Chapter Text
Ally had been told emphatically by her father that she was not allowed to go down into the abandoned labs below the building. They’d been converted to storage units when the building was repurposed for records and bookkeeping and all that boring stuff of the BSAA so there was nothing of interest down there but it was still dangerous anyway. So of course that was the first thing she did.
Both her parents worked long hours and neither wanted their eight-year-old daughter home alone after school, and Ally had no close enough friends with which to spend those hours. Most of those days she spent with her grandparents, especially her doting grandfather, but they too were still involved in the work life and would sometimes be away. So her father would pick her up and bring her to his office building. It was a decent compromise; a little more time with her dad, somewhat, and, supposedly, time to sit down and get her homework and reading done. She could wander as she pleased, grab a snack from the cafeteria, and hole up somewhere quiet to focus.
Or that’s what she said. She’d give her dad a kiss on the cheek and, backpack over her shoulder, head for the less used hallways and then make a beeline for the stairway. The elevator did go to the basement levels but they required a key to go down and she didn’t want anyone to happen to see where the car was going anyway, just in case.The stairway, however, and the door to the first of the basement levels were unlocked. Either no one noticed or didn’t care. Judging by the occasional cigarette and other things she’d found on that first level she guessed the latter. Even adults needed their getaways and for that reason she’d learned to be sneaky coming and going and had perused those first couple of rooms of the first level quickly.
As she was told, there was little. Boxes of old books and hard copies of records, spare furniture, some unused safes, the fans that would get hauled out in summertime and space heaters in winter, and so on. Boring office stuff.
The building had once been one of the BSAA’s research and training facilities, but with the decrease of bio-terrorism and BOW activity over the years those departments of the BSAA had been downsized and relocated. The BSAA still had a heavy hand in monitoring pharmaceutical activities and viral research, its original purpose, but there hadn’t been an outbreak in a long time so its focus was in the usual business and government dealings and other red tape stuff. The other kids used to perk up when she said her dad worked for the BSAA, asking if he fought monsters or traveled the world, and then would lose interest when she informed them he just had a desk job.
Ally crouched down by the door to the basement and listened for a long minute. No scuffling of feet, no voices, no weird slaps and grunts of people being gross, so she opened the door and slid into the dark. She knew the layout almost by heart now and hurried to where she could turn her light on without being seen should someone come in, but more importantly she hurried because she hated the dark. She really did. The stories her grandpa used to tell her were burned like brands into her mind and despite knowing full well no lickers or hunters or other extinct things were going to grab her she wanted to be able to see to be sure.
She counted steps and she jogged down a hallways and turned into the third room where she turned on her phone light and sat in a spare chair, spinning it around to assure herself there were no monsters.
The monsters were all gone. People like her daddy kept track of that and the brave BSAA agents made sure of it.
Still, some shadows made her shudder.
She dug into her backpack and pulled out a large flashlight, trading its broad, warm light from her phone’s colder one. A big flashlight said ‘explorer’ more than a phone ever could, but she kept her phone handy should she find something interesting to film and show her classmates later.
Poking her head back out into the hall for a last check, she hurried to the basement stairs. The second basement level was accessible from there and had a few more interesting things: old lockers, a few safes still locked and functioning, bathrooms and showers that still worked, obsolete computers long wiped, and more old furniture and boxes of records that nobody needed anymore and would someday probably just be burned.
She crossed this level to get to another set of stairs that led down to what she dramatically referred to as The Dead Zone. Whatever power there’d been down there was long shut off, pipes silent, and the only movement that of rats.
She hated rats. Not the cute, fat little things that sat on your shoulder in school, but the nasty wild ones that bit and probably carried The Plague. She always wore her boots on days she knew she was coming to her dad’s work.
The last of the power on the second level stopped at the door at the bottom of the stairs to the lower levels, keeping that door locked behind a large deadbolt. Or it was supposed to; the lock had been broken for a long time and no one came down to check it.
Discovering that had been the moment Ally went from childish scrounging through forgotten storage rooms to exploring the Unknown. A lone agent in the oppressive, silent dark. She’d been down there many times and it scared her every time.
She approached the door and paid respect to that dark, shutting off her flashlight and staring at that pinpoint of light on the lock; the last sign of life and civilization. She pushed open the door and slid inside and didn’t turn her light back on until the door clicked shut behind her. She double-checked her phone; the signal was weak but still there should she get locked in or something happened. She’d get in trouble, but knowing she could call for help kept her fear at bay. She shushed her shadow (only quiet in the Dead Zone) and then moved on.
She’d explored most of this floor already. As far as she could tell there were two more below, but it was harder and harder to get to them. The space got heavy the farther down she went; the dust thick and the dark itself pressing down, insulted at the presence of a little girl. She concluded that as long as she was a polite guest it wouldn’t really harm her.
There was a big open space she guessed was once a gym, or some kind of training area. A few mats were left and started to rot long ago. There were rooms she couldn’t get into, physically locked and requiring a key or the power locks dead. Some doors still had plaques labeling their purposes: offices, training rooms, records. The bathrooms didn’t work and no water flowed, save a corner where it crept down the wall into a moldy puddle.
The next floor was worse: labs with some remaining equipment that made her mind jump to horror video games. Ally managed to wedge her way into a partially blocked door into an operating theater, but only the observatory part. The doors to the room below were well sealed.
Shining her light down into that room made it some how creepier than normal, and so she filmed it for her adventure videos and then never went back.
Her heartbeat always increased at this point, the rats skittering around just outside her light. She could see their red eyes watching her.
There was one last set of doors to the floor below, and while she’d opened them and looked into that level something chilled her and she decided to keep looking around on the fourth floor. She passed her light over that door and considered: was the day the day she go below? Should she wait?
What time was it? She checked her phone: she still had time, but her signal was getting dangerously weak. She eyed the door, then decided to be the polite guest she was supposed to be and ask.
“Should I go down today?” she whispered, so low her voice was barely more than a breath. It still roared n her ears in the silence.
Nothing moved, there was no sound, and yet the oppressiveness seemed to ease just slightly, her heartbeat not as fast. She took that as an invitation and stepped forward.
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” she whispered to the dark. She was old enough now to know she was probably being silly but you never could be sure in dark creepy places and it was best just to be cautious.
She pushed open the dead door and descended the staircase back around to the last door. The air was so heavy and stale she was sweating, the temperature forever constant. She pushed open the last guardian and entered the heart of the darkness at the bottom of it all, her flashlight shining around the dank hallway. This was the farthest she’d ever gone, gazing upon this last floor but never entering. Her fear rose, but also a bit of disappointment. Once she explored this place, what was left? Oh she always scrounged around the other floors, always finding new things, but this was the Final. The Boss level, the…
She took a breath, rechecked the door to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind her, and then gently shut it.
The hallways had many doors indented against large rooms that made shadows that shifted and jumped out at her. The doors were huge, thick slabs that moved on a track, now dead. The first room was open, nothing but a big space beyond, though chains lay on the floor. What was this place? Training up above, labs below, and now… She pulled out her phone and filmed, scanning around the room. She used to narrate her progress on the upper levels, but here she stayed silent. She could edit it later.
The next room was the same, and so were the others. Big empty rooms with nothing in them, infested with rat droppings and bugs and other things, but otherwise silent and dead. The other floors had remnants of human life in them, which was creepy, but this had something else. Nothing. There were rooms but they were dead spaces, a large hall of big empty locked rooms.
Like a prison. Ally shuddered.
Deciding she’d done enough for today, she began to make her way back down the hall when something caught her eye. A light. A small, red pinpoint of light in the pressing, endless dark. She stared at it.
There was no power down here, how was this door still active? She shone her light on the source; a keypad, just as dusty and grimy as everything else, but still active. Hand trembling, she took a couple pictures with her phone, then, slowly, her finger inched towards a button.
She reared back and stepped away.
Not today. She was not ready for the dark’s secrets today.
She hurried back to the last door and ascended, crossed the abandoned levels and finally up to the broken door on the second basement level. Again she performed her ritual, shutting off her flashlight and curtsying to the dark, before she left and fled through the storage rooms and back upstairs.
Life, light, noise even in the quiet places. She settled herself into a corner with her schoolbooks and pretended she’d been there the whole time and pulled out a pencil.
Ally didn’t do her homework, her mind locked on that single little light in the heart of the darkness.