Don't Look Back! Part 2

Chapter Seventeen: Movement

Intrigued by the alarm that went off in her office, Ava Paige hurried inside and had a look at the monitor. Not a second later, a guard stormed inside, out of breath. "Ma'am, you need to see this" he yelled out and pointed at the door, but Dr Paige remained on the spot.

"The cocoons, they are glowing" She muttered as she inspected the vitals on the second monitor. The heat kept on rising, so far, the thermometer showed a dangerously high level. "Get them cooled down, now" she ordered, turning on her heels and heading in direction of the lab.

Under her supervision, the soldiers used water that evaporated on contact, then ice,t hat melted soon enough, whatever they used in an attempt to cool the cocoons it did not work. Neither did removing the cocoons, and although with the heat they produced, the metal of the tables they still lay on, began to melt and not long after, the cocoons lay flat on the ground. Still not a single liquid, or solid had the chance of cooling them.

"Keep an eye on them, we need to find a solution" Just as Dr Paige spoke those words, the alarm went off and so did the sprinklers, this however resulted in the entire room and the hallway filled with mist, so thick, the soldiers struggled to find their way back to the elevator, and with the mist the heat rose on t he entire level that needed to be isolated. No more use of the elevators, not even the stairs, the doors were sealed and any unnecessary personal had to be removed.

The eyes on the monitor, Dr Paige struggled to make out the height of the temperature the room had reached, but either way, she did not want anyone near the room.

The spectacle lasted almost an hour and some children on the level above complained about the heat that radiated from the floor, thus the level above needed evacuation.

Curious about what went on below, Thomas and Stephen snuck past some guards in direction of the elevator, but someone had cut the power to it, so they used the stairs. However not a single door let them onto the level below, and by the time, they had reached the level on which the cocoons lay, a guard had spotted them and they hurried off, back the stairs and hid amongst the other children.

"Did you see anything?" some of the kids asked as Stephen steadied his breath and motioned them to stay quiet.

Lucy?

No answer

Pressing his lips together, Stephen nodded at Thomas and they followed the other children that walked into one of the massive domes with plants in them.

As soon as the children had gathered inside the gigantic glass house that offered several levels the children never got to encounter, another click made them turn their heads.

Right in front of the children a hologram appeared of Ava Paige and Dr Wilson.

"Hello children. You may wonder what is going on. We have decided to let you in on a small secret." At once a video of the cocoons inside the mist filled room appeared before the children. "This is one of our projects. Two of you have managed to build these, but now they make problems and we need your help to get rid of them. Can you do that?" Her glance wandered around to see the children stare at the cocoons, glowing, pulsation in that moment as if something beneath tried to get out. "We have tried to cool them down, but nothing helps, and as you may have noticed it is getting warm inside the facility. Now for our safety and yours, we hope one of you might find a solution"

Just as Stephen turned his head to Thomas, one of the cocoons cracked and let out a bright light. And with that, the video feed stopped.

Dr Paige turned her head to the children and smiled. "As you can see, we too encounter new situations, which is why we want to prepare all of you for the world that you cannot control. Some of you may have felt something, or even seen what can help with these cocoons, and if so, I ask you to come to me. Please. Until then you may stay in the green house, enjoy the day, and we will do our best to find a solution. Remember WICKED is good" And with that the hologram vanished.

"What the hell is happening?" Dr Paige spun around to the monitor behind her, watching as the cocoon cracked even more and light shot out of it, blending the cameras. Due to the heat that rose abruptly, the monitors went dark and the thermometer showed higher temperatures that they had ever measured inside the facility, before it broke.

The stilettos clicked on the floor as she hurried, threw her lab coat over her shoulders and joined Dr Wilson, who had previously left her office to check on the situation. "I need an update now" Her eyes grew at the sight of mist on the ground level of the facilities. "What did you give the children to cause this?" Her eyes fell onto Dr Wilson, who grinned yet his eyebrows furrowed at the same time.

"I cannot say, we found some new stone that had similar abilities to what the children exhibit, so we figured if we connect them to the children we can enhance them and get better results, maybe even copy the genetic sequence and embed them into our own"

"And you believe this is the way to do it?"

"Well, I did not expect it to go this far. The other experiments had not worked, and we redid all of it the way we did with these two, nothing so far. Most of the subjects have died or shown no special abilities other than what they already are capable of"

Rubbing her temples, Dr Paige walked over to another monitor that showed the glass house with the children inside. Some of them tried to use the water inside the ponds to form ice, others talked about what to do, and two boys stood off to the side, arguing about how to get past the guards. "What about the boy. He has similar abilities to the girl, they liked each other, bring him to me"