Dark and quiet best describe the current room we are in. It is not completely black though: instrument panels glow their yellows and reds and greens and blues, illuminating comfortable yet small gray fabric chairs behind them. Rows of fluorescent lights overhead are out, save one bank amongst many, suggesting a power failure or even damage. A slight hum comes from various machines tucked behind the walls, under the floors and in between the fluorescents.

Power does still flow, and thick cables and tubes point to the far wall our point of view is staring at. This wall is unlike many others: where many walls in this octagon room are polished and smooth, this swarms with cables, boxes, angles and shapes all part of the wall itself in a dull gray, punctuated by the nuts and bolts that hold it all together.

In the center of the suspiciously organized chaos, slightly taller than man sized and four times his width was the source of the most light is a chamber. The chamber has a circular floor, not made of metal or plastic or anything we could tell just by looking at it, concentric rings with a slight soft blue glow beneath. The chamber’s back wall is a half tube, with the “doors” we could only call them, make the front half, the outside of which is the same gray as the surrounding walls, but the inside was of the same material as the floor, as is the entire interior of this chamber. Except for the ceiling, which was definitely metal and blacker than the night is gray, also of concentric rings with the same slight glow. Also excepting the right door looking in, which has a piece of glass or fiberglass hermetically sealed in the wall to act as a window for when it was closed. The chamber hums louder than anything in or out of the room.

The chamber was pristine, or was normally. On the floor lay something small and hard to recognize. It had been oozing a dark and thick liquid some time ago. The object itself wasn’t metal or plastic either, and could be thought to look almost soft, almost like a….

Above the chamber and slightly off to the side is the source of the only two lights on this wall. One was green and shone out brightly. The other rectangle of light next to it was a dull and dark red. On closer inspection it could be decided that it only gave its presence away because of the light of the green escaping through a tiny space in the piece of metal dividing the two.

Our point of view backs up a little, enough to take in the entirety of the chamber and nothing else in the room. The green light dies as the red light illuminates to its fullest. A deep male voice says, “Incoming traveler. Exit the pad.” A few seconds go by before the hum of the chamber becomes louder as it is fed more power and the machines behind the wall suddenly work harder. A few more seconds and the left door closes, after which the right one does as well and when it stops do we finally notice that the right is slightly larger and overlaps the left slightly. There is an audible click and the two are locked together.

The increase of the humming reaches its peak and a small white light goes on somewhere on the wall, hidden in an angle. The voice says, “Foreign object detected. Initiating sterilization.” Another few seconds go by before there is a sudden increase in the hum and the chamber is filled with a blue light, brilliant and for a short time illuminates the entire room, creating shadows of not just the consoles and chairs, but of shapes that look familiar.

Our point of view starts to slowly and steadily back away from the chamber after the light fades quickly down, and the humming decreases. The voice speaks, “Sterilization process complete. Initiating reconstitution.” Five, six seconds go by before the chamber’s hum increases to the same level as before, but quickly dies and the voice comes back, “Error. Reconstitution process unable to complete.” Another three seconds go by before it says again, “Error. Unable to acquire host address.” Another three seconds, and, “Error. Unable to acquire destination addresses. Possible communications failure.” A second goes by before the red light is off and a much larger yellow hazard light shines bright enough to illuminate the room and even make out some objects with slight detail.

A person lying on the floor, on their chest with limbs splayed in a chaotic fashion. Another person we see as we continue back, also on the floor, one leg angled that, as far as we can tell, shouldn’t be. Both their faces are toward us, away from the light, unable to reveal their expressions.

The voice comes again, “Error. Possible communications failure.” Then, “Please transfer passenger to storage unit B.” There is a small electrical sound and a two foot square door opens on a flat portion of the wall. “Please insert storage unit B.” Nobody moves. Our point of view backs further away and we see more people. One person is still sitting in his chair, slouching with his head tilted back. It seems to be tilted back slightly more than it should.

Our point of view backs around a corner, the chamber leaving our sight. We pick up speed slowly. Three more people in our view. Four. Five. A sixth person looks as if she had been nailed to the wall with a section of pipe that used to transport water overhead. The rest of the pipe it had belonged to now dripped occasionally. We can now see a portion of the hallway we are in must have light still far behind us because we can make out more details now, dim though that they are.

The walls here are primarily stone, with man-wide sections of metal separating the large slabs of concrete. In these patches of metal are air ducts, more piping, a computer console at one on the left. The floor is not metal, could be plastic. The only thing for certain is that it is a slightly reflective dark purple, with underlying buff marks. The ceiling is all concrete with pipes and cables strung tightly together. One pipe stands alone, colored red, standing out against the other black ones.

A seventh, and an eighth person are in our view now, one of whom was propped up against the wall in a sitting position, head and hands down, palms upward. The palms had been burned black and blistering. So had his neck and portions of his forhead.

They are all dead!

Our point of view turns quickly, still heading away from the room, the chamber, and the voice. We run. The hall is very long, but we can see a door slightly ajar at the far end, illuminated by some still working fluorescence. Nine, ten, thirteen, sixteen!

We are half-way down the hall when we realize we can hear voices coming from somewhere. We slow our pace and look around for the source. There! A hand radio some distance from its owner that had, my God, that had no arms! The wounds had been cauterized shut with more extensive deep burning marks on his clothes, on his skin.

We suddenly recoil from the radio as it spits out a mass of static with an undecipherable voice beneath. We hear only one word clearly, then complete static, then silence. Run!

We run full out. The door is close, and we can now see it leads to a similar hallway, but shorter.

We hit the door at full clip and it offers no resistance. Twenty, thirty, forty! This hall is fully lit and amassed with people, all in a state of panic and fear, all trying to run somewhere, not all in the same direction. Another door at the end, wide open and unchallenged except for a woman laying chest down across its threshold. All these people, they were all the same: scientists by their lab coats or security by their armor. Not all lab coats were the same, though. Most were white, but some were olive, others were brown. One or two were black. And all these people were burned like the others.

We leap effortlessly over the woman in the door and land on a catwalk in a large area. A massive garage that held compact trucks with eight massive wheels, military equipment, barrels of something unknown, and at the far end was the open door to the outside world of big thick trees, a paved road, and the open security fence.

We quickly turn and spy the ladder that would bring us to the floor, and we run for it. Forty-five, forty-seven, fifty-two! A guard was on his back, clutching a radio in his burned hands. It squawked to life, then a voice shouting frantically, “Close it! Close it! Close it all down!” We ignore it until we hear, “Don’t let them get in!”

We stop suddenly at the ladder and stare outside. The trees were waving madly, dirt and garbage raced over the asphalt.

Just the wind, just the wind, we think.

”Shut the doors! Don’t let them out!” This voice was even more frantic, from someone else. A woman still alive, somewhere, wherever we are. She shouts again, “Its too late, shut it down!”

We tremble going down the ladder. Fifty-three is in a heap at the bottom, one arm supporting the body at the shoulder over the fourth rung. And then a noise, like the grinding of massive steel plates and the dragging of a huge chain. The massive doors to the outside begin to close.

We drop down two at a time, hopping from rung to rung. For such large doors, they are fast. Two more, two more we drop. We look out again, at the moon in the distance, a distant mountain, the endless swaying of tree tops as the road dips down a steep hill and banks sharply to the left. The view is cut off as the ugly brown metal doors interrupt the sight. No, it is closing faster than when it started.

We drop the six or seven feet to the bottom, half watching the doors and the body below, landing on her. Our left leg hits the concrete smartly, the other foot we weren’t watching lands half on her stomach, heel in her flesh and toes on the floor, twisting us and we fall hard. It is then that we notice that the only light came from the outside, security lights atop a pole in the distance and the full moon above.

The doors are closing, nearly finished. Our leg doesn’t hurt and we get up, running. Closer we get to the exit, and closer the doors get to closing. The garage is enormous, and the doors close away from us, making the distance even longer.

We can make it! We can make it, we pant, but no we can’t. The doors are nearly closed.

We can barely see anything, nearly all the light is gone, but we saw enough and know that nothing blocks our path. We can’t make it. The doors are nearly closed and we are only halfway there. With a massive boom that echoes continuously throughout the enclosed cavern, the doors close plunging us into near total darkness except for the rectangular light of the doorway above, with the shadow of the dead woman.

We slow to a stop, panting hard, wheezing, gasping for breath. We collapse sitting on the cold hard stone floor, then gradually lay back. Our eyes get used to the bare light and we can see around the room thanks to the open door and the woman’s body keeping it that way. We turn as far away as we can from the door and stare into the darkest area of the garage to let our eyes adjust further.

A crackle from the radio in the distance brings the terror flooding back again, and a man’s voice, “We are locked down! Repeat, we are locked down! Now let’s see those things get out.” A screech, and the voice was gone and all was silent.

Where were we? What are we doing here?

Our sense of self slowly comes back to us, and we realize the error we made. We should have stayed in the room and helped the traveler come through.

Footsteps! We quickly turn and look. Up high, on the catwalk, against the light of the hallway we see someone bending over, moving the dead woman out of the doorway and further into the garage. We start to rise quickly, hoping to catch up and join the figure, but in mid crouch we see the figure is standing and looking inwards, one hand resting on the doorframe. Another hand is slowly raised as slowly as we continue getting to our feet, slight wave of the hand we can see is intended for us, and the figure reaches over, grasps the doorknob. Our breath sticks in our throat as we see him step in the hallway, closing the door.

With a faint click, we are plunged in complete darkness.