August 16th, 2020. [Part II]

So onward we marched.

A fact people don’t often think about: six stories is roughly sixty feet. And sixty is a very large number, actually. My thighs ached—my toes were numb. And, more than ever, I was desperate to find something, anything, worth coming all this way for.

Seemingly, we had found ourselves on floor B7; a light fog danced about our feet as we stepped forward. The time was 10:20 PM, and the sun had set hours ago, not that we could see it from down there. I clicked on my flashlight—and Chloe hers—and we began looking around.

The laboratory was dusty, untouched by human hands for many years. As such, I had to hold back a cough while sorting through the filthy file cabinets. A rotten smell wafted through the dark hall; almost everything had been eaten by decay, and what hadn’t been wasn’t interesting enough to garner much merit.

Though infested with some sort of lichen, the computers nearby seemed like they would work just fine, given a power source. Chloe flicked the switches on and off, but nothing happened.

“Work, you dumb hunk of metal,” she commanded to no avail. “Nothing’s turning on, Niko.”

“The lab’s off the power grid. Of course it’s not turning on.”

“Well, it must’ve been on it at some point, otherwise they wouldn’t have computers here.” She kept walking, looking around at all the machinery. It wasn’t really my specialty, but just looking at the tech, I figured it was powerful.

Scanning the tall corridor, my eyes landed on an opening in the wall. I found buttons on its side—apparently it was the elevator shaft, though it looked a little more like a jagged cave entrance. The glint of the wire from inside reassured my assumption, though, and I proceeded forward to get a closer look.

Chloe was definitely on the right track when she’d said something went wrong here.

I staggered back, holding my flashlight with two hands to steady myself. Laying over the fractured elevator box was about half of a human skeleton, moldy and rotten, festering with roaches. Black sludge seeped over the edges and into the darkness below—the same sludge I’d seen on the elevator doors above. It was blood.

Chloe scared me out of my wits when she set a hand on my shoulder. “Goddamn. Where’s the other half?” she remarked.

“Ah! Don’t scare me like that.”

“Don’t get scared like that, man. I don’t know what to tell you.” She pushed past me and kneeled next to the corpse. “This body looks like it’s… well, at least ten years old. It gets hard to know for sure after that.”

I worked up the courage to approach. Quickly, I noticed something off about it. “It… ew. It still has eyes. Shouldn’t those decompose?”

Unfazed, Chloe flipped the skull over. Sure enough, a pair of eyeballs stared her down. “These are implants,” she replied. “Fake. So our friend here must’ve been blind. And clearly, some kind of test subject, too. Look at the back here.”

“There’s metal bolted in its skull!” I gasped. “Do you think this is one of the bodies?”

“I doubt it. Those were dead bodies. This one was clearly alive when it wound up here. Unless the experiment involved bringing the dead back to life, and I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing.”

“That, and it’s only half of a body,” I added. “I wonder how that happened.”

“It probably won’t give us an answer to our mystery. Let’s get back on track,” Chloe said, standing up and wiping her hands on her jean shorts. She walked past me and kept on searching—I followed her, feeling more like a sidekick than ever.

That had always kind of been our dynamic. Chloe and I worked through lots of mysteries together when we were younger, sometimes ones we certainly weren’t supposed to. She had a fascination with solving crimes, and since I was her only friend, I wound up being her guy-in-the-chair more often than not. I loved the logician’s game of connecting the dots, but I could never bring myself to show up to the scene and do the dirty work.

Hallways branched off on either side of the room, reaching like the arms of a fractal into the depths of the building. In the center of the floor stood a large supercomputer of sorts—wires spilled out onto the tiles below like a spider’s web.

The rotten stench from before grew sickening, like corroded iron. “Eugh. El olor de la muerte,” said Chloe. “It’s strong.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah. Another body.”

I walked slowly around the back of the device, hoping the source was just some kind of animal. The sight of a slumped, rotting hand shot down my hopes—against my conscious will, curiosity dragged me forward to see the whole corpse.

Its face had mostly decomposed. The cause of death was obvious: a bullet through the skull. Spiders made their home in the holes where its eyes should have been; metal plates had been bolted into its head and neck. A chunk of concrete, fallen from the ceiling, had crushed its entire lower body.

“What is it with these lower halves?” Chloe, having walked around the other way, took no displeasure in seeing the body. “It’s at least a decade old, like the other one. If you do a DNA test, we could get an analysis when we get back.”

“…”

“Don’t throw up. It’s disrespectful,” she said, indifferent. “I wouldn’t want anyone puking on my corpse. This dude—actually, I think it’s a girl, look at the jawline—probably wouldn’t either.”

I took deep breaths through my mouth. “Woah-kay. Alright. Body number two. Cool. Not what we came here for.”

Chloe smirked. “I think I found something, though…”

Without hesitation, she kneeled down, lifted the rotted arm, and swiped a crumpled paper from beneath its ribcage. I gagged and turned away—she unfurled it and read it aloud.

“MWP Research Log. July 14, ‘57.”

I spun back to her in disbelief. “You’re kidding. 1957?”

“It just says ‘57. For all we know, that’s 2057,” she grumbled, brushing her curly hair out of her eyes as she stood up. “Subjects behaving erratically. Secure plans for the New Dawn Experiment, the savior of the world, on floor B8. And that’s all it says.”

“No way.”

“This shit would be cheesy if we weren’t standing next to a dead body. There’s another secret floor.”

In feigned indifference, I flipped my flashlight in the air, trying to catch it in one hand. I fumbled with it—my hands were shaking pretty bad. “Ahem. So now we have to find a way down there. For the ‘savior of the world’.”

“Yeah, that’s a hook and a half. But before you start running around, uh. I thought I should let you know.”

“Know what?”

“There’s another one. Over by the wall.”

“You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m kidding.”

I let out a sigh of relief and turned—then promptly hurled up my lunch. Fully intact—and clothed in goggles and a lab coat—this skeleton still had something of a face on it, enough to imagine it was a person at one point. I caught its insides leaking through a hole in the side of its head and swallowed a little more vomit.

“What the fuck!”

“‘Please tell me you’re kidding’, is what you said. I did what you wanted, scaredy-cat,” she argued. “You go off and try to find B8. I’ll get more info on these bodies.”

My stomach gurgling, I split off to cover the maze-like complex. The floor was built in weird, confounding ways, almost as if meant to confuse someone. Might not be too far off. Human experiments clearly aren’t off the table here.

Despite the floor’s grand design, it wasn't long before I found something of note. At the end of a side hallway, a faint glow flickered from the ground. I ran over to it and inspected it further—it was a hatch.

“Hey! Chloe!”

Upon prying it open, I found a few iron rungs leading down to an ominous door. From its frosted glass window, I saw the source of the glow—lights, somehow still active in the very depths of the laboratory.

“Oh my God! Chloe!”

She ran up behind me, panting. “I’m here, I’m here. You need me to kill a bug or something?”

“No! Holy shit, look in here. The lights are still on.”

“Your eyes are playing tricks on you, Niko. There’s no way anything’s– oh my God. How long have they been…?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Well, that’s great. I snatched another card off of the scientist. It was Doctor White, who wrote that note before, so that tells me we’re on the right track. Couldn’t get anything on the other two, though.”

I quickly descended the ladder and opened the door to some kind of airlock. Amber lights pulsed and flickered, putting us both on edge. How many years had these lights been running? What exactly was this ‘savior of the world’?

Walking past a couple of lockers, another door loomed over us. This one required a keycard, like so many others—but with the reserve power down here, we would actually have access. Chloe pressed the scientist’s card to the scanner and watched the LED light turn green—the door audibly unlatched several times.

What we found inside was a cramped corridor, cabinets to either side and a small contraption in the center. The lights flickered on and off around us, highlighting everything with a faint orange hue.

“Bunch of machines in here. You have any idea what they’re for?” I asked.

“Maybe we’ll get some sort of answer from these file lockers,” Chloe replied.

…I wish we’d given up then.

I tried pulling one open—nothing. “Locked.”

“Oh, duh. Classified bullshit. They really wanted to keep it a secret.”

…I wish I’d heeded the warnings.

“You mean the New Dawn Experiment?”

“Yeah, savior of the world and all that,” Chloe said. “Whatever that means.”

…I wish I’d known the truth.

My attention was drawn to the capsule in the center of the room, billowing some kind of cryogenic steam. Reaching through the haze, I pressed my fingers against the cold, hard metal. Once I got both hands on it, I found myself in thought.

Whatever’s in here could tell us exactly what’s up with this place. Maybe this is my chance to do the dirty work. Call it jealousy, but I’m a little tired of being the sidekick, and this here might be the biggest mystery we’ll ever crack. So I’ll be the one to crack it.

I twisted the device on its pedestal, feeling a little more confident than I should have. Chloe and I made eye contact—she was bewildered.

“Well, that’s one way to figure it out,” she grumbled.

“God forbid Niko takes a risk once in a while.”

“My risks are calculated. That’s just a gamble, primo.”

The central device, glowing white, began to pour white smoke from its sides. It shot gas out in six different directions, rotating slightly and hissing. Curious as a cat, I leaned in to read the text embedded on it.

New Dawn Experiment, Prototype 3MV

Eclipse Time: ~3 Months

Sample Size: 1075 Species

Genetic Splicer / Viral Vector

“Viral…?” I stuttered. “It’s… a virus. But what does it do?”

“You know what? I’m tired of secrets. Let’s find out!” Chloe grunted, delivering a powerful kick to the drawers. Papers scattered everywhere—with only a bit of glancing, I found one with the experiment’s name on it.

Swiping it up, I immediately read it aloud like I had all the others. “The earth is sick and dying. Soon enough, it will be unable to harbor life.”

“Faster, c’mon.”

“This is the fault of only one species—humanity,” I continued. “In order to save the planet, its scourge must be eradicated. To achieve such a feat without mass genocide would be miraculous. And indeed, our miracle has arrived.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “What the hell…?!”

“By methodically splicing the genes of common animals with human cells, it is possible to entirely convert an organism from one species to another. To ensure a new dawn for our beloved planet, intelligent life… must pay the price.”

I dropped the paper and clutched my chest. My heart rate skyrocketed, my mind raced, and I could only come to one conclusion.

“Chloe… I can’t believe I’m saying this. I don’t even want to believe it,” I mumbled, “but if this thing is a working prototype, then we’re turning into animals.”