Death of a Prophet

The biggest hurdle most people had to get over in this job was the isolation, but Simon had always been alone and had no need to contact anyone. He would have unlimited access, resources, and equipment to do experiments and be housed and fed. He could also request anything for personal comfort and entertainment, receiving it for free. His life would be complete and he would be exactly where he needed to be.

-

Simon froze. Ahead of him, he could have sworn he saw movement... a shadow around the corner, illuminated by the red flash of emergency lights. The next flash revealed nothing and again nothing but... there! An arm, thin and bony. It was pulling something up that looked horribly like rope but, in these halls, there was only one thing it could be: the insides of another scientist.

Creeping as though the thing could hear him over the sirens, Simon moved back to another hall. Without another hesitation he ran, driven hard by panic at his close call. This place was a maze to anyone who hadn't been here for a few years. In fact, the first year here, everyone was required to wear a panic button in case they got lost. Of course, those buttons only worked if you remembered to wear them.

-

That's how he learned about what else the facility held, and how he met Heather. It was nearing eight months since he had started at The Hole, and Simon had already fallen into a routine. He even had a large plush couch moved into the observatory for the times when he had worked himself into exhaustion. He had fit right in and managed to impress his superiors almost immediately. The only thing he had gotten in trouble for was forgetting to return books he had checked out from the library. But when the administration found every book neatly kept in stacks in the observatory, instead of hidden in his room, they simply got the librarian to come to the observatory to collect the books he no longer needed.

Simon thought he had the hallways figured out: a plotted course between his room, the cafeteria, the observatory, and the library. They were the only rooms he needed. One day, however, he had found a particularly useful pair of books relating the difference between the molecular structures of what was supposed to be in the sun, and some new elements that had been discovered. Somewhere between the library and the observatory, he became so engrossed in the books that he had lost track of his course. He didn't look up until he had come to a dead-end hallway terminating at a door that didn't open for him automatically.

Now, the amazing thing about chance is that when you least expect it, or want it, it can get you into places you ought not to be. All the doors dividing the separate wings in The Hole are programmed with facial recognition, preventing people from getting into places they are not

supposed to be. When someone has clearance to enter a wing, the door opens automatically. If someone is leaving the door you are entering, however, you get an open pass. Discipline is very strict in The Hole, so the automatic doors are more for convenience than security. No one is willing to risk their perfect jobs simply to get a sneak peak at experiments with which they have nothing to do. The Agency was very adamant about choosing people without that dangerous kind of curiosity. Blind chance, however, allowed Simon to make his way into a separate wing of The Hole. Because of the doors, and because Simon seemed to know where he was going, no one questioned seeing a new face in the halls. He didn't appear to be snooping, and how else could he have gotten this far if he wasn't supposed to be here.

-

A blood curdling scream chilled Simon to the bone and froze him in his tracks. He had to look around for a moment to realize where he was. He wasn't sure who screamed, or why, but at this moment, it was of little concern to him. He was already running a tight-rope of sanity, and the fact that the scream was the only sign of human life he had encountered since leaving his room had not dawned on him. He had been running though a haunted house, making it through some doors only because they had been broken in or damaged too badly to close. The thought that other people were still here hadn't even crossed his mind. His only thought was to get outside... to escape them and Her. There was an elevator in front of him with a maintenance door next to it. Like the Titanic, The Hole was never supposed to fall. There were no stairs from floor to floor. The builders had not planned for a planet-wide apocalypse that could shake the walls of their precious complex. The wet, and abrupt, stop to a scream in the distance spurred him to action and he slammed into the maintenance door, flinging it open. This may have been the cleanest room left in The Hole. There was no sign of blood at all. Simon almost laughed out loud as he shut the door behind him and started climbing the ladder in the vertical hallway.