She woke up gagging and gasping for air. Let go of the hand she was still holding, and heard a body falling to the floor with heavy thud. She rolled on her side on the table and peeked over the edge. Cold and dead eyes of a lab technician met hers. Young man, barely in his twenties. He had been preparing her for the procedures when the sound of the alarms had pierced the air. Her reaction had been purely instinctual. She had grabbed his wrist. That move had probably saved her life. When halon had landed from the vents on the ceiling she had held on. Technician had been screaming and struggling, halon suffocating them both, her mutation pulling the last remnants of life from the technician in to her. That small amount of energy had probably been the only thing separating her from the blade of the Reaper.
She sat up and rubbed her face groggily, wondering when they were going to notice that something had happened. Room should have been swarming with guards already, all armed to the teeth with live ammo and tasers. After all, she was the one successful project of theirs. Prime example of their skills and knowledge. Lethal to the core.
When nothing was happening she stumbled down from the table, thankful for the earlier interruption that had prevented the technician to put on restraints on her. She rubbed her arms, trying to ward off the chills wrecking her nude body. Grimaced to the large mirror that covered one of the walls. Two-sided. They were probably watching from the other side. Observing. Taking notes. Studying her. Let them. She turned her back to the mirror and grabbed the dead technician, stripping off his lab coat and putting it on. It was far too big for her, but when she rolled up the sleeves and tied the sash real tightly… It was better than nothing. And she was warming up already.
Something clinked softly and thumped against her chest every time she moved. She grabbed it. A dog tag. One word engraved on it. Rogue. She scrunched her forehead. It didn’t sound right. Rogue. It was tickling something at the back of her mind, but she pushed it aside. She had more oppressing matters to attend to. Something had happened. She was sure of it. She was in here alone and free. Their pet project. Surely somebody would have noticed her by now?
She sat on the table when her knees started to give up. What ever they had been pumping in to her system for the past two weeks had wrecked havoc with her nerves and muscles. She felt so weak and clumsy. Like a new born baby. She shook her head, trying to clear off the cobwebs. And realized that she couldn’t hear the steady hum of the air conditioning. Couldn’t see flickering screens of the computers as they went on, calculating possibilities and combinations. Screens were dark. Complete silence wrapped around her like a heavy quilt, more suffocating than the halon few moments ago. And she knew she had to get out.
Quick search through the lab coat’s pockets produced a keycard with set of codes attached to it with yellow post-it. She resisted the urge to grab the dead technician and kiss him. Instead she stumbled to the door with rubbery feet, pushed in the code to a keypad right next to it and slid the keycard through a slot under the keypad. Lock rattled, then door started to turn open.
She stood at the doorstep, half in, half out from the room, listening. Listening the silence that filled the corridor in front of her. It wasn’t right. There should have been people. Lots of people. She was sure of it. There had been a crew of ten people assigned to her project alone, and she was aware that there had to be several other projects going on simultaneously. Where the hell was everybody?
She stepped forward, leaning against the wall hesitantly. Waiting for the alarms when she crossed yellow line painted on the floor. Then remembered that they had removed her bracelet because they were going to test her today. No alarms then.
She didn’t know which way to go. At her left the corridor ended to a locked door. At her right it divided in two. One path was marked with yellow line of paint, the other with green. A yellow marked operational unit, green was probably for holding cells. She turned towards the door. Tried the keycard and every code on the list she had taken from the technician. It wouldn’t open. Apparently what ever was behind that door, technician hadn’t been allowed to enter there. That left her only two options. She already knew what she would find from the green corridor. It was the area they had kept her when they weren’t working on her. A dead-end. She chose the yellow corridor.
She passed several doors with a sign ‘Examination’ and a number attached on them. Numbers were decreasing along her way from twenty, until she reached the door number one. Long walk had brought her to a large, open area. Several desks were scattered all over the floor, some of them turned over. Computers, stacks of papers and pencils, calculators, erasers, all kinds of office supplies were littering the floor as well, some of them broken, crushed almost beyond recognition. From here she found the first signs of what had actually happened.
Door of the examination room 1 hung lopsided from its hinges, like somebody had tried to tear it off. Room itself was a mess. Mutilated corpses strewn across the floor, blood staining gleaming metal surfaces of the walls and floor, medical instruments thrown carelessly over the mess. Deep gouges, three in a row, decorated the door and the doorframe. Lock had been torn off and thrown aside. Something or someone had decided that enough was enough.
She suppressed the shivers that run down her spine. There really was no reason to be afraid. What ever it had been that had mutilated these doctors was most likely as dead as its victims by now. As far as she knew, she was the only one equipped with an ability to survive through cleaning procedure, and if she hadn’t gotten scared of the alarms and grasped technicians bare wrist, even she would be dead as a doornail.
One good thing came out of the carnage though. There was a young nurse among the victims, approximately same size as her. She couldn’t bring herself to take the woman’s blood stained clothes, but she took her shoes. They weren’t exactly her size, they were tad too small, but again they were better than nothing. Sensible white sneakers. She crouched to tie the laces when she heard a noise coming somewhere down the yellow corridor that stretched past the hall outside of the examination room 1. It sounded like something had fallen to the floor. Something heavy and fragile. Maybe a computer. She tied the laces before standing up. Safer that way. If she needed to run she wouldn’t trip over.
She sneaked to the direction of the noise. It came again. She stopped briefly to pick up a huge, machete-like paper cutter that somebody had torn off from the copy machine standing at the corner of the hall. It was stained with blood. Somebody had already used it as a weapon. Good enough proof for her that it worked. She grasped it to her right hand just as the lights flickered and shut down, and she was plunged in to complete darkness, her only guide the constant crashing noises coming from the end of the corridor.
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