The Pandora Index (Older work)

In Control

Daniel Walker

The car pulled into the nearly-empty parking lot in front of the new Pandora Headquarters. It was a re-purposed old business tower from the 2000's that had walls of dull black windows instead of the sleek reflective glass of the more recent buildings. It was also incredibly isolated, it sat alone on a hill by the coast a couple of miles away from the edge of the New Detroit area.

Madison and I climbed out and walked inside. In the large main room the floor had a strange choice of green and white tiles. The walls were painted a darker shade of green and in the middle of the room was a golden, pyramid-shaped fountain that looked like it hadn't worked correctly in years.

"Mister Sleet wanted to talk to you alone as soon as possible."Madison said while she showed our badges to a red security android. "We'll have to go to his office on the top floor." She said pointing towards an elevator.

We stepped onto the elevator and started up. We rode in silence for a minute before the doors opened on the third floor for a muscular man with red hair and a beard. He looked like he was surprised to see me at first.

"Hello Madison, I see that our friend here has finally finished his nap!", he said with a cheerful Irish accent as he pushed the button for the floor he was headed to. He was wearing body-armor like the man in the bandages too, except his armor was a light grey color.

"Daniel, this is Agent Samuel, J Williams he is one of Pandora's best agents", Madison said.

Williams then struck a heroic pose, which roused a few chuckles.

"Are you going up to see the boss?" he asked me, regaining his composure.

"U-Um, yeah." I said nervously.

"Don't worry, you don't have to be too nervous about meeting him, he doesn't bite that often!" he said jokingly.

The elevator doors opened and Williams stepped off, "Well, it was nice to have time to meet you, good luck!" he said as the doors closed.

"Well, he sure was interesting.", I thought out loud. He seemed like he was a little immature to be one of Pandora's "best" agents.

Our floor had finally came up, and I stepped off the elevator into a short hallway with two doors on each side.

"His room is the second on the right." Madison said, "I have to take care of some business back downstairs...so I'll try to meet up with you later, okay?"

I nodded and continued down the dark hall. This hall was probably the grossest part of the decomposing building. The grey walls were smudged and cracked in places and the tacky, red carpet reeked of mold.

I knocked three times on the old door and I heard movement on the other side. The door unlocked and slowly opened. To my surprise it was the man in bandages who had appeared in the door-way. He studied me for a few seconds with that creepy, orange eye before he grunted and gestured for me to come inside.

The large office had a single desk in the center of the room, which was piled high with files and other assorted papers. In the corner of the room was a makeshift kitchen with a bubbling coffee brewer, the coffee's aroma filled the room as I took a seat in front of the large desk. A rustling sound came from a closet in the right side of the room and a man stepped out carrying a box containing even more files.

"Oh good, your here!" he said excitedly with an accent that I couldn't really identify, maybe Eastern European? He waddled towards the center of the room and with a heavy thud, dropped the box on the already cluttered desk, knocking a few miscellaneous papers on the floor.

He was a very odd-looking man, he was very slim and he was wearing a dark, high-collared business suit with a red tie. His long, pointy nose supported a pair of round sunglasses, even though the room was poorly lit. His bald head reflected what light had managed to poke through his drawn blinds.

"I see that you've already become acquainted with Mister Grieves." Sleet said, gesturing absentmindedly towards the man in bandages, as he rooted through the files.

"So...Daniel," he said without looking up. "I would expect that you don't remember much about yourself, let alone the breakout, but I still need to ask you a few simple questions."

He looked up and gestured for Grieves to wait outside. Grieves muttered what sounded like a low growl as he quietly exited the office.

He then looked up from the file at me, "Well, first of all has anything unusual happened since you woke up?"

I sighed. "Well everything is a bit unusual today, I..." I stopped, and remembered the man in the scarf. Now would probably be a good time to tell someone, I turned to Sleet.

"No, I don't remember anything particularly odd happening." I said.

Wait, that's not what I wanted to say at all! What was going on?

Mister Sleet must have seen my startled expression, "Are you feeling alright?" he asked.

The word "yes" forced itself out of my mouth.

...

Half an hour later, I exited the office even more nervous than when I had entered. Mister Sleet had asked me many more questions and I answered almost all of them with a fake smile.

There was no doubt in my mind that something was keeping me from talking. Is there a kind of abnormal that can do that? Was that man in the scarf an abnormal? So many questions were running through my mind, and none of them had answers.

I walked back down the quiet hall to the elevator. Mister Sleet had told me to go to the designated agent's quarters on the third floor. So that was were I was going to go. I'm going to have to find some way to tell someone about this without alerting whoever is controlling me. I'll just have to act normal until then. That won't be easy, I feel like he is watching me.

The elevator let out a ding, signaling the third floor. I stepped off and found myself standing in another hall, but this one ended at a larger room that looked like an armory, with gun lockers, armor racks, and crates that probably contained even more guns and armor. There was also two people in the room; a tall man with dull brown hair wearing a brown t-shirt and jeans going through one of the lockers, and a woman with short blond hair who was wearing dark crimson armor. She was sitting on a bench in the middle of the room putting combat boots on, I could see that she had a tattoo of a snake that wrapped around her arm and ended at her shoulder. For a second she gave me the same surprised look that Williams had given me earlier

"Hey, Daniel, your already here!?", a deep voice behind me exclaimed. I turned to see a large black man wearing blue body-armor walking down the hall towards me. A large pistol sat in an under-arm holster.

"Samuel said that you would get here soon, but I didn't expect you to get here this soon." He shook my hand, "I'm Jack, do you remember me?" he asked.

"Sorry... I don't." I said. Repeating this is starting to get annoying.

"Well, can't say that I'm not surprised; you took a pretty nasty blow to the head!" He said. "I guess I'll have to introduce you to the rest of the crew again when we get back."

"Get back? Where are you going?" I asked.

"We're going abnormal hunting. and you're coming with us." The woman said, grinning as she slid an ammo cartridge into a sniper rifle.