Tobias felt vulnerable in the long, stretching shadow of Central University's Practical Biomedical and Genetic Research Center. Sweat beaded on his brow, trapped uncomfortably beneath the false forehead glued to his skin. His armpits and collar felt damp.
A few cars trundled past on the quiet campus road behind him, each stirring a chilling gust that rippled over his black clothing and sent chills throughout his body. Getting onto the campus had been frightening enough, but now, at his own familiar building's familiar locked and decaled glass doors, the adrenaline in his blood had gone cold. The stickers on the glass warned with bright yellows and reds and familiar symbols; signage of danger, of biohazards, of punishment for unapproved personnel.
He swallowed, dragging the hotel key card out of his pocket. It hovered tentatively over the glowing slot as he took a deep breath. A security guard, he predicted, would round the sidewalk corner soon. If he did not try the card now, he would never have the chance. The odds, thankfully, seemed to be in his favor.
He slipped the card partially in, then pulled out again. There was roughly a twenty-five-percent chance that it would not work and that he would have to attempt to run. Those chances were all he had to survive on the volcanic island, and he had survived. If the chances were the same that it would not work, he feared that it would not.
"What are you waiting for, Doc?" Dizzy buzzed in his earpiece, her signal scratchy with distance and interference. "Security's coming."
The beam of a flashlight bobbed on the corner of the block. No time. Tobias stuck the card in and exhaled gratefully at the click. He quickly slipped inside and pulled the door shut after him, holding his breath as he bolted to the nearest corner and pressed himself against the walls. Concealed in the shadows, he watched the light outside swing over the pavement, outside the doors, into the building through the stickers that colored the light red, yellow, blue, then past. Tobias waited for dark again before he breathed, quickly and shallowly.
Small lights lined the walls near the floors of the dim biomedical building, lighting low-powered paths for the security detail to see by. Tobias squinted, then closed his eyes, focusing the possible futures to the center of his eyeline where he could investigate them fully. Only one guard roamed in the building. A small handful of restless workaholics were isolated in labs and offices scattered throughout. If Tobias was to avoid the guard bound to appear soon at the top of the main entrance staircase, he would have to make a beeline for the far end of the bottom floor to the rickety, lesser-used stairwell, passing two lit offices on his way. He inhaled deeply and waited for a foreseen signal.
The door to one of the offices along the hall closed and Tobias bolted. He wore a pad on the bottom of his rubber foot to muffle its clunking and stepped only on the toes of his left foot as he galumphed hastily past the rows of doors with his arms out, ducking beneath the windows of those rooms that were occupied.
Just as his gloves fell on the railing of the old stairway, the guard stepped onto the ground floor. Tobias bit his tongue and stilled. He focused sharply on the stairs, listening as hard as he could for the faint sounds that had become stronger and stronger in his visions over the week. The pounding of his ear drums overwhelmed his senses. He shook his head and slapped his cheek, shuddering, then gripped the railing tightly. As he concentrated, the throbbing of his ears began to grow quieter. The first stair, he sensed, would creak if depressed on its right half, so Tobias stepped carefully on its left. The second would not squeak, the third would. He hauled himself laboriously up to the fourth, dragging his peg behind him. He carried on like this as swiftly as he could manage, ushered by the fear of the guard's light enveloping him if he hesitated for even a second.
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Up, up, then he stopped and ducked. The guard's flashlight light swung over his head in the stairwell, then swung out like the rotating beam of a lighthouse. He was using the elevator. Tobias could hear the soft whirring of its mechanics if he stopped to listen. When he heard the door of the elevator shut, he slowly unbent his knees and crawled up the last few steps to the second floor. The white beam of light swung overhead, on the landing of the third floor.
Tobias grabbed onto a door handle to help himself stand, knees weak. The second-floor hallway was the most familiar of all, containing the most familiar door that would open to the most familiar locker room and the most familiar laboratory one more door within. Mustering up all the resolve he had left, he rolled his shoulders and made way for the central door, on the left, across from an office that still had his name plastered on its entrance on a golden plaque. He squinted briefly inside, saddened. Empty. All his belongings had been cleared out, leaving nothing but a few dust bunnies on the desk and a couple of bare nails in the wall where once upon a time, his degrees and awards had hung to remind visiting students that he was more than just the teammate of Mr. Might. He limped across to his lab door and inhaled, holding his breath.
All he could see was the trembling of his hands, all he could think of was how he needed it to stop, but all that thinking about his hands did was make their condition worsen more and more, but never enough at once for him to notice how bad he was making it.
"Dizzy," he whispered.
"You need the code?"
He remembered the code, for he had written it. "I'm not accustomed to sneaking or breaking into places. I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. My hands are..."
"Doc, take a breath." His earpiece buzzed with the faint hiss of soda can opening. "The guard is doing a loop of level three and will be coming down the main stairs."
"I know." Tobias pressed his hands into his sweat-soaked hair. The plastic key card scraped against his scalp. "But, if I open the door now, I'll fumble on the keypad. There's a chance that I will stop the alarm, but those odds are not in my favor. I'm usually not so terrible under pressure, but I am usually not doing criminal things that might send my own team upon me."
He squeezed his hands together, grabbing fistfuls of his fingers, alternating the hands, rubbing his arms, splaying and clenching his digits. The guard was coming.
"You need to get into the lab, Doc. Just try," Dizzy insisted. "If the alarm goes, leave the keypad and hide. I'll watch the guard in the cameras and let you know when you are clear to come out again, and I'll shut off the alarm from here once it starts. There will be a delay. It will go for maybe three seconds, five max. Open the door, make for the keypad, do your best."
Tobias moved to rub his face but stopped himself in frustration. Prosthetics. He wrung out his hands, took one last deep breath, and replied, "Okay."
He placed his burned hand, his dominant hand, on the door handle, then raised the key card to the slot with his left. The card jostled against the guides of the slot as his hand shivered wildly. He bit his lip and quickly slid the card through with one resolute motion and the door swung at his simultaneous pull. He tumbled inside, slamming his left hand and the card against the entry wall, and plunging the fingers of his right towards the keys. One-eight-seven-seven-six-two-A-C.
"One," he gasped, finger clumsily sinking into the silicon. "Eight, seven—God—FAR OUT! DAMMIT!"
Aiming for the seven, his finger collided heavily with not just the seven key, but the eight, the five, and the four at the same time, and in a great panic, Tobias frantically searched for somewhere to run. He dived onto the handle of a broom closet just as the spine-chilling alarm screamed deafeningly from all directions and every long white light in the locker room burst on blindingly at once.
Tobias pulled the closet door shut behind him, falling backwards into the lab coats and hazmat suits that hung along a bar. He turned around to part the sterile gear like curtains and lunged behind them, to sink into the corner behind a large bucket. He pulled a pile of the coats over the top of himself just as heavy boots thudded outside and a man shouted.
"Security!"