03 - Spearhead

Luci, Owen, and William woke back up in the drug lab. They were in their phlebotomy chairs staring up at brilliantly white lights in brilliantly white ceiling tiles. Their minds felt foggy, they were still dealing with the reconsolidation of their memories.

Dr. Aaronson was talking to them asking, “What do you see, what do you see now?” They realized that during memory reconsolidation they must be speaking out loud or saying what they're experiencing; for all they knew they may even be responding to prompts from Aaronson subconsciously.

All three immediately wanted to get up out of their chairs. Aaronson cautioned them to take it easy, but they got up anyways. Once on their feet, Owen went and retrieved his gun and Luci retrieved her earpiece. Owen checked the clip, it was still full. Luci checked the earpiece for chatter, it was silent.

They had questions still about what they had experienced, about the Cooler, C-1011, and who they were with down in the Cooler. Before Aaronson offered any answers he urged Owen to provide an answer himself. Aaronson told Owen to focus intently in his mind on the figure that he had been following. It worked, suddenly Owen had a brief flashback.

He was lying on his back in the cleanroom. The cleansing mist had stopped and was just hanging in the air. Luci and William were passed out beside him. Owen was utterly exhausted. Just before the flashback ended, he heard a loud thud against the cleanroom door. Through the small window in the door, Owen saw Jackson's face. He had a horrified expression. Then he slid down out of sight still trapped inside the Cooler.

Owen told the doctor that it was Jackson who is in the Cooler with them, and that it looked like he didn't get out. Aaronson was pleased with Owen and praised him saying, “Good you can remember.”

There were so many mysteries still though and they wanted answers. So, Aaronson offered up his explanation of what had happened. He explained that he already knew that Jackson was down in the Cooler because Aaronson too had been there. He revealed that it was him who they were after down there. Aaronson admitted to opening the pressure reduction valve and flooding the Cooler with the chemical. He explained he was trying to destroy the C-1011 in the tanks.

Aaronson went on to tell them how it was him who said off the initial lockdown of the facility as well. The lockdown went into effect when he began erasing and overwriting files in the server room. Aaronson had destroyed all of the research files pertaining to C-1011 on the company’s server. It was his ultimate goal to eradicate C-1011 in its entirely, not just the data, but also all physical traces of it as well.

Aaronson explained that after several attempts on his part to shutdown the program he was denied and forced to continue on with the research. He continued, but he had seized to believe that there could be any good that would come of this project after seeing the effects that it was having on the subjects that they were testing. He was a doctor first and foremost before he was a government employee, and he was sworn to protect life. The program was wrong and harmful and an affront to everything he stood for. He couldn't live with it anymore so he took it upon himself to end it.

Upon learning that Aaronson had been the saboteur all along William became infuriated. William called him a traitor for turning on the company and also on his country. He asked him, “What right did you have to decide what was best?” The program was personal to William. “How dare you attack us and destroy our work,” he yelled at Aaronson. William defended the program and its goals citing the benefits of C-1011, such as its ability to eliminate PTSD and allow soldiers to better integrate back into society and be free from the scars of war. If William had had more energy, he likely would have attacked Aaronson right then and there, but he didn't have the energy, not yet.

Aaronson waited for William to settle down and then continued. He explained that he was not successful in destroying the C-1011 down in the Cooler. Jackson had interfered and prevented him from finishing his task. Then he was forced to flee before he was consumed, as they had been, by the chemical.

For some reason Jackson, Luci, William, and Owen were all working together to stop Aaronson. But they none of them could remember any of it, nor could they remember why.

For the past three hours Aaronson had been stuck down in the drug lab due to the lockdown. He explained that the current lockdown was not something that he had triggered himself, prior to entering the Cooler he had been able to move about the facility freely. The only person who could have triggered such a complete and full lockdown of the facility was Luci.

Aaronson could see that their heads were spinning with the information and that it would take some time for them to process it, so, he took the opportunity to show them something else in the room. He walked them over to one of the lab stations and pointed down on the ground. They looked down and saw a long snaking crack in the concrete floor. Aaronson explained that that crack had been growing over the past few hours.

The Cooler was directly below the drug lab. The Cooler was still being pressurized and the pressure had nowhere to go. The floor was beginning to buckle under the stress. If the floor gave way the drug lab would be flooded with C-1011. Aaronson had been waiting and hoping for them to wake up, hoping they could break the lockdown. They all needed to get out of that room.

The time for questions had passed and the three sprung into action scouring the room for a way out. None was able to find a way out. Their only option was to unlock the doors that led back to the rest of the facility. Luci borrowed Aaronson's tablet again and began to assess what it was going to take to bypass the lockdown that she herself apparently had put into effect.

If only the camera footage during the event were accessible to her through the network, she thought, then she could pull it up on Aaronson's tablet and understand what the parameters of the lockdown were and bypass them. However, Spearhead lockdown protocol was such that the camera feeds were cut from the network and routed behind a firewall on a separate server to prevent would-be attackers from using the camera system to their advantage in the event of an attack. The feeds were still active, but she would be have to physically be at a security terminal to bypass the firewall and access the camera log. First things first, open the door the hard way. Then, get to a security terminal.

Try as she may, Luci could not get the doors open quickly. Aaronson could sense the frustration growing in the room and said, “It's no use getting worked up over. We have some time. The floor hasn't shown signs that it is going to collapse right this moment. The best thing to do right now is to reconsolidate your memories so you'll know what needs to be done when we get out of here.”

Reluctantly the three agreed to cooperate with the man who seem to be more their enemy than their ally. Upon his suggestion they returned to their chairs and allowed the doctor to trigger another flashback.

Private Jackson was the trigger this time. Aaronson pulled up a photo from his dossier on the tablet and showed it to the three of them. Before they knew what had happened they were transported from the drug lab and back into a memory. They were moving down a corridor, their hearts were beating hard in their chests. Each had a sinking feeling in their stomach that they were being chased and that they mustn't be caught.

The corridor was long. Behind them on one end was an exit stair that they had come from. A ways away in front of them was another exit stair that they were trying to reach. There were strobe lights on the walls that were flashing indicating that a lockdown had been initiated.

Jackson's voice spoke in Luci’s ear through her earpiece, “I just got out of the server room, I got as much data as I could but I fear it's not nearly enough,” he paused breathing heavily. “Did you head him off yet?” he asked.

Luci replied saying, “No.” Jackson urged her to stay on him. Luci, Owen, and William were close to the east entrance lobby where there was a security checkpoint. The checkpoint had a security terminal, from which they would have access to the cameras. Using the cameras they could determine where their target was and where he was headed. Jackson agreed with the strategy and said that he too would make his way down there to meet up. Then they signed off.

As they made their way down the corridor a door in front of them opened and a guard stepped out into the corridor. Acting quickly, they ducked into a woman's bathroom and waited until the guard passed. Then they proceeded down the corridor and attempted to access the stairwell. Luci slid her access card over the card reader to unlock the door and the indicator light lit up red. Each of them in turn tried their cards but to no avail, their access privileges had been denied. Luci then tried to bypass the door while the other two made casual conversation to conceal her efforts in the event that someone else entered the corridor.

It wasn't long until another guard came out of a room and noticed them. He began walking quickly towards them. Owen and William maintained their cover, continued their conversation, and walked towards the approaching guard to head him off away from Luci.

As the guard neared William and Owen he cupped his hand up to his ear and said in a hushed tone, “I've got them. Send back up.” William and Owen knew they didn't have much time. As soon as they were close enough to the guard they attacked him. Owen snatched the guards gun as he drew it and William drove the guards face through a drywall wall.

As they were subduing the guard Luci began to shout, “I've got it, the door is open.” Without hesitation William knocked out the guard with a ruthless kick to the head. The guard was stripped of his key card and his gun. William and Owen began dragging the guard back towards the door where Luci was waiting but they were forced to leave the guard in the corridor after two more guards came out of the stairwell at the opposite end of the corridor.

The three went down the stairs and entered into the east entrance lobby. Luci rushed to the security checkpoint and used the stolen key card from the guard to open the door. Owen and William waited at the stair door to prevent the two new guards from getting through.

The lobby was a large two story space with glass walls on opposing ends. Outside, through the glass, they could see the parking lot on one side, and a picnic area on the other. There was only one way into the lobby besides the stairwell and that was through a corridor that dead-ended into the middle of the lobby.

As soon as Luci gained access to the checkpoint she ran to the terminal and put the entire east wing on lockdown. Owen and William could hear the bolt on the door to the stairwell click shut just as the two guards came barreling down the stairs and slammed into the door.

Before they could celebrate their temporary safety, William and Owen heard the heavy foot falls of more guards running down the corridor towards the east lobby. They tried the exterior doors but they were locked. The perimeter was impenetrable. The lockdown prevented anyone from leaving the building. There was nothing Luci or anyone could do to exit the facility. Their only escape routes were back up the stairwell they came from or the corridor where they would face the guards coming towards them. They shouted to Luci to hurry it up.

Luci rushed to restore her security credentials to the highest level on her card. As she was doing so, Jackson hailed her on her earpiece. He too had found that his access privileges have been removed and was not able to get down the stairs to meet them. Luci told him not to bother, as they were about to be boxed in themselves.

Jackson told her to use what little time she had to find Aaronson on the cameras and find out where he was headed. She bypassed the firewall and scanned the cameras. She found Aaronson careening down a corridor. She reported back over the earpiece to Jackson, “It looks like he's headed to the Cooler.”

“Lock him out,” he implored, but she was out of time, the guards were about to reach the lobby. The last thing she did before she left the security checkpoint was unlock a clear path for Jackson to the Cooler. Then she left the checkpoint and locked the door behind her.

Luci rejoined Owen and William in the lobby. By that point the men had formulated a plan to go back through the stairwell, deciding to face the two guards instead of an unknown number of guards coming down the corridor.

The guards trapped inside the stairwell were still attempting to pound down the door. Owen readied himself to pull the guards from the stairwell, William armed himself with a nearby stainless steel trash can, and Luci waited by the card reader for Owen’s signal.

They heard a guard prepare to slam himself against the door, Luci slid her card and the lock clicked open. Owen threw open the door and grabbed the guard as he stumbled towards the door that gave way before him. Owen threw the guard clear into the lobby where he tumbled to the floor. William followed up with the trash can, smashing it into the unsuspecting face of the second guard still within the stairwell.

The momentum of the blow carried William into the stairwell, trash can still in hand, where he landed in a pile with the guard he had attacked. Owen and Luci slipped inside the stairwell just as the guards arrived in the lobby from the corridor. They closed and locked the door behind them.

Owens subdued the solitary guard while William dusted himself off. The guard was relieved of his gun and it was given to Luci after William rejected it.

Even in his defeated state the guard was still defiant. The guard spoke, spitting blood, and called them all traitors. William mocked him and then threw his insult right back at him. The guard looked William square in the eyes. As the two men stared at one another William could see that something seemed off with the guard’s gaze.

With fury in his voice the guard told William, “It's do-nothings like you that let this program get out of control, you'll burn in hell for this.” Even as he hurled his insult, the guard seem distant, and William wondered what sort of indoctrination this man had been through.

Nevertheless, the guard had gone too far. Williams stooped down and grabbed the guard by his shirt and looked at his name badge. Bradley it read. “I know everyone in this compound Bradley. You have a family, I remember it from your dossier when you were hired,” William said. “This is my program,” he continued menacingly, “both you and your family are going to pay for your treason.”

Luci pleaded for them to keep moving, and for a moment, William seemed to back off. Then suddenly, with a savage kick to the back of the head, William knocked Bradley out. Then the three rushed back up the stairs.