Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
When I walk into the front lobby on my first day of work at the MRF, the first face I see is Ellis’s. He turns to me with a wide grin and a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Willow!”
I hesitate, eyeing the cup he holds out to me. “I already had some this morning,” I lie. More like I don’t accept drinks from people I barely know. Ellis may be friendly, but it takes a lot more than a smile to earn my trust. If anything, they make me warier.
“Oh. Well.” He shrugs, his grin not dimming.
“More for me. Anyway, I wanted to say you were so cool back during the test…” He trails off, to my great relief, as Hunter Barnes approaches us.
His back straightens, his demeanor changing in a way that calls to mind an overeager Boy Scout. “Good morning, sir.”
“Morning,” I echo, without the formal address. Automatically, I fold my arms over my chest, spine straightening, falling into a defensive stance.
“Welcome to your first day at the MRF,” Barnes says, offering lanyards with attached employee IDs and key cards.
“Today I’ll be giving you the tour of the place, the rundown of your schedule and responsibilities, and”—he hands each of us a binder—“an overview of the subjects. You’re not allowed to take any of these materials home for confidentiality reasons, so you’ll have to learn on the job. ”
Ellis flips his binder open immediately, and I follow suit, unable to resist the tug of curiosity.
My eyebrows rise as I scan the chart on the first page.
Subject X-9: The Minotaur, which we caught a glimpse of in the training video, is now listed as deceased.
The lines that should contain Subjects X-11 and X-13 are blacked out, which I assume means that information is above my clearance level as a newcomer.
More goddamn secrets. It’s annoying, but I get it.
Farther down, X-14: The Revenant is marked as missing, and X-15: The Imaginary Friend has a note stating released. Subject X-16 has no moniker assigned like the rest; there’s just a question mark next to the number.
I scan the rest of the list. The Siren. The Werewolf. The Wraith. The Banshee. Each one is also assigned a threat level, which is yellow, orange, or red. A glance at the chart shows an awful lot of red.
Except for the mysterious Subject X-16, who is listed as threat level: black.
“As I’m sure Director Wright mentioned, the Facility has been through a large-scale overhaul recently,” Barnes says, before I can ask any questions.
“There have been changes in leadership, new hires, and adjustments to policies. That includes a reassessment of the threat levels for each of our subjects. What you see here might not be entirely accurate, but you should always err on the side of caution when it comes to guessing how dangerous they are. Many of them are intelligent beings capable of thought and emotion, but that doesn’t mean they can’t—or won’t—hurt you under the right circumstances.
” He gives us a serious look, waiting for a nod from both me and Ellis.
“But don’t worry, we don’t plan on tossing you into the deep end. ”
I arch a brow. “Didn’t you already do that with your little test?”
He chuckles as if I’m joking. “Trust me, Somnus isn’t ‘the deep end’ when it comes to this place.
Far from it. Anyway, as I was saying, you’ll mostly be monitoring security cameras and patrolling the perimeter instead of dealing directly with the subjects during your probationary period the first few weeks.
I don’t want to scare you off just yet.”
I shut the binder and tuck it under my arm. “If we were easy to scare, we wouldn’t be here. And I think we deserve to know what we’re getting into.”
Ellis snaps his binder shut as well, albeit less aggressively. “Yeah, can we see the subjects?”
Barnes looks surprised for a moment before he cracks a grin.
“Fair enough. I’ll show you a few of them today.
I just want you to know we don’t expect you to get up close and personal with the subjects right off the bat.
Your key cards don’t have access to the cells yet, but they’ll give you access to the main doors and the CCTV room. ”
He leads us there first. Ellis starts up a constant stream of questions as we walk through the hallway. How many subjects are there, exactly? Classified. Which one is the most dangerous? Also classified.
“What does CCTV stand for?” Ellis asks, as we stop outside of the room.
“Uh…” Barnes rubs the back of his neck.
“Closed-Circuit Television. It’s a video surveillance system,” I answer, eyes narrowing at Barnes. “Hey. How long have you been working here, anyway?”
He glances at me, sensing the judgment in my tone. “A few years. But I was only recently promoted to head of security, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Oh, congrats,” Ellis says.
“Thanks,” Barnes says, sounding less than enthusiastic. “Let’s hope I fare better than the last one did.”
Ellis and I exchange a look, but even he knows better than to question that further.
When we’re standing in the CCTV room, I have to stop and stare up at the expanse of screens for a moment.
Ellis is literally open-mouthed at my side as he gawks, looking from screen to screen of video feeds covering the facility.
Many of them display empty hallways and observation chambers, or the outside of the building… but then there are the subjects’ cells.
“Jesus,” I mutter. I had accepted that I’d be dealing with the unknown here, but facing the sheer amount and variety of creatures this building contains is something else entirely.
There are monsters bearing fangs and claws and wings and tentacles.
Creatures I recognize out of myth, and eldritch things I don’t know how to describe.
It’s hard to wrap my mind around what I’m seeing.
Harder still to believe that those things, all of them, are under the same roof as me, separated only by the walls of their containment cells.
If something were to go wrong… If any of these things were to be released…
I swallow hard, thinking again of that chart marked up with warning symbols. The threat levels reading red, red, red.
My eyes dart from screen to screen even as each new revelation makes my skin crawl.
But amid the fur and scales, the monstrous and wondrous, my gaze pauses on a screen that is entirely black.
The camera feed that should be showing the mysterious X-16’s cell is shut off.
Threat level: black, I remember. I’m almost sufficiently overcome by curiosity to ask, even though I know the answer will be classified, but Barnes speaks before I can.
“You can flip through different angles of most rooms with these buttons,” he says, demonstrating on the consoles.
“Zoom in by selecting the camera on the computer and hitting this.” He fiddles with the controls.
I glance down, forcing myself to pay attention instead of being hypnotized by the screens.
When I look up again, my eyes are inevitably drawn back to screen sixteen.
Curiosity lingers in the back of my mind.
Barnes shows us the exits, both normal and emergency; the fuse box and backup generator; the physical alarm lever to pull if electricity fails.
Plus the break room, which has a shockingly normal atmosphere.
A few employees are gathered to talk over mugs of coffee, and they pause to wave at us as Barnes shows us around.
I guess people can get used to anything, though it feels like a mistake to get too comfortable in a place like this.
As if in a reminder of that, the lights flicker—and a shadow near us grows and solidifies.
Ellis swears under his breath and takes a step back.
I freeze, eyes darting to Barnes. But he doesn’t react, nor do the other employees at the coffee machine.
And a moment later I recognize the shadowy figure forming in front of me.
It’s the same monster who “tested” us during the interview process.
It’s smaller—though still much taller than my own five foot five—and more humanoid than I remember, or maybe it’s just taken a less intimidating form.
It lifts a hand and gesticulates. I recognize sign language, but not well enough to understand the rapid series of gestures.
“Somnus would like to formally introduce himself,” Barnes says, “now that you’re coworkers.”
The shadow creature grins, toothy and still as unsettling as I remember. It extends one large hand—claws retracted.
He, I correct myself mentally. He, not it, is my coworker now. I give myself a moment to acknowledge the absurdity, and then I take the monster’s hand.
“Willow Hawkins,” I say, shaking firmly. “Pleasure.”
“Ellis Smith,” Ellis says a beat later, also taking his hand.
“Somnus, as you can imagine, is uniquely suited to helping us deal with a number of our subjects,” Barnes says. “We all place great trust in him and hope you’ll do the same.”
Despite Barnes’s assurances and Somnus’s perfectly pleasant demeanor now that he’s no longer trying to frighten us, my heart is still pounding.
During the “test,” those reactions were easy to push aside so I could deal with the crisis at hand.
It feels worse in a calm moment, my skin itching with the desire to do something, anything, but I can’t.
The surrealness renders me dizzy as I look around the break room and try to process the absurd scene.
Employees talking calmly, the coffee machine rumbling in the corner, and a shadow monster smiling at me while doing sign language.
Something in my mind feels close to snapping.
Perhaps Barnes notices, because he soon excuses us to finish our tour. We step into the hallway, and I take a breath and wipe my sweaty palms on my security jumpsuit, hoping it isn’t too obvious that I’m freaked out.
“Take a minute,” Barnes says. “It’s a natural response. You’ll get used to it.”