Description of Incident:

The situation in Lab 4 is dire to say the least.

Lt. El Ray, Cadet Daart, and I are all in terrible positions. Given the layout of the room there’s nothing to hide behind, and the material that’s escaping from the cylinder seems to act with intelligence. I catch myself trying to examine the creature for scientific research, but quickly snap out of it when I remember our lives are in danger.

As the tentacles encroach upon me, I do my best to cut at them with my umbrella blade. It offers me precious seconds. My independent vision allows me to track the tentacles coming from multiple directions.

El Ray is in a far worse predicament. He’s situated closer and slightly behind the cylinder. A mass of tentacles reaches back toward him and pins him near a wall. He exhausts himself as he seems to only be able to generate enough bioelectricity to maintain a small, defensive boundary around him. It shrinks by the second. He attempts to call out to us, to issue orders, but they’re unclear over the incessant barking of the Octopup and Daart’s whining. There seems to be no way out. I suddenly wish that I had simply allowed Dr. Mera to know what these two were doing.

Daart hides in the corner, sweating the thick green slime that he generates when he ingests the appropriate insect cocktail. He had been jumping out of the way of the tentacles until the octopup made its way to him. The octopup has a surprising resistance to Daart’s toxic slime. The scientists don’t fully understand why, but they believe it may have something to do with his cephalopod DNA. Octopup has taken to riding on Daart’s back, and in this dangerous situation, it leaped on him, presumably, to feel safe.

But as Octopup lands on Daart’s back, Daart’s forced to remain stationary for a split second, just long enough for a tentacle to wrap around his arm. Daart screams at a pitch I’ve only ever heard from dolphins or perhaps small human children using their outside voices. The sound pierces through Octopup’s barking and El Ray’s attempted orders. The tentacle lets go and disintegrates into bits of plants, trash, and old shells. All of the other tentacles react to this, slowing their attacks.

“Do it again!” El Ray shouts.

Daart’s follow up scream is far different than his original. The tentacles are unaffected.

Daart yelled, “It’s not working,” as another set of tentacles reach for him. They wrap around his arms, legs, and neck shortly before, again, falling apart!

“Daart! Your poison excretions! That’s what’s destroying them,” I shout

“Cadet, use your slime to open a path to Sham and me!” El Ray orders. As he speaks, I discover that the remaining tentacles are beginning to retreat back into the cylinder. I can’t be sure, but it looks like there is a larger mass within the cylinder, like the hub or main body of this thing, but it’s unclear.

Daart, with renewed confidence, moves toward me using his hands to toss globs of slime at the tentacles. Everywhere his slime splashes, the creature disintegrates. The bulk of the creature retreats back into the cylinder. By the time Daart reaches me, even El Ray has a clear path to join us.

“Keep going until it’s completley in the cylinder, Daart,” El Ray orders. “Sham, give me a hand with this. Careful not to touch the Garbage.”

He and I lift the cylinder’s heavy lid. As the creature fully retreats into its container, we place the lid on. I work feverishly to straighten out and tighten its various locks and fasteners while El Ray uses his body weight to keep the lid in place.

Once it is properly closed again, the three of us put the cylinder back in its housing. Besides some biowaste and bits of trash on the floor, nothing was left amiss.

In the remains of the disintegrated tentacles we find bits of seaweed, shells from ocean crustaceans, some mud from the ocean floor, and thankfully, the majority of Daart’s PalmCam. It seems that this Garbage creature can absorb almost anything and integrate it into its own body.

We rush to clean up. We add the refuse to green metal drums marked for biohazardous waste. Curiously, some of these containers were already full. To keep Garbage from regenerating, Daart secretes some excess slime to top off the drums we use before we seal them shut.

During the long walk back to the main barracks, Daart and El Ray are full of questions.

“Do you two think we’re safe from that thing?” Daart asks. I assure him that our cleanup was more than sufficient, and that the biohazard refuse containers are sent to the incinerator once a week. That would eliminate any remaining evidence.

El Ray asks, “How can you be sure?”

Without even a smirk, I turn only my left eye to El Ray. “For quite some time, I have been keeping an eye on the place.” El Ray isn’t distracted by my dry wit.

“What is ‘Garbage’ then? A weapon? A new lifeform?” he continues.

“I can’t say. You know as much as I do about this Garbage creature. Anything you can tell me about it?”

As El Ray explains how he and Dart came to find Lab 4, I make a mental note to look into the drainage pipe that led him to the lab.

Daart is still visibly shaken from the experience. “I won’t have trouble keeping up with my bug diet anymore,” he said. “In fact, I think I’ll have some right now!”

Daart unscrews the top of one of his pouches of insects and eats a mouthful.

“Wait ‘till we tell the guys about this adventure! We kicked bootay!” Daart yells with insect remnants spraying from his lips.

“We’re lucky to have survived that encounter,” I say. “I believe it best to keep this little adventure from Albert VII and Quillroy.”

Daart is shocked. “How can we keep this a secret?! There’s a monster in that lab!”

El Ray is a tad more practical in his resistance. “That’s a negative here too, Sham. Part of the reason why Cadet Daart and I were in this section of the island was to find out what’s being kept from us. I don’t know about you, but this seems like a pretty big secret to me.”

“It is, indeed,” I tell them. “This ‘Garbage’ is one of Dr. Mera’s secret projects.”

“I knew there was something up with Mera!” Daart says.

“You don’t know the half of it. She’ll do anything to maintain the secrecy of projects like this. When it comes to this kind of experiment, everyone is expendable.”

“Then we need to tell Cdr. Stone,” El Ray counters.

“Everyone is expendable. Only one person truly knows what this is, and that person is Dr. Mera.”

I could swear I see Daart’s red face turn white. Apparently my words were enough to convince him, but El Ray was not pleased with my plan.

“No. I refuse to keep secrets from the rest of the Deltas,” he says.

“Anyone who knows is at risk,” I explain. “It would do more harm than good to tell them. At least for now. The remains of the creature are beach waste, and Daart’s camera was destroyed. Why would they even believe us? We have no proof.”

“Albert VII would believe us,” El Ray says.

“Lieutenant El Ray, sir? Remember when you didn’t want me to come along because it put me in danger?” Daart interjects. “I think Sham’s saying we don’t want to do that to Quillroy and Albert VII.”

He pauses for an uncomfortably long time before finally peering into my left eye and asking “Sham, how did you know we were here?”

We’re in it together this far. There was no point in hiding anything from them anymore. I explain that I monitor video surveillance of this part of the island without necessarily having orders to do so. He finally agrees to keep today’s incident from the Deltas on the condition that I give him updates on anything I discover related to Garbage or Lab 4.

Daart, still in a bit of shock, asks “Is this what it’s like to be a full member of GK Delta, sir? All secrets and monsters all the time?”

“This was definitely more than I expected.” El Ray tells him. “It may seem tough, Daart, but even if we have to keep a secret, at least we don’t have to keep it alone.”