It was raining. Of course it was raining. And the gate wasn’t opening. Of course it wasn’t. Even if Jeremy was watching, the rain probably made it difficult to positively identify his vehicle. Mark wasn’t bothered by rain, it just all seemed so ominous. He really needed to change his frame of mind. What was it with this facility that had him so on edge? He shook his head and opened the truck door. What wasn’t there to put him on edge? He took a step down out of the truck and punched in a code on the sheltered numpad. It had been placed low for convenience. Just not his convenience.
There was a buzzing sound and the gate began rolling back. He quickly stepped back up into the truck and shut the door. It was really starting to come down out there. As he rolled through the parking lot slower tonight, he found himself counting the cars out of habit. It wasn’t a perfect count, they were hard to see, but there were at least fifty, probably another dozen he’d missed. Why did that seem like too many?
Stop. Just stop. He parked and walked quickly to the doors, which opened before him. Dan stepped out into the downpour, eating a Snickers. “Dude! This rain is amazing!” Rolling his eyes, Mark brushed past him and into the warm lobby. He took off his jacket and shook it off over the rugs that were placed in front of the doors, then clack-clacked his way to the office. Beep went the keyfob, snick went the lock, and “Yo, officer, guy, dude!”
“It’s Mark” he called back over his shoulder and quickly entered then shut the office door behind him. His shift didn’t officially start for another five minutes, Dan was still Jeremy’s problem. Jeremy wasn’t in the office. Throwing his jacket into the corner by the lockers, he turned to go back into the lobby, but a pink piece of paper caught his eye. It was a sticky note, and it was posted to a monitor. It was posted to the monitor. He didn’t have to look any closer to tell it was the one he had written on the night before.
He opened the door and his hand reached up instinctively, catching the wrist of a hand that was coming at him, his other hand grabbed a shoulder and twisted, all before he realized it was Dan, and that the boy had been about to knock on the Security Office door. He let the kid go with a gentle push before he could finish the maneuver. Dan stumbled a bit but laughed at the same time. “Duuuude! You’re like Jason Bourne or some shit!”
“What’s wrong, Dan?”
“Nothing, bro, just saying ‘hi’. Why you so jumpy?”
“You know where Jeremy is?”
“Who?”
He thought a second, “Hatfield, the other security guard.”
“His name is Jeremy? I always thought it’d be something like.. I dunno, Frank?”
Mark changed his mind, the kid was useless. Then something else caught his eye. It was another pink sticky note, but this time it was on the reception desk near the door. He started to walk over and heard Dan, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I was going to tell you. Frank needs your help with something, left that note there and told me to tell you. Duh, sorry, man.”
Clack, clack, clack, Mark picked up the note.
Mark, 7-FUBAR 10-78
Ten seventy-eight was a request for assistance. “I need your help again, Dan, come on.” Walking towards the motion detector, he motioned for Dan to go ahead. The kid jogged in front, sneakers squeaking across the lobby. Green light. Mark clacked his way through, a loud beep echoed through the lobby and a red light shown on him. Another beep, and they were moving down the corridor to the changing room.
Dan was once again very helpful getting the security clean suit on. OK, so the kid wasn’t totally useless. “Thanks, Dan, now you better get back to Neuro before Wanda finds you missing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” came the nonchalant reply.
“Oh, what’s the quickest way to--” Mark stopped. Which room was seven? Cardio? He shook his head, “Nevermind.” He entered the Nexus. Seven wasn’t too far into the route, and he didn’t know those back passageways enough to be sure he wouldn’t get lost, so he would just have to hurry through the route. Why hadn’t Jeremy put the name of the room on the note instead of the route number? Was this a test?
Closing his eyes he imagined the route in his mind, mapping out the turns. It had to be through one of the doors on the right. Probably through the second from the right. He entered the door, counted to twenty, then continued through to a room that was fairly benign compared to most of the others. A few computers were set up around the room, with several mobile trays covered in petri dishes, microscopes, and other random tools. He recognized the room as five. That probably saved him a couple minutes.
He continued to a door back and to the right, which lead to a hallway shaped, he always thought, like a puzzle piece. Six was around a corner, but from there he would have taken a left, so seven was probably this one. He opened a door and stepped inside. The floor was sticky.
“Mark! Glad you could make it,” came Jeremy’s gravelly voice over the comms.
“Yay, backup,” and a few unidentified chuckles came through as well.
He looked around the room. Five technicians in their white cleanroom suits scattered around the space holding glass jars filled with… something. The gloves and boots of the white suits were stained a dark pink, almost red. Broken glass littered half the floor, along with a reddish liquid that Jeremy was in the process of mopping up.
Blood didn’t bother, Mark, neither did gore. He’d seen the worst wounds that could be inflicted on a person. He had been the cause of many of those wounds. What set his spine tingling and caused him to glance away from the jars was the knowledge that he had remembered right, this was the room called “Cardio”, but those things were not hearts. They didn’t look like anything you could find inside a human body.
“Don’t just stand there,” he caught the mop as it flew through the air. He began mopping right around where he stood, making a bit of a path towards Jeremy, where the bucket still sat.
“Ah! Another one!” Instinctively glancing towards the man who was moving into a crouch, Mark watched him reach behind a large pipe that was protruding from the wall. He lifted another one of the things from behind it and placed it in his jar that was already quite full. Mark felt an involuntary shudder go down his back. Had it wriggled? He glanced at Jeremy, but the man was using a set of large tweezers to pick up glass shards and place them on a tray.
Getting a hold of himself, Mark asked, “What happened in here?”
One of the techs who hadn’t moved at all and was hugging his jar looked at Mark. “I’m so screwed,” the voice was one of emotionless acceptance.
“Stop worrying about it, this kind of stuff happens sometimes,” came a soothing female voice, but Mark couldn’t tell which of the other techs had said it.
“I know but,” the one who had obviously been the cause held up his jar, “look at them.” Then he said it again, and there was a hint of a sob in his voice. “Look at them. We can’t just grow these thin--”
A loud male voice cut him off, “Shut up, Zack.” The tone sounded like a threat. It was all Mark could do to concentrate on the mopping.
“It’s OK,” came the female voice again, “accidents happen. You’re not the first person to trip in the labs.”
“I didn’t trip!” Zack was yelling, and sounding very emotional.
“Everyone just calm down,” Jeremy’s very reasonable sounding voice broke the tension immediately. “We’ll get this cleaned up, you lot get those things wherever they need to go, and take a break. We’ll let you know when we’re done in here.”
The five lab technicians looked at each other, then turned as one to look at Mark. He pretended not to notice. They began moving together towards a door. Once they were gone, Mark silently counted to thirty before speaking. “So, what did happen in here?” He had reached the bucket and was rinsing the mop. It wasn’t very productive.
“Who knows. I’m sure the kid just tripped. Trays got knocked over and the organs ended up all over the floor. Happened just a few minutes before you showed up. I was looking out for you on the cameras, but I noticed the mess and those techs just standing around sucking their thumbs.”
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Mark splashed the mop back down and kept wiping. “So do I get paid a janitor’s salary on top of the security guard, or..?”
Chuckling, Jeremy shrugged. “Well, usually there’s a janitor on duty twenty-four seven as well. They do all the upstairs cleaning at night, and the occasional mess here in the labs, but the night shift quit a few days ago.”
A new opportunity occurred to Mark. “Do they need someone emptying the garbages upstairs? I mean as long as I’m mopping up blood and guts, I might as well take care of the upper floors as well.”
The other man was silent for too long. Mark wasn’t fooling anyone in this room. “I’ll ask Sherman tomorrow, see if they want to give you access.” That was not the response he had expected. As long as Jeremy was on to him and not hostile, he might as well go further.
“Do you have access?”
The older man stopped picking up glass and looked up at Mark, a sly smile on his face. “Officially?”
Mark laughed. “You were wasted in the engineers.”
“Probably was,” and he was back to picking up glass. A few minutes of silent cleaning later he spoke again, “I found your note.”
“I saw.”
“Smart idea. It hadn’t even occurred to me to try tracking the blackouts. Of course I haven’t ever actually seen one.”
“Really?”
“Well,” he started, and groaned a little as he stood up from the floor, “I have seniority here, so I avoid the night shifts as much as possible. I have to admit, until I saw your note, I was partial to IT’s explanation.”
“Buggy software?”
“Nope.” Mark paused and looked at him. “Look, Mark, every officer that comes through here is either a young brat or an old geezer. Closer to permanent retirement than myself by a decade or more. The shifts are long, and, well, it’s an odd environment.” Mark nodded to that. “I’ve never seen it. IT has never seen it. The recordings never show it. They’ve replaced every piece of hardware, checked cables, and while the reports are consistent, all of the concrete factors aren’t. There’s no reason for it to be happening, so while the official story is ‘buggy software’, what we’ve really believed is hallucination.”
“Hallucination? Seriously?”
The man shrugged again. “There’s a lot of chemicals in here, and the shifts are long and boring, and, well, there’s other signs. Does seem strange for you to be affected your first night, though. I’m not sure I buy that story anymore.”
Hallucinations. Other signs. Consistent reports. Not sure, but not unconvinced either. Mark thought back to the recording, and the behavior of the scientists. He could play it safe, give it more time, see if anything else happened. Maybe it was just buggy software, though he didn’t believe that at all. He could question the nasally lab tech, maybe he knew something. No, Jeremy was being forthcoming, and it was only fair to return the trust. “Jeremy,” Mark started hesitantly, but then he became suddenly confident. “I can prove it’s not a hallucination.”
The other guard tilted his head. “Really?”
Mark smiled and nodded. “You didn’t watch it, did you?”
“No, it never shows up in the recordings, so I didn’t see any reason to.”
“That’s because you’ve been looking for the wrong thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mark motioned, “Follow me, I’ll show you.” They made their way back through the lab to the changing room, mop, bucket, and jar of glass shards in hand.
“Just leave them in here for the janitors, I’ll let them know what happened tomorrow. You go pull up that recording, and I’ll let the others know the room’s as clean as it’s going to get tonight.” The older man was quicker at removing the clean suits than Mark, having had much more practice. After Jeremy left through the main doors, Mark took the side Security door to the office.
Jeremy came in right as he was pulling up the time and camera in the recording program. “Like you said, I’m the first that thought to track the times, which I’m betting means that all you or IT have been looking for is blackouts in the recordings, which don’t show up.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, the blackouts might not show up, but something else does.” He pointed to the time stamp on the screen to show it was just a few seconds before the time he had written down, then pointed to where one of the techs was standing. “Watch this,” Mark hit play.
The clock ticked away the seconds, and then it turned over to 22:04:32, and a chill went down Mark’s spine. The lab tech in fourteen was working. They were both working. Five more seconds passed. “What am I watching for?” Mark was frozen. His brain refused to process it. He clicked on the controls, rewound, played it again. Nothing happened. The techs never looked at the camera, never left the room. He sped up the recording. Mark never showed up in the room.
“This...this isn’t right,” he heard himself mumbling. He clicked again, rewound it, changed the camera to room fifteen. He hit play. He watched as the tech in the room worked normally. The others never showed up. “I...I…” he shook his head. Suddenly Mark was very conscious of the fact that he had never felt this way before. He had never frozen like this before. He had never felt so helpless. He had never known a time when there wasn’t something that he could do. Always when he heard of people freezing up, feeling “clammy”, or disoriented in combat situations, he didn’t understand it. It had never happened to him. There was always some damn thing you could do.
“You OK, Mark?” Jeremy’s voice showed real concern.
Almost he left. Almost he stood up and walked right out of that room and never looked back. Almost. Then his attitude change. Almost he grabbed the older man by the neck and forced him to spill out everything he knew. To tell Mark why he’d messed with the recordings. Why was he pretending to be so nice? What was going on in this place? Almost. “You know what, Jeremy? Maybe you and IT aren’t wrong.” If Jeremy had messed with the recordings, Mark wouldn’t get anywhere talking to him. If he hadn’t, what could Mark do to convince him of what had happened? “Maybe I just imagined it.” He laughed nervously. “Weird, though. Well, I’ll keep writing down the times, in case that helps anything.”
Jeremy nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry too much about it. If you want my advice, just enjoy the job. It’s no secret at this point that the turn-over here is high. It’s because the others focus too much on the things they don’t understand, and not enough on the people. They’re good people here. Make some friends, enjoy the exercise, and you’ll find this to be a pretty easy going job, with just the right amount of excitement, and nothing trying to kill you.”
Mark nodded. “Thanks, that sounds like great advice.” It did. For only his third day in the building, and only one full shift, this job was causing way too much stress already. Maybe he actually had imagined it.
“Have a good night, Mark.”
“You too.”
The door snicked shut. Mark was alone. Suddenly he sat up straight and looked around, expecting something to jump out at him. It didn’t. He made himself look back at the main screen. The tech in the recording of room fifteen was still working. The tech. One tech. He looked at the live monitor and waited for it to flip over to the current view of room fifteen. There were two lab technicians in the room.
Mark reached for the patrol wand, then stood up. Going down that rabbit hole would drive him crazy. Time to focus on his job. He opened the door. Clacks echoed through the lobby. The wand’s light lit up green as he pressed it to the first button. The break room door screamed, but Mark barely noticed. He weaved through the chairs and tables. Green light on the wand again, this time the button between the men’s and lady’s restrooms. Back through the chairs. Banshee door. Echoing clacks. Green light poured down as he passed through the metal detector. Zip went the retracting keyring. Beep went the lockpad. Snick went the lock. Zip went the keyring again.
Mark glanced over at his reflection in the one-way glass as he walked down the hallway. That clean-shaven face still seemed unrecognizable to him, like he wasn’t looking at a reflection at all. He opened the next door, walked across the room, and held up the wand to the button on the Security lockers, where the security cleanroom suits were stored. The light on the wand turned green. Green. The light had been green.
His hand went instinctively to his holster. The pistol was there. Not five seconds later, he was standing in front of the metal detector. He watched it closely as he stepped in. A loud but low beep echoed through the lobby and a red light shone down on him. Had he imagined this too? He was certain that the light had been green the first time he’d gone through. There hadn’t been a beep. The cameras. They would prove it, they--
Mark looked up at the ceiling. Stepping out into the center of the lobby his eyes followed the corners. It was a high lobby, a good forty feet, but he could see no cameras. Why had it not occurred to him before? All of the cameras were inside the lab.
He turned back to the metal detectors. Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, boop. He held up the wand in his hand and stared at it. Don’t focus on the things you don’t understand. Focus on the people. Had it really been advice? Or had it been a clue?
It was time to get to work.
“Don’t forget Tina’s date tonight. James is picking her up at six.”
Mark smiled, “I’ll be sure and get up in time to put on a good impression.”
She kissed him. “You seem to be in a good mood, things going well at the lab?”
“Yeah, made some friends during break time last night.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Maybe we should bake some cookies tonight for you to take in.”
He nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.” Then he headed upstairs to get some sleep.