60 Prologue 1 (1/2)
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 clusterf*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 lap. 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 breast 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 chest.
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 breast 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.”