Morning all. Ready for the morning prompt? Personally I am ready for coffee. Buckets and buckets of coffee, but as it is brewing I will start with the prompt and hope it wakes my brain up a bit so maybe there will be less need for coffee. So if you are with me, timers at the ready and off we go.
No clue what the beast is or what sort of facility this is. I’m thinking maybe alien studies, but I’d need a little time to think that through. Regardless the timer dinged before the something bad I know is going to happen actually happened.
Thursday, April 10th: The cage was unlocked.
The cage was unlocked. Sandra went clod. She reached out to her left, hand scrambling for the cattle prod while her right dropped to her hip to retrieve the radio clipped to her belt.
‘This is not good,’ she thought. Each hand closed over its destination. She pulled the cattle prod close and made certain it was charged before looking to the radio. She hesitated pressing the buttons to call in the open cage door, knowing the sound of her voice would announce her presence.
‘Maybe just see what the situation is first,’ she thought. She made certain the door closed behind her so that at least nothing could escape past her and move into the hall. Moving as silently as she could, Sandra eased forward. Her eyes were in constant motion as she searched the floor, the walls, the ceiling any place where anything could be.
They moved at a much faster pace than her feet, cataloging every square inch of space before her feet shuffled forward. ‘At least the lights are all on,’ she thought. Sandra knew if the lights weren’t on, she would have backed out of the door and called in the open cage open, refusing to search the space without back up. With the lights on she had less fear of something jumping out of the shadows.
‘Mostly because there are no shadows.’ She frowned. The lights were almost surgically bright. That was not the norm for this part of the complex let alone this section of cages. The light here was always a more natural level that rose and fell with the sun to help promote normal biorhythms.
As thankful a she was for the light, the strangeness of it bothered her. Sandra reached the open cage door and leaned in. The bright white light bathed every corner. The plants that helped soften the space and make it less industrial stood out starkly in the harsh brightness.
‘And there is nothing here.’
She knew what was supposed to be in this cage, knew that the few small plants around the perimeter were not enough to conceal even without the lights. Even shadows she should have seen an outline. In the hash lights she could see the cage was empty. She backed out, eyes still searching. She reached the door and clipped her radio back onto her waistband. She still clutched the cattle prod and knew she would keep it until she was certain it was no longer needed.
She reached the door to the hall and opened it behind herself. She backed into the hall, closed and locked the door and turned away. The hall was silent and felt like it stretched for miles. While it was usually quiet and she was certain the corridors under the facility did stretch for miles, today she felt the length and quiet in ways she had not before.
Sandra felt the intense need to be up where other people were. ‘Especially because it is not in the cage.’ Logic told her that if it was no longer in the cage then it was somewhere out of the cage. There was a lot of somewhere outside of the cage.
Sandra clutched the cattle prod in her sweaty hand and felty her heart rate increase. Suddenly the open hall felt too exposed. She walked quickly to the elevator and pressed the button. As she had in the cage, her eyes searched the space around her. She couldn’t force herself to the same slow walk however and barely restrained herself from running.
‘I’ll call it in when I am in the elevator,’ she told herself. She pressed the button.
Ten til Midnight 