Vacant, as expected. Mark’s plan was a good one, he knew, but it could have been easily botched by a single tech leaving the lab later than the rest. There was a chance they might not recognize him in his street clothes, but if they did they would have immediately known something was wrong. For now, he had the changing room to himself. Keeping his back to the camera as best he could, he quickly dressed in one of the white clean suits.
He had made up his mind. The best option was to enter the labs in a white suit, then wander the labs in a methodical way, checking every door and hallway, but in a way that didn’t correspond to the patrol route. This made it unlikely that anyone who might bother to view the camera footage could figure out it was him. If they did figure it out, he did, of course, have an excuse. He was taking the opportunity of having Les there to watch the door in order to become more acquainted with the layout of the labs. This had the bonus of being both true and something he’d likely have done even if he had no suspicions.
After all, if an emergency happened and he needed to get to a specific room, he couldn’t very well run through the patrol route, losing precious time. Why the white suit instead of the blue? He didn’t want to alarm anyone that might have stayed behind in the labs. Again, both true and likely. The best lies were always both true and likely.
Entering the Nexus he turned left. There were eight doors in this room. The exit, or entrance, he had just come through, then, moving from right to left, the first door was where his patrol usually started. The second door was one he had only ever been through as a shortcut to Cardio. The third door he would exit out of about halfway through the patrol, and then enter back in through the fourth. The fifth door he had never been through. The sixth was where the patrol ended. The seventh, directly to the left of the Nexus entrance, was where he was headed now. It was another door he had never been through.
Mark entered, counted to twenty, as usual, annoyed at the loss of precious time. He had already decided that since he was likely to get lost and need to do some backtracking, he would spend no more than one minute in any room, unless he found something of particular interest. There were twenty-one rooms on the patrol route. One minute each meant about twenty-five minutes, when including travel time between rooms. That was half the available time. If something that needed additional investigation was discovered, this would give him plenty of leeway in studying it.
The next door opened to one he only knew as the route number it corresponded to, as was the case with most of the rooms. Room twenty was one of the bigger rooms in the labs. The ceiling in here was unusually low, with bright lights at regular intervals, that shone down on what he could only describe as small operating tables. They were metal and flat, with a control panel for adjusting their height. On closer inspection it looked like the panels could also control the surface temperature of the tables, allowing them to be heated.
He played with one panel, discovering the temperature could go as high as ninety degrees Fahrenheit. This room, in particular, had been one that always bothered him. It reminded him of a morgue, but the tables were much too short to fit a human body on them. Now the tables were clear, but during patrols, the techs in this room were usually inspecting various “organs” on the tables. Mark glanced around the room then approached one wall which had a long counter.
On the counter were various flasks, tubes, and trays covered with instruments, many of which the purpose and function were unknown to him. Below the counter were many cupboards. He opened a few to find sealed organ transport crates. This was where they stored the organs when they weren’t being analyzed, he presumed. He didn’t dare open any, for fear of ruining something.
It was time to move on. Other than the door he’d come through, there were two exits from the room. Both were doors he’d normally pass through on his route, so he chose the one on the right. It opened into a hallway which led to room twenty-one, the final room on the patrol.
Though a smaller room, twenty-one was crammed with computer stations. A large pipe hung down from the center of the ceiling, through which many cables, ranging from power to ethernet, descended, spreading out to the surrounding standing desks. Along the walls were rolling tables with microscopes. Mark looked into a few of these, but the trays had been emptied for the break.
Turning his attention to the computers, he once again found them to be unhelpful. The screens were filled with what appeared to be form reports, which asked questions or called for measurements that were meaningless to him without context. He attempted to see if there was anything else on the machines accessible to him. Good old reliable alt-tab brought up a new window. It was some kind of instant messaging system. Did every computer have this on it?
Clicking through some of the tabs, with names of different rooms or projects on them, he found very little conversation that he could follow. Again, without the context of the projects or specific scientific knowledge, it was like reading a foreign language. Checking the time stamps on the messages, it seemed that most days the chat rooms available to this station were devoid of conversation. Hitting alt-tab again, the screen returned to the reporting form.
He kept the IM system in mind as he moved on. Three exits from this room. One he had entered, another led to the Nexus. That left just one door he had never been through. From what he knew of the layout, it should lead to nineteen, Neuro.
It did. An odd feeling of unease crept into him as he slowly opened the door, peeked in, then, finding the room empty, entered. He was on the opposite side of the room from the locked door. That door filled his mind. He had to get in there. No, he had to look around, see what else he could find in this room. There were computers, and the locked door. But the computers might have something interesting, and the door must contain something interesting. But the door was locked. He moved towards one of the trays, to examine the instruments on it. His finger was reaching for the keypad.
What keypad? He was standing in front of the door. Shaking his head he turned. Hadn’t he come in here to find something? Yes, to find out what was behind the door. No? Yes? Wasn’t Wanda going to show him what was behind the door? He needed to see what he could find on the computers. Moving to one of the computers, he pushed a number on the keypad. The keypad. Of the door.
The unease within him swelled. The desire to get in the door crushed it. Instinct took over, as it had so many times before in his life, and he ran. Sometime later he came to himself. Where was he? Why was he breathing so hard? Glancing around he recognized room eighteen. Laryngology. He held onto the word. This room was where they, supposedly, worked with replacements for the larynx.
What had just happened? He vaguely remembered standing in front of the locked door in Neuro, an overwhelming need to get through the door consuming him. He remembered running for the closest exit. Not more than thirty seconds could have passed from entering and exiting Neuro, yet in his mind, it seemed to have happened so many long years ago. Almost as if it had been a dream.
Taking a deep breath, Mark shook his head. The actions of the scientists from the previous night rising to his consciousness. They had moved as one. Spoken as one. They had seemed surprised when they realized it. Creepy, Les had said, and she was right. Now he had moved, against his will, acted, against his own interests. Creepy was not right. It was terrifying. Once again Dan’s words came to his mind, “where we keep the alien body.”
No. There wasn’t an alien. And he wasn’t insane. This wasn’t happening, it hadn’t happened it was all just… what? What was wrong with him? Closing his eyes tightly he just breathed. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t crazy. There was an explanation. His mind raced but could come up with nothing. Instead, he counted. One, two, three, four, five, six…
Slowly his heart rate slowed, his breathing became normal. He didn’t have time for this, he had to move on. All he was gathering was more questions without answers. A part of him wanted to return to nineteen, see what was going on, but a deeper part of him repelled the thought. That part of him wanted to run away from the lab altogether, get as far as possible.
Mark looked around the room. It held nothing of particular interest to him, and he found himself inclined to follow that primal flight desire just a little more. Moving to the only other exit, he entered a T-shaped hallway. He knew that the door to his right would lead back to Neuro, and straight ahead to seventeen. Conscious of how scared he was, a sensation foreign to him, it was no surprise that he found himself hugging the left wall and moving quickly ahead, practically jumping through the next door.
Seventeen. He had made it. For some reason Mark had expected to find himself back in front of the locked door, punching in numbers on the keypad. His whole body convulsed in a quick shudder. Embarrassment flooded into him. Thankfully, he was alone. The Marine had slipped quietly behind enemy lines, surrounded by thousands of armed combatants that would kill him on sight. He had been under intense mortar and sniper fire. More times than he could count he had been immersed in the most dangerous situations, where the slightest mistake would mean instant death, or worse: capture, torture, then execution. Never had he felt fear.
This lab, however, had changed that. Closing his eyes he calmed himself, reclaimed his sanity. There were explanations. There had to be explanations. He was tired. Not enough sleep, with long nights in the lab. His imagination and exhaustion were simply overwhelming him. Opening his eyes, Mark refocused on the task at hand.
Plastic shelled stations sat in the middle of the room, bright lights from within providing most of the ambient light. Holes in the sides of the shell led to rubber arms for manipulating whatever might be inside. Stepping closer, he saw that there was indeed stuff inside. Grotesque fleshy objects he didn’t recognize. “Organs”, he assumed. Attached to the sides of these stations were monitors. As usual, they showed nothing of interest to him. These appeared to be touch screens as well, with no keyboards or mice attached. If the IM program were on there, he didn’t know how to switch over to it.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The clock in the corner of the screen caught his eye: 00:28. Shit. He must have taken longer to get a hold of himself than he thought. It’d been more than fifteen minutes since he had entered the labs and he’d only been through five rooms. Time to move. Three doors, other than the one he’d come through. One was the usual entrance, another most likely led back to the Nexus, but he wasn’t sure having never been through it.
Quickly he opened the door, recognizing the following hallway immediately as one of the decontamination chambers. He had been right, it would lead back to the Nexus. That left only one more door. Crossing the room, he reached for the handle. Fear of the unknown gripped him. What if something happened again? What if he was caught in some psychotic episode and lost control? Just the thought made him shiver. Turning the handle, he opened the door.
What was this? A small closet, full of supplies, with a bare back wall. He took a moment to look through the boxes on the shelves. Jars of chemicals, boxes of syringes, scalpels, and other various tools, even a couple replacement rubber gloves for the stations. Nothing unexpected. He picked up one of the custom microscopes and turned it over. Made in Japan. Heavier than he expected. Setting it back down he took one more inspection of the little room. Was that really a wall? Taking a step he got up close to the back of the closet.
A barely visible edge outlined a large rectangular shape. Like a thin door. Gently he put his hand up and pushed against it. The fairly well hidden passage opened, just a little, some force pushing back against him. It shut itself as he let up on the pressure. Pushing again he glanced up. The hydraulic door closer was no different than all the others in the lab, but this one was set to a higher tension, closing quickly, more forcefully. And there was no handle. It was obviously a door, but not obvious that there was a door. Why?
The now familiar sense of dread began to spread out from his chest. The Marine’s response was anger. Enough. He didn’t care what was behind this door, or any other door in the lab, for that matter. What was the worst that could happen to him that he hadn’t already put on the line a hundred times before today? He pushed against the door, opening it a full ninety degrees before it stopped.
A slim passage, barely enough to walk into without turning sideways, led about eight feet before stopping at a wall. This wall also had a hydraulic door closer attached to it, giving away what otherwise appeared to be a dead-end in the dimly lit corridor. Mark inspected the door he held open. There was no handle on the back either. Could it even be opened from that side? If he entered and this door closed behind him, would he be able to get out of the small hallway? Without the light coming from the closet, it would be pitch black in there. And the door would close quickly.
Searching the shelves, he found nothing heavy enough to hold back the pressure of the door, but at least he could keep it from closing all the way by wedging a box in the opening. The hall was quite dark. Memories of a gas mask left in a door jam to keep it from closing sprang to his mind. Someone, or something, had moved that mask, and that door had closed. Luckily that door had been made to open from either side. This door was not.
Embracing the anger he felt in response to his growing fear, he left the safety of the propped open door and felt his way along the empty walls to the opposite end. Running his hands across the wall was useless, there was simply no purchase to grip in order to open the door. Perhaps without the marshmallowy gloves of the clean suit, it would be different. This was insane. Who would put a secret passage in a lab, with no light, and no apparent way out? There had to be some trick to it.
There was always a trick. Turning he moved back to the supply closet. Searching the boxes of various syringe sizes, he chose the biggest available, then grabbed a scalpel. Carefully he cut through the needle-side of the syringe to open it up. Now there was just the tube and plunger. The cut wasn’t perfect, though. He needed a seal.
He kneeled down and opened the box of replacement rubber gloves. Using the syringe tube as a guide, he cut a small circle out of the rubber. It would ruin the gloves, of course, but it was a risk he was willing to take. There were two replacements, it was unlikely they’d need both at the same time. Now that he had a circular piece of rubber, he cut out the center, to make an O shape. Replacing the scalpel and moving back into the corridor, he shuffled his way into the darkness until reaching the far wall.
Mark placed the rubber O against the edge of the door, where a handle might normally be, then he pressed the cut end of the syringe tube into the rubber, creating a seal. Pulling on the plunger created a makeshift suction cup out of the syringe. It was just enough to let him pull the door open an inch before the seal broke and the door closed. He tried again. This time, when the door opened, he managed to hook a finger around the edge before the pressure released. It was all he needed.
The door opened into another small closet. Quickly grabbing a box from a shelf, he propped open this door. Then he placed the syringe and the jury-rigged O-ring on top of the hydraulic door closer’s box. It would be there if ever needed. Moving back into the newly discovered closet, he opened the door which led to room eleven.
Discovering a secret passage between closets was interesting, but in the end, it just created more questions. Why have such a passageway? Was it originally intended as a connecting hall, but then it was decided that storage areas would be more useful? Then why have such dangerous doors, that could lead to people getting trapped? Did the scientists even know about the passage? Where there more of them?
A minute later all of the boxes had been put back, the doors closed, and Mark was standing in room twelve. He was running out of time, and twelve was one of the rooms with a door he’d never been through. It opened into a hallway, like so many of the other connecting hallways. The door at its end opened into room nine.
Nine was one of the largest rooms. Perhaps the largest. It was hard to say because it was divided into two sections, in an L shape. He was in the long part of the L, on a side of the room he’d never been on. A ways down the wall on his left was where he usually entered the room. He had often wondered where this door had led, now he knew. He also now knew what was on the other side of the shelves that stuck out from the wall to his right. Nothing.
It was nice to have some questions, however benign, answered. Passing the shelves he turned to his right. Here was where nine was divided by long, thick sheets of plastic that hung from the ceiling. Pushing his way through the plastic wasn’t difficult, but once on the other side, the temperature dropped significantly, while the ambient noise rose.
Two large HVAC systems pumped cold air into this area, creating what as essentially a large fridge. The redundancy made it seem very important that this area remained cold. More shelves were in this room, filled with all kinds of jars, organ transport crates, and even several cases of bottled water. He assumed they weren’t for drinking since he’d never seen them used.
There was simply too much for him to go through in this room, and too little time. There were still a few rooms left with doors he had never opened. After his find in room seventeen and eleven, mystery doors were a top priority. So he continued right through the fridged area, and into room ten.
As soon as he entered room ten he approached the door on the left, wondering if he’d find another closet, connecting hall, or something new. It appeared to be a connecting hall. Quickly he pressed forward, finding himself in room five. Crossing the room he opened the door to the puzzle-piece hallway, then continued into room six.
Across the room was another mystery door, and he wasted no time. It opened into a closet. All three sides of this closet were shelved. He stepped up to the back shelving and move stuff around until he could get a good look at the wall. It didn’t appear to contain any secret door, but just to make sure he checked the other two walls as well. Nothing. Just a closet. Turning to leave he gripped the handle, turned it, and pushed.
The door didn’t budge. Mark frowned and pushed harder. “Help me.” He twisted, pressing himself against the door and scanning the tiny room. The whisper, it hadn’t come through the comms but sounded like it came from just behind him. It was desperate. There were only shelves. Mark’s heart was racing. His hand wanted to reach for the pistol, but his mind knew it wasn’t there. He had given it to Les and hadn’t yet purchased a new one. The gun Sherman had given him, nothing more than a toy, was back in the Security Office with his uniform.
He wanted it now, as he peered through the cartons that lined the shelves. It may not fire, but it could still be used as a weapon. He calmed himself. It hadn’t been a whisper. Just his imagination. Bracing his back against the door, he gripped the handle, turned it, then pushed with both legs. The door didn’t budge. Still gripping the turned handle, he threw himself into the door. It wasn’t there.
Tumbling to the floor in surprise, Mark fell flat onto his back, still gripping the door handle. He raised his right hand to look at it. There was no door handle, there was a pistol in his hand. It was the one Sherman had given him. The one he’d left back in his locker. The one he’d so desperately wanted just moments ago. The door to the closet was slowly swinging shut, the entire handle was missing. Mark scrambled backward, out of its way, before finally standing. What the hell had happened? Scanning the room quickly, intensely, he noticed the camera. The camera. It would have caught it all. There was yet one more door he had not opened, in room four, but all desire to investigate it had left him. All Mark wanted was to get out of these labs and find out what that camera had seen.
He sprinted towards the door he had come through, it opened before him. No one was there. It had opened on its own. Suppressing the shudders and panic rising within him, the Marine charged through the door. The door to room five opened for him as well, then did the door to the decontamination chamber, followed by the door to the Nexus, each one swinging wide before him, letting him pass through without slowing his pace, each one setting off alarm bells inside his head and increasing the fear rising in his heart.
As he reached the exit from the Nexus it didn’t open, and he had to stop. Opening the door he heard one last whisper, as if from a long distance, “We can help each other.” Slipping through the opening he pulled the door closed behind him. The changing room was still empty. Mark was breathing hard, his heart pounding. Voices reached his ears. Muffled. They were coming.
Quickly unzipping the clean suit, he tore off a glove and reached into his pocket, pulling out the keyfob. Mark leapt across the room to the security door, unlocked it, and opened it just as the main doors to the changing area were opening. Again he slipped through the opening and pulled the door closed. To his left, through the one-way glass, he could see the line of lab techs pouring through the hallway, heading back to work. The time had gone by so fast. Too fast. The door in Neuro, the secret passage, the closet that wouldn’t open and now this. He hefted the pistol in his hand, looking at it closely. It was definitely the same one Sherman had given him, Mark recognized the serial number.
Was this what insanity felt like?