Before he died, Nathaniel emailed us from his work: “Hey. I haven’t seen you guys in a while, but I feel like now is the time. No, I haven’t proposed to the woman of my dreams yet; it’s not that. It’s my work and it has been tailing me for the past year. I won’t disclose what I’m working on, but it’s something big, probably it will change the whole world. This is going to sound cliché, but I wanted to say: thank you. Take care, Mom and Dad, and good luck, stinker!”
A few days later, we received word from Nate’s company that a lab fire broke out and Nate and several others died in it. When they delivered us his body, he was burnt beyond recognition.
After his funeral, officials from the company made us sign NDAs and offered us a million dollar to compensate our loss. Mom and Dad agreed, but they haven’t been the same. As for me, I wouldn’t get my revenge until a decade later when an anonymous email came into my inbox.
•
The midnight breeze chilled me as I laid down my duffle bag and took out the giant wire cutter. I spray painted the gate in a giant oval and I carefully cut out the outline. A few minutes later, I got inside and quickly ran towards the back of the facility building. Or it was a facility before they decommissioned the place after the lab fire.
Once there, I scanned my surroundings. Security cameras on the walls were broken, rusted after years of neglect. The wall paints were peeling off, and I could smell something rotten; a dead animal was hidden somewhere.
I took out my crowbar and headed towards the big back doors covered in yellow tapes. Peeling them off and placing the tool between the doors, I pulled it with all my might that they banged wide open and I fell to the ground. Then, a clicking sound was heard somewhere and I froze; I didn’t know what it was, but I’ve got no time for it. I got up with the crowbar and bag in hand, went through the doors and shut them behind me.
I made it to the lobby and, as I stood, I counted down my breaths. I’d only been here when I first visited Nate in his first year of work, and it was my last visit. He had to convince the people to let me in for just one day, and I got to tour around his workplace and some parts of the facility. He talked about his and his secret lover, Vanessa, project which will make the world better. When I asked further, they told me it was classified and we moved on about my hobby in baseball that Vanessa took interest. But I had enough of reminiscing. I went back on my task.
I remembered where the stairs were. I opened it and stepped through, but my foot cracked something. Under it was a smartphone and I picked it up. The screen was cracked, but the old gadget was still alive with a battery life of 30%. I felt confused, then worried, and I began slowly walking the steps up to the tenth floor.
Carefully observing the hallway’s dirty interior, I made my way down and found the door with Vanessa’s name on it. The door was already opened ajar and I peered through before going inside. Everything was left here as I remembered and my baseball, a parting gift, was still on her desk. The bottom drawer was locked, but I took out the key, given by the anonymous person, from my bag and unlocked it. I sifted through the files before I found the letter N and picked it up. Its author was Vanessa.
I took pictures of its content with my own phone and it details that the fire was a cover up and the burnt bodies were fake, revealing my brother, along with the others, got bitten by a subject called B-09, and I read on to find out more, but I found nothing about the subject; only details about the cover up and the damage expense.
A footnote, at the end of the page, made me jump.
“For the official record, the subject and I had a secret romantic relationship for two years before his death. As one of the heads of Project Bs, I understand my significant role and will receive penalty from the heads for this action. I will also remain silent to the outside of this incident, even to his family.”
I reread it, twice, and stashed the file in the bag. I uploaded all the photos to my source and returned to the hallway. Then, a click came to my ears. I froze again.
Something was definitely here, but my heart began pounding and I counted down my breaths again. I held up my flashlight and shined down the hallway in front of me, but the click then came from behind and I immediately turned around; nothing there.
I continued walking when I stopped and heard sounds of munching. It was coming from a room and, idiotically, I glanced inside. My heart sank.
Crouching there was a monstrosity, with large limbs, long hair and scaly skins. It was munching on a person, a man. Instincts told me it was the smartphone’s owner.
It didn’t see me as it was busy eating, but I still locked my gaze on it. An epiphany emerged and I held out my phone and recorded the abominable thing. Ten seconds of it will suffice for evidence, big enough for the federal court and human rights to step in.
Unbeknownst to me, when I pulled the phone out of my bag, the folder was slipping on the edge and it finally fell to the floor. The noise caught the monster’s attention, and it gazed up at me and began clicking. I picked up the folder and bolted right out of there.
I jumped down the stairs, busted through the door and found others monsters like it sitting on the floor, chewing on some birds and making the same noises. I continued running and went out the back doors and, as I furiously ran across facility, my phone flew out of my bag. I turned around to grab it and, for a few seconds, saw the monsters standing from the building in the distance, watching me, as if they didn’t dare of leaving their home. I turned back on my path.
Coming back to the hole, I still ran. I must have ran for thirty minutes when I finally came back to my car parked on the side of the road. I turned my head around one more time, and got inside the vehicle. I drove for five hours before I returned back to the house.
•
As I looked closer to the video recording, at the last frame, something odd appeared. Its face was grotesque, but I could have sworn its eyes resemble someone familiar. But I didn’t pry closer and put my phone away.