Glitches

Chapter 27 - Numbers

The working station was on the very top floor of the building. Apparently, the building had more storeys than I had expected. Even though my stamina was greater than normal people's, my legs still burned slightly when we got to the top. And my head throbbed. My body leaned on the banisters, while I panted lightly. I was just glad that both Miranda and Nick seemed to be slightly out of breath as well. It made me feel a little less weak.

Nick carefully opened the rusty iron door, the metal screeching when it grinded against the woodened floor.

There were no windows in the room. However, no light was needed. It was illuminated just fine, by hundreds of computer screens hanging on the wall.

All of them either showed pictures of RTI's buildings, or thousands of ever-changing numbers. On tables along the wall, radios where buzzing with different voices talking about something I couldn't catch.

People were everywhere. Someone scribbling down something on a note block, while keeping their gazes intensely on the screens, or listening to the radios. Others were leaned over a big table in the middle of the room, their eyes scanning over papers in their hands, while they discussed something to one another. The only place on the wall without computer screens, were where a door into another room was placed, a big sign over it saying.

Building and research room.

(Max 10 people at time, unless you have an appointment with Paul.)

"In here," Nick said as he walked across the room, in the direction of the door, "it only says max 10 people because of the heat. We don't want the computers to get over-heated. But it's not busy right now, so we should be allowed to visit."

I began to walk up to him, my eyes everywhere, trying to absorb everything. All that technology gathered in such a small room, made my little engineer jump in happiness, and a smile found its way onto my lips. Nick opened the door too soon, making me force myself to turn my attention to the door. We all walked in, and when I looked at my surroundings, my smile grew even wider.

The room looked just like the garage me and Eve had used in all these months. The only different was that the room was so much bigger, and way tidier.

Blueprints were hanging on the wall, showing different type of machine parts, tools separating the papers. However, none of the blueprint looked like something that would turn out to look human at all. It was more blueprints to weapons, computers, and something I couldn't even describe.

A cooler stood beside a metal table, where a woman was working with what I think was going to be a foot. Three toes were missing, and instead of a skin or bone colour, it was a cold metal grey.

A girl, looking around the age of Alex was sitting on the table beside her, looking impatiently on the woman doing her job. When I looked at her, I saw that where her left foot should've been were now nothing, except a few wires sticking out from the hole.

Another android.

Miranda nodded at the girl in a silent greeting, before opening the cooler, taking out four bottles the size of a quarter litre tin. The brown liquid inside of them had already coloured the sides in a muddy brown colour. She handed each of us a bottle, while she opened one for herself.

"Drink up," she said, taking a swig of her own bottle, almost drinking all of the content at once.

"Man, I'd happily forgot that I actually needed this stuff," I mumbled, opening the bottle in my hand, before taking a swig as well.

The taste hadn't changed since last time I drank it, the gasoline taste filling every inch of my mouth and throat. I gagged few times, when I had swallowed all of the content, my teeth scraping over my tongue in an attempt to clear it from the brown liquid.