The room was cold and silent. From the steel pod emerged a whole set of tubes and wires, linked to a computer. On the huge screen, the only light source of that place, was displayed a series of parameters, monitoring the pod status.
The quietness was suddenly broken. A sound signal echoed through the walls, and the computer screen went red. The pod opened like a germinating seed, releasing a cloud of ice-cold smog. A woman was then revealed. From the seemly peaceful sleep, her eyes opened wide, as she took the cold air to her lungs so desperately, she appeared to be breathing for the first time.
As she tries to recompose herself, the lights went on, revealing the white, aseptic room. She raised her torso, only to feel her head being shaken by the worst feeling of nausea you can imagine. She attempted to her surroundings: a lab; and not very far from her, a table, full of surgical tools. Her first instinct was looking down her naked body, but she found no marks or scars… she seemed unharmed. Which didn't stop the adrenaline flood in her veins: she tossed her body out of the pod, and forced herself to stand.
Ignoring the low temperature, she rushed to the main panel. BLOCK02 – CRYOSLEEP.
"Where the hell am I?" She cooed to herself.
The red signal indicated a failure on one of the pods, the computer referring it as SUBJECT ALPHA.
Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of the situation. And there's only a way it can do that. Remember. Unfortunately, every time she tried, she founded only a blank.
I was surely part of a messed up experiment. What did they seek? And who are they?
She began researching, but most of the files needed some password to be accessed. Her profile displayed information she already know. Nina Williams; 23; Irish; assassin for hire; master in Aikido. She looked around. A small shelf, holding a few folders caught her attention. She readily took the heavier one, which, however, didn't have more than a dozen pages.
«HISTORY: ALPHA After a first analysis on Subject Alpha, we believe she was surely target of other treatments in the past: her limbic system has been modified, probably by chemical means, and shows signs of tubal ligation.»
What a great way to start the day…
Other than the thin folders, Block02 hadn't anything to offer but a closet full of medicine, computers and analyzers. She left the room, only to face a dark corridor. The walls vibrated and some of the roof lamps buzzed as she passed, giving occasional sparks. The next massive door announced STORAGE. Inside, boxes and boxes were placed in a giant shelf. After a quick look, she located the one with a rooky handwriting: ALPHA (N. WILLIAMS). She pulled it, and found all her belongings… not that she recalls them, not even the polished twin automatic Glock 17. She quickly dressed the one-piece leather suit, and got out in silent steps.
The murmur of the steel walls was getting louder. On the way, deep claw marks appeared adorning the walls. And with it, dry spots of blood. Alarmed, she took her hands to the gun barrels. The next door appearing was severely damaged. The deformed letters formed the words STAFF ROOM. This time, Nina had to put her strength to the test, by forcing the heavy door to open. She made it, but only got space to enter sideways. The room was much larger than she anticipated. The only thing she found there was chaos: along the equidistant lines of desks holding several computers, archives were smashed against some of the screens, and papers were scattered on the floor; there were sharp pieces of glass, from broken desk lamps, shining on top of the tables; fallen lockers… and corpses. Some dressed in white lab outfits, and others in black smoking. One of them had its skull facing her, with wide, cracked orbits and a partially opened mouth. Under its arm, Nina noticed a block of yellow pages, and slid it slowly towards her.
«Today, a stranger invaded our labs. It wasn't the ordinary type: he's as tall as a bear, and we could all sense his power, a dark force evolving it. People started calling it Ogre. He had a girl in his arms, and demanded to talk with Doctor Bosconovitch. The Russian scientist readily appeared to face the threat, with an escort of a dozen guards, armed to the teeth. The Ogre was very specific: he needed some experiments on her, and the monitoring and results should be reported only to him. Doctor Bosconovitch was always an eccentric man, but I never believed he'd agree with a stranger to use his precious lab and research. But as the Ogre talked, Dr. Bosconovitch fell in silence, like a child hearing a bedtime story, then, he smiled… and agreed. And I could see in his expression… something changed: the man became compliant, like a puppet. The will of the Ogre became his own. And now, through him, the monster controls every one of us.»
Nina twisted her eyebrows. Nothing on that letter made sense. The girl in the monster's arms… was her?
The floor vibrated and snapped her out of her thoughts. She continued along the corridor, and eventually reached out a cockpit. She could see the ocean waving below her. She was not in just a lab… it was an airship. The auto-pilot was engaged, showing multiple minor failures piling up. It was a matter of time until the airship dives into the sea. The controls were been savagely broken, sulked by claw marks, which Nina followed with her fingertips. There were more corpses to be found, dismembered, whose arms and legs were then spotted several meters away from the torso; splashes of blood appeared everywhere. One of the corpses had his hands on top of the panel, while the rest of the body lies on the floor, its broken spine pressing against the bloody lab-suit. Somewhere between the confusion of blood, broken bones and rotten guts, Nina was able to find another note. Because of the blood stains she only could read parts of it.
«(…) Experimentation didn't have the results expected, (…) Bosconovitch went mad! Start shooting the employees! Some of the staff jumped off (…) The Ogre came (…) claws emerged sharp as daggers, (…) turned into a hideous snout, monstrous wings burst from its back (…) long tail cut through steel like butter (…) some died impaled in his horns (…) And I am next. Been hiding among the corpses too long. (…) I closed the blocks to keep them safe. I'll rush to the panel and engage the auto-pilot. With luck, they will awake once the pods ran out of energy… it's that or fall into the ocean when the systems start to fail… Either of them is better than die at the hands of that freak (…)»
Nina was assaulted by another piercing headache, which almost made her lost her balance. For most she tried to reason, under the evidences, there appeared to be none. Still, the view of the cockpit was quite alarming: the only thing the ship had under it was ocean. If she wants to get out of there, she has to be able to guide the flying lab to the city. She fought against the sparkling, ruined controls, but eventually the auto-pilot was engaged in the right direction.
The note mentions some of the staff 'jumped off' the ship in order to escape Bosconovitch's madness. So this place must have some sort of hangar…
Determined to find it, Nina passed by BLOCK02 again, but in the opposite direction, and a few steps ahead, she found another: BLOCK01. Inside, there was a lab exactly equal to the one she came from. It readily illuminated as soon as she passed the door with the same blindly white lights. And there was a pod, still working. The computer screen showed SUBJECT UNKNOWN – ID NEEDED.
As she got close, giving a look to its interior, she jumped as she faces a familiar sight: her sister, Anna.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She asked to the sleeping woman.
There were instructions to awake her, but Nina ignored them. Her little sister spent all her life make Nina's into a living hell. By mere curiosity, Nina searched all the desks and lockers. Was Anna evolved in the massacre she presented?
The answer came soon enough, when she spotted an old notebook in one of the lockers.
«We got another subject. She didn't tell her name, only claims to be sister of the subject alpha. She demanded us to put her in cryo-sleep for as many time as her sister, and paid us well for that, so Bosconovitch ordered me to put her in our oldest pod.»
Nina smiled. "Sweet dreams, then." Then she left the block, and headed to the hangar. There were carcasses piling at the entrance. The doors were made of thick steel, and in spite of severely damaged, they were still solid. They were, however, opened by a flinch. Nina could almost see the despair of all those doomed people, as they tried to pass only to die smashed against the steel, or stuck in between.
Nina had no other option but to attempt the same. She held her breath, and passed first her leg, then her arm; she squeezed her body to the max, passing it as slowly as she could. She made it by close. If she were one pound heavier, she would probably die in that place.
The hangar was a wide space, sealed in thick, dark walls, with diffuse spots of red light revealing the shadows of obstacles she couldn't identify. The turbulence there was enormous. The sounds of the objects trembling amplified by that gigantic resonance cage, made her cover her ears. At her right, there was a red lamp, poorly lighting up a yellow-black blazed lever. A few meters forward, lay the parachute-bags, behind a transparent sliding-door.
Nina accelerated her steps, only to jump backwards: as she passed the lever, another image flashed out on the corner of her eyes. At a first glimpse, a skull, a few hairs still stuck, and its jaws wide open; then the body, bended in a ninety degree angle, beneath the ragged lab-suit and a pool of fetid, dark fluid, beneath. Next to the corpse, there was a riffle, and above it, a bended foil.
«I DID IT, MASTER! I DID IT! I did the experiment you requested! However, I must say… some of my workers betrayed us! None admits who did this! Oh Lord I'm sorry for this mess! But I'm fixing it! Yes I am! None will escape this lab! With his life, at least… I WILL KILL THEM! ONE BY ONE! I will not rest until I have its location! And when I do, You'll be proud! Very proud! And then… then You'll fulfill Your part of the bargain, yes? And I shall follow You to eternity, WITHOUT EVER FEAR DEATH!»
So this is Bosconovitch… Nina immediately dropped the paper, thinking that she was having her first nightmare.
Don't be silly and get out of here! She demanded to herself.
After a quick sight on the parachutes, she noticed that the majority had been damaged. The holes suggested a gun fire. Bosconovitch did this on purpose.
Luckily, one of the parachutes, hidden behind the others, seemed intact. She putted it on her back and pulled the lever down. The floor started to move, pending to the city ground, turning into a huge ramp. Nina didn't hesitate: the moment she got eyes on the net of motorways between the buildings, she jumped.