Echo
When she woke, she didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know who she was, but it all felt familiar. It was cold and damp, and she couldn’t hear a thing but the painful ringing in her ears. She lay face down on a damp, shattered glass-filled, concrete ground. Bruised, battered, and cut in a dozen places. Her body was slow to respond to the commands of her mind. She hugged the wall until her legs regained their mobility. The hallway was filled with smoke and flickering overhead fluorescent lights. She couldn’t remember anything but small fragments that were fleeting in her memory like a dream escaping the woken mind.
She stumbled along the wall, passing a locked door, then passing another, and another, and another. The only difference was the thick soot covering the doors and a number on each door. As she passed another door, it had 2045-EE, then 2044-EE. Each one was just as locked as the last. Keeping their secrets behind them. Hiding any clue as to where she was or who she was. She came to the end of the hallway to a door that was off its hinges. This only led to another hallway with more locked doors, smoke, broken lights, and liquid flooding the corridor.
“Don’t go. You are hurt and don’t know what you are doing,” a voice said over the speaker.
She didn’t even notice the ringing missing from her ears until the piercing crackle of the speakers entered the hallway. She stopped where she was. Backing up against the wall as tightly as she could, checking her surroundings. Which in this case were only the two directions. She looked to the ceiling and saw a camera fallen off its mount and angled towards her. She checked her surroundings once again and continued forward. She came to a stairwell at the end of the hallway and trekked down the stairs. She was only able to make it two stories down before the stairwell was broken and came to an end. She entered a door marked “95”. She entered through the door and found another hallway with more doors. Lights were still shattered and flickering, floors still wet, and surroundings covered in soot. This time the doors had small windows. Most of the rooms on the other side of the windows were dark. The first one she passed that she could see in was filled with large amounts of pink fluid.
“You can’t go. You are too important to the research.” She backed up against the wall again to find another camera down the hall looking at her.
She continued down the hall. The next room she looked in, room 2087-GZ was covered from floor to ceiling with slug-like creatures crawling up and down the walls. 2111-GZ had a single shadowed figure in the center of the room. A figure that had no appearance, no face, only an outline of the human body, but taller than she was. It didn’t move, but she knew it was alive.
The broken glass from the overhead lights covered the cold slab of concrete. Her boots crunched the glass along the way. She stalked the hallway like prey hiding from predators. Though her conscious mind didn’t know where to take her, the aching muscles knew exactly where they were going. She reached the end of another hallway and was forced to choose left or right. At no hesitation, she chose right.
“If you leave, you will regret your choice. All the years of hard work flushed down the drain, and for what, for a —.” The speaker cut out.
Down a few more floors, sparks were still igniting fires. Engulfing everything within its reach. This hallway looks exactly like all the others. She knew there was no time to look through any of the windows. No time to understand this floor. She didn’t know why she knew there was no time. An internal clock told her body there wasn’t any time.
Another stairwell and yet another obstacle blocking the passage. The concrete on this floor was a bit lighter than the floor before. She tried to think back to the other floors if they kept getting lighter in color. She couldn’t recall and didn’t want to concentrate on this at the moment. She still didn’t know who she was or where she was, she only knew her life was in danger.
The secrets behind the locked doors were becoming more visible as the windows to the doors increased in size on each floor. Behind one of the doors were more slugs climbing the walls. This time they were a bit bigger, dark blue, with vibrant yellow spots. Another door had only a table with a single alarm clock on it. The alarm clock stated the time was twelve minutes after twelve.
“If you leave, you will be a failure. Like you always have been. Living up to your destiny of never finishing a thing in your life.”
Each time the man’s voice came over the speakers, it become increasingly louder. Causing her to startle a bit more each time. She thought she would get used to it. Even as she entered the stairwells many more times and descended dozens of stories, he just got louder and louder.
“I can’t believe you would do this. I can’t believe you would betray everything you know for this.” The man’s voice was earsplitting as she opened the door with “32” in its center.
Ten floors up she decided not to look in any more doors. Things were making less and less sense after each door she looked into. That is until this floor. The doors were practically full see-through glass now. The walls were still concrete. There was still fluid and broken glass all over the floors. The soot was more prominent as the concrete for sure was growing lighter in color, but the doors were exposing more and more of the rooms behind them.
Her muscles gave out from sudden spasms of pain, She fell to the cold concrete in front of door 6001-A. There was another human inside the first actual human she would see in this maze. As she tried pushing herself back up she noticed this human. She noticed the surroundings and the room they were sitting in. A steel frame chair, and a jumpsuit with 6001-A on the name tag. Alone in the room with lifeless looks on their face. She doesn’t know why but she knocked on the door. There was no movement from the human on the other side. They weren’t dead but did not seem alive.
She came to another choice of left or right. Her muscles were growing with pain, her head was drowning in its own cloudiness, and she couldn’t see straight. She couldn’t get the other human out of her mind. She didn’t want to leave them, but she had no choice. That is what she tells herself. That is what she needs to tell herself.
“Worthless. That’s what you are. Not worth the hassle.”
Ignoring the loudspeaker as much as she can, she persisted forward. Her nose started to bleed and her muscles were seizing and locking up. As she entered the next floor, the concrete was now white, the walls were white, and the doors to the rooms were solid glass. In each room was another human. Each one sitting in the same chair, each one wearing the same jumpsuit. The only difference was the identification number on the chest of the suit that matched the number on the door. She was confused. Each human in every room looked exactly the same. Same hair, eyes, build, and face. They were all identical. They were all…immobile.
“We will stop you! There is no escape! You will fail!” the voice screamed over the speakers.
She was getting close. The man was getting angrier over the speaker. She only had one more floor to go. All the floors before this one were exactly the same. The floors just felt like copies of each other. It felt like she was caught in a loop of entering the same floor. If it wasn’t for the nametags on the jumpsuits and doors, she would have been certain it was the same floor. Groaning and grunting through the pain of her body failing her, she didn’t think she was going to make it.
Upon entering the last floor, she saw it. She saw the doors. They were familiar to her, she couldn’t figure out where she knew them from. It was like everything else in this building. A distant memory or a dream. Her heartbeat raced faster than ever before. She knew she would be free in minutes. She ran as fast as her aching legs would allow her. Using the wall as support, ignoring everything else around her. The double doors were outlined with glimmering light. If she could just make it outside she could be free from this hell she is in. She could figure out who she is.
She approached the double doors with speed and anger. Slamming through the doors and entering the blissful light that was her freedom. Collapsing to the ground. At first, the light was so blinding she couldn’t see a thing. Once her pupils settled, she could make out some images. It was the silhouette of another human. The ground was soft, but it was not what she expected. She didn’t know what to expect, but this wasn’t it. She looked around and found herself in another room. A room with hundreds of lights shining, aiming at her. Continuing to blind her from all areas of the room. A room she quickly realized was not her escape.
“Congratulations! You made it. I didn’t think your body would make it this time.”
She recognized the voice from the speakers. “What…where…where am I?”
“You are at the end. And in record time. I am impressed.”
More silhouettes of human figures appeared from the sides. Grabbing her arms, restraining her. She felt a pinch in her neck and instantly started to feel groggy and could barely form another word.
“Who…why?” she forced out and muttered.
“Because we can,” the voice replied. “Reset everything and try subject 61287-ZAB. We are making progress.” She heard the man say before it all went dark.
When she woke, she didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know who she was. But it all felt familiar.
End
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