Strange Atmosphere | Aris Jones [1]

20 || What's Next?

"What's going on?!"

"Where are the lights at?!"

"We need to get out of here!"

The screams and panic died down when the door we had trouble with before slowly opened up. We hesitated before entering the other side with caution. There, we were now in a tunnel, the lights flickering on for us to see better.

"Should we start walking or...?" Cora spoke up, looking around at everyone, waiting for an answer.

"Well, we've come this far, haven't we?" Maeve sighed. "Come on."

Maeve led the rest of us down the hall, the sound of the rumbling from the vents and the water dripping down from the ceiling. She stopped when we reached a door, a green light shining above it. Rachel slowly walked to the door, putting her hand on the handle tightly, then quickly pushing the door open. There, what we found was something we couldn't unsee. We found bodies all over the floor, blood sliding down the walls, and a small siren going off, a yellow light flashing.

"Are they dead?" I asked stupidly.

"They look pretty dead to me," Gwyneth stated.

We did our best to not look at them while walking through the hallway, but there were so many of them that it was hard to just look straight ahead.

"What happened here?" Sonya questioned.

"No idea," Rachel muttered as we entered what looked like a conference room. The chairs were spread out, glass was broken, and more bodies were on the floor. I swallowed hard, trying to compose myself as we all scattered around the room, looking at the mess.

Harriet went to a spot with a bunch of computers on the walls, examining what was on the screens. "So they were watching us," she commented. "For two years, the Creators were watching us."

"That's kind of creepy when you think about it," Maeve stated.

Rachel was looking down at some kind of board with different buttons on them. With a shaky hand, she pressed the one in the middle, causing one of the computer screens to turn on, getting everyone's attention.

"Hello," a woman with blonde hair greeted us through the screen. "My name is Dr. Ava Paige. I'm Director of Operations of the World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department. If you're watching this, then that means you have successfully completed the Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you, but circumstances seem to have prevented it. I'm sure by now, you must all be very confused, angry, and frightened. I can only assure you that everything that's happened to you, everything we've done to you, it was all done for a reason."

Maeve scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"You won't remember, but the Sun has scorched our world." Clips of the sun and fire appeared on the screen. "Billions of lives lost to fire, famine, and suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable." Images of the remains of the world came up, making me cringe at the sight of them. "What came after was worse. We called it the Flare, a deadly virus that attacks the brain." I felt nauseated when grotesque videos of the brain popped up. "The Flare is violent, unpredictable, incurable. Or so we thought." A human, or a creature it looked like, came on the screen, seizing, screaming, and coughing up blood.

"In time, a new generation emerged that could survive the virus," Dr. Paige continued. "Suddenly, there was a reason to hope for a cure. But finding it would not be easy. The young would have to be tested, even sacrificed, inside harsh environments, where the brain activity could be studied. All in an effort to understand what makes them different, what makes you different. You may not realize it, but you're very important."