If he was right about the hierarchy, there had to be a way to inject the contaminants into himself somewhere in this room. There was lots of storage space up there. They ringed the room, including directly above the doors.
“I wonder what treasures you contain?” he asked out loud. Given the attention to detail that had gone into constructing these isolation rooms, there would be something up there for his purposes. He was sure of it.
The isolation room, Tom realised, had disturbingly high ceilings. They were at least a metre higher than ones he was used to on Earth. A typical adult, without the enhanced attributes they got in Existentia, would not have been able to leap and touch it. That was how high they were, and the challenge he faced was far more substantial than that. After all, he was only a short four-year-old.
The roof was five body lengths above him, and there were no convenient hand or foot holds to assist a climb. Not that he would trust this physique to be successful at something like that, anyway. He needed a different method.
With his brain in solution mode, his eyes roamed the room.
He sharply inhaled and then, with a mental apology to Dimitri his eyes settled on the toy boxes. Stacked appropriately, those three represented two body lengths of the missing height, and they would provide a stable base for additional construction. Then there were the containers for the weapons and the small climbing framework in the corner. If he combined all those elements, he would be able to stack them high enough.
With a sigh, he poured out the content of all three toy boxes and stacked them, two on the bottom layer and one on the second. They were extraordinarily light, given their bulk. They were each almost as high as he was, and fifty percent longer than that again. The climbing frame was placed on the boxes, and then above it went the weapon containers to get the last metre.
The makeshift structure soared above him. It kind of had a series of steps, then ropes to climb, then two more steps.
Experimentally, he pushed.
It wobbled alarmingly, but didn’t collapse. If he was an adult, he would have climbed it without hesitation, backing himself to keeping everything balanced, but he didn’t trust this body.
Tom ran the calculations and decided that so much instability was not acceptable. He switched the position of the weapon boxes and the climbing frame. It lowered the height slightly, but he would still be able to access the cupboard’s lower shelves.
When he pushed, it didn’t wobble, but if he overbalanced, it would still collapse. Tom disliked the design of the climbing frame being off the ground.
He dismantled it, and this time stacked the toy boxes vertically, before pushing the weapon containers up in a hazardous mess on top. It was a complex process. The weapon containers were stacked and stood on to shift the top box, and then the climbing frame was used to push the weapon containers high enough.
Finally, he used the wire frame to get up, reorganised the weapon containers into steps, and nodded appreciatively at what he had created. It was solid. If he jumped up and down, it wouldn’t collapse.
Having prepared as much as he was going to get, he climbed the last two steps. When he looked back, his feet were two metres off the ground. Tom wasn’t too concerned. Even if he fell, he knew enough to protect his head, and even if he broke his legs, he would be able to crawl to the healing crystal to fix himself. Opening the doors was awkward because his head got in the way, but that was the only difficulty. Curiously, there was no lock, latch, or anything to stop him from accessing the cupboard. He had been expecting some sort of mana lock, or a physical puzzle to solve, to stop the younger children from accidentally opening it up. That lack troubled him.
In some ways that was a bonus, because it let him gain access easily.
But if it contained what he hoped, why was there no security?
He frowned.
If they weren’t secured, then… He wondered if he was breaking into empty storage space and then mentally shrugged. He would find out. He leant backwards and swung the doors fully open with the edge of both, brushing his chin and nose.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He sighed in relief. On each of the cupboard doors were was a big red danger sign, including skulls and bones. It screamed stay away even if you couldn’t read.
Neatly underneath the warning symbol was a label.
Warning. Deadly materials contained inside.
No items from this cupboard may be removed from the isolation room.
The isolation room will remain locked until all contents are returned, and the cupboard securely closed. Failure to do so in a timely manner after session ends will result in adult supervision being summoned.
Note: Due to the sensitive nature of the substances, these cupboards are only restocked on a quarterly basis.
That sounded both ominous and promising. Tom couldn’t reach the top, top shelf but he could see the bottom two, and they were both filled with bottles and vials.
Excitedly, he reached out and grabbed the closest one and pulled it out to let him read the small label.
Tier 2 Frotoic Acid
Warning. Extreme caution is required when using this. A single drop is capable of eating through an arm.
Tom stared at the label.
It was tier two!
And it was deadly.
It was way too powerful for him to even consider using. A single drop in the wrong place would kill him. If it could burn through an arm, it could do the same to his skull.
His eyes flickered over the rest of the labels. Almost every one of them had the skull and bones warning.
Strong Alkaline Nectar – Tier 3,
Bottled Flame – Tier 2,
Lodeaye Contact Poison – Tier 2
There were all deadly. They were the type of materials that should have been secured behind lock and key with a security guard in front of them. These items were far more dangerous than he had been imagining when he had constructed his tower to gain access.
Instead, they had been undefended and he, in his tiny, pathetic child’s body, had got access within five minutes.
Tom could feel the fury building in him. What were the adults thinking? What the hell were they doing, leaving this so accessible?
Sure, four- and five-year-olds probably lacked both the curiosity and the ability to build the structure he had. That was kids his age, but ten-year-olds were locked into this room, too. Bored ten-year-olds were left in here, and there was no way they wouldn’t spot the cupboard and climb up to investigate it.
The level of irresponsibility was breathtaking.
He wanted to smash heads in. He could feel the red haze rising, but there was no target for it, so it ebbed and flowed as much as it built. It receded slightly but did not disappear rather it settled deeper inside him.
Tom shuddered at the feeling of both the rage and the fact there was nothing to direct it against. Whenever his thoughts even got close to thinking about a young child getting access to this acid, he almost lost control.
Every errant thought made the fury rise, then discover a lack of valid targets and be forced to drop back down.
He felt beyond sick.
Tom stared at the deadly vial in his hands while another wave of fury subsided. Nope, keeping this near him was too risky. With trembling hands, he returned the vial to its spot and then slammed the doors shut. Everything contained there was too dangerous to be in easy reach, given the emotions heaving through him.
The incompetence was disgusting. There wasn’t one thing capable of killing someone; there were dozens and potentially over a hundred. Nearly everything was lethal, and while there were warning labels, he knew for a fact Bir and Pa couldn’t read and might not even recognise the danger.
If they got their hands on even one of these bottles and splashed a drop onto their skin, they could die.
In a shell-shocked trance, he checked that the cupboard was closed properly and climbed down.
His fury had not dissipated.
His arms were trembling, and there was a pressure that filled him.
It was the room’s fault.
If it was better, there would be no risk. He couldn’t think. The anger was a living thing, it could not be denied. He grabbed the climbing frame and tried to throw it, but it was too heavy. He crashed back, bringing it down on top of him. The corner struck his mouth and teeth.
He had to destroy.
He wriggled desperately out, breaths like he had just finished a sprint. He wiped his mouth and saw red tinted saliva.
Those bastards, what were they thinking, running these sorts of risks?
He screamed at the roof. The tiny helpless rational part of his brain was thankful for the privacy and sound cancelling.
It was the room’s fault. He kicked the toys on the ground, then tipped the structure he built over. The noise of crashing objects made him grin in feral delight. His back complained at the force he had put through it. Naturally, he ignored it and flipped a toy box over to the music of a larger crash.
Emotions ran thick. He punched a wall, once, twice a third time. The plaster didn’t dint.
The injustice of them so causally putting so many lives at risk. It wasn’t right.
His next punch left red droplets. Despite that, he still threw a fifth. His hand throbbed, and he suspected he had broken bones in his fist along with the skin, but he didn’t care.
“Why would you? Why would you, you fucks!” He spun and roared. Toys were thrown, weapons scattered, but he forced self-restraint and managed to avoid the book shelves.
“How many have you killed?”
There was no answer. He stopped hitting the walls. It was pointless, and kicking the toys achieved nothing. This was not an enemy he could beat.
The rage vanished.
Tom collapsed onto the ground and angrily wiped away the tears that had come with his fury. He didn’t know what had happened. The anger had not been his, and the lack of control… he shook his head. That was terrible.
He had to find out what that was about and do something to manage it.