His bag over his shoulder, Jonah climbed back up into the abandoned medical facility. He had been thinking about the other examination rooms and the furniture and equipment that filled them, but it hadn’t occurred to him until then that each room had a different type of equipment or furniture inside, filled up to the ceiling and then the door locked. It didn’t make sense for someone to go to that much trouble to arrange the items that way. The building was supposed to be demolished, but was preserved covertly for reasons that Jonah still didn’t understand. If whoever had decided to keep this building in place knew that no one else would know that it was still there, why would they put forth that much effort? Why not just dispose of the furniture and equipment, or leave it in place the way that it was when they cut the center down?
Jonah knew that he needed to get into those rooms and explore inside of them. The reason that they had been filled and locked might just be information that he had been searching for to help him solve this and possibly save lives he still felt could be in danger.
When he got to the first door in the hallway, Jonah tried the doorknob, knowing that it was locked but still wondering if there was a possibility that it might have been opened since they found this abandoned floor. Placing his bag on the floor, Jonah pulled out the tools that he had put inside before leaving the basement. When they first explored this part of the building Samira had mentioned that the contemporary hospital utilized metal doors that sank fully into the frames to allow for faster and easier maneuvering through the rooms. Jonah was thankful that these were not like that, but simple, more traditional doors. This allowed him to fit the end of a crowbar into the gap between the frame and the door and smash it with the end of a hammer. It was a crude approach, but proved highly effective as after the fourth blow the door started to warp and soon Jonah was able to smash the locking mechanism and pry the door fully open.
Once inside, he took the lantern from his bag and settled the lightstick he carried inside to multiply the light, then placed it on a shelf bolted to the wall just inside the door. The chairs inside were stacked so close to the door that Jonah could barely take a step all the way inside. He looked around them, trying to identify how many might be in there, and resigned himself to removing them one by one rather than maneuvering through them to reach the back of the room. He set to work taking the chairs out of the room and setting them in the waiting room, resisting the urge to arrange them in the way that he remembered they once were when this medical facility was still in operation. He had removed several when he heard a crashing sound coming from the waiting area. His muscles tightened and his ears pricked up defensively. Bracing himself, he stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him to block the light so that it would be more difficult for whoever had invaded the space to tell the direction that they should be moving.
Jonah crept down the hallway and into the waiting room. Suddenly a bright light burst in his eyes and he squinted, lifting his hand to shield them while also trying to see who was standing there.
“Jonah!” he heard Aubrey’s voice gasp.
“Aubrey?” he asked.
The light lessened as Aubrey lowered the sleek metal lantern that she carried to the ground by her side.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I barely recognize you greeting me without a knife in your hand.”
Jonah slowly withdrew his hand from behind his back, revealing the weapon that he had been holding in anticipation of a clash with the Valdicians or members of the hybrid army. Aubrey’s eyes fell on it and he saw them sparkle. Her lips twitched and finally she let out a short laugh.
“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re consistent,” she said.
Jonah slipped the weapon back into its sheath at his hip and took a step toward her. His heart had leapt when he saw her, but now that he had gotten over the initial surprise, he was concerned, not only that she had uncovered how to get into the medical facility, but also that she had come down here without any idea that he was there, meaning that she was willing to go exploring through the building completely alone and vulnerable to whatever dangers might still lurk there.
“What are you doing down here?” he demanded. “It’s not safe for you.”
“You told me that you were able to get up into the laboratory building through a hole in the closet wall. I wanted to know more about what was going on and to see if what you told me was true.”
“You didn’t believe me?” he asked, feeling stung by the revelation that she questioned him and that she hadn’t asked him about it, but rather took it upon herself to see if she could find out about it.
“I barely even know you,” Aubrey said.
“I think that we’ve gotten past the barely knowing each other stage, don’t you?” Jonah snapped.
Aubrey looked taken aback and he regretted being so snide with her. He took another step toward her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that it might be incredibly dangerous down here. Even I don’t know where Ryan’s little minions are or if they even know that I’m still here. Besides, if anyone saw you going through that closet, it could compromise everything.”
“No one saw me,” Aubrey insisted. “It’s the middle of the night.”
Jonah realized that he had, in fact, lost track of time.
“Regardless, you shouldn’t have come down here. Especially not without knowing if I was here. You shouldn’t be in a place like this alone. You need to go.”
Chapter Four
“Absolutely not,” Aubrey said.
Jonah straightened and tilted his head at her as if stunned that she would defy him.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do, or what is safe for me?”
“I’m someone who has actually experienced the dangers that are down here and know what these creatures are capable of. You didn’t even know that any of this was happening a few days ago, and now you think that you can just come down here and be perfectly fine? And what? You’re going to miraculously find something that I’ve missed over and over again, and everything’s is going to wrap up neatly?”
“No,” Aubrey said, taken aback by his intensity. She hadn’t known that he was going to be down here when he resolved to come into the medical facility, but if she had known she wouldn’t have thought that he was going to react this way. “I – I’m sorry. I just – “
She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. She turned away from him and started through the pile of chairs that she had accidentally knocked over when entering the space so that she could go back upstairs.
“Wait,” Jonah said and she turned back to him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just know how dangerous this can be, and I don’t want you to be put into that.”
“I want to be in that,” Aubrey argued. “Now that I know what Ryan has done and what’s going on, I can’t just sit around and pretend that I don’t. I have to do something about it. I started doing some research into the history of the University and I found out that this medical facility isn’t even supposed to be here.”
“I know,” Jonah said. “It was supposed to be torn down when the rest of the old buildings were removed and replaced with the new laboratory facility.”
“Exactly,” Aubrey said. “So why is it still here? Who made the decision to keep it, and why did they? It doesn’t make any sense to keep a building that is totally outdated sealed up inside another building, especially when nobody knows about it.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jonah said. “When the rest of the team was here, we found this building accidentally. We were trying to get away from Ryan and the Valdicians, and Eden remembered the closets at the end of the hall and how strange they were. She figured out that they each correspond to a flight of stairs in this building. That’s how we broke through from that closet and ended up down here, and then went further down and found the basement.”
&n
bsp; “Do you have any idea why the old medical ward was preserved?” Aubrey asked. “It was closed and set for destruction more than a hundred years ago. What use could it do to anyone?”
“The basement itself is where we found the entrance to Ryan’s facility,” he revealed. “That’s where we found the human women that I told you about.”
“But Ryan wasn’t even alive when this medical ward was in operation,” Aubrey said. “He couldn’t have influenced them keeping it. It was already here when he came to work here.”
“The experiments were started by his great-grandfather,” Jonah said. “He could have had something to do with it.”
“I don’t know how,” Aubrey said. “How would a scientist influence keeping an ancient medical ward in place so that a new lab could be built around it rather than letting it be torn down? Especially without anybody knowing about it? What would be the purpose?”
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “That’s something that I’m trying to figure out. Maybe if we can find out why this building was kept, and by who, we can better understand what’s really happening. This isn’t just Ryan. It’s so much bigger than him and even his family. I just don’t know how.”
Aubrey felt a tug in her belly and a rush of warmth across her cheeks as she looked into Jonah’s eyes. The attraction to him was undeniable, but she was still conflicted. There was something about him that made her feel slightly off-balance. He wasn’t giving her all of the information, even though he was sharing so much with her, and that made her worry about what it could be that he was hiding. If he was willing to tell her about the horrors that he had already seen and what he knew Ryan was capable of doing, what could be so serious that he wasn’t able to tell her? She knew that she needed to concentrate on what needed to be done and not him or what had happened between them, but that was going to be hard. She forced herself to look away from him, instead scrutinizing the chairs that were placed haphazardly throughout what looked like it had once been the reception area of the medical ward.
“So, why did you come down here today?” she asked.
Jonah cleared his throat softly and gestured toward the corridor that led off of the room.
“When we first came here we found all of these examination rooms locked, but if you look through the windows in them, you can see that each one of them is filled with a different type of furniture or equipment.”
“Really?” Aubrey asked. “That’s strange. Why would whoever wanted to keep this building around bother with putting everything away in the rooms and locking them up if they didn’t intend on using it, or didn’t think that anyone knew that it was here?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Jonah said. “I came down here to see if I could find anything.”
“Like what?” Aubrey asked.
“I figured that I would know it if I found it,” he said.
Aubrey nodded.
“Did you find anything yet?” she asked.
“No. I’m still working on getting these chairs out of the room. They used to be in here anyway, so I thought that I might as well put them back.”
Jonah chuckled quietly, but the comment struck Aubrey.
“How do you know that these chairs used to be in here?” she asked.
Jonah hesitated just for a moment before answering her.
“Well, I’m assuming that since this was a hospital that this would be the waiting room, and these look like chairs that would be in the waiting room of a hospital, don’t they?”
Aubrey looked down at one of the wide wooden chairs with its rigid arms and plastic-covered, muted multi-colored floral cushions. She knew that he was exactly right, and admonished herself for being so suspicious.
“They do,” she agreed. “Can I help you move the rest of them out of the room?”
Jonah nodded.
“I would appreciate that,” he said. “I feel like every time that I get one out, it just regenerates.”
Aubrey smiled as she picked up her lantern and brought it with her across the waiting room toward the corridor. It created an eerie glow down the long-forgotten hall and she felt a chill go down her spine. Something about this place was off even beyond just still being there when it wasn’t supposed to be, and part of her wished that she could just leave. She had come this far, though. If she hadn’t wanted to be a part of this, she could have just pretended that she had never met Jonah, never heard what he had told her, and just gone back to work. She had come here, and by doing that she had committed herself to helping him. There was no turning back now.
They kept working for what felt like hours, until finally most of the room was cleared of the large chairs. As they emptied, they revealed a row of low shelves positioned along one wall. Each was packed tightly with boxes marked with a complex-looking symbol. Aubrey leaned down to examine it more closely.
“Do you recognize that?” she asked.
Jonah shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”
“Me, neither.”
“Should we see what’s inside?” Jonah asked.
Aubrey shrugged and scooted back a few inches so that Jonah could grab one of the boxes and take it from the shelf. He set it on the floor in between them and used his knife to open the seal on the top.
“Oh, so that has another purpose other than threatening me,” Aubrey said.
Jonah looked up at her with a smirk and tucked the blade back in his sheath before prying the box the rest of the way open. He reached inside and pulled out a small, dark bottle. He looked at it for a few seconds and then handed it to her. Aubrey took it and examined the bottle.
“This is old,” she said. “I’ve never even seen bottles like this.”
Jonah reached into the box and pulled out another.
“The whole box is full of them,” he said. He stuck his finger in the open mouth of the bottle. “They’re all empty.”
Aubrey set reached forward to push aside one of the flaps of the box so that she could peer inside.
“All of them?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jonah replied.
He turned and pulled another box down from the shelf. He opened it and revealed that it contained the same old, empty bottles. A few boxes later, the bottles appeared newer, but were still empty. Finally, Aubrey was able to read the name of the chemical.
“Izalux,” she muttered.
“What?” Jonah asked.
She looked up from the aged label and shook her head.
“I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”
“Is it something that’s used in the lab?” Jonah asked.
Aubrey shook her head and looked back down at the bottle, trying to jog her memory.
“No,” she said. “I know all of the chemicals that we have in stock. This isn’t something that we have around. I just feel like I’ve seen it before, though.” She let out an exasperated sound. “I just can’t place it.” A thought occurred to her and she put the bottle back in the box. “Why don’t we go to the library tomorrow when it opens and do some more research?” she suggested. “We might be able to identify what this chemical is and what it’s used for. That might tell us why there are so many empty bottles of it here.”
Jonah looked hopeful at the thought of learning the purpose of the chemical, but unsure of going to the library with her.
“I don’t know if I should go with you,” he said, sounding nervous. “Do you think that you could just do the research yourself and I’ll come back down here and work on emptying another one of the rooms so that we can see if there’s anything there.”
“What’s wrong?” Aubrey asked.
“Nothing,” Jonah said, sounding unconvincing. “I just think that we should maximize our time by doing both things at once.”
“And I think that it’s a better idea for us to find out more about this building and about whatever this chemical is before we spend any more time digging around through it.”
�
��The bottles are empty,” Jonah said.
“That doesn’t necessarily eliminate the hazard,” Aubrey said. “As a scientist, you should know that. There are some chemicals that we use in the lab that are so volatile that if one of the empty canisters were to be dropped on a hard enough surface with anything around it, it with explode with such magnitude that it could kill people with the shrapnel. If neither of us know what this chemical is or what it’s been used for, we can’t take a chance.”
Jonah continued to stare at her for a few long seconds before his expression relaxed and he relented.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the lab tomorrow morning.”
“Do you think that it’s safe to keep going there?” Aubrey asked. “Could the people who are working for Ryan come back there?”
“I don’t think so,” Jonah said. “If you’ve noticed that Ryan’s missing, that means that other people have, too. Like you, the people working here wouldn’t think twice seeing me in the lab. They’d just assume that I am there representing Ryan and working on a new project, but knowing that Ryan himself isn’t there is going to make people pay more attention. They would notice too easily and too quickly if they saw the types of creatures that are helping Ryan lurking around his lab. Besides, with Ryan not here and the people who he is after already on Penthos, there isn’t really a reason for them to go back to the lab. If there are still Valdicians or hybrids here, they’re waiting somewhere else.”
Though she knew that Jonah hadn’t intended them to be, the words were chilling. Aubrey was unnerved by the reality that all of this could have been happening inside the laboratory where she worked every day, and she had no idea.
Chapter Five
Jonah & Aubrey's Story (Uoria Mates IV Book 8) Page 2