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In despair he rushed forward, crashing in the darkness against the next wall and began to punching it. Based upon the sound, the wall was very thin (it even slightly caved in under his blows), and behind it there was an emptiness. He tried to cut the wall with the tablet corner, but, while thin, the barrier turned out to be too firm.

"It is not a labyrinth," he thought. "It is a warehouse, and I am wandering between containers!"

This discovery, however, had not much improved his situation. He still had no idea how to get out from where he was in complete darkness–even again to the staircase, let alone to the outside. He tried to shift the next container in his path, but it was, of course, too heavy. Or maybe the issue was that metal bars which he periodically encountered probably served to fix contain
ers on a place. Had he understood it it or just remembered it? That's not important! The bars! The warehouse was obviously not full, and the containers, apparently, weren't placed in a strict order, but the bars should stand at equal intervals and, most likely, form a rectangular grid. So if he went from one bar to another, counting them, then...

Suddenly something round rolled under his foot, and he almost fell down. He heard it, having turned out from under his foot, trundle on the floor in the opposite direction. What was it? Some small cylinder–maybe just garbage. Nevertheless he made some steps toward the sound, then went down on all fours, putting the tablet down momentarily, and began to rummage the floor with his hands–carefully, in order not to push whatever it was again. Where are you, you little bastard? Aha, here!

He felt his find. A smooth circle on one end, and something like a button on the side. Could it be a flashlight? He pressed the button, and a soft light flashed in his hand, lighting up suspicious dark stains on the floor and the wall of the next container with a lengthy number. Luck, luck at last!

He sprang to his feet, immediately receiving a blow by something long and firm on the head. A flash sparkled in his eyes, and he powerlessly tumbled down on the mucky floor.

Having come round, he lay for several seconds, stupidly looking at the flashlight which lay nearby and continued to shine. The beam, almost parallel to the floor, quite vividly illuminated all the dirt and dust. The top of his head ached, and he thought for certain there was quite a large lump. Then it hit him like a bolt of lightning: he should not be thinking about his head, but instead about the one who has struck him! But everything was still silent and it did not seem as though anybody was going to attack him again. The man very carefully turned his head and saw several pipes almost directly above him. They were not too thick, about two inches in diameter, with one end going into a wall of the nearest container. This wall seemed not to be solid, but perforated. He took the flashlight–still no one hindered him–and, having shone the light on the container, saw that it was indeed perforated. Then he sat up on the floor and moved his eyes and the beam to the opposite side, wishing to understand where the pipes led. At that very same moment he caught his breath in horror.

The beam of light tore from the darkness a silent figure, standing closer than two meters from him. The figure was dressed in (a shroud, it seemed to him at first) a white lab coat (apparently its only covering) and stood motionlessly, with its head inclined to the left shoulder in an unnaturally angle. Long black hair completely hid the face. The hands hung powerlessly. On deathly pale naked legs and feet ran streams of blood, coming from under the coat, but now dry.

It seemed that she (she, the amnesiac understood; it was a woman) was silently examining the uninvited intruder, smiling under a curtain of hair with a grin promising nothing good. He would have cried under this inscrutable look, but a spasm seized his throat. His fingers began to fumble convulsively on the floor in search of the tablet left somewhere abouts. But the next moment he had already realized that his horror and shock were caused only by unexpectedness. This woman was not likely the one who had struck him. He realized this because he had, at last, noticed the pipes, which had in several places ripped through her coat into her breast and solar plexus. She was punctured by these pipes, like an insect specimen pierced by several pins at once.

At the same moment the man understood that nobody had beaten him on a head. He had struck against these pipes him
self when he sprang to his feet, being directly under them. He stood up and approached the dead woman. The free ends of the pipes, brown with blood, stuck out of her back no less than a meter. A pool has accumulated on a floor under them. From behind, the coat had been soaked red much more deeply than in the front, and the man rejected the idea of putting on these blood-stained rags (for, of course, he would at first have to remove the corpse from the pipes). He did, however, have the logical thought of searching the coat pockets.

There were only two of them. The right one was empty, but in the left he found a folded sheet of paper. The man unfolded it and brought to the flashlight. It was a list, written by hand (for
tunately, this time not in blood):

Dr. Kalkrin - s-e

Dr. Hart - heart attack

Prof. Poplavska - madness

Dr. Silberschmied - s-e

Dr. Nakamura - s-e

Dr. Lebrun - coma

Prof. Ward - fire in lab, supp. s-e

Prof. Streicher - killed h-self in ment. clinic

Dr. Giroldini - death in road accident, supp. s-e

Dr. Wong - stroke

Prof. Kovaleva - took the veil, silence vow

The amnesiac twirled the paper in a hand. The mysterious "s-e" probably meant suicide ("Kill yourself now!"). But what does this list of the lost scientists mean? Not all of them, in fact, have died physically, but, anyway, all were lost for science. Whether is it possible, that all these corpses, which he saw in this place, are the people on this list? And he, in that case, is one of the survivors? For example, professor Poplavska... But no, it is, apparently, a female surname (he looked again at the dead woman standing near him). Then maybe, Lebrun, who had regained consciousness after a coma... Though this place was hardly similar to a functioning hospital... Yes, yes, he already thought of it... But whether a certain hybrid of coma and lethargy were possible, where a patient forsaken without any help for several months would not be capable of just surviving, but would also come round without aid? It seemed to be something out of pure fiction, though he, after all, still did not know what the experiment was essentially, even if it actually were an experiment.

And the others–a fire in the laboratory, a road accident–all this was not very similar to that, to what he saw here. How
ever, he saw only four–more precisely, three, because on the fourth he had only stepped. But, if it were known about the deaths of the scientists, why were the bodies left here? Maybe the list on this piece of paper reflected merely the official version?

Or maybe all of them were left here simply because all those who knew about this place have died, gone mad, or fallen into a coma? No, that would be nonsense, such a huge building cannot be the initiative of a small group, something not reflected in governmental or corporate documents. But what could he tell for certain? He, who cannot remember even his name?

He moved the beam around on the floor, searching for his missing tablet, found it, and stood for a while, without knowing what to do with the paper. He lacked pockets, and carrying three objects was inconvenient. Perhaps he should learn this list by heart? Was it valuable? It was the only item in the pocket of a woman who died a terrible death. Perhaps, this information cost her her life? On the other hand, the murderer had not touched this paper.

But was there actually a murderer? It didn't look like the victim has resisted. Her feet stood on the floor, her legs not bent back as they would have been had she–already dying–been pushed forward, further and further on to the impaling pipes. And the main point: How could the murderer position himself so that the pipes would not hinder him to do what he did? They would bear against his own chest.

But it is was even more difficult to imagine that she had done it to herself. She, applying considerable force, would have impaled her stomach and breast pressing on the pipes pushing forward, sliding on the metal piercing her body, while she still could. What an excruciating pain she must have felt! Is there truly something in this world capable of making a person do such a thing? Even the worm in your guts didn't seem a sufficient cause.

This flashlight–was she the one who had dropped it? After all, the murderer very unlikely would have thrown it here, so far from the exit!

But the dead body made nothing clear. Maybe if he were–what is it called?–a pathologist–and he had the proper tools... But, though he still did not know who he was, he was, for some reason, quite confident that he was definitely not a physician.

At last he wound the sheet around the handle of the flashlight and picked up the tablet from the floor, then continued to search for the exit.

The flashlight shone dimly. Apparently its accumulator was almost discharged, so he definitely had to hurry. But with at least this light source the warehouse didn't seem something like a haunted dungeon anymore. The containers were not specially placed in order to confuse the person who appeared here, so he quickly enough found the exit back to the staircase. This, however, did not suit him already, and he moved along a wall in search of an exit to the outside. But, to his surprise, having gone around the whole warehouse on its perimeter, he had not found any more doors. For some time he stood there perplexed. Some containers were obviously too large to drag them down the spiral staircase already familiar to him. How could they get here? He looked with doubt at the waning flashlight and nevertheless moved deeper into the warehouse.

The thought which had flashed through his mind proved true and after a while he found them: the big square hatches in the floor–more exactly, not really hatches, but the platforms of lifts by which cargo was hoisted from below. So, this was not yet the bottom level of a vault? There are probably tunnels under the building. Anyhow, he couldn't go there. He had not found any buttons to activate the lifts. Any attempts to open some of the containers had also failed. He had to return to the staircase.

As he had planned to do before, he ascended to the next level and entered the passage leading into the cylinder. Here it was also absolutely dark. But no sooner had he taken a pair of steps than light switched on with a strained click, and brighter than before, so that he shuddered unexpectedly, but understood at the next moment that in some places the automatics still worked. He turned off the flashlight to save the battery charge.

Having rounded the lift shaft, he found himself in a cor
ridor. Here something clicked too, but light did not come on. Perhaps, it will work in the next section, the man thought and made some careful steps forward. There was clearly a reason to move cautiously. The floor underfoot was not simply dirty. It was somehow greasy, in places slippery. It was not blood–neither dried up nor even fresh. It was something different. And the smell. To the general atmosphere of mustiness and desolation something else was added here. Something heavy and unpleasant. Not the odor of decay, no. More likely such an odor came from something alive–something even the most excited fans of nature would not care to have as a pet. More precisely, they would not want to encounter at all.

The man stopped in indecision. Now he also heard sounds–muted sounds, hardly distinguishable, wet, rasping and stirring.

He lifted the flashlight, holding it like a sword hilt. But he didn’t switch it on. He took one more step, knowing (from where did this knowledge come?) that he would enter the radius of a sensor responsible for illuminating the next section. This hope proved true. It clicked, and then light was turned on.

The light illuminated a corridor looking completely dif
ferent from the other premises of this strange building, while initially, obviously, it had been built and finished in the same manner. But while in other places only dust and rubbish had accumulated, here everything looked much worse.  From the ceiling here and there hung some sort of fringe, disheveled rags of something like a dusty web, with stalactites of pale flesh hanged down. On the walls jellylike stains fatly shone and mold blots shagged. On the floor, covered with dead insects in some places, having swelled and broken through an artificial covering, slimy ugly mushrooms, similar to pieces of aborted embryos, puffed up. But this was not the nastiest. Oh no, it was only a background which was almost not borne in the mind of the amnesiac. Because he, paralysed by horror and disgust, stared at what he had nearly nestled against in the dark.

Just a meter from his face, across a corridor, hung a cru
cified corpse. Certainly, this was not the first dead person he had seen this day, but all the previous, however terrible their end had been, were really lucky compared to this unfortunate person–more precisely, unfortunate woman. Though there were no clothes on the body, the amnesiac could not immediately recognize its gender. Her skin was almost completely grazed. Only on the lower body did semi-torn off scraps of skin hang down from the scarlet flesh. Maybe the torturer did not have enough time, or something has distracted him. But especially gruesome was the look of the round head, with rolled out balls of lidsless eyes and, grinning in a final shout, lipless jaws. She had no legs, only a medley of blood-stained tatters of flesh, from which yellowish bones stuck out, was left from her hips, and everything below, seemingly, was not even chopped off, but simply broken out from knee joints. The belly of the martyr has been ripped, and entrails, having fallen out through the cut, hung down like an ugly knobby utter. Thin but obviously strong wire dug into her outstretched arms, tearing the wrists almost to the bone, the left arm tied this way to a bracket on which, probably, an observation camera had once been established, and the right arm to ventilating lattice in the opposite wall. (The ventilation was not working here as seemed to be the case for the whole building.)