Chapter 03 Peered into the Storage Room

Leo slid into the seat beside her 30 minutes later. He didn't say anything at first. Just looked at the bottle, then at her, then back at the bottle.

"Hey yo, you weren't kidding about drinking it all alone."

"I warned you."

"Yeah. You did." He dropped one hand over her shoulder, a casual touch, the kind of touch that came from years of friendship. "Hey. Aris. Did something happen?"

She swirled the wine in her cup. "Define 'something.'"

"Bad. Depressing. Upsetting. Sad. The kind of thing that makes someone drink half a bottle of wine alone in a sad cafeteria with a candle that's probably older than me."

She didn't answer.

"You know, we could go to my room. For old times' sake. The boys are in the gym. We'd be alone for a few hours. I could comfort you there."

Aris finished her wine in one long swallow, set the cup down, and spoke.

"Leo. I told you last time. I don't feel like doing it."

"I know."

"And I don't need comfort."

"I know that too."

"So why do you keep asking?"

"Because I keep hoping the answer will change."

"Look, Leo. I'm going to be honest with you. We've known each other for what, nine years? Ten?"

"More than that."

"See? I can't even remember how long it is. And you've never pushed. You've never pried. You've just... been there for me. So, you deserve the truth.

Some years ago... I did experiments on my body. Used some things... I can't talk about. Compounds. Vectors. Gene therapies. Things that weren't approved for... human use. Things that the board would have fired me for if they'd known.

The goal was to reverse aging. You know, the whole 'live forever' thing the board is so obsessed with. And it worked. Sort of. I got a genetic mutation in my DNA. A spontaneous one. Something that shouldn't have happened. Something that I can't replicate."

She paused.

"The mutation changed how my cells process certain signals. Nerve signals. Hormones. The things that make you feel." She picked up the wine bottle, looked at the label without seeing it. "I can barely feel anything anymore, Leo. Temperature. Pain. Pleasure. It's all... suppressed. Like someone turned down the volume on the whole world."

"Is that why your beautiful black hair turned white all of a sudden two years ago?"

She touched a strand, her once-black hair was a pale, silvery white. She was forty-two. She looked thirty. But her hair belonged to someone much older.

"Telomere elongation affects melanocyte stem cells. The cells that produce pigment. They age differently than the rest of my body. They got... confused. Started shutting down. But white hair. It's not the worst side effect."

"What's the worst?"

"The worst is that I can't remember what it feels like to be warm. Or cold. Or hungry. Or full. The good news is that the feeling is coming back. Slowly. Every year, I get a little more. A little warmth. A little pain. A little... something. I might recover fully. Eventually. In ten or twenty years."

"And until then?"

"Until then, I drink wine I can barely taste and pretend that being alone is a choice instead of a side effect."

Leo took the bottle, poured himself a cup, and raised it. "To feeling things again."

Aris touched her cup to his. "To feeling things again."

Leo leaned back in his chair. "You know, when I was a cop, I had this partner. Old guy. Name was Kowalski. Used to say that the best way to deal with a bad day was to drink and fuck... Oh, yeah, I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Leo. I told you this because you're my friend. Because you've been my friend for nine years. And because I wanted you to understand why I keep saying no."

"It was thirteen years and I thought you just weren't interested in me."

"I'm not interested in anything. That's the problem. The mutation took my drive. My hunger. My want. I go to work. I do my experiments. I go home. I sleep. I wake up. And I do it again. Because what else am I going to do?"

"You don't want to try."

"I don't want to disappoint you. Or myself."

"Well, that's the most honest thing anyone's said to me in years. Does Sarah know?"

"Sarah knows about the mutation. She doesn't know about the... numbness. Not all of it."

"Want me to keep it that way?"

Aris nodded. "Please."

"Okay." He set down his glass. "Okay. So. No candlelit romance in the cafeteria. No 'old times sake' in my room while boys are at the gym. Just... friends. Drinking cheap wine. Waiting for Chen to show up done with her fitness videos."

"That sounds perfect."

"It sounds sad."

"It's all I can do." Aris reached for the bottle. Poured the last of it into her glass. 

Cafeteria door opened. Chen walked in, in her workout clothes, phone in hand.

"Sorry I'm late! Video took longer to upload than I thought. Our internet connection in this bunker is terrible."

Leo and Aris looked at each other. The moment broke. The world returned.

"You're good, didn't miss much," Leo said, waving her over. "We saved you another bottle of wine. We hit few shots and call it a night."

"You saved me wine? Few shots? I thought this was a date! For like a three-way or something. I mean why else you would call two women for a drink."

"It was," Aris said. "I got stood up."

"What? By whom?"

"Myself." She raised her glass. "Long story and I don't want to talk about it."

"Aw! What a shame, that would have been so much fun."

Chen pulled up a chair, completely missing the weight of the conversation that had come before. Leo poured her few drops from the bottle.

"To survival," Leo said.

"To survival," Aris echoed.

"O.M.G... You two sound like geezers. Drink for something fun! Not to something depressing sounding like survival."

They drank.

---------------------

The next morning started like any other.

Aris parked her car in the employee lot, walked through the main entrance of Warren Center, and swiped her badge at the reception desk. Lobby was the same as always. Primary colors, cartoon murals, the faint smell of vanilla candles. Happy stood in the corner, abandoned. Another tour for kids.

But something was different. The reception desk was empty.

Mara, the young woman who spent her mornings scrolling through her phone and her afternoons pretending to care about children's tours, was nowhere to be seen. Her chair was pushed back. A half-empty coffee cup sat on the desk, steaming. A single earbud dangled from the edge, still playing music.

Aris paused by the desk.

"Mara? Hello?"

No answer.

She glanced around the lobby. Empty. The ball pit was still. The tiny chairs were still. The only movement came from the security camera in the corner, its red light blinking slowly.

"Probably in the bathroom," Aris thought. "Or getting more coffee."

She walked to the elevator and pressed the button.

The elevator doors closed. Aris leaned against the railing, watching the floor numbers tick down.

Lobby.
Level 2.
Level 3.

The elevator music was the same as always, a cheap instrumental version of some song she couldn't name, the kind of music that existed only in elevators and waiting rooms, designed to be forgotten the moment you left.

But today, something else was there.

Beneath the music. A sound. A voice.

Not words, exactly. More like a low whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was too quiet to understand, too present to ignore.

Aris frowned.

She looked up at the speaker grille in the ceiling. The music continued, unchanged. The voice was gone.

"Great, elevator's glitching. Please, don't break down on me. It would suck to get stuck," she told herself. "Building's old. Happens all the time."

Doors opened on Level 6.

She stepped out. The hallway was quiet. Too quiet.

Aris walked toward her lab, her footsteps echoing on the concrete floor. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, the same as always. The air was cool and dry, the same as always.

But something felt wrong.

She passed Lab 68. Locked. Through the small window, she could see the equipment was dark, the monitors off. But she could hear something inside. Voices. Muffled, indistinct, like people arguing behind a thick door.

She paused. Listened. Silence.

Aris knocked on the door. "Hello? Everything okay in there?"

No answer.

She waited a moment, then shrugged and kept walking.

Lab 67. Locked. Voices inside. A man and a woman, speaking quickly, their words overlapping.

"...can't just ignore it..."
"...I'm not ignoring it, I'm saying we need more data..."
"...data? We have three days of data..."
"...then we go to Thorne..."
"...Thorne? She's Finch's..."

Aris stopped again. Her hand hovered over the door.

"They're talking about me?"

She knocked. "This is Dr. Thorne. Is there a problem?"

The voices stopped instantly.

Silence.

Aris waited. Nothing.

She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. Not even breathing.

"Maybe I imagined it," she thought. "No, I could swear I heard them speak. Oh well, I have no time for this. If they need something from me, they can come to my lab."

As she walked on, she noticed the storage room door was open.

The storage room was supposed to be locked at all times. It held old equipment, expired chemicals, and the spare mascot suits, the ones they used for off-site events and emergency replacements.

The door stood wide open. The lights were on inside. And parked just outside, still on its wheeled cart, was Happy.

The mascot suit was slumped on its stand, one arm raised in its permanent wave, its painted smile frozen and cheerful. But the cart had been moved. It was usually kept inside the storage room, against the far wall. Now it was in the hallway, blocking the entrance.

And there was no one around.

Aris looked left. Looked right. Empty.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice smaller than she intended. "Um... anyone here?"

No answer.

She peered into the storage room. The shelves were messy, more disorganized than usual. A box of latex gloves had been knocked over. A roll of duct tape lay on the floor. And in the back, against the wall, she could see the other mascot suits. Two of them. Slumped on their stands. Staring at nothing.