Alice rounded a corner with her gun raised. The only thing she could hear was the sound of her respirator and the crunch of loose concrete under her feet. The hall in front of her disappeared into the darkness a few feet ahead of her. She was far enough into the building that any light coming from the front windows was already dispersed.
Keeping her rifle steady with one hand she reached down to her breast pocket and removed a small flashlight. She attached it to the end of her rifle with an old hair clip and some tape she had fashioned there. She pointed her rifle down at the floor and turned the flashlight on. Soft red light emanated from the end. She had stretched a plastic bag over the end of the light to give it the hue. Red light didn’t affect sleeping Shades as much as cooler colors did.
She didn’t know if any Shades would actually be in the building but she had tested that theory before and been wrong. She raised the rifle again to face down the hallway. Red light was good for not attracting entities but it was terrible for long range illumination. It gave her maybe ten or so feet before everything just bled to shapes.
The hallway looked fairly normal for an office building. Or at least what she remembered an office building looking like, it had been 30 years.
“This better be worth it Kat.” She grumbled then took a step forward.
The hallway was mostly empty. Some of the ceiling tiles had made their way down to the floor as well as what used to be paintings. The concrete walls held firm while everything around them disintegrated with time. Just about all of the doors had already fallen down and where they hadn’t Alice had no issue in breaking the frail wood around their locks.
Computers with information about The Disconnect. That’s what Kat said she would find here. So far all there was to find were empty rooms. Ransacked desks and bookshelves full of kindling. She found bullet casings in the third room and blood stains on the wall, but no body. She bent down to inspect the casings. They were from a weapon that fired 5.56x45mm rounds. The same that her rifle shot. Whatever Kat sent me here to find is probably already gone.
She didn’t come all this way just to see a couple looted rooms and call it a day. She steeled herself and returned to the hallway. Further down the hall she could just barely make out in the red light what looked like a stairwell door. Cautiously she made her way towards it, checking two more rooms in the process.
The door was solid metal, a rusty push bar bisected it horizontally in the middle. There was no way this thing was going to open without making a lot of noise. She looked around the rest of the bottom floor and found nothing, even the vending machines in the breakroom had been smashed open. She returned to the metal door.
“Well if someone thought they could smash a vending machine open what harm could opening a door do?” She muttered to herself as she pushed on the bar.
The push bar squeaked and rattled about an inch but caught on something before it could open. Alice cautiously tried to apply a little more force but all she got in return was a groan from the door.
“Damn”
She weighed her options for a moment while staring at the door. She did notice a broken window on the second story but there wasn't anything to climb on under it. The fire escape on the side of the building had its ladder retracted. Alice sighed and took a step away from the door then brought a foot up and kicked the bar in. Slam! The door flew open. In an instant Alice had a foot propped up against the door and her rifle aiming up the stairwell.
She stayed that way for a long time. Rifle aimed, finger on the trigger waiting for anything to come barreling down those steps towards her. Yet, nothing came. She steadied her breaths and broke her staring contest with the stairs. She grabbed a loose painting from the ground and placed it between the door and its frame propping it open. Always know your escape.
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She went up the steps slowly. Careful not to make too much noise. The door leading to the second floor was much better off than the ground floor. It opened without incident. Most of the interior was the same as it was downstairs. Decaying ceiling, broken glass, destroyed doors. The rooms on this floor however appeared to be untouched. I’m not this lucky, something’s going on here.
The first room she cleared had its door wide open. It looked like it was a well lived in space at some point. There were plenty of paintings on the wall, some had fallen to the ground but most of them survived. Picture frames littered the desktop as well as other office trinkets.
She rounded the desk to check the contents of the drawers when she noticed the pictures the frames held. A collection of a man's life. His family. A wife and children, three of them it seemed. Two boys and a girl, she was the youngest, still a baby in what appeared to be the most recent photo. Thomas Burrow his name plate said. The Burrow family. They were probably all dead now, an eighty percent chance anyway. Her heart fell at the thought of it. She removed one picture of all of them standing in front of a front door, folded it and placed it in her pocket.
The drawers of the desk didn’t have much to offer her. A few pens that didn’t work and some old dingey paperwork. The file cabinet did hold some valuables though.
“Looks like Thomas was a snacker.” Alice chuckled. The bottom drawer of the cabinet held an unopened box of snack cakes and a sleeve of crackers. With any luck the wrappers will still be intact. She made a mental note and left them on the desk. She moved down the hall to continue searching.
It was in the third room that she found a body. The room was trashed. Wood from a broken desk cluttered the floor. The window had been entirely smashed, parts of glass that didn’t fall outside covered the ground. In the corner of the room opposite of the destroyed desk was what remained of a body. Alice froze in place when she saw it. She couldn’t see the whole body, it was mostly covered in black tar like webbing. A Strider. And she was right in the middle of its nest.
Alice took a moment to reevaluate her situation. She was not nearly equipped well enough to deal with a Strider. Large spider-like creatures that could phase through surfaces and glide along them. The black tar webbing still looked menacing after the fact but it was a whole other story when it’s still molten hot careening through the air at you.
She wasn’t dead yet so that was a good sign. If she was lucky the thing would be asleep right now. That also meant that its actual resting spot was somewhere further into the building. It was time to make a decision. Continue searching for the computers Caitlin told her would be here or call it a bust and leave.
The answer was obvious to her. She still felt like she should play the part of deliberating just to try to convince herself that she wasn’t entirely insane. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway heading deeper into the Striders lair.
Most of the other rooms on this floor were fairly empty. She wished she could just pass by them and get straight to her objective. There were two things getting in the way of that. One being the hours of rigorous training she had that screamed in the back of her skull anytime she even thought of not checking a room for threats. The other being that she still wasn’t entirely certain what she was looking for.
On the opposite end of the building she found another stairway entrance. It opened up just as easily as the other one. She somewhat anticipated this after seeing how good the condition of this one was. Curious. Why was the ground floor door in such bad condition? What she didn’t anticipate was the pod of Stingrays hanging from the ceiling directly above the stairs.
She brought her light down to point at the ground as fast as she could and winced. She knew the things didn’t react to light, they were blind anyway but it was still a good instinct to have. She brought the light back up to get a better look.
Five or six of the things were bundled up, overlapping one another across the ceiling. Their flat kitelike bodies clung to the stone with suction cup like protrusions. Their sleek black bodies reflected the light. Their nearly six foot long tails hung down like snakes from a tree. Slowly swaying back and forth, searching for its next meal.
Yet another sign that continuing further is a terrible idea. Though it would seem terrible were the only ideas that Alice had on this particular day. She removed the flashlight from its clip and slung her rifle over her shoulder. She made sure that everything ws secure against her and that she had full control of it all. With that she stepped up and between two of the Stingray tails.