Jason Luthor - Floor 21

The Security guard shakes his head as he steps away from the door. “I’m telling you, doctor, there’s something wrong with these samples. This one looks agitated, too.”

“Well, I can’t very well go through every sample in the entire facility! Maybe you’d like me to play some music and make it happy? Would you like to sing for it? Or what do you think is going to satisfy the samples?”

As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you what will satisfy the sample.

The Creep lashes out from the tray, grabbing the doctor like a moist tongue whipping around his wrist and yanking him toward the tray. Rivera screams as it happens, and Security doesn’t waste any time. He whips out a knife, but believe me— this is the most amazing knife of all time. He flicks a button on the side, and suddenly it lights up orange, like it’s burning, and he jabs downward into the Creep. The stuff screams as he does this, thrashing and quivering like melting jelly before it suddenly deflates into this ashy black heap. Doctor Rivera collapses to the ground, panting like a tired dog, while the Security guard reaches down to help him.

He does this just as the room becomes bathed in red light. It flashes over and over, like it’s trying to induce a seizure. The worst part is the siren. It wails like an angry animal until it’s so loud that my teeth clench the strap in front of my mouth, my head splitting as I try to brace against the pain. I can feel the noise bouncing around between my ears and rattling my brain. Rivera looks outside, then back at the guard, and asks, “What’s going on?”

Security hesitates a second as he looks toward the window, then yanks the doctor to his feet. “Creep Incident. Must be.”

“ Here? ” the doctor asks, the color in his face shriveling away. “On Floor 1?”

“We need to get you somewhere safe,” Security replies as he shoves the doctor by the shoulder, ushering him outside. They’re like panicked animals as they rush to the far exit of the laboratory and vanish into the outside hall. There’s just one problem, though. The entire time I’m the one left sitting there, and all I can wonder is: What about me?

Through the windows I watch as the Creep floating around in those tanks start to bubble and stretch, their tendrils gluing to the surface of the glass. They begin to “breathe,” expanding and contracting every few seconds, then quivering as they push against the inside of the tanks they’re trapped in. I watch as one of the containers bursts open, flesh and muscle spilling out and down the side of the tank. My eyes zip around my wrists, trying to figure out some way to get myself free. The straps are built into the chair, though, and no matter how much I struggle, I can’t slip free. I rock back and forth, trying to do whatever the hell I can possibly do to just get out. But the whole time my face is frozen to the outside, watching as the Creep starts spreading along the wall and inching toward the window. Somehow it knows I’m in here. It’s coming for me.

The door to the lab flies open, and a Security member steps in, and he’s rocking this huge tank across his back. The rifle in his hand is dripping fire, and the only thing I can think of?

This… is… awesome.

Why don’t we get any cool weapons on the lower floors?

This guy just lets out hell with it until half the room is engulfed by fire. He stands back, swiping his gun back and forth, and just douses the entire right wall. I don’t know who this guy is, but even if I’m just getting one more day to live, I’ll take it. It’s not until I start panting that I realize I’ve been holding my breath for practically a minute, and this guy, whoever he is, marches straight to the lab. He stands outside the glass for a minute, tapping at some controls I can’t see. Only thing about him is, for Security, he’s kinda, I dunno, thin. Especially compared to all the other guards I’ve seen on Floor 1.

The door on my right slides open, and he dashes inside. I’m really starting to pick up on the fact that he’s a pretty scrawny dude at this point, but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers. He doesn’t bother with anything else in the room, and, you know, I kinda like being someone’s priority for once. Feels nice. Anyway, he undoes the straps holding me to the chair, and I practically fly into his arms.

“Oh my God,” I sigh, practically saying all my words in one breath. “Thank you so much.”

The guy has this musky laugh that’s filtered through his mask. Then he steps back, adjusting the strap and sliding the helmet off. Still, the moment his light brown skin comes into view, I already know who it is.

“Dad!” I scream as I launch into him again, and he chuckles for just a second. He’s already motioning me to the door.

“Come on, Jacko,” he says, heading to the exit. “We don’t have time to waste. We’ve got to go.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agree. I mean, of course, I agree; what else would I do? He’s already outside when I pause, looking over my shoulder. Doctor Rivera forgot something. Finders, keepers, right?

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.”