15. 15 #2
To get to Elias’s office in the CIA building, he had to press a pattern into the buttons, but this was all digital. In the mornings, I would scan my keycard in the parking garage, and select my floor on the screen.
I ran to it, nearly diving over the chair holding the door open, not caring if it came loose. I didn’t plan on coming back.
Ripping the key cards from my pockets, I tried them, one by one in the elevator.
Caitlin Shepard, Richard Nguyen, Carolyn Lee.
Ten more. Twenty of them, and still no secret floor appeared on the elevator screen.
I was making a mess on the ground of the elevator, until the hero appeared.
Important enough to not even have her first name listed on her I.D. was S. Singh.
I held up her keycard to the reader and an additional two options appeared. SB and SBx. I chose SB to start, and tucked her keycard carefully back into my pocket. While the elevator descended, I looked up to see the security camera dangling by a frayed wire. Elias had been here. Alive.
The weight in my chest was so noticeable now, in the quiet elevator. A pit had opened in my stomach, and I felt my right hand shaking the gun by my side into my pant leg. I breathed, that’s all I could do. Deep breaths in and heavy sighs out.
When the door in front of me opened, I could find Elias bleeding out on the floor, trying to escape but never managing to. Like Michael. I’d feel the pain he had then, knowing that if he had only been a few minutes faster, he might have been able to save his life.
Guilt. That was what was lurking in on me.
I could have stopped Dr. Fassi. I could’ve ripped Elias out of his arms and we could have run out of the building together, vaccine be damned.
Fuck what Elias wanted me to do, and honestly, fuck the President, too.
I had all the information he needed on the SSD in Elias’s pocket.
Surely, he had the best scientists working for him, and they could take my research and make the vaccine themselves.
I was pissed. Mostly at myself, for being caught dead center of this stupid situation.
I just had to prove myself to the world, to get a fancy degree and a prestigious job for a major company.
This idealized life I dreamt up for Dr. Cassia Hayes was going to be worth nothing in the end.
I had no friends because I studied too much, and left them all behind.
I wasn’t any better than them, but I lied to myself and pretended that I was. I was a fucking idiot.
My leg was bouncing underneath me when the elevator finally opened. It wasn’t a long ride, but it gave me enough time to ruminate, and that was dangerous for both Elias and I.
Silence. Pristine concrete floors. It was evident that Baker and Pryor employees didn’t work down here often.
I was almost afraid to step out of the elevator, worried that I might be heard.
Rather than running, I walked. Running wouldn’t help regardless, as I had no idea where I was going. The only path forward was a hallway. One direction until I reached a set of locked double doors. Miss Singh’s card opened the way for me.
Another hallway was waiting for me, though the lighting was much worse, less clinical.
It led to a small lobby, a set of doors in all four cardinal directions.
What the hell was down here? A subbasement only accessible to a few, but clearly used enough to have what seemed to be a breakroom right in the middle of it.
I really hoped they burnt this place to the ground.
There wasn’t a sign of Elias here, so I chose the first door on my left.
It opened for me this time, not needing the keycard.
The floor was angled downward, and my knees struggled with the decline, shaking with each step.
I prayed I wouldn’t find infected dogs or cats, I knew my aim was too shaky at this point to stop one of those.
A swinging door, like one might find in a commercial kitchen, waited for me at the end of the ramp, the lack of security doors only adding to my unease.
Across from the door was a long metal table covered in reports, photos, MRI scans, and countless medical charts.
Without the time to read everything, I rifled through the photos, horrified by what I was seeing.
The MRI scans were labeled to be victims of Variant-13, and were almost entirely shots of the brain.
In all of them, the cerebellum had deteriorated significantly.
That explained their degenerating motor skills.
Massive tanks filled the room, almost like the walls were mirrors, making the area look endless.
It really was endless. They weren’t quite aquariums, but I didn’t know what else to compare them to.
For at least a hundred yards, the space was barren except for the rows of these mysterious glass tanks.
Hundreds of gallons each, maybe thousands, I wasn’t sure.
A pink liquid filled them, rather than water, and I walked deeper into the maze of them when movement caught my eye.
A few rows in, floated a man. He was completely submerged, tubes running into his spine, and a large mask covering his eyes, nose, and mouth. I was frozen in place watching the man, forgetting where I was momentarily.
I back peddled, reaching for the light on the wall. I clicked it on, and looked on as the lights to each row of tanks turned on, one by one. There were more bodies. Many more bodies, men, women, and children.
“What is this?” I whispered. No one to ask, no one to hear. I’d get no answer to the horrors I’d seen. I didn’t want to see this, nor could I dwell on it. Elias was not in this room, and I needed to find him.
A single gun shot, as clear as day, came from the other side of the sub basement.