Ava was the sole occupant of containment level Bravo. I could fix her. There's a certain grace to the way she drifts in her tank. Water temp is 37°C. Unlike the rest of Dr. Nurullina's creations, she wasn't a hulking mass of flesh and muscle and fury, an embodiment of man's triumph over nature and concrete evidence of the lack of a just and loving god. And unlike the rest of Dr. Nurullina's failures, she wasn't euthanized and subsequently incinerated. According to records, she had been in there for 1783 days, far longer than my three years working at this facility. I wonder what she had done previously. Who she had been. Does she dream? Where had the name Ava come from? I wish I could draw, paint, sculpt; her beauty is wasted here, 35m below grade. She deserved to be somewhere with sunlight instead of sterile cool florescent tubes. She deserved to be laughing on a beach as waves crashed over her or relaxing by the bank of a river with a thick book. She needs enrichment and engagement. The way zookeepers will give a big-ass cardboard box to a tiger, stacking cups to an otter or cotton candy to a raccoon.
The records only say during her last time out of containment, she destroyed the old facility. Whatever that could mean. I have seen Doctor Nurullina's work in the proving grounds. Behemoths capable of destroying heavy construction equipment and structures of steel and concrete with ease.
Her ash-blond hair flows in the eddies of the containment fluid with an uneasy serenity. Despite her nudity, I was lost in the features of her face, her eyes were closed, her expression placid. Heart-rate 55 bpm. I take the remainder of the measurements, enjoying the silence and peace afforded by level Bravo before attending to the more, let's say energetic, subjects in level alpha.
„Wait.“ I'm alone in this level. We're alone in this level. „Stay?“ The monitor shows her brainwaves spiking to 244hz before dropping back to 3hz. I call it into the darkness „Ava?“
I look back to the tank, her palm pressed flat against the thick poly carbonate tankwall, fingers outspread, her eyes still closed. Faint light blue arcs raced across her skin. I approached the the tank, reverentially, and placed my hand over top of hers, mirroring the gesture. Her eyes open gradually, staring into me. Intently, purposefully. I am transfixed in her predator gaze and simultaneously at ease. I can sense her intruding in my mind, peering into my thoughts and observing my memories. I can feel her recall a small moment of my triumph as, her smile curling gently. And then I'm free.
A klaxon blares from one of the safety systems, her brain activity hitting wild heights. I am no longer upright, Larson, the head of security and containment tackled me to the ground, the cool smooth concrete. I can't move. I can not even blink. He seems to give me a quick once over, assessing me to see if I was injured, possibly concussed from the force of his impact.
„Call the Doctor. Tell him she did it again. She fucking did it again. Gold Team to Bravo!“ He barks something else into his radio, there is a response but in the chaos it is lost on me. I can't turn, I can still make out Ava in the tank, her fingers curling and uncurling. More guys pile in, I don't think in my entire assignment here I had seen more than five other people in the facility, excluding Doctor Nurullina. From my sliver of perspective I watch the additional security personnel surround the tank. Someone is shouting, but Ava seems unmoved. One raises a shotgun and I watch in horror as he is reduced to a viscous sludge, slowly glooping into the the 3” floor drain. I can't see what she did to the next aggressors. Don't want to. Pained screams and a high pitched whirring echoed and bounded from the walls.
In a moment, the tank explodes, spraying containment fluid and shards in a furious radius. She is no longer floating due to buoyancy, but something else. Her hair still moving in the unseen currents around her, her eyes an electric blue, fluid dripping off her, patiently. Even in all the violence, the aggression, the mayhem, she was beautiful, maybe more so for the destruction that surrounded us. She moved towards me, her arms outstretched and she drifted down to embrace me.
„Thank you for freeing me.“ I could feel my ability to move return, first to my extremities and back to the my core. I sit up to look around and the melee continues. Someone had brought in additional creations, but if this was a stalling measure or an actual countermeasure I was not sure. That had never been my department. I watched as she turned a quadrupedal hulking thing inside out in a spray of red and grey viscera. It stopped moving briefly, only to give a pained yelp and resume its offense. Tired of its assault, Ava made a sweeping gesture and it vanished. No noise, no other display just an immediate absence of a creature roughly the size of a sedan.
More things swarmed. I recognized them from my rounds in the incubation ward, but they had been smaller then, no larger than a fig. Now they could pass as balls for some obscure sport played in an obscure former Soviet Republic. Leathery little things like overgrown scrotums complete with fang filled mouths bounced and rolled towards her. She grabbed the largest one before it could bite her and like a horrible testicular matryoshka, she immediately began jamming its smaller peers into it, six or seven, finally stopping with what was the runt of the brood. The largest specimen on the outside was taut and stuffed. In a single move, she punted it through the opened door and down into the depths of the facility.
Something like a massive octopus with a plated metallic exoskeleton attempted to grapple her, but she ripped it into segments that wriggled away to attack the last two security team members. I watched one gory fragment of the creature wrap itself tightly around the neck of the mook and harshly choke him to death, his eyes bulging from the force. Once he collapsed, the remaining Gold Team member threw himself on a console. I knew from my training it initiated the final countermeasure, the burn controls for Level Bravo. I watch him mouth „I'm sorry.“ as he flips the case and slams down on the button.
Panels roll back exposing dozens of jets, each blasting with incredible heat. I'm waiting for the moment I carbonize and die like those fuckers in Herculaneum but I notice Ava's arms wrapped around me. Jets of flame twist around her, around us and I am unscathed. I watch her smile, and I watch her smile turn to grin. I do not know how much time had passed, only that whatever had fueled the burners had been exhausted. We wait a while, her arms are cool to the touch and impossibly smooth, as if you had waxed a dolphin. I don't want to leave. Again, subtle blue lines run and pulse across her skin, this time in sharp, jagged irregular forms.
„Do you want to leave this place?“ the softness in the question caught me off guard considering the horror I had seen her execute. Destroying Doctor Nurullina's brutes, killing Gold Team, liquefying Larson. What had I unleashed? I nod. Level Bravo becomes faint and fades to a dense neutral grey before giving way to park. The sounds of the conflict from moments ago replaced with children laughing, ducks quacking and ambient traffic noise. She gives my hand a small squeeze.
„Thank you again, love.“ And she began to glow with an intense cerulean radiance before disappearing entirely.
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