Jason Luthor - Floor 21

I watch as the doctor moves to the wall and taps at a few buttons. Within a second a panel slides away and a tray slides out. Even from here I can tell what I’m looking at. The stuff’s like pure muscle covered in splotchy skin. Creep. It’s kinda disgusting seeing it in light as bright as this. For the first time in my life, I’m actually looking at it pretty clearly. It quivers a bit, like it’s reacting to Rivera’s presence. Even the doctor seems a bit hesitant as he approaches it.

“Got to be careful with this stuff,” he says as he picks up a needle from a nearby tray. “You remember what happened to Doctor Carson.”

The Security guy nods. “Whatever happened to him?”

“Well, we couldn’t get him out of the Creep. It wrapped him up so quick that he wasn’t able to breathe. Your brain really doesn’t do well without oxygen for more than a minute or two.”

“Damn. That sucks.”

“Yes. It’s not like this tower’s abundant with doctors.” He shakes his head, breathing in. “Ah well. That’s what happens when you get careless.” Rivera angles the needle toward the Creep, putting the sharp tip at the skin and plunging it inward.

It screams.

God. I don’t know how, but it lets loose this piercing screech that makes my teeth hurt. I can’t help but suck in my breath when it happens, then slap a hand across my mouth. For a moment Rivera pauses, looking around. Even the Security guy tenses up, raising his gun as he takes a step forward into the room. So, for the longest moment, I don’t breathe. I just sit and wait, watching as they look around. They’re trying to find out if they really heard what they think they heard.

Then the Creep screeches again, and Rivera’s eyes whip back to its surface. He quickly fills the syringe with, I don’t know how to put it, blood, I guess. It’s blackish purple, and it comes streaming out until the doctor’s got a full sample in that needle of his. He yanks backward as the Creep suddenly shivers, jolting toward him with a long, fleshy stalk it generates from its skin. Rivera jumps out of the way, just missing the blow, while the Security guy slams the button near the sliding panel. The sample vanishes back into the wall, and Rivera is left standing there, panting. He doubles over, heaving for a moment before he stands back up.

“See what I’m talking about?” he asks as he regains his composure. “It just takes one second of hesitation. You can’t play around with this stuff.”

Again the Security guy nods, but he’s pretty clearly freaked out, too. Hell, from where I am in the vent, all I want to do is scream. I keep a lid on it, though. Literally, I never take my hand off my mouth because I don’t want to risk losing it. I’m just seconds away from waking the dead if I don’t keep my mouth jammed. Still, I’m able to hold it together as I watch Rivera walk back to the patient’s side. The poor guy in the chair is starting to slam back and forth, but the restraints won’t let him loose, and every time he tries to talk, his voice is muffled by the strap around his mouth. I can’t help but think of Danny. Did he have to go through this?

Rivera yanks up the man’s sleeve. “Proceeding with the injection,” he says, leaning close to the guy’s arm. “Hold still, you idiot. This will go a lot worse for you if I mess this up.”

That doesn’t seem to do much to calm the guy down, and he keeps trying to scream as he struggles against his restraints. Rivera puts the tip of the needle to the guy’s upper arm, its edge sinking into the guy’s skin, and I watch as the purplish black liquid inside shoots into the prisoner’s body.

Then, for the first time since I’ve arrived here, someone sees me.

I can tell. He’s looking straight at me, his eyes wide and desperate as he tries to shout for help. He wants me to do something. He wants me to get out of the vent, take down Security, and free him from his restraints. I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. Instead, I have to watch as the whites of the man’s eyes suddenly surge with a blackish color, his body going rigid for a second as he just wails, and I can almost feel his pain from where I’m hiding. His screaming stops as Doctor Rivera pulls the needle from his arm. For a few minutes the man is stuck, his every muscle tensed up. Then he goes limp, the whites of his eyes returning as he collapses back into the chair.

I really wish I wouldn’t have seen this.

I’m recording from my room. I don’t know what to say about what I’ve seen today. When I got back home, Mom was acting as if she didn’t care that I’d been forever. For the first time in my life, I paid attention to her kinda crazy behavior and just… I took notes. Mentally. She’s always done this thing where, like, even if the circumstances are bad, she finds a way to be deliriously happy. That’s how it always is with her. She’s either depressed and crazy, or ecstatic and a little less crazy.

Now, I can’t help but think of that woman Stella whenever I look at Mom.

I retreated to my room when I got home and spent the rest of the day there. As far as I can tell, nobody noticed I was gone. When I got back, I exited through the same grate I’d used to travel up to Floor 1. I didn’t notice anything unusual then. From what I saw, nobody’d even come back to the Cleanup closet. Guess it was a good day for the Cleanup crew. I’d guess any day where you don’t have to mop up vomit is a good day, though.

Anyway, I thought about telling Allison about what I saw. But what would I say? I’d be putting her life in danger. So, for now, I’m just keeping this to myself. Poor Danny, though. I mean, if he had to go through that.

That’s probably the part I regret most about everything. The fact that I saw a guy get injected and didn’t do anything. I dunno, it’s just… damn. I felt helpless. You always kinda think back on what you could’ve done, but really, if I’d tried to help, then Security would have put me down. That wouldn’t have helped anyone.

Maybe there’s some way I can tell other people about this, though. Let them know what’s going on up there. Who knows? Maybe I can even go back sometime. Find some new dirt on what’s happening on Floor 1. Do you know how pissed everyone would be to find out how nice they’re living up there? Not to mention the whole, you know, injecting people full of Creep thing. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll head back up there next week and get some new dirt on this whole mess. Then I’ll find a way of telling people without getting myself taken into Reinforcement. Hm. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe I can put out a newsletter or something.

God. That’s a pathetic idea. I need something that would really get people’s attention.

Hold on. Somebody’s knocking at my door. Probably Mom. Or, hopefully, Dad. Suddenly I don’t care how weird they are. I just want them to be okay.

I watched as two men from Security came into my room. They didn’t even wait for me to open the door.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up here, back on Floor 1. This time I walked through the front door. Strange thing about it is, the golden number “1” on the doorway in the stairwell looks so cheap in comparison to the hallways inside.

Even if I’m about to get my mind wiped, at least I got to see the inside of the halls this time. They’re a lot more gorgeous when you actually get to walk through them, and I saw things I didn’t get a chance to when I was trying to work my way through the vents. Like, the paintings. We don’t have many of those on my floor, or anywhere else. Floor 1’s got them on every wall. Fun fact? The paintings change images. At least some of them do, anyway. I saw it happen when they were marching me to my cell.