Cleaning Up The Future

2034

Washington City, New Cinalia

"Not feeling too well today. OVER," a woman's whispering voice begins the broadcast, and after a brief pause, she continues with a louder, more confident voice. "I know you're out there," the only person not wearing a white lab coat leans forward and jots down some words in the margin of the first page of her information packet. "I know life is going as good as always for all of you. Eating, drinking, sleeping in comfort. Things are going awful here. Real awful. Kids are running off scared and alone from people that should be protecting them. You don't understand this. You're safe."

The recording of a young female voice plays for the ExplorerTech personnel from a small ovular speaker placed at the center of a long, wooden conference table. Out of the many black, cushioned office chairs settled around the rustic furniture, five of the seats are occupied to the right of an imposing reinforced metallic door. The long bulbs lining the ceiling thoroughly illuminate the many photocopied pages laid out on the table and give the only surviving scientists of the ExplorerTech Industries, River City division, an unattractive pallid look upon their skin. To the right of each employee sits a tall glass paired with a plain, black coaster.

The sterile white walls block out all sound from the rest of the facility and contain all the active sounds that may be projected from the occupants currently settled in the room. You could imagine that this room is one of the most secure, quieted office spaces in all of New Cinalia, and you'd be right. Finding such a place outside their facility would be problematic, and unlikely, since they were one of the few establishments to have an inkling of an idea of what truly occurred on March 18th, 2018.

'Several shifts in tone,' the woman in the black turtleneck jots down along the margin of her page before she scans the faces of the scientists assembled within the meeting room. 'I can see the negative effects of living underground just by looking at their sickly complexions. Thank god for my transfer to the bumf*ck islands of Cinalia before the start of this cl.u.s.terf*ck.'

"I bet if you truly wanted to call your family or friends, they are a button away," the recording continues, but following those words begins a long stretch of silence. For the first minute of silence, the woman leans back in her chair and continues to watch her new associates. The scientist sitting beside her is cradling their information packet in their l.a.p. The woman's name tag reads Dr. L. Mitchell. Along the other side of the table sits two men, one being the head scientist, and another woman, a blonde with short bangs flush against her forehead. The blonde woman's name tag is clipped sideways to the left b.r.e.a.s.t of her lab coat. When she finishes skimming through her packet, she carelessly tosses it to the tabletop and rests back in her chair while clutching her glass to her c.h.e.s.t.

After another minute goes by, the woman in the turtleneck begins rubbing her thumb along the body of her green pencil while her eyes roam the windowless walls of the room. The bland, white paint job makes the room feel like it belongs in a hospital overseas, but the absence of the usual stench caused by cleaning supplies and the rumble of the vents pushing out recycled air reminds her where they truly are.

'Abandon all hope, all ye with claustrophobia.' the woman closes her eyes and calms down the annoyance she can feel panging at the back of her head.

After the third minute of silence, she sets down her pencil. Her amber eyes open and roll to the side to glare diagonally across the polished table at the scientist sitting in front of a slim, grey laptop. His greasy brown hair hinders any view of his pale face while he taps a finger at the touchscreen display. The nametag clipped onto the right b.r.e.a.s.t of his lab coat reads Dr. E. Adams.

Her glare doesn't go unnoticed. He sighs and looks up; his anxious brown beads meet her gaze and he flinches at the attention. "It's not malfunctioning," he blurts out.

"Just another moment, she stops using her transceiver. We..well..we assume she was completing a task of some sort before leaving the facil...uh...facility. She uuh...well...um...she returns to add a closing statement," Adams grabs the laptop by the sides of the display screen and twirls it around so the woman can view the recordings progress. "You said you wanted to hear the recordings as the...they were originally broadcast, so I..."

It's very near completion. The woman nods at the explanation and picks up her pencil once more before the recording begins again.

"It used to be like that for me before I got trapped here in this disgusting place," the young woman's voice has a hint of anger in it before she quickly finishes the broadcast. "I can't breathe without a taste of dread. I just hope that you are safe in America, Aliyah. I love you. Please at least be safe," the broadcast ends there.

Dr. Adams turns the laptop to face himself and taps at his screen a few more times, "This broadcast was longer than her first broadcast by...uh..by..um..but shorter than most of the broadcasts sent over the days prior...t...t..to the last one," after voicing his thought he swallows thickly and peeks over at the head scientist.

The stern, greying man sitting across from the woman in black has a name tag that reads Dr. W. Lee. He has his packet flipped to the fourth page and gestures to it with his other hand before continuing to fill the newest employee in on the situation. "If you turn to page four, you can see where the information we've gathered so far on Sia Chen begins. Page six lists all her known relatives, living and deceased. She mentions a person named Aaliyah which coincides with the name of her youngest known sibling. On page five, we have her resume. She was hired to be a part of the janitorial staff of River City in 2018. The records state that Sia Chen had a shift change from morning shift to night shift two days before her disappearance. She was scheduled to work the night shift March 18th, midnight to 7 am."

"She would have been inside the building during the bombing," Dr. Mitchell speaks up with an anxiety-tinged voice while rolling the packet in her hands. "She had a clean background. Her parents were divorced, and she had dual citizenship but had not entered the United States in six years. She has not been legally pronounced dead. Her family has not withdrawn their missing person report."

Mitchell pauses and unrolls the crumpled packet to skim the details within before continuing. "They continue to mourn her every year on social media and support any disaster aid groups that come to investigate the coasts. None of which have gotten authorization to enter further into the country in the last eight years. It's unlikely she has made contact with them without us knowing through a radio broadcast, and not a blip has shown up on her social media accounts or call log records in sixteen years," Mitchell's green eyes hesitantly glance at the woman in the black turtleneck when she finishes then averts her eyes down at the table while grasping for her glass of water. Her hand trembles as she drinks from the glass and sets it down on the black coaster.

The next scientist to debrief sits on the other side of Dr. Lee and has her packet flipped over, splayed out across the oak tabletop. She has been sipping at her beverage for quite some time. Dr. Lee clears his throat and smiles back across the table at the newest employee, but she can see the way his lips fight to hide the disdain clearly seen in the tilt of his head and within his cold, coal black eyes. Finally, the woman with the sideways name tag, that reads Dr. S. Plum, sets her glass down on her packet and raises a hand to cough into it.

The woman in the turtleneck leans forward to pick up her own drink. She presses her smirking lips to the edge of the glass to swallow lukewarm water. 'I want what she's having.'

"We've got nothing. She shouldn't be alive. There is no trail to find. We don't know why she would be at the Coldstone facility, it was one of the first places evacuated and there shouldn't be any leftover data at that site," Dr. Plum's slow, depressed drawl highlights how she feels on the matter.

"All evacuated facilities were ordered to enact Operation Blackout," she pauses a moment to swallow. "There's nothing there. Our sources say there is nothing but scavengers out there and those creatures. It's a dead end," the report finishes with a shake of her head. She runs a hand over the top of her head to settle a few unruly strands of hair. Debrief complete, she wastes no time reaching for her glass and gulping down the last of the clear liquid within.

Finally, the woman in the turtleneck joins the discussion. She is leaning back in her chair and holding her steepled hands against her chin while looking down at her l.a.p.

"Where has she been hiding? Was there a traitor in the River City branch? Who has she had contact with? How did she survive the bombing without hiding inside the underground shelter? What is her physical condition? Has she had any mutations that were exhibited by," she pulls up a small, black leather notepad from her l.a.p and reads the words on the pad verbatim, "the subjects of the gene therapy Project 5S.Q held by Muller-Brady?"

"Ms. Royal. We've--" Dr. Lee begins.

"Dr. Royal, please," the consultant corrects while looking down at another page of her notepad.

"We've given you all the information we have on the subject. None of those questions can be answered at this time. We lack resources and have no samples of her current condition," Dr. Lee gestures to the room with the hand still holding the sheets of stapled pages. His jaw clenches as he refrains from scowling at the younger woman, her pierced eyebrow, and closely cropped hair. 'How could you possibly make sense of this situation?'

"A lot has happened in sixteen years. We'll have to work together to figure this mess out. That's why I'm here, correct?" Dr. Royal flips a page in her notepad. "I'll need to see all the inventory logs for River City branch from the start of 1999 to 2018. I'll need all the records for all the subjects involved in Project 5S.Q. Send me a copy of all of her broadcasts. I've already begun going over the personnel files of the employees that worked within the River City branch before its destruction," she keeps her attention on the scientists in her peripheral as she flips to another page in her notepad.

Dr. Adams keeps his attention fixed on his laptop and Dr. Mitchell tenses up, reaches for her packet on the table to hide its crumpled form on her l.a.p. Dr. Plum's gaze is transfixed on her empty glass. The head scientist appears calm as the youthful consultant closes her notepad and sets her amber gaze upon him once again.

"Have you had any contact with Charles Williams?" she leans back in her chair and waits for an answer.

Dr. Lee doesn't repress the grimace that comes with hearing that name, beside him, Dr. Plum nearly chokes on a laugh, swivels her chair sideways, and tilts her head to the side while making eye contact with the other woman. The smile plastered on her face doesn't reach her eyes. "He's last been seen at the National Park that surrounds Washington city, Mercalia. It usually takes us approximately three days for our courier to make contact and return with a response, unless an incident occurs before or after contact is made. It's not ideal."

"And you've kept the company informed of all of the developments pertaining to him up until this point?"

Dr. Plum lifts a thin hand, the gold band around her ring finger shines in the light, and tips it back and forth like an uneven scale, "More or less."

The consultant nods and assesses Dr. Plum's unfocused green eyes and feverish cheeks. Slowly, she reopens her notepad and flips through a few pages until she finds the correct one and sets it down on the table. She leans back in her chair and swivels it to the side to look at Dr. Mitchell. "Tell me about the Savages. Charles Williams seems to have made a name for himself in all this...chaos. How much of an advantage does that bring us?"