The stone white footrace of the place was an eyeful for Eve and me as we looked at it from afar. There was all but one Ranker there protecting the entranceway. "Okay so what we know so far of this place is that it's run by a Dr. Williams and only a few other doctors have access, including..." She reached for her pocket. "...Dr. Bernadette." She smiled proudly. I could see a similar pixy-cut haired woman with big glasses on.
"Okay, but why doesn't she go in and get the stuff we need instead of us having to do it?" I questioned as she unzipped her bag.
"Because she doesn't have access to the last level. No one can get into that except Dr. Williams." She pulled out a white lab coat and put it on. Then she took out a pair of ridiculous glasses and put them over her face.
"And those are for?" I said, giving her a concerning look up and down.
She shrugged her shoulders. "What? They make me look more geeky."
I shook my head at her cuteness. The pixy cut with the square framed glasses made her more chic than nerdy. It even hid most of her pale skin tone—a dead giveaway of being a Stiff.
"How are we going to have access? Her card won't work on that level, right?" I asked.
She dug deep into her backpack searching for the answers to my question. She then pulled out a card with Trinity's face on it. "Dr. William Trinity was the hierarchy in the lab so the card should still work."
"Yeah, hopefully. Unless they changed the codes. Have you thought of that?" I said, watching Eve throw the bag to the side to hide it in the bushes nearby. I did the same with the food bag.
"Don't be such a worry wart. If that happens, we'll have a few minutes to get out before it complete locks us in," she said nonchalantly.
"Okay great," I said sarcastically, unamused by her response.
Dusting off the lab coat, she looked over to me. "Well, how do I look? You think I can pull of Bernadette or what?"
"Possibly, if they eye the image quickly," I said truthfully. "What about me? Who am I going as?"
"Yourself. We know that they are secretly taking zombies and doing all sorts of testing in there." I looked at the sinister building all dressed in white, pretending to be pure. "Including some Stiffs."
I snapped my head back almost getting whiplash. "Our people? Are you sure?"
"No, we have no evidence of anyone being taken but there are whispers though."
Images of the Rankers we saw earlier on our side had my skin crawling. Fire ignited inside me and I was ready to wreak havoc on all of them.
"Let's do this."
We walked over to the entrance. My wrists were intertwined in rope and tucked behind me. Eve was close to my side with her hand fully gripped around my arm.
The ranker looked no younger than twenty. He stared us both down, gun close to his side and firming his hand around the grip. "Badge," he said.
Eve pointed to her card resting on her side chest.
"No badge?" he asked. My heart skipped a beat, sinking below my stomach. I looked at Eve trying to mask the pure panic that was going on inside me. We're going to get caught.
Just then, the guy moved to the side and revealed the tall computer-like stand. Eve chuckled. "Well you know how my days going. It's been a long one, especially with these damn Stiffs, am I right?" We made our way past the guard in one piece.
Making our way down the empty halls of the building, on each side we observed open windows for us to see through to each room. Lab men and woman were too focused on their materials and vials to pay any attention to us imposters. Feeling like odd ducks, we quickened our steps until we reached the elevator at the end.
Once inside, the doors closed and we both took a deep breath. She untied my hands and clicked the button for the bottom level. The elevator soon descended down until reaching the forbidden level. As soon as the elevator doors opened, the whole place lit up from the bouncing light of the reflection of the silver room. It revealed nothing but a long and wide outstretched hall and a single metal door at the end.
"Trinity said if her card works it will only work for a brief second before the system realizes that it's an error or an old code. Something like..." She shook away her thoughts. "You have about half a second to get to the other side before the ground beneath you opens up and basically drops you to your death." She gave a wide, weird looking smile.
"Really?"
Standing in position, I jumped up and down shaking my hands to release all the jitters. This was truly the most insane thing I've done so far. Focusing on the long stretched hall, I took a minute before I finally gave the go for Eve to swipe the card. The loud click sound coming from the opposite end informed me that the door had unlocked.
My legs took off as fast as they could carry my body. Each step clanked on the surface as I wondered if this was when the floor beneath me was going to give in. A loud alert sounded through the dense room. I was halfway to the end when I felt the floor open up right dab in the middle like a giant mouth getting ready to devour me in the darkness. I almost fell because of the movement the ground was now making but managed to get it together. Near the end, I gained enough momentum to ricochet off the wall with my foot and grab ahold of the ledge that was at the foot of the door.
Catching my breath as my feet dangled, I gathered enough of the strength I had left to pull myself to the door and open it. As soon as I did that, the floors slowly started to go back.
Cheer and hoorays were applauded by a hysterically happy Eve.
Walking in, automatic sensor lights kicked on, lighting the place up. I looked around for anything that would be evidence like a flash drive or documents showcasing whatever it was they were doing down here.
Seeing a row of computers, I headed over and searched around, anxiously trying to find something. I finally laid my eyes on a black chrome flashdrive underneath the table. It was connected to the main box. I crouched down and reached under to try and pull it out. Once I did, the hard pull had gotten my sweatband stuck on the metal piece of the furniture.
Jerking my hand as hard as I could, I managed get myself free as my wristband spun around, still attached to what it was caught on.
I caused one of the chairs to fall back giving a loud echoing boom from my fall. The next sound that came after was a screech from some type of animal coming from the opposite side of the wall. I couldn't see what it was but the sound was excruciating my ears. Getting on my feet quickly, I took a hesitant step in that direction.
A part of me was instinctively telling me not to go over there, and the other part was curious to find out more. But before I could even reach the corner, a loud siren had me sprinting back to the door and back to a wavering Eve.
We headed back to the elevator and pressed for the first floor. I bent over, trying to catch my breath.
"What did you get? Did you find anything?" Eve questioned as we started going up.
I stretched back up and waved the flashdrive in front of her.
"Yes!" she said. "Put it in your pocket. You don't want..." Before she could say another word the elevator doors slowly started opening and we noticed a group of Rankers all gathering up getting ready to head our direction.
Eve's fast reflexes pushed the button to the top floor and the doors shut in time enough for us not to be seen.
"What are we going to do? We can't go back out the way we came in." I panicked and started pacing in the small entrapment.
"Hold on, let me think for a second..." she said in thought.
The doors soon opened and we readied ourselves for whatever was on the other side. Nobody was in sight. We saw nothing except some empty desks. I dropped my hands from the "I'm about to punch anything that moves" position. Thank god!
The loud sirens were still going off so I knew they were going to do a full sweep through the building. We had to think of something fast or everything we had risked would be all for nothing.
"I've got an idea," Eve finally said. She ran to the stairway that led to the roof. Once we reached the top, we could see more Ranker troops heading inside along with Sergeant Cooper. Eve took off the coat and the glasses and peered over the edge. "We can make the jump."
I stepped back from the loony who suggested offering up our deaths on a platter. "Are you nuts?! It's over two stories high! We'll break our bones, or worse."
"We ain't like the Luckies, Leona."
"Yeah, I know that. We were zombies once. That doesn't mean a shot to the stomach or a jump like this and we'll be resurrected somehow."
She shook her head and I watched her hair bounce from side to side. "No, that's not what I mean. Remember Morgan talking about the shot they would give us every day?"
"Yeah, but Trinity stopped it. Everything was too overwhelming." I pointed at her. "And it still is. Shit, you guys are going to give me a hemorrhoid or something."
"That stuff is making us weak on purpose. They are purposely weakening us because we are stronger than them." Her eyes pinned me down, revealing what I thought I already knew.
Every idea or thought I had about the green vial and my time slowly increasing more than my usual, was all making perfect sense. Eve opened up a belief in me I never thought I would have. I am strong. I am capable of so much more than I ever thought I would be. But I was still scared shitless to jump from the building.
I walked over to the ledge. "Do you trust Morgan's theory?"
"With my life," she said.
We both grabbed hands and jumped.
The freefall felt like I was floating for a minute before landing on my feet with a hard thump. I didn't catch sight of the whole thing because my eyes were completely shut. The only thing I had felt was the slap of the pavement that my feet endured on landing. It caused a little bit of a tingling sensation up and down my leg but then it disappeared completely.
Morgan was right. We were much stronger than we had even known possible. I felt invincible. Running to get our things, we headed back to the secret tunnel and back to our land with food and a promise to change the system forever.