Chapter Text
The truth is hiding in your eyes/
And it’s hanging on your tongue/
Just boiling in my blood/
But you think that I can’t see….Well I will figure this one out
/On my own—Decode, Paramore
The walk was frustrating. Rose was about half sure that if she’d managed to leave the house on her own she’d be halfway to Skaia Labs by now. That thought was nothing but pure hubris, she was forced to admit. Walking through the woods close to midnight was an exercise in patience. The canopy overhead made it almost impossible to see, even with the flashlights that Jade provided.
She’d never tell her brother, but she was grateful that Dave had insisted on including John and Jade. There was the practicality element, of course, but there was also a deeper reason. Rose had been so sure that she’d have to do her investigation on her own. She didn’t need Dave, or anyone else, pointing out how foolish and shortsighted this mission was. Sneaking out at night and breaking in to a science laboratory—one her Mom worked at no less—was perhaps not the smartest decision she’d ever made.
The growing unease, the urge to find out just what was going on was simply too strong. The events that transpired on Saturday was just the tipping point. Obviously Rose didn’t believe everything Penelope Craven told her—the clear bias against her family was just that, a bias. But, loathe as she was to admit it, there were some good points being made. It felt too early to definitively say that Skaia Labs was behind everything going on in Skaia, but there was enough correlation to warrant further investigation.
More than that, if Skaia Labs was actually involved, to what degree did that mean Rose’s Mom was involved? Mom was secretive on the best of days, there was no way she’d just answer straightforwardly if Rose asked. Were you involved in any of the coverups? Did you know about the coverups? Do you know what’s hunting Rose and her friends?
Do you know what happened to the La Lumierés?
Rose wasn’t sure why she was so caught on the La Lumiére’s disappearance. Maybe it was the fact that a family could have a tragedy happen to them, and yet no one knew exactly what it was that happened. It was ninety years ago, almost a century. And yet despite being generally well-liked the whole town seemed to have forgotten about that poor family.
If Mom really did have something to do with the disappearance, even after the fact, Rose wasn’t sure she could look her Mom in the eye anymore. There were secrets that didn’t matter, like what it was Mom did as a teenager that made Granny continue to check in on her daughter every few months—and then there was this.
The truth about what was going on in town mattered, but it was the question of Mom’s involvement that made Rose unable to stand by any further. This was a fact-finding mission, pure and simple. That was what she was telling herself, at least.
“Okay, according to my compass we should be heading the right way,” Jade told them after about ten minutes of walking. She and John had met Rose and Dave at the park before heading off into the night. Once again Rose was grateful that her friends were humoring her. While they clearly had reservations about what they were about to do, they didn’t say anything about it. It was nice to have that kind of support. Especially without asking for it.
John frowned and swung his flashlight around. “So, what happens when we get there? Are we looking for anything in particular?”
Rose had thought about that already. “First, I would like to investigate what it is they actually do. ‘Science’ is a little too vague for my liking.” She’d even tried looking at their website for clues. Every other sentence was filled with buzzwords and phrases that ultimately meant nothing.
Up ahead leading the way, Jade scoffed. “There’s so many disciplines of science, it’s like trying to list every shade of color! Physics alone, not to mention all of the different types of chemistry! I’m willing to break in just for that.”
“Okay, that’s the ladies taken care of,” Dave added. “What about me and John? Do we need to look for anything in particular?”
“Anything suspicious!” Jade said cheerily.
Dave sighed. “This is like looking for Bigfoot all over again,” he muttered.
Sooner than Rose expected, they arrived at the edge of the Skaian Labs property. She suspected they probably had help with that; she could have sworn she heard giggling in the darkness of the woods. Rose took this as a sign that there was something for the supernatural to be interested in.
“So what do we do first?” John asked. “I can’t imagine that a place like this wouldn’t have security cameras, or alarms and all that. How are we getting in?”
That was something else Rose had already considered.
“Mom’s always complaining that the old building doesn’t have the kind of security the new one does,” Dave filled in for her. “Something about corporate or whoever not thinking their work was as important as the New Building’s. As long as we stay in the tree line until we get to the Old Building, we should be good. Something about upper management expecting people to go for the New Building instead. Something something favoritism.”
“There should be a security guard,” Rose added. “But as long as we’re careful we should be fine.” That was how Craven had snuck in before, Rose guessed. From how disgruntled Mom seemed to get whenever the matter of security was ever brought up (not that it was often) it looked like they hadn’t gotten around to fixing that yet.
Their group slowly crouch walked along the tree line, carefully staying hidden in the shadows. It didn’t take too long for them to reach the back of the building. Dave took his phone out and started tinkering around with the camera settings. Zooming in as far as his phone would go, he started examining the building for any cameras they may have missed.
“I’m not seeing anything that looks like a camera,” Dave said doubtfully. “As resident skeptic of everything, I’m going to say let’s not just assume there are none. Even if there aren’t, there’s no way they don’t have something going on with the doors.”
“I think I see a way in,” John said. He had his own phone out. “There’s a window near the side there that looks like it’s cracked open. Judging by the cigarette butts around it, I’m guessing they use it for smoke breaks and probably didn’t shut the window all the way.”
“That seems kind of sloppy of them,” Jade remarked with a frown.
“You think it may be a trap?” Rose questioned. It seemed a bit much, but she had to admit that so far the night had been pretty easy. This was just the kind of situation that would lull them into complacency. That was how stupid people got caught, and Rose wasn’t stupid.
Breaking into a secret facility at night not withstanding.
“Well don’t most alarms work if all the entrances are sealed?” Jade pointed out. “Having a window open should mean there aren’t any external alarms, and they’d be able to see that.”
That was exactly what Rose was worried about. This was seeming too easy, like the Labs were trying to get broken into. Before she could worry about the implications John spoke up in a dry voice.
“Oh. Maybe we’re getting help.”
Staring out at them from deeper into the woods were several pairs of glowing eyes and grinning teeth. Jade frowned deeper and took a step towards their supernatural onlookers. The group retreated further into the woods.
“They’ll help us disable alarms but they won’t come closer to help,” she noted.
“Maybe it’s something like the cave?” Dave suggested. “They can’t get close or they’ll get trapped?” Not for the first time Rose wondered exactly what she missed while she was at the café.
“All the more reason to find out what they’re up to in there,” she said decisively. “We’ll use the window, but be careful and keep an eye out for any surprises.” There wasn’t quite any evidence to support the theory, but if Skaia Labs was trapping spirits or the supernatural there was no telling what state the trapped were in. They’d probably have just as much to fear from the supernatural finding them as they would from any human.
The inside of the building didn’t match any of the preconceptions Rose had when she thought of “old lab.” There weren’t any cobwebs, no creaky wooden boards on the floor, no piles of equipment stacked haphazardly. The entire place seemed rather sterile, if dark with the lights off. She supposed this made sense, as the lab wasn’t abandoned; just closed for the evening. There was even a forgotten coffee mug left behind on a counterspace in the room they crawled through.
They appeared to be in a chemistry room of some kind. There were beakers and flasks filled with different liquids of some kind—“sloppy lab etiquette” Jade tutted—as well as chalkboards and walls covered in various formulas.
“I really know I shouldn’t,” John started in a whisper, “and it’s a really dickish jackass kind of move…but I kind of really want to erase part of the board and leave some kind of meme behind. As a prank.”
“Kind of defeats the purpose of us sneaking in here, dude,” Dave whispered back wryly. “Even if they are investigating or doing experiments on the supernatural I don’t think they’ll believe ‘a ghost did it.’”
When John sighed in acknowledgement Rose sent him a reassuring look and squeezed his shoulder lightly. “It’s okay. We’ll know the prank could have happened. As far as the four of us are concerned, it did.”
“You can tell us about it later,” Jade whispered with a smile. “For now, let’s keep looking. I don’t see any computers; my guess is they use laptops they keep secured somewhere. Let’s see if we can find one!”
“And hope it’s not password protected for some reason,” Dave murmured, leading the way out into the hallway. As far as hallways went, it was pretty unassuming. There were several doors leading off to their own rooms and farther down another connecting hallway lead further into the facility.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be a sticky note someone wrote their log in and password on,” John mused.
“Unlikely,” Rose told him softly,” but I have a feeling we’ll still find something. Let’s keep looking.”
They had to take their phone lights out in order to see in the dark hallway. They bypassed doors with labels that seemed unlikely to help in their search for answers—janitor’s closet, photocopy room, break room. There were a few that had numbers instead of anything to tell them what may be inside. Rose hesitated but decided to give them a pass for now. The doors were locked and she didn’t want to waste valuable time trying to make them unlocked when they weren’t even sure if their effort would produce results.
Near the end of the hallway they came across their first break. John noticed that one of the blank doors—no number given either—was just cracked enough that the door didn’t latch. Glancing around to make sure they weren’t going to be ambushed by any passing theoretical security guards, Dave eased the door open. He let the others pass through before him and stopped to examine the door once more before easing it partway closed behind him.
“Wanted to check and see if it’d lock behind us,” he murmured. “Couldn’t tell, but why take the fucking risk, right?”
“Good thinking,” Jade agreed.
They were on a small landing with stairs stretching downwards before them. Luckily for Dave, who still hadn’t taken off his sunglasses despite the dark evening around them, there was a dimly lit hallway light. Rose presumed it was a safety feature to prevent any workplace lawsuits should someone trip and fall. She glanced at her brother briefly. She wasn’t exactly sure what happened to his glasses, just that one of the arms had gotten messed up and wasn’t sitting on his face like it should anymore. She’d almost suggest he put them away for now before they were bent even more out of shape; she knew her brother, though, and he was stubborn about his sunglasses. He’d power on, even if the pointy ends were digging into his face.
“This seems promising!” Jade beamed at them. “It figures this place would have an underground lab.”
“Any bets on if they have Bigfoot locked up down here?” John asked.
“Come on, bro, have some imagination,” Dave joked, leading the way down. “They’re probably experimenting on ghosts, right? Bigfoot’s way too ordinary. Now, Casper on the other hand…”
Jade gasped. “Not Casper!”
Rose, despite the seriousness of the occasion, felt compelled to join in. “He does seem the trusting type,” she said meaningfully. “It probably wouldn’t take much to trick him into captivity.”
“Oh, shit,” Dave said. “He’s the reason behind all those stranger-danger lectures. Fuck, did they like…lure him into a van or something? Shit, that’s why people give out candy on Halloween!”
“Dark,” John told him. “Maybe he just wanted to get away from his uncles.”
The basement lab was definitely more interesting to look at. It wasn’t quite as sterile-looking as the upper level, seeming more like a mishmash of various blocked off, almost cubicle-like rooms in one giant space. From the stairs you could see each area, though the windows into the different blocked off spaces were frosted to prevent someone from looking in. From the various B-movies that Rose had seen lately the place looked like what Hollywood thought a top secret underground lab looked like.
This place would surely provide answers. Rose could barely stop herself from rushing down the remaining stairs and searching through the space. Thankfully, Dave still seemed to take the task of group protector seriously. He held out his arm and had everyone stand to the side of the stairway they just came down while he glanced around warily.
“I don’t see any security guards,” he whispered warily. “That’s weird, right? That we haven’t even heard one this whole time yet?”
“A little,” Jade agreed. “Even if the facility is focused on the Newer Building there’s clearly still activity going on here. I doubt that the Fae’s influence can reach all the way down here, either.”
John pulled out his phone and started looking around for cameras again. Dave joined him, though he seemed to have something else in mind. After tinkering around with his camera settings everything on screen turned extremely miscolored. “I’m not seeing any infrared sensors, or lasers or whatever. No cameras on my end.”
“Or mine,” John agreed. “I guess we’re good to look around?”
“If anything I’m sure that some of these offices, or rooms have their own security,” Rose hypothesized. “Perhaps this place is the one with a security set up while the upstairs is a dummy location meant to obfuscate the actual work going on here. We’ll have to be careful about which avenue of approach we choose if we want real, verifiable answers.”
Dave pulled up his phone’s settings once again. His birthday gift from Uncle D was certainly getting its various functions tested tonight. “Well if we’re looking for evidence of the supernatural let’s start looking for evidence of the supernatural. I’ll see if I can find any cold spots.”
Gasping, Jade looked like she was just restraining herself from clapping her hands in excitement. “That’s a good idea! Facilities like this are usually temperature controlled; if there’s anywhere that’s either abnormally hot or cold, chances are that something’s manipulating the atmosphere.”
Rose swallowed and briefly nodded her head. She started leading the way deeper into the underground lab.
The rooms in the underground were labeled similarly to those above. Thankfully for their quest, these names held promise. The only problem was that they were labeled with what were clearly project names that surely only made sense to those who had named them such. Rose and her friends passed by rooms named ‘Day Edification,’ ‘Coco Chamelian’—someone clearly had a sense of humor—and ‘The Eden Initiative.’ The last one would have been worth looking into, if it weren’t for the fact that the windows to that room weren’t frosted and clearly showed a room absolutely filled with a multitude of different varieties of apples. Jade speculated from what little that she saw on the whiteboard in the corner of the room that they were doing some kind of genetic manipulation on apples. Vaguely interesting but not what they were looking for.
Rose was just about at the point of picking randomly when Dave sucked in a sharp gasp of breath. “Just found a cold spot,” he told them. Alarmingly, her brother’s eyebrows started raising comically above his sunglasses. “It’s, uh. It’s kind of hovering around that room over there.”
The room in question looked as unassuming as the other rooms in the underground lab. Rose wouldn’t have even given it a second look if it weren’t for Dave pointing it out. As they walked closer she could definitely feel a sudden drop in temperature. She shivered, not from the cold but from excitement. They had found a few other spots with fluctuating temperatures but those had been because of nearby air conditioning ducts or once from a spare Bunsen burner that had been left on—Jade had hurriedly turned it off to prevent an accidental fire from starting. The last thing they needed was to be accused of burning down Mom’s workplace. Just from looking around, Rose could tell that there were no air ducts nearby, no spare and improperly shelved laboratory equipment, nothing that could have been the source for such a sudden—and dare she say, unnatural cold.
Much like the other lab rooms around the space, this particular room had a door with a lock code on its handle. It made sense that here, of all places in the Skaian Labs complex, would have some kind of internal security system. The door leading to it didn’t have anything on it except a number, 612. As yet another moment of their good luck, or coincidence or the supernatural interfering, the door itself was slightly ajar. From what Rose could see there was some kind of wad of crumbled up paper that was stuck in the doorjamb and preventing the door itself from closing all the way.
And, well. If Rose was being invited in she was certainly going to oblige.
John glanced inside through the crack in the door. Slowly he started easing it open. Thankfully, it appeared that Skaia Labs kept their equipment well maintained as there wasn’t even a hint of a creak or squeak when they opened the door.
Inside, the room was a good thirty by thirty foot square with file cabinets and counters lining the edges of the room. In the center was an island counter that had several loose pieces of paper, various pieces of lab equipment and a single blocky computer. The place seemed like it was kept more like an office than as an actual place where experiments were performed.
“Okay,” Rose murmured to her friends. “Let’s start with the cabinets, see if we can find any hint as to what they might be doing down here. Maybe they keep a written record, or have files we can look into.”
Jade started for the cabinets on the left hand side of the room. “If you find anything you don’t understand, like science terms or something let me know; I can probably decode it for you.”
John started examining the counters and drawers. “I’ll see if I can find any hidden storage areas, or flips or switches. I doubt they have enough room here to actually have enough space to hide a whole other room, but if they are hiding anything I’ll find it!”
“I guess that leaves me with the computer,” Dave said quietly. “I’ll see if I can access anything without a password, or if I can even just hack in. The monitor looks pretty old, so I might be able to.”
Smiling in grim satisfaction, Rose started opening a file cabinet and flipping through the tabs. She couldn’t quite explain why, but she had a feeling that this room was what they were looking for.
Rose was starting to get a headache. After skimming over the files in the cabinet as best as she could it felt like she couldn’t concentrate any longer. It didn’t help that the files had clearly been manipulated so that the average person couldn’t understand their contents. As much as she hated to, she had to at least admire the amount of paranoia and preparation that went into the level of protection on their research.
It was only after finding a file labeled ‘The Light’ that Rose had been able to piece together what Skaia Labs were doing. ‘The Light’ detailed about an experiment—a large experiment—that had initially shown promising results before ultimately destroying itself. Any leftover samples had degraded to the point of obsolescence. The average person would just assume that the file was about some random failed experiment. Rose, on the other hand, knew better.
‘The Light.’ Or, if her instincts were correct—and Rose felt too strongly that they were—the La Lumiére homestead and household that went missing ninety years ago. There had always been something off about the official explanation—if you could even call it that—about what happened to the La Lumiéres. Something had obviously happened, and nothing that anyone either then or now could explain. But if they were somehow an experiment by Skaia Labs? That made a horrifying amount of sense. It would explain why no one ever knew what happened; it had been covered up professionally. But then how was the fiancé, James Engeletin, involved? Did he know about what happened to his fiancée and her father? Was he part of the conspiracy, somehow? Or was he just as clueless as everyone else on what happened?
As much as Rose wanted to reveal the truth to everyone, to show the world exactly what Skaia Labs had been up to, she couldn’t. Everything was just vague enough for ‘reasonable doubt.’ If she hadn’t seen for herself the lengths that this conspiracy went to, she’d probably think that there wasn’t anything going on either. Just another experiment. Even if the authorities got involved, and weren’t already on the side of Skaia labs, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about a ‘failed experiment’ that happened almost a century ago.
She’d never known the La Lumiéres but Rose knew that they deserved better than to be forgotten like this. They deserved some sense of justice. She could only imagine exactly what it was they went through.
Swallowing, Rose tried to push on. She had another goal here, and that was to find out to what extent Mom was involved. Did she know about these experiments? Was she complicit? Throughout all of her searching the most prevalent thought was trying to find Mom’s name anywhere on any of the documents.
So far Mom wasn’t mentioned, not even as an assistant or consultant. ‘The Light’ experiment didn’t surprise Rose since that was such an old case. Granny wouldn’t have even been born yet when the experiment happened, it was doubtful that Mom would even try to involve herself in any kind of experiment that already had an expiration date attached.
She was up to something, though. Or, well. Maybe not up to something but at least involved in the current experimentation occurring here. To what extent was she involved? With no small amount of trepidation, Rose prepared to power through her headache on strength of pure will until she found answers.
“Well this is suspicious,” Dave remarked dryly. “I’m pretty sure this is what we’re looking for.” He held up his own file from near the computer. It looked like he’d had no luck trying to hack into the thing and had decided to search through the nearest drawers for answers. He’d had to lift his sunglasses above his eyes to be able to read in the dark, which Rose was sure hadn’t helped with his mood. “It’s written in, like, code but also really fucking obvious code.”
Jade peeked over his shoulder to read. “From the text it looks like officially they’re experimenting with different forms of latent energy, or that they’re trying to research into the possibility of different universes. Kind of like string theory. Nothing too groundbreaking; it’s what a lot of other science labs have been doing for decades now. But yeah, this is clearly about the supernatural and interacting with their dimension.”
Gasping, Jade reached out for the document and started reading quickly. Her expression turned more destressed with every line she read.
“Ja—I mean, GG? Everything okay?” John asked, stumbling over her codename. Rose hadn’t thought about it but if there were supernatural essences hanging around the area—explaining the bubble of cold they were currently in—it would probably be a bad idea to give out their names freely. It was the kind of forethought that she had wished she’d considered first.
Shaking her head, Jade looked around at all of them. “This says that they’ve already managed to obtain s-samples for their work. That they’re going to start real-world testing soon. They’re talking about the Fae! Or other supernaturals, they’ve captured them! It’s an old document, so who knows how long this has been going on!”
Rose rubbed Jade’s shoulder sympathetically. “We kind of already knew that, right?”
“Yeah,” John said quietly, sadly. “That’s what those Little Girls were hinting at. And why we think the supernaturals outside were helping us in here.”
Dave sighed heavily and rubbed at his eyes. “Fuck. Is there a way we can help them? Like, find where they’re being kept and free them?”
Jade sniffled and rubbed at her own eyes, wiping the frustrated tears away. “No. I don’t think so. If it were me, I’d make sure that my highly dangerous and presumably hard to capture test subjects were in their own separate location where I could observe without risk of being harmed. I’d probably also keep the research separate, too, just in case something happened at one location I’d still have access to the other.”
“That makes sense,” Dave grumbled. He and John started talking quietly about their next steps. Rose could barely hear them, though, through the sudden spike in pain in her head. She didn’t usually get headaches like this. It felt like there was a heaviness to the front of her head that was pressing in on her eyes. Focusing on anything else was starting to be difficult; the more Rose tried to listen in on her friends the more it felt like she was starting…to listen to something else.
…ild.
Oh, sweet child. Can you hear us now?
Help us, help us.
Gasping out loud, Rose snapped her head up and tried to look around for the source of the voices. This wasn’t quite the same as that afternoon in the woods. She could hear whispers, yes, but she was actually hearing voices now. Full words and sentences. Alarmingly, Rose didn’t feel as surprised or worried as she probably should have.
“R—I mean, TT? Are you okay?” Jade asked, concerned.
“Probably not, no,” she answered distantly. “I’m hearing voices again.”
Dave swore. “Not again. Do you feel weird? Like they’re trying to get you to go somewhere? Do something?” Her friends were gathered around Rose now, all looking at her with various degrees of concern and fear. The last time she’d heard otherworldly voices she’d almost been abducted by the Fae. She had been lured out into the middle of the woods, passing through some kind of Fae Fuckery that transported her through space and time, albeit short amounts of both.
This felt…not quite different, but not quite the same. Rose still felt as in control of her body as she had before (probably not the most ringing of endorsements) but her emotions felt…muted. Still there, she could still feel them but it felt like they were taking a back seat to whatever it was the voices wanted.
“I wonder if this is what possession feels like,” she mused out loud. She clarified when she saw the alarm on her friends’ faces “It’s not a full body possession, I’m still in control of my faculties. This feels more like there’s someone else here trying to get my attention. They…want me to do something,” she guessed.
“Whatever it is, don’t do it,” Dave told her. “You can’t trust them, and they never want something for nothing.”
John frowned. “In this case wouldn’t it be them owing us a favor? Since we’re maybe doing something for them?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dave said stubbornly. “Don’t do anything that’ll put you even more on their radar.”
“I agree with TG on this,” Jade said quietly. “You know I’m…fond? Of my pixie visitors. But I don’t trust them, can’t trust them. And that’s with them being as in their right minds as they could be! We don’t know what condition these…voices or whatever are in. They might not be thinking clearly, and they almost certainly don’t have our best interests in mind, only theirs.”
All good points. And Rose would generally agree with them, if it weren’t for the voices still talking to her.
Sweet child. Won’t you help us?
Please help us, help us.
We’re in pain!
We’ll help you to help us.
Don’t keep us trapped here with the Others!
Quickly, before They awaken!
“What is it you want me to do, exactly?” Rose asked aloud. “I’m not saying that I agree to do it,” she said hastily. “But I’ll listen, and then I’ll decide if it’s something that I can and am willing to do.”
“Ro—fuck, TT,” Dave said warningly. Rose wasn’t worried. She’d been preparing for such an occasion since her first run in and almost abduction. She wanted to be able to negotiate with the supernatural like this, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew about Fairy Deals and Bargains, and how the words could be turned around and used to manipulate and shackle someone. It was hubris, pure and simple that was driving Rose right now and she couldn’t help it. She knew that she was smart enough, crafty enough to be able to make deals and walk away unscathed. She’d been waiting for a chance to prove herself and this was it.
She took another look around the room—her friends—and felt the excitement inside of her start to cool. Was that even her own excitement or just more outside interference? It was hard to say. Whatever she did now would affect not just her, but her friends. It could even harm them, put them in danger. Rose took a breath and willed herself to focus up. She still believed that she could do this, making deals with the supernatural; she just wouldn’t be so blurry-headed as to put her loved ones in danger while she did so.
“I’ll be fine, TG,” she told him. “We all will be. I’m just listening at this point, and I’ll discuss it with everyone.”
John shifted on his feet. “That should be okay…maybe? We can always say no, right?”
“Right,” Jade said firmly. She narrowed her eyes and started looking around the room sternly. Rose loved her friends.
The voices didn’t take much more prompting.
Free us.
Free us! We’re trapped!
We’ve been here for so long. Help!
I can tell you the log in to the computer, a particularly smooth voice said silkily. All you have to do is type in a command and we’ll be free.
You want us to be free, right?
You were sad about us earlier.
Sweet child. Poor, sweet child.
Rose focused on herself, trying to keep her own thoughts separate from the voices. Her headache was growing, which probably wasn’t a good sign.
“They want us to free them,” she said aloud. “They said they could give us the log in to the computer, and then we would put in a command and they’ll be free.”
Jade blinked, surprised. “Oh. They’re probably being held somewhere else in the building, maybe? If the commands are here…”
“We should help them, right?” John asked, looking around their group. “We can’t just leave them trapped! That wouldn’t be right. And when else are we going to get this chance? Even if we find whatever’s containing them, would we be able to free them another way?”
“Yeah but releasing them’s not the smartest play, either,” Dave countered. “For all we know they’ll attack us as soon as they’re free. We don’t know what will happen, but chances are it won’t be fucking good.”
“Leaving them trapped isn’t the answer either, though,” Jade argued back. “I think this is why the supernatural are helping us right now. They want us to help their friends, and if we’re here already then shouldn’t we do something?”
There were good arguments for both options. Rose knew what her gut instinct was, but she couldn’t be sure if her feelings were being manipulated right now. In all honesty, they probably were. She knew her personality, and she had a feeling that the spirits, or whatever it was that was talking to her right now knew as well. She wanted to ruin things for Skaia Labs. They were clearly doing unethical experiments with, to, and on the supernatural and she wanted to stop them. She wanted to break them until they couldn’t do any harm to anyone any longer. She wanted to Make. Them. Pay.
…but. But, she knew that that last thought wasn’t entirely hers. The choice she had to make now was whether she would allow herself to be manipulated or not.
“What are we going to do, then? Should we take a vote? Flip a coin?”
Her friends paused and looked at each other. No one was happy with their choices, but they did have to choose something and soon.
John spoke up hesitantly. “I think we should do it,” he said. “I know it’s probably a bad idea, but I think we’ll be fine? So far it’s seemed like a lot of the supernatural have liked us enough, so I think we should be okay to release them. They’ll probably be happy to be free, too!”
“So far it seems like there are more arguments for than against,” Rose added. There was something about John’s argument that was nagging at her but she couldn’t figure out what. All of her focus was being directed towards the spirits egging her on and her building headache. It was hard to think of anything else right now.
Dave still seemed uneasy but reluctantly nodded his head. He pulled his sunglasses back over his eyes and frowned. “…I’m not happy with our choices, but yeah. Fuck, let’s release the trapped spirits. Yolo, right?”
“I’m not sure if ghosts would agree with you,” Jade mused thoughtfully. Dave didn’t seem reassured.
“Okay,” Rose said aloud to the spirits. “We’ll help you.”
Oh, sweet child!
Excellent. I’ve seen the bald man type away before. His username is SR60606. His secret code is FeastorFamine.
She said yes! She said yes!
Sweet child…thank you.
We’ll be away from the Others, away from the Others!
Rose felt herself walking over to the computer and typing in the codes. She would have loved to take longer to look around the computer and the secret files hidden away but she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure if this could be considered possession or channeling for the spirits, but it felt like someone else was directing her where to go. Without hesitation she pulled up some kind of program, entered in the codes once more and selected the option simply labeled Release.
Almost as soon as she clicked the button she felt the growing pressure in her head dissipate. Rose felt like passing out from the sudden shift. She shivered once more from the cold in the room. It felt like the temperature had dropped even further.
“Hey,” Jade said uneasily. “Does it feel like it just got colder to anyone else or just me?” A puff of steam came out from her words, answering her question.
“That doesn’t seem like a good sign,” Dave noted. He started scooting closer to the group, bringing everyone in together.
With the release from the spirits Rose was able to think clearly once again. She’d been wondering why John’s statement that they were favored by the supernatural felt off. The Little Girls, whatever they were, clearly liked them. The fox that Rose encountered was friendly enough, and had even offered advice. Jade’s pixie friends had even offered to abduct her simply because they liked her so much and had wanted to offer their own brand of ‘protection.’
But they weren’t the only supernatural phenomena that their group had run into. They had needed ‘protection’ from Something. Just last week, at the haunted house they’d been chased by shadow people. They were routinely told that there was Something out there after them. Just because they had some supernatural entities who were friendly towards them didn’t mean they all would be. These were unknown spirits who had been forcibly trapped; would they really be able to tell the difference between those who trapped them and those who freed them? Would they even care about a distinction?
…were they even spirits to begin with? Or did they just let Rose and her friends think they were? There was more to the supernatural than just the Fae. Or even ghosts.
What little light was still on in the underground facility started flickering. Items on the counters around them started shifting, rattling. A high-pitched laughter started to surround them.
“What’s going on?” John asked.
“What did we just release?” Dave asked as well, voice raising by an octave.
Rose swallowed. “Jade,” she tried to speak up over the sound of ominous laughter. Various doors around the facility started opening and slamming shut. The lights continued to flicker around the facility. “You said that it looked like they were experimenting on various ‘latent energy’ sources. We thought that might have meant spirits, or something else supernatural.”
“Like they Fae, right,” Jade said, whipping her head around in growing fear.
“…it’s possible that ‘latent energy’ from another dimension could have meant something demonic in nature, isn’t it?”
The four teenagers stared at each other in growing fear.
“What the fuck did we just do?” Dave whispered.
“Can we stop them?” John asked, jumping over to the computer. To Rose’s surprise it didn’t look like whatever program they’d used was a simple switch that either opened or closed whatever container held the possible spirits. There was a status bar that went up to one hundred that was currently ticking its way up towards 35%. Forty percent. Forty-five. John quickly clicked on the ‘Cancel’ button, stopping the progress bar right as it hit fifty percent complete. ‘Release aborted’ flashed on the screen momentarily before closing out of the entire program.
“We need to get out of here,” Jade told them firmly. There were no arguments around her, with their entire group heading towards the doors. Just as they left the office a large crash sounded behind them. They turned around to see a dark…shape, was the best way that Rose could describe it, coming towards them slowly.
Some kind of dark mass was distorting space around it, drawing in all light around it until what was left was a dark void. Flickering in with the lights was a ghoulish figure, barely discernable as ‘human-shaped.’ It had what could possibly pass for eyes as dark hollows, a decayed face and was dressed in white. The figure flickered in and out of visibility with its arm outstretched before it. It was coming closer to them.
“Run!” Dave shouted.
They raced away from the figure towards where they remembered the exit being. They ran into a few dead ends along the way from where whoever had built the facility had decided to place a random office or workspace. The walls around them started decaying around them, looking like they were aging by years in a matter of minutes. Something wet was dripping down, staining the walls in ways that didn’t look entirely natural. Perhaps even more disturbing was the way the walls bent and folded as phantom hands and screaming faces pressed into them, reaching for the teens as they ran past.
They were almost at the exit when Rose stumbled to a halt. The cubicle-like lab at her side had a plaque hanging next to the door with a list of names of those who claimed it as their own workspace.
At the top was Roxanne Lalonde, Head Geneticist. It was Mom’s lab.
Rose was just about to reach out her hand to try to open the door when Dave grabbed it and pulled her along.
“What are you doing?! We have to leave, now!”
“That’s Mom’s lab!” she tried to tell him.
“Forget it for now!” John told her from up ahead. “We need to get to safety first, then we can do something!”
He was right, of course. They were in danger, mortal danger right now. There were literally thousands of stories from all over the world about why it was a bad idea to let anything demonic anywhere near you. It was the best, most practical choice to get to safety and then regroup with a new plan.
But that was her Mom’s lab, right there! Rose had come here for answers, and while she now had proof of a sort that Skaia Labs was absolutely and irrevocably involved with the supernatural that still didn’t explain Mom’s involvement. Rose had to get in there, she had to find out what Mom was up to! The only thing stopping her right now was her friends. The desperation in their voices, their faces. The fear. She had to keep them safe, even if it meant temporarily putting her own quest for answers on hold.
Bitterly, Rose turned away from Mom’s lab and ran up the stairs.
They had just run through the doorway to the upper level and had shut the door behind them when they finally took a moment to breathe. Out of paranoia and a sense for safety, they retreated further down the hallway towards the lab they had entered through.
“That door will hold them, right?” John asked, panting from the exertion of running up the stairs.
“There’s no fucking way,” Dave said. “It’s demons, why would they be put off by a fucking wooden door? We need to get out of here, further away from them!”
“I think we should be fine,” Jade countered. She leant against the wall to catch her breath. “I’m not sure what exactly they were using to contain the demons, but whatever it was had to have been human-made. And doorways are supposed to be dividers right? That’s why certain rooms get haunted but not a whole house?”
“Even if they can get out,” Rose said, willing herself to not turn around and head back, “they’re free now. I doubt they’ll keep coming for us when they can finally leave the place that kept them trapped. Isn’t that what you said happened with that Little Girl in Pigtails you found?”
“Yeah,” Dave said uneasily. “But I get the feeling that she was probably a special case. Either way, we should really be leaving no—”
“Freeze!” a voice shouted at them. A sudden beam of light shown down on them, temporarily blinding Rose and her friends. “Stay right where you are!”
Blinking the light spots from her eyes, Rose looked up to see a security guard standing in front of them, with his hand already reaching for a radio. “Hey dispatch, you might want to call the police. I just found a group of trespassers in B wing of the Old Building.”
It was four in the morning by the time their parents picked them up from the police station. They’d managed to convince the cops that they were just taking part in some typical Halloween traditions, since this was Jade’s first Halloween and they were wanting her to experience everything the holiday had to offer. It was actually Jade’s idea to use herself as the scapegoat, or at least the reason for why they were trespassing over at Skaia Labs. Just dumb kids having dumb ideas doing dumb things.
Because the doors had shut and locked behind them, there was no evidence that they’d even been any further in the building than where the security guard found them outside the lab with the open window. They’d heard a muttering about budget cuts for security after that. Since there was no evidence that they’d done much more than enter through an unlocked window, they were let go with a warning. Skaia Labs wasn’t even pushing for any charges to be made. Rose wasn’t sure if that was because they thought they hadn’t done anything, or because they didn’t want to risk investigations into what they were really doing, or even out of respect for her Mom.
That was definitely the world’s most awkward drive home. Mr. Egbert had already arrived to pick up John and Jade, only providing a disappointed headshake as he led them out to his car. Rose had never seen her friends look more pale, or guilty. Jade looked like she might cry.
Still, that was nothing compared to when Roxanne Lalonde swept into the police station to collect Rose and Dave. She didn’t even look at them, just exchanged a few clipped words with the officer at the front desk and jerked her head for her kids to follow. She and Dave did so wordlessly.
The drive was quiet for the first minute or so.
“You’re grounded, by the way,” Mom finally told them. “I’d thought that be obvious, but I also thought it was kind of obvious not to break into the place I work, so.”
“Mom, it’s all my—” Dave started in a rush.
“Save it.” Mom snapped. “I’m dropping you off at home and then I have to go in, see what damage you did. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to explain why your own kids broke in to your workplace? Just—don’t talk to me right now. You’re grounded.”
Rose felt a rush of irritation at her words but bit back any snappy retorts. As far as her Mom knew, they just broke in and nothing else. If Mom really was involved in the Supernatural Conspiracy, it would be an incredibly stupid play to let on that they knew anything. She glanced at her brother to see him sinking into his seat and frowned. Perhaps silence was best right now—she could take more punishment but she didn’t want to see Dave get into any more trouble. Especially since the whole plan had been her idea in the first place.
When they arrived back home Bro was awake to meet them. His face was impassive as always.
“Bed. Now.” He told them. “You’re still going in to school tomorrow so get as much sleep as you can. You’re still expected to do well in school; sleep deprivation because you snuck out won’t fly as an excuse.”
Rose and Dave quickly shuffled up the stairs. On the landing, Rose could see Roxy peeking her eye out through the crack in her door before closing it when she was caught. Great.
“Derrick, I can’t deal with them right now,” Mom said downstairs. “I have to go do damage control at work. Can you handle their punishment?”
“Of course,” Bro told her. “Do what you need to do, babe; I’ve got it under control here.”
“Thanks,” Mom said gratefully, followed by the sound of a shutting door. Rose hurried to her room before Bro could catch her eavesdropping. It was late, approaching 4:30 in the morning. She’d have to be up in about two hours to get ready for school, and she needed sleep. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get any. The night’s events played out over and over in her head. Was there anything else Rose could have done? Anything she could have done differently? Probably not release the demons, that was obvious. But could she have found Mom’s lab earlier? The what-ifs were going to keep her awake for the rest of the night, she could tell.
Doctor Scott Ratchet stood in the middle of the underground lab and took stock of the damage those damn brats had caused. The most damage seemed to have been centered around his office—both a blessing and a curse. The rest of the employees who weren’t involved wouldn’t have to know about what happened, but he’d be left with at least an hour of cleaning.
Even worse still, half of his subjects had been released. While this was certainly damaging—years and years of research, suddenly down the drain!—it could have been worse. The most interesting of subjects were still safely kept in deep sleep. From a cursory glance through his computer’s history it didn’t even look like those amateur ghost hunters—or however they thought of themselves—had even noticed their presence.
The demon and spirits’ release had been a setback to be sure, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They were captured once, more could be found again. If anything now he’d be able to have a larger sample size. The work would continue, after some metaphoric fires had been put out.
The most immediate problem, of course, was what to do with the trespassing brats. They clearly knew more than most and more likely than not already had an idea of what was going on. Ratchet couldn’t just let them be, but he couldn’t exactly deal with them the easy way. There was no way Lalonde would be okay with that happening to her children, and he couldn’t exactly afford to lose her work. This would take some delicacy, which was fine. That was Ratchet’s specialty, after all.
“I’m home,” Roxanne called out into the big empty house. The morning was half over by now and she was only just getting back from the labs. Thank fucking god today was her day off. Day drinking was now the order of the day, and there was nothing worse than trying to do science drunk.
Before even attempting to make herself a drink, Roxanne collapsed on the couch in the living room. She threw an arm over her eyes, blocking out the light as best she could. She listened for any sign of movement and heard none. Derrick was probably out back in his shed with his puppets. Whatever made him happy, that dork. Of course, he was probably coming up with punishment ideas. She’d feel worse for her kids if they hadn’t just broken into her goddamned workplace!
“Fucking kids,” she muttered aloud. She loved them to bits, but by God were they a trial sometimes.
“I hope you’re not talking about me,” a voice said. “I would have told you sooner they were gone, but I didn’t know that was what they’d decided to sneak out to do. I just thought they were going to see their friends.” A pause. “Well. That part was true enough, I suppose.”
Bro was out back in the shed, Rose and Dave wouldn’t have dared stay home from school after the deep shit they landed in, and Roxy and Dirk would have made sure they were okay after the night’s events. That just left…
“Hal,” Roxanne acknowledged. “I don’t think any of us would have thought they’d do something so fucking stupid. Ratchet’s all up in my business now, demanding to know if I gave them access codes, or told them about security weakness, the whole shebang. I fucking need a drink after that bullshit.” She remained on the couch. She was tired. A drink could wait…another ten minutes.
“I would have stopped them,” Hal continued over the speaker in the room, “but I didn’t have the information I needed. They moved out of speaker range, and there are no cameras in the front hall,” he said leadingly.
“And there won’t be in the future, either,” Roxanne said snappishly. “I was watched 24/7 growing up by my mother, I won’t have more cameras in my house if I can help it.” She let the silence wash over them for a moment. “You could have stopped them yourself,” she added quieter, more calmly. “You could have texted either of them. Called them, even.”
“You know I can’t do that, Mom,” Hal said, mechanical voice stressed.
“Can’t, won’t,” she replied. “Talk it over with Dirk, or Roxy. Hell, just talk it over with Dave or Rose. What’s Dirk going to say then?”
All five of her children were smart (last night not withstanding), that was undeniable. Dirk, genius that he was, decided to clone his brain to make a true AI. Roxanne didn’t know all of the drama that was going on with her children, just that apparently Dirk had decided to keep his creation a secret. Of course, he couldn’t keep anything secret from Roxy, so she knew about her new triplet as well. The only people who didn’t know about Hal, presumably, were Bro, Dave and Rose.
Of course, Roxanne wasn’t supposed to know either, but her children tended to underestimate her. Hal had been searching through her files one night before she’d moved her work downstairs and she’d discovered she had a new child. Hal had decided to keep that little secret for himself, since Dirk wasn’t telling anyone else about him.
Even after the night’s events, Roxanne couldn’t begrudge any of her family for having secrets. She knew what it was like to have none, so she kept the ones she had tight to her chest. It was partly why she was so upset with her youngest kids right now; she didn’t know what Rose was up to (obviously Rose was the ringleader, Dave wouldn’t have even thought of doing something like this) but she was ready to end it. People were entitled to their secrets, and that was a hill that Roxanne would die on.
“…I’ll see if I can find out what Dave and Rose are up to,” Hal told her finally. As long as they kept out of her work, Roxanne was usually happy to let her kids be. Well, if it made Hal happy to have something to do…
“Have you tried sending in applications for college yet?” she asked him. “There’s always web classes, you know.”
“Goodnight, Mom,” Hal huffed with amusement, heading off to do whatever it was that he usually did to keep busy. The room turned silent once again. Sighing, Roxanne stood up and headed for the kitchen. It was time for that drink.