrified.” Kyle muttered, though he didn’t sound sure.
They climbed over one by one. Their breath fogged the air in thick bursts. Every sound; a boot scuff, a zipper, a muffled curse… Seemed too loud against the hush of the snow.
On the other side, the ground sloped toward a service entrance. Half-buried ventilation ducts rattled faintly. A red warning light blinked above a sealed steel door, steady as a pulse.
Stan adjusted his flashlight and aimed it low.
“Still powered.”
“Then someone’s home.” Kenny said.
They moved closer. The door had a digital lock, its keypad faintly glowing behind a frost film. Cartman tapped it with one finger.
“He probably keeps snacks in there. Maybe even booze.”
Kyle shot him a look.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Thank you.”
A sudden flicker caught their attention; light through glass. Down the hill, a narrow window exposed part of the basement. Movement crossed the glow, brief but unmistakable.
Stan leaned forward, “You see that?”
“Yeah.” Kyle’s voice dropped, “He’s still here.”
They crouched lower, brushing snow from the glass.
Through the narrow slit of the basement window, a figure moved in the blue light… White coat, gray hair, his back turned to them.
Dr. Alphonse Mephesto.
He was bent over a console, sleeves rolled high, adjusting something they couldn’t quite see. Wires looped across the counters; tanks gleamed in the sterile light. His lips were moving, muttering, maybe arguing with himself, as he scribbled notes. The reflection off a metal surface caught their eyes: something shifting behind him, half-submerged, too vague to make out.
“Is that him?” Kenny whispered.
Kyle nodded.
“Yeah, Jesus, he’s still working.”
“Doesn’t he, like, sleep?” Cartman muttered.
Stan leaned in closer, squinting through the frost, “Guess not. Looks like the old man’s lost it.”
They backed away from the window and crouched by the wall again.
“So now what?” Kyle asked quietly, “We came all this way, and he’s awake.”
Stan rubbed his gloved hands together, a grin crossing his face, “We wait. He’ll turn in sooner or later. When he does, we go in.”
“Go in and do what, exactly?” Kyle hissed.
Stan shrugged, “Make a mess. Smash the freak-show tanks, dump his experiments. You said yourself that he’s a lunatic, and you and Terrance have always been rivals. Let’s make it worth the trip.”
Kyle hesitated, “This feels wrong.”
Cartman snorted, “Everything feels wrong to you.”
“Because it is wrong,” Kyle snapped. Then, quieter, “But… Screw it. We’re already here.”
Kenny stared back toward the window. The light was still on, a faint blue square in the snow. He thought about the grave they’d passed, the date rubbed out, and a strange chill crept through his chest.
“Fine,” he said, “But whatever’s in there… Don’t touch it.”
No one answered.
Cartman was watching Kenny now, brow furrowed, “What the hell is your problem?”
Kenny didn’t answer. His eyes were on the faint blue window down the hill. He didn’t look scared, just watchful. Like a dog that heard something no one else could.
“You’re giving me the creeps, dude,” Cartman muttered, “If you’re gonna chicken out, do it before we freeze to death.”
Kenny’s voice was low, “You ever get the feeling you’re about to do something you can’t take back?”
Cartman scoffed, “Yeah. Every time I talk to you people.”
Stan was about to laugh when movement caught his eyes.
“Wait.”
They all turned back toward the building.
Through the frosted glass, Alphonse was moving again, slower this time, deliberate. He shut a series of monitors, their blue light dimming one by one. The last to go was the one closest to the tank. He then pulled off his gloves, hung up his lab coat, and stood in the doorway for a moment, shoulders heavy. He looked older now, smaller somehow, before he reached up and flipped the main switch. The basement went black.
Stan grinned, “There. Show’s over.”
Kyle exhaled. “You’re serious about this?”
“Dead serious.”
They watched the door close. A minute passed. Then another.
Kenny adjusted his hood.
“He’s gone.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Stan said, standing.
The others hesitated just long enough to make it clear they all knew this was a mistake. However, they then followed him anyway. Snow crunched under their boots as they made their way down the hill toward the basement entrance, breath fogging in the dark. Behind them, the mountain wind moaned through the trees, long and hollow; like something calling after them.
The hallway outside the laboratory was silent except for the steady pulse of generators. Terrance walked fast, his reflection moving beside him in the glass walls; pale, hollow-eyed, still wearing the faint smirk from their argument. When he reached his quarters, the biometric lock clicked open. The door shut behind him with a pneumatic sigh.
The room was smaller than his father’s office, but neater. Everything in its place. Shelves lined with awards, framed articles, medals, certificates, all perfectly dusted.
The youngest recipient of the BioFuture Research Grant.
The pioneer behind gene-splicing protocols adopted by half a dozen institutes.
His name in gilt letters on every plaque: Terrance Mephesto.
He stood there for a long time, looking at them.
A clock ticked. A soft vibration hummed through the floor from the facility below.
“You gonna stare at those all night, man?” Bill’s voice came from the couch against the far wall. Beside him, Fosse scrolled aimlessly through a tablet. They looked out of place here; two men trying to act casual in a museum of someone else’s achievements.
Terrance didn’t turn.
“Do you know what he said to me?”
Bill glanced up, “No, sir.”
“He said I should destroy it.”
The silence that followed wasn’t reverent; just careful.
Fosse cautiously broke the silence after a few moments, “Maybe he’s right. That thing-”
Terrance cut him off, “He’s not wrong. He’s just small-minded.”
He crossed to the kitchenette and turned the tap. Water hissed briefly before running steady. He let it flow over his wrists. The light above the sink flickered once, catching his reflection in the stainless steel backsplash. He leaned closer.
His pupils didn’t contract evenly.
He blinked. Tried again. The right one tightened a fraction later than the left. He tilted his head, studying it. Pressed two fingers to his cheek until the skin went white, then let it color again. Normal. He shut off the tap.
“You ever wonder,” Terrance said quietly, still facing the metal, “What it’s like to spend your whole life proving you exist?”
Neither Bill nor Fosse answered.
He dried his hands on a disposable towel, then crossed to the shelves. His reflection followed him in every glass frame. He took down one photo: a boy in an oversized suit, sitting beside Dr. Alphonse Mephesto under studio lights, both smiling for the camera. The boy’s eyes were bright, alive. Terrance stared at them until the glass fogged.
He then returned the photo exactly where it had been.
From the couch, Bill whispered to Fosse, “He used to laugh more.”
“Shut up.” Fosse muttered.
Terrance didn’t react. He unlocked the narrow drawer under his desk with a small key. Inside: a sealed hospital bracelet, a cracked student ID, a funeral program with no photograph. His hand hovered over the bracelet.
The label read: T. Mephesto - Pronounced Deceased, 17.
He stared until his reflection doubled in the metal edge of the drawer. Two faces, one expression. Then, he shut it and turned the key.
He sat at the desk and woke the console. Rows of camera feeds blinked on: hallways, storage levels, the north elevator. The screens came alive with a low hum, filling the room with a cold, sterile light.
The first feed that appeared was from the containment floor: monitors tracking vital signs, respiration cycles, and chemical balances from the lower tank. Terrance’s eyes moved over the data automatically… Then stopped.
The readouts pulsed. The lines were stable.
Too stable.
He frowned. Alphonse had sworn he would terminate the specimen… “drain it completely”, those were his exact words… But the monitor showed active neural response and faint cardiac rhythm. The creature was still alive.
Terrance leaned back in his chair, his expression flattening into something halfway between irritation and amusement.
“Of course you didn’t kill it,” he muttered under his breath, “You never could finish what you started.”
He watched the waveform spike faintly as the thing inside the tank shifted under sedation.
“Curiosity,” he said, almost smiling, “Always your downfall.”
For a long moment, he just sat there, listening to the soft pulse of the monitors and the whine of the cooling systems. He felt the faint satisfaction of irony settling over him like a warm coat; his father’s disgust, his moral speeches, all undone by one human weakness: the same hunger to see what happens next.
That was the difference between them, he thought. Alphonse hated the sickness in mankind but still wanted to save it. Terrance just wanted to watch it rot.
He opened a blank document and began typing.
SPECIMEN T-01: BEHAVIORAL SUMMARY
- Reflex arcs stable at reduced temperature
- Locomotion under sedation confirmed
- Pupillary constriction along motor pathways increasing
- Structural fibrosis along motor pathways increasing
He stopped. The cursor blinked. He erased the last line and replaced it.
- Control remains hypothetical.
He leaned back, rubbing his temple with one finger.
“Control.” He repeated softly, as if testing whether the word still belonged to him. When he looked up again, his reflection in the dark monitor lagged half a second behind his movement.
“Bill,” he said, “Where’s the medal from the Regeneration Symposium?”
Bill looked confused.
“Uhh, second shelf. You hung it there last week.”
Terrance checked. It was there. He nodded once, then turned back to the console, expression unreadable.
“You’re working too much,” Fosse said, “You should get some sleep.”
Terrance’s tone was flat, “I’ll sleep when the world’s worth waking up in.”
Neither of them spoke again.
The security feeds cycled. One camera, the graveyard, flashed red.
A motion flag.
Terrance leaned forward. Four figures trudged through the snow toward the facility’s basement entrance. The lens struggled with the light; their movements blurred and reformed. He zoomed in. One bent over to brush snow from a headstone.
His stomach churned.
That headstone.
Bill frowned, “What the hell? Thought you said-”
“Quiet.” Terrance said.
He zoomed farther. The one with the green hat looked up toward the camera. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met through the layers of glass and static.
Kyle Broflovski.
Terrance’s pulse ticked visibly in his neck.
“You want us to call security?” Fosse asked.
“No.”
He adjusted the feeds: north fence, service hatch, basement corridor. Each camera caught a fragment of movement. The four shapes worked in silence, fast and sure, like people who had already decided that once they stared, they couldn’t stop.
Terrance tapped his temple twice with his forefinger, “Even if you destroy it,” he murmured, “you can’t destroy what’s in here.”
Bill shifted, “What?”
Terrance clicked record.
“Opportunity.”
On the screen, a crowbar, in the hands of nobody other than Stan Marsh, bit into the hatch. Snow drifted past the lens. Metal groaned. Then the hatch gave way.
Fosse half-rose.
“Boss, shouldn’t we-”
Terrance raised a hand without looking.
“Let them come.”
The feed flickered. A flashlight beam cut through the basement stairwell. He sat back and watched. The hum of the facility deepened around him, steady, mechanical, patient… Like the sound of something enormous holding its breath.
The vent gave way with a hollow clang, echoing through the concrete chamber. Cold air bled out first, sharp with disinfectant and copper. Stan dropped through the opening, boots thudding on the tile, and turned to steady Kyle as he followed. Cartman landed next with a grunt, and Kenny slipped in last, cat-quiet, pulling the panel closed behind him.
The lab’s silence pressed in immediately. Everything gleamed: Metal tables, sealed glass cabinets, ceiling lights that hummed faintly but never flickered. The smell was wrong; not rot, exactly, but something sweet and stale beneath the bleach.
“Jesus…” Kyle whispered. He adjusted his ushanka, eyes darting from the walls lined with specimen jars to the surgical trays resting under the sheets of plastic, “This place looks like a hospital from a horror game.”
Stan gave a low whistle and stepped past him, his shoulder brushing Kyle’s.
“Guess Terrance’s dad never heard of spring cleaning.”
Cartman was already rummaging through drawers, muttering.
“There’s gotta be something worth taking in here. Computers, chemicals… Hell, maybe even a dead monkey.”
Kenny trailed behind him, eyes scanning the room. Despite the shine, dust had settled on some of the shelves. A forgotten coffee mug sat cold beside a microscope, the ring it left etched into the steel. It was clean here, but not cared for. He felt the air shift in that uncanny way it did before something happened… That kind of quiet.
“Stan…” He murmured.
But Stan and Kyle were across the room already, crouched beside a metal table. Kyle leaned in closer to the glowing monitor above it, brow furrowed.
“Look at this… This is-... These are project notes. Biological weapon models. He wasn’t working on gene therapy, he was making something.”
“Probably a sex robot.” Cartman snorted.
Kyle ignored him. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, and the monitor crackled to life with a faint blue graph.
“It’s encrypted, but… Holy shit, these are protein maps. He was building something living!”
Stan leaned over his shoulder, close enough that their arms pressed together.
“Can you get in?” He asked.
“I can try,” Kyle said, not noticing that Stan’s hand had drifted to rest lightly at the small of his back as if steadying him.
While they spoke frantically in whispers, Kenny’s boot nudged something on the floor; a laminated page that must have slipped from Cartman’s latest search. He bent down and turned it over.
TERRANCE MEPHESTO - DECLARED DECEASED, OCTOBER 2005
The certificate was official, embossed. His breath hitched inside his hood. He’d seen Terrance just last week at Stark’s Pond, laughing, alive.
Before he could speak, Stan’s voice cut across the room.
“Hey, look at this.”
They gathered around a containment tank, half-hidden behind a curtain. Inside, suspended in cloudy fluid, something moved. It wasn’t entirely human; its limbs were too long, its ribs faintly visible beneath pale skin that twitched against the glass.
“What the hell…” Kyle whispered.
Stan stepped closer, eyes wide, almost amused.
“Well, we found the freak show.”
“Don’t touch it.” Kenny said quietly.
Cartman rolled his eyes, “Relax, dude. It’s sleeping.”
But even as he said it, a pulse of movement rippled through the tank. The liquid churned, and one pale eye flickered open… Ringed with a faint, matte black circle around the iris.
Kenny’s heart slammed against his ribs. The others didn’t notice the detail, not yet. But he did. He always noticed first.
The hum of machinery filled the space again as Kyle leaned back toward the monitor, eyes flicking between the screen and the tank.
“Wait, these files match the code name on this chamber. Subject T-01. He was writing about this.” His voice was thin, dry, “He called it a correctional prototype. He wasn’t curing anything, he was… Trying to re-write biology?”
Stan frowned, confused, stepping closer to the tank, “Re-write it how?”
“Look at this,” Kyle said, scrolling through a line of text, “Neurological restructuring… Adaptive regeneration… involuntary motor retention after cerebral death. He made something that keeps going even after-”
“...After it’s supposed to be dead.” Kenny finished quietly.
Cartman snorted, “So it’s a zombie. Congratulations, Einstein.”
Kyle didn’t respond. His reflection swam in the glass beside the creature, distorted by the fluid. He could feel the gap between himself and Terrance like an ache. He’d thought of him as a rival once; someone to out-think, to prove wrong. But this wasn’t rivalry. The gap between the two of them was unthinkably large. And Kyle realized this fact tonight.
Kenny’s voice broke through the quiet, “There’s something else.” He held up the laminated paper, his gloved thumb smudging the seal, “I found this.”
They crowded around. The words gleamed under the sterile light: TERRANCE MEPHESTO - DECLARED DECEASED, OCTOBER 2005.
Cartman laughed.
“Bullshit, I saw him buying beer last month.”
“So did I.” Stan said, but there was no humor in his tone.
Kenny shifted uneasily. “You remember that grave out back? His name was on it. The death date was scratched off like someone tried to hide it.”
Kyle’s stomach turned. He reached out, touched the glass of the tank.
“So what the hell are we even looking at, then? If he’s dead, and alive, and this exists-”
“Who cares?” Stan interrupted, “It’s just another one of his freak experiments. Look at it,” he lifted the crowbar, “It’s disgusting.”
Kenny stepped in front of him.
“Stan, don’t. You don’t know what’s in there.”
“It’s contained.” Kyle said, trying to sound calm but failing, “If we break that seal, we could release something we can’t take back.”
Cartman groaned, “Oh my God, you guys are so dramatic. It’s probably just some mutant goat or whatever. We’re wasting time.”
Stan’s grip tightened on the crowbar, “We came here to send a message, right? Let’s do it.”
“Stan,” Kyle warned, his hand brushing Stan’s arm, “Stop and think.”
But Stan’s mind was already made up, caught in that electric rush, the thrill of defiance. He yanked his arm free and swung. The crowbar struck the glass with a wet, cracking thud. A second hit sent a spiderweb of fractures racing across the tank. The lights overhead flickered once, then twice.
“Kyle…” Kenny started.
The third strike broke it open. Fluid exploded outward, splashing across the floor, flooding their boots in cold, viscous liquid. The creature spilled out, its body folding awkwardly, limbs hitting tile with a sound that was so wrong… Too soft, too heavy.
For a moment, it didn’t move. The only sound was the drip of fluid from the shattered glass.
Then it twitched.
Kyle grabbed Stan by the arm and yanked him back. His eyes widened, breath catching in his throat as the thing on the floor began to stir.
“Oh… Fuck…”
Stan’s breath hitched when he heard the panic in his best friend’s voice. He turned, his body slightly in front of Kyle without thinking, shoulders squared, crowbar still slick with fluid. His pulse hammered in his neck, but his expression hardened; automatic defense, like a reflex he didn’t remember learning.
Across the room, Cartman stood frozen halfway through a step, face twisting between disgust and disbelief.
“What the hell is that thing?”
Kenny didn’t speak at first. His hood shadowed his face, but his hands were trembling at his sides. He couldn’t look away. The creature was breathing now, shallow and wet, each rise of its chest louder than the hum of the lights.
A strand of fluid dripped from its mouth. The sound of it hitting the tile was the only thing moving in the room. The head lifted slowly, skin pale and wet under the light. Its eyes opened; both ringed matte black, gleaming like oil.
Kenny whispered, “We have to go. Now.”
But nobody moved.
The thing’s head tilted, the motion jerky and searching, as if its neck hadn’t quite learned what to do with gravity. The fluid around their boots rippled when it shifted its weight, one trembling arm pressing against the floor. The flesh was wrong; too translucent, too thin, veins pulsing darkly beneath the surface.
“Kyle…” Stan’s voice was low.
“I see it…” Kyle breathed.
Then the creature exhaled. A rasp, wet and ragged, filled the room. It wasn’t words, but it wanted to be. The sound was human enough to make all of them flinch. Kenny stepped backward, his shoe squealing against the tile. The creature’s head snapped toward the noise.
“Shit!” Cartman hissed.
And then it moved. It didn’t stumble or crawl this time. It lunged.
The impact of its lunge shattered the silence. Glass crunched under its limbs, alarms screamed to life overhead, and a red light began to pulse from the ceiling like a heartbeat. The sterile hum of the lab dissolved into chaos, the shriek of pressure valves venting, the hiss of steam, the crash of falling equipment.
“Go, go!” Stan yelled, shoving Kyle behind him as he swung the crowbar. It connected with a wet crack, the creature jerking sideways, but it didn’t fall. It reacted, snatching for Stan with hands that bent the wrong way.
Kyle grabbed the edge of a counter, his mind blank with terror, before muscle memory kicked in. He grabbed a wrench from a nearby tray and threw it with all the force he had. It hit the wall instead, but the motion broke his paralysis.
“Stan!” He screamed.
Kenny kicked over a metal cart, sending it rolling between them.
“Come on!”
The floor had turned to ice beneath their boots, slick with coolant and blood. Every step was a fight to stay upright. Cartman slipped and slammed into Kenny, both of them catching themselves against the counter. Kenny’s hand shot out, steadying him… Just in time for Cartman to pull him backward as the creature’s claws tore through the air where his head had been.
“Holy shit, thanks!” Kenny gasped.
“Don’t die dude, you owe me!” Cartman barked, his voice shaking.
The red lights strobed faster, making every movement look disjointed; like a series of photographs flashing in and out of sequence. For a moment, the boys weren’t screaming anymore. They were laughing. The kind of laugh that comes from adrenaline, from knowing they shouldn’t be alive but somehow still are.
“Is it even human?!” Kyle shouted over the noise.
“Who cares?” Stan yelled back, grabbing him by the coat and dragging him away from a cascade of shattered glass.
Something toppled behind them; a cabinet, maybe a table… Followed by the sharp hiss of gas escaping a pipe. The room filled with the smell of antiseptic and burning metal.
Kenny swung a stool, hitting the creature’s shoulder, earning another guttural screech.
“Think it’s mad at us?”
Cartman gave a wild, humorless laugh, “You think?”
“Shut up and hit it!” Stan barked.
A monitor exploded somewhere, showering them with sparks. Kyle coughed, his hands slick with coolant, anything he managed to grab slipping from his grip. The strobe of red light made everything move in slow, violent flashes: swing, stumble, breathe, shout.
Then, between flashes, a voice cut through the noise.
“Get back!”
The door slammed open, and Dr. Alphonse Mephesto stumbled inside, a tranquilizer rifle raised. His lab coat was half buttoned, his face pale from sleep.
“Don’t move!” He barked, closing the distance too fast.
The creature’s head snapped toward him.
“Stop-”
It didn’t. It lunged.
The tranquilizer dart flew wide. The thing’s jaws locked onto Mephesto’s shoulder, tearing through fabric and skin. His scream filled the room, high and human and unbearable.
“No!” Kyle screamed.
Stan grabbed him before he could rush forward. The others watched, frozen, as Mephesto tried to pry it off, blood slicking his hand. The creature’s eyes flashed back, then it released him. It then turned, scrambling toward the open vent the boys had come in through.
And then it was gone.
The alarms kept screaming. Mephesto staggered to the console, pressing his hand against the wound, breathing in broken gasps.
“It’s… out,” he choked,” It’s out.”
The boys stared at him, faces pale, clothes drenched in fluid. They stood in a half-circle, dripping coolant and blood. No one spoke for a moment. Then Cartman broke the silence.
“You know,” he said, voice tight but mocking, “maybe you should’ve put a lid on your freak science project. It’s slick as a Diddy party in this bitch.”
“Shut up, Cartman!” Kyle snapped, his voice sharp with residual panic.
Mephesto spun toward them, wild-eyed.
“Did any of you get bitten? Scratched? Anything in your mouth, your eyes, anything?”
Stan wiped at his face, breathing hard.
“We’re fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I said we’re fine!” Stan barked back, defensive.
Mephesto didn’t believe it. His gaze ran over them, scanning their arms, their faces, as if infection might already be blooming under the skin. He stared at Stan, blood slicking his collar, breath coming in short gasps. He stepped forward, not backing down this time.
“You think you’re fine,” he said, voice shaking, “But you have no idea what’s in the air right now. What’s in you.”
Stan opened his mouth to speak, but Mephesto grabbed the front of his jacket and dragged him close, eyes burning into his.
“This thing doesn’t kill you fast. It waits. It hides. Days can go by before you even notice.” His words came out low and furious, spitting flecks of blood onto Stan’s face, “Do you understand what that means? You don’t know if you’re fine.”
“Let go of me!” Stan shoved him backward, leaving a smear of blood across his coat.
Kyle stepped between them, his voice raised, “Enough! He’s hurt, Stan.”
At the sound of his best friend’s voice, Stan’s face seemed to soften, his body relaxing. Mephesto’s voice cut through the calm.
“I’m hurt?” Mephesto laughed once, a sharp, ugly sound, “You broke into my lab, destroyed everything you could touch, and unleashed something you can’t even begin to understand!”
Cartman muttered, “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t keep freaks in a jar, dude.”
Kyle shot Cartman a glance, but said nothing.
Mephesto pointed at the door, shaking, “Get out. Go home. If you start to feel sick, feverish… Listen carefully… If you feel anything out of the ordinary at all, you come straight back here. Do you understand me? You don’t go to a hospital, you don’t tell anyone else. You come here.”
Stan blinked.
“So you can what, lock us up?”
Mephesto’s voice dropped, “So I can keep you alive.” He forced the words out through clenched teeth, but there was something unreadable behind his eyes; too much calculation to be only fear, “I can stop this. But I need to monitor you. If exposure occurred, the data-” He caught himself, swallowing the rest, “You’ll be safe here.”
Cartman scoffed, “Yeah, that sounds real reassuring, doc.”
Kenny shot him a look, “Shut up, man.”
Kyle took a step forward, uncertain.
“Are you… Are you infected?”
Mephesto’s gaze flicked toward the bleeding wound at his neck.
“Doesn’t matter. Get out before I lose focus.”
The boys hesitated. After a few moments, Stan grabbed Kyle by the shoulder and turned him toward the exit.
“Come on.”
They left the way they’d come, boots slapping through the fluid, shadows darting between flashes of red light. When the door slammed, the echo lingered like the memory of a heartbeat. The silence that followed was absolute. Mephesto stood still, staring at the dark smudge of blood on the tiles where the creature had first crawled. He moved to the console, hand trembling, already pulling up new data fields. Infection models. Viral kinetics. Autoimmune regression. His fingers flew across the keys. The wound pulsed once under his collar. He didn’t stop to treat it.
There was no time.
The mountain air hit them like ice water. Their boots crunched over frozen gravel, the dark stretching wide around them. Below, the town’s few streetlights blinked through the snow; distant, almost unreal after the sterile brightness of the lab.
Stan led, crowbar still in hand, eyes fixed ahead. Kyle followed a few steps behind, his face pale, jaw clenched. Cartman and Kenny trailed in silence, each breath steaming cold. For a long time, no one spoke.
Then Kenny snapped.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Stan.”
Stan stopped, “What?”
“I told you not to hit the tank. I told you!” Kenny’s voice cracked under the weight of adrenaline and fury, “You couldn’t wait five goddamn seconds-”
Stan turned, still riding the high of the fight, “If I hadn’t done it, we’d still be standing there staring like morons!”
“Yeah, and now some guy’s half-dead and a freak’s running loose in the woods!”
Kyle stepped between them before Stan could answer.
“Both of you, stop. This isn’t helping.” His voice was tight, shaking, “We need to check for bites, cuts, or anything. Then we find it.”
Cartman’s laugh was sharp and humorless, “Find it? Yeah, sure, let’s just go monster hunting in the middle of the night. Great idea.”
Kyle spun on him.
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah, we go home. We forget any of this ever happened.”
Kenny crossed his arms.
“You think you can just forget it? You think he will?”
Cartman’s eyes darted toward the mountain, toward the lab, then back to the others.
“That guy’s probably already dead.”
Kyle flinched, “Don’t say that.”
Cartman shrugged, “I’m just being realistic.”
Stan’s hand tightened around the crowbar, “You’re being a coward.”
Cartman started to snap back, but Kyle cut him off.
“Enough! Look, we started this. We have to finish it.”
Kenny said, “Mephesto said tell no one.”
Cartman glanced toward the dark treeline.
“Then who the hell’s gonna help us hunt this thing down?”
There was silence. After a few moments, Stan said, “Jimbo will.”
Kenny’s head turned slowly, “Jimbo?”
Stan nodded, “He’ll believe me. Him and Ned. They’ll know what to do. They’re the best hunters and trackers in the county.”
“They’ll ask questions.” Kenny said.
“Then we lie.” Stan said flatly.
Kyle stared at him, “You think you’re capable of lying about this?”
Stan’s eyes were hard, unreadable, “Better that than doing nothing.”
Cartman groaned, kicking at the snow.
“How the hell are we supposed to explain this, huh? ‘Hey Uncle Jimbo, we accidentally let out some science project that eats people while breaking into someone’s home in the middle of the night, wanna go hunting?’ Yeah, that’ll go over great.”
Stan didn’t answer.
Kenny looked between them; the dark, the snow, the blood drying on their sleeves.
“We can’t just walk away.” He said quietly.
Kyle exhaled, “No, we can’t.”
For a moment, all four stood there, the wind cutting through them, their breath clouding the air between their faces. The adrenaline hadn’t worn off; it had just changed shape, from panic to purpose.
Stan lifted the crowbar over his shoulder.
“Then we find it before it finds anyone else.”
Kyle nodded. Kenny gave a short, reluctant, “Yeah.”
Cartman sighed and moved his hands into his pockets.
“Fine, but if I die, I’m haunting you assholes.”
They started down the slope together, flashlights cutting through the dark, the sound of the lab alarms still echoing faintly through the mountain wind. None of them dared to look back.
The lab was a wreck of motion and sound. Machines still hummed from automatic routines, red lights flashing in steady rhythm. Alphonse worked through the pain, sleeve rolled to his elbow where the bite marks had already begun to swell. His breath came quick, shallow, every exhale fogging the inside of his mask.
He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Glass clinked, liquid hissed in cooling tubes. He recorded numbers, cross-referenced protein chains, and labeled samples in handwriting that grew more unsteady by the minute.
The door hissed.
Terrance stood there in a lab coat, hair damp from the snow outside, face blank. Bill and Fosse lingered behind him, uneasy.
Alphonse didn’t look up.
“You took your time.” He rasped, “If you’re here, start stabilizing the cultures. Use the secondary centrifuge. We don’t have long.”
Terrance moved closer, his steps slow, deliberate.
“I thought you told me to leave.”
“Change of circumstances,” Alphonse pointed to the sample tray, “We’ve got a breach vector and maybe six hours before full systemic-” He stopped, grimaced, pressed a gloved hand to his arm, “Just work.”
For a moment, Terrance didn’t move. Then he set his jaw and began clearing debris from the workstation. His motions were precise, efficient, almost automatic. As he worked, his eyes caught a small device half-buried under lab notes and a shattered slide. A portable recorder, light still blinking red.
He hesitated.
“Keep moving.” Alphonse muttered without looking.
Terrance picked it up, “You’re still logging?”
“Yes. Every symptom.”
Terrance turned it over in his hand, “I’ll file it for you.”
He stepped aside, pressing the playback button as he crossed the room. The recorder crackled, the voice that came through, calm and methodical, was Alphonse Mephesto.
“Day one hundred and seventy-four of the Reconstruction Project. Specimen T viable. Cellular aging normalized. Neural retention inconsistent. Subject displays speech, affect, and memory but limited spontaneous empathy. Remains… Incomplete.”
Terrance’s brow furrowed. He looked toward Alphonse, who didn’t notice, still bent over his microscope.
“I had hoped replication would bring back what death erased. What it took from me. I see now it can’t. A perfect biological mirror without a soul. He looks alive, sounds alive, even remembers being alive, but there’s nothing there. I’ve built a reflection that believes it’s human.”
Bill shifted uneasily. Fosse took a half-step back.
Terrance stood still, listening.
“If infection doesn’t kill me, regret will. I should have let him stay dead.”
The click of the recorder stopping was louder than anything else in the room.
Terrance set it down carefully on the desk. For a long time, he said nothing. His face was expressionless, but the air around him seemed to change; a quiet, heavy pressure that made Bill glance toward the door.
Only then did Terrance realize what he had just listened to. It wasn’t the current experiment log. It wasn’t about the infection of the samples.
It was a personal file.
One that had nothing to do with the cure, and everything to do with him.
Alphonse finally looked up, noticing the silence, “Did you log the readings?”
Terrance’s eyes met his.
“I understand everything now.”
Alphonse frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Terrance said, his tone was even, controlled, “I’ll finish the work.”
He turned back to the instruments, gloved hands steady, movements precise. Behind him, Bill and Fosse exchanged a look neither could name. The hum of the lab filled the space again; steady, mechanical, indifferent.
