Hidden Beneath Part 2
So I put up the first part of this story and I had no real idea where it was going... I finished writing all but the last few sentences of this last night...
The descent was long. Had I been paying more attention I might have noticed the signs. Or the lack of them. The steps down and the corridor they led to were blank, no identifying marks at all. The lights flickering across the ceiling gave an eerie tone to the corridor. We slowed. A door was coming into view.
There was no handle on the door, just the tell tale outline and a mirrored window that we had a feeling was only see through from the other side. We were essentially in a dead end. We started methodically searching the area from the door back. About four foot back from the door there was an odd imprint on the wall. Shoulder height,a slight impression of a left hand in the sheeting of the wall. Instinctively I put my hand in it. An automated voice came from the direction of the door.
“Familial match confirmed. Please face the door.”
We just looked at each other not quite knowing what to do. What was a match to? And was there someone the other side of the door controlling this voice?
“Please face the door.”
I made everyone step further back and then faced the door.
“Remain still.”
The mirrored window proceeded to scan me, top to bottom, bottom to top.
“Please stand by.” We all stood by. “Welcome. Please enter for briefing.”
It seemed hopeful, no more searching, maybe we were about to find out what we'd been waiting to find out all this time. The door opened revealing what appeared to be a control room.
“Chamber status: stable. Main power: restored to control room. Complex power: essential functions.”
As the computers came back online we gathered around the centre console.
“Please select command request.”
There was no keyboard in sight.
“Computer, display complex schematics.” I had no idea if it would work. We were all watching the screen for results when the wall behind the computer lit up. This room was much more technological than it looked. A blue line drawing illuminated on the screen. At the top out on one edge was a solid blue cube pulsating slightly, that had to be us in the control room. Beneath us a shaft led down to another room that was attached to the main part of the facility. Twelve floors in a cylindrical chamber with rooms off the edges. Under that, one large chamber beneath the centre.
“Computer, who am I am familial match with?” The screen changed and displayed a picture and bio... of Moira... she was a definite relative. She was the original. We always joked about that, it seems kind of morbid now, but she was the reason my family had been doing this for years. Her daughter had started the investigation and ground recovery scheme that we were involved in. But why didn't we know she was here? It had been a long time ago, but this lack of knowledge made me a bit uneasy.
“Computer, list all members of staff for this facility.”
About thirty names appeared on the screen, around me my team started to murmur and gasp. Each recognised a name of their own, and other names had surnames we were sure the others up top would know too. We'd always just accepted that this job passed between family members, could this be the reason? This facility?
We called up to the surface and read out the names we were left with on the screen. Sure enough, as a group, we knew all of them. We took a while to think it over, there wasn't much talking, we really weren't sure what to make of it.
While the others took a break I sat at the computer. There were so many questions to ask it.
“Computer, what is the purpose of this facility?”
“This is a storage facility.”
“Computer, what is this facility storing?”
“This facility is storing cryogenic pods.”
It felt like the computer was set to vague. The others came back into the room and we went through possible questions.
“Computer, what is inside the cryogenic pods?”
“Information unknown.”
I got that answer when I asked any question about the pods, when they were sealed, who authorised the pods into storage.
“Computer, when are the pods due to be opened?”
“There is no schedule for these pods to be opened.”
We asked for security cameras, the wall monitor split into several small videos. Most of them flashed between different images of what must have been the cryopods. Four in the top right were stationary pictures that looked to be in the same room with one lone pod.
“Computer, how many pods are there?”
“There are 600 standard pods, currently 436 are active with back-up power on standby. 1 advanced pod, currently active with 2 back-up power cores on standby.”
They had to be people down here, what else would you freeze? We carried on interrogating the computer without much luck, until I asked for archive footage.
“Database damaged.”
This was something we could fix. I got our tech to set to work and the rest of us made a plan to go down into the main facility.
It was going to take about two hours to repair the database, this gave us time to investigate the main facility. We'd already discovered the hatch that led down, two stayed in the control room and four of us went down.
The room we ended up standing in looked like staff quarters. Only one door was secured with a hand print indent, it opened with no trouble. On the other side was a small nondescript room with a reinforced glass wall that opened out into the central cylindrical shaft. We stepped inside and I found the next hand print on the left hand side by the glass.
“Secure room. Secure room.”
A light started flashing above the inside door. We closed it and turned to the main room, once we heard the door locked behind us the glass started to move.
“Access granted.”
It was immense. A platform stood out over the drop, we all peered over the edge. The view was twelve layers of landings, each level ringed with lit windows. There was a small flight of steps down to the first level. The drop from this height was enough to give anyone vertigo, and the echoing sound of our footsteps didn't help.
The first door was much more normal than any we'd come across so far, there seemed to be no extra security measures, just a handle. The small window glowed a faint blue from the pod inside. There were no unusual readings from any of our instruments, so we opened it.
In the centre of the room was the cryogenic pod bolted to the floor, a small wall mounted table and a file in a slot on the wall above it. I picked up the file, a classified stamp on the front, I opened it to the first page. It almost read like a personnel file. The first page was a bio, presumably of the person in the pod.
“Nelson Cooper. Age: 42. Light smoker. Family history of high blood pressure.” I saw nothing unusual on the paper, the next one however had a different story. “Convicted on multiple murder charges. Remanded to Neklar maximum security prison, no chance of parole.” The list of his historical actions were long, and horrific. This wasn't Neklar, we knew that prison still existed. Page 3 had a lot of long words on it, the whole page appeared to be medical but not a lot of it made sense to us, no one on my team was fully medically trained. The fourth page spelled it out a bit more simply. “Patient exhibited signs of regeneration while imprisoned. During a prison riot patient was stabbed multiple times, later escaped from the morgue where he was believed to be dead. When recaptured patient exhibited no signs of injury.”
This facility now seemed to be some kind of prison or medical facility.
“DNA markers extracted and transplanted successfully.”
Without context we really didn't know what this was.
“Computer, please explain DNA transplanting.”
“Information classified.”
There was no clear reason that this information should be classified to someone who had access to the computer. We asked more questions but every reply was the same, and that led to more questions.
We moved on to the next room after documenting everything. It looked exactly the same as the last. I headed straight to the file.
“Andrea Hawkes. Age: 25. No history of genetic problems. Full-time primary school teacher at Bethnal Primary. Patient exhibited signs of telekinesis. During a school trip patient saved a pupil from falling scaffolding from 10 metres away. DNA markers extracted and transplanted successfully.”
We didn't try to open the pods, we had no way to know what would happen, and we definitely couldn't treat them for any after effects. My team had tried to see inside the first pod without much luck, this one was slightly clearer. They cleaned the glass and you could see a face through the misted interior, I couldn't help but think of Sleeping Beauty.
We had to keep the pace going, we found a room that was dark, the pod inside was open and empty. The file in the room was like the others, except for the red stamp across each page. “Deceased.” I flipped through to page 4. Patient exhibited signs of pyrokinesis. Patient was the only survivor of a building fire that claimed the lives of approximately 138 civilians. Patient was completely unharmed. DNA markers extracted, transplantation resulted in the loss of Patient 00218. Patient terminated.”
This one file gave us yet more to think about.
Checking in with the control room they told us they were expecting another hour and a half at least. We decided to make a sweep of the rooms, documenting the files and anything that was out of the ordinary.
In the hour and a half we cleared the first level. 48 rooms with active pods and 2 inactive. All the same. Patients all had some remarkable ailment and the other terminated pod was also the loss of Patient 00195.
Back in the control room we gathered to see what had been retrieved. There were hundreds of hours of information retrieved from the damaged sector. Most of it was listed as test data with a number at the end of the file name. The numbers were a match to serial numbers on the patient files.
“Computer, display test data for patient 11593.”
On the screen a video started playing.
“Patient 11593, Nelson Cooper. Possesses natural healing abilities. We have been testing the limits of these abilities.” The video went on to show these tests, it made us all a little sick. They started off by pricking his finger and timed how long it took to heal, it only got worse from there. Reluctantly we watched another, the second patient we found, it wasn't as violent as the first but still not pleasant to watch.
After this discovery we were quite glad to find it was getting late. We packed up our gear and headed out to the surface.
–
In the morning there were more volunteers to go down in to the facility. I don't know whether it was morbid curiosity or whether they were just happy knowing the facility wasn't radioactive or collapsing. With more of my team with us we planned to clear the eleven levels as quickly as possible. Two members in the control room scanning data, six teams of two on the levels and the last few outside doing the ground work.
We went down to level 2 and dropped two people off, down two floor and dropped another two and the same at each even numbered floor. We'd shown everyone down here the documents, the plan was to get overall photos of each room and copies of the files. The aim was to cover a level in an hour and a half, we were assuming every room was the same as we'd already seen, if anything didn't match it was to be called in and we'd circle back to it. I deliberately put myself on level 12, that way I'd get to look at the lower chamber first.
We cleared our floor quickly, nothing unexpected. Nothing unusual had been discovered above us either. I don't know what we were hoping for but as we walked down to the floor of the main chamber I felt a tingle at the thought of opening the advanced pod.
When we'd got down more levels it was easier to see that the entrance to the advanced pod was some kind of elevator, that was the only thing standing on the floor. As we descended the last few steps to the floor I put on a com-unit, we'd been using walkies up until now but I wanted to have a constant line open to the control room.
“We've hit the bottom. Have you found any data about the advanced pod?”
The answer was a no. They were still trying to crack the encrypted files.
As much as it killed me not to go straight into the pod we searched the floor before heading to the elevator. On the walk round the exterior wall we found a hand print. As I put my hand into the indent the walls lit up with monitors. All of them appeared to be inside the advanced chamber. One caught my attention, and I should have gone with my instinct then to wait... but we were right there.
Up until now we hadn't discovered a patient under the age of 21, but the screen we were staring at was of a young girl, no older than 8.
“Computer, what is this an image of?”
“This is an image of the advanced pod.”
“Computer, who is this an image of?”
“This is an image of Patient zero zero two zero six.”
The only pods we'd come across with related patient numbers all started with ones, the nearest number to this was the mystery patients that were having DNA markers transplanted.
I asked the control room if they had any files on Patient 00206. They'd found two that were classified, they started trying to open the files for us. Meanwhile we were left with nothing to search but the elevator. It was no more than a cubical stuck to the ground, a very hi-tech cubical.
I stood in front of the door.
“Place both hands on the pads.”
Two green pads lit up in the middle of the door. I put my hands flat against the door. After a short time they turned yellow.
“Access granted.”
The mechanism pushed the door out towards me and slid off to the side. There was only room for one person. I could see above me that the team were peering over the railings. There was only room for one person. I stepped in and the door sealed up behind me. A scanning beam went over me and I felt the air fizzle around me, I'd seen some decontamination units very similar to it, the advanced pod had to be in a clean room.
Once I was scanned the floor started to lower. Soon I was standing in a stark white room staring at the pod of Patient 00206.
In my ear I could hear my team. I'd appeared on a set of monitors and the screens above me. I told them the area was safe and I started to look around the room. I heard an odd sort of alarm coming from the entrance above. The computer had recognised the familial match in my colleague but there was no body scan for it to match too. I had brought them all in when I opened the doors, no one had used the main entrance like I had. That's when I sent them back upstairs, anyone that had finished their search should go back up and get scanned by the computer. They argued that they didn't want to leave me in the room, but I was in radio contact and I didn't expect the scans to take them too long. Everyone started heading up from the main chamber for the control room.
I kept talking at the com while everyone went up. Just standard descriptions of the room and the environment. Over the com I heard the computer in the control room.
“Video files available to view.”
“Computer, play video files.”
The first file was a similar experimental procedure, the little girl who was behind me in the pod was on the screen being injected with a green liquid. She was screaming. A horrible painful scream that brought a tear to my eye.
“Computer, skip to the next video.”
I wiped a tear from my eye as the next video started on the screen. In front of me was Moira, the video appeared to be taken in the control room, she looked terrified.
“My name is Moira Kristoff, I am in charge of this facility... was in charge of this facility. We are evacuating immediately and have called in a nuclear strike on this location. Our experiments have been a terrible mistake. We never considered what would happen when we combined so many powers in one entity. Patient 00206 has surpassed all expectations... and is now a danger to us all. We thought we had her under control but she developed powers we never expected. The pods have all been sealed and they have safely contained most of the powers... but she isn't frozen like the others...”
I could see the terror in her eyes.
“She has developed the ability to hibernate. We didn't know... I didn't realise... she's killed almost everyone in the facility, they... they just evaporated, we didn't give her that power.”
Tears were running down her face.
“It's protocol not to terminate a patient who is conscious, but the last of us agreed Patient 00206 can't live, she's a global threat.”
“Why are you crying?”
Every bone in my body felt cold, a shiver shot down my spine. I turned slowly towards the pod. From the clear window I could see two small hands and a face, with two dark eyes, tilted to one side.
“We don't know how long she has been able to sense our presence, but the cryogenic sleep hasn't been taking effect, in the last week she wakes up whenever we enter the room...”
The video was still playing as I started moving back towards the door. The door was not opening fast enough. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. And all the while I could see her in my peripheral vision begging me not to go. The sweet childlike voice was enough to make you turn round but the piercing black eyes almost made you lose hope.
As soon as I was on the floor I stopped and looked at the video feeds. I couldn't see her moving.
“If you can hear me don't come back down, I'm coming up.”
As I ran up the levels I felt the terror again.
“Please don't leave me.”
She was standing on the floor looking up at me, I carried on climbing. I shouted in my com again.
“Go to the surface straight away, leave everything!”
As I reached the control room I knew I couldn't leave her in here alive. On the monitors I could see her in her pod, I had no way of telling what was true.
I understand why Moira was so terrified. If you're receiving this message you have to understand why this facility is so dangerous. The amount of powers we saw in here are all in 206. I think she's contained but there's no way to know. After I got to the control room I called the others and made sure they were safely out, then I sealed the whole complex. I've been in here three days and I can still hear her voice in my head. Our families knew we were the only ones who could operate this place, and that's why we were sent on this mission... to check it was over... but it's not. I've managed to override the functions on the power cores of her backup generators and I've set them to overload. My team should be a safe enough distance now. The explosion will start in the advanced pod, but the facility will more than likely still be standing if it survived a nuke from the outside. I don't know if I'll survive the explosion, or if it'll destroy 206. My team has a copy of all the files and they'll work out what happened here... but whatever happens in this building... you have to make sure she's dead.
--
The writing prompt for this was as follows...
A team of archaeologists discovers a cryonic prison. The world’s most dangerous criminals have been lying there, frozen, for hundreds of years. In the middle of the prison, in suspended animation, is an eight-year-old girl. The archaeologists begin to debate: Was she frozen in some sort of tragic mistake, or did the government have a good reason for wanting her out of the way?
I didn't stick exactly to the prompt but then, that's kind of the point. It's something I can see myself going back to and re-writing at some point.
The descent was long. Had I been paying more attention I might have noticed the signs. Or the lack of them. The steps down and the corridor they led to were blank, no identifying marks at all. The lights flickering across the ceiling gave an eerie tone to the corridor. We slowed. A door was coming into view.
There was no handle on the door, just the tell tale outline and a mirrored window that we had a feeling was only see through from the other side. We were essentially in a dead end. We started methodically searching the area from the door back. About four foot back from the door there was an odd imprint on the wall. Shoulder height,a slight impression of a left hand in the sheeting of the wall. Instinctively I put my hand in it. An automated voice came from the direction of the door.
“Familial match confirmed. Please face the door.”
We just looked at each other not quite knowing what to do. What was a match to? And was there someone the other side of the door controlling this voice?
“Please face the door.”
I made everyone step further back and then faced the door.
“Remain still.”
The mirrored window proceeded to scan me, top to bottom, bottom to top.
“Please stand by.” We all stood by. “Welcome. Please enter for briefing.”
It seemed hopeful, no more searching, maybe we were about to find out what we'd been waiting to find out all this time. The door opened revealing what appeared to be a control room.
“Chamber status: stable. Main power: restored to control room. Complex power: essential functions.”
As the computers came back online we gathered around the centre console.
“Please select command request.”
There was no keyboard in sight.
“Computer, display complex schematics.” I had no idea if it would work. We were all watching the screen for results when the wall behind the computer lit up. This room was much more technological than it looked. A blue line drawing illuminated on the screen. At the top out on one edge was a solid blue cube pulsating slightly, that had to be us in the control room. Beneath us a shaft led down to another room that was attached to the main part of the facility. Twelve floors in a cylindrical chamber with rooms off the edges. Under that, one large chamber beneath the centre.
“Computer, who am I am familial match with?” The screen changed and displayed a picture and bio... of Moira... she was a definite relative. She was the original. We always joked about that, it seems kind of morbid now, but she was the reason my family had been doing this for years. Her daughter had started the investigation and ground recovery scheme that we were involved in. But why didn't we know she was here? It had been a long time ago, but this lack of knowledge made me a bit uneasy.
“Computer, list all members of staff for this facility.”
About thirty names appeared on the screen, around me my team started to murmur and gasp. Each recognised a name of their own, and other names had surnames we were sure the others up top would know too. We'd always just accepted that this job passed between family members, could this be the reason? This facility?
We called up to the surface and read out the names we were left with on the screen. Sure enough, as a group, we knew all of them. We took a while to think it over, there wasn't much talking, we really weren't sure what to make of it.
While the others took a break I sat at the computer. There were so many questions to ask it.
“Computer, what is the purpose of this facility?”
“This is a storage facility.”
“Computer, what is this facility storing?”
“This facility is storing cryogenic pods.”
It felt like the computer was set to vague. The others came back into the room and we went through possible questions.
“Computer, what is inside the cryogenic pods?”
“Information unknown.”
I got that answer when I asked any question about the pods, when they were sealed, who authorised the pods into storage.
“Computer, when are the pods due to be opened?”
“There is no schedule for these pods to be opened.”
We asked for security cameras, the wall monitor split into several small videos. Most of them flashed between different images of what must have been the cryopods. Four in the top right were stationary pictures that looked to be in the same room with one lone pod.
“Computer, how many pods are there?”
“There are 600 standard pods, currently 436 are active with back-up power on standby. 1 advanced pod, currently active with 2 back-up power cores on standby.”
They had to be people down here, what else would you freeze? We carried on interrogating the computer without much luck, until I asked for archive footage.
“Database damaged.”
This was something we could fix. I got our tech to set to work and the rest of us made a plan to go down into the main facility.
It was going to take about two hours to repair the database, this gave us time to investigate the main facility. We'd already discovered the hatch that led down, two stayed in the control room and four of us went down.
The room we ended up standing in looked like staff quarters. Only one door was secured with a hand print indent, it opened with no trouble. On the other side was a small nondescript room with a reinforced glass wall that opened out into the central cylindrical shaft. We stepped inside and I found the next hand print on the left hand side by the glass.
“Secure room. Secure room.”
A light started flashing above the inside door. We closed it and turned to the main room, once we heard the door locked behind us the glass started to move.
“Access granted.”
It was immense. A platform stood out over the drop, we all peered over the edge. The view was twelve layers of landings, each level ringed with lit windows. There was a small flight of steps down to the first level. The drop from this height was enough to give anyone vertigo, and the echoing sound of our footsteps didn't help.
The first door was much more normal than any we'd come across so far, there seemed to be no extra security measures, just a handle. The small window glowed a faint blue from the pod inside. There were no unusual readings from any of our instruments, so we opened it.
In the centre of the room was the cryogenic pod bolted to the floor, a small wall mounted table and a file in a slot on the wall above it. I picked up the file, a classified stamp on the front, I opened it to the first page. It almost read like a personnel file. The first page was a bio, presumably of the person in the pod.
“Nelson Cooper. Age: 42. Light smoker. Family history of high blood pressure.” I saw nothing unusual on the paper, the next one however had a different story. “Convicted on multiple murder charges. Remanded to Neklar maximum security prison, no chance of parole.” The list of his historical actions were long, and horrific. This wasn't Neklar, we knew that prison still existed. Page 3 had a lot of long words on it, the whole page appeared to be medical but not a lot of it made sense to us, no one on my team was fully medically trained. The fourth page spelled it out a bit more simply. “Patient exhibited signs of regeneration while imprisoned. During a prison riot patient was stabbed multiple times, later escaped from the morgue where he was believed to be dead. When recaptured patient exhibited no signs of injury.”
This facility now seemed to be some kind of prison or medical facility.
“DNA markers extracted and transplanted successfully.”
Without context we really didn't know what this was.
“Computer, please explain DNA transplanting.”
“Information classified.”
There was no clear reason that this information should be classified to someone who had access to the computer. We asked more questions but every reply was the same, and that led to more questions.
We moved on to the next room after documenting everything. It looked exactly the same as the last. I headed straight to the file.
“Andrea Hawkes. Age: 25. No history of genetic problems. Full-time primary school teacher at Bethnal Primary. Patient exhibited signs of telekinesis. During a school trip patient saved a pupil from falling scaffolding from 10 metres away. DNA markers extracted and transplanted successfully.”
We didn't try to open the pods, we had no way to know what would happen, and we definitely couldn't treat them for any after effects. My team had tried to see inside the first pod without much luck, this one was slightly clearer. They cleaned the glass and you could see a face through the misted interior, I couldn't help but think of Sleeping Beauty.
We had to keep the pace going, we found a room that was dark, the pod inside was open and empty. The file in the room was like the others, except for the red stamp across each page. “Deceased.” I flipped through to page 4. Patient exhibited signs of pyrokinesis. Patient was the only survivor of a building fire that claimed the lives of approximately 138 civilians. Patient was completely unharmed. DNA markers extracted, transplantation resulted in the loss of Patient 00218. Patient terminated.”
This one file gave us yet more to think about.
Checking in with the control room they told us they were expecting another hour and a half at least. We decided to make a sweep of the rooms, documenting the files and anything that was out of the ordinary.
In the hour and a half we cleared the first level. 48 rooms with active pods and 2 inactive. All the same. Patients all had some remarkable ailment and the other terminated pod was also the loss of Patient 00195.
Back in the control room we gathered to see what had been retrieved. There were hundreds of hours of information retrieved from the damaged sector. Most of it was listed as test data with a number at the end of the file name. The numbers were a match to serial numbers on the patient files.
“Computer, display test data for patient 11593.”
On the screen a video started playing.
“Patient 11593, Nelson Cooper. Possesses natural healing abilities. We have been testing the limits of these abilities.” The video went on to show these tests, it made us all a little sick. They started off by pricking his finger and timed how long it took to heal, it only got worse from there. Reluctantly we watched another, the second patient we found, it wasn't as violent as the first but still not pleasant to watch.
After this discovery we were quite glad to find it was getting late. We packed up our gear and headed out to the surface.
–
In the morning there were more volunteers to go down in to the facility. I don't know whether it was morbid curiosity or whether they were just happy knowing the facility wasn't radioactive or collapsing. With more of my team with us we planned to clear the eleven levels as quickly as possible. Two members in the control room scanning data, six teams of two on the levels and the last few outside doing the ground work.
We went down to level 2 and dropped two people off, down two floor and dropped another two and the same at each even numbered floor. We'd shown everyone down here the documents, the plan was to get overall photos of each room and copies of the files. The aim was to cover a level in an hour and a half, we were assuming every room was the same as we'd already seen, if anything didn't match it was to be called in and we'd circle back to it. I deliberately put myself on level 12, that way I'd get to look at the lower chamber first.
We cleared our floor quickly, nothing unexpected. Nothing unusual had been discovered above us either. I don't know what we were hoping for but as we walked down to the floor of the main chamber I felt a tingle at the thought of opening the advanced pod.
When we'd got down more levels it was easier to see that the entrance to the advanced pod was some kind of elevator, that was the only thing standing on the floor. As we descended the last few steps to the floor I put on a com-unit, we'd been using walkies up until now but I wanted to have a constant line open to the control room.
“We've hit the bottom. Have you found any data about the advanced pod?”
The answer was a no. They were still trying to crack the encrypted files.
As much as it killed me not to go straight into the pod we searched the floor before heading to the elevator. On the walk round the exterior wall we found a hand print. As I put my hand into the indent the walls lit up with monitors. All of them appeared to be inside the advanced chamber. One caught my attention, and I should have gone with my instinct then to wait... but we were right there.
Up until now we hadn't discovered a patient under the age of 21, but the screen we were staring at was of a young girl, no older than 8.
“Computer, what is this an image of?”
“This is an image of the advanced pod.”
“Computer, who is this an image of?”
“This is an image of Patient zero zero two zero six.”
The only pods we'd come across with related patient numbers all started with ones, the nearest number to this was the mystery patients that were having DNA markers transplanted.
I asked the control room if they had any files on Patient 00206. They'd found two that were classified, they started trying to open the files for us. Meanwhile we were left with nothing to search but the elevator. It was no more than a cubical stuck to the ground, a very hi-tech cubical.
I stood in front of the door.
“Place both hands on the pads.”
Two green pads lit up in the middle of the door. I put my hands flat against the door. After a short time they turned yellow.
“Access granted.”
The mechanism pushed the door out towards me and slid off to the side. There was only room for one person. I could see above me that the team were peering over the railings. There was only room for one person. I stepped in and the door sealed up behind me. A scanning beam went over me and I felt the air fizzle around me, I'd seen some decontamination units very similar to it, the advanced pod had to be in a clean room.
Once I was scanned the floor started to lower. Soon I was standing in a stark white room staring at the pod of Patient 00206.
In my ear I could hear my team. I'd appeared on a set of monitors and the screens above me. I told them the area was safe and I started to look around the room. I heard an odd sort of alarm coming from the entrance above. The computer had recognised the familial match in my colleague but there was no body scan for it to match too. I had brought them all in when I opened the doors, no one had used the main entrance like I had. That's when I sent them back upstairs, anyone that had finished their search should go back up and get scanned by the computer. They argued that they didn't want to leave me in the room, but I was in radio contact and I didn't expect the scans to take them too long. Everyone started heading up from the main chamber for the control room.
I kept talking at the com while everyone went up. Just standard descriptions of the room and the environment. Over the com I heard the computer in the control room.
“Video files available to view.”
“Computer, play video files.”
The first file was a similar experimental procedure, the little girl who was behind me in the pod was on the screen being injected with a green liquid. She was screaming. A horrible painful scream that brought a tear to my eye.
“Computer, skip to the next video.”
I wiped a tear from my eye as the next video started on the screen. In front of me was Moira, the video appeared to be taken in the control room, she looked terrified.
“My name is Moira Kristoff, I am in charge of this facility... was in charge of this facility. We are evacuating immediately and have called in a nuclear strike on this location. Our experiments have been a terrible mistake. We never considered what would happen when we combined so many powers in one entity. Patient 00206 has surpassed all expectations... and is now a danger to us all. We thought we had her under control but she developed powers we never expected. The pods have all been sealed and they have safely contained most of the powers... but she isn't frozen like the others...”
I could see the terror in her eyes.
“She has developed the ability to hibernate. We didn't know... I didn't realise... she's killed almost everyone in the facility, they... they just evaporated, we didn't give her that power.”
Tears were running down her face.
“It's protocol not to terminate a patient who is conscious, but the last of us agreed Patient 00206 can't live, she's a global threat.”
“Why are you crying?”
Every bone in my body felt cold, a shiver shot down my spine. I turned slowly towards the pod. From the clear window I could see two small hands and a face, with two dark eyes, tilted to one side.
“We don't know how long she has been able to sense our presence, but the cryogenic sleep hasn't been taking effect, in the last week she wakes up whenever we enter the room...”
The video was still playing as I started moving back towards the door. The door was not opening fast enough. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. And all the while I could see her in my peripheral vision begging me not to go. The sweet childlike voice was enough to make you turn round but the piercing black eyes almost made you lose hope.
As soon as I was on the floor I stopped and looked at the video feeds. I couldn't see her moving.
“If you can hear me don't come back down, I'm coming up.”
As I ran up the levels I felt the terror again.
“Please don't leave me.”
She was standing on the floor looking up at me, I carried on climbing. I shouted in my com again.
“Go to the surface straight away, leave everything!”
As I reached the control room I knew I couldn't leave her in here alive. On the monitors I could see her in her pod, I had no way of telling what was true.
I understand why Moira was so terrified. If you're receiving this message you have to understand why this facility is so dangerous. The amount of powers we saw in here are all in 206. I think she's contained but there's no way to know. After I got to the control room I called the others and made sure they were safely out, then I sealed the whole complex. I've been in here three days and I can still hear her voice in my head. Our families knew we were the only ones who could operate this place, and that's why we were sent on this mission... to check it was over... but it's not. I've managed to override the functions on the power cores of her backup generators and I've set them to overload. My team should be a safe enough distance now. The explosion will start in the advanced pod, but the facility will more than likely still be standing if it survived a nuke from the outside. I don't know if I'll survive the explosion, or if it'll destroy 206. My team has a copy of all the files and they'll work out what happened here... but whatever happens in this building... you have to make sure she's dead.
--
The writing prompt for this was as follows...
A team of archaeologists discovers a cryonic prison. The world’s most dangerous criminals have been lying there, frozen, for hundreds of years. In the middle of the prison, in suspended animation, is an eight-year-old girl. The archaeologists begin to debate: Was she frozen in some sort of tragic mistake, or did the government have a good reason for wanting her out of the way?
I didn't stick exactly to the prompt but then, that's kind of the point. It's something I can see myself going back to and re-writing at some point.
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