Urban Fallout (hold)

(1.1) Storage Lockers

(1.1) Storage Lockers

The burst of static lasted a fraction of a second. The large central computer screen had gone grey in a moment of speaker crackling camera interference. It had obscured the featureless grey hallway completely. If she had looked away for any reason Issa would have missed it, but she hadn't, and now she was sitting alone in the darkened security office, unable to breath. Something was wrong. It didn't look like it now, switching through the close to one hundred security camera feeds that ended in her consul, but there was no way what she had seen had been an accident. There was a part of her that kept insisting it was an anomaly. Machines had glitches.

But not these machines.

It was three o'clock in the morning and she was utterly alone. It was the kind of silence that turned the skin on her back to gooseflesh, that made her understand why humans weren't nocturnal. But the night shift payed well, and she'd gotten used to it after working here for almost a year. Or at least she'd thought she had.

There was nothing in the manual about how to deal with camera static. She picked up her phone, sitting on the desk, and had pulled up the number for her supervisor before she decided against it. It was three o'clock in the morning, and this facility was far from top priority.

Securing her gun holster to her waste, and pocketing the phone, she headed out into the series of empty laboratories. Phosphorescent liquid sat in test tubs, supernaturally bright, and easily visible through the glass walls that divided the hallway from the scientists' work areas. Stealing her nerves, and reminding herself for the hundredth time how ridiculous she was being, Issa stepped into the elevator that would take her to the warehouse complex below. She could have sworn she'd never been able to hear the pulley system before. And had the elevator always rattled so much?

For the sake of posterity, she opened a recording program on her work phone. An as-it-happened dictation would make the incident report miles less trouble.

“Three o'clock in the-” Issa stopped, her voice was hoarse, barely audible. She cleared her throat and continued. “Three o'clock in the morning and a camera anomaly has been observed. Down in the storage lockers. No movement was detected. No alarms were tripped. Computer reads everything as normal. More than likely faulty wiring.”

Saying it allowed made it sound even more ridiculous. Of course one of the cameras here could malfunction. There was nothing special about them. Just because she hadn't personally witnessed it didn't mean it didn't happen.

She stepped from the elevator and into a basement hallway, lit with long florescent lights that turned her complexion to a sallow brown, like mouldy firewood. Every few meters along the walls stood the pull down metal door of a storage locker. Issa wondered at the last time any of them had been opened. This was the dumping ground for the company that owned the labs above her: Inposterum Sciences. Nothing dangerous, nothing poisonous, but on taking the job Issa hadn't been told much more than that. Judging by the size of the complex, she guessed it varied.

It was almost a five minute walk to where she'd seen the camera disturbance. There were electric carts in the storage locker closest to the elevator, but she hadn't thought to bother. Everything seemed smaller when she did her one nightly patrol.

There was no sound aside from the echo of her boots against the concrete. Coming up to a point where the hallway split like a T, the flickering of a light was obvious, even around the corner. Shadows would appear for a split second before being banished by the light once against. The florescent buzzed. Issa was glad she'd spotted it. All faulty light bulbs had to be reported, and she must have missed it on the cameras.

She turned the corner and froze. Air slid from her nose in a slow trickle, every hair on her body lifted by static electricity. It wasn't just one bulb. Every light in the corridor flickered, as if they'd just been turned on. Although they were never turned off. The changes from cold light to pitch black were as swift as the beating of a moths wings, all lights in perfect time.

Pulsing.

Buzzing.

Issa was terrified. She kept one hand on the pistol, the other desperately clutching her thin, black flashlight. Her legs seemed to move by themselves, in time with the war drum hammering against her ribs.

One more corner.

A boy hung in the air, suspended in space. The light above him did not flicker, burning bright blue. His feet did not touch the ground. His head did not brush the ceiling. He hovered.

Issa dropped the flashlight.