The facility smells like antiseptic and bad decisions. I notice it the moment the elevator doors open onto Sublevel Three. Sterile chemical bite in the air.
Bleach.
Ozone.
The faint metallic edge of something biological that shouldn't exist in a place built out of polished white walls and corporate funding. I've worked security contracts in a lot of places.
Military installations.
Black sites.
Government labs that were buried so deep in the desert that even the coyotes didn't know they existed. Places where the paperwork had more redactions than words, and the men who hired you made a point of never learning your last name. None of them felt like this.
Those places felt dangerous in ways I understood. Weapons.
Unstable personnel.
Clean dangers. Dangers with edges I could locate and plan around.
This place feelswrongin a way I don't have a word for yet. Like the danger here doesn't have edges. Like it has something else entirely. I’mgood at keeping my expression neutral, but there’s an unease churning low in my gut.
The guard beside me shifts his rifle strap across his chest as we walk down the corridor. His name is Pearce. I know this because it's stenciled on his badge, not because he introduced himself. He has the look of someone who's been here long enough to stop noticing what's strange about it. That particular blankness behind the eyes. The careful forward focus of a man who's learned not to look too hard at the doors he passes.
That's its own kind of information.
"First time on containment rotation?" he asks.
"Yeah."
He nods toward the steel doors lining the hall.
"Don't talk to them."
I glance sideways at him.
"Wasn't planning to."
"Good." He exhales through his nose, "because they'll talk to you."
Something cold slides through my veins at his words, but I don’t have much time to ponder them. We pass the first containment cell. Thick reinforced glass. Observation shutters open. The cell beyond is identical to what the briefing materials described… bare concrete, a drain in the floor, the suggestion of a mattress in the corner.
Inside, an omega presses both palms flat against the window, eyes wide and bloodshot. The posture of someone who's been waiting for exactly this. He smiles when he sees us.
Not a friendly smile. The kind you see on someone who's been locked in a room too long with nothing but their own thoughts and has since made peace with whatever they found in there.
"Hey," the omega calls through the glass. His voice is muffled but clear enough.
"New guy."
My partner doesn't slow down. I don't either. Behind us, the omega laughs, high and loose, bouncing off the walls in a way that doesn't quite match the size of the corridor. It follows us. The echo carries longer than it should, or maybe I just keep listening for when it stops.
It stops.
The silence after it is worse.
"Yeah," Pearce mutters. "Like I said."
We continue down the corridor. Each door has the same design. Reinforced steel with a recessed handle and no external hardware that a person could grab. Observation glass set at chest height, wide enough to see the whole room. Barcode designation stenciled beside the lock in crisp black characters.
