August 17th, 2020. [Part II]

The signs were subtle at first. We couldn’t have known; at least, that’s what I tell myself.

I woke up in a cold sweat, my ears ringing. The soft pitter-patter of the morning rain echoed through our impromptu shelter, a contrast with the crackling fire soon to die out.

I rubbed my eyes to clear out the gunk. “Morning, Niko,” Chloe said, crouched near the fire. “Feeling any less human?”

“Wha– no, not really…”

“Well, you look like it. But maybe it’s just the hair.”

I ran a hand through the dirty-blonde mess on my head. “Rude. You know, I prayed for a good hair day last night.”

“Dios mío. You should try another religion.”

I put on my vest and scarf, and as was my morning routine, started braiding my hair. Using one of many cracked windows as a sort of mirror, I pulled the right side forward and split it in three, then slowly intertwined them—right, then left, over and over. I’d worn my hair many ways over the years, but I’d always done this.

Chloe, by comparison, never did much with hers. I probably only noticed because mine took so long, but other than wearing a ponytail when she was young, she’d always just fluff it a little and go. I’d have done the same if I’d inherited my mom’s curls—instead, I barely even looked Latino.

The only other family member I had who looked like me was my twin sister, Aubrey. She learned how to braid it from her friends at school, then came home and taught me the same day so we could match. Ever since then, we’d both worn a braid on our right, no matter what else we changed. I hadn’t seen Aubrey in years, not since she’d gone off to boarding school. We exchanged letters pretty frequently, though.

Chloe noticed my styling just as I was wrapping it with a hair tie. “I don’t think Aubrey wears her hair like that anymore,” she said.

“Yeah, she does. She still sends pictures.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” she said, holding her phone up in hopes she’d pick up some cell service. “It’s funny, everyone always got you two mixed up because of that braid.”

“Even though I’m a guy?”

“More when you were younger. But you still don’t really give off manly vibes, either.”

I gave her a glare. “Okay, whatever. Let’s hold off on the chatter until we have a game plan.”

She kept glancing at me while I laced my boots. At first, I figured it was out of annoyance—she’d been ready for who knows how long—but as I worked my way up the lattice, it occurred to me she was just watching. Not a whole lot else to do out here, honestly.

That notion shattered when she spoke up: “I actually think it’s the eyelashes.”

“Huh?”

“That’s why you look so girly.”

“People are gonna watch the news tomorrow and see ‘tragedy strikes local designer’ after I use that bedroll as a body bag.”

I rummaged through my backpack and brought out a bundle of nylon rope. The package held forty feet’s worth, but I’d already used some in tying a sidecar to Chloe’s motorbike (which turned out very poorly and left me with a nasty scar on my cheek). From the look on her face, she probably recognized it, too.

“That rope is shit.”

“Well, I– I wasn't expecting to use it.”

“Ay ay ay,” she said, shaking her head. “So we’re just using it to get into the stairwell?”

“Yeah, but… it’s raining.”

“Our hands won’t slip that much, will they?”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I replied. “We shouldn’t get our clothes wet.”

“Why not? We can just dry them when we get back.”

“...You’re right.”

“C’mon, it’s only a little rain. We’ll be fine.”

Carrying the bundle outside, I led Chloe to the broken wall. Droplets pelted our shoulders and soaked into our clothes as we walked, careful not to step into any particularly deep puddles. We both had boots, but water would seep into their seams if we weren’t careful—not to mention, Chloe’s were designer-brand.

As I unwound the loop, memories of Boy Scout training raced through my mind. If Chloe had named any knot, I could have tied it. This task didn’t really require any of that, though, nor did many of the investigations we’d done over the years. Mostly it centered around what Chloe was good at: annoyingly close to everything I wasn’t.

We approached the collapsed tree, sticking out of the concrete labyrinth like a giant lever waiting to be pulled. Unfortunately, the thing weighed well over a ton, so pulling it down wasn’t much of an option. I scrunched up one end of the rope and tossed it over the log—only for it to end up right back in my hands. Chloe chuckled behind me.

“It’s the wind,” she said. “Let me try.”

I dejectedly passed it off to her as she stepped to the other side. Throwing in sync with the wind, she made it over with ease; we now had a pulley of sorts.

“I’ll hold the rope down on this side. You climb up,” I suggested.

Chloe gripped the nylon, slick with drizzle. “And then I’ll pull you up after, right?”

“You better.”

I held my side of the rope for dear life as Chloe scaled the wall. She ascended with leaps and bounds, kicking against the concrete like a professional rock climber. Once she stood atop the log, she leaned over and looked down at me.

“You look short from up here!” she said.

“I look short from anywhere, Chloe,” I called back.

“Five-eight isn’t short, primo.”

“Wha– okay, so you know my exact height, but you didn’t know I played the guitar?”

“I can tell you’re five-eight by looking at you. Guitar doesn’t work that way. Now hold on tight.”

I clung to the rope as she hoisted me up. My hands still stung from yesterday, and having to grip twice as hard thanks to the rain, I nearly gave out. Luckily, Chloe grabbed my wrist as I started to slip.

“A little déjà vu here, huh?” she said, pulling me up with a grunt. “It’s like I’ve done this before.”

“Except this time the ground is right there,” I added. “Hey, how tall are you, again?”

“Five-two. Why?”

I stared at her. Notably, up at her. She had at least a few inches on me, and she was smiling like she knew it.

“Ha, ha. What are you really?” I asked.

“You got me. Five-foot flat.”

“Do you just want me to guess?”

“Sure, I’ll give you a few guesses. But I’ll just keep saying no to piss you off.”

We shimmied our way down the trunk and into the fire stairs. In a vain attempt to free up the doorway, we both tried to shove it with all our might. This ended up having little consequence other than tiring us out a little, so we gave it up and started the hike downstairs.

Around floor B4, after lots of height guesses and bickering, we decided to split off. Chloe offered to go solve the mystery of the lab itself while I researched the truth of the New Dawn Experiment. After all, I’d been the one worried about it being real, not her—it stood to reason I should be the one to disprove my suspicions. So, she left me to descend further while she explored the fourth basement.

At that point, it was around eleven in the morning. That was obviously a guess, since my phone had been dead for a while and I wasn’t some astronomy expert. I didn’t know how long I’d slept, nor could I see the sun’s position in the sky past the summer rain. It was dark enough outside to warrant a flashlight even just one floor down today.

I arrived on floor B7 as before and, careful not to get close to the bodies, made my way across the broken tiles. Mist hung in the air as the humidity mixed with the cold of the laboratory—mist we’d seen yesterday with our flashlights, but which was made apparent today by a soft glow coming from the elevator shaft.

A light humming sound with all the resonance of a steel drum called me to it. I clicked off my light and listened to the falling of rain against the bent metal frame of the elevator box. Confused now as to how the elevator cord had remained taut, I stepped inside, next to one of the bodies, and looked up.

Oh, I thought. The cable is at an angle. The lab had eight upper floors on the map, but we only saw four. Which means part of it’s collapsed, and the rest of the elevator cord connects somewhere up there. How could something like that have happened?

Figuring that out was Chloe’s job, wasn’t it? I’d found myself sidetracked already. With a directive like ‘disprove the virus’, though, I didn’t know where to start, other than coming down here. Maybe the workstation in the hatch had answers, but part of me was scared to go back in there. One slip-up keeping the door propped, and I’d be locked inside for the rest of my life.

I kneeled down and set my eyes on the skeleton in front of me, watching the raindrops beat against its skull. Those robotic red eyes sent a shiver down my spine, but they didn’t stop me from consulting the cadaver.

“Hey, bud. Any idea what I should do?” I asked.

The skull had very little to say. I’d have been more worried if it did have anything to say.

“You probably know more about this place than I do, so… Should I go down that hatch again?”

Nothing, again.

“Ugh… yeah, I probably should. But it’s dark down there. Like, really dark. And we didn’t really find anything last time, other than the virus, but even that’s just speculation.”

I stood up and stepped out of the rain. If there was anything down here that could prove the New Dawn Experiment, it was in the same room the prototype had been stored in. I spun my flashlight in the air and caught it—why couldn’t I do that when Chloe was around?—then clicked it on to start investigating.

When we first came down here, I'd thought the hatch was ominous because of its glow. Now seeing it unlit, it was more nightmarish than ever. My flashlight’s reflection in the frosted glass panes appeared as monstrous eyes peering through the windows.

“Flashy, don’t scare me like that,” I scolded. “That’s mean.”

His name had been Flashy the Flashlight for a long time. I got him as a birthday gift one year after I’d joined the Boy Scouts—back then, I had a tendency to name inanimate objects very simply. Flashy had been with me on every camping trip and every vacation (though we didn’t have many of those growing up).

I carefully stepped down the rungs of the ladder and entered the airlock chamber, where I found my neck pillow still bravely holding the door open. Deciding I wanted my pillow back, I slipped my backpack off and started searching for anything that would work as a doorstop instead.

The rubbery cover of my first-aid kit seemed to be a nice fit. I pulled open the door—heavier than I expected—and jammed the kit between it and the floor. The friction held it open as I’d hoped, and I was able to retrieve the previous doorstop victim. If the virus wound up being real, I’d probably have to find another solution, given how important first aid was.

Scanning the room with Flashy, I sighed at the mess we’d made in here. Papers lined the floor like an off-white carpet, and as sure as I was that one of them had the answers I needed, I didn’t want to comb through that many files.

“Flashy, you wanna look at the machines? That’s a great idea,” I said in the tone you’d talk to a dog with. “Let’s go look at the machines.”

The central capsule gave me chills as I walked past it. The thing looked evil. In retrospect, I really shouldn’t have opened it with such haste. I mean, I was pretty sure Chloe would have if I hadn’t. Right?

Beyond it, a set of large machines framed the back of the room. They didn’t look quite like computers, though there were several black screens and many orange accents. Upon them laid several buttons and switch covers I could find no apparent use for. They looked seriously futuristic, but not in the way something actually from the future might look. Just… a bit off.

A few more papers lay on the desk nearby, papers roughly more organized than the ones on the floor. I figured they were probably set up that way when we’d arrived. Flashy and I approached one—handwritten, scrawled on scrap paper—and read it down:

New Dawn Experiment, Research Log | 7.14.57

The project is a failure. Because of a freak accident, our research has been compromised. Only a prototype remains—if left undiscovered, humanity will meet its gruesome end to plagues of famine.

We were unable to take the necessary precautions for deployment because of the threat. The project’s completion remains unlikely, and as I understand it, I probably will not survive for very long if we cannot rein the subjects back in. I’d like Ghiles to finish it for me if I meet my maker, but knowing him, he probably won’t.

I hope you’re reading this, Niko. And I’m sorry for whatever happens next.

- Dr. White

I was completely speechless. Reading the last line over again, I nearly had a heart attack. There it was: my name, written in ink however many years ago.

Trying to rationalize, I turned my thoughts towards the first portion of the research log. It said it was a failure—good news, except that it mentioned the prototype. If it had just said whether the thing worked or not, we’d be a step further along. I hated how vague this Dr. White figure tended to be.

They were unable to take the ‘necessary precautions for deployment’, and the project’s completion remained ‘unlikely’. Considering the bodies outside, the ‘subjects’ probably weren’t reined in. Plus, in White’s words, this ‘Ghiles’ person wouldn’t have finished the project for her. That all stacked up to mean one thing: the New Dawn Experiment was definitely unfinished.