Go For Stories

The walls were too thick and the distance too great for Nigel to hear the explosion. The first thing he noticed was a slight tremor through the floor, followed by a brief flicker of the light. He glanced at his watch: half past six in the morning. Too early for trouble. He placed his steaming coffee on the desk and went to the window overlooking the grand atrium of the underground lab. Looking down over the multiple levels normally gave him a great sense of control, like he could see anything. This time, however, there was nothing. All was eerily quiet. His heart took a queer turn. Something didn’t feel right.
He scolded himself for his silliness and headed to the door. As he poked his head into the hall, his phone lit up. In one clean, practised movement it was in his hand and to his ear.

“Security,” his deep voice cracked with its first use of the day.

“Percussion alarm. Research Three. Now.”

The phone went dead.

Nigel sprinted out of his office and down the hall, pressing a small, blue button at his hip. Fluorescent lights flashed overhead as he raced towards the elevator. It was still early, so the hall was empty. Reaching it as the doors opened, he skidded into the lift and bashed the button for sub-level 21. The doors hissed shut and the lift dropped. Steadying himself against the wall, he took a deep breath. If he wasn’t used to the emergency descent now, he realised, he never would be.

Within moments, the lift shuddered to a stop and the doors opened, practically throwing him out. He took off at a run, gesturing and shouting at anybody in his line of transit.

“MOVE. GET OUT OF THE WAY.”

As he neared the wide, glass wall at the front of the lab, he hesitated. Everything looked intact. The desks all stood waiting to be occupied by people with their notebooks and computers and scientific knowledge, doing things that Nigel would never understand with equipment whose names he probably couldn’t pronounce. Most researchers didn’t start until Seven, so there weren’t many people around. Those that were looked shaken and wide-eyed. He grabbed the nearest person; a slight, wild-haired man in a white coat.

“What happened?” asked Nigel.

“I-I- don’t know … I…” His voice trembled.

Nigel shook him. “I need to know.”

The authoritative tone in his voice broke the man’s stutter. Of course, his I-just-woke-up growl didn’t hurt.

“There was a loud bang. In there.” The man pointed with a shaky hand to the door at the back of the lab. The door was marked, “Authorised Personnel Only. Any Unauthorised Persons found entering this room will have their employment terminated immediately. No exceptions.”

“Shit,” muttered Nigel. He had never been through that door. Only under the direst of circumstances was he permitted to enter whatever it was that lay behind that door.

He hesitated for only a moment before he made his way through the lab to the security panel by the door frame. He pressed the button at his hip again and stared at the panel as it scanned his face. If there was nothing wrong in there, his job was forfeit. For the first time in his life, he hoped something was wrong.
The door clicked and he pushed it open, only to find himself in a short corridor with yet another door. Beside the door was a big, red button. “QUARANTINE” it said.

A glass panel set into the door allowed him to see a smoky haze in the room beyond. It was no ordinary smoke, it had a brown tinge to it and it seemed to hover, rather than billow. It menaced, rather than following the patterns in the air. A group of scientists huddled against a far wall, protecting themselves from the smoke curling around the walls. He wondered why they hadn’t escaped the room yet as he pushed on the entrance. It didn’t budge.
He booted the door as hard as he could. It was blocked from behind, but it did give a little, enough to allow the smoke a way out of the room. The group looked his way at the sound, their eyes pleading with him.

“Help me,” he called. “I can’t open it myself.”

One of the group, a young woman in her mid-thirties, stood and crossed to him. Though her black hair hung partly over her face, he could see an odd glaze to her eyes.

“It’s blocked, Milly,” he said to her. “I’ll push from this side, while you pull.”

She shook her head and tears brimmed on her lower lids. “It’s too heavy.”

“No, it’s not. Not if you want to get out of there.”

At that, she seemed to break from her funk. With a small shake of her head, her eyes cleared and she nodded. She bent out of sight of the window and gave a groan. Nigel pushed on the door and it moved with a high scraping noise behind it. He gave another push and it moved again, this time allowing him room to fit through.

He blinked back tears as he entered. While the smoke wasn’t thick, it was enough to upset his eyes. It had an acrid, sweet smell to it that he couldn’t place and it made his head spin a little. There was no sign of what had caused the explosion, or even the whereabouts of the source of the smoke. He turned to investigate what was blocking the door to see that it was a desk, complete with computing equipment in good condition. This was not thrown by an explosion, it was placed there.

“What’s going on here?” he asked Milly. “Why was the door blocked?”

“We couldn’t let it out,” she replied, her voice breaking a little.

“What?” He looked around the lab, noting the people still huddled against the wall, seemingly unaware of his presence. Banks of medical beds lined a second area at the side of the room, separated by another glass wall. All beds were unoccupied. “Is there anyone else in here?”

Milly shook her head and stared at him with a blank expression. He was overcome by a sudden lethargy. He was getting no help here and he may as well give up. A strange despair settled somewhere deep inside him, willing him to slump on the floor along with the researchers. Telling him to relax and let it happen; whatever ‘it’ was.

He blinked hard and took a deep breath. The smoke curled into his lungs and he choked. Coughing hard enough to strip his throat, he cleared the smoke from his body and stood panting. This was not a wholesome place.

“Okay, we’ve got to get you all out of here. We can seal off the room and figure out what happened later.” He had a sudden thought and looked up at the ceiling. Between the rows of lights, there were dozens of small, built-in fire extinguishers. They hung from the ceiling with ineffectual ease. “Why in the shit didn’t the hydrants go off?”

Before Milly could answer him, there was a great boom from behind the glass wall at the side of the wide room, sending her flying into his arms. The rows of beds exploded outwards from the centre of the enclosed area, collapsing under the strain and sending debris flying everywhere. The glass wall bulged with the pressure, cracking in several places. It shook the air around them and made his ears throb with the pressure shift. A lime green mist developed from the middle of the shockwave, filling the medical bay within seconds.
The explosion appeared to shock Milly and the remaining scientists out of their reverie and they all screamed in unison.

“The solution.” Shouted one of the group. “It’s vaporised the solution.”

Milly shot a serious glance at Nigel.

“We have to get out now.”

“Why? What is-”

“NOW!”

Nigel didn’t need to be told again.

“Okay, everyone out.”

Without hesitation the small group lunged to their feet and piled towards the door. As they did, the green mist began to sneak through cracks in the glass wall and moved towards them. Almost as if it had a mind of its own.
Milly was the last one out of the lab before Nigel swept his eyes over the scene once more and followed suit. He slammed the door shut and hammered his fist into the red button set on the wall beside him. A loud hiss met his ears and a plate glass panel slid down from the ceiling on the other side of the door. Seating itself into the floor with a loud thunk. He let a long, silent breath escape his mouth.

“Fuck,’ cursed Milly. “Oh, fuck. Did Allen get in early?”

Nigel whirled around to see a middle-aged man stumbling out from behind a row of desks. Dried blood had caked on his face and his eyes were wide in fear. No, not fear. Dread. He staggered towards the door, arms outstretched, pleading.

“Get it open,” urged one of the scientists. “For the love of god, open the door.”

“I can’t,” whispered Nigel hanging his head. “It’s sealed tight. I’ve quarantined it.”

Allen reached the door a moment after the mist. It swirled around his head and entered his mouth and ears. It wormed its way into his eyes and the colour dulled into a jaundice-yellow. As it penetrated deeper into his body, his skin lost all colour. Within mere seconds, he was as white as his colleague’s coats and his eyes bulged. They locked onto Nigel’s as if accusing him.

‘You did this to me,’ the bulging, yellow eyes said, ‘you locked me in here with this.’

Then he died.