The ARC 03: Fractured

by Alexandra Moody

  She shrugs. ‘We just shouldn’t. I get a bad feeling.’

  Her face is serious and as I look in her eyes I get a strong feeling in my gut that I should believe her. I nod and start running down the other corridor.

  The place is a dead end. I race to the closest door to try the door handle, but it’s locked. Then I move onto the next, finding it locked as well.

  I curse. I have no idea how to get out of this place. What happened to Ryan? Why didn’t he make it back for us?

  ‘We need to go in there,’ Kelsey says, as we move past one of the doors. I try the handle, but it’s locked. Fear pulses through me. Are we cornered here? Is there no way out?

  My breathing shortens and I rattle the handle violently, trying to get it to open. My fingertips tingle from the movement and static energy prickles along my arms as I concentrate on the handle. The more I rattle it, the greater frustration I feel for the small object baring our way. I put Kelsey down and, still gripping the door handle, I ram my shoulder into the heavy wooden door.

  ‘Please, just open!’ I yell at the door, my anger seeming to pulse like thick and violent energy that radiates out of my skin.

  I jump back in shock as a light bulb flickers and then explodes with a loud crack behind me, plunging the section of corridor into darkness. At the same time, the keypad by the door sparks and bursts into flames.

  ‘Cool,’ Kelsey whispers.

  I stare at the mangled mess of a security pad and take an unconscious step further away from it. I didn’t think I could feel any more fear in this moment, but I was mistaken. The anger I felt mere seconds ago has evaporated and been replaced by cold terror. Did I do that? I remember what happened in the MRI machine and my hands shake as I pull Kelsey close to me.

  ‘We should go inside,’ she says. Apparently not even slightly concerned I just managed to turn a security pad into liquid.

  I nod, feeling almost robotic as I move forwards and twist the door handle. The door opens onto a messy lab, with benches covered in large machines, piles of loose papers and beakers of all shapes and sizes. A man dressed in a white lab coat weaves his way between the benches towards us, clearly wanting to see what the commotion is.

  He stops as we enter and his eyes latch onto mine. ‘Who are you?’ he asks. ‘You can’t be in here.’

  I fail to answer him though, because I’ve seen his face before. It’s been such a long time since I looked at the picture Dr. Wilson gave me in the ARC, should I ever find his grandson, but there’s no mistaking the resemblance to the man I see before me.

  ‘You’re not allowed to be out of your ward. We need to get you back there at once.’

  ‘Aiden?’ I say.

  The colour in his face drains and his eyes fill with fear. ‘How do you know my name?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Aiden rushes towards me and grabs my free arm, pulling me further into the room. ‘How do you know my name?’ he repeats.

  ‘It’s really you!’ I exclaim, unable to believe I’ve found him. He’s in his early twenties and a few years older than in the picture I’d been given. There’s a hardness in his eyes the picture didn’t portray and he seems incredibly serious, but it’s really him.

  ‘You look so much like your grandfather,’ I say.

  ‘You know him?’ he asks, the grip on my arm loosening.

  ‘Yes, in the ARC. I met him in the Aged Care Ward.’

  He frowns. ‘I’m calling the nurses. You need to get back to your room.’

  ‘Wait!’ I yell, holding out my hand to stop him. I glance back over my shoulder to the door. ‘Please don’t, let me explain. I have something you’ll want to hear.’

  ‘I highly doubt that,’ he responds, lifting his cuff to look at the screen.

  ‘Your grandfather wanted me to give you a message.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asks, glancing up at me from his cuff.

  ‘Your grandfather, Dr. Wilson, helped me escape the ARC. He gave me a picture of you and drew a message for you on the back of it.

  ‘What was the message?’

  ‘I don’t have it here, but I could draw it…’ I hesitate. ‘If you can you help us get out of here.’

  Aiden looks around the room. ‘That will be difficult,’ he responds.

  ‘Please. We can’t stay here any longer, we need to get out.’

  Aiden folds his arms across his chest. ‘This isn’t a game. That message could be important.’

  ‘I know this isn’t a game. I’ve been locked in this place against my will and experimented on for weeks now. I am more than aware how little this is a game. We’ve escaped and there are recruiters coming for us. You have to help us now or I won’t be able to give you the message.’

  His eyes soften as he looks at me. ‘It’s not simple. There’s only one way out of here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It takes time, which you don’t have. Recruiters will come and secure the rest of this floor, searching for you two. You maybe have a few minutes before you’re found and I expect you’ll be put in solitary for attempting to escape,’ he says, nodding his head at me.

  I ignore the way my heart falters as I consider time in solitary. ‘How much time do you need?’

  ‘It’s not me that needs it. The only way out is from the outside.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘This place is completely walled in. The only way out is with someone talented who can get in and out either by teleporting or walking through the walls. There is one spot this can happen at, that doesn’t constantly have the inhibitor sensors on, and it’s heavily guarded.’

  ‘So, it’s possible,’ I conclude.

  ‘Yes. It’s possible.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  He scratches his face. ‘I don’t know, maybe a few hours. I have contacts on the outside, but it depends on them.’

  I hear footsteps from far down the hallway. ‘People are coming this way. What do we do?’

  His eyes flick up to look at the door behind me. ‘The only way out is back the way you came, if they’re already here there’s no escape.’

  I glance over my shoulder to the door. ‘Then we’re doomed.’

  Kelsey lets out a little whimper and I lift her up in to my arms. ‘It will be okay.’

  The men outside the room shout to each other as they discover the broken security pad at the entrance to the lab.

  I face them as they burst into the room. There are six of them by the door, all dressed in black, their faces filled with outrage.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ the man in front yells.

  ‘Elle?’ Kelsey whispers to me, her small voice shaking, as they move closer.

  ‘It’s going to be fine,’ I respond, gripping her more tightly in my arms. I look up to the men moving towards us. ‘I’m sorry we’re out of our room. We were scared when the siren went off. We thought there might be a fire and got lost trying to get away.’

  ‘She’s right, I was just about to bring the girls back to their room…’ Aiden says.

  ‘Give the girl to us,’ one of the men says to me, ignoring Aiden.

  I take a step backwards. ‘No, I won’t leave her with you.’

  One of the men disappears and reappears next to me. Before I can react, he wrenches Kelsey from my arms, disappears again and reappears behind the others.

  Kelsey screams and starts to cry.

  ‘Please don’t hurt her!’ I shout out. As I do the light bulb above my head explodes and glass shatters over my head. I throw my arms over my face to cover it from the shards that fly down on me.

  ‘Will someone get an inhibitor out!’

  I drop my arms from around my head and look up at one of the recruiters who is taking hesitant steps towards me. He holds his arms out in front of him and a black glass contraption glints in his hands.

  ‘I need you to calm down. Nothing bad will happen to you or your friend, we’re just taking her back to the children
’s ward. We want to make sure she’s okay.’

  My hands feel like they are pulsing with anger and energy. I instinctively hold them out in front of me in defence as the recruiter takes a step nearer. ‘Don’t come any closer!’ I warn.

  ‘We know you were trying to escape,’ the man says. ‘But, everything will be okay if you just calm down and come with us.’

  ‘No!’ I roar. A tremor ripples through the room, as though it has been shaken by the very sound of my voice, causing me to stumble backwards against one of the benches. A slow rumbling noise echoes as the room continues to quake and small cracks splinter out on the ground around my feet. Several beakers roll off the table, their glass shattering in a high-pitched clamour when they hit the ground.

  My mind feels foggy and I struggle to think clearly. I notice the man take another step nearer. ‘I said, don’t come any closer!’

  A hissing noise reaches my ears and I glance down at my hands. Where I have placed them on the metal bench looks like it has been covered in a layer of shimmering blue frost that slowly expands outwards, reaching for the broken shards of glass that lie just beyond. I rip my hands away, looking at the two things with fear.

  ‘I said, don’t…’ I stagger forwards and sway on my feet. My head fills with a shooting pain and I drop to my knees, clawing my hands against my forehead, willing it to stop.

  ‘Make it stop, please make it stop,’ I beg.

  My body starts convulsing and I sink onto the floor. My world is filled with pain, my skin blazing with heat and searing with cold all at once. I scream as my body buckles and all the pent up energy swelling inside me escapes in one powerful surge. I feel it scorching me as it rips through my skin, leaving the air around me cold. I collapse back against the ground, feeling completely empty inside.

  As I succumb to the welcome invitation of the darkness that pulls me under I feel something cool slipped onto my wrist and the buzzing feeling disappears as I black out.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘Why is she still sleeping?’ I hear Kelsey ask, her high-pitched voice dips and rises in the singsong way it does, so I immediately recognise it.

  ‘I think she’s waking up now,’ comes a man’s response.

  I slowly blink my eyes open to see Aiden and Kelsey looking down at me from above. The room is dark and a soft blue light illuminates their faces. While Kelsey beams at me, Aiden’s forehead is furrowed with a frown. ‘You’re Elle Winters, aren’t you?’ he asks.

  I slowly nod. ‘What happened?’ I croak.

  ‘You exploded,’ Kelsey says, her eyes twinkling with excitement.

  ‘I what?’ I shift my attention from Kelsey to Aiden.

  ‘You used one of your talents and it didn’t end well. We need to get you out of here,’ Aiden explains.

  ‘Talents? What did I do?’ I ask, sitting up so quickly blood rushes to my head. ‘Woah,’ I whisper, as I get a look at the room around me. Though the room is darkened, blue emergency lights glow down upon a sparkling white blanket of snow and ice that appears to cover everything. Like one of the impact winter storms had erupted inside the room, the place looks like it’s been hit by a blizzard.

  My eyes drop onto a frozen statue before me. I can just make out the features of one of the recruiters who’d been closest to me before I passed out. ‘I did that to him?’ I ask, tears creeping into the corners of my eyes as I start shaking. ‘Is he going to be okay?’

  ‘They’ll get a crew in here,’ Aiden says, gently putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sure they’ll be able to help him and the others.’

  ‘You should’ve seen yourself!’ Kelsey exclaims. ‘It was awesome!’

  My attention moves to Kelsey and I grab her arms to inspect her for any damage I inflicted. ‘How aren’t you hurt?’ I ask. ‘You were just there!’

  ‘You would never hurt me,’ she says simply.

  ‘This is incredible,’ Aiden’s voice interrupts. ‘I’ve heard about you from the other doctors. You’re the one they talk about.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your mutation is different to the others here. You’re special. They have been trying to give you talents, and it has obviously worked. I doubt you’ll ever see the outside of a lab again if they see this. Who knows what else you can do.’

  ‘But… why me?’

  ‘Your mutation allows you to absorb and adapt to other talents.’ His eyes light up as he says this. ‘They’ve been talking about you for weeks. You’re vital to their research and if they see how well it’s working they’ll step up their experiments. Like I said, you need to leave.’

  I try to understand what he’s just said, but right now it feels beyond me. His words feel as though they are spoken in a foreign language. He may think I’m special, talented even, but I feel like I’m a monster.

  ‘I’ve already contacted someone on the outside who can help. It’s not ideal, and it’s risky, but we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. If they catch you now, there will be no escape.’

  I nod, trying to gather my frayed nerves together and compose myself. I slowly draw myself up and stand, though I feel unsteady on my feet. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Follow me,’ he replies, making his way past the frozen bodies to the door that leads back to the corridor.

  The passage is pitch black and silent; the siren that sounded earlier now gone. Kelsey shuffles closer, gripping my hand tightly in hers as Aiden lights up his cuff and flashes the beam into the darkness. I look down to do the same with my own, but my cuff is gone and on my wrist is a contraption I haven’t seen before.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask, lifting my wrist closer to inspect it. It’s similar to my usual cuff, but thinner and instead of clear glass it’s black. It looks like the device that had been in the recruiter’s hand before.

  Aiden turns back, flashing the light onto the device.

  ‘It’s a wearable inhibitor, it will stop your talents so we don’t have a repeat of what happened in my lab.’

  ‘Did you put this on me?’

  ‘Yes. It’s for your own safety,’ he replies. ‘Come on, we have to move quickly now.’

  We make our way through the darkened building slowly, constantly checking for other doctors and recruiters. The hallways are deserted though and the emptiness sets me on edge.

  ‘Why is it so dark?’ Kelsey asks.

  ‘I think you can thank Elle’s little performance back there for the darkness,’ Aiden replies. ‘Though I’m surprised the generators haven’t kicked in out here.’

  I don’t know if it’s the eerie silence, the darkness or the fact I caused the building to completely black out, but shivers creep down my spine. I shouldn’t be able to cause this. No one should.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I ask, keeping my voice quiet. We haven’t heard so much as a whisper since leaving Aiden’s lab and it’s making me nervous.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replies, his unease obvious.

  ‘Surely they would have come running after I “exploded” as Kelsey put it.’

  He glances back at me, before turning and moving forward. ‘I have no clue where they all are.’

  I become increasingly nervous. This has all gone way too smoothly so far. We’re almost to the end of a corridor when the light from another cuff appears around the corner revealing a doctor coming towards us. The three of us freeze, becoming statues as the man approaches.

  ‘Follow my lead,’ Aiden whispers. ‘And keep your head down, we can’t have him seeing who you are.’

  ‘Is that you Aiden?’ the doctor says, as he gets close.

  ‘Yeah,’ Aiden responds.

  I hold my breath as we continue towards the man.

  ‘Absolute nightmare this is, isn’t it?’ he says, raising his hand to indicate the darkness.

  ‘Definitely,’ Aiden responds.

  The man lifts his light to shine down on the faces of Kelsey and me. I keep my eyes glued to the floor. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Just
two patients. I’m returning them to their room.’

  The man takes a step closer, the beam of light upon my face becoming brighter.

  ‘I thought we had nurses for that,’ he says.

  Aiden smiles pleasantly. ‘Well, nurses are a little hard to come by in the dark.’

  The light drops from my face. ‘I suppose so. Well, don’t take too long returning them, the staff have all been told to stay in their rooms. Don’t want to be caught out here when the squad arrives.’ The man sounds nervous and he glances anxiously around as though expecting someone to jump out at him from the shadows.

  Aiden’s back stiffens. ‘No, I suppose not. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Okay,’ the man replies, as he continues on his way.

  ‘That was close,’ I say, once we’re clear of him.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ Aiden says. ‘If the squad are on their way we don’t have much time.’

  ‘Who are the squad?’ I ask, walking quickly to keep up with Aiden.

  ‘They’re the guys you send when all hell breaks loose.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound promising.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  We move through the hospital as quickly as we dare in the dark. Aiden slows when he sees a lit corridor up ahead. He nods in its direction. ‘You turn right at the end of the corridor and the bridge is the first door on the left.’

  ‘What bridge?’

  He goes to respond, but pauses and then glances over his shoulder, peering into the darkness behind us. His eyes search the shadows as though expecting to find someone there, and my heartbeat quickens as I turn and follow his gaze.

  I don’t see any movement or hear any sound other than the soft, almost inaudible breaths of Aiden and Kelsey beside me. Aiden taps my shoulder and jerks his head at the door closest to us. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone around, but we’ll go in here just to be safe,’ he whispers.

  I nod and, holding Kelsey’s hand tight, follow him into what appears to be another lab. Aiden shines the light from his cuff around the room, before allowing us inside. He’s quick to find the emergency lights in the lab and turns them on, illuminating the space in a soft blue light.