August 17th, 2020. [Part IV]

I shouldn’t have let her go.

Almost instantly, I was confronted by the silence of Chloe’s absence. I generally worked best alone, but without our back-and-forth, I worried I might go insane. That is, if I wasn’t going insane already.

I realized that the ‘silence’ wasn’t very quiet, though. Birds flew through the air, screeching mating calls at one another. Wind ruffled the leaves almost percussively, a cabasa whose beads encircled the ruins. It was actually astonishingly loud—I had lots to listen to.

As I entered the laboratory again, a high-pitched ringing assaulted my ears. Not from anywhere but my own body, of course—of this I was keenly aware—but I had never experienced tinnitus this strong. Part of me still worried it was the virus, while the more rational half decided I must have caught some kind of ear infection by sleeping in the moss.

That wouldn’t be a problem anymore, though. I had the bedroll to myself now. My rations would last significantly longer without having to feed another human being. It made lengthy tasks lengthier, like starting a fire or gathering wood, but overall life would be a little easier.

I barely spoke a word for the next few hours, except for a couple offhanded insults to Flashy when I had to replace his batteries. My first priority was gathering firewood again, before the rain wet everything once more. Chloe’d left her knife, so I just cut shivs out from the nearby trees and made it work.

I ended up eating the rest of the jerky Chloe hadn’t finished. Would it have been in better hygiene to throw it out? Probably. But I wasn’t willing to risk leading bears out here, especially not when I didn’t have access to the higher floors to hide.

Speaking of that, it was still a good idea to open those fire stairs up. Climbing up a rope every time, now without Chloe to help me, would get pretty tedious. I stared at the door, jammed with the rotted log, and tried to think of something.

Can I just break it off its hinges? That line of questioning proved ineffective when, upon further inspection, I found the tree had actually landed on the hinges and busted them. Logically, I should have figured as much; fire doors have to open outwards, and the tree was inside. If it wasn’t budging, it clearly wasn’t functional.

I can climb through the windowpane! False. My shoulders fit through, but realizing the dramatic risk of cutting myself on the broken shards, I backed out.

Maybe try the elevator cord? It would work, but hell if I was getting back into that shaft. Besides, we lucked out with B1’s elevator doors being open. A2 might not be the same, but no harm would come from checking… probably.

Snatching up my backpack, I walked through the vines and into the back hallways. When I got to the elevator, I leaned in with high hopes—only to have them crushed. A2 wasn’t open. Neither were A3 or A4, though the latter could still be accessed by scaling the wire all the way to the broken roof.

The whole time, the thought kept crossing my mind that Chloe probably would have found a way by now. She was undoubtedly better at this sort of thing than I was, and now without her, I wasn’t sure what to do. I wouldn’t hold it over her—she had all the reason in the world to leave, and I let her—but I certainly wasn’t happy about it.

I thought of something then. The broken emergency panel in the elevator shaft on B1 had forced those doors open. There was a second set of fire stairs back here, right next to the gaping abyss. Maybe there was another panel that would open this up, too. So began my own investigation.

It was short-lived. But for a good reason, actually. There was an emergency panel, and with a bit of tugging, I ripped it from a decade of cobwebs and unidentified fungus. Flipping a switch inside (which I did from long-range with my machete because I hate spiders), a loud clunk sounded from the door to the fire stairs. With a slight pull, the thing swung open—the era of dangling off ropes was no more.

Well, sort of. As it turned out, this staircase was meant for the upper floors and actually didn’t go any further down than ground level. But it did give me access to the upper floors, and at this point, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Lugging my bag up four stories and out onto the de facto roof, I caught a whiff of petrichor and looked out into the sky. Sure enough, a massive storm brewed on the horizon, a rain wall so dense I couldn’t see the sun setting. It felt like nightfall already, though I was sure I’d have at least thirty minutes before then.

The floor itself was eroded by acid rain, a consequence of the manufacturing plants south of Serpho. In contrast to the rest of the lab, some of the tile here was faux wood, the type you might see lining the floors of a Starbucks (or a Tim Hortons over the lake). It was sort of cozy, actually. Wrecked tables and chairs told me this had once been some kind of lounge.

I wasn’t sure any of the wooden chairs had enough structural integrity to support my weight, so I sat on a part of the cracked concrete wall instead. I slid off my pack and reflected on the day with only the wind’s soft hum to comfort me.

Chloe and I never really fought. The argument we’d had earlier was really just another way we showed each other we cared. She was worried for my mental health; I was worried for her safety. And in the end, I started feeling less and less sure of my choice to stay, while she’d probably already found her way home.

I wondered how she was doing. Everything she’d said about my nostalgia blinding me had been… pretty accurate. I guess it was a result of us knowing each other so well. I almost knew her better than Aubrey—and she’d been with me in the womb, so that was saying something…

“…Oh, shit. I never wrote her back,” I said aloud, chuckling to myself.

I’d received a letter from Aubrey the day before our expedition, and for the two of us, it was customary to write back as soon as we could. I had forsaken that custom in the thrill of adventure. Luckily, I’d brought a journal with me—and our system had no required format, so any paper would do.

I wrote Dear Aubrey with haste, then sat for a while staring at the blank page. The past couple of days had been… odd. Obviously I’d have to talk about the laboratory to some extent, but Aubrey was more of a ‘bashing skulls in’ sort of girl. Some grungy old ruins probably wouldn’t excite her much.

The place certainly had no shortage of bashed-in skulls, though. I was sure she’d love hearing about that stuff. I drafted a letter talking about the highlights of our journey, excluding the nonsense surrounding the New Dawn Experiment. If it ever became relevant, I’d tell her about it someday, but I had a feeling the dead bodies would be a little more fun to hear about than an existential crisis.

Once I’d finished writing, my hand cramped pretty bad. This was nothing unusual, even after years of hand-writing letters to my sister. I shook it out like I’d just finished a timed essay in grade school. My head ached the same way it might have back then, too.

As I retreated to the stairs, I felt some dizziness set in. I hadn’t eaten much at all, and I was pretty damn dehydrated. An idea struck me—scanning the lounge, I found a basic steel bucket, one used to catch leaks, set up on a broken counter.

Bingo. I took it and carefully hung it on a rebar spike off the side of the building. Since it would almost certainly pour tonight, I figured I might as well get some clean drinking water out of it. With that, I made my way downstairs to get some rest.

Drip... drip...

Cuddled in my sleeping bag near the fire, I had just begun to doze off when I heard the first few droplets hit the dirt. Chloe must have been right—if I were turning into an animal, I’d have started having symptoms by now. I turned my head on my pillow and felt a sense of relief wash over me.

I was overreacting. Everything will be fine. God, thank you for answering my prayers.

But deep in my soul, something still flickered. The tiniest kindling of doubt smoldered in my heart.

And even the smallest ember can ignite a wildfire.