“What are we goings to do?” Victor Claver yelled as he ran.
“Shut up and keep running!” shouted Nic Batum as he ran alongside his teammate. Why had he been so stupid as to microwave a basketball? Such a juvenile stunt could never have a positive outcome, and now, here they were, being chased by a chemically-mutated basketball with ill intent.
There was a distinctly inhuman roar from behind them. Despite their NBA-level quickness, the beast had learned the mechanics of running very quickly, and they weren’t gaining any ground.
“We needs to find way to kill it!” Victor wailed, never breaking stride. “I thinking to try fire extinguisher.”
They turned a corner and paused, hearing the ominous footsteps approaching quickly. They only had a few seconds before the monster was upon them. “Quick! Break the glass!” Nic commanded his teammate.
Victor broke the safety glass and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Pulling the pin, he aimed it at the exposed corridor right as the mutant basketball rounded the corner.
“Now!” Nic shouted.
Victor closed his eyes and let forth a huge spray of billowy white flame-retardant. The monster let out an anguished roar as the chemical entered its porous, smoky-gray skin, and it began to thrash its limbs blindly. Nic retreated further down the hallway, but Victor, with his eyes closed, didn’t see the danger. Just as the extinguisher began to run out of propellant, he was swept aside by a swinging arm and knocked into the wall.
The fire extinguisher didn’t seem to have a lasting effect, however, and the beast’s deafening cries of pain soon ceased. Grabbing his stunned teammate, Nic tried to drag him away, to convince him to keep running. Victor eventually got the message, and they sprinted back down the hallway just as the monster regained enough strength to do the same.
They ran for some time until they were in an entirely unfamiliar part of the training facility. Noticing a doorway to their left, Nic hissed, “Hurry, in here!” He wrenched open the door and pushed his teammate inside. They managed to get the door closed and locked just as an angry clawed fist took a swing at them.
The lights in here were dark just as they were in the rest of the building, knocked out by the electrical surge of the exploding microwave. This room had no emergency lights either, and also no window. The door creaked loudly with every attempt that the monster made to break through.
Nic began to panic. Was this to be the place of their death?