On the night Uncle Johann died, it had been Maria's job to protect him.
She shone her flashlight down the gloomy hallway, sweeping the beam over walls painted a morose, institutional blue. Seven years ago, her mother had disappeared at Saturn Technologies, and now it was Maria's workplace.
A glance at her cell phone showed the time to be 10:02 PM. No reception, as usual, and two hours remaining in her shift. These lonely vigils had a way of messing with her sense of time.
What was she even doing here? Working security and doing odd tasks for Uncle Johann had seemed like a good deal a few months ago. But she hadn't expected the nights to draw on so long and dark, or the memories to crowd in so oppressively.
On her left was the cluttered office that her mother used to share with her uncle. A little further down was the office that once belonged to Henry, but now belonged to Vincent. And on her right was the door to the machining room.
It hurt to be reminded like this, especially when Unce Johann clearly knew more about the disappearance than he let on. And when Vincent, with his haunted eyes and prodigious mind, joined the research team to carry on in his brother's stead, she’d hoped he might help her break through the shell of secrecy. But he, too, divulged nothing.
Whatever Vincent's reasons for secrecy were, Maria's relations with her oldest friend soon grew chilly — as chilly as this awful hallway. She wished she'd brought a jacket. For that matter, she wished she hadn't let her shift partner borrow her revolver.
Come to think of it, I'd better check in with her.
She pulled out her walkie-talkie. "Hey, Felicity. How's it going?" she asked.
No response.
"Hey, Earth to Felicity! Are you there?"
Silence. She'd try again in fifteen minutes, and if she got no reply then, she'd check out the opposite wing in person. With a grunt of annoyance, she trudged further down the hall.
Even after seven years, there were still emergency cabinets on the walls, the same ones she'd mistaken for "emergency snack compartments" as a child, and decades-old fluorescent lights still protruded from the ceiling. Now they were dark. The only illumination came from her flashlight and a scattering of moonlight through the dusty blinds at the end of the hallway.
Her beam alit on the furthest door on the right, next to the office chairs she and her sister had occupied on that fateful day years ago. The door's placard read ANIMAL TESTING, and it was slightly ajar. She paced over and tried the handle, which turned freely.
Somebody must have forgotten to lock up. She fished around on her keyring, but none fit. She'd just have to scold someone in the morning.
Stolen novel; please report.
Although, if she were to take a little peek inside, would anyone ever know? What if the secret project was gigantic rampaging mice? What then, Maria, what then?
She chuckled at her own imagination. Then again, this really could be her chance to explore the lab without anyone scolding her away from the interesting stuff...
A few moments of fumbling found the testing room's light switch, and she blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden fluorescent brightness.
INTERACTIVE SEGMENT: To examine an item more closely, comment in the thread titled "Searching the Testing Room."
"Howdy, flies," she muttered.
The Animal Testing room was lined with cabinets and shelves stacked tall with fruit fly vials, starchy food flakes, and electronics. A plastic mouse cage with a whirring ventilation fan sat on the center table, next to a beige metal box studded with knobs and audiovisual feeds. In the air lingered the scent of yeast, cleaning supplies, and a faint undertone of mouse urine.
✔ Narration Unlocked by Melanthe: The Audiovisual Equipment
A tangle of cables connected the metal box to a bulky microphone and two cameras, both of which pointed directly at the mouse cage. The rig was coated with a layer of dust.
Her curiosity overcoming her reluctance to meddle, Maria plugged the box in. Its monitor displayed a menu in blocky text: RECORD, VIEW RECORDINGS, SETTINGS.
With a few clicks of a keypad, she navigated to VIEW RECORDINGS, only to find an empty list. Had it been deleted for secrecy? Uncle Johann could be paranoid. Then again, Maria was snooping through his research materials.
But whoever deleted the videos had forgotten to reset the settings, and one drew her attention:
☑ Start recording upon noise detection.
Musing on this, Maria unplugged the box again to cover her tracks.
A fruit fly sorting station, which used to reside in her mother's office, now occupied a desk in the testing room's corner, along with an old PC with a battered optical mouse. Maria had played many a round of solitaire on that machine. Next to it sat the can of paintbrushes and the carbon dioxide pad she’d used to sort fruit flies as a summer job.
A sudden squeak roused Maria from her reminiscence. She turned around.
"Hey. A mouse."
The sole occupant of the cage on the table peered out at her inquisitively. And while she might have ordinarily filed this under "adorable but normal," something was odd.
The grey-and-white mouse wore a brass harness that hung over its neck and looped around its front legs. Embedded in the metal at shoulder level, three green LEDs shone brightly. Though the mouse gave no sign of discomfort, it was probably just as well that it was caged alone. Another mouse would've surely gnawed at the device, whatever it was.
Nearby, protruding up through the wood shavings on the floor of the cage, stood a tiny tripod with a flashing green LED at its summit. A mouse-surveying stand? A microphone for mouse karaoke?
At this point, it would have been thematically appropriate for Maria to have said "Curiouser and curiouser," or possibly "Oh my fur and whiskers!" But she didn't. She merely pursed her lips and turned out the lights, leaving the mouse alone, its LEDs shining an eerie green through the dark. Then she stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind her.
As a result, she was unable to witness what happened in the testing room after she left.
First, the tripod in the mouse cage beeped. Next, it flashed three times. And then...