*Actions/Sounds*
‘Thoughts’
“Speech”
----------------------------------------
*Beep… Beep…BEEP…swoosh*
Mechanical beeps echoed through a dark room until a loud beep sounded, signaling the open of the door of a machine.
*Gasp…cough…cough*
Cold air rushed out of the machine and a woman emerged from within. Collapsing to the group as she took in a large intake of air before proceeding to cough out, as if her lungs had not had to breathe in a while. While adjusting her breath, she is dazed and confused on how she got in her current predicament. In her vision a blue box appears, she closes her eyes and shakes her head as her vision is adjusting to the dim lighting of her surroundings. Opening her eyes to a ruined room with the blue box missing from her vision. ‘…. Where am I?’ She thinks to herself.
She gets off the dust covered ground and looks around her surroundings, finding herself in a dark room illuminated by the icy blue light emitting from the inside of the machine she emerged from. The room is covered with debris of varying sizes from the partially collapsed concrete ceiling, and everything is covered in a layer of dust, indicating it's been a while since the collapse had occurred. One of the rooms walls that she can see that isn’t completely collapsed is a half concrete wall that once contained a glass window looking in that has long been shattered with only a few large shards still in place and a door sealed by fallen debris. Through the shattered window she can see into a hallway that has a faded painted sign with the only legible letters being ‘-evel 03’, few letters given but seeing them gave her the answer to her question in her foggy mind.
‘I’m in the cryology department…so then…’ she thinks, upon which she has a realization, turning herself around to see where she emerged from. The machine was in an almost coffin shape with blue light emitting from the open cabinet and blue fabric cushioning the inside of it. The outside has a small control panel that is covered in dust and the lights of the buttons are dim and the backside of it has multiple thick cords and wires that run along the ground and disappear under some rubble. ‘I was in one of their experimental cryo chambers…but how did I get in it and what happened to the facility?’ As one question was answered, multiple more had appeared in its place.
Touching the cryo chamber, the metal was unfeeling under her touch, but her arms could feel a severe chill emanating from the inside and evidence that there was ice once present in the machine. After her quick inspection, she decided she should get out of the facility due to the stability of her surroundings. Looking at the broken window as the only way out of the current room, she makes her way over while climbing over the debris. Upon making it to the window she tries as carefully as she can to climb through, but she makes it though with some slight scratches to her arms and legs from the broken shards. Landing with crunching noise from the broken glass on the ground, now finding herself in a dimly lit hallway barely able to as the only light sources being the dim blue light from the room she came from and a flickering white light down the only hallway that isn’t blocked off or leads to a dead end.
With the only way forward being toward the flickering light, with the heavy crunching sounds from the grit and glass as she makes her way through toward the light. Upon getting closer to the light, she starts to hear a soft and slow dripping of water. *Drip….drip….drip.* Entering the flickering hallway she sees that the floor is partially flooded from the pipes that were burst in the ceiling and walls, presumably by the same event that caused the collapse of the facility. With no other option than moving into the ankle-high cloudy stagnant water, she steps into the water and becomes uncomfortable as the water seeps into her socks and shoes, soaking them in the process.
In the hallway, she can see that the flickering lights are coming from ceiling lights that are barely hanging on to their original positions. The hallway leads out to her left and right, but knowing the facility layout like the back of her own hand, she knows that the left leads to a dead end as it heads to the radiobiology department section of the facility. Knowing this she heads to the right pathway as it leads to the main elevators and staircase, wading through the hallway she comes across a glass wall looking into a completely ruined laboratory. With the better lighting, she sees herself in the reflection of the glass for the first time properly. Her hair was dark brown with a white-gray color coming from her roots, and is now so long it reaches to her lower back. Behind her round and cracked lensed glasses, her eyes were now a dull pale green bordering gray. Her outfit, which was once an oversized green knitted sweater over a brown midi-length skirt and long socks going into a pair of black mary jane shoes, has also lost their brighter colors now resulting in a dull green and brown. Around her neck was a lanyard that had an ID card and a white blank key card.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The ID card was partly damaged with the ink faded in some parts of it, but it had the words ‘Fluxcor Employee ID’ at the top of it, a barely visible image of a woman with shoulder-length hair dark brown hair and hazel-green eyes behind large circle rimmed glasses can also be seen on the card. On the bottom was the most damaged, but one can make out the words ‘Evelyn’ and ‘Biogeneticist’; the place where the last name would be, is too faded and damaged to read. Evelyn’s appearance makes the anxiety and dread that she has been feeling build up more. As it appears, she was in the cryo chamber for quite a while, as along with the facility’s state means that no one has stepped foot down here. She takes a deep breath to calm herself, as panicking in this current scenario will do her no good, and she has hope that it's just the facility collapsed, and the outside is fine. While on her wade through the water she passes by ruined labs and offices and notices a pattern of all the electronic key card doors being opened. ‘How curious’ Evelyn muses.
Finally, Evelyn arrives at her destination of the main elevators and stairway, after a couple of minutes of wading through water and climbing over bits of debris blocking her way. The elevators obviously do not work, even if they did, it would be unsafe to do so. One of the elevator doors is busted, and it seems like the elevator carriage fell down the shaft causing it to bend the doors outward, the other elevator door is cracked slightly open with the elevator stuck in between floors.
The only way out appears to be the stairway, Evelyn hopes that the stairs are not in complete disrepair, or she might be trapped underground. She pushes hard against the stairway door in an attempt to open it as she is met by resistance, but she manages to crack it open enough to squeeze into the stairway. In the stairway she was met with a worrisome sight, the stairway had partly collapsed. The stairway is barely visible, with some still functional wall lights illuminating the stairway. Revealing chucks of the stairs that have broken off and fallen to the bottom which is why there was resistance met at the door due to the debris. Evelyn curses slightly under her breath, ‘I should’ve gone with Angela and Adam when they went on all those exercise outings more often’ Evelyn sighs in her mind.
Evelyn psychs herself up in preparation for the climb. Carefully she starts to climb making sure to test each placement for her feet while gripping on anything her hands can catch a grasp upon to steady herself. Slowly she makes progress until almost to the top of the stairway she is met with a section that is left with just rebar sticking out from the walls with small chunks of concrete still attached. The exposed rebar has long rusted away, adding to the already perilous situation. Testing her weight on the closest rebar to her, it is stable enough to hold her briefly, but she would have to be quick.
Having to ditch her slow and careful method, she quickly makes her steps on the rebar going from one to the other. Right before reaching the stairs landing, the rebar she moved onto started to crumble beneath her. With no time to think, Evelyn launches herself off the unstable rebar in a leap of faith towards the landing. Evelyn lands roughly catching her grasp on the stair railing, with the landing getting her right under her rib cage with the pain almost making her let go of her grip on the rusted stair railing.
Fighting her instinct to recoil and cover the pained area, Evelyn pulls herself up the landing fully whilst damaging her knitted sweater against the rugged exposed concrete. She drags herself to the open stair doorway leading to the hallway of the level one basement and curls up on the dusty ground from exhaustion and severe pain.
After a few moments of recovering, Evelyn gets up off the ground and makes her way out of the stairway. Following along an empty, straight hallway she comes out of a doorway that was once hidden by a vending machine. Evelyn took note of this abnormality, ‘Something is really wrong if even the lab doorway was left wide open’. Trudging forward she finds that the access to the ground floor of the building is inaccessible as it appears the whole building had collapsed into itself. Evelyn wanders around the empty and dilapidated hallways for a way outside, encountering the few exit signs left hanging from the ceilings and a barely legible evacuation route map.
Following the routes and signs, Evelyn finally finds a door that isn’t blocked off or inaccessible. The door is an old heavy metal fire exit door that was left over from the old iteration of the facility. Evelyn puts her worn out and battered body against the door and pushes with all her remaining strength in an attempt to escape. Slowly the door makes progress on swinging outward, after a few excruciating seconds the door opens wide, blinding Evelyn’s eyes with strong sunlight. Covering her eyes with her arm she pushes outside with a few steps hearing *crunch…crunch…SNAP!*
Hearing a sharp snapping sound, Evelyn looks down then follows her eyes down the object and makes a terrifying discovery. Laid among the dead dried grass was a human skeleton now with a broken left ulna as it was reaching for the fire exit door.
Chapter 1: Beginning of a Grim Reality