If you’re guessing that I stole his recorder… well, I prefer the word borrowed. How else would I be recording this?
Dad shakes his head at me as I catch up, then slaps his mask back on. We’re out and in the hallway—and everything, everything is different. The white walls are bathed in red, all the doors are shuttered closed, and the floating screens that used to show commercials keep scrolling the word LOCKDOWN over and over again. I’ve barely got time to process it as we move along. At an intersection in the distance, I see a crowd of Security just run by, rifles in their hands, shields on their arms, and a few of them wearing tanks like my dad’s got. He spots them, too, and shoves me down a different hallway. I don’t know where we’re going, but soon he’s got me in what I think is a Cleanup closet.
I look at him and ask him the only question any daughter could ask. “Dad… what the hell is going on?”
He sighs as he takes off his mask again. “Nobody knows. The Creep’s been more agitated than normal, just nobody can say why. It started a few days ago when we started having power fluctuations throughout the tower. That wasn’t bad enough to start an incident, but something happened overnight that got the Creep really just out of control. All we know for sure is that it started deep and it exploded before sunrise. We went from minimum Creep activity at midnight last night to a full-blown incident within six hours. We’ve never had an incident spread this fast. It’s even faster than the Stockholm Incident.”
“The what?”
“Your sixteenth birthday.”
My mouth drops. “Wait. So, that really was as bad as I thought?”
“It was the most intense and quickest Creep infestation we’d ever experienced. Until today. We got the Stockholm Incident under control by Floor 4, and it took almost all day for the infection to reach that high. This? Less than six hours, and the Creep’s gone from below Floor 21 to Floor 1. It’s unheard-of.”
It’s a lot to take in obviously, especially ’cause I’m still just a bit, you know, shaken by the fact that I was seconds away from being injected with Creep. “Dad… were you just going to let them shoot me full of that stuff?”
“Are you kidding me?” He laughs like I wasn’t just about to go brain-dead. “I was already on my way to the lab when the alarms started going off. The only reason they kept you overnight was because I was arguing for your pardon. I kept telling them that the only reason you were so curious was because you were so smart and that it would make you the perfect scientist. When all that fell through, well, sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. Authority doesn’t always make all the right decisions. They’re a system. They don’t know what it’s like to bend for exceptions.”
“Okay, but, just so you know, they were literally about to inject me with Creep gunk when the alarms went off.”
“Hey, everything worked out, didn’t it?”
I shake my head. Dad loves me, I’ve never doubted it, but he’s always played it kinda loose. “Yeah. Guess it did.”
“Anyway, how are you feeling? Are you ready to get out of here?”
“Where exactly are we supposed to go if the Creep’s everywhere?”
“I… don’t know exactly. We can’t stay on Floor 1. They’ll come back for you once they’re done pushing back the Creep, and then they’re going to get on with the process of Reinforcement. We have to move you deep, but for now we just need to get you off this floor.”
“Okay, sounds good and everything, but how?”
“Jackie, we’re in a Cleanup closet. At least one kind of one.”
So, Dad’s a pretty smart guy, and it takes me up until that second to realize that there’s a reason he’s hauled me over here. Pro tip? It’s not for the décor. Taking a look over my shoulder, I see that the grate here’s already been popped open. Still, there is a Creep infestation happening. I look from the vent back to him. “Uh, do you really think that it’s safe to go down that way?”
“We know the route the Creep is taking. It’s coming straight up the primary staircase and more than a few old elevator shafts. No sign of intrusion through the vents, though. So far what we’ve been able to determine is that something broke down the old blockades on the stairwell access so the Creep’s got free run through those.”
“Dad… Dad, I really don’t know about this.”
He stares at me for a second, then back to the door. “We can’t go into those halls, Jackie. This is the only way for you. If you see anything suspicious, just come right back. As long as you don’t panic if you do see the Creep, it shouldn’t react to you immediately. It’s psychoreactive.”
“Psycho what?”
“Psychoreactive. It reacts to the psychological state of a person, primarily negative emotions. Fear, sadness, panic—those sorts of things can produce incredibly strong reactions. If you do see anything, just back away slowly and retrace your steps. I promise you, it’ll be okay.”
I mean, he’s probably right. What am I saying? Of course he’s right. There’s no way to go through those halls without Security getting me for sure. At the same time, I just don’t want to be stuck in a tube that could flood up with angry living tissue at any moment. Kinda, you know, one of my peeves. No freaky muscle goop on Jackie. Anyway, he sees I’m hesitating, so he holds up a hand and says, “Okay now, wait. I’ve got it. I’ll go to one of the Security lockers and get a flame gun. That way, if you do see any Creep, you can at least push it back. How does that sound?”
A big hell yeah is what it sounds like. What I actually say is, “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Dad.”
He takes off through the closet, and I have a few minutes to get myself psyched up. Or at least that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I think it’s working. Talking to this recorder’s helped.
Just got to wait here until I get that flame gun.
Recording Thirty-Nine
If I get through this day, I’ll be happy.
Dad was right. The vents weren’t infested. Floor 4, on the other hand, was just a little bit different a situation.
I pop out into a Cleanup closet on a far end of my wing that I normally don’t go to, which, you know, wouldn’t have been such a problem except for the Creep dripping from the ceilings. And coming out of the ground and the cracks and the elevator shafts. My floor looks nothing like what it normally does. Instead, it looks a lot more like Floor 16 or worse. All the doors are sealed up, and for the first time, I’m asking myself how the heck Dad is ever going to get down here. Between Security and the Creep, he’s going to have to fight through a lot.
Actually, thinking about Dad brings up another question.
Does Mom even know what’s going on?
I mean, right? She’s always so out of it. Is she just sitting at home, eating chocolate bars while the Tower falls apart?
Well, guess there are worse ways to go.
Trying to get back to my room is like working my way through a minefield, except all the mines are made of child-size growths of muscle and tissue. As I dance between all the slime and gunk on my way to my room, I suddenly slip when something grabs my leg and yanks me toward the wall. I turn to see a Creep tendril tightening around my leg until I think my bone’s going to snap. My instinct is to scream, but instead, I douse it with fire. I’m not sure what’s brighter, the flames or my eyes as they light up while the Creep gets scorched. The thing screeches at me with that terrible scream that I must admit I’m getting used to. I’ve heard it enough by now, and really, it’s my life or theirs. Or its.