The Mercury Wars: The Clearing

Prologue - Disaster

The grey clouds that hung above Mercury City dulled the world around it as the citizens went about their everyday lives. Men and women headed towards their high-rise office buildings to carry out their various roles that helped to keep the roofs over their heads and the food on their tables.

The humdrum of the traffic, stationary on the roads as queues formed, rivalled by the busy and continuous movement of the people on the pavements heading towards their locations. All of them are blissfully unaware of the events taking place just 5 miles outside of the bustling metropolis.

Mercury Laboratories sat on the outskirts of the city. Enclosed within tall metal fences all around, the facility was protected from any unauthorised entrants. The car park was full, just like every other morning. Over 500 employees are all inside the various buildings, working towards advancements in medical research.

But this was no ordinary morning for the facility and its employees. What usually was a display of calm and polite greetings in the corridors, was now a commotion of panic and fear as people scrambled to reach the exit in time.

The usually-white walls were lit up by rotating red lights as the overhead illumination had cut off once the evacuation procedure had begun.

Instead of the familiar silence and quiet conversation, the soundtrack to this moment was heavy footsteps in abundance, people screaming into their phones as they called loved ones and ear-piercing sirens that signalled the oncoming disaster.

Everybody ran in the same direction, towards the lobby and the large entrance to building five.

All except one.

One man.

Glancing at his portable device, he reads the countdown that had begun when the sirens first signalled and the lights cut out.

00:10:32

His hair flows backwards as he rushes towards the stairwell at the end of the corridor. His lab coat lifted behind him like a cape as he hoped he could be the superhero it symbolised.

Sweat dripped from his brow as he passed the evacuees, none of them even sparing a glance at him as they became selfish and desperate to save themselves.

His breathing is irrational as he reaches the concrete stairwell and pulls the large red door open with all his might. Fighting his way through the bodies climbing upwards towards their freedom, he heads down towards floor B6 where his lab awaits him.

00:09:45

The air is getting thicker with the heat that has crept up up the more stories he descends. His heart threatened to escape his chest at any given moment. Every step he takes, the more the anxiety rises inside him. By now he is running on pure adrenaline.

The marker, B6, in big bold letters indicates he has reached his destination as he pushes through the doorway and continues to race down the corridor.

Stopping mid-way down the corridor he places his thumb against a scanner on the left wall and impatiently jumps on the spot as he awaits the door to unlock in front of him with a buzz that is barely audible amongst the sirens.

00:08:49

He heads past the bodies of frantic technicians and scientists as they furiously type at computers on the desks in the centre. The sides of the room are filled with high workbenches as others stand, talking animatedly on phones, trying to resolve the crisis that lay before them.

He reaches the front of the room and stands before a wall covered in 6 flatscreen monitors. Every screen displays different data, but none of it appears promising.