Emeros X

Chapter 5

The car ride felt longer this time. Erin had a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t untie. She tried looking out the window, or turning the music up, but neither worked. The closer to the office they got, the tighter that knot became.

“Mom, isn’t this supposed to take a week?” Erin asked. She was at camp when Violet went, so she never knew what it was actually like. Violet solely talked about Todd and never told Erin what the process was.

“What? No, sweetie. You’re only there for three days. We drop you off at eight every morning and pick you up at seven every night. They haven’t required anybody to stay there for five days for years,” her mom answered. “Not that I know of anyway.”

When her mom pulled up to the building, she stopped the car, but kept it locked.

“Erin, I want you to relax. You’re in good hands here. I can walk you up to the testing facility if you’d like,” her mom offered.

“No, it’s fine. I can get there on my own.”

Erin unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, shutting the door a bit too lightly. Clouds covered the sun, making everything look different shades of grey and blue. It had rained the night before and there were still puddles where the sidewalk dipped. She walked around them, careful to not get her shoes wet.

She walked through the sliding doors and stood in the lobby. Erin had never been in this building before. The building she had always gone in was behind this one and far less expansive. Part of the ceiling was high and made of glass, forming a sort of point at the top. The room wrapped around part of the building, creating two interlocking rooms within themselves. The walls all around her were windows, but it was far too bright in the room to be using natural light. Erin looked above her, but there weren’t any ceiling or wall lights that she could see.

“How?” she breathed, looking for any sort of answer she could find.

“Oh, the lights? The windows have microscopic lights in them to simulate natural sunlight. Quite amazing actually don’t you think?”

Erin looked back down toward the desk in front of her. She realized she hadn’t moved from her spot. The woman in front of her smiled, pulling her short, black hair behind her ears and smiling.

“This is your first day I presume?”

Erin nodded, walking closer to the desk and pulling out her id. The secretary took it and scanned the barcode on the back.

“Alright Miss Erin, you’re ready to go,” she said, handing Erin back her id, along with a card that had her three-day schedule on it, including a map, and smiled.

Erin smiled back, taking a short breath before walking to the elevator. She checked the card to see what floor she was on and walked in as the doors whooshed open. The inside of the elevator was made of some sort of glass, partially reflective and translucent; it seemed iridescent too. Erin tilted her head back and forth, watching the panel in front of her transform from blue to green and then to red. She shook her head and looked at the floor buttons, pushing the number three. There was a faint ding from somewhere around her, and before she could place where the speaker was, the doors opened back up again.

Walking down the hall, Erin tried to peek in the rooms, but they were all empty. When she had gotten to the end of the hallway, she looked to her right and left, trying to place which way her room might be. She decided to go left first, but the numbers were going down from three hundred ten. Erin was supposed to be in room three twenty eight. She turned around on her heels and went the other direction, finding her door on the left.