Gah, I pre-emptively guessed that Xan would reply to my edit with "Why would I assume human form? It's so boring". And so I wrote this. On my phone, no less.
No proofreading, sorry.
Brian growled as he escorted his squad of sods towards subsector 8. Apparently, ARM had managed to sneak another of their damnable psychopathic operatives into the base, and he'd already slaughtered everyone with a radio connection to anything outside of the subsector.
Luckily, Brian's supervisor had managed to lock down the area. Unluckily, after the ARM bastard realized he was trapped, he smashed every last camera he could reach with a rifle. So now Brian had been sent in with a squad of heavily armed sods, for some wetwork.
"Okay, stack up, formation B-7" Brian stated once he reached the wall he was supposed to enter through. He readied his gauss rifle as the sods locked into position, as still as statues. "Breach." He ordered, and the front sod slapped a specialized automanipulator onto the wall, which melted into slag a moment later.
All at once, the sods exploded into action. In the blink of an eye, all six of them were through the hole and sweeping the room beyond, but there were no targets. Brian stepped through after them, and was immediately confused- the whole place was pristine, and utterly clean. He'd looked at the video feeds, and saw the carnage taking place- the whole room should have been drenched with blood and bodies.
The confusion passed quickly though, and Brian's training took over. "Set up a Brain shell formation, on me". The sods immediately took up their positions around him, their aim radiating out in all directions. Brian continued forwards, into the only corridor out of the room. He looked to his sides, and frowned when he noticed that the sods to his sides were aiming directly into the walls. "Three, Six, adjust aim forwards." Brian said, and they instantly complied mid-stride.
Once the squad reached the end of the corridor, the exit door automatically opened, revealing a room much like the previous- pristine, and disturbingly clean. However, unlike that room, there was a young woman standing in the center of the room, facing him. Strangely, the sods didn't shoot her. Brian momentarily wondered if maybe they had been set to only shoot males; after all, the ARM operative was male. His thoughts were interrupted when she began to cheerily speak to him. "Hello, Brian! I've been expecting you!". "Who are you?" he replied "We thought nobody had survived!". The woman pouted "I thought you would remember this face; I selected her just for you. You were involved only a few months ago." She closed her eyes and sadly shook her head. "...Marissa? The fuck?! You left this comple-" Brian blinked as he realized what was going on; ARM was known to use insane alien shit that messed with people's minds. This was a trick.
He shouted at the sods to open fire, and he did so himself. However, only one bullet was fired at the woman. A well-aimed shot, which took off the top half of her head. She didn't seem to mind though, and began giggling at a much higher pitch than a human should be capable of. Then the sods looked back at him, without moving anything aside from their heads. He could hear their spines snap, and they each gave him the same uncharacteristic grin.
Brian thought back to his last class on ARM tactics, and closed his eyes while taking a deep breath. He then began the mantra that had been drilled into him "It's a trick. A lie. I know where I am, and what my miss-" he let out a scream as the first tentacle drove through his ribcage, and opened his eyes to see Marissa smiling at him, inches away. "It's real. All real." She whispered to him as the tentacle reached his nervous system. Everything went black.
The pain left. So did his breath. But he still thought, and he still heard; heard the screams of everyone that had already fallen to the ARM monster. Before long, he too joined the choir, forever singing his horror to Xan.