As soon as she set foot in the room, a warning klaxon began to sound. All the lights in the office area turned to red. The klaxon sounded like a moose calling to a mate. Clara could do nothing about that now. She slammed the door to the office closed and turned the convenient lock. Only realising then that the room she had stepped in was in complete darkness.
For several minutes, the klaxon muffled by the closed door, Clara searched along the walls for a light switch. She found it, eventually, located near the floor, for some obscure reason, and the lights flickered, winked out and then blazed into life, revealing an incredibly huge space.
An empty space. Like a warehouse where some enterprising thieves had managed to steal everything, including the stacks, waste bins and even the dust. Except, it wasn't completely empty. There, in the middle of the white space sat a table and, upon that table, she could see something.
Taking cautious steps, trying not to make a noise even though there was no-one else in the room and the blaring klaxon would drown out any noise for people outside the room, Clara approached the table. She felt nervous and she didn't know why. The closer she came to the table, the more nervous she became, to the point where she found it difficult to walk upon trembling legs.
Until she reached the table and stood upright. She scratched her head and scowled before circumnavigating the table to make sure she wasn't seeing some kind of illusion. She looked around, to see if she had missed anything in the stark, bleak white room, but she could see nothing else. Only this table and the thing upon it.
A record player. She remembered those. Her dad once had one and a loft full of boxes that held hundreds of old vinyl records. LP's and singles. Never used by her farther, despite him swearing blind that vinyl sounded far better than any of those upstart CD's, MP3's and streaming services. Vinyl was 'Earthy'. Vinyl was 'real' and could never truly be replaced. Clara signed him up for a subscription service and he never mentioned vinyl again.
The record player had a record upon it, waiting to be played, and Clara crouched beside it. Her hand rubbed her chin. It seemed like the appropriate gesture, under the circumstances. She examined the record player and the small, black, grooved disc upon it. A single. Madonna's 'Like a virgin', according to the label.
Back in the day, Clara had found that single in her father's collection, stolen his record player, and put that song on repeat for quite a while. After two weeks of constant playing, the single had become warped and scratched and Clara's parents had threatened to throw it away. She had clutched that single to her chest, scratching it even more upon the zip of her bomber jacket.
She saw that scratch upon this record. That self same scratch. One of the many Claras upon Claras' World had brought this record with them. For some, unknown reason. A memento of home. Their real home. The property of the first Clara to arrive on this world, possibly. She reached up to set the record player turntable revolving and stopped.
"Oh!" The thought hit her like tree branch whipped in her face by a selfish person walking through a forest. She understood now. "Record Room. Not a place for records. A place for a record. I am such an idiot!"
She slapped her forehead and regretted it immediately. A sound from the door made her jump. The other Claras, including Muscle Clara, probably, were trying to get into the room. She had little time left, so, of course, set the record player going and stood back, not certain what to expect or how much time she had left before the other Claras broke down that flimsy looking door.
The record hissed and crackled as it led into the song, the speakers attached to the turntable filling the room with the sound. As soon as the music started, Clara began tapping her foot. She remembered it well. Until it reached one point, where the needle jumped and repeated, caused by that identifying scratch.
"I was beat, incomplete." The words rang out, over and over again. "I was beat, incomplete. I was beat, incomplete. I was beat, incomplete."
She heard a crack coming from the door. Biting her lip, she had learned nothing here. Nothing about who had brought her and the other Clara's here, or why. Only that all the other Claras seemed to think this single so important that it deserved an entire warehouse space to itself and insane levels of bureaucracy and security surrounding it.
She stole it. Ripping it from the turntable, she stuffed it onto her sling backpack after taking off Clipboard Clara's jacket and folding it around the single. With little time left, she decided to get changed back into her own clothes. It may seem stupid, but if she had to get captured, interrogated and, possibly, executed for desecrating something massively important, she wanted to do it in her own clothes.
A piece of the door broke and the leering visage of a Clara glared through the hole towards Clara. Possibly one of the scariest things Clara had ever seen. She never realised she could ever make a face like that and resolved to practice it, if she survived.
But, she wasn't captured, or dead yet. She had resources. She had gumption. She had a clever mind that she rarely, if ever used. She'd confronted Time, himself, and survived (after dying a few times, but no-one gets it right the first time). She had her watch. Foston's Trans-Temporal, Multi-Dimensional, Reality-Modulated Location and Chronometric Sensor, if anything could help her get out of here, it was that watch.
The watch face told her nothing, unless she wanted to know what the weather was going to be like in the next hour. Or needed to know the local time. It showed no sign of Breach activity. Nothing. Even when she thought of one a Breach stubbornly refused to appear.
"Well, how about a bloody map of the building, then?" She slapped the watch face and, in response, it flickered up a map of the building with a 'You are here' dialogue above an arrow. "Good watch! Clever watch."
To her left, she knew a corridor ran parallel to the room. At the end of that corridor, a set of stairs led up to the ground floor. She only needed to get there. A brilliant idea came to her and she fumbled in her pocket for her laser death pen. Running to the wall between her and that corridor, she set the pen to red and it's lethal laser and began to fire at the wall.
Very little happened. It scored a deep scratch in the surface, but little else. Infuriated, she shook the laser death pen in the air and then began pressing down the other settings. Blue would do nothing. Green only seemed to repair the scratch she had made in the wall. Purple did nothing that Clara could see, but something smelled nice and fresh. Finally, she clicked the black setting and fired that.
A large section of the wall disappeared. Not obliterated. Not burned. Not even hit by an explosive force. It simply vanished, leaving a perfect circular hole, more than large enough for Clara to scramble through. Which she did. She stopped for a second, looking at the contents of her other hand.
Putting the laser death pen away, she reentered the room and glared towards the end of the space, where the other Claras fought to scramble through the remnants of the door. She raised the clipboard and snapped it in half, dropping it to the floor, and then gave them the finger with both hands.
She kept the lanyard. Lanyards could come in handy.
Clara rushed down the corridor towards the stairwell, firing her laser death pen at all the Claras she saw until she realised, after those Claras blinked out of existence, that she had forgotten to change the pen back to the stun setting. She clicked the blue setting, shrugged her shoulders in a, sort of, guilty fashion and mouthed an almost genuine 'sorry' to the heavens.
She wasn't really that sorry, if she was honest with herself. They may be Claras, but they weren't her. Taking the stairs two steps at a time, she began to regret it and regret not continuing with that pilates class after she had joined it because of the good looking instructor. He turned out to be gay, so that put paid to her plans for exercise. Before leaving the stairwell, she paused to catch her breath, clutching her side as cramp began to set in.
A little case of cramp couldn't stop her, however. She took one, last deep breath, opened the door and began sprinting towards the exit. A number of Claras tried to stop her, but nothing could. Nothing and no-one had the slightest chance to stop her. She stunned some of them with her laser death pen, kicked others in the groin (which does hurt women, as she could attest after her drunken brawl with Annabelle, that time) and elbowed others in throats, chests and faces.
Almost exploding from the doors of the Hall of Claras, she barrelled, head down, through the crowds, looking for somewhere, anywhere that she could run to and hide. Her face on many people flashed by as she ran, all staring at the mad Clara being chased by other Claras. Claras that, from the sound of it, were really, really angry with Clara.
She considered whether stealing the record from the Record Room was a good idea after all, then dismissed that thought. It was their fault for practically worshipping the single, even though Madonna was, is and always will be, a goddess.
Turning a corner, she slammed into someone. That someone remained on their feet, but Clara tumbled backwards, landing in a heap. She threw up her hand, pointing the laser death pen at the other person, but stopped before she fired.
"Clara! Thank all the gods!" Foston held out his furry hand towards her. "Let's get out of here."