Susan Adams: Diary Entry 1

((Not as long as some of the posts displayed by the Mighty Foxton, but hefty nonetheless.))

OK, the weirdest stuff has been happening to me recently, and I’ve got to write it down or it’s all going to get muddled up. I already think that I’m mad – I don’t need anything else to tip me further over the edge.

It all started on 2nd January this year. I was cleaning out the coffee machine after the morning commuter rush when one of the newbies reached across to make a hot chocolate and knocked the steamer – it scalded me all up both forearms. I got them under the cold tap quick, but the day manager wrapped them in cling film and took me to the hospital. They looked pretty bad. I was put onto a holding bed to wait for the doctor while the manager went back to work, and when the adrenaline from the pain wore off I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the only bit of me that wasn’t bandaged up like a mummy was across my mouth. I was lying on a bed and wired up to a drip and heart monitor in a white room with four other people. Dave, the guy that helped me to unwrap my hands and arms is some sort of musician in a rock band, I think. James… he’s a mechanic. Canadian with a rather scary voice. Amy’s a student and Harry – introduced as Old ‘Arry – works in a hardware store though I think he’s ex-military. We were all bandaged in some way, and we were all admitted to hospital on the same day.

The weird thing - well, one of the weird things – is that none of our injuries hurt any more, and the skin on my arms looks pretty much perfect. No scarring at all, like it’d never been damaged.

We were in this pure white room, six beds. No windows and only one door, and that was heavy duty steel. It didn’t look like any hospital ward I’ve ever seen. We were just getting unwrapped and re-dressed (all our clothes being in boxes under our beds) when the door opens and this *robot* comes wheeling through. It followed marks on the floor, so it looked like it’d been doing this for some time. It went up to each bed and gave each of us a subject call sign, announcing that we were absent, except me because I was sitting there putting my shoes on. It nearly knocked Harry flying when he got in its way.

When it left the door banged shut so hard that it bounced open a little bit again. We all decided that it was time to move on, so we wedged the door open with an IV stand and finished getting ourselves ready.

We went out into the corridor, which wasn’t as clean as the room and I didn’t like the look of it. We followed the wheel marks and came across the robot again, which seemed to be in power-save mode or hibernation or something, with a countdown above it. It was ticking down seconds from, I guess, 7000. I assume that when it reached zero it went to check the room again. Dave started rocking it and the countdown sped up, but resumed its one-a-second when he stopped.

I moved on to the corner. The corridor was really disgusting – the walls were yellow and stained, and there was mould creeping out from the corners and it was really starting to get to me. I had this really bad feeling – call it intuition if you like, but that gut feeling has never let me down – and I really wanted to get moving. Only, as I looked around the corner I had this flashback. A memory of intense pain all over my body and a vision of this insanely grinning surgeon leering down at me. It was over in less than a second but I could still hear this high-pitched keening. It wasn’t until Harry grabbed my arm that I realised it was me.

We kept going and found a door to some sort of janitor’s cupboard. Dave and Amy grabbed themselves an improvised weapon each. I think it was a mop or a broom handle. I found myself some marigold gloves, so I put them on to try and keep my hands clean. The lights started flickering and eventually went out, leaving everything pitch black. We stood still, freaking out slightly, and a scream rang out. It wasn’t from neither Amy nor I and lasted exactly two seconds before it suddenly stopped, but it was full of fear. The lights came back on just afterwards and we kept going. There were bugs all over the floor, wriggling in the filth. I could hardly stand it.

We came across a sort of laboratory and the door wasn’t locked so we went in. There were…jars. There was one that matched the call sign given to me by the robot, though the number was lower. It had a… I think it had a roll of skin in it. Dave’s had a hand. He decided he was going to keep it. James’ had a hip joint – the ball and socket were there but the bones were cut short. There was a mass of fibrous tissue in Harry’s, but none of us were looking too closely at that to work out what it was. There wasn’t a jar for Amy. She looked a bit green at that, but I think she was secretly glad, as her head had been bandaged.

On the other hand, Amy did find a computer terminal without a power supply, so she pulled out the hard drive. There was also a notebook which mentioned a thing called Bravo Hotel, and a rip-away-a-day wall calendar. The last date shown was the 14th August 2010. We appear to have lost eight and a half months and none of us can remember anything about them.

Harry’d found a bunch of keys in a janitor’s coat back in the cupboard, and he unlocked the door at the side of the room. It stank of ammonia in there, but we stuck together and all went through. There were bars running the length of the room, like an old-style cage, and inside was an extremely dirty girl, early 20s I thought, with bright green eyes. She said her name was Natalie and she’d been abducted after her finals in mid-May. She’d been, well, we don’t rightly know, but she was scared of the boys and treated like an animal, so I dread to think what she’s been through.

She mentioned the “Professor”. James looked up the date just before her abduction in the notebook, and it says about bringing in “entertainment”. We didn’t want to ask, and Natalie didn’t tell us either. Harry unlocked the door but he was wary – she’d been able to get her hands on a large shard of glass. Natalie walked with Amy and I, though she was all dirty and I didn’t like it very much.

The corridors started to get cleaner again, thank goodness. We turned the corner and met one of the people that worked there. He was pinned to the solid concrete wall by some sort of iron pole. That’s when things got even weirder.

Dave jumped to one side and *climbed the wall* while James turned into a blur as he ran – far faster than he should have been able to – around the corner and back the way we had come. Natalie, Amy and I were just frozen to the spot. Harry (how he didn’t through up, I don’t know) rifled his pockets and found an ID security card. The ID said that we were in the Drayge Institute. This rang a bell with Natalie and we kept going (once Jason had returned and Dave had stopped playing on the walls) as she told us that she’d overheard some of the workers talking about the Beta Human Project. Guess that’s also referred to as Bravo Hotel.

Eventually we hit carpet. It lead to a staircase going up – so we did. Four flights up we met with a door through which we could see a rather messy and abandoned-looking office. Harry found the right key and we went through. It smelt musty, but there was power because the sensor lights came on. Outside was dark, but we were definitely on the ground floor. Amy found a working computer, but it was nearly empty and those that were still there corrupted beyond readability. I took a note of pretty much the only semi-recoverable e-mail:


F¤om: S¤m Marl¤w; Pet¤r Tow¤s¤¤d
Se¤t: 16th Ju¤¤ 2¤1¤
¤¤: Adr¤an Kn¤¤¤¤¤
S¤bject: Re: B¤ Experi¤¤¤¤

Y¤¤ are ¤¤¤ mad! We are so close, ¤¤ y¤u h¤¤¤ any idea ¤¤¤¤ w¤¤l happen i¤ ¤¤ pull the plug ¤¤¤¤ Well n¤¤¤¤¤¤ do I!


----Orig¤¤¤¤ Messa¤¤----

F¤om: Adr¤an Kn¤¤¤¤¤
Se¤t: 16th Ju¤¤ 2¤1¤
¤¤: S¤m Marl¤w
C¤: ¤et¤r ¤ow¤s¤¤d
S¤bject: B¤ Experi¤¤¤¤

Sa¤,

S¤r¤y m¤¤e, ¤¤t b¤c¤¤se o¤ funding cuts, w¤ are be¤¤g forced t¤ stop the BH e¤p¤ri¤¤nt early. It’s not my ¤¤¤¤¤, it’s the ¤¤w ¤¤¤¤¤¤ with this D¤m a¤¤¤¤nce. W¤ ju¤¤ ca¤¤¤¤ a¤¤¤r¤ to h¤ve th¤¤ bl¤¤ sky project on the go

Speak to Pete if you have any issues.

A¤¤rian


We also found out that the Drayge Institute is closely linked to MI6 and Porton Down. It had been working on something called Blue Sky, but funding appears to have been pulled and the entire place pretty much abandoned. The e-mails are dated either June or July, but Natalie last saw the Professor a few days ago.

There were filing cabinets behind one desk, and Dave forced them, and some locked desk drawers, open. They had our complete histories in there – medical, educational, psychological profiles, everything. The last page was a signed permission dated 6th January, but no pages to which it referred. There was no file for Natalie, and though there were other hanging files with names on, only ours held any paper.

Dave found a digital camera in the drawers and there was one photo on there – a man and a woman in lab coats smiling and posing. Natalie pointed that the woman was the Professor.

We were busy poking around and working out what to do next when we suddenly realised that Natalie had vanished. We tried to look for her, but decided that just getting away from there would be better. So we pushed open a fire escape. Unfortunately, the door was alarmed.

We found ourselves on a patch of lawn. The buildings were enclosed by high brick walls topped with razor wire. Dave went up the wall and started to lay coats and twist the wire up – we could hear police sirens in the distance and getting closer. I think at this time he took “his” hand out of the jar and stuck it in his leg pocket.

Harry tried the swipe card on some kind of heavy duty security gate, and it opened just as a couple of police cars came screaming up and the men got out pointing guns at him. James tried to run but they shot him. They fired some sort of gas canister over the wall which made Amy, Harry and James go a bit woozy.

Dave and I gave up on the idea of climbing the wall and instead we made for a tall tree in the compound, to try and hide. He helped me up and we tried to make ourselves as small as possible to avoid the lights and searching police. The men game into the compound, cuffed Amy (who was sitting on the ground with her hands in the air) and then cuffed Harry and James too, hitting them in the face with their guns to knock them out.

They had a dog unit with them, and they found our scent at the bottom of the tree, so Dave climbed down - pretending that he was climbing like a normal person – and they beat him too as he struggled to stay out of the cuffs. I could hardly stand to watch my comrades being treated so roughly and I didn’t want to be left alone, so once the dogs were back in their van (horrible hairy things, always eating the most disgusting thing they can find) I climbed down and wandered after them. I tried to look unthreatening and did everything they told me to, but they still knocked me out once the cuffs went on. Bastards.