Chapter One
Sat in a chair that was becoming seriously uncomfortable, I stared mindlessly at the slowly blinking green light on the dashboard in front of me. It's 2 AM and I'm in a small office that may or may not have once been a storage closet. The grainy black and white security footage on the multiple screens at my desk has been the same since 11 PM and shows no sign of changing any time soon. I know I'm not supposed to, but I pull my phone out and begin scrolling through Facebook. Nothing new since I last checked it fifteen minutes ago, of course.
Just as I start to debate pulling up my smutty Kindle library I hear the jangling of keys and shove my phone aside. It clatters and ends up falling under my desk. Shit. I'll have to fish it out later. Right now, my headache is coming back.
"Hey, Charlotte." Nate's voice makes me jump and I look over my shoulder. He's shaved his patchy facial hair and it somehow makes him look rougher, more unkempt. "Just checking in." He tells me.
Like every other round he makes, of course. Nate's the patrolling security guard for Paragon, the facility I've just been hired to work for on the overnight shift. No one wanted these hours, especially for this position, so the pay is decent and it's really very easy. Or, it would be, if I didn't have a middle aged man coming after me like Pepé Le Pew goes after Penelope Pussycat. "Same as every other night." I shrugged, doing my best to give him as little to go on as possible. This man can drag out a conversation like no one else.
"Ah, yeah. You know, we used to have a guy who worked here for years. He said that he'd never seen the footage change in his forty years of working here." Nate said.
"Yeah, you mentioned that the other night." I reminded him, because he had told me that probably three times by now. "I'm gonna get started on these forms, try to keep myself on track tonight. I'll let you know if anything changes on my end." I said, tapping the walkie talkie that had not once left it's charging station on the edge of my desk. That solid green light would never die.
"Listen, uh," He entered the office and I groaned internally. Like always he stood too close and I could smell the Old Spice wafting off him in waves. "I know it gets pretty boring in here. Lonely, even." He leaned against the desk and I did my best not to look at his groin now planted directly in my line of sight. If I saw so much as a single twitch, even the smallest tent, I would lose this job for strangling him. "You don't have to use the radio just for emergencies, y'know. If you ever just wanna," He shifted his weight and slid closer, his head dipping down towards mine, which hadn't left it's place in my hands. "Chat, maybe get to know each other better...well, I'm always looking for new work friends." He grinned, yellow teeth bringing bile to my throat. I knew he smelled like cigarettes after his breaks, but I hadn't thought he'd be a chain smoker.
"Right." I gave him a thin smile. "I'll keep that in mind." I lied.
"If you wanna talk outside of work, too, you know I could always--" We both jerked when his radio buzzed to life with static.
"818, this is 747. Can I get you to do a walkthrough down on Level 4?" It sounded like Terry, the facility director. He was in a building across the grounds for which Nate was responsible for patrolling.
"Yeah, on my way." Nate replied, turning his head to speak into the radio on his shoulder. "Hate when they call me out to the western building." He sighed.
"817, please be advised your radio seems to be malfunctioning. Please check the call button is not locked." Terry's voice came through my own desk radio and I bit back a laugh as Nate's face turned red.
"Thanks, Terry. Sorry about that." I replied, reaching over as Nate came off my desk and seeing that the baton on his belt had pressed against the button on the side, holding it down as it was pressed against my single file cabinet. Straightening it on the desk, I pulled a folder and some loose papers from a drawer and selected a pen.
"Right, well." Nate cleared his throat. "Just let me know." He slowly walked backwards out the office, bumping against the doorframe before turning to face the right way.
"I will. Have a good night, Nate." I called, waiting until the jingling of his keys rounded the corner to push myself back on the wheels of my chair and shut the door. Rolling back over, I looked at the paperwork on my desk. God, the ten point font blurred together as I tried to read through each thing on the list. Every night, at 3 AM, I was supposed to check the equipment. Why? I have no idea. They didn't tell me these things. Looking at the screens, I wondered if my nightly tasks bothered the subject of my surveillance.
There were twelve subjects contained here. I had access to the feed for only one. In the single cell were cameras that could see every angle. There were no blind spots, not even inside the decontamination chamber at the entrance to the cell. I also had access to the cameras in the corridor outside the decontamination chamber, the hallways connected to it, and the outside of the building I was stationed in. All of us, the women who worked here overnight, had access to the cameras for the main areas.
Absent-mindedly, I started doodling the layout on the back of my form to kill some time. The main building was a dodecagon, or a twelve sided polygon. On each side, there was a long hallway that had only three doors; the one to enter the hallway, the labs on the right, and then the door at the end of the hallway which led into the decon room. For some reason, each door required a different keycard. I have level one clearance to enter the grounds, level two for the main building, level three for the labs, but I did not have level four clearance to enter the containment chambers. At least, not yet. I'd been told that, after my 90 day evaluation, I'd be permitted that keycard. For now, if I ran into any trouble, I was to call Terry at the grounds surveillance office, and then request assistance from Nate.
Yeah, it was a lot of hoops to jump through, but it paid about $20 an hour and had great benefits. Plus, it was mostly just sitting around. I shredded the paper. We weren't allowed to put things like this on paper. We weren't even allowed to take anything out with us when we left. My shift began and ended the same way each morning, with a frisk and metal detector, courtesy of Nate. He enjoyed his 12 hour shifts way too much.
It was 2:25 AM and I decided to head to my break. "Hey, Terry. You good if I snag a bite to eat?" I asked.
"10-4, 817." He replied, and the blinking red dot on my cameras became a solid feature, indicating that he was monitoring them from his own enormous office in the building by the gates. Pushing away from the desk, I very awkwardly reached behind it to try and pull up the cords my pop socket was snagged on. It was slow going, and I had to put my cheek to the screen to get my arm down there, but a few minutes of awkwardly bending over and fishing blindly and my phone emerged, no worse for wear.
As I walked into the break room I was surprised to find three of the other women there. Oops. We'd need to better coordinate these breaks. Terry had to cover for us whenever we left our station. "Hey, Charlie." Nicole greeted me around a mouthful of her usual chicken wrap. "Heard Nate tryin' to put the moves on you." She teased.
"Shit, did the whole compound hear that?" I asked with a groan. Now everyone would think we were some cute puppydog-lovey-dovey couple when I really just wanted to knock him out most nights.
"If it helps, we were almost as uncomfortable about it as you were." Katie assured me as I pulled a chair out and sat down to eat my lunch. "Almost." She made a face.
"He doesn't put the moves on any of you?" I asked. They all shared a look. "God dammit." I had thought he was just a weird guy. Turns out he was my own personal creep.
"If he makes you that uncomfortable you could file a complaint. Terry heard him tonight." Julie pointed out. "I'm sure he'd help you get him fired, or at least transferred." She seemed optimistic, but I wasn't so sure. Men stuck together in these things.
"Nah, I'll just have to talk to him at some point. If he makes a scene, I'll go up the ladder. I just got hired three weeks ago, I can't be making waves like this before my evaluation." Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Why did men have to make things so complicated?
"Sorry, sweetie." Katie gave me a sympathetic look and offered me one of the Hershey's snack size candies from her purse. Shaking my head, I unzipped my bag and pulled out some zucchini fries and grilled chicken. I needed to eat healthy so I could lose the weight I'd gained recently. The whole point of fighting so hard to get this job was that I wanted enough income to have a better life. I'd only eaten healthy for the past few weeks, and one tiny sweet could be the straw that broke the camel's back. I'd get off work and spend the rest of my sign-on bonus at the Chocolate Tree, binge it all in one morning, and probably throw up and be nauseous from high blood sugar for days afterwards.
I was impulsive, and it would be my downfall. My fatal flaw, Achilles Heel. Either that, or the fact that I was an oblivious air-head who procrastinated on everything. If anyone would ever show up late to their own funeral, it would be me.
At the thought of procrastination, I remembered that I hadn't filled out that paperwork. "Shit." I swore, stuffing some food into my mouth before shoving it all back into my bag. "I forgot to do comms logs." I groaned, nearly tripping over my chair as I stood and backed up from the table.
"Oof. Those are due at 3 AM but you can turn them in any time after midnight, you know." Julie reminded me.
"Yeah, but I always get distracted with reading." I admitted. They gave me pointed looks. Phones, and paper materials from home, were definitely not allowed. "The daily activity logs." I said, as if they were the ones now forgetting something. "We're supposed to read them every night. You know, the red binders on top of the filing cabinets?" I reminded them.
"I just skim those." Katie admitted. Nicole and Julie directed their scrutinous looks to her and I took the opportunity to disappear.
Walking briskly down the hallway I closed the door behind me, let Terry know I was back early, and began doing my logs. Check the visual feed. As clear as it ever was, which was...not really. Check auditory feed. "Sorry in advance!" I cringed as I flipped the switch. This sent a feedback loop, which I heard, loud and clear. "Sorry, so sorry." I apologized, even though I knew my mic was off. One of the first rules was not to give any auditory input to the subjects. As I scribbled my notes--it had to be detailed, not simply a yes or no answer--I heard shifting. That was common. Anyone assaulted with a horrible, jarring tone in the middle of the night would stir.
"Hello?" A dark and gravelly voice came over the intercom. I froze. My eyes locked on the main camera. In the night vision feed, inside the containment cell, a pale and horrifying face at the camera. A chill ran down my spine and my pen creaked as I gripped the plastic tightly. The hulking figure on the bed of furs shifted, the weight of it enormous as it rose to it's four legs. Of course, the forelegs were more like taloned hands. Those sharp claws scraped the ground as it stretched. "Can you...can you hear me?" The voice came again, and I felt my jaw grow sore. I'd been clenching my teeth. My lungs burned from lack of oxygen. Inhaling slowly, I jabbed the button for the mic and sighed in a ragged, disheveled way when the sound of a shared input feed died. Closing my eyes, I took a moment to settle myself.
How had I not noticed that keening hum? God, I really needed to pay more attention to my surroundings. That could've been bad, very bad.
"Please come back." The voice spoke again, and when I opened my eyes the subject was mere inches from the camera by the reinforced intercom. On every other screen I could see different angles of it, and I felt sick. During my shift, my subject always slept. I'd never seen it outside of it's bed, a pile of thick furs in the corner of it's cell. It looked like a cross between a Demogorgon and a Kaiju. Up close, I could see that the face was made of skin folds that met to form a maw. Two eyes peeked out from beneath long black hair that shrouded it's face and fell down it's back, the curls ending just above the ground. From a side angle I could see that, when it was standing, digitigrade legs which ended in ferocious claws held it up, with two forelegs used to prop itself up and maintain balance. Below the forelegs were two smaller ones that seemed almost human. The subject was all muscle, with a healthy layer of fat and dense curls that ran from it's head to it's tail, which became a three-pronged appendage, sort of like...well, sort of like a Slattern Kaiju. I knew from the reports, however, that each of those tips sheathed a stinger equipped with lethal venom. "Please." It said, an odd tone of sorrow giving it's monstrous voice a strange pitch.
There was no way I was going to break the rules just because I felt a small, minute, too-teeny-tiny-to-even-see iota of pity for this creature. Then it sighed, forlorn, and I caved.
