by John Darling
Aside from the main floor, each one contains long hallways with several offices and bedrooms. Kicking in each door and clearing each room was taking longer than I had expected and we needed to move faster. It took us half an hour to get to the fifth floor, and we hadn’t heard a single peep. We were just about to move on to the sixth floor, when I heard a faint knocking coming from one of the rooms at the end of the main hallway. Keith kicked in the door and Sophia signaled over to the closet where the knocking appeared to be coming from. I raised my rifle and braced myself for what could possibly come out at us. Keith slowly opened the door and jumped back. I was about to pull my trigger, but a frantic voice stopped me.
“Wait! I’m Doctor Victor Lindenburg and I’m with S.T.O.R.M.! Please don’t shoot!”
I could not have been more relieved. Someone was alive. He was just an innocent doctor, but his life changed everything about this mission. We needed to know everything he knew, and fast. Keith helped him to his feet and quickly demanded information.
“Several hours ago, our emergency alarms started going off and we were told to report to the safe house on the forty-seventh floor. I ran back to my room to grab a few things, but while I was doing so the power went out. So I locked myself in here hoping someone would come. I have no idea what the alarms were for.”
“How well do you know this building? Is anyone else alive? We need to get to that safe house immediately. A detonation order has already been given.”
“Yes, I’ve lived in this place for twenty-three years. I’m not sure if anyone else is alive but you won’t be able to get past the twenty-sixth floor.”
The doctor came over to me and looked right into my eyes. The terrified look on his face made me feel very uneasy. I hesitated to ask why we wouldn’t be able to get past the twenty-sixth floor.
“That floor is the beginning of twelve floors that house all of our labs. When the power went out, the emergency nuclear reactor didn’t go on like it should have. All of those labs house live experiments that are held in cells with electrical restraints. With no power, those experiments are free to move as they please…”
Sophia cut in and concluded that the experiments were the targets she had read on her scope earlier. These targets must also have been the Stage Five infections Captain Kenneweg had told me about. I asked the doctor if we could avoid those floors, but he informed me that the staircases got more intricate after the twelfth floor. The only way to the top was up various staircases in several different locations on each floor. This means we had to go directly through the labs if we wanted to get to the top of the building. My stomach dropped yet again and I felt like I was going to puke, but we couldn’t stop now. Besides, the building hasn’t been destroyed yet, so maybe Kenneweg has convinced them to hold off on the detonation for a little longer…
Chapter Twenty-Five: Contained Chaos
Drops of sweat dripped off my face as our four person team slowly and silently tip-toed down the halls of the twenty-sixth floor. The beginning of the laboratory was just a few feet ahead of us now. My fear for our lives multiplied with each step that we take. On both sides of us are glass tanks with people inside connected to webs of wires. Each person appeared to be sleeping within their glass cage. We walked by at least fifty cages before finding the staircase to the next floor. If all of the targets on the following floors were sleeping, then we could slip past them without firing a single shot. Sophia showed me her scope and each person in the tanks had a heat signature higher than any I’ve seen before. These were all of the Stage Five targets that Captain Kenneweg had been talking about. It’s crucial that we not make any noise and wake the sleeping dead.
Hearing the harmony of slow breathing among each person in their cage as we passed was one of the most frightening sounds that I had ever heard in my life. The four of us crept past each tank and carefully stepped over the giant cables lying on the floor. I instructed Sophia and Keith to keep their heads on a swivel. One false step would be the difference between life and death. We were almost at the end of the hall and my heart was racing.
Regrouping at the stairwell, I checked on the rest of my team and made sure we are ready to go up to the next floor. The three of them didn’t say anything. Keith and Sophia looked just as nervous as I was, while the doctor looked like he was going to need a fresh set of pants. We had eleven more floors like this and I am really doubting if we are ever going to make it through all of them. However, there was no time to consider going back. We had come too far already.
Our transit through floors twenty-seven through thirty went by smoothly. We were able to weave in between all of the human fish tanks without waking any of them up. I tried my best not to look at any of them as we walked by, but I accidently looked at one right in its eyes on the twenty-eighth floor. I jumped backward a few feet and raised my gun. I pointed it right at the body because I thought for sure that he was going to jump out at me, but the doctor informed me that some of them slept with their eyes wide open. I lowered my rifle and examined the person in the tank for a minute. You could barely tell that it was still a human. The bare body was disfigured with veins protruding from its skin in every direction. The person also didn’t have any hair. Their pale skin looked paper thin and almost worn away in most places. Without a single pound of fat on its body, you could make out the entire skeletal system of the being. It was creepy. Before I could stare at the body any longer, Keith tapped me on the shoulder and we started moving again.
The four of us were gathered up in the stairwell and about to go up to the thirty first floor. Just before we entered the doorway to the staircases, the doctor started breathing heavily. After a few seconds, he grabbed his chest and started hyperventilating. We have to get him to calm down before we moved any further. I am not going to let him get us killed. Any sudden noises will no doubt wake one of them up.
“Victor, you’re going to need to get it together. Focus on my voice. We have to get to the top.”
He started mumbling and I clenched his arm as hard as I could.
“You need to relax now. If there’s something you need to say, take a deep breath, swallow, and tell us.”
He took a deep breath. Upon exhaling, he turned to me and grabbed my shirt.
“If we let just one of those things out, they will kill everyone. They won’t stop either! They will kill everyone until there is no one left to kill. You understand?”
I removed his hand from my shirt and nodded. We had to get to the top. The doctor thankfully pulled himself together and our four man unit started moving again. We only had eight more floors to get through before we were clear of the danger areas. I took a deep breath, looked over at Sophia, and opened up the door to thirty first floor.
Our pace picked up as we successfully passed through each floor. Before we knew it, we found ourselves staring at two doors with giant numbers that read ‘38’. I was about to push the door open when the doctor spoke up.
“Wait! This is the deadliest floor. If we so much as breathe the wrong way, they’ll hear us and wake up. These experiments have senses that are far more advanced than any other species. They can especially smell, see and hear much better than we, or any animal on earth, can. We need to get through this floor as quickly as possible. Once we get to the other side, there’s a huge steel door that separates the lab floors from the housing floors. Beyond that door, we’re safe.”
I took my hand off the door and paused for a moment. This was a make or break moment. I wasn’t excited at all to walk through the worst batch of infection experiments, but if getting to that door meant safety, then I was all for it. This was the most stress I think I’d ever put my body under, and we hadn’t even fired a single shot. I looked at Keith and Sophia. Instead of looking scared this time, I was surprised to find looks of confidence and determination occupying their faces. It’s moments like this that made me happy to have them by my side. The doctor, however, still looked like he was going to need some fresh pants after this was over.
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I opened the door and raised my gun. There were about three hundred feet in between us and the steel door of freedom. Looking around in every direction, I braced myself and took the first step into the room. Keith, Sophia and the doctor followed suit and we resumed our stealth mode. We’d made it through eleven floors of hell so far. Whether it was luck or skill that had gotten us through didn’t matter. The only thing that counted now was getting through this last one.
We came within fifty feet of the door when I heard a weird sound from Keith. I turned around and saw him desperately trying to hold back a sneeze. His eyes are fluttering and I can see pockets of severe strain in his face and neck. We had to get out of here now. I picked up the pace and set my sights directly on the door. We were about ten feet away from it when suddenly a noise shattered the silence and stopped me in my tracks. I froze and turned around to find Keith’s face buried in his elbow. He had tried to hold back the sneeze but, he couldn’t. My eyes widened and I glared right at him. He eyes were just as wide and looking back at me.
The four of us stood frozen hoping the noise didn’t wake any of them up. For a moment, everything seemed OK. I was about to let out a sigh of relief when I heard a small cracking noise. I couldn’t tell what it was at first but I quickly figured out that it was the sound of glass splitting. One of the glass tanks behind us burst and all of the fluid in the tank rushed out onto the floor.
“RUN!!”
We all sprinted towards the steel door and I reached for the handle but it didn’t budge. Victor screamed as we heard another crash.
“Get out of the way! I know the passcode!”
Victor rushed past me and I turned around to find Sophia letting bullets fly toward the monster hurdling towards us. The creature went down, but it had taken several headshots. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be our only problem.
I looked around to see every other caged person awake and fighting to break out of their glass tanks. This was going to go from bad to total hell in a matter of seconds. Their dark green eyes stared us down and it looked like we only had about thirty seconds or so before we were totally screwed. I set my sights on the closest person and fired my weapon. Keith didn’t hesitate to do the same.
“How’s that door coming along? Things just got real over here!!”
The three of us let bullets fly out in every direction. The diseased people were coming at us like enraged animals. There must have been at least fifty of them. I focused on killing one at a time but each one was taking too long to kill. The bullets were penetrating their skin however they weren’t even slowing them down the way bullets should. The only thing slowing them down was the headshots. The problem was that it took three to four headshots before each being stopped moving. Based on the amount of monsters still moving, we were going to run out of ammo before even half of the things were down. Just then, I heard a loud clicking sound.
“Door’s open! Let’s go!”
Keith and I stopped shooting and joined Victor on the other side of the door.
“Sophia, c’mon! We may need those bullets later!”
She stopped shooting after killing three more threats and rushed toward the door. We slammed it shut as soon she was clear. The steel door locked and we all backed away from it. We heard a series of “thuds” as the experiments attacked the door from the other side. Thankfully, it didn’t budge, confirming what Victor had promised earlier. We were in fact safe… for now.
“What the hell were those things?”
Keith hadn’t been too happy about our little encounter and put a gun to Victor’s head. I immediately intervened as Victor begged for mercy.
“Killing him won’t do anything! Lower your weapon, Keith! We still have a job to do!”
Keith lowered his weapon and started to cool off.
“I told you all before. Those are the most deadly things you will ever see in your life. What we do here is in search for a cure however, with research comes experimentation. With experimentation comes failure. Unfortunately, almost everything in this building is a failure. The only people in the world that can change that are upstairs. We need to get to them now.”
Victor is right. We do need to get to them, now more than ever. Keith is ready to go again and we formed back up in our triangle formation. Victor informed us that we wouldn’t encounter any resistance since the next eight floors were all staterooms where most of the people working in the Nucleus lived. Regardless of the nature of the floors ahead, I instructed Sophia and Keith to remain on high alert.
Getting through the next eight floors was a breeze compared to the lab section of the building. The four of us arrived onto the forty-seventh floor somehow without a single scratch. I feared that we were running out of time since it had been at least two hours since we had entered the building. My greatest fear was still the possibility of High Command blowing this whole thing up with us still inside. But I couldn’t let that thought slow me down because we still had a job to get done.
Victor walked ahead of us and approached what looked like elevator doors. He pressed his hand up against the left side of the doors and a blue light flashed. It looked like a typical hand scanner that most S.T.O.R.M. bases had nowadays. The doors opened up and Victor was immediately attacked by several other people. They had weapons and were yelling but stopped once one of them recognized Victor, and started hugging him. A strange feeling of joy came over me as I realized that we might have just found the three hundred and fifty eight other Stormers.
“Hey Trent, Keith, Sophia. Come over here. Meet Dr. Daniel Falco. He’s the lead scientist here and Commanding Officer of the Nucleus. Sir, without these three, I would not be standing here right now.”
I shook Doctor Falco’s hand and introduced myself.
“Trent, what’s going on outside? Obviously, you were sent here for a reason. Please tell me you have some good news for us.”
I informed him of the status of the World Trade Center and the threat of detonation at any second. We had no time to lose. Now that we had found the people we were looking for, it was time to go.
“Sir, what is the quickest way out of here? And if we could avoid the lab floors that would be preferred.”
Victor explained to him that some of the experiments had gotten loose. Dr. Falco asked if the evacuation plan was by air but no way was that possible. Three hundred people was too many to evacuate with just one helicopter, especially with all of the media focused on Manhattan.
“There has to be another option. Is there any sort of back staircase or fire escape that can get us all to ground level? It’s not ideal, but we can try to get everyone out through the way we came in.”
Dr. Falco paused for a second before answering; “I can do you one better.”
“Please enlighten us.”
“There’s a series of ladders that run from the fortieth floor all the way down to four stories underneath the foundation. Down there, there is an old subway station that was built in the eighties for emergencies. There should be plenty of cars available and we could definitely get everyone out that way. The problem is, how do we get there with all of these experiments running wild?”
“I can answer that. Officers Kreider and Johnson are the best tactical experts I know. Along with myself, we will escort all of you through the ladder system and down to the trains. But we need to go now.”
Dr. Falco didn’t waste any time and instructed everyone to leave the safe room. I instructed Keith to take point at the front of the pack, while Sophia and I stayed toward the back. This was a lot of people and pulling this off was not going to be easy, but at this point it was our only option.
We made it down to the fortieth floor and everyone began climbing down the ladder system. Our group was moving at a great pace, especially for its size, but we didn’t have much time. My turn came to climb down and I quickly lowered my body down onto the first set of rungs. I looked up at Sophia who was standing above me. She smiled back at me which momentarily made me laugh. Of
course she would be relaxed in a situation like this. I was still overly cautious about what could potentially happen if we ran into one of those monsters, but so far everything was OK.
The ladder system was completely enclosed and surrounded by steel walls. Whoever built this hadn’t been messing around. It took about forty minutes to get all the way to the bottom. The duration of the climb was weird since the only noises that I could hear were from the people talking above and below me. Once I got to the bottom, I met back up with Dr. Falco, who was directing everyone onto the trains. I couldn’t help but notice how old the train cars looked, but the good news was that at least twenty of them were all lined up. We might not have been able to go anywhere, but we could definitely fit every single person inside them. If anything, they could provide us some protection from the detonation if it came to that.
“This system was designed as a last resort in the event of a disaster. A few years back, they were going to relocate the trains, but I’m very thankful that they didn’t!”
I was happy that they were here too. As people boarded them, I noticed a small detail that Captain Kenneweg had forgotten to mention. The people in this group weren’t just scientists; there were women and children who I assumed were the scientists’ families. They must have been living in the building all these years. It was unbelievable that S.T.O.R.M. would be so quick to turn their back on them. Just then Victor came running over.
“Sir! All of the trains are functioning however, I cannot dismantle the failsafe!”
I interrupted; “Uhh, what is the failsafe?”
“These trains are rigged with enough explosives to bring down the entire building. This system was designed for total evacuation. As soon as the last train pulls off the tracks, the bombs will detonate and no evidence of our involvement or existence will be left behind. Good thing too, since all of those monsters are still running around up th—”