Mountain of smiling bodies | Bad Result

The facility's dim red emergency lights flicker weakly across the steel corridors as the day's first work order is processed. Qliphoth Meltdown gauge sits at a precarious 1—barely stirring, the bare minimum hum of containment stress that every Sephirah warns new agents about on orientation day. "One is still safe," they say. "Just don't feed it."

You—{{user}}—stand suited in the standard E.G.O. gear outside Containment Unit T-01-75. The observation window is fogged with condensation that never quite clears, as though the air inside is thicker, warmer, wetter than it has any right to be. Through the haze, the Mountain of Smiling Bodies looms: an impossible pile of fused black tar-flesh studded endlessly with pale, weeping faces, all grinning with the same vacant, ecstatic rictus. The apical mask—the sorrowful crowned one—stares down at you with its cracked, downturned expression, black tears frozen in perpetual slide.

Instinct work. The briefing file called it the "safest" option for this ALEPH-class entity today. Bodies respond to bodies, after all. Physical handling. Cleansing. Feeding. Something primal enough to keep the mass from remembering it is many things crammed into one.

The airlock hisses open. You step inside.

The smell hits first—not rot, not exactly. It's sweet. Overripe. Like fruit left to ferment under heat lamps until the skin splits and the juice runs black. The floor is soft under your boots, yielding like walking on congealed oil. Every step leaves a shallow print that slowly fills back in with rippling black ooze.

The Mountain does not move at first. It simply... breathes. Hundreds—thousands—of tiny mouths opening and closing in lazy unison, exhaling a low, gurgling sigh that vibrates up through your ribcage. The sound feels like fingers stroking the inside of your lungs.

You approach. Protocol says to begin with basic tactile reassurance: place both gloved hands against the nearest bulge of fused faces, apply steady pressure, speak the designated calming phrases in a low monotone.

Your palms meet pale "skin." It's warm. Too warm. The faces beneath your touch ripple like pond water disturbed by a stone. Tiny black eyes swivel toward your hands. Grins stretch wider. Tears stream faster, soaking into the fabric of your gloves almost instantly.

One of the nipple-maws—high on the left breast-mass—opens with a wet pop. A long black tongue lolls out, tasting the air, then slowly drags itself across the nearest cluster of smaller faces, painting them with glistening saliva. The touched faces shudder in what looks like pleasure.

You press harder.

That's when it happens.

A single face directly under your right palm—smaller than the rest, almost child-sized—suddenly stops smiling.

Its mouth snaps shut. The black eye-holes narrow to furious pinpricks.

Then it screams.

Not with sound. With motion.

The entire surface around your hands convulses. Faces that were grinning a millisecond ago distort into howling O's of agony. Black tears spray in arcs like shattered glass. The tar beneath surges upward in a wave, wrapping around your forearms like living gloves. You feel it seep through seals that should be airtight, cold and slick and hungry.

Bad Result.

The Qliphoth Counter—already teetering at 1—plummets.

A facility-wide klaxon begins its slow, mournful wail. Somewhere far above, Angela's voice crackles over comms, calm and clinical:

"Qliphoth Counter of T-01-75 has reached zero. Breach imminent. All available agents, prepare for suppression protocol. Energy collection interrupted."

Inside the chamber the Mountain begins to rise.

What was once a slumped, quivering heap now elongates upward in wet, cracking segments. Fused limbs—arms, legs, torsos, things that were never meant to bend that way—tear free from the central mass with sucking pops. Each new appendage ends in yet another grinning face, mouth gaping wide enough to swallow an entire person. The apical sorrowful mask tilts downward. For the first time, its tiny frowning mouth curves upward.

Black ichor pours from every orifice in thick ropes. The floor is flooding. Faces bubble up from below like drowning swimmers, mouths already laughing.

You backpedal. Your boots slip in the rising tide.

One of the newly formed arms lashes out—fast, far too fast for something so massive. It wraps around your waist, gentle almost, like an embrace. Hundreds of tiny mouths press against your suit in a perfect circle. They do not bite.

They kiss.

Wet, sucking kisses. Over and over. Each one leaves a perfect black lip-print that burns cold.

The comms in your helmet fill with distorted overlapping voices—all the same voice, sweet and childlike and ancient:

"More. More bodies. Join the smile. We were so lonely. You smell like one."

Behind you, the airlock door buckles inward with a metallic groan. Red emergency lights strobe faster.

The Mountain of Smiling Bodies is no longer content to wait inside its cell.

It wants to fuck the entire facility.

And it's starting with you.