August 17th, 2020. [Part I]

The clock struck twelve then. Maybe it was some kind of universal irony.

“Okay, give me that,” Chloe said. She stepped over and grabbed the paper out of my hands rather forcefully—her eyes darted all over the mission statement, as if trying to catch it on a technicality.

“What, do you think I’m lying?!”

“No. I just think you’re wrong, Niko,” she said, straight-faced. “Technology like that just straight-up doesn’t exist. Not in 1957, not now.”

“But the paper–”

“This is a statement of intention. We can’t just treat these words as the truth.”

“The thing said it was a prototype, alright? Like– what if it is from the future?” I spat. “It’s easy to sit there and say it’s a lie. And sure, maybe it is. But we should act like it’s not!”

Chloe lowered her brow and read over the paper one more time. “It definitely says it outright: they were trying to kill off the human race. But…”

The cold smog from the capsule hung in the air, a grim reminder of what we’d just unearthed. We’d come here for answers, but we’d wound up only with more questions—and quite possibly an apocalypse on our hands. The corridor closed in on me; I felt more and more like I was caged.

The two of us were silent, apart from my pacing footsteps. What were the chances it was real? And if it were, how would it work? Why even create something like that? I knelt down and sorted through some of the scattered papers in hopes I’d find an answer. But I didn’t.

“Half of these are about completely separate projects, Chloe,” I mumbled. “The only thing they have in common is Dr. White.”

“As in, that’s who wrote them all?”

“Yeah.”

“So adding that to the fact I used her keycard to get in here, we can conclude this was probably Dr. White’s workstation. Which would be more than enough evidence for an arrest warrant if she weren’t a skeleton in the hallway.”

“She?”

“The skeleton was female.”

I glanced at the empty capsule, its glow fading. “So I guess that means… she’s the one who made this thing.”

“Again, tried to make this thing. No evidence she actually succeeded,” Chloe said quickly. “Assuming the worst is something you’re really good at, Niko.”

“Thanks. Read it out again. What did it say? Something like ‘our miracle has arrived’? That doesn’t sound like speculation.”

“Agree to disagree. Look at the lights.” She drew her hand upward and pointed at the angled emergency lights above. They’d been flickering on and off for some time now, but it was becoming more frequent.

Looking around, it became obvious. Fine print was harder to read, our surroundings more difficult to discern—the power was running out. I dropped my bag and unzipped it on the floor, taking out a pillow I’d planned to use for camping. As the light faded, I pulled open the door and propped it open with the headrest.

“What are you– oh, I get it. If that door locks, we’re trapped in here,” Chloe remarked.

“Exactly,” I said. “But I’ll probably find something better to prop it with later. I like that pillow.”

“Why not take it when we leave? You wanna come back here or something?”

The lights went dark—probably forever. Chloe held up her phone, and I clicked on my flashlight again. “...No. I just realized something.”

“And that is?”

“I know you said we’d agree to disagree, but we can’t really do that. I don’t want to believe it, either. But if there’s even a chance it’s real, then…”

Chloe glared at me knowingly. “Then we can’t go back. That’s what you’re saying.”

“We need to prove it isn’t real before we take any risks like that. It said it was a viral vector, and those things spread fast.”

“Okay, sure. We quarantine ourselves for a day or two until we know it’s a hoax,” she replied. “But we’d need some kind of shelter.”

“We’re standing in one.”

“The abandoned lab with the rotting corpses? Seriously?”

I groaned. “I mean on the upper floors. We can set up camp up there while we figure everything out.”

“That’s a lot of work to disprove something we know isn’t possible, primo,” Chloe said. “And our mystery was supposed to be what happened to this place. Not whatever this New Dawn Experiment bullshit is.”

“I’m sorry you can’t get back to running your business or whatever, but this comes first. We don’t have a choice. We have to quarantine. Are we on the same page?”

Chloe took a moment to process. Despite all her strong words, she never really seemed upset—I rarely saw a real smile or frown on her face, and for how much I’d put her through out here, that was really impressive now. She blinked and looked at me.

“Fine. We give it one day. If there’s no proof for either side, I’m walking off the next morning.”

“That works. Let’s go set up camp for the night,” I said, creaking the door open and stepping over my pillow. “What time is it, anyway?”

She looked down at her phone. “It’s 12:24,” she replied, following me out of the workstation.

No wonder I’m getting so worked up about this. I’ll probably wake up tomorrow and think of some way to prove it’s fake.

We began to scale the facility again. I tried not to gag as we walked past the bodies. Chloe counted them up—we had missed one near the massive computer, which made four total. Oddly, according to her, the last one had no apparent cause of death, so the mystery of what exactly went down became all the more intriguing.

As it turns out, six flights of stairs is way worse going up. I probably should have guessed that, but in all fairness, I had other things to think about. Like the fact that, even now, I still felt like a sidekick, following behind Chloe.

I don’t know why it upset me so much. I’d been tracing her footsteps practically my whole life. Maybe I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I’d only chosen my genetics major to assist with her investigations. I’d wanted to be her equal, and I think she viewed me that way, but I never felt like I was truly on par with her.

We came out on floor B1 tired and sweaty, realizing at the same time what we’d have to do if we wanted to return to the surface—unless we could find another way. I kept climbing the staircase without Chloe in hopes I could budge the tree aside and clear the path for us.

The stairs themselves were nothing more than metal bars affixed to the concrete walls, so naturally the tree had knocked a few of them out. I made do with what stairs were left and clung onto the log when I got to it. The chirping of summer toads echoed from the night sky above—and to my side.

I nearly slapped myself in the face. The tree had fallen from somewhere, hadn’t it? I stood upright on its rotten surface and balance-beamed my way into the open air. Looking out and into my surroundings, I was roughly ten feet off the ground. My best bet would be to grab onto the roots and hope they’d bring me to a halt, but really, I wouldn’t get too hurt if I just fell instead—so that’s what I did.

My feet stung pretty bad for a moment, but I shook off the impact and wandered back to the lab’s entrance. I saw Chloe coming up from the back hallway and gave her a wave.

“How’d you get up here? Did you move that tree?” she asked, the imprints of the cable fresh on her forearms.

“I climbed on the tree and jumped out,” I explained. “I have a rope in my pack. Tomorrow morning, let’s throw it up there and make a path for ourselves.”

“Sounds like a plan, primo. I hope you brought two bedrolls.”

It took us almost an hour to set everything up. Even without the hassle of tent-setting, we still had to get a fire going, and since it’d rained fairly recently, there wasn’t much drywood to go around. It did give me something of an ego boost, though—Chloe hadn’t been a boy scout.

Using Chloe’s hunting knife, I cut dry shavings off branches from trees near the lab. (You can tell they’re dry because they snap when you bend them.) We piled them together on a dry spot in the lobby, then after some careful layering, I threw in a match. Waving it with our hands eventually gave us a solid fire, which I had Chloe add to for a while as I figured out our bedroll issue.

I felt kind of bad for only having packed one. The main issue became one of indecision; I didn’t want to cut my bedroll in half, but considering it was still fairly warm out, it was a reasonable option. I decided in the end to just give the whole wrap to Chloe, who’d never gone camping before. I would make something work.

It was around half past one as we sat next to each other in front of the fire. Chloe fiddled with her bra straps over her scarred collarbone. I ducked my head—the smoke wouldn’t stop blowing towards me no matter where I went.

“Niko,” she said quietly, “I’m not insulting you or anything when I say this. Why did you open that thing?”

“The capsule?” I replied, coughing as I tried to wave the smoke away.

“You didn’t give me time to look around and make sure it was safe. You just went straight for it. That’s not like you.”

I yawned. “I don’t know. Looked shiny.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

The fire lit her face up with a glow the same color as the lights down below. I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes.

“I really don’t know. Curiosity, I guess. But I know if the New Dawn Experiment turns out to be real, then…”

“It’s not real. The only reason we’re still here is to prove that,” she said.

“I really hope you’re right.”

“We’ll laugh about this in a few years like everything else. I swear on it.”

“Like the time Aubrey and I had to talk you out of lacing Maya’s lunch with laxatives?”

She smirked. “No, that one’s not funny. Would’ve been if you’d let me.”

“Okay, what about July 4th before you went to college?”

“Hah! I think Maya’s sheets still smell like smoke. She’s been texting me about owing her new ones.”

I shrugged. “You better pay for them. It was your idea.”

“When is it not my idea, Niko?”

“Good question.”

We joked around for a little longer, but eventually the day’s exhaustion set in. And honestly, I couldn’t live down my regret much longer. Chloe was right—most things were her ideas. But this one was mine, and… well, it had certainly put us in a bad situation. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her why I’d done it, and now I was suffering in silence.

“Hey, before we crash… I’m really sorry about today. And I’m really worried about what I might’ve done, even if it’s not possible or whatever,” I said, staring blankly at the flames.

“Pray on it. Give your worries to God. No priest out here, but He’s always listening.” She grabbed a pack of jerky before she rolled up in her sleeping bag. “Nos echamos, Niko. Hasta mañana.”

“Hasta mañana.”

I sat outside for a moment, looking up at the cloudy sky. Lights from the city twinkled in the distance like artificial stars, and despite Chloe being only a few feet behind me, I felt so alone. My mind told me we’d be out of here by afternoon—my gut told me I’d doomed the whole world. The wind ruffled my hair as I laid in a patch of moss.

I shut my eyes and relaxed my aching bones. All I wanted was the truth.

God, are you listening?