It was dark and gloomy the moment Zeke walked in through the opened doorway.
Everything was blackened as far as the eye could see. The curtains on every window were closed, as usual, keeping out the enticing orange and pink light of dusk outside. It was only natural to suspect that no one else was occupying the home. Zeke made his way through the blackness without bumping into any of the furniture or walls on accident, as if he had night vision. He had come onto the darkness more times than anyone else before that it was unthinkable. But it's because of this that he could navigate so easily through his void-like house.
He eventually found the door he was looking for and his body paused. Should he really ask or even demand for what Matti had suggested? He already knew what his uncle's answer would be, though. A scolding, a lecture, and then just more work, as usual. He had tried it before in the past, and the results were always the same. Was he really that afraid of his uncle?
Suddenly, a memory thought to be lost in the back of his mind fought for his attention and won. When he was younger, his uncle had called him a "good-for-nothing" whenever he made any kind of mistake. Sometimes he would declare much worse, such as "worthless little scum" or "If you can't do things right, just drop dead!"
These phrases had already faded from being habit, but were they true? Was he worthless? Was he scum? Did he not deserve to live? Zeke didn't want to believe it.
Why was he even like this? He began searching for an answer. But as the clock ticked in the background, he knew that he was going to be late if he didn't hurry. Then he remembered it. He knew why things turned out like this. It was because he did not want to die. His hand started to turn the doorknob. His footsteps echoed while he walked down the stairs. As the darkness continued, his thoughts started to diminish, and he became more focused on mentally preparing himself for yet another extensive night.
When he reached the basement floor, he let his school bag drop from his hand and took off his school uniform's black blazer jacket, hanging it on the old-timey style wooden coat rack that stood next to the bottom of the stairs. There was a white lab coat hanging on one of the hooks. He picked it off and put it on over his white-collar shirt. Slipping his feet into a pair of brown shoes that sat by the coat rack, he deemed himself ready, at least for now.
About several feet away from where he stood, there was another door in the basement. One made of iron and protected with a coded lock. As always, Zeke dialed in the numbers with quick fingers. The light on the lock turned from red to green, signaling that he was permitted to enter. This time, he grabbed the doorknob and turned it open without hesitation. He pushed the heavy door inward and found everything in its usual place.
Dozens of scientists and researchers working tirelessly and devoutly, roaming the seemingly sprawling laboratory from one section to the next. Rows of tables topped with beakers and test tubes filled with various chemicals and compounds, some of which were extremely dangerous but still left out in the open. Shelves stocked with filed documents in manila folders, with a total page count in the tens of billions.
Zeke took a few steps through the doorway, and for a while merely stood frozen in his own two feet that refused to move. He watched as the many scientists worked. Most of them were engulfed in their current projects, not noticing that the high school boy had arrived. Some of them were in groups, exchanging ideas and conversation topics with slight smiles on their faces.
'They all must be blind as hell…'
He thought inside his mind. Only Zeke knew these people were nothing but meager pawns in a game of life-and-death, with his uncle as the player controlling their every action and movement. He felt sorry for them because of this fact. The worst of it was he couldn't say anything about it to anyone since he knew he'd be out of a job and a roof over his head otherwise.
"Ah, Ezekiel! I'm so glad to see you've finally come here," a distinctively feminine voice spoke out from one side, snapping Zeke out of a daze. He turned his head in that direction to see a woman scientist with long dark crimson hair swooshing from side to side as she walked up to him, with her high heeled shoes clicking against the floor with each step. Her dark eyes would at first seem intimidating in retrospect, but to him they meant a little bit of comfort. She noticed that blank look on Zeke's face, which was his sign that something was off, "Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm fine," he tried to sound reassuring, in which case he always hesitated while answering, "I appreciate your concern, though, Dr. Fellows. So, um…is he here?"
"Oh yes! He's in the back observing some of the others," the woman known as Dr. Fellows gestured one hand to have Zeke follow her into more darkness, "And just so you know, we received the new item to study earlier this morning while you were at school."
"May I ask what this new item is?" Zeke sounded curious for once.
"Well, I don't know all the details myself," Fellows informed, "All I really can tell you is that it seems to be from an undiscovered ancient civilization, and as far as I'm concerned and from what I saw so far, it's unlike any artifact I've ever seen. Not to mention the excavation team who recovered it mysteriously died afterward."
Zeke felt a shiver go up his spine upon that last remark, "Wait…are you serious?!"
They stopped in front of the door in the back of the lab, which was shrouded in darkness, and Dr. Fellows knocked on the iron three times before turning her head to him and answered his question, this time more sternly, but with a gentle smile to seem assuring, "Well yes, but it shouldn't be any problems for us."
'Is she's just as crazy as him?!'
Zeke thought inside his mind. He started thinking about the possibilities of what could go wrong based on that accusation, and it gave him a sickening feeling mixing itself in his stomach. One tiny miscalculation. A chemical meltdown. An explosion. More deaths overall. He could not deal with that, but still he managed to shake the thoughts away as Dr. Fellows opened the door and they walked inside.
VVVWWWWPP! VVVWWWWPP! VVVWWWWPP! BEEP! BEEP! CLICK-CLICK! BEEP
All the lights from the equipment were flashing on and off from various buttons being pressed and levers being pulled. At the center was a smallish incubation tank, connected to each of the five stations via wires of various sizes that were controlling what went on inside the glass, mainly sending electric waves from the equipment into the middle. These wavelengths caused surges to mess with the already dim lighting in the room, and thus these sparks of electricity were the only source of light. And within the tank was an ancient stone box covered in strange markings and sealed with a golden lock.
As Zeke stared at the artifact from a distance, something strange happened. He began hearing the laughter of a young child. It was faint, but still perceptible. There were about a dozen or so scientists operating the circle of equipment, and they seemed to be engulfed in their work. They obviously did not hear the same laughter that Zeke was hearing. Thus, he decided to brush it off, along with the thought that he might be going crazy himself.
"So, this is it, huh?" he managed to say after a long moment of silence.
"Indeed," Dr. Fellows replied a split second later. She too was in awe of the mysterious artifact, "The hieroglyphics carved into the sides are diverse from any ancient language I've come across before. Nobody here even knows what it says. And judging from that lock, there may be something inside, but we cannot seem to get it open. It's far too delicate to use force, and every method we've tried so far isn't working."
Zeke tried to pay attention to her words, but all he could hear was the laughter of a giddy little child, probably up to mischief. It was echoing throughout the room, but no one else seemed to notice it. Now it was really starting to bother him.
"Hey, Dr. Fellows, do you also hear that?" he decided to ask.
"Hear what?"
"That laughing. It sounds like a kid." Zeke explained.
Dr. Fellows stopped to listen for a moment before answering, "Eh? But I don't hear anything like that. Are you sure that you're hearing laughter? You have been working a lot this week. Perhaps you should sit out on this project."
"No, I'm fine. Really, it's nothing. Um, forget what I said." Zeke tried laughing it off, but it only came out as a nervous chuckle. Maybe he was going crazy.
"Hold on a minute, something's wrong," a scientist working behind one of the stations spoke out suddenly, "I can't get a proper reading anymore on the radars screen over here."
"Is that so?" Dr. Fellows walked over to that station, leaning one hand down on the metal tabletop. "Let me see."
"Have you tried reversing the calibration here?" one of the other researchers asked while managing the same station.
"Yes, but it's still not working right."
As the superior scientists were trying to figure out the situation, Zeke noticed only a few moments later the source of the problem. A couple of the wires connecting the incubation tank to that station had come loose. Without giving any warning, Zeke found his body already moving towards the incubation in the center of the room. All the while, he could still hear that giddy laughter of a child, as if it were calling him over. He chose to ignore it, though. Once he was standing beside the tank, he knelt and plugged the wires back into their proper outlets.
But as he stood back up, there was a smoke forming from inside the glass of the incubation tank, shrouding the box-like artifact in a dark grayish cloud. Zeke found himself staring at the smoke, eyes widened in shock and curiosity. By now, the scientists at each of the stations had noticed something new popping up on the screens. It was beeping loudly and glowing in big red letters that spelled out: SYSTEM ALERT!
"Whoa! What the-?!"
"Oh my God! What's happening?!"
"Hey, Ezekiel! Get away from there!" Dr. Fellows called out towards Zeke, trying to warn him of the impending danger upon them.
He didn't respond to her. He was far too in trance from listening to that strange child's laughter. Now he was sure of it. That child's location was somewhere within the smoking artifact.
Suddenly, the incubation tank began to crack, sending lines down the glass and the smoke began to rise and pour out through the seams. Zeke took a step back when he noticed a strange white light shining through the cracks. It was shining onto his face, blinding him for a split second as it was growing stronger with each passing moment that the glass kept breaking.
And then, somehow and in some way, as the laughter was still ringing in his ears, the white light took the form of the upper body of a little girl floating in the air. Zeke was so startled that he couldn't move. No, it was the smoke forming and spreading around him that kept him frozen in his tracks.
Eventually, as the girl in the light appeared to smile, she also reached out one hand towards Zeke, touching him on the top of his head. And in that instant, a sequence of unfamiliar visions began flashing through his mind, mainly displaying acts of destruction and disaster in an ancient time. He saw countless people scrambling, trying to escape the devastation, but to no avail. Those caught up in the flames were trembling in fear and struggling to survive. Crawling around weakly until the intoxicating fumes burned them into nothing. Explosions popped and boomed left and right, causing most of the obliteration. The winds picked up and scattered the ashes of the ruins. Blown away. Obliterated. Nothingness. It was all so intense, like he was there at its center.
As if that weren't enough, these visions of disaster flowing into him sparked the haunting memories locked away inside the back of his mind. Zeke saw pools of blood filling on the floors, pouring out of his parents' dead bodies.
The dizziness was getting to him, feeling like he was going to be sick and then pass out at any moment. And in that moment, he could have sworn that he heard the voice of a young child speak out in a sort of omnipotent manner: "…YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN…"
As the visions finally faded, so did the white light, and Zeke stumbled backwards. He lost his balance and landed into the arms of Dr. Fellows who had rushed over to his side.
"My God, Ezekiel! Are you alright?!" she asked in distress.
It took a while for him to answer, trying to regain control over his own breathing, "Y-Yeah. I, uh…I think so."
"Well, well. I see there's been some fun going on in here…" a rather masculine voice spoke out from behind them, just entering the room. Everyone else in the room turned towards their boss and the chief scientist of their work and operations. Of course, Zeke felt a slight tremor in the pit of his stomach once he laid eyes upon his mad scientist uncle. Dr. Gutter was roughly in his late fifties, with grayish silver hairs forming around the edges of his head and signs of aging wrinkles on his face. He wore a brown suit under a long white lab coat, same as everybody in the workplace. He also wore a thin pair of circular glasses to correct his field of vision.
He then noticed his nephew sitting on the floor, being held upright in the arms of one of his most loyal associates, "And what's this now? Did you get carried away with captivation for our newest study, my boy" He said this almost jokingly.
"Sir, something happened with the new specimen, and Ezekiel seems to have been affected by it," Dr. Fellows clarified to her superior. Zeke was shocked that she was sticking up for him, "I think he needs to rest for tonight before he can get back to working…"
But as she said that, Zeke noticed the look in his uncle's eyes. They were glaring down at him, seeming to be belittling him with all their hatred. He did not like this feeling of where things were going at all. Struggling, he stood back up on his own two feet, trying to look confident, and said, "No, I'm fine. I was just surprised by it. This is nothing, really. I just needed to take a quick breather, that's all."
Though skeptical about his behavior, Dr. Gutter turned his gaze to Dr. Fellows with a small grin, "You heard him. If he says he can keep going, let him. Besides, we don't time for all this lolly-gagging."
Dr. Fellows sighed, deciding to accept his decision quickly. Shortly afterward, everyone returned to their posts, managing each of their stations, and even the glass in the incubation tank was replaced in the blink of an eye.
Zeke remained in the same room for a while, but through it all he still could hear that child's laughing, which seemed to have grown stronger somehow.
About several hours later, Zeke's shift was finally over. Walking upstairs to his bedroom, he was still trying to shake off the laughter that he could not stop hearing. At this point, he could not tell if it was coming from inside his head or not. Even so, he powered through the better part of an hour sitting at his desk and finishing his homework, shoving the books into his school bag, and then making his way to his bed. Zeke had never felt so exhausted in his life, so when his head hit the pillow, he allowed sleep to drag him under immediately.