Stealing Silence(19)
Avalon could not make any sense of the room. What could possibly be hazardous about any of it? Puzzled, she spied rows of stacked wooden crates with the biohazard warning symbol emblazoned on their sides. A crowbar leaned up against the side of box and she picked it up, forcing the flattened end into the crack between wall and lid pulled up. With a squeak, the lid rose until she could look inside the box.
There, in the crate, was a skeleton, resting in shredded newspaper. It was not human, but some kind of animal. The bones were huge, and now that she knew she was looking at bones, she realized that the odd sizing of the crates was for even larger bones. Bones so large, they could only be one thing. Dinosaur bones.
“Mitch, they are dinosaur bones.” Silence greeted her words. “Mitch? Mitch can you hear me?”
She looked back to the door and realized that the room had cut off her communication. She knew if she spent too long in the room, they would panic, so she decided to take a sample of the bones with her. She closed the lid and went back over to the trough. As she stepped closer to it, she realized that it was not rocks at all, but smaller bones that littered the base. Working quickly, she took a multi-zippered plastic bag out of her backpack and scooped up some of the bones, being careful to not let her fingers come in contact with anything in the room. She also scooped up a sample of the paste, and for extra safety, she double bagged them both and tucked them back inside the backpack.
Zipping up the backpack, she tossed it over her back and just as she was turning away, she saw a chamber with hinges protruding out of the beehive. One of the tubes fed into this chamber. Curious, she lifted a panel on the metal chamber. Inside was a perfect beehive, every side of it visible from a glass panel that hid behind the plate. Attached to the hive was a tube that allowed the bees to move back and forth between the smaller cells to the larger hive. There was little activity right now, as it was nighttime and the bees were for the most part inactive. On impulse, she slid the shut off in place, pulled the pins holding the hive to the tube, and added the hive to her backpack.
It was time to get out. She marched back over to the time lock door and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. She yanked on it, pulling with both hands. Nothing happened. It was then she saw that the biohazard light above the door had been activated, and knew that the door had been locked to contain the room. Panicked, she searched for a cancellation button, anything to turn off the sign but there was nothing in the room. A TV screen on one wall lit up and she could see security guards running down the halls she had so recently traversed. True panic set in now and she ran about the room, searching for a way out. Avalon looked up and that is when she noticed the grillwork for the ventilation system. It was located directly above the boxes full of bones. She ran over to the crates and climbed up on top of them to reach the ceiling. Avalon pulled her multi-tool switchblade from her pocket and quickly unscrewed the four corner screws then jammed it between the cover and the ceiling and pried. It fell to the floor with a crash. She slid her backpack off and threw it into the vent then hauled herself up into the confined space crawling and pushing her bag ahead of her until she reached secondary screen. The ventilation shaft took her back out over the corner of the hive and as she crawled through the ventilation shaft, she could see downward termination vents every few feet that fed fresh air to the hive. Angry voices echoed up to her and she grimaced as her fears were confirmed. They were aware that there was an intruder in their midst.
Suddenly she heard movement in the shaft behind her. Someone had crawled into the shaft and was following down the long dark length. She came to another screen and pulled it off, and once past the join, put the screen back in place. She scrambled forward. She heard a crash and one of the screens for the termination vents fell past her view to the floor below. With an angry buzz, the hive came alive and rushed the opening, seeking the intruder into their home. Screams filled the air and vibrated along the vent behind her as the bees swarmed her pursuer. Shrieking, the man fell out of the vent to the floor below, dead before he hit the ground, his body covered in bees. Avalon moved faster, panic threatening to break her concentration. Bees crashed against the screen behind her, buzzing angrily. She shuddered, and scrambled as fast as she could move in the confined space, scraping her arms and hands on the sharp sheet metal. She left the hive behind and took a series of twists and turns that she thought would take her to the south end of the building.
After several moments, she paused, realizing that she was running straight toward those who sought her, as they knew where she was. She needed to leave the ductwork. She crawled to the next vent cover and peering down, saw a toilet and sink below her. Pulling her knife out again, she dropped three sides of the screen, and then dropped the backpack onto the toilet before sliding out of the vent herself, dropping the few feet to the floor. Slinging the backpack on her back, she pulled Peet’s map from her pocket and opened it up. She spied her bathroom on the map. She was in the southeast office section of the warehouse. Cracking the door an inch, she checked for movement on the other side of the door. People bustled back and forth just beyond the door, oblivious to the frantic search going on in the secure area behind them. Avalon closed the door and saw a discarded lab coat hanging from a peg by a set of showers. An idea came to mind and she stripped out of the jumpsuit and goggles, stashing them in the end shower unit, and then put on the lab coat. The sleeves were slightly too long so she rolled them up and buttoned the front. A box of paper sat on a shelf beside the showers and she emptied the box of its towels then stuffed her back pack inside, securing the top to hide the contents. She restrung the camera and the mic under her lab coat and then plugged it in again.