Touched - Order of Odium: Book One

Daniel - 4

The next morning Aleksander appeared in Daniel's room with an overly loud "Hello Daniel! Good morning!"

Daniel opened one eye, looked at the scientist and groaned to himself. The man was nice enough, but his loud voice and excessively cheerful tone could get on your nerves. He sighed inwardly and sat up in bed. "I guess I don't have time for a shower then?"

"No, no. You don't need a shower for this. It'll likely take fifteen minutes at most, and that's including the walk there!" Aleksander laughed as if what he had just said was exquisitely funny.

"Okay, give me a second to get dressed."

Daniel grabbed the clothes he wore yesterday and put them back on along with his shoes. "Okay, ready when you are I guess."

"Great! Let's get going, shall we?" Aleksander input a code into a keypad next to the door and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket, picked a key out and placed it into the knob on the door.

"We can never be too careful here!" Aleksander said over his shoulder as the door to Daniel's room opened. "We didn't use to have all these safeguards in place, and as I said yesterday, it didn't end well for some."

Aleksander noticed that Daniel was still sitting on his bed and smiled. "Please, come," he motioned to the open doorway. "I notice you are a little wary. It is okay, I am much nicer than the guards I assure you."

They left Daniel's room and began walking down a hallway before stopping at an elevator. Although they didn't have any guards walking with them, Daniel noticed there were armed guards posted at various spots along the hallway along with some who seemed to be on patrol. Aleksander placed his palm on a rectangle beside the elevator and the doors opened.

Aleksander motioned for Daniel to enter first and walked in after him and spoke as the doors closed, "C level please." The elevator began moving and Aleksander turned to face Daniel.

"While we are here I may as well tell you some of the rules for working with this artifact. The rules are simple, you follow my orders exactly, and do not touch the artifact unless you are told, okay? This is for your safety, as well as the safety of others in the room. As I said earlier, the artifact is harmless to most everybody, but that is not the case for everyone, so we must be careful. Do you understand?"

Daniel nodded. "Don't touch anything unless you tell me to. Got it."

"I do not think this will be a problem, but I must mention is that a failure to comply would not be good for you. We require absolute obedience when it comes to any type of experiment done with these artifacts."

The elevator doors opened silently and the two stepped into another hallway, this one different than the dull grey hallway they had just left. Everything seemed to be made of some type of metal, but the metal had a subtle white glow emanating from it. Daniel didn't see any light fixtures that were making the hallways as bright as they were, only sections where the walls and ceiling glowed brighter than the surrounding areas, the light emitted from them much more pronounced than the others.

"The lighting is very nice, isn't it?" Aleksander said, noticing Daniel looking around at the surrounding walls. "Very sophisticated. Much better than what they have down below, yes?"

"Yeah... " Daniel said, marveling at that sight. "How does it do that?"

Aleksander laughed before replying, "Oh Daniel, this is nothing! We have much more impressive sights elsewhere. You may get to see some in the future. Come, let's go."

The two walked along various corridors until they came to a door marked "C-116". The door looked like it could withstand a nuclear bomb aimed right at its center. They had passed other doors along the way, but Daniel hadn't paid much attention, instead, trying to remain focused on creating a mental map of where they walked, although Aleksander's mostly frivolous talking kept interrupting his thought process.

"That man loves to hear himself talk," Daniel thought to himself, inwardly rolling his eyes.

"We are here Daniel! This is the artifact that we have discussed, C-116. Before we go into the room I want to tell you a few things about it. The first is that what it looks like changes depending on the person looking at it; for example, I may see a square object, you may see a rectangle. We don't know why it does this yet, but it is something to be aware of. One of the first things we will do when we go inside is talk about what you see, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Great. Let's begin, shall we?" Aleksander flashed his trademark grin and began opening the door.

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