Twenty-Two: Chapter 3
#8 of Scrap Book
Sorry this one came late. I got caught up in other things.
Twenty-Two Chapter 3
Official recordings of Dr. Steiner Head Researcher at (Information Redacted)
Date: (Information Redacted)
Location: (Information Redacted)
Student Twenty-Two is showing remarkable progress as of late. He's passed every type of test that is thrown at him, no matter how difficult it is. He's managed to outthink and outperform his peers across the board. He's smarter, faster and stronger. If training continues as planned, he'll easily be a candidate for a leadership position once indoctrination occurs and he's briefed on why he's here.
That brings up some concerns as well. He has no idea why he's here. Whenever he isn't testing, the boy seems lost and disconnected from the world. We did pick him up at a critical moment of his life. His father died just a month before Twenty-Two's arrival here. Sadly, records show that his father had been branded as a traitor and the course of actions that took place were the cause of his death. Records do not give me the reason for such a harsh sentence that left this boy an orphan.
There are no details regarding his mother. Either we don't know who she was or it's above my pay grade. Either way, they bore a son that will do great things someday. I'll ensure that he gets the best treatment, especially since I'm not the only person to take notice of his prowess.
I've received orders from my superiors, they want him ready in a year. They didn't specify what they want him ready for, but the new set of training instructions that came with the order's point towards intelligence of some kind.
I don't know why, nor could I guess why they want him in intelligence with the Inquisition so close to death. We need quality leadership to replace our current ones. As much as I believe that they try their hardest and have the best of intentions, they are hardly fit for the job and they know it. Pushed into the roles through necessity and trained on the job, it wasn't our best time and there are still rough challenges ahead for us, but with this training facility pumping out quality agents, that should change soon.
I've had a talk with the security chief about our proximity to several concentration zones and I'm glad to see that he shares my concerns. He's put up guards outside when he can, but he says that the only thing we can do to make sure we're not noticed is to just close the hatches and hunker down. The less noise we make on the outside, the less they'll suspect what's going on the inside. He's recommended securing outside access and I'm keen to agree. The staff won't like it, but if it keeps us safe, then I'll go ahead and do that. I can make a schedule to let people out to see the sun later, for the time being ours and the safety of the students is the top priority.
--
Pain flashed across my chest as I struggled to pull breaths in and out. It was as if there was a snake constricting me, squeezing tighter and tighter the further I ran through the endless maze of pitch black halls. I had to stop now.
I coughed and gagged as I came to a stop, my muscles screaming for the sweet relief of rest. I tasted iron in my mouth and spat off to the side. Even that small pause in breath sent agony through my burning lungs.
I don't know how long I had been running for, it was hard to keep track of time as my oxygen deprived brain scrambled to tell me where I was. Somehow I had managed to navigate in the complete darkness almost perfectly. I could sense when there was a turn as if I could see it with my own eyes. There was also some sort of pull on me. I don't know what it was, but I just had this urge to go in a specific direction.
When my panting stopped and my breathing returned to something that didn't sound like some asphyxiated, dying cat, I took the time to listen to the darkness. There was nothing out there, whatever had been chasing me wasn't coming after me anymore. For the moment. A temporary burden off of my mind.
"You can put me down now." A voice squeaked from my arms and I remembered that there was a weight in my arms. Small arms hugged around my neck and mine around his body as I had carried the tiring boy to save us both.
I could have left him behind and that would have allowed me to travel faster, negating the massive risk I took for the both of us. Though I wouldn't have been able to live with myself after the fact. I didn't think there was any reason to forsake him if he didn't do anything to me to deserve death and abandonment. That gamble had paid off, we were both alive.
The arms let go off me, a clear sign that Francis wanted to be put down from his uncomfortable seat in my arms. I bent down to let the small load off where he slid down onto the ground.
"Where did you take us?" He asked and I imagined him looking around even though there was nothing to see. We still needed to take care of the power problem if we were going to get out. There was no telling, however, if there was any possibility of finding our way to the generators again.
"I don't know." I walked over to a wall, hand out stretched. The surface was cool to the touch and felt like the surface of an egg. "I just ran, not caring where we were going, so long as we lived."
There was a small silence as Francis though this over. "Better to be alive and lost than dead."
I nodded to myself. "Now we need to fix that lost part." I tried to recall the path I had took, recounting all of the rights and lefts. There were so many and I had run for so long. I began to realize just how big this place was because I had never run into a dead end of any sort, each turn led to another hall, another turn that twisted through the blackness.
"How do you think we're going to do that?" He asked, I could tell that the gratefulness for being alive was slowly ebbing away, giving way to the same sense of helplessness. "I have no idea where we are." He huffed a bit.
I rolled my eyes. I needed to remember that he was still in his teens, from the looks of him, he didn't think like I did. Emotions were more volatile as puberty set in and drove his chemistry crazy. With power stripped from him, that confidence was now gone.
I opted to just following the wall. That same feeling that drove me the entire chase was back, nudging me to walk along the wall. Francis heard me walking and quickly fell into step, stumbling occasionally. My hand ran across the surface, feeling the individual grooves until it came onto something else.
"A plaque or something." I whispered and began to feel along it. There was lettering on it and while I was no expert at distinguishing letters from touch, the letters were pronounced enough that I could draw a picture in my mind. "Emer...gency... gener... at... tors. Emergency generators."
"Wow." Francis took the words right out of my mouth. Somehow I had managed to run us all of the way to the place we were hoping to get to. "What next, you're going to tell me you're Jesus?"
"C'mon." I reached out and tugged on his arm. "I don't like the dark." It felt like a lie, I almost felt at peace in the darkness, but telling him would probably freak him out.
By how the air changed, from stuffy to a more breathable and cool air, I could tell we were in a large room.
"Feel around and see if you can't find some kind of switch." We both split and went around the room, feeling everything that we could. I felt plenty of switches that I tried, but none of them did anything. I could hear a series of clicks from the other side and guessed that Francis was doing the same.
As I was making my way across what I thought was a control panel, a single, concentrated light turned on. I ducked immediately.
"Who's in here?" A quivering voice. The light swept across the room and I got a glimpse of how large the room was. This wasn't some ordinary emergency generator, it was a full sized generator in its own right. It took up half of the football sized room. I was currently in a small room off to the side that looked as if it could be a control room, but I saw several other such rooms in the place as well. It would have taken hours or even longer to find anything that might have been able to turn the power back on.
I couldn't see who was talking, with the light pointed in my general direction, it was impossible to discern who was holding the flashlight and if he was a threat or not.
"You can't be in here." He said with a bit more confidence, revealing a slight British accent. "The place is under lockdown."
"We need light." Francis yelled out from his own hiding spot and the light darted over in his direction.
"I'm working on that." The man yelled, frustrated with something. "You need to leave now." He was insistent.
"And what if we don't?"
"I'll..." The man paused. He had nothing to hold over us. If he was working on getting the lights back on, then he wanted it as much as us which meant that he couldn't hold the light hostage.
"Exactly." Francis sneered.
"Look, I don't want trouble. I'm just here to get the lights on and then get out like the rest of the staff, but the doors stay locked without power. Just let me do my job."
"What's your name?" I asked, trying to get the man to calm down. He didn't seem like a threat and I didn't want the situation to escalate. Francis seemed like he was ready for a fight, but that would only be counterproductive.
"Sayler." The man replied. "James Sayler. I'm one of the mechanics that keeps the place running."
"Good job." Francis mocked him.
"I said I was working on it." His voice squeaked. Poor man was under a lot of pressure and out presence probably wasn't helping with his nerves one bit. "Do you know how complicated this machine is." He pointed the flashlight at the piece of intricately interlaced metal that dominated to room. "It's hard enough to maintain when it's working, but some idiot threw a monkey wrench into it and I need to get it out."
"Perhaps we can help." I offered. "We don't want any trouble either. We just need to power back so we can get out as well."
It didn't take him long to take us up on the offer and we approached him. He was a big burly guy. I guess he had to be to be a mechanic, but it wasn't the kind of voice I was expecting with his British accent. He showed us where the problem was and how he couldn't quite reach the obstruction, a wrench which was jammed deep into the machine by the turbines.
He explained that it was blacking a valve that controlled the flow of steam which turned the turbines to make power. The generator was a thermos-generator, using a natural heat source deep in the earth to power to place. It was fascinating. I had read about different energy sources and how the heat that leaked to the surface from the core of the earth was a viable source of power where it did leak up. It also turned out that the main generator for the place was a Nuclear reactor, but there was no hope of getting that to start up since the lockdown put it on a permanent standby mode and couldn't be turned back on without a special set of passcodes and James didn't know where they were.
The solution was simple, James and I were too large to get to the wrench, but Francis wasn't. At first the boy was hesitant at the idea, but we managed to talk him into letting us hold him and lower him to the machine where he would be able to grab the wrench.
Luckily, it came away easily and just like a it was supposed to, the generator slowly came to life. The steam that had been blocked up began to flow again and soon, the overhead lights slowly began to come on.
"Thank god." James smiled. I could now see him better. He was the same height as me, and even though he was bulky, it wasn't as much as I previously thought, he was just well built. "Let there be light." He laughed and clapped his hands as an entire row of bulbs came on.
I couldn't help but smile at his mirthfulness. Francis was already off, looking at all of the new things.
James looked back at me and his smile faded a bit. "You're students." He pointed at the number tag on my chest.
"Yeah." I nodded. I had never been called a student, but it seemed correct. "What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing. Nothing. It's just that the announcement earlier."
"What announce-"
"The one that said that this was the final exam?" Francis cut in, he had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, wearing a lab coat that he had found discarded off in the corner. It bore the same crest as the staff, a blue cross.
"Yeah, that was fake."
"Fake?"
"Yeah, something is going on. I think they got in."
"Who's they?"
James looked at us in bewilderment. "Why do you think you're here in the first place? The werewolves are inside."