The Split (3 page)

              “Hello?”  I call out into the void, stepping through the threshold of the doorway.  There has definitely been a mistake, and I realize almost immediately that, in his rush, Doctor Crawford had told me to go to lab seventeen instead of lab seven.  This room was way beyond my security clearance.

              The second that I realize my mistake I hear footsteps approaching down the long hallway behind me, and my heart skips a beat.  I’m already on thin ice as it is and, based on my experience in the conference room this morning, I have no doubt that Doctor Crawford will have little patience to hear out my explanation for being in a restricted area, even if it’s his own damn fault.

              If there’s one thing powerful men hate doing, it’s admitting that they were wrong.

              With only a few seconds to spare, I decide to duck back into the darkness, hiding away under what I assume is a large desk.  I try to remain as silent as possible.

              From here I can see two figures talking briefly in the hallway. Soon, they get back to work installing the laboratory door’s new card reader.

              I try my best to breathe quietly, scooting as far back into the corner as I can while the unassuming man and woman work on their installation.

              “Did you see what was in that last room?”  The woman asks, her voice trembling.

              “We’re not here to judge.”  Says her coworker, solemnly.

              “Those poor little mice, they were all stretched out and…” the woman trails off, clearly upset.  “Warped.  I don’t’ know.”

              “They were rats.”  Says the man.  “Not mice.”

              “I don’t give a fuck what they were.” The woman replies.  “They were living things.”  Suddenly, she bursts into a fit of tears, unable to control herself.

              “Jessica!”  The man shouts.  “You need to get a hold of yourself!  We’ve got a job to do!”

              Jessica can barely speak through the tears.  “I install fucking security systems, Dan!  I didn’t sign up to work for some mad scientist.”

              The two of them fight for a while, with Dan struggling to keep Jessica together while she throws professionalism out the window for the sake of a few rat corpses.

              To be fair, though, when the experiments don’t go as planned and the nanobot programs become corrupted, the results can be pretty horrific.  I’ve gotten used to it at this point, but for someone who’s never seen such a thing I’m not all that surprised by her reaction.

              Eventually, Jessica loses control completely and devolves into a blubbering mess, sobbing uncontrollably.

              “Alright, you need to go.”  Dan finally says.  “You can’t come in here and lose it like this over someone else’s job!”

              “I know!  I know!”  Jessica repeats.  “I’m sorry.”

              Dan lets out a long sigh.  “Okay, just… you need to get out of here.  Why don’t you head home for the day?”

              Jessica stops for a moment, sniffling loudly.  It would appear that she likes this idea.  “You sure?”  She asks.

              “Yeah, just don’t let them see you crying on the way out.”  Dan says.

              Through a small window in the door, I can see Jessica’s silhouette stand up and wipe the tears away from her eyes.  She seems young and slightly too fragile to be spending her time in a place like this.  From where I sit, crouched here in the darkness, I can also see that she has an average face and mousy brown hair like mine, and suddenly I’m sympathizing with her even more.

              “I’m a mess.”  Jessica moans.  “They’re gonna see me like this.”

              Dan tosses her his jacket.  “Just put that over your head and head straight for the door.  I don’t care if it looks weird, I don’t want anyone to see that you’ve been crying.  Got that?  Be professional.”

              “Got it.”  Jessica confirms.

              “Good.”  Dan says.  “Now get out of here, go straight for the car.”

              The woman leaves quickly as Dan continues to work on the door’s new security panel.  I get the feeling that these two wouldn’t have cared about finding me in here, or wouldn’t have even known that I shouldn’t be hanging around.  Now that I’ve been hiding in the dark for a while, though, coming out and surprising him just seems incredibly creepy and weird.

              It doesn’t take long for Dan to finish working though, and just as quickly as he began the man is gone once more, moving off down the hall towards the next installation on his list.

              I let out a long sigh of relief and begin to climb out from under wherever I’ve found myself hidden beneath, but my movement is abruptly stopped when I accidentally kick a long metal beam and hear a deafening metallic slam from all around me.

              Immediately, my entire field of vision is assaulted with blinding white light, and I quickly realize that I’m now trapped within some just of large, coffin-like metallic box.  My brain in a complete panic, I start pounding my firsts against the walls, screaming as loud as I can for someone to rescue me from this strange contraption.  Seconds later, the box begins to fill with a bizarre, sweet smelling smoke, which causes me to choke and cough wildly.

              I have no idea what I’m inhaling, but the fear that comes along with this foreign invasion of my body kicks my panic into overdrive, clawing at the walls of my airtight chamber with more ferocity than I’ve ever known.

              “Help!”  I scream, trying now to kick out the floor below me.  “I’m trapped!”

              Suddenly, a low hum starts to shake the entire chamber, rumbling up through my body and vibrating me faster and faster until my eyes hurt and my teeth chatter loudly.                The bright white light shifts into a strange green hue and then begins to flicker, completely disorienting me and causing me to let out a sickly moan.

              My entire body feels blazing hot now, as if I’ve suddenly been hit with a powerful fever.  It tingles and burns across my entirety, spreading from the top of my head all the way down to my feet as I contort spastically with discomfort.  I feel as though my skin is painfully expanding and contracting with every breath that I take, the heat growing and growing until finally it shifts into a pleasant numbness.

              Moments later, the vibration below me slows and soon enough I find myself whole again, the lights within the chamber flickering off and the lid above me popping open with a loud hiss.

              I crawl out into the darkness coughing, trying to collect my bearings on the lab floor.

              It takes a while, but eventually I’m able to climb to my feet and stagger over to the room’s main light switch, which I flick on immediately and then spin around.

              What I see makes me gasp in astonishment.

              There before me is a stack of four strange chambers, inlaid inro the back wall of the lab from floor to ceiling and surrounded by a plethora of strange, scientific equipment.

              It takes me a moment to put everything together, but the second that I see the familiar nanobots containment system, I know exactly what this is.  Allencorp has been secretly developing an airborne delivery system for the Project Chimera, and each chamber represents a different version of the code.

              Even more terrifying, though, is the realization that I’ve now been exposed.

              Suddenly, I feel as though the floor is falling out from under me.  I grab onto the wall and try to stable myself, reeling from the news that my very existence could be snuffed out any second from now.

              The nanobot code is still incredibly unstable.  Not only could these be my very last breaths of life, but there is a very, very good chance that they will be.

              However, I’m smart enough to understand that, at this point, any amount of panicking will only add to the instability of the program, and looking down at my hand I can already see the results of this hypothesis.  My fingers have started to jut off in strange directions, contorting and pulling themselves well beyond the limits of any normal human being.  It’s not painful really, but it certainly is terrifying, especially because I know what will happen if the program becomes too unstable.

              “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”  I start to mutter to myself, holding my hand up to my face as it twists into even stranger shapes.  “Stay calm, Mandi.  Get it together.”

              The word ‘calm’ comes out all slurred and weird, and I glance down to see that part of my lip is drifting out away from my body. 

              Suddenly, my thoughts jump to all of the mental work I’ve put in throughout the years with my meetings.  The way that I’ve managed to master my thoughts and feelings, cultivating a system of tranquility that has kept me stable and sane, without a single relapse.  I may be literally calling apart, but my mind is trained and stable as a rock.

              Instead of screaming out in fear, I remain silent and I turn my thoughts inward, focusing on my breathing as I attempt to lower my heart rate.

              Shockingly, it works, and before I know it my fingers are slowly but surely returning to their original form.  The program is stabilizing.

              Once everything is back where it belongs, I breathe out a thankful sigh of relief.                The code now imbedded within my cells could, and probably will, still corrupt over time, but at least that time is not right now.

              Quickly collecting myself, both literally and figuratively, I turn around and try to open the laboratory door, finding it to be firmly locked from both the inside and the out.  Without a new keycard there’s no hope for me, and even if I did have one I still wouldn’t possess the security clearance to get in here.  In other words, I’m fucked.

              Of course, someone will eventually come by and find me in here, but what happens then?  Best-case scenario, they will see that the forth chamber has been triggered and I’ll be quarantined indefinitely (They can do this, I’ve read the fine print in my employment contract top to bottom).  I don’t even want to think about the worst-case scenario, especially now that the United States government is involved. 

              Flashes of tiny, cold isolation cells and military tribunals flash through my head.  Sure, I still have my rights, but now that the nanobots have completely fused with the structure of my body, I’m technically a piece of Allencorp, and government, property.  They have every right to do with me whatever they want.

              I’ll admit it, maybe I’m just being paranoid about the whole thing.  But I’d rather not have to find out the hard way.

              I have to get out of here.

              Suddenly, it feels as if a switch has been flipped in my brain and I go into full-on problem solver mode.  I’m focused and sharp, scanning my surroundings for anything that could help me escape this lab before someone returns.  The meeting should be ending any moment now, giving me very little time to make my move.

              Using the keypad is a dead end, encrypted well beyond anything I could hope to decipher even if I had my laptop handy.  The door itself is made of solid steel and it’s not going anywhere.

              My gaze finally stops on a small air duct, located up in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling.  It’s too high to reach, and the tables in this lab appear to be bolted firmly to the floor and are far from helpful.

              That didn’t stop the rats, though, I think to myself.

              I close my eyes and try my best to focus on the rhythm of my body, the way that it feels to simply exist within my own shell.  I take it all in; the sensation of my lungs expanding and contracting, my heart thumping, my veins pushing blood throughout my entire being.

              Once I’ve done this, I turn my attention to the molecules of my neck and arms, trying to imagine them stretching and pulling apart like taffy.  It’s not long before the internal sensation of myself starts to shift.  I open my eyes and find that I’m extending towards the air vent, my body elongating itself in a strange but beautiful arc.

              To my surprise, my clothes stretch around me, as well, somehow infused with the same nanobots that make up my biology.  Everything that was locked inside that chamber with me is now one, single entity.

              Soon, I find myself grasping the edges of the air duct with my long, slender fingers.  I can see that the front panel is screwed on tightly by a Phillips head screwdriver, which is a problem at first until I realize that I can easily create that shape with one of my digits.  I press my pointer finger into the head of one of the screws and twist, letting my flesh form into the cross shape that’s embossed within it’s hard surface.  The next thing I know, the screws are popping off left and right, dropping down onto the floor below until finally the entire thing its unsecured and I lower it gently with my long, strange arms.

              Now I’m pulling myself up into the vent, which is no more than a foot wide on any side.  I slip deeper and deeper until eventually I can feel my feet lifting up off of the ground below, and soon enough I’ve disappeared completely into the tiny duct.

              I slither for a few yards until I find another vent, this time located out over the hallway; the path to freedom.

              From this side unfastening the screws is easy, and I manage to pop out the vent with relative ease.  The front panel drops onto the hallway floor with a clatter and I wince, desperately hoping that the sound won’t draw anyone’s attention.  As quickly as I can, I slide out of the vent and then immediately return to my usual proportions.

              Briskly, I walk down the hallway towards the nearest exit, aching for freedom from this living nightmare until sudden I stop dead in my tracks.  There, staring down at me, are the new laboratory security cameras. 

              All of that work I spent avoiding exposure was for nothing, because I know for a fact that the second I get home, the Department of Homeland Security will come knocking within the hour.  Everything has been caught on tape; my security breach, the nanobot exposure, and even my supernatural transformation.

              I let out a long sigh, defeated, until I’m suddenly hit with yet another idea. 

              The security office is close by, and the hard drives that record these video feeds are sitting out in the open, just waiting for me to unplug them and take off without a trace of evidence left behind.  Theft of Allencorp, and government, property only adds to the long list of problems I already have to deal with, but I’ve already gone too far to stop now.  Besides, the second I step out that door I’m technically stealing myself.

              Without a moment to spare, I turn on my heels and head back towards the security office.

              When I arrive, I’m met with yet another hurtle.  The office is not only locked, but currently being manned by a young guy, fresh out of college and about my age.  The guy stares blankly at his computer screen.  I can only see him through a small slit of glass in the room’s door, but from this angle I can plainly manage to make out the subtle reflection of hardcore porn reflecting off of the man’s stylish eyewear.

              “Shit.”  I say aloud, spotting the hard drives of security footage that sit on the shelf behind him, slowly filling with data.

              Once again my brain flips into emergency mode, coolly assessing the options at hand, of which there are very few.  If I was a bombshell like Jamie, I could simply walk in there, give the new guy a few playful winks and then take the drive without him even batting an eye.  However, these day’s I’m having trouble even getting noticed at all, let alone ogled and lusted after.

              Suddenly, it hits me.  Maybe now, I
can
be a bombshell like Jamie.

              I focus intently on the internal workings of my body once again, only this time I start to let my imagination run wild.  I picture my breasts like the ones that you’d see bouncing down the beach in a show about blonde bimbo lifeguards, my hair long and full, jet black as it cascades down my shoulders, and my face that of an exotic, European model.  I imagine myself with perfectly toned curves that turn my body into a womanly hourglass, and an ass that would make jaws drop.

              Once again, my transformation is painless, but strange.  It doesn’t take long, and suddenly I find myself pulling out my phone to get a look at my imagination’s handwork with the front-facing camera.

              The results are shocking, to say the least, and absolutely surreal.  There is a completely different woman staring back at me from the tiny screen of my phone, an unrecognizable face that, had I seen out on the street, would more than likely fill me with bitterness than excitement at its pure, almost surreal beauty.  Instead, a slow smile now creeps across my new visage.

              Filled with a pristine confidence, I rap hard against the security office door.

              It takes a while for the new guy to zip up his pants, but eventually he saunters over and throws open the door angrily.  The second that he sees my face, however, everything changes.

              “Whoa.”  The guy says, dumbstruck by my beauty.

              His reaction is so severe that it takes me off guard for a moment.  Is this really what it’s like to be a beautiful woman?

              For the first few seconds I freeze up, the two of us standing here in awkward silence as we stare at each other.  The man’s change in demeanor is so severe that my initial reaction is to assume that he’s joking, my brain barely able to accept the possibility that he could be that taken with my outward appearance.

              “Hey there.”  I finally say.  “What are you watchin’?”

              The guy hesitates, still incredibly unsure of himself.  “Nothing.”  He finally says.  “Security footage.  Can I help you?”

              “Oh yeah?”  I coo, ignoring his question and reaching down to take the name tag on his uniform between my slender fingers.  “Does Tucker know what you’re doing in here while you’re supposed to be paying attention, Greg?”

              Greg plays dumb.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

              “You’re not watching porn in here, are you?”  I ask, giving him a little wink.  “Because that’s kinda what it looked like to me.”

              The raw sexual power that I wield now would be intoxicating enough, but in the hands of someone who’s been celibate for two years, like myself, it’s like giving a baby the keys to a nuclear arsenal.  I try to pull myself back a bit, to restrain my thoughts from disappearing too far down the rabbit hole of lust and excitement, but it’s already too late.

              “No, I wasn’t watching porn.”  Greg scoffs, trying a little too hard to feign his innocence.  “Who are you?  I haven’t seen you around the lab before.”

              I think for a moment, pursing my lips.  Suddenly, a name just comes to me.  “Ms. Hyde.”  I tell him.  “Well Greg, it’s too bad you’re not watching any porn in here, I love porn.”

              Greg’s young, dumb eyes suddenly light up as I say this.  I notice now that he’s literally shaking as he stands before me, cowering in the presence of such a beautiful, feminine sexpot.  “You do?”  He stammers.

              “Oh yeah.”  I say, pushing up against him as I make my way into the room and shutting the door behind me.  “It makes me so fucking horny.”