Descent Into Madness

Chapter 7: Door to Door

One hand clutching the knife, I walked through the gruesome scene, trying to avoid stepping on any more bones.

Much like the other level, the doors here were ripped from their hinges and torn up.

One doorway in particular caught my attention. The door was still in one piece, open wide. Holes, bullet marks I realised, lined the door and the wall around it.

How bad of a shot were these guys?

Shrugging it off, I walked into the room. It looked a bit like the first one I'd seen in this place.  Cabinets on the walls, tables lined with lab equipment. Like outside the room, much of inside had been shot up.

I moved around one of the tables. Various stains coated its surface. Cracked and chipped beakers, flasks, and test tubes covered it, along with other items broken beyond recognition.

My eyes drifted past it before slamming shut when they landed on what was on the floor. I took a deep breath before reopening my eyes.

The body lay face down. It was obviously a woman. Strands of long dark hair were still held in place by a clip, despite the attack she'd sustained. There was a good sized hole in her back that the floor, discolored with bodily fluids, was visible through. One arm was gone completely-the shoulder a ragged mess of decayed muscle and fragments of cartilage-the other chewed down to the bone.

A morbid curiosity gripped me, and I knelt down to grab her shoulder where it was still covered with a blackening lab coat. My fingers sunk into her flesh like it was putty. Curling my lip slightly, I cautiously rolled the corpse onto her back before allowing myself to pull my hand back.

My gaze found her face first. A single hole penetrated her forehead between her shriveled up eyes. I was almost glad that my stomach was empty as I briefly looked away.

A short chain hung around her neck with a pendant-No, a ring-hanging from it, just as tarnished and dirty as the chain.

There was a plastic ID card still clipped to her coat, and I ripped it off as I stood. I couldn't read it, there was too much gunk plastered to its covering. I rubbed it on my already ruined slacks before giving it another attempt.

Nope. Still can't.

With a sigh, I shoved it into a pocket, a gut feeling telling me it might come in handy in the future.

I glanced around, looking for anything else that might be useful. Walking by one of the counters, a labeled jar caught my eye, and I picked it up.

Gastrotheca cornuta. I blinked at the label. Were they experimenting with amphibians? That would explain the long tongues...

The glass jar was fill with some sort of preservative that made it impossible to see the frog that was contained inside.

Setting the container back, I finished my inspection of the area and left the room to search some the other ones.

Door after door, now I know there's nothing useful in store. 

I needed to find a way back up the lift shaft. Even though my hands had stopped bleeding, I still didn't think I'd be able to climb back up that cable.

Walking up to the last door on that side of the hallway, I blinked. It appeared to be a trashed locker room. Once white lab coats were discarded across the floor along with some other items.

A few coats still hung in destroyed lockers. Glancing between the bars, hangers, and cloth, an idea sparked in my mind as I shoved the knife in my belt and replaced it with my screwdriver.

Twirling the tool in my hand, I spent a few seconds contemplating if this plan would work any better than the last.

It's still better than nothing.

I got to work.

It was a slow, tiring process that almost made me wish Phineas was here to help me, and the end result was in no way pretty, but it was usable.

Running my hands along the makeshift rope, I tugged on it, testing the strength before tying the free end around my waist. Taking some more strips of cloth, I wrapped up my hands.

Knife in one hand, makeshift grappling hook in the other, I poked my head out into the corridor. Seeing none of the creatures, I dashed to the lift and carefully maneuvered through the piles of bone to the hole in its roof.

Shoving the knife back in my belt and looping the hook on it as well, I jumped up, grabbing the edge of the hole. I pulled myself up as quietly as possible, which still consisted of several echoing bangs and grunts.

Hopefully they'll just think the noise was caused by one of them.

Stepping around the creature's corpse, I grabbed the grappling hook and threw it up towards the doors of the level I'd started on.

I flinched at the loud clang it made on contact.

Yanking on the rope, it gave a little but didn't come loose and the lab coat rope didn't break. I wrapped my hands around it, lifting my feet off the roof of the lift. When it didn't come apart, I dropped back down.

Taking a deep breath, I jumped up, grabbing the rope as high up as I could, and started to climb, weaving the lab coat rope in between my feet to make it easier.

A bang drifted up from below, and I forced myself to move faster, heart pounding in my chest and ears. I was not up to fighting another one of those things in this shaft.

My hand found the edge of the floor, and I started. Shaking off my surprise that I had reached it sooner than I'd anticipated, I climbed out the shaft and unhooked the hook from it caught on the door.

Untying the rope, I bundled it up as I walked before shoving the whole thing into my pocket.

In truth, reinstalling Gallifreyan technology into my clothes every time Mum bought me new ones was a bit of a pain but it was so worth it for the bigger on the inside pockets.

I came to a screeching halt when I saw the control room door.