“I don’t understand what’s happening!” Dr. Lewis yelled to Dr. Abrams, as they ran through the hallways, their white lab coats flying behind them. The white tiled floors of the halls were almost a blur under her feet. The subjects had been injected and everything had gone smoothly. They weren’t expecting any sort of reaction to the serum for at least another 2 days! It had taken that long, at the very minimum, for the animals that they’d experimented with. She thought back to the previous day. Each of the doctors had begun injecting their subjects at the same time, approximately 3:30 PM. None of them had shown any reaction. After an hour had passed, they had received their second injections. They’d all eaten dinner with no problems and had all been able to get to sleep without the use of sleeping aids.
Around 4:00 AM, she had received an alert that she was needed at the lab. She’d arrived around the same time as Dr. Abrams, and they’d proceeded to race into the lab together. The observation rooms were located on the third floor of the building. From the view outside, the entire third floor was lit up like a beacon through the darkness. The bright white light was interspersed with sporadic flashing of the red security lights. Alarms wailed through the otherwise silent night.
Upon entering the building, by mutual agreement, they bypassed the elevators and headed straight for the stairwell, knowing they could get there more quickly. Mussed hair and hastily donned clothes attested to the fact that neither of them had bothered with appearances, instead hopping out of bed and rushing straight toward the lab.
“The monitors started going off about thirty minutes ago. I got here as fast as I could. Hopefully, Mark will be able to give us some answers,” Dr. Abrams replied, nearly gasping for air as they pounded up the stairs.
Mark, sadly for him, had drawn the short straw and was therefore the one that was supposed to stay the night at the lab. Of course they had night personnel that came and went, and security that patrolled the premises, but they’d decided that they should leave someone to monitor the volunteers just in case they had an adverse reaction. Bursting through the doorway on the third floor, they ran down the hallway and rounded the corner toward the observation rooms. Shoes squeaking on the slick floor, they finally slid to a stop outside the door simply labeled Observation. Dr. Abrams placed a hand on the wall and leaned against it as he tried to get his harsh breathing under control.
The door was sealed. That was odd, because lab doors were only ever sealed if there was a possible chemical spill. Then the doors were sealed in order to prevent further contamination to others in the building, but that wasn’t common for an observation room. As implied, observation rooms were for observation only. Chemicals weren’t brought into the observation rooms. Test subjects were the only things brought in, and that was after whatever chemical, or serum as Dr. Lewis preferred to call it, they’d been testing had been administered.
Nearly every door in the lab was capable of being sealed, and they’d done Emergency Spill Drills to ensure that they were all in proper working condition, but they’d really never had to seal a room before. In most cases, if there was a chemical spill, it set off sensors that would automatically seal the doors in order to allow for decontamination. In the observation room, however, the doors could only be sealed by entering in a complicated alarm sequence. That could only be done from inside the room or from the control room two floors down.
Dr. Lewis exchanged an apprehensive look with Dr. Abrams before pressing the intercom button beside the door.
“Mark?! Is everything okay in there? My home alarm went off and I rushed straight over to see what happened.”
A long, tension-filled moment passed before they received a reply. When they did, it wasn’t Mark who answered.
“Hey, Doc! I think Mark went a little crazy in here. Looks like he brought in some beer and maybe hit a few buttons on the control panel. I think he’s had one too many. He’s passed out in his seat!” A young, female voice called out across the intercom.
She frowned, thoughtfully. That was weird. She’d never known Mark to be a drinker, and he’d been a part of their team for over two years. The voice sounded like it belonged to one of the women who had volunteered for the experiment.
“Who am I speaking with?” Dr. Lewis asked into the intercom.
“It’s Carly, ma’am. What do you want me to do with Mark? Is there a button here that can turn off these alarms? They’re giving me a headache, and I think everyone else is waking up in here.”
She remembered Carly. A slim, perky nineteen year old with shoulder-length brown hair that hung in ringlets around her ears and a dimple that flashed in her right cheek with every word she spoke. She had seemed very sweet and eager to help with the project.
“Sounds like we need to hire a more reliable assistant,” Dr. Abrams complained. “I was dragged out of bed for this?” Stabbing his finger angrily into the intercom button, he quickly told Carly how to deactivate the alarm system.
One thing didn’t seem to make sense to Dr. Lewis, though. “Wait! How did Mark manage to put in the alarm sequence if he’s so drunk that he passed out?” she asked, looking at Dr. Abrams with rising concern.
A look of surprised comprehension crossed the other doctor’s face. As they turned and watched, the doors to the lab slowly started to open, and Dr. Lewis began backing away toward the stairway. Spatters of blood could be seen now through the opening. Dr. Abrams began frantically trying to push in buttons on the intercom panel for emergency override in an attempt to seal the doors again, but with the way his hands shook, he couldn’t input the correct codes.
Carly appeared in the opening of the doorway. She was dressed for bed, in pajama shorts and a matching tank top. Her bare feet and legs were streaked with blood, and more was spattered across her face and caked into the ringlets of her hair. She smiled serenely at them as she stepped through the open doorway, the dimple in her cheek flashing. In her right hand was a hammer, so coated and dripping with blood that it left an obscenely thick, red trail behind her as she proceeded toward them.
Dr. Abrams now stood frozen in shock at the control panel, finger still pointed as if in preparation of pushing more buttons.
“Oh my God!” he whispered, his gaze fixated on the bloody hammer in her right hand. “What are you doing? What’s going on?!”
“Oh, Dr. Abrams!” she replied, “I’ve got some wonderful news for you!”
Confused, his eyes lifted to her face, and the happy smile still on her pink lips.
“What?” he whispered uncertainly.
“The serum,” she said, walking directly up to him, her brown curls bouncing around her face with each step. “It works. It works wonderfully!”
Slowly, she leaned forward and pressed her body up against his trembling one, forcing his back to the wall. The top of her head only came up to his chin, she was so tiny. The sweet smell of her shampoo mixed with the coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils. Rising up onto her toes, she placed her lips against his ear.
“So well, in fact, that I know how I was born,” she whispered, then turned her head so that their eyes met. “And, I can tell you that I was born…bad.”
With one swift move, she raised her arm and brought it smoothly down, burying the claw of the hammer into the side of his head. A brief look of shock crossed his face before his body began to slide down the wall. Carly stepped to one side, allowing his body to slump onto the floor by her feet, the hammer still embedded in his head.
Dr. Lewis was nearly to the stairway now as Carly leaned down and, with a disgustingly wet, squishy noise, easily pulled the hammer from Dr. Abrams head. Carly took a moment to watch the blood ooze from the wound before swinging the hammer and smashing it into his head once again. Thud! With a gasp of horror, Dr. Lewis turned and ran through the door of the stairwell and down the stairs as quickly as she could manage. The light, tinkling sound of Carly’s delighted laughter echoing behind her. It was in that moment, with her only thoughts of looking for help, that she realized she had not seen a single security officer since her arrival…
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