The Containment Breach

They called it Subject G.

It arrived in fragments captured residues from multiple hauntings, compressed into a containment orb no bigger than a snow globe. They kept it cold. Buried. Labeled. Forgotten. It pulsed, once. Twice. Then fell still.

They should have incinerated it.

The breach began in silence. No alarms. Just a flickering light. Then the camera feed failed. When the technician entered Room 7-B, she slipped on something that hissed.

The floor was wet. Not water. Not oil. It glowed.

By the time the team arrived, she was gone. Her boots stood empty in the corner. Her name badge was fused to the wall, half-melted, still humming.

Goop was awake.

Not born. Not summoned. Not alive. But aware.

It slid through vents, dripped down stairwells, seeped between layers of steel. Anyone who touched it anyone who breathed in its vapor changed. Some liquefied, flesh first, then bone. Others became hosts: eyes weeping green sludge, voices echoing with wrongness, muttering memories that weren’t theirs.

Security footage showed faces stretched too far, teeth growing sideways, limbs bending back in prayer. And always, the dripping. Always, the sound of wet laughter.

By the third hour, it wasn’t just Goop. It was Goop-and-them.

A mass of recollection. Experiment logs. Childhood songs. Screams. It learned from what it digested. Grew. Shaped itself into something close to personhood. Not quite humanoid. Not quite liquid. Something between.

They tried fire. Goop smiled.

They tried freezing. Goop whispered.

They tried forgetting. Goop remembered.

The survivors don’t speak now. Their mouths twitch, leaking green when they dream. Some have no skin. Some have too much. One of them hums nursery rhymes backwards.

Goop got out.

Not far. Not fast. Just enough. A drip. A fleck. A trace on a boot.

Now people go missing in odd ways. Shoes left behind, perfectly upright. Mirrors fogged with green fingerprints. A thick smear across the pavement that pulses if you watch it too long.

And every so often, someone wakes up wrong. Their skin a shade too glossy. Their eyes too still.

They say it’s just the flu. They say it’s stress. They say it’s nothing.

They don’t know about Room 7-B.

But Goop does.

And Goop is still learning.