by Caveman Ninja Joe
Synopsis: A young woman wakes up in an abandoned hospital in the middle of no-where, with no memory of how she got there, or even of her own name. She starts to investigate.
Nothing moves in the cold and sterile room, save for a lone security camera, slowly swinging from side to side. It pans over an empty nurses station, across the empty hospital beds, along the cold, blank walls, and finally over a young, tall, blonde haired woman. The woman lies slumped across one of the beds, stark naked, and unconscious. Suddenly, the woman's eyes flutter open. She rises off the bed, and looks around the empty room, seized by a fear born of confusion.
Looking around, she soon spies an open door underneath the security camera. The door is made of metal, and about half an inch thick. A sign on the outside of the door identifies this room as 'Recovery Ward 1'. Cautiously, the woman creeps over to the door, and inspects it more closely. She quickly sees that the door is bent out of shape around the handle. Curious, the woman grabs hold of the door. As she does so, her slender fingers sink into the metal like its made of putty, instead of tempered steel. Intrigued, she moves her hand around, and her fingers start to gouge deep trenches in the door. Suddenly, the door begins to groan, and the woman withdraws her hand faster than if she'd touched a stove top. She looks around, hoping no-body heard that. Baffled by her apparent strength, she looks her fingers over, but sees nothing out of the ordinary.
Putting the mangled door out of her mind for now, the woman warily steps out into a corridor. Where the room she just left was so clean as to be considered sterile, the corridor is in total disrepair. Its dark, the only illumination comes from a single, flickering, fluorescent light. Tiles and plaster have cracked and fallen to the floor. A filing cabinet sticks out of a broken window, littering the floor with glass. Dust chokes the air. Human bodies are scattered randomly throughout the corridor, most wearing lab coats or dark blue security uniforms. Several of them lie next to rifles and assault weapons. Each flicker of the light reveals large stains of dried blood under the bodies.
Struggling to keep her fear in check, the woman walks over to one of the guards, and checks for a pulse. Sure enough, he's dead. She looks up and down the hallway, searching for whatever may have caused this destruction, and spots a half open door a few yards away. She creeps up next to it, and sees the sign on the door, 'Security Office 5'. Anxiously, dreading what may await her inside, she slides open the door.
Peeking inside, she sees that this room is almost as badly trashed as the hallway. A dead security guard lies in the corner. Papers and DVDs cover the floor. The monitoring console is badly damaged. All but one of its screens are either smashed, or show nothing but static. The woman tip-toes quietly into the room, her eyes darting around rapidly. She finds nothing else.
Still tense, the woman walks over to the console, and sits down. The one working camera shows the black and white image of Recovery Ward 1. The woman sees play, pause, re-wind, fast-forward and record buttons under the monitors, along with a small red light labelled 'Recording Damaged'. All of the Recording Damaged lights are lit up, except the one for Recovery Ward 1. She decides to watch the recording, and re-winds it, the presses play. For a few minutes, the room remains completely still. Suddenly, the camera starts to shake, violently. A moment later, it happens again, and the woman sees her black and white counterpart appear in the frame. The door is sent crashing into the wall as she stumbles inside. The woman watches her counterpart, fascinated. That fascination turns to horror as she sees the look on the woman's face. She looks absolutely terrified, like she just woke up from some horrible nightmare. The woman watches herself stagger around for a little longer, then finally collapse onto the bed.
The woman pauses the footage and notes the time stamp, '20:43, 05/11/15'. She stops the recording, and checks the stamp on the live feed, '03:17, 05/12/15', just over six and a half hours later. Her curiosity aroused, the woman leaves the office. She treks further along the demolished hallway, stepping over dead bodies, checking every shadow for signs of what caused this destruction. Soon, she comes to a door labelled 'Records Office'. She goes in, and finds that unlike the other places she's come across, this room is still in fairly good condition, save for a few Manilla folders left on the floor. Flipping through the folders, she sees that most contain medical and personnel records, although she doesn't recognize any of the people in them.
She continues to search, hoping to find a file on her. She soon locates a folder with a picture inside, and the woman in the picture looks exactly like her. The woman in the photo is sitting in front of a white background, giving a nervous half-smile to the camera. The woman finds a piece of paper inside the folder that reads...
“I
am... Alexis?”. The woman pauses, lost in her thoughts.
Regaining her focus, she re-reads the file. She can't see anything
that indicates how 'Alexis' could have ended up in a building like
this. Looking through the folder, the woman notices that there are a
bunch of pages missing. Disappointed, she tucks the folder under her
arm, and resumes her search of the room. She soon finds a folder
labelled...
Intrigued,
she picks it up and starts to peruse its contents. The folder
contains, among other things, an assortment of pictures that show,
what would appear to be, organs. That is, if the colour didn't make
them look more like month old meat. The woman also finds a number of
reports, most of which are loaded with medical jargon she doesn't
grasp. However, she finds one that's fairly straightforward.
Well,
that didn't tell me much. she grumbles internally. She takes a closer
look at the letterhead, wondering what TPA could stand for. Nothing
comes to mind, so she puts the folder back, and leaves. A
little further along the hallway, she comes to another security
office, in far better shape than the last one. There is still only
one monitor with a picture, in this case, displaying the hallway.
However, checking the Recording Damage lights she sees that one of
the other recordings is also intact. She decides to start with the
recording from the hallway camera. As
soon as she hits play, she sees five security guards standing in the
hallway outside the office. The men are steadily falling back,
grimacing in concentration as they fire on a target the camera can't
see. Around them, men in white lab coats, apparently scientists, flee
in terror. They pass between the security guards, who make no effort
to stop them. The guards just continue to fire round after round, and
clip after clip, at their unseen foe. After
about ten seconds, their target appears on screen. The woman's jaw
drops as she sees who it is. Its Alexis, walking down the corridor
without a stitch of clothing on her, advancing steadily despite the
streams of gunfire. The woman watches in awe as bullets bounce off
Alexis' naked flesh like they were mere spit-balls. The shots
ricochet into the walls, cracking the tiles and plaster. As Alexis
closes in on them, bullets start to hit the scientists and guards,
who crumple to the floor, clutching at their wounds. Suddenly,
in the middle of the corridor, Alexis stops dead. The guards,
seemingly bewildered, cease fire. As the woman watches the screen,
the guards fling their arms up to cover their faces. They brace
themselves as their hair and clothes start to whip about, like a gale
forces wind suddenly blew into the corridor. Alexis, however, doesn't
appear to notice it. Further down the corridor, the winds lift some
of the scientists off the ground, and blows them about like leaves in
a fall breeze, before hurling them into the walls. The winds don't
stop. The door of the records office blows open, sending papers
flying everywhere. Deciding
she's seen enough, the woman pauses the footage, and again notes the
time stamp, '20:40, 05/11/15', three minutes before Alexis collapsed
on the bed. The woman stops that recording, and starts up the other
one. A static filled screen immediately switches over to a picture of
an operating room. People in surgical masks are gathered around a
small table looking at something the camera can't see, talking
amongst each other. A man stands off to the side, reading a sheet of
paper, but the picture quality is too poor for the woman to see what
it says. The scene is interrupted when three other people wheel in a
table with somebody on it, covered by a sheet. The woman, now able to
see the small table, notices that its covered in the organ... things
she saw in the Project Scorpion file. One
of the men who wheeled in the table says something to the man with
the bit of paper, who is apparently the surgeon, then walks out. The
surgeon visibly rolls his eyes, places the bit of paper on a table,
and walks over to the table that was just wheeled in. He pulls back
the sheet. The
woman lets out a gasp when she sees who is under the sheet.
Its Alexis Manning, but something is terribly wrong. She isn't
breathing. Her eyes are shut, and the area around them is abnormally
dark. Her body is covered in lacerations, none of which were present
in the other recordings. The surgeon holds out his hands, and one of
the nurses hands him a scalpel, while another rushes off to fetch the
table with the organs. For nearly an hour and a half, the woman
watches as the surgeon slices open Alexis' flesh, and sticks the
organs inside. The woman shudders sympathetically with every cut. The
surgeon occasionally checks a computer screen, apparently unsure of
where the organs are supposed to go.
Suddenly, the woman notices one of Alexis' fingers twitch. Moments later,
Alexis' eyes shoot open, and she looks down. The woman shudders as Alexis lets out a horrified scream. Alexis suddenly grabs
hold of the surgeon in mid-cut, and hurls him aside. He crashes into
the sink, hard enough that the metal distorts around him. He doesn't
move again. Meanwhile, Alexis continues to flail about on the table
on complete panic. The nurses run in to restrain her. One of them is
hit by Alexis' flailing arms, and is sent flying up at the camera. The
feed cuts out at '20:32, 05/11/15', eight minutes before Alexis tore
through the halls. Profoundly
disturbed by what she'd just seen, the woman leaves the security
office. She walks down the corridor a little further, before stepping
on a bit of paper. She reaches down to the remove it, then recognizes
it as one of the missing parts of Alexis' file.
Below
this are pictures of the family. The woman feels a rush of warmth as
she looks at them. She continues to read.
As
she reads, the woman's joy soon fades, replaced by an almost
overpowering sorrow. For the next few minutes, she can do nothing but
sit and stare blankly at the paper, tears rolling down her cheeks. Regathering
herself, the woman wipes away the tears, and re-reads the paper,
taking careful note of the dates of death. All the family members
died within a few weeks, the last less than a week ago, from
apparently unrelated, yet sudden, causes. Her suspicions aroused, the
woman puts the piece of paper into the folder, and resumes her
search. As
she walks a along, she spots a door ajar. She looks inside, and
immediately recognizes the surgery Alexis woke up in. She feels a
faint shiver run up and down her spine as she steps into the now
trashed room. The surgeon is still lying in the sink, a pool of dried
blood visible under him. The small table has been knocked over,
spilling the organ like things on the ground. They look even worse
now that the woman can see them up close. Several of them are unusual
shades of green or blue, and some are pulsating on the floor.
Reluctantly, the woman picks one of them up. Nothing happens. Feeling
a little bit braver, she gives it a small squeeze.
A
thick, viscous green liquid seeps out of it. The woman recoils, and
drops it too the ground. The liquid hits the floor with a loud
hissing noise. Smoke rises as the apparently acidic liquid begins to
eat through the floor. The woman watches on, fascinated, as the organ
sinks into the goo, and gradually disappears from sight. Deciding to
leave the rest of the organs alone, the woman starts to search the
surgery for the piece of paper the surgeon had. She soon finds it on
the same cabinet he left it on. Examining the paper, she sees its one
of the missing parts of Alexis' file.
“Alexis
Manning... is dead?”. The woman reads on, and sees a note at
the bottom of the page.
“Interesting.”,
the woman mutters, sliding the medical records into the folder, and
completing the set. She returns to the corridor. A
little further along, she comes across two sets of doors, right next
to each other. One of them, to her left, is labelled 'Conference
Room'. The other consists of two huge blast doors, right in front of
her, which she can only assume is the way out. She decides to check
the conference room first. She opens the door, and finds a circular
room, with beautiful wood panelled walls. A long, rectangular, and
very expensive looking mahogany desk occupies most of the room. A
vase of fake flowers sits in the middle. The desk is surrounded by
equally expensive looking high backed chairs. In the far corner,
there is a small digital camera mounted on a tripod, next to one of
the chairs. The woman walks up to the camera, and examines it more
closely. She soon finds a single video file stored on the camera's
memory card. She presses play. The
camera's in-built video screen flickers to life. It shows an image of
the conference room, empty save for two men. The woman recognizes one
of them as the surgeon. The other is a tall man wearing an expensive
looking business suit. His face is covered in pits. The man in the
suit turns to the surgeon and says, “I would prefer not to be
recorded Doctor Evans.”. Every word comes out like a low hiss.
The doctor walks away from the camera, and replies, “I'm aware
of that sir. Just as I'm aware of what happened to my predecessor.”.
The room goes deathly quiet, until finally the surgeon asks, “So,
what do you have for me?”. The
man in the suit curls his thin lips into a very, very creepy smile,
then lays a briefcase out on the desk. He slowly opens the case.
Seeing the contents, the woman's eyes narrow. The case contains the
organs the surgeon implanted into Alexis, packed inside airtight
plastic bags. “What the heck are those?”, Doctor Evans
asks, looking over the organs, seemingly torn between curiosity and
revulsion. “Doctor...”, the man in the suit says with a
smirk, “I would hope a surgeon of your reputation would know
organs when he sees them.”. “I've never seen organs
like... where did you get these?” “Oh...
various sources.”, the other man says evasively. “Which
are... ?”, “Some were grown for us, the others.... well,
you wouldn't believe me if I told you.”. Evans opens his mouth
like he's going to inquire further, then seemingly thinks better of
it, “So, why are you showing these to me?”. “Are
you familiar with Project Scorpion?”, the other man asks
coolly. “Not really.”, the surgeon says, visibly
confused. The other man, clearly annoyed by his ignorance, asks, “You
are at least aware of our organization's goals?”. “More
or less.”, Evans says, not looking at the other man. “Well
Doctor, in order to achieve those goals, we will require a new breed
of human. Implanting these...”, he indicates the organs,
“...into a subject will allow us to achieve this.”. Evans
looks up at him, and dismissively says, “How do you plan to do
that? I doubt you'll find anybody who wants you sticking a bunch of
weird body parts in them.”. “Its quite simple really. We
have acquired the body of a deceased individual. This one.”,
the other man says, and holds out a PDA. Looking closely, the woman
sees that the PDA is displaying a picture of Alexis Manning. The
surgeon's eyes widen. “I
don't want to know how she wound up... deceased... do I?”.
“No.”, the woman's eyes narrow. “So...”,
Evans says, “let me get this straight, you want me to
operate... on a dead woman?”. At this, the other man's smile
becomes downright grotesque. “Don't think of it like that
Doctor.”, he says airily, “The woman we bring in may be
dead... but the woman you're operating on... is
Scorpion.”. The man in the suit stands up and heads for the
door, leaving the organs on the table. “Oh, and Doctor? Don't
screw this up.”, the man adds with a menacing leer, before
departing. Doctor Evans keeps a nervous eye on the organs for a time,
before noticing the camera, and promptly switching it off. The woman
stares at the now blank screen, stunned. “I am... Scorpion?”,
she whispers to herself. “I
am Scorpion!”, she declares more confidently. 'Scorpion' pulls
the memory card out of the camera, and drops it in the folder with
Alexis' files.
She steps out of the meeting room, and finds herself standing before the massive blast doors once more. The door are truly intimidating, standing twenty feet high, twenty across, and three deep. Scorpion confidently strides up to the doors, and gives them a huge kick.
There's a loud noise, not unlike a gunshot, as her foot connects with the thick metal. One of the doors is bent slightly outward. Unsatisfied, Scorpion lets fly with another, harder kick. The sound this time is less like a gunshot and more like a howitzer blast. The door buckles, bending back even further than before. Scorpion prepares to kick it again, when she sees a small gap between the doors. She pushes her slender arms through the gap, accidentally dropping the folder., then tries to push the rest of her body through. With every attempt, the door moans and groans in protest. Growing impatient, she starts wriggling back and forth, yielding further protests from the overtaxed metal.
Slowly, Scorpion pushes through her head, her torso, her hips, and finally her legs. She pops out of the hole, and lands on a block of concrete outside with a dull thud. Standing up, she takes a moment to look around. She finds herself standing at the entrance to a cave, dug out of the side of a cliff-face. The vast desert surrounding the mountain is lit by a full moon. Large pillars of wind-swept rock loom out of the darkness. The concrete block she fell on gives way to a dirt track about fifteen feet beyond the blast doors. Scorpion soaks in her surroundings, basking in her freedom.
Her reverie ends as she remembers the folder. She reaches back through the hole in the doors, and feels around. Finding the folder, she grabs hold and carefully pulls it through. She opens it up to make sure everything is still there. She finds the memory card, the medical file, the family pictures and personal information, the personnel file, and finally the picture of Alexis, still nervously smiling at the unseen cameraman. Scorpion looks down at it, her eyes filling with sorrow.
“I will find out who did this to you. I will put things right. I promise.”, Scorpion says quietly. She closes the folder, and looks out into the night.
Clutching the folder to her breast, she sets off along the dirt track. Before long, the bunker vanishes from sight.
Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Acid Dripping Organs? Send them all (Except the organs, they make a real mess of the carpet.) to cavemanninjajoe@gmail.com or find CavemanNinjaJoe on the SWM forums.