“It’s funny, I can escape from pretty much anywhere, but I always have help from the outside in some way, and without that help, any escape would be blind.” I pause, feeling something deep at the core of my mind like an itch I can’t scratch. It started recently. The first time was when I was trying to sleep, and it lasted almost all night.
“Are you okay, Sam? You look pained or puzzled about something.”
“It’s nothing. I’ve been getting these odd headaches recently. The doc says it’s nothing to be concerned about.” The scratching stops all of a sudden.
Samuel looks past me for a few moments before replying, “I’ve never been able to read you fully, and your mind seems complex, not like the professor. We had a very long chat when he first arrived, and he’s very easily manipulated.” He pauses, looking past me again. “Do you know what Jessica is planning?”
“Jessica? Oh, you mean Abs. She’s planning something, but she won’t tell me any details. She’s like that. You know she doesn’t trust you in the least.”
“That I know. Sadly, our chat needs to end here, and as usual you won’t remember what we talked about.” Samuel looks up as Abs walks back into the dining hall. “Take care, Sam, and warn your friend not to interfere.” Samuel stands, nodding at Abs, and leaves.
Abs takes a seat as the scratching and tickling returns. “What did he want this time?”
My mind feels strange, like someone has been digging holes in it, but the more the scratching continues, the more these holes seem to become filled in once more. Then it stops, and for the first time I remember.
“He’s wanted information about your plan, I think. Oh, and he suggested you are sticking your nose in where it should not be. Just the usual threat, and he let slip that he had a long chat with the professor. I think Samuel is behind a lot of the mess that’s been going on here.”
Abs looks thoughtful and then replies, “I’ve always had a suspicion about Samuel, and I’m certain he’s somehow behind the freakers. The next power fluctuation, I’m going to find out what.” She looks determined and thoughtful.
“By my calculation, that will be by the end of the week. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this? If you don’t get back in time, the chances are you will be stuck wherever you end up for at least five weeks.”
“I realize that, and it’s not something I desire, but it’s something that I need to do. Plus, we need answers, and I think we will get some down wherever the freakers hide. I’ve spoken to a few trustees, and they mentioned that no one has been able to access level one in a long time.” Abs looks around at the room and then continues, “Do you have any ideas where Neil has been hiding?”
“I’ve not seen him around for a few weeks. He’s another that’s decided to go into hiding. I was thinking of checking up on him tomorrow, but for now I need to get some rest,” I say, getting up from the table.
“Yeah, I’ll turn in also. I was thinking of going over a few places and try and get some supplies.” Following suit, Abs stands up and heads over to the tray chute with me, Frank giving us a wave as we leave.
Abs is long gone by the morning and nowhere to be seen at breakfast. Eating quickly, I head out to try and find Neil. I call out to the computer for a route. Having security clearance gives me access to many places. A route opens and I follow it. It’s similar to the route to my own room, but I soon arrive at a blank wall. As it’s not my room, access to the room itself won’t immediately open until permission is given, unlike for the professor, who can override such access if needed.
“Prisoner M2301 does not wish to be disturbed,” the computer replies.
“Neil, open up. It’s Sam. Please open up. I would like to talk to you.”
“Prisoner M2301 does not wish to be disturbed.”
“Neil! We haven’t seen you in ages, and we are all worried about you.”
“Prisoner M2301 does not wish to be disturbed.”
“Fine. I’ll be back with the professor.” Concerned, I turn and call for a route for Professor Brookes’s room. Another route opens up, and this one twists and turns and ends at a lift that takes me up to the top of the facility and opens onto another path that ends at a blank wall.
“Professor. It’s Sam. Can I have a word?”
“Occupant M0000, Professor Brookes, does not wish to be disturbed.”
“Now this is ridiculous, Professor. I need a word with you about Neil.”
“Occupant M0000, Professor Brookes, does not wish to be disturbed.”
I let out an exasperated sigh, turn, and head back down the corridor, requesting a route back to my room.
Neil looks up from his task toward the wall as the computer announces Sam McCall’s presence requesting access.
“Best tell him you are not available,” Samael says as he watches Neil work.
“I’m not available,” Neil replies.
“Sam McCall is concerned with your welfare and requires access to speak with you,” the computer says.
Neil looks over at Samael and understands the unspoken word between them. “I do not wish to be disturbed.”
“Sam McCall would like you to know that he will return with the professor.”
Samael says, “Well, I would imagine that will not happen very soon. The good professor is not in the best of moods. Now, Neil, it’s simple. All I require from you is for you to give Jessica that blade, but make sure she can’t return it.”
Neil looks across at Samael and continues to score a line just above the blade.
The week passes by without any issues and no sign of Neil or Professor Brookes. Just a few hours before the next fluctuation, Abs uses the elevator to descend as far as possible and reaches level two of the facility. Stepping out of the elevator, she is surprised to see that it has taken her to another part of the facility’s engineering section, this one containing oxygen generators. It’s where the excess hydrogen and pod fuel is burned away harmlessly.
Jessica’s estimation is correct, and the power fluctuation occurs right on schedule. As always, everyone now is safe within their rooms or the dining hall, except for one. Stepping closer toward a section of wall, Abs takes a deep breath and slowly steps through.
Abs finds herself between the corridors and rooms, but now she’s able to almost see the layout of the entire floor, but most importantly, she’s able to see through the walls of the corridors closest to her as they become semitransparent the closer she is to them. The rooms, on the other hand, are still obscured, and she cannot see into any of them. It’s hardly surprising why the freakers had such an advantage when they attacked.
She heads back to the elevator, which hopefully will allow her to descend to level one. As expected, the elevator ascended back up through the station after Jessica arrived earlier, now leaving an empty elevator shaft. Stepping closer to the shaft that drops away into darkness, Abs can see a flickering light far below. Looking upward, she sees that the shaft length just disappears into darkness. The elevator most likely returned to the top of the station when the power fluctuations occurred.
Taking a closer look, Abs notices that against the bulkhead of the floor is a makeshift ladder that has been placed against the opening. This is most likely why the trustees are unable to access level one.
Listening for any movement, Abs carefully descends through the shaft and enters level one of the facility. The temperature drops as she goes farther down into the shaft. After the first ten feet, the makeshift ladder stops, and another one continues down. This one is part of the bulkhead of the facility. After thirty feet in all, Abs arrives on the floor of the facility. The view before her could only be described as a scene out of some kind of haunted house movie. The corridor is strewn with material, blankets, shredded and hung up like tapestries. Candles have been placed along the path at points where they can’t set fire to the fabric. Looking closer at the candles, Abs’s implant detects the presence of organic material; the implant then lists the process to render human flesh.
Following the corridor with caution, Abs moves away from the central section and heads toward where she estimated the main dining hall would normally be situated. As she arrives at a crossroad, it becomes apparent that the sound-nullification fields are still operational, as the noise of freakers is heard suddenly loud and close. Peeking around the corner, Abs spots five freakers throwing objects and shoving spears at a makeshift barricade whose defenders look more like the usual convicts of the facility and not the scared and mutilated freakers Abs is now familiar with.
Stepping into the corridor, she heads down toward the freakers. Keeping low with a blade in her right hand, she slowly closes the gap. The first freaker has no clue what is happening until he sees his own blood gush from his throat. The second turns just a little too late and sees the flash of metal and then feels the warmth of his life force spill from his wound. Clutching at his own throat, he sinks to his knees. Abs grabs a spear from her last victim as the other three spin to see this unknown new threat. The closest of them receives Abs’s newly acquired spear thrown squarely into his chest. The freaker clutches at it and stares with disbelieving eyes. The last two freakers scramble for the safety of the walls, but one of them is hit from behind by the defender of the barricade before it can escape. The last disappears with shouts of screaming hate.
Abs cleans her blade as she walks toward the barricade and then stops. Watching the defender carefully, she takes another step, slowly closing the gap to the freaker who is now lying dead with the thrown spear jutting up from his chest, resembling some kind of gruesome boundary marker.
“That’s far enough,” the defender shouts as Abs reaches her spear. She places a foot upon the chest of the freaker and pulls, twisting the spear free. Looking up at the defender, she smiles.
“Who the hell are you?” the man at the barricade calls out, shifting nervously at what he has just witnessed, maybe a new threat. Other movement can be seen through the gaps.
“I’m Jessica from level five. Prisoner F2965, but my friends call me Abs. Long story.” Abs cleans the tip of her spear on the freaker before her and then turns her head slightly, hearing noise from over the wall.
“Okay, Jessica from level five, what the hell are you doing down here, looking like you are just having a stroll in the local park?”
The noise from down the corridor is getting closer.
Abs takes a cautious step closer, replying, “Well, if you mean a park with candles made from rendered-down human fat, then sure it’s a lovely park, but if you don’t mind, I would rather have this conversation in your dining hall than out here.”
The defender looks like he is about to object when another unseen voice calls up, “Let the girl in before the first friendly face we have seen in months becomes another friendly dead face. We have plenty of ex-friends as it is.”
The defender still looks uncertain as freaker faces start to appear through the walls. Abs starts running for the barricade since the unseen voice said to let her in. “Hey, wait. Stop. Let me—” the defender starts to object, but Abs doesn’t wait or stop. She speeds up and leaps for the top of the barricade and dives for the gap, the defender falling backward in surprise.
Diving head first over the barricade, Abs tucks her head in and lands on her back. As she rolls to her feet, Abs twists and turns back to the barricade to see one of the freakers already taking advantage and starting to climb over. Swapping the spear to her right hand, she takes a fraction of a second to aim and then lets loose with a forceful grunt. The spear flies true and impales the freaker through his windpipe, stopping him dead as he lands across the barricade. Abs rushes to the barrier, grabs at the shaft of her spear, and yanks it free. The sound from the other side stops momentarily and then erupts into a new crescendo of noise.
The defender who was knocked from his post as Jessica dove through stands up from where he tumbled to the floor. “Who the hell are you, lady?”
Abs, now climbing up onto the platform, replies as she carefully looks over at the new attackers. “You know, I’ve been getting that rather a lot lately.”
The attack on the dining hall on level one lasted several hours, and once the lights started to flash and blink, Abs realized the reason for the prolonged assault. Her pathway back from here was effectively gone, but during the fight, another five freakers were killed, and Abs learned that the first defender’s name was Bobby. At age nineteen, he must be the youngest prisoner sent to the facility.
The one that allowed her entry was called Carter, and a third that arrived to help midway through the fight was called Jimmy the Fist. Jim or Jimmy immediately struck Abs as a bit of a jerk, mainly due to the way he dragged Bobby off the platform by his neck and then climbed up. Once there, he pushed Abs off, saying, “This is no place for a girl!” Jimmy standing over seven feet tall, even Abs did not feel that the time was right to share her thoughts on the matter.
But still it gave her a breather to chat to Carter, who did come across as a nice guy. It transpired that level one did not fall to chaos all that quickly; in fact, it fell very slowly, as one by one, the inmates started to show signs of needing to be on their own, followed by self-mutilation, and then one by one they would either slip away or just flip out and seemingly become deranged.
The dining hall now resembled a scene out of a war hospital: tables upturned and moved to the walls and beds set up in their place, the food dispensary now some kind of chemistry experiment, the walls and floor around the dispensers now stained with green, yellow, and dark brown, lots of brown, with a massive helping of a blackened patch.
“What’s happened over there?” Abs asks, pointing at the food dispensers.
“Oh yeah, just as things turned from crazy to homicidal, two of the kitchen staff started to dish out brutal stabbings, followed by an explosion. Killed twelve that day, and that was the start of all this we have now. Slowly since then, our numbers have dwindled,” Carter replies as he stares over at the mess with a look of solemn calm. “Now we gather our food in various raids; it’s not much. Other than the guys you have already seen, we have two others that are currently sleeping, Ollie and Kerren. They’re not the best fighters, but they know where to find food and water, and they’re slippery as heck.”
“Do you have any access to the system?” Abs motions to the room.
“No. We lost that some time ago, and now the system has decided to keep all the routes open, which you can imagine causes all kinds of issues. That’s the main reason why we built the walls and the barricade.”
“Why don’t the freakers tear down the walls?” Abs asks, looking over at the assembled makeshift walls.
“No idea. They seem to revel in death and mayhem, but they ignore things that help us defend ourselves. Not a lot of this makes sense, including their leader.”
“Ah yes, the big freaker. I’ve already had a run-in with him, and I’m looking forward to finishing the job.”
Carter gives Abs a confused look but then nods with understanding. “The big one isn’t the leader. He takes his commands from Samael.”
“Who the heck is Samael?” Abs suddenly looks perplexed.
“Well, he went by the name Samuel at first, being all nice and helpful, but once everything turned to shit, he’s been seen on occasions with the spaceman and asking us for helpers, but that was ages ago.”
“Holy crap, I knew there was something wrong about that guy. Hey, wait—who or what is the spaceman?” Abs’s expression changes from perplexed to excited to bewildered.
Carter laughs as he watches her expression change. “Well, the spaceman is a man. He’s just wearing an environmental suit, and he’s been seen being dragged along with some of the freakers. The rumor was that he had been trapped here when the station went online but knew how to convert a pod in order to be able to try and escape.”
Abs looks stunned, remembering what the professor told her a few weeks back. “But what happened?”
“Well, Samael asked for help from us, but we trusted
them as far as we could fling a spear. That still wasn’t far enough, so we told him to go screw himself.” Carter laughs at the memory. “But that pissed him off, and the freakers attacked us for several days constantly. We lost a fair few on that occasion.”
“So what happened to the spaceman?”
“Well, as far as I can work out and have been told, he completed his work and true to Samael’s word, Samael let him go.” Carter points to a cot on the other side of the room.
Abs, feeling positive for some good news, follows the direction where Carter had been pointing, but her spirits drop again when she sees what looks like a blackened, bloated figure lying upon a makeshift bed. “Is he dead?”
“Dead? No, but I’m not sure how long he can last out. He’s desperately dehydrated and starving. Our best guess is that he also has some kind of infection caused by one of the freakers giving him a going-away gift when Samael let him go.” Carter turns and follows Abs as she walks over to the spaceman.
The bloated, blackened appearance is due to his environmental suit. His helmet is placed to one side, and the man lying upon the cot coughs as Abs arrives, his complexion looking deathly pale. Abs kneels down. “Dr. Zorn…Dr. Zorn, can you hear me?”
The doctor opens his eyes after a moment and looks up at Abs. “You…you know my name?”
“I do. My name is Jessica. Professor Brookes told me you died trying to get here.”
The doctor coughs again and tries to sit up when he hears the professor’s name. Abs gently helps him to rise a little. “Brookes is alive?” he asks.
“Yes, he is, and he’s been desperately trying to find a way out of here. The pod you were piloting was hit and destroyed, and everyone thought you had died, but then we saw a pod blast away from here that was far too complex to be designed by anyone here.”
Prototype: The Lost and Forgotten Series Page 12
