NationStates Jolt Archive

The Treblinka Affair

The actions and events presented in this RP are entirely secret with some exceptions, which you will read as the story progresses. The location is just outside of Treblinka, in Poland, where the Umbrella Corporation (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13340163&postcount=58) maintains a large research and development facility. Before we begin there are two things I would like to explain. First and foremost, the naming of the story is chosen on purpose. I am well aware of the history of Treblinka, particularly during World War II and the gruesome truth and history of Treblinka is just the dark setting required for what happens here, at this facility. Secondly, I want to present the details of the facility. It is a large complex, that covers and area of 15 mi² (38.85 km²) and is a walled in facility. These walls are 24 feet (7.32 m) high and over 2 feet thick (60.96 cm) made of reinforced concrete. The complex is entirely self-sufficient and houses a total of 15,000 personnel who consist of 2,000 security personnel, 4,000 maintenance and support personnel, 2,850 technicians, 150 administrators, 2,600 scientists, 400 defense personnel, and around 3,000 miscellaneous workers. Security is highly technological and, in total, the 2,400 security personnel are broken into two divisions. The bulk of them, 2,000 in total, are police-level trained guards and support staff who man the facility. The second division of 400 people are an elite SWAT-level trained security division that is heavily armed and trained.

The Umbrella Research and Development Facility at Treblinka, as it is known, is state-of-the-art and consists of both top-level and subterranean facilities. It is not a military installation and, as such, it is not built as one but it is nothing short of a fortress. The facility was established in the early 1980s during the rule of the Fourth Reich of North Germania. Umbrella, a worldwide corporation established the facility in Poland due to the looser restrictions on medical research, which has garnered some unusual criticism. Umbrella has been rumored to conduct advanced research on human cloning, biological weapons, and even human experimentation. Though unproven, these rumors have continued to linger on as the facility continued to operate. Though it operated without incident for the better part of two decades, its blemish free existence would be forever altered in late February 2008.

The story will follow the lives of four characters, their details presented below. I encourage you to look into the eyes and perspectives of the characters before you pass judgement upon them. They may illicit any number of emotional responses from your as your read them or they may not at all. For them, the events told in this story were a reality, a harsh and grim truth that none of them would have imagined in their worst nightmare. Perhaps to you this is just a story but, for them, it was their future.

Lastly, before you read please do not pass any judgement that this will be a pathetic post. If you must have a reference, please go to the list below and you will see the abilities of me to tell a story. I am a writer.
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Legend
All text in red type is top secret classified. It is unknown to the normal reader and even anyone else other than those present in the text. All are loyal to the government so please none of that, "We had spies" nonsense because I'm going to ignore it.

Italic text is text that is speech. It is italic to differentiate from normal text.

Italic underlined text is thought.

Orange text is a memory.

Green text is documents, communications, etc.

Small text is a translation.

Bold, blue text is a service announcement meant in OOC form

Small, bold text is OOC.
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Notes

This will be updated on a irregular basis. If you see a lapse then by all means, bump the topic. Pictures may be included with horrible images of death. The RP will be R-rated. I will not delve into the realm of sexual acts such as rape and the like because they are just unnecessary but there may be elusions to horrid acts. There will be profanity and there will be gore. I am warning you of all of this because I feel that if you do not like it then this is your chance to avoid reading it. There won't be any surprises. If there is ever something that violates NS rules (and no nothing illegal will be had here) please inform me and I'll take care of it. If you are offended don't read! Simple as that, I know, what a concept, actually not reading something you're offended by instead of protesting like a sissy wimp.
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Other Role-Playing Stories

Ascensión (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=509447)
Infernal (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=540788)
La Guerra que no Hombre Debe Saber (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=434657)
Ride the Lightning (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=448866)
Tale of the Time: Ancient Secrets Found in Yucatán... (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=409829)
The Decayed (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=474683)

Table of Contents


Prologue: A Cold Rising (Page 1)
Chapter I: Sector One
Chapter II: First Response
Chapter III: European HQ
Chapter IV: Sector Four
Chapter V: Pandemonium


Characters

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/The%20Treblinka%20Affair/ldraiman.jpg

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/The%20Treblinka%20Affair/mnewstead.jpg

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/The%20Treblinka%20Affair/msloan.jpg

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/The%20Treblinka%20Affair/awitherspoon.jpg

Prlogue
A Cold Rising

The tractor trailer had pulled away from the loading dock on the western face of the Umbrella Research and Development Facility at Treblinka but stopped after only ten feet. There were eight loading docks, all of them at least six feet off the ground at the bottom of a slightly sloped ramp and only one of them was busy. It was dock five and, on that Saturday night, it had been opened by special arrangement. As Adam climbed down the small ladder on the side of the dock wall, he couldn't help but shiver in the cold air around him as his breath lofted upwards. He was exhausted but that didn't stop him from what he had to do and, with a crow bar in his hand, he did that duty. The tractor trailer had stopped ten feet from the dock so that its doors could be shut and that was the job of Adam. He walked over to the two, massive, metal doors and swung them closed, first the right and then the left, locking the hatch securely into place. With two wraps, he sent an echo through the hollow trailer and the driver gave a thumbs up out of his window and put the truck into gear as he slowly pulled away, the diesel exhaust blasting warm air and a familiar smell against the side of the building as Adam climbed back onto the loading dock. The door was secured behind him as he now looked at seventeen pallets of special shipment that needed to be immediately refrigerated. At one time, this had been his job but now, as Director of Logistics, he sat most of his time in an office, going over shipments, coordinating pick-ups and deliveries, and what not. It was strange that this evening, on a day he usually had off, that he was working.

The shipment was a special circumstance, scheduled a week earlier for delivery at that particular time. The loading docks had been cleaned, swept, and organized the night before as they always were, giving maximum amount of space for the next day's deliveries, which usually happened between seven in the morning and six in the evening. It was nearly eight thirty. Adam had come in to do a favor for the receiving manager, a twenty-six year old college graduate who had recently earned the promotion to an old position of Adam. The receiving manager was in Warsaw that evening but not for pleasure as most people from the facility were. Instead, he was in the hospital, with his wife and newborn baby girl. She was three thousand, six hundred, and eighty-five grams, a healthy weight for a newborn baby and he was nothing short of ecstatic when he left work the previous evening to rush her to the hospital as she went into labor. That was why Adam was at work and, as he walked over to the receiving manager's desk and sat down, he couldn't help but remember how this had once been his entire domain. In some ways, he missed the simplicity of the job, receive what came in, ship what needed to be, make sure all of the paperwork was in order, make sure the receiving docks were clean and safe, and make sure nothing wayward happened. He didn't have to worry too much about theft or intrusion as the receiving docks were classified as a level one breech area, meaning that it was highly likely that anyone who attempted to breech the facility would do so through the receiving area. Because of this, the state-of-the-art security cameras and sensors fortified the receiving docks and, at all times, an armed security guard was posted there. Adam had brought him coffee that evening as a cold front settled in over Poland and eastern Europe, bringing with it temperatures around freezing.

As workers carted the seventeen pallets off to refrigerated storage with manual pallet jacks, Adam hunched himself over and began reading over the manifest, one last time. He booted up the computer at the desk and waited for its log-on screen to appear before he looked up again. Because this wasn't his terminal, he would have to log-on as a guest, giving him access to a limited interface that wouldn't give him much. However, through a shell, he could access his own, secure e-mail client, allowing him to notify the proper person that their shipment had arrived. He had too many dealings with the pushy, uppity scientists that swarmed the corridors and halls of the extensive complex to know that, if they weren't notified the minute their shipments arrived, they would have a fit. He partially understood the urgency but he was no scientists. Unless it came in melting or burning, he didn't sense the instant urgency in the matter but he was a different breed of person. As he watched the shell boot up, he rubbed his eyes. He was supposed to be out at the movies with his wife and young son but, instead, he was working. It had been a busy week. They had received forty trucks per day and he had to coordinate with all of them, make sure the freight bills got paid, and make sure all of the inventory was received accurately. Normally, he had two assistants to help him but both of them had come down with some strange bug that kept them both confined to their quarters for three days already. Needless to say, Adam was buried in work but he wasn't one to go against the health codes of Umbrella. Even sneezes were treated with urgency in a complex that had entire sections completely clean of even microbial, airborne bacteria. His sector wasn't nearly as germophobic but any communicable disease was treated as a half-filled gasoline jug.

Adam laughed as he thought of both of his assistants vomited their stomachs out and suspecting, at the same time, that both of them were involved with each other. He didn't have any proof of the matter and, so long as it didn't affect their work, he wasn't going to break up the couple. He did; however, advise against it simply because of past experiences he had witnessed. Human Resources, on the other hand, strictly forbade inter and intraoffice relationships of a romantic nature but it was largely up to the directing manager to handle. Yawning, he entered his username, "AWITHERSPOON" and his password, a lengthy, twenty character password, the minimum recommended length for any password, "HAZMAT%%33REDrover@7." How he remembered it was beyond even himself but he did what the security personnel in the Electronic Applications Unit told him and every other employee of the complex. Minimum recommendations for passwords were for twenty characters using a combination of both lower and upper case letters, numbers, and special characters. There were safeguards in place that made certain nobody could enter a password without meeting this minimum criteria. People were encouraged to have passwords in excess of twenty-four characters. To many, it was absurd but, given the nature of their work there, everyone understood, even if they didn't agree with it.

His e-mail client booted up quickly and downloaded showed him whatever mail was waiting in all four of his in-boxes: interoffice, intraoffice, secure, and external. He had forty new messages in total, most of them in the external inbox. His interoffice inbox was filled mostly with a number of things, the daily security brief, the daily newsletter, an invitation for someone's birthday cake in customer service department, and some personal communications with friends of his that worked throughout the complex. His intraoffice inbox was empty, his two assistants being in their quarters either in bed or in the bathroom. His secure inbox contained about fourteen messages, none of which he cared to read at the moment. Lastly, his external inbox contained the majority of his new e-mails. Most of them were from his contacts at the various freight companies sending status updates such as truck locations, shipment status, delivery status, and any other information. Nothing was significantly important that he had to look at it on that Saturday evening so he brushed them aside and opened a new message, this one to a Dr. Julius Westerguard, assistant to Dr. Laura Draiman in Sector Four, whichever one that was. His knowledge of what went on outside of the operations area was limited to what he picked up over the years through idle chit-chat and what not. Operations was largely public and though highly secure, it wasn't nearly as secure as the medical research sectors. That was where the scientists were and operations were where the lay people were. It was a class society and he had grown used to it in the eleven years he spent with Umbrella, at this facility.

Yawning again, he began to type his message. The subject was "SHIPMENT ARRIVAL" and he typed his message out at a rate of ninety words per minute.

Good evening Dr. Westerguard,

I am informing you that shipment 082299-ABF has just arrived. It is for seventeen pallets and is currently being tagged and placed into refrigerated storage. It will be available early Monday morning through normal means. Should you need access to it prior to that time then please see the attending security officer and they will be happy to assist you. Have a good night.

As he sent the message, a loud, buzzing noise echoed in the tranquil loading docks. The security office, cautious about any visitors, even those through the normal entrance stood up from his seat and approached a man in a white lab coat, who had come through the door and began to walk through the area. "Sir. May I help you?" The security officer asked as he stood in front of him and the moving pallets.

"Get out of my way. You Neanderthal. That's my shipment." The man snidely remarked.

"Please remain polite sir. You need to sign in before you can proceed."

"Sign in? What is this nonsense? Do you know who I am?"

"No sir I do not but I will not let you step further." The scientist tried to sidestep him but was immediately stopped as the security officer grabbed him by his left arm and held him in a tight grip, his right hand on his pistol, which still hung in its holster. "I said you will need to sign in."

"Get your hands off me right now or else I will file an official complaint." The security officer did not let go and though he had remained polite the entire time, he wasn't about to let the scientists get the best of him.

"Sir. You have two options. You may leave or you may sign in. You will not move beyond this point without signing in. Is that understood?"

"Fine. Let go of me." He did and escorted the scientist back to the booth where he forced a pen into his hand and made him sign a log.

"Your ID please." He asked as the scientist exhaled his frustration and handed it over. He scanned it and booted up the information. Looking at his watch, he entered the precise time and date into a log stored on the server. He handed him back his card and smiled, "Thank you."

"Asshole." The scientist remarked as he stormed past the moving pallets and to Adam, who was sitting behind the receiving desk, his eyes dropping from exhaustion.

Oh great. He thought as the scientist prepared to unleash a slew of comments and remarks. "Sir. May I help you?"

"This is my shipment."

"Your name is?"

"Doctor Westerguard. This is my shipment. It is late. Why is it late? Why isn't it in storage yet? What is going on here?"

"Doctor Westerguard. Yes. I just e-mailed you that it has been received. It is, as per the freight billing and my paperwork, on time. It is not in storage yet because it just came off the truck. Is there something you need?"

"I need to know why this department is so incompetent."

"Listen. I don't give a crap who you are or what your titles are. You listening to me or is your ears clogged with earwax." Adam said, unable to put up with the berating like the security officer did. "It is here. It is here on time. It is being moved into storage right now. By the time it gets into storage it will have warmed up maybe a degree or two. As per this paperwork, unless it warms fifteen or more, it is not a problem. So. Care to take your attitude elsewhere?"

"Why of all the nerve!"

"Nerve? Nerve!" Adam stood up, "You come in here, insult that man over there for doing his job and protecting YOUR shipment and now YOU have the nerve to come here and insult me because you dropped a Petri dish or something. Now. You want to be polite and I'll help you otherwise get the hell out of here. Talk down to me and see what happens. Understood?" He pointed his finger right at him as he eyes said the rest. "Now. What do you need?"

"I need one of the packages right away." Sensing Adam was not the man to insult, the scientist complied and changed his tone.

"Are they all the same box or is it on a specific pallet?"

"May I see the manifest?" Adam handed it to him and he quickly scanned through it, "Pallet sixteen."

"Sixteen. Let's go find it." Adam stepped around from the desk and exited the small office full of filing cabinets and out to the loading area where two men were pulling the pallets away. Both of them wore tight braces around their shoulders and backs as they moved each pallet, weighing twenty-five hundred and fifty pounds. "Sixteen. Ah! Over there. Jimmy. Don't touch that one yet."

"Any box will do. The rest will be picked up at a later date."

"That's fine. Jimmy what's space like in there?"

"We're fine Adam."

"Good. Good." Adam removed, from his back pocket, a small, folding knife and snapped it open, the sharp, box cutter snapping to and locking into place. He sliced open a hole in the top shrink wrap and folded the box cutter back to its safe position. "Go ahead."

"Thank you." The scientist promptly picked up one of the boxes and eyed the label on the side of it through his glasses. "This will do." He walked back off, towards the door he had entered from and cautiously stopped at the guard booth before he left, making sure to have his ID scanned. He signed out as well, without so much as an argument this time. Adam walked over to the guard shortly thereafter and they both had shared a laugh at the scientist's expense.

"You should have just shot him." Adam remarked with a bit of laughter as the guard nodded his head.

"Then the floor would have been all messy. You know what a forty-five does to someone's head don't you?"

"All too well. I'm going to finish up here and be gone maybe in about two or three hours. Let me know if anyone else comes in that wants to pick a fight."

"Will do." Adam returned to the receiver's office and went back to work on the manifest. He would have to receive it fully into the system still but he would note that a package was removed from pallet sixteen by the scientist, Dr. Westerguard. As he keyed in the final pieces of information into the computer, he leaned back in his chair and tried to put his feet on the desk. Unfortunately though, his move was a failure as his cell phone brought a shrill echo to the otherwise quiet receiving area. The silence in the receiving area, now that the pallets were away and the two receiving clerks gone. There only remained the single security officer and Adam. The silence was so powerful one could listen to and hear the humming of generators on the other side of the docks, the winds outside, and even the buzzing of the security cameras as they panned back and fourth to encompass a full rotation of one hundred and eighty degrees.

His caller ID showed the number to be blocked. He knew too many restricted numbers to ignore the call and he answered it after the third ring, "Witherspoon." Nothing was there at first, just a faint static that was unusual for cell phones in this era. "Hello? Witherspoon here."

"Mr. Witherspoon." A faint voice said on the other end of the line, the static growing worse. "Listen carefully."

"Who is this? Hello?"

"Mr. Witherspoon. Time is crucial. You must listen and you must listen carefully. This connection will be terminated in thirty-five seconds."

"What is the meaning of this? Are you playing a joke on me?"

"Listen carefully Mr. Witherspoon. Directive 989 will be enacted tonight. Your continued cooperation has been greatly appreciated and your reward is fully justified and in place. The account details have been received and the proper monetary compensation has been issued."

"Who the fuck is this?" He lowered his voice, his eyes squinting sharply. "How do you know who I am?"

"Mr. Witherspoon. The time is upon us all. Thank you." The call terminated and he looked around. Nobody had heard his conversation, despite it being so quiet. He put the phone into his pocket and sat forward in his chair. Who is that and how does he know? Something was a miss and he wasn't sure what was going on either. He glanced sharply at his watch, "Nine-fifty. Almost done here. Just one more thing to do before I leave." He grabbed the mouse on the side of the keyboard, clicked the save button on the shipment database, and initiated a computer shut down. Grabbing his leather coat from the chair, he stood up and threw his arms into the sleeves and shut off the light in the office. "Alright. Good night." He said as he left the receiving docks and entered the cold, white hallway that led throughout the rest of his sector.

OOC: Tag for later post

"And so. In conclusion, I would like to thank my esteemed colleagues here from the Umbrella Corporation and you, the donors who allow us to continue our great, humanitarian work. Thank you and please, help us find the cure humanity so desperately needs. Thank you." The spotlight covered Dr. Michael Alexander as he stood on the stage, behind a beautiful, mahogany podium. He had stood there for the better part of the past ninety minutes, elaborating and detailing the research progress that the Umbrella Corporation had made in finding a vaccine and a cure to the gravest biological threat humanity could currently face. It wasn't smallpox or the spread of weaponized Ebola but rather something new. It could illicit a pandemic on the entire world and eradicate over a billion people in just a few months. It was classified as a category five on the Pandemic Severity Index which meant that it had the potential to kill scores of people and its case-fatality ratio was over two percent. The Spanish flu, which killed fifty to one hundred million people would be nothing compared to the devastation this could cause.

It was called, within the circles of the academic community, Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 but, to the lay people of the world, it was simply "Bird flu." Though it had first appeared in the world in 1959, it didn't become an issue until the early 2000s, when its secrets were largely revealed. Still entirely within avian species, the virus has the potential to evolve from a strictly avian and animal virus that can only be transferred to humans via ingestion to a human to human infection. It could be even more infectious than Ebola or Marbug. Since 2003, there were 366 human infection cases, all from eating tainted food with a 63% mortality rate. If it were to become a human to human disease, through certain evolutionary characteristics, it could claim a mortality rate in excess of 96%, which was seven percent higher than the highest average for Ebola. Certain evolutionary characteristics could make it almost one hundred percent, more than double the average of the Bubonic Plague, which reduced Europe's population by nearly one hundred million people in the mid-1300s.

The Umbrella Corporation, since the disease began to make headlines in 2006, had been the leading researching into a vaccine for the deadly virus. The only known vaccines were made in Umbrella laboratories but, because influenza evolves so quickly and so frequently, it was a nonstop race to stay ahead of them and the influenza virus was winning the battle. The banquet that evening was for that purpose. The Umbrella Corporation funded most of its endeavors, particularly those into vaccine research from private donations. Private funding from Umbrella itself was minimal, usual just to balance out any outstanding costs but private donations accounted for almost three quarters of all funding for Umbrella's vaccine program. In laboratories and research facilities like the one in Treblinka, scientists worked day and night, weekdays and weekends, even holidays, testing and trying to synthesize vaccines. That was the problem with the vaccines they had for Avian flu, none of them were synthesized yet. This meant they had to be grown, not a time-efficient process and the yield could never be that great. If they could be synthesized, on the other hand, Umbrella could churn out enough vaccines to inoculate the whole world in a matter of months. Avian flu would disappear from the history books and become eradicated, like smallpox, but without the death toll.

Invited that evening to the banquet were over a hundred prominent politicians and social elites from media moguls to doctors and university presidents. Nobody had a net worth under forty million dollars that evening and all of them brought their check books. Umbrella hoped to get at least one hundred and fifty thousand out of everyone that evening, which would give them just shy of one hundred million dollars. It was, in the larger scheme of things, small change but it could go a long way in the fight against Avian flu. Professional bankers were present who could and would provide all donors with proper receipts and information on their donation. As any government would give, all donations were entirely tax deductible and for those who lives in the more strict, social welfare states, it would provide them with a cushion to avoid high tax fees at the end of their fiscal year. For Layartebians, it would be a welcomed relief as well as the government was proposing an increase of the flat tax rate from 27% to 29%, which could give a surplus at the end of the fiscal year of an extra few billion, adding to the already large surplus the Layartebian government had gained in twenty-eight years of rule, pulling the Empire out of a spiraling national debt that was in the trillions. At one point in time the tax rate had been nearly 45% but had, since then, been backed down all the way to 18%, its lowest yet. It experienced an ongoing climb since realization was had but it was leveling off, expected to stop rising once it hit 32%. There was a lot to show for it though. The Empire had the one of the lowest crime rates in the world, an overpowering a first class military, a national surplus rather than a national debt, and the promise of future growth. Currently, the per capita GDP was $41,375 and the government enjoyed the continued rise of that figure, hoping to see it reach $50,000 by the year 2012 and surpass $60,000 by 2020.

As the crowd stood for an ovation, Dr. Alexander took a small bow. With the spotlight on him and the board of directors and company executives of the European Division, it couldn't have been a better moment for the middle aged biologist. At a table in the front row, his wife stood too and clapped, beaming with pride that her husband was doing some amazing things for humanity. It was why she married him after all. He looked down at her amidst the clapping and blew her a kiss as he stepped off to the side and made his way for the stairs at the opposite end of the stage. In doing so, he walked right by Michelle Sloan, the Chief Operating Officer of the European Division. She was forty and a divorcee who was seemingly already married to her work. With a PhD in corporate efficiency and ten years with the company she spoke six languages and was a unique person in her own right. She had two operating modes. At one level she was a no-bullshit, all-balls fireball of a woman who wanted results, and led rather than stood in the shadows. She could be caustic at times but it was her style of leadership and when someone was wasting her time or dragging her along, she would find someone who wouldn't. On the other hand, she could be the most pleasant person in the world, a seemingly total opposite of her other personality. Rumors put her as bipolar but it was more than that, it was genuine. To those she had no business for, they knew it but for those who weren't on that end of her stick, she was pleasant to, it all depended. She had achieved her position by being the one to make hard decisions, owning up to those that didn't turn out for the better, and for always thinking outside of the box.

She clapped and stood herself as her phone buzzed against her hip. She tried to ignore it at first but the ringing continued to repeat. Feeling that it could be something important, she looked down at her hip and saw her phone blinking. She maneuvered it to look at the screen to see that the number was restricted. Like Adam, she knew about ten thousand restricted numbers but still, she let it ring. She hoped they would simply leave a voicemail but, when the ringing stopped, no voicemail appeared on the screen. The ringing repeated now for a third time. Whatever it was, she thought to herself, it was definitely important. While the attention was focused on Dr. Alexander, who was shaking hands as he walked in front of the stage, she carefully slid herself behind the row of people on the stage who continued to clap. The ringing continued and she quickly walked off the stage, the sound of her heels being washed in the ovation. Once she stepped down onto the floor, she pressed the send button on her phone and put it to her ear. "Michelle here."

"Miss Randall." It was her maiden name and it caught her attention right away. Though she had only been married for four years and had been divorced now for twelve, she had not changed her name back to her maiden name. "Are you paying close attention to me?"

"Who is this?" There was static on the phone and she wasn't sure if she had even heard everything right. "Excuse me. Who is this?" She put her left, pointer finger in her left ear to try and mute the loud ovation in the background.

"Miss Randall. There are thirty-five seconds left in the duration of this call. Pay close attention. It will not be repeated. We are aware of Directive 989. It is your ultimate decision to implement its countdown."

"Who the fuck are you!"

"Time is ticking Ms. Randall. You've got a choice to make and I will not be the one to make it for you." The call terminated and she looked around as the clapping began to ebb. Dr. Alexander had done well and though she was proud of this, proud that his presentation would bring in tens of millions of dollars in donations, hopefully one hundred or more, she couldn't help but feel alarmed at the ominous telephone call. Directive 989. Who was that? She thought to herself. Directive 989 was something that was classified in and of itself. Few people knew of it. Those few people were her, the highest executives of Umbrella, any other chief operating officer, and a select few within the government. It had been explained to her once but that was the last she heard of it. Now, again, she heard that term, on a night that was nothing short of extraordinary. Confused as to the nature of the call, she tried to brush it off, put the smile back on her face, and return to the party but her analytical mind wouldn't allow her that liberty. She she walked back to the front of the stage, standing at the base of the stairs, a plastic smile on her face, she couldn't help but wonder who it was who had called her and why. As people walked past her, shaking her hand, congratulating her on the presentation by Dr. Alexander.

As people continued to walk by her and congratulate her on their advances, she politely thanked them all, invited them to stay, to talk to Dr. Alexander, and to donate their money to research. The Polish city erupted with hope that night as hundreds of thousands of people, some young, some middle aged, some old, all brought out their night life. They went to bars and clubs and move theaters. They went to cafés and to get coffee. They went out for food and they went out for sports. Warsaw had an active nightlife and as people began to file out of the banquet hall, lining up at the donations table, the moon rose slightly higher in the sky. It had gone through a full phase just two days prior, on the 21st and it was beginning to wane towards its third quarter and eventually, towards a new moon on March 7. For Treblinka, it was just another evening. Clear skies but cold, that Saturday night was going to be nothing short of memorable. It was now ten thirty.

Mark stepped off the metro, his iPod still playing from his "hard rock" playlist. He was a tall figure as he stepped off the train and moved through the crowds of people as he ascended the stairs to street level. He thought for a moment that he was in some other major city, perhaps Falcon City. There were hundreds of people around him and as he looked down at his watch to see that it was a quarter to eleven, he realized that he was already running late. He ran up the stairs, passing through the people all around him. As a Layartebian and a former Force Reconnaissance Marine, he was a different type of person than the Germanian born Polish inhabitants of Warsaw. They had a different pace about them than he had and they were, largely, in his way. He rushed through the crowds, his playlist continuing to belch out hard rock music. Currently, he was listening to Shinedown and he tried to rush as he moved through the crowds. He had been in Warsaw now for just two weeks and his history told a story that not even he fully understood anymore. He had a great sense of direction and he ran through the crowds and down a few blocks towards a small bar that wasn't too far from the metro exit. Cursing to himself under his breath, his cowboy boots didn't help him run any faster but he still moved as quickly as he could.

He reached the bar at seven to eleven and took a deep breath. He pulled one of the ear phones from his ear and put it between both his undershirt and shirt. He stepped into the bar and paused his iPod as the noise from inside, a combination of music and conversation, drowned out what he had playing. He pushed over the hold button so it wouldn't turn on in his pocket as he walked up to the bar and ordered a beer. He quickly eyed the bar floor and found who he was there to meet. She was a stunning brunette who winked at him from the other side of the bar, a beer already in her hand as she talked and laughed with one of her friends. Mark gave a small smile, took the beer, and walked over to her. "You're late," she said, her voice carrying over the roar of the bar, despite her not yelling.

"I'm sorry." He said, having no other explanation. "Hi. I'm Mark." He held out his hand for her friend.

"Katie." He smiled and gently shook her hand as he took a sip from his beer. "Crystal has told me a lot about you. We work together," she said with a smile, trying to illicit some information from him.

"Did she now? I bet she has." They shared a quick laugh as the three of them got to talking. Crystal was just a year younger than he was and she had moved to Warsaw with her family eleven years prior. Her father had been an ambassador to the Fourth Reich for a few years and took a post at the Warsaw consulate after he resigned from the post. Katie, on the other hand, was new to Warsaw. She was barely out of college and she landed an internship during college with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She impressed her bosses so much they offered her a job working in the Warsaw consulate. She took the job and worked alongside Crystal in the consulate, which would now officially become the Layartebian embassy for the new, independent Poland. Both of them worked counter service for Layartebians. They did basic work, stamping passports and what not but they wouldn't be doing that for too long though as new opportunities were always presenting themselves. "She even told you the story about how she stalked me huh?" Mark said after a brief conversation about how they had actually met each other.

Mark had walked into the Layartebian consulate to register his visa and passport and Crystal had been the teller at the time. Both of them found each other equally attractive but neither one of them had the guts to actually say something to the other. Crystal, on the other hand, went a step further. She had intentionally messed up something on his visa and he had to come back the following day for six hours while they fixed everything. They got to talking and she offered to buy him lunch, revealing the true reason his visa got messed up in the first place. He had only been in Poland for two weeks but they hit it off quite well and now, tonight, he was going to officially ask her to be his girlfriend. It would be a sharp contrast to his previous ways but he was getting older and knew it was time to settle down, to find someone worthwhile, and start a family. "Yeah she did. She couldn't shut up about you Mark. I'm glad I finally got to meet you. He's cute," she added to Crystal, loud enough for half the people around them to hear. It was seemingly, in that instant, everyone got quiet.

"Well that wasn't embarrassing," Mark joked as he finished off his beer, offering to buy the next round. He still hadn't revealed what he did at Umbrella but he did say that he worked in security services. With his past career, he couldn't lie to her and say he wasn't. She saw his record when she stamped his visa. As a Force Reconnaissance Marine, he had more than enough qualifications to lead an entire platoon of soldiers, let alone security guards. That was why he was selected to enter training for the Special Service Unit. The Umbrella Corporation called it a secret organization and nobody could prove it existed. The SSU, as it was often called, existed in every major Umbrella facility and office building. They were elite security guards who had training akin to that of S.W.A.T. level police officers. Most of them were ex-military and they were tasked simply with advanced and extraordinary defense, not only of the physical surroundings of the facilities and its integrity but also of some of the people. Umbrella had been accused of having its own paramilitary, mercenary force and that force was SSU.

"So what do you do with Umbrella?" Katie asked, probing because Crystal had asked her to prior to them arriving.

"I work security."

"Like what kind?"

"Just a nobody." He laughed, knowing the true nature. He was no stranger to occupational secrets, he had dozens of them as a Marine and this was no different. "Sorry to disappoint," he added with humor.

"One day they'll make him director," Crystal added, rubbing his back. "I mean come on. How could you not?"

"In time. So you're here out of college huh?"

"Yeah." She explained her story and the drinks flowed even more. Another round and another round, Mark paying for all of them. He wasn't about to let these fine ladies pay for their own drinks. They continued to have fun as the clock ticked away towards Sunday. It was still a calm night and the bar was just one of many but it was a place to be, especially on that night. In the back, music played and people danced. There was a pool table off to the side and it was being monopolized by a group of Polish soldiers on leave who were trying more than ever to pick up a few girls for the evening, failing to do so. "I've got to run to the bathroom." Katie said and Crystal grabbed her purse to follow them. Mark, being the gentleman he was, sat down on one of the stools, in order to hold it for them for when they got back. He sipped his beer again and watched as they passed by the pool table but he watched a little more intensely as one of the soldiers approached the two girls. He couldn't hear what they were saying but he was directing his comments towards Katie it seemed. She brushed him off and Crystal dragged her to the bathroom. The soldier shot Mark a look and went back to his pool game.

A few minutes passed by and Mark was nearly done with his beer when the girls emerged and walked back over to the bar. Mark promptly stood up to give Crystal his chair and Katie managed to sit down at an empty one. The conversation continued. It wasn't long though before the soldier walked over, a beer in his hand. He had a look on his face that told Mark what was going to happen next. He already had begun to prepare himself. "Hey baby. Why don't you come out with me. Don't be a third wheel." He said and Katie's face turned sour.

"I told you. Leave me alone. I'm not interested." It really was the third time now that she had to say it to him. "Please.

"What? You Layartebians too good for us? You think you're better?"

"Listen pal. She said 'No,' why don't you listen to her." Mark added, the look on both Crystal's and Katie's face pleading for him to do something.

"Pal? You too huh? You Layartebians. You come here and think you own the place?" The other soldiers, all three of them walked over now, listening to their comrade raising his voice. People began to turn their heads and the bar tender began to walk over too from the other side of the bar. He yelled something in Polish but he was rebuffed by the soldiers. "You think you're all tough?

"Ladies. I think we've overstayed our visit. Want to leave?"

"Yeah." They agreed as Mark put his beer and a tip down on the bar.

"We don't want any trouble. We're leaving. This is over. Go back to your pool. We're done for the night."

"We're not done." The Pole put his hand right against Mark's shoulder to stop him. The move caused his blood to instantly begin to boil. "You leave when I say you can leave." With a flash of instinct, Mark grabbed his hand and twisted it hard, causing the Pole's body to bend and contort with pain. With a quick blow, he smacked him right against his windpipe, instantly causing him to begin to gasp for air. It wasn't a fatal blow but it could have been. He did it only to give him a moment's pause and to warn the other three but they didn't see it that way. Two of them jumped towards him, trying to grab him but, again, his training took over, something he'd never forget. As he pushed the first Pole out of the way, onto the floor, he picked up the bar stool and flung it at one of the two coming towards him, catching him off guard and forcing him to the floor as it hit his face. The other one, tried to smack him with the pool stick but he blocked it, shattering the piece of wood into splinters and pieces. With a yank, he grabbed the stick from his hand and smacked him hard against the face. The fourth Pole, not one to let his friends go down without a fight jumped in too but didn't get too far. He tried to throw a punch, only to have it avoided and his arm contorted in much the same manner as his comrade. He was on the ground moments later as both of the girls, still behind Mark, realized that it was definitely time to go.

"I said we're done." He turned around and looked at the bar tender, who was already on the phone to the police. "Sorry," the bar tender sort of ignored him. He could tell that Mark didn't start the fight but he wasn't going to let a Layartebian get all the glory. "C'mon. We have to go now." He said as the three of them exited the bar, him behind them in case the four Poles got up and came after them. They got outside and quickly started walking away, towards the metro. "Sorry. Are you alright?" He asked both of them. They were and impressed as well.

"Thank you." Katie said first and Crystal followed. "Those guys were such jerks."

"You're telling me. What do they have against us?"

"The Reich," Crystal added without much else. "I've been dealing with it for years now."

"Sorry to hear that. So where should we go now? It's what? Five after twelve. Why should we let that ruin our night?"

"I know of a place," Crystal said with a smile. "Come on." They darted off, down a block and towards the east when his phone buzzed.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at it. The number was restricted but, also knowing many of them, decided to answer it. "Wonder who it is. Hello?"

"Michael Newstead. Are you enjoying your evening on the town?" A voice said through static. It was definitely a voice that wasn't human. Someone was speaking through some sort of computer software, disguising the voice.

"Who is this?"

"Mr. Newstead. You're attention is quite necessary in this situation. Are you enjoying your night on the town?"

"I am. Who is this?"

"Good. This call will terminate in thirty-two seconds. Please listen carefully."

"Who is this?"

"Who is it?" Crystal asked, a little worried as she noticed the look on Mark's face. He definitely wasn't smiling. He nodded he didn't know but listened.

"Are you listening?"

"I am."

"Sunday is a day of rest. Your day of rest won't be Sunday. Please let me direct you to your occupation. You are paid to do something important and to do it well. I trust that you will succeed in your mission tonight. You will be called upon soon and I trust that you will act accordingly. The situation is set and the situation is planned. Directive 989 is to be recalled." Abruptly, the call terminated.

"Hello? Hello? Who? Hello?" He looked at the screen to see that the number was gone and the call had ended. "I have no idea who that was."

"What'd they say?"

"Something about work actually. I don't know what though."

"Prank call?"

"Maybe. I am a newbie."

"Okay. You alright?"

"Fine. C'mon where we going? I'm a little hungry. They got food?"

"Uh huh." Crystal said as the smile returned to her face and she took Mark's hand. They began walking again with Katie on Crystal's other side.

"I was lost and I'm still lost but I feel so. Much better." Laura sang as she listened to the song on her iPod. She was the only one left in the lab, working late. She looked down at her watch as she put the slide on her powerful microscope. "I can't believe it's a quarter past midnight. It's Sunday morning. And I'm here!" She said to herself, her voice echoing above even the headphones in her ears. "And now I'm talking to myself." She laughed as she put her eyes to the microscope and looked down at the culture below the lens of the microscope. It was a culture of Avian flu and she looked at it for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen, the music on her iPod continuing to play. She had been working in the lab since early evening and had yet to take any sort of break. It was a clean but not sterile environment and as she scribbled on her pad, she yawned. It was a quarter after twelve, already Sunday morning and she hadn't eaten in eight hours.

Earlier in the evening, her assistant had brought her a box from a recent delivery. She had opened the box to reveal dry ice inside of it keeping two virus cultures frozen and moisture free. They were both test samples of an experimental vaccine for Avian flu from another Umbrella facility. Her assistant had already left for the night and she was there, by herself. Throughout the entire facility and its seven sectors there were only a handful of people on duty and working. Most of them were security personnel but there were about fifteen scientists, throughout the facility, still awake, eight of them inside of labs working hard on their projects. Laura was one of them. She had already analyzed the first sample and found it to be largely ineffective. Displeased, she had spent the past hour detailing, in her notes and on her digital recorder the findings of the first sample. She had only just loaded the second sample onto the microscope eight minutes earlier. She had just looked at it underneath the lens and sighed as she saw much of the same results as she had originally seen. "Damnit. Again. Where the hell is this from?" She pulled out a piece of plastic from inside of the box and pulled open a tab on the plastic and pulled out a piece of paper that contained a basic summary of the package's contents.

Looking over it, she immediately realized why the samples were dead. "No wonder," she said to herself as she stood up from the desk, taking the iPod headphones from her ears and pushing pause on the dial. The samples had come from a smaller and less advanced Umbrella facility that wasn't too far away, on Kihnu Island, in the Baltic Sea, not too far away. A place that had once belonged to the Trenskian government, it too had gained independence after the Reich fell and its dissolution spread outwards, to several neighboring states. The facility on Kihnu Island was not the best facility in the Umbrella Corporation's dossier when it came to vaccine research. They had produced a number of quality cosmetics and good ibuprofen but that was about it for them. Laura knew their reputation all too well.

She stepped away and walked over to the phone on the wall and picked it up slowly, thinking about what she was going to say. She took it and went back over to the lab desk and began to dial the number that was on piece of paper. It rang a few times before someone answered. "Hello. Doctor Landers."

"Yes."

"This is Doctor Draiman at Treblinka. How are you this morning?"

"I was sleeping," he replied, someone aggravated that he had been awoken by her phone call. He was a German by birth but he grew up in the Empire. "What can I help you with?"

"We received the samples."

"You did?" His voice was suddenly changed from pestered to excited. "What were the results?"

"Not good, I'm afraid. The first sample, 'KI-080215-A' completely failed."

"That is impossible. Did you follow the procedure for testing?"

"Yes I did. It still failed."

"Impossible! You must retest the sample. Follow the procedure!" He began to yell through the phone.

"I followed the fucking procedure. I'm the one who wrote it. The sample is garbage! Here, I have the second one in front of me. It exhibits the exact same failures as the first one. You gave me a useless," she peered into the microscope and stopped abruptly in her sentence.

"Doctor Draiman? Are you there?" She didn't answer and he repeated himself twice. He could hear her whispering in the background but she didn't answer him.

"It's amazing." She whispered under her breath as he asked, yet again, if she was paying attention to him. It caught her off guard. "I'm sorry?"

"Doctor. Are you even paying attention or do you think this is a mockery?"

"Hold on. The second sample is. The second. It's."

"It's what?"

"It works. It's it! You've found it!"

"I thought you were saying?"

"No. The first sample. It's pure garbage. But this one, the second one. This is the right one. This is the right everything. Do you have the research and development logged?"

"Of course I do."

"Very well. You will have to come to Treblinka and to Warsaw. You must present this."

"I will make arrangements in the morning."

"Thank you." She hung up the phone and looked back down, into the microscope. "That's it. That's the virus!" She looked up and went back to her notes and began to immediately scribble down what she now saw, clicking on the digital recorder and speaking into it, simply because it was faster. She barely got through a sentence when the phone rang. Thinking it was Dr. Landers, she picked up the phone and immediately started talking, "Fly into Warsaw..." She was cut off quickly and the voice was not the one she had heard before nor was the connection the same either. It was full of static as the largely electronic voice began.

"Doctor Draiman?"

"Yes. Who is this and how do you know my name?"

"Your research is important. Is the sample valid?"

"Who is this!"

"Doctor. There are only a few things you need to ask and that is not one of them. Now listen carefully."

"Listen to what? Your practical joke? Who is this!"

"Doctor. This call only has a duration remaining of thirty-nine seconds. Please listen carefully. Your research has its implications. You created that which I propose. You have a valid sample there, which is the final element to Project Megiddo. It is up to you to put the final pieces together. Tonight you must do that before Directive 989. As per our agreement, you will be well protected."

"How are you? What the hell are you talking about? How do you know about this?"

"Doctor. The time is drawing closer." The call ended and she looked at the phone. It did not reveal a number and, frustrated, she slammed it down on the desk. Whoever was playing a prank on her wasn't going to get away with it, she was sure of that but she had bigger fish to fry. In front of her, staring down the eye pieces on the microscope, she watched as the vaccine for Avian flu did exactly as it was supposed to do and that was evolve. It did it so quickly that it would soon run out of room, destroying itself in the culture. She had found the final element of something so horrific that even its name described its purpose in the food chain. She looked down at her watch again. It was a few minutes past one and she had to hurry up to get all of the data prepared for Dr. Landers' arrival. Quickly, she went to work, jotting down notes, speaking into the recorder in order to get everything down as accurately and quickly as possible. Her headphones went back into her ears and she began, a revitalization about her as she scribbled and spoke away.

The Warsaw nightlife had continued into the morning and would continue until the sunrise. The clock had just passed two and nothing showed signs of slowing. Out, on the town, Mark, his date, and her friend were at a lounge, dancing in the back amidst a hundred people, none of them older than twenty-seven. They had snuck into the lounge quickly, hiding from police who were now looking for them. With sirens in the background, they rushed into the lounge and made their way for the back. The Polish police in Warsaw suspected that they had high tailed it out of the area, taken the metro somewhere else and that was where their searches went, rather than eight blocks away, at a lounge. The four Polish soldiers had joined in the hunt, their pride having escaped them. It was four against one and they blew it, losing the battle to a foreigner, a Layartebian of all people. Their hatred fumed and their desire to find and hurt the Layartebian clouded their better judgements as they rushed with the police into the Metro.

In Sector One, Adam Witherspoon turned off his computer at his desk and closed a notebook. He stood up, yawned, and opened a safe behind him, hidden in the wall. An aerial photograph of the Treblinka facility was swung open and he dialed in the combination. With the safe open, he put the notebook inside, shut the door, locked the handle, returned the painting, and stretched. He looked at his watch and, amazed by the time, he realized he had to get home, to get to bed. He had been working on some extra business after he left the receiving department and had finally finished his work. His cell phone buzzed again and, this time, he recognized the phone number. It was his wife. "Hi honey."

"Are you coming home soon?"

"I'm leaving now. I'm sorry, I got caught up. Is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine. It's just late and we have to be at church early tomorrow morning, you know that."

"I'll be home soon."

"Bye." He hung up the phone and looked down at his watch again.

"I can't believe this. It's so damn late." He said to himself as he flicked off the lights in his office and shut the door behind him, locking it before he left.

Elsewhere about the facility, in Sector Four, Laura was scribbling down her final notes. She would transpire it all into an official memo and documentation by mid-morning and get it sent out to everyone who needed to see it. She hoped Dr. Landers would arrive soon enough. He didn't have a long flight, just 425 miles from the airport in Kuressarre to Warsaw. He would likely be on board a propeller airplane rather than a jet and it would take him approximately two hours to get from one airport to the other, if the winds were in his favor. Still, he had to gather his own belongings and get a ticket at the airport, and wait for the next flight. He had already called the airport about the flight and ticket information and when phone rang in Laura's lab, she picked it up with skepticism this time, remembering the voice she had heard before. "Hello?" She answered.

"Doctor Draiman. This is Doctor Landers."

"Doctor. Thank you for getting back to me. Are you on your way?"

"I should be arriving in Warsaw at seven thirty."

"I will make sure a car is there to pick you up and bring you to our headquarters. I will meet you there. It is a great honor Doctor to finally have met someone who could do what it is that you have done."

"Thank you." He hung up the phone and put the last of his papers into his briefcase. Most of his research was stored on an encrypted, titanium, USB flash drive and that would never leave his own pocket. He already had that in his pocket along with his wallet and his keys. He locked his briefcase and grabbed a duffle bag next to the bedside. Now he just had to get to the airport, where an Estonia Air Saab 340A would be flying to Warsaw.

In downtown Warsaw, nine stories above the ground, Michelle turned off the lights in her bedroom. She had drawn her verticals to a close, hiding the city's lights from her bedroom, which was now completely dark. She lived in a luxury condo that was big enough for a family of six. The condo was cavernous but she didn't mind. She worked more than she spent time at home. She had set her alarm for eight and it was ten past two. It would give her more sleep than she was used to on a normal basis but, Sunday's were there for that purpose. She worked six days out of the week and though she didn't yet know about the discovery Laura had made with Dr. Landis' samples, she would soon fine out and wind up spending even her Sunday at work. It was part of the price of her position, a price that cost her a marriage already. Her bed was soft but chilly and she pulled the covers up to her neck and stared up at the ceiling. Exhausted from planning that night's event, she was rewarded with just over $116 million in donations and grants, given by the vast majority of those present. It would go a long way to finding a synthetic process for manufacturing a vaccine for bird flu. She finally closed her eyes just before two thirty and drifted off into some sort of sleep.

There remained little activity inside of the Umbrella Research and Development Facility at Treblinka. Most of the staff that lived on the grounds of the facility were fast asleep and those not asleep were a small number, most of them security personnel staring at television monitors receiving feeds from CCTV cameras all over the facility. There were a handful of security guards sitting at booths in various high risk areas, such as the one in the receiving department, and there were a few of them walking the premise both inside and out. All security guards were armed as well, given a standard issue sidearm, specifically made for them by Heckler & Koch. Their sidearm was a Heckler & Koch P30, which had been specially built to fire the .357SIG round, rather than the usual 9mm that it was originally built to fire. With fifteen rounds per magazine, the guards carried, as per standard guidelines, three magazines. Backup would never be too far away if they needed it and some of them opted to wear bulletproof vests. With hands-free radio sets in their ears, they all were connected to each other at all times and could always contact each other if necessary.

Inside of the main control center, deep inside of a cordoned off and secure wing of Sector One, four security guards sat comfortably at various tables. They watched a slew of television screens and panels. Some of the panels had red lights, some yellow, some green. All of them meant something and, from the security control center, they could monitor the entire facility. Motion sensors and a plethora of high-tech, security monitoring equipment allowed them to know everything that was going on in the facility at all times. As they watched the monitors and the panel lights, they commented to each other about sports, what happened the previous night at dinner, et cetera. They were tightly knit and as they sipped coffee and listening to each other, a strange occurrence happened. A few lights on the air filtration system went from green to red. It was cause for alarm but it wasn't serious just yet. It was noticed instantly and, as the security guard picked up his radio to call it in, every light and screen in the control center suddenly went dark. "What the..." One of the guard's said as the yellow, emergency lights went on, indicating that the emergency, backup generator had kicked on and was working. Juice began to flow into the control center as lights came back on and some of the television screens turned themselves back on again. This time, three quarters of the lights that were once green were now red. Something had seriously gone wrong. "Call it in. We've got a code red. Something has seriously gone wrong! Call in full services."

"On it!" Within the next eight minutes, pagers, cell phones, and home phones would be ringing. It was 2:40 a.m. and the Umbrella Research and Development Facility at Treblinka had just experienced a catastrophic disaster of unknown origin and size.

Chapter One
Sector One

Adam was on his way out of the building when the lights completely shut off and cast the long, quiet hallway into an oblivion of darkness. "What's going on?" He yelled down the hallway but nobody was there to answer him. He stopped in his tracks and looked around as the various emergency lights kicked in, illuminating the exit ways and bathing certain parts of the darkness in a nice, white light. He took a few more steps and then, suddenly, a red light began to flash at the other end of the hallway. It meant that something was wrong and the facility was currently in a lock down. The only way now to move out of sectors and designated safety areas was with a keycard encoded for special access. Not even all of the security personnel had these. Few of them did, in fact. Mostly the security supervisors had them and various area managers and directors. Adam had one but, in a lock down, it was not all access. He could move freely throughout all designated safety areas in Sector One but he couldn't step foot outside of the sector. Jesus Christ, he thought to himself as the millions of possible causes ran down his brain. The flashing red light was joined instantly by a klaxon that would ring for thirty-five seconds before the instructions were broadcast over the speakers. The klaxon was designed to get everyone's attention, even if they were sound asleep or engrossed in an iPod. Even deaf people had a hard time ignoring the flashing lights.

Adam knew that it was serious enough of an event to trigger the lock down. He didn't know what it was though and he waited now for the klaxon to end and the instructions to begin. He was still alone in the hallway and the nearest other person was in the receiving department, where he had spent a good portion of his evening and early night. The security personnel there were definitely preparing for whatever message would be coming over the speakers, if they didn't already know what was happening. Deciding that it was probably the safest place to be, Adam began to move towards the receiving department, his pace quickened but not too fast that he wouldn't be able to hear the speakers. He would be on the phone with his wife immediately thereafter. The klaxon echoed in the quiet hallway, off the hard, vinyl commercial tile floors, which had been cleaned and shined hours earlier and the concrete walls. Adam almost wanted to put in a pair of ear plugs, the sound was so annoying. It was shrill and loud, an incessant buzzing almost as if a fly were hovering by his ear. It was just that annoying and after ten seconds he had enough of it already.

Adam got to the receiving department just as the klaxon clicked off and found the security guard holding up a defensive position at the door, his pistol drawn. "Hey. It's me. Adam. What's going on?" Adam said, entering with his hands up, trying not to spook the guard. He only shook his head and the instructions began. It was a woman's voice, soothing and calm.

"Good morning Treblinka Facility. We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone. This is a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations." The message repeated.

"Code four? What does that mean?" Adam asked as the security guard holstered his pistol. "What does that mean?"

"It means contamination."

"Contamination!" Adam's voice echoed in the cavernous and quiet receiving department. "Well then why the hell aren't we being evacuated?"

"Sir. Please remain calm." The security guard sensed that Adam was beginning to lose control. This was what he had been trained for, among other things.

"I am calm. Don't start that collective security bullshit with me. What the fuck is going on here?" He began to walk around but the security guard pulled out his pistol again. "Put away the fucking pistol, I'm not going to try to break out. Get on the radio and find out what the hell is going on."

"Sir. Remain calm."

"Is that all you can say?"

"Sir. I said remain fucking calm. Right now!"

"Remain fucking calm? Calm? I'll fucking show you calm!" Adam darted forward and avoided an otherwise well placed shot by the security guard as he tackled him down to the ground. In the tackle, the security guard lost his grip on his pistol and sent it sliding across the concrete floor. Having the upper hand, Adam pounced on him, punching him hard in the face and ribs, pummelling against him in a sort of uncontrollable rage. The security guard did manage to fling him off and though he was in good shape, he was no match for Adam's own adrenaline, which allowed him to recover quickly. As the security guard reached now for his radio, he was tackled again, this time into a stack of wooden pallets, arranged neatly ten or twelve feet high. The pallets collapsed down, on top of the security guard as Adam leapt out of the way, avoiding the fifty pound, four by four arrangements of wood. Wounded badly and now with his radio crushed, the security guard was helpless. Adam, being guided by his own adrenaline walked over to the pistol, a Heckler & Koch P30, specially chambered for .357SIG, and picked it up, a determined and blood thirsty look in his eyes. Blood dripped from his cheek where a punch by the security guard had broke the skin. His fists were red and his ears were red too. He was cut not just on his cheek but underneath his jaw and on the side of his neck, where the security guard tried to get his nails into Adam's throat in order to choke him and subdue him. He failed all around and, as he lay there, helpless under a stack of pallets, bleeding, in pain, and barely conscious, he could only see Adam's shadow.

The shadow approached the pallets and the echoes of Adam's footsteps drowned out the repetitive voice over the speakers. "Help." The security guard said, his voice low from his injuries. "Please stop it. Please." He begged Adam. He could barely see him through the slits on the pallets but he knew that he was there, in front of him. Adam didn't answer, he just raised the pistol, aimed at the security guard, whom he could see through the pallets, and squeezed off four rounds. The first two tore right through the security guard's chest, undeterred by the wooden pallets. They splintered the wood as they went through and entered the security guard quickly exiting and deforming on the pavement below. The last two shots missed completely, landing to the right of the security guard's head and above it. Adam, enraged, kept the pistol pointed at the security guard as he kicked off the pallets and eyed his work.

"Dead as a doornail." He said to himself as he put the pistol behind his back, in his pants, the safety on so he wouldn't accidentally shoot himself. He reached down and looked at the security guard's belt and found just what he wanted, a couple of magazines of ammunition, which he stuffed in his pockets, his ID card, which he shoved in his shirt pocket, a ring of keys he shoved in his pocket, and a flashlight he would use to see in the dark areas. The entire ordeal was streamed on the video cameras to the various monitoring stations throughout the facility but it was a funny thing that Adam's crime would go completely unnoticed.

Adam exited the receiving docks with his eyes boiled over and a sense of rage about him. His actions had been unprecedented and, as he moved down the empty corridor, he had only one destination in mind. With the pistol tucked securely behind his pants, he moved down the whitened corridor, listening to the dull dram of the alert over his head. Speakers continued to repeat the lovely woman's voice, "This is a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." The entire facility was awake already and they were all moving towards their designated safety locations but there was something different in the air. Tensions were high and people were on edge. Adrenaline pumped in each person's veins and their thoughts wandered. Adam was just a few corridors away from where a dozen people were converging on an office, where they could effectively seal themselves off from the air around them. That wasn't Adam's destination though. He was moving towards the security control center, which was located in the heart of Sector One, about a hundred meters away, through various twists and turns and several secure doors. With the guard's ID card, he could gain access to the security area, his own mind racing about the possibilities and about what he wanted to do when he got there.

The facility was under a lock down, which meant that nobody could go anywhere unless their specific ID cards authorized it. For most of the facility, especially those who resided in the facility itself, it meant few places. For the entire maintenance and low-level staff they were locked into their quarters, confined where they could be easily accounted for and rescued if the need came. For most of the professionals, it meant that they could move to various safety locations where they could be grouped together and rescued in one easy shot, should the need arise. In this instance, Adam, if he were at the facility, would take over command of his office and those around him. No fewer than twenty people would look to him for guidance and direction. Those people were now confined to their quarters or at home, outside of the grounds of Treblinka's facility. He was without a mission in that respect but he wouldn't let that deter him from his goal. The security center. He said, over and over in his mind. Taking deep breaths, his chest heaved back and fourth and it was almost as if he was running. His skin crawled and his sweat glands pumped out volumes and volumes of salty moisture from his pores. His body was acting as if he had just run a four hundred meter dash, at full speed, never slowing or stopping once. His brain's logic and reason center had, essentially, been turned off and now he ran on pure instinct. This was what drove him to seek out the security center.

He turned another corner only now sixty meters from the security center. Cameras had tracked every movement had made thus far but he still went through them unnoticed. Security personnel manning the surveillance booths were in a stymied state of panic as they rushed about, trying to get the situation under control. They were, essentially blind to everything that was going on below Sector Five and their attention went there, rather than to Adam, who was quickly approaching an area of the facility he had no business being in, especially in a time of crisis. He had only a few more turns to make and he approached the first of four secure doors now. The doors were built to withstand just about everything out there they would face. Armies of men armed with rocket propelled grenade launchers and explosives found find it hard to breach the doors. Tanks would be able to do so but not without taking down half of the space they were in along with the door. Fail safe systems meant that the doors could not be wedged open either. However, gaining entry through them was easy enough with the right tools. Adam had that tool, a secure ID card that granted him access straight to the security section of the facility. He approached the door and swiped the ID card across a wall panel. The security pad buzzed but remained red colored. A message scrolled across a small screen above the swipe panel and it read: "Please enter pin or place thumb on scanner." Adam growled, unaware that this would be required. He should have known though, he would have to do this to get anywhere using his own ID card in a lock down. He ignored the message and turned around, destined now for the receiving bay again, only this time, he ran.

The security guard was still lying dead on the ground, underneath the wooden pallets but now blood had pooled around his body. Adam didn't immediately go for the body though. He walked instead into the office and pulled out a crowbar and a hammer. With a sinister and twisted smirk on his face, he walked back over to the body, careful not to step in the blood. He yanked the security guard's right hand free and placed his palm on the ground, fingers spread. Determined to get through the security door, he prepared to get the one piece of identification he still needed, the security guard's thumb. Methodically, he put the sharp and straight end of the crowbar against the security guard's thumb, just above the base joint. Then, with a strong and long swing, he rammed the hammer down onto the top of the crowbar. The vibration went right into his own hand but correlated into the result he wanted. The force of the hit and the weight of both the hammer and the crowbar sent it right through the bone and flesh, cutting the thumb free too easily. Adam nodded his head in satisfaction and collected the severed thumb. It fit too nicely into his jacket pocket and he left both the crowbar and the hammer next to the corpse of the security guard.

Minutes later, he was back at the door and this time he would have more success. He scanned the card again and, when the prompt came for him to enter the pin or scan his thumb, he withdrew the severed thumb from his pocket and put it against the fingerprint scanner. Immediately, the pad turned green and buzzed. The door shook to motion as it began to lift into the air. Adam was pleased now and put the thumb and ID card back into his pocket. "There we go." He commented aloud and, as he was about to step underneath the raising door when he was abruptly stopped.

"Stop. Where do you think you're going?" A man yelled from in front of him. The man was a security guard and in his hands was a pistol, fully loaded and his finger on the trigger.

"Easy now. Easy!" Adam said, his hands in the air presenting a lesser threat than he really was. "I'm trying to get to my locker to suit up. I just got the call a few minutes ago."

"A few minutes ago? I've never seen you before."

"I usually work the second shift. Not this one. Now I have to get to there and get there right away. How else would I have gotten that door open if I didn't have authorization?" The security guard couldn't answer him but kept his pistol aimed at Adam's chest. Adam had already taken a few steps back before to give himself more room between him and the security guard.

"Let me see that identification?"

"C'mon you're wasting my time. If I don't report in you know what's going to happen."

"I wasn't told they called anyone else in."

"They have. Now get out of my way and lower that damn pistol."

"Let me see your ID."

"Fine. Fine. Here. You've forced me into this. This doesn't leave us. I have a friend who lives here. On facility. She's. Well. You know the rules. But we love each other. Now. You want to lower that pistol so I can get to my post. Now I'd appreciate it if you kept that quiet so I could keep my job. It's harming nobody. Now let me through," the security guard began to lower his weapon a little but he was too slow. Adam, sensing this as his golden opportunity reached around and yanked out his pistol. Both of them fired at nearly the same time but only Adam's round found its mark. It banged right through the security guard's throat, just above his vest and kept going. The security guard never got a second round off and fell down to the ground, his pistol sliding away from him. Cautiously, Adam walked over to him with his pistol still tight in his right hand. Blood poured out of his throat as he clenched his mortal wound. Adam was standing over his body moments later and looked down at him as he tilted his head to get his eyes in line with the security guard's. "I told you to let it go. But you wouldn't listen." He aimed the pistol now at his head and squeezed off another round, not a thought running through his brain or an ounce of remorse.

Adam's blood boiled as he fast approached the next set of doors. He put the pistol away behind his back again and came up to the second set of doors with the same intention as before. He first scanned the ID and then pushed the thumb onto the scanner. The door pad buzzed, its green light tinting the air around him. This was his second to last door and he was more than halfway to where he wanted to be, the security quadrant. A fuel within him pushed him towards his goal and he stepped through the opening as the door rose above his head. There weren't any security guards in his immediate view, which was just what he wanted. The less of them, the easier it was for him to get there and the less people he had to shoot. He suddenly had no premonition against shooting people, even his own friends, even in cold blood. His brain's higher functions had been switched off by some sort of emergency shutoff switch in his body. The only functions his brain operated on now were his most basic functions. His medulla, which drove his body's autonomic functions had taken over the rest of his brain. His heart rate was racing, his arteries pounding inside of his skin like a drum, nearly breaking out of the skin. Even the other lobes of his brain were acting abnormally. The fever that had come over him hadn't subsided and as he moved further into the compound, the fever grew exponentially.

His chest heaved as he stormed down the corridor, an internal guidance system inside of him locking onto his destination and plotting his route there. He found the corridors to be empty, completely empty. The only contact he had in the corridors was with the security guard, who now was lying dead on the cold, hard floor, in a pool of his own blood. Above him, the speakers continued to ramble on with the same announcement. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." He looked up at the speakers as he plowed through the empty corridor.

"Shut the fuck up already!" He yelled at them though it was a fruitless endeavor. The message should have cut off by now and barked out instructions but it didn't get that far yet. To anyone else who was experiencing the same fever that Adam was, it was definitely unusual. Something catastrophic had happened in the control booth. Whomever was supposed to push the proper button in order to get the appropriate instruction message had not. To those who still had their brain about them, it worried them even more and more. Mainly, they were trapped inside of their quarters with few stragglers around the complex, mostly inside of sealed laboratories on the lower sectors. Many of them would comment to themselves that something was wrong, worrying that the worst was happening around them, unaware as to the nature of anything. Adam wasn't one of them as he moved through the corridor, passing by doors that led to closets or other parts of the complex, paying them no mind.

The complex had a unique layout. Each sector was one floor underneath the previous one, buried deep into the ground. Sector One had the largest amount of space because it was the largest sector. It was the Operations sector and, because of that, it had to handle everything required to run the place. Security was at the central core of the sector with the receiving and shipping areas to one area, the living quarters in another, visitor's center and corporate offices in another, and various other heres and theres all over the sector. It was because of this that the complex looked so large on the surface. In reality though, combining all of the underground sectors as well, the place was gigantic. Still, to Adam, he wasn't necessarily concerned with the layout or the size. He was concerned with getting to the security area and getting what he needed or thought he needed. In reality, he needed nothing except an escape route but that wasn't in his mind. His mind was one-track, burrowing through his conscience and his reasoning skills. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" He yelled at the speakers above him. His irritability factor was increasing as he got closer and closer to his destination. The troublesome combination of the noise overhead and his own body overheating as he traveled took into account the two most important factors in human irritation levels: heat and noise. In a dangerous combination, they could drive people mad. Adam had that proper combination.

He walked up to the last door. He had moved quickly, without confrontation, without seeing a single person. In a way, it was all too surreal. Determined, he scanned the ID card, waited for it to prompt him for the finger print, and, when it did, gained access to the security center. He expected it to be a beehive of activity but he was shocked at what he found, even though his brain had been, essentially, switched off. Flashing yellow lights in the ceiling, a mess and a half of clothes, papers, and everything else, the lights that were only half on, and the lack of any people made it something out of a horror video game. Adam drew the pistol and carefully entered the security wing. He was careful not to step on anything that would announce his presence. The flashing lights pierced right into his eyes and through his brain, annoying him even further. The message repeated overhead, "e are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." Shut up already! He thought to himself, aware what the repercussions of shouting could bring. He had shot and killed two security guards, in cold blood. Under a lockdown condition, security personnel had the explicit and unwavering right to shoot people first, kill them, then ask questions. Adam had, seemingly, avoided that, twice.

The hallways were a total mess. He didn't seem to care though, stepping through the mess quickly but quietly, his pistol drawn in front of him, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze. He was finally at his destination but he still wasn't where he wanted to be yet. He would still have to move through a few more places and through several more locked doors. He had the right equipment though, the severed thumb of the first security guard and his ID card. Adam cared not about him or the other one. It was a distant memory to him now and if he had to shoot someone else, that too would become a distant memory. After a few more turns, a few more straightaways, and one locked door, he came to his ultimate goal. He stood infront of the steel, reinforced, windowless door with a smile on his contorted face. With a swipe of the ID card and the press of the thumb, the door slid open, to the right, hiding the word "ARMORY" quite quickly. Carefully, Adam stepped into the armory, the door shutting behind him, his pistol out the whole time. It too was deserted. Good. He thought after the sweep and now he went to work. He put his pistol back away and took off his jacket. His mind had made an itinerary of what he needed and, methodically, he went down the list.

First, he got a tactical vest and strapped it on, more so because it had a built in bullet proof vest with a trauma plate in both the front and the back. Next, he went to the weapons racks and yanked out a powerful, unique, brand-new, AVIR assault rifle. They had been locked behind a special cage, the keys being given to only a few people inside of the complex but, it was opened. Although not pilfered clean, there were many weapons missing, including all of the SPAS-12 shotguns that were in there. The AVIR would do him fine. He picked it up and loaded a full magazine into its rear stock and looked around some more.

The AVIR was the newest assault rifle produced by the Doomingsland Defense Industries and it was amongst the best in the world. It was thirty-two and a half inches long, equipped with a long, eighteen inch barrel, and it weighed a smidgeon under six pounds loaded, four and three quarters empty. The weapon used a magnificent, lightweight but powerful round. The 6.7x35mm round it fired weighed in at one hundred and ten grains and it was a CTA type bullet, which stood for cased, telescopic ammunition. The advantages were significant. Because the round was fully encased it was smaller and the same diameter the whole way down, without any shouldering. This meant fewer feed problems and the firing mechanism was smaller, allowing for more compactness and a longer barrel. The AVIR held fifty rounds in a helical magazine in the rear of the weapon. Its operation was a balanced long stroke gas piston with a rotating bolt that operated on a highly unique way. It was equipped with a semi-automatic or automatic trigger but, a disciplined shooter could squeeze off only two rounds when in automatic mode with proper trigger control. On fully automatic, squeezing and holding the trigger, the weapon belched out six hundred rounds per minute at speeds of two thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-five feet per second. If the shooter was using two round bursts, the weapon operated at eleven hundred rounds per minute. This was done with the employment of a special mechanism that slowed down the bolt in fully automatic fire, allowing it to be highly controllable in such a mode. It was like the Skorpion submachine gun, which had an inertial rate reducer device. Its effective range was eight hundred meters and its muzzle energy was eighteen hundred and thirteen foot pounds of force, forty percent more than the NATO 5.56mm round.

The Umbrella Corporation had procured a number of the nifty weapons at a cost of $2,000 each but they weren't used by the normal security personnel. They were used by an entirely different contingent. The fact that some were missing and the cage unlocked meant those personnel were on site, though secrecy was their biggest advantage. Adam wasn't too worried though. He grabbed five more magazines and stuffed them into a pouch he grabbed. He also picked up a leg holster for the pistol that he had stolen as well as more magazines. He was, in effect, a combat warrior now, equipped with the most dangerous weapons inside of the armory. However, there was one more weapon he still needed and he wasn't going to find it in the armory. Once he was finished in there, he would move to an adjacent room and procure a tactical radio, enabling him to know everything that was going on with the security staff, including their positions.

Adam was more than just lethal now. He was a robotic killing machine. Armored, armed, and tuned in, he made his way for the main command and control booth, the same one that, earlier, had given the first indications that something had gone wrong. He had a fundamental question to answer and his hijacking mind drove him to seek its answer. Was the control booth empty? The incessant and annoying repetition of the lockdown message above was an indicator that it was vacant. However, it was the command and control center. Unless a full evacuation had been declared, it was to be manned at all times. Adam wasn't even part of the security team at Treblinka but he knew that tidbit of fact; after all, so did everyone else. The command and control center was the most important part of the whole facility. That was why it was at the core of the above ground complex. Now it was just a few dozen meters away from Adam. Around several bends and a few more corridors, past dozens of doors leading to various rooms housing everything from brooms to complex computer networks, the control center sat. It was fully encased in concrete with a single door. It was more than just a small control booth though. It was the size of a small house. Inside of it, at least three dozen people, most of them security personnel, kept eye on the facility. There were small booths within it that were dedicated to certain areas and aspects but, on the whole, the center was a giant room. It was sure to be staffed, especially during a lockdown.

Adam found the reinforced, steel door after no time. He recognized the keypad and the ID swipe from the other doors. A simple enough task it was for him to procure the objects, it was even simpler for him to put them to devestating use. Adam stood silent in front of the keypad and swiped the ID card. The keypad buzzed but never lit up nor did it ask for him to scan his fingerprint. He swiped again. It buzzed a second time, a more of a warning buzz. Though he was in a state of disbelief, even he knew that the card was suddenly useless to him. He swiped a third time and, finally, a message displayed. It was simple and yet like a monkey wrench to Adam's plans: "ACCESS DENIED." Angrily, he kicked the door hard, barely making it budge. The only indication that he actually kicked the door was the loud echo that now reverberated throughout the corridors both inside of and outside of the door. "FUCK!" He yelled as he looked down at the keypad, angrily swiping it again, as if he were expecting some sort of miraculous result this time around. Above him, the annoying message continued. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." He yelled up again at the message over his head and stepped back from the keypad. His rage filled his whole body as he leveled his assault rifle and aimed it square at the keypad. "OPEN YOU FUCK!" He yelled once more as he let out a burst of eight rounds, all of them smashing into the keypad and the wall right around it. The bullets were utterly useless to him though. They pierced and devestated the keypad, sending sparks out of it as the internal circuit board was melted to a crisp from the short-circuit. The bullets ricochetted away from them, bouncing off the walls with small sparks as they pinged around, eventually losing all of their energy and falling harmless to the floor.

The door continued to remain locked and the sound of the gunshots had echoed even louder than his kicking of the door. There was no way around it, anyone inside knew that someone or, rather, some thing was attempting to break into the center. Outside the door, a camera rotated itself onto Adam and its mechanical noises were caught instantly by his ears. He snapped his head towards the camera and saw that it had moved onto him, centering on his face. Adam wasn't one to stand there and let the camera film what he was doing. Instead, he walked up to the camera, took the butt of his rifle, and slammed it into the lens, shattering it, cutting the camera to pieces in the process, casting nothing but a black screen where the image of the door had once been. Furious, Adam returned to the door and kicked it again, and again, and again, failing in all of his attempts. The door, simply, wouldn't budge. "I WILL GET IN!" Adam yelled as he walked away from the door. There would be no way to get into the control center, even he knew that at the moment, despite his obvious mental hijacking. Instead, he set back out for his origin, the receiving department, where he could get the tools needed to get into the door.

As he backtracked, a second time, he was less cautious about running into anybody. Not that there was anyone around but Adam cared less either way this time. He had tried to reason with both security officers before, failing and succombing to his desire to shoot them dead. This time around, he thought to himself, "Anyone gets in my way, there won't be any time for a conversation." He was too determined to have to argue with someone, anyone, who got in his way. Whether they were in his way or not, he would shoot anyone in his path. Now equipped with the proper tools to do it, he could mow down half of the complex before running out of bullets. That same murderous rage that drove him also guided him back to the receiving docks, where the corpse of his first victim remained, lifeless. He didn't pay it any mind and simply walked right by the dead security officer, his finger severed, the effects of death beginning to work on his body. Adam could care less that there was now a rotting corpse in the middle of the flood. He had no desire to drag it into the storage freezer to slow down the process of death nor had he any desire to do anything about the body. It was not his concern and his mind blocked out the encouter, as if it never happened. Though it was no shock to him that there was, in fact, a dead body lying on the concrete floor, underneath a pile of pallets, he had no recollection of how it got there. It didn't slow him down and he bypassed both the office and the freezer for a secured room. The room was a storage closet, another controlled enviornment. Unlike the freezer though, nobody had access to it but Adam and a few other people in Sector One.

He approached the door and dug into his pocket. His keys had clanged around the whole time but, until now, they served little purpose to him as he slid a tubular style key into the lock and turned it to the right. At the same time, he punched a code onto the keypad next to the door and watched it light up green. The lock opened and air rushed into the vault-like room. It wasn't too large but it was completely encased in armored steel and reinforced concrete, all for good measure and reason. Lining the walls were boxes and buckets marked with orange and red stickers on them. This was the dangerous, Hazardous Materials locker. Inside of the storage unit were boxes that included explosives, most of them minor and highly flammable materials. There was no good explanation why such a facility like this one had these materials on premise but they were there and subject to continual inspection and certification. Adam was often the one doing the job as he was one of the few in possession of the key to open the door. He was one of the few that also knew the keypad code. Normally it would require a person with the key and another person with the code to get into the room, as a precautionary measure. Adam could subvert that and he did. The door remained open behind him and the storage locker remained explosed to the air. Normally, the room was kept in a state of such low oxygen that any fire would be immediately snuffed out after consuming the available oxygen. Precautionary measures were instituted throughout the facility. Equipped with a massive HALON system, the room could be instantly turned from a giant powder keg into a harmless closet.

Adam looked around for a minute before he found what he wanted, a box containing just a few pounds of explosives and another box with several canisters of explosive gas, particularly acetylene. The latter was used for welding purposes and was frequently used, especially to fix the massive, steel mechanisms inside of the receiving bay. Both of these would do fine for Adam, who took the boxes and shut the door behind him, locking it, which allowed the vaccuum to kick in again. He left the boxes there and took the two canisters of acetylene and the small wad of putty. He held the canisters in his left hand but put the wad of putty into a pocket on his vest. It was just small enough to fit inside but he wouldn't be able to run or else it would pop right back out and fly onto the floor. Though insensitive, he wasn't the one to risk doing such a thing, just incase. Minutes passed by before he got back to the control center door. With a bang on the door, he reannounced his presence and yelled "Open up! Or I'm coming in!" He waited a moment but there was no answer. "Have it you way!" He said with a twisted laughter as he put both gas cansiters next to each other, in front of the door. He put the wad of explosive putty behind them and stepped back a dozen paces. He raised the AVIR assault rifle and centered the sights on the blue acetylene canisters in front of the door. With careful precision and excellent trigger control, he squeezed out just two rounds. Before he even realized that had fired the rifle, a fireball engulfed the area in front of the door and a noise so loud as to instantly cause a ringing in his ears erupted from the explosion. Smoke came next and the whole building shook a little.

The smoke filled the corridor instantly and Adam took a deep breath of fresh air before the wall of gray engulfed him. The fire suppression systems had kicked on instantly and filled the area with a thick blanket of HALON gas. He would have to wait until the gas cleared, which would take a minute or two. Part of the fire suppression system was a venting system, which kicked in immediately, sucking up the smoke and gas throughout various tunnels and ducts to the exterior of the building, where they would be vented. Adam pulled his shirt up to his nose and used it as a filter, to keep the smoke away from his lungs and the air inside of them as he stepped forward, up to the door. He roared with laughter as he stepped into the control center, the cloud of smoke still around him. "Come out. Come out. Wherever you are." He taunted the air around him as he took a few more steps into the room and emerged from the cloud of gray smoke. He could see that the door had been blown clear across the room, having smashed through a solid glass wall and two desks on the way. The tank that had blown up was in shards all over the entrance way, fragments scattered as if from a grenade. An alarm buzzed inside of the control room and flashing yellow lights illuminated the area where the powered lights had been destroyed or disturbed from the blast. Its pressure waves completely shattered half of the lighting in the control room to pieces and disrupted the lights in the other half. Only three or four bulbs remained lit, casting down a florescent white glow amidst a sea of yellow flashes. "Come out. Come out. Wherever you are." He taunted the air again.

The control room was a horrific scene that his eyes immediately missed. When the smoke cleared though, the horrors of it swept up, into his cerebral cortex. Any normal person might, under the circumstances, gag, throw up, or faint. Adam, kept his composure, the fear part of his brain completely shut off as he cautiously stepped over shards of broken metal and jagged daggers of glass. "Anybody here?" He asked with another sinister sounding laugh. He was playing with more than just fire and he meant business. The first consoles in the room were drenched in blood and one of them had a fire extinguisher bashed through its monitor. He didn't see any bodies at first. The room was something like the bridge of a fictional starship, perhaps Star Trek or Star Wars. There were consoles here and there, neatly ordered, a row of chairs and consoles along the back wall, an array of television screens on another wall, and that same sterile sense of being that existed throughout the rest of the complex. Adam moved past the second row of consoles only to find more blood, more battle damage, but still, no bodies. He kept moving forward, glass crunching underneath the rubber of his shoes, the sound of squishing blood adding to the noise. He got past the fourth and fifth rows, still seeing the same, or rather lack of bodies. The lack of consistent lighting overhead didn't help either but he could see now, something or rather someone at the back of the room.

The yellow light passed too quickly for him to get a proper glimpse and, as he got closer, he saw a body, the first one since. It was a man, slumped over on the console, face down, lifeless, blood all around him. Adam advanced quickly to the body and looked down at it before he did anything. He couldn't hear any sort of breathing and, instead, he gave the body a nudge first with the barrel of his assault rifle. Nothing happened and, finally, he decided that the body was a corpse rather than anything else. With a kick, he pushed the body clear off the chair and onto the floor, where he saw what had happened. He didn't cringe, jump, or gulp either. He didn't seem to be fazed whatsoever by the scene, which was nothing sort of grotesque. In the hand of the man was a knife, a small pocket knife, no more than four fingers long, legal everywhere that there were knife laws. Stuck on the end of it though was his left eye, a gaping black hole where once was, the optic nerve ripped free and the single, blue eye looked up at him and, for a moment, Adam saw it blink. Not that it was possible but his mind saw it and his eyes reacted. He stepped back and looked down at the man, who also had three bullet wounds in his chest, presumably put there after he had ripped out his own eye. Whatever caused it, Adam didn't seem to be affected by it. The massive amount of blood in the control room led him to believe that some sort of slaughter happened in the control room. He didn't find any bodies there but there was more. He took a few steps around the corner and into a small enclave where there was an office, a large enough one to hold a few dozen people.

Stepping up to the door, Adam took another look behind him. Embedded in the wall was the door, having shattered a row of consoles into thousands of pieces, some large, some small. Blood drenched the room and the lights continued to flash and flicker. He was almost waiting for some sort of Imp monster to jump out and attack him, as if this were some kind of video game. Nothing of that sort would happen, this was a grim reality, not a fictional fantasy. Adam took a step up to the door and leaned against the side of it as he pushed the open button on the console. With a whooshing sound, the door slid open and he peaked into the room. Having avoided the damage from the explosion, the room was sort of, at peace. The lights were off and it was almost silent, except for some sort of crunching sound that was barely audible. Adam crouched down and took a step into the room, the flashing yellow light behind him giving off some sort of light into the darkened abyss, which could have been hundreds of feet long in the pure darkness. He could still hear the munching sound and he wanted to know what it was so he stepped closer to where he thought it was, the far corner on the opposite side of the room. Careful not to lower his guard, he sidestepped towards the corner, the yellow light failing to reach that corner or any corner for that matter. Adam had a flashlight equipped to his AVIR and he would use it, when he got to where he thought he could see. Whatever was there, he didn't want to startle it until he had the drop.

It was a painstakingly slow trek from the entrance to the far corner of the room. He moved slowly, bumping into a few odds and ends here and there, sometimes making a little noise as he did. Regardless, it didn't disturb the constant and almost rhythmic munching sound. It was almost as if there was some sort of large animal, chewing on something. Whatever it was, it had to be slow and deaf to not hear him approaching. Still, he didn't take any chances and, as his eyes adjusted a little bit for the lack of light, he could see a little more of his surroundings. He wasn't far from some sort of potted plant, perhaps a fern, he could tell. There was a desk a few feet in front of him and he had bumped up into a soft, leather chair only a few strides earlier. Finally, when he thought he could go no further, he stopped, crouched back down, and flipped on the light. The shrill scream was enough to make him want to tear his ears out but he didn't. He stood firm and fast, his finger on the trigger as the light bathed the corner of the room in a bright echo of luminescence. His pupils suddenly widened, taking in all of the available light and the image before him, sending nerve impulses throughout his brain for interpretation. However, what he saw and what his brain determined it to be was totally different.

In front of him, not more than twelve feet, was a monster. Its eyes were red and its mouth was covered in a dark, red, viscous liquid. It dripped towards the floor from a jaw that revealed razor sharp, pointy teeth. The monster was, dimensionally and proportionally, identical to that of a human being and it was feasting on the brains of an obviously killed person. Whether or not the monster killed him, Adam couldn't say but, either way, this monster, which shrieked and held up its arm to hide from the light, had made significant headway. Adam looked at it and saw that it was dressed in clothes identical to that of a security officer. Whatever happened to the security officer, Adam didn't know but this monster, who was feasting on the brains of a fellow coworker, was definitely not human, or so his brain told him. He had witnessed nothing more than a security officer devouring the brains of another one. There was no monster, per say. His eyes were not red but the thick, dark, red blood on his face was very real. Adam's brain told him something different from what his eyes saw but the message was simple. A series of nerve impulses shot down his spine, through his arms, and into his fingers. Braced against his shoulder, the AVIR assault rifle rocked as he let out a six round burst of shells, at point blank range. The bullets tore through the chest, neck, face, and head of the monster and kept going, impacting the concrete wall behind it and embedding themselves a few inches inside of it. The monster roared and slumped over, onto the floor, lifeless and Adam stood up, keeping the muzzle of the rifle pointed right at the fallen monster. He scanned quickly for some sort of light switch on the wall and found one, just behind a large, glass desk. He put the light back on the monster and saw that it hadn't moved. Whatever was going on, he told himself, it would end soon enough.

The switch on the wall bathed the whole room in white, florescent light. It revealed a lavish office that was about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was a nice, comfortable carpet laid across the concrete floor, part of the reason why Adam's footsteps never echoed. He knew something soft was on the floor but he could only guess as to what it was before. He was standing at the back of the room, a large, glass desk in front of him. Atop it sat a desk lamp, pens, a keyboard, a flat-screen monitor, and various other things one would normally find on an office desk. File cabinets were all over the room, full of logs and writing and a telephone sat on the edge of the desk, a red light lit on its receiver to indicate the presence of a voice message. Otherwise, the room was largely empty except for a conference table and chairs, as well as a flat-screen television. The only things out of place were the two bodies in the corner and a long, trail of blood from the door to the corner. The monster had definitely dragged the body there and began to gnaw on its brains, having bashed a hole in the body's skull with some sort of blunt but heavy instrument. Above him, the voice echoed, "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." With no one alive in the control room to select the proper recording, it would just continue to play. Adam wouldn't know where to go to fix it nor would he be able to do much. Three quarters of the consoles were completely out of action and the other quarter were covered in blood, glass, and debris, making them easily unusable.

Adam paced around the control room, his assault rifle in his hands, panic settling over his body. Now what! He kept saying to himself. He wasn't asking any question of himself either, he was simply stating that he was lost. His plan of action hinged upon there being people around and there being an operable control room. There were neither and the only people he encountered, since the lock down went into effect were two security guards, both of them dead by his own hands and a monster that was feeding off the flesh of a corpse. With so much blood on his hands, Adam found it difficult to think further; to think about his plan B. But the question beckoned, did he actually have a plan B? The flashing lights above him and the incessant continuation of the warning message began to crawl further and deeper underneath his skin. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." He took another look around the control room. Where is it? He asked himself as he paced around, in circles.

He was looking for the control panel that could shut off the annoying voice above him. "Please shut the fuck up already!" He yelled once more as he paced around the horrific scene that sent his own blood to a curdle but it didn't fill it with fear though, it filled it with a sense of desperation. His plan had been his only plan, a plan that was meant to be completely fool proof. How could he envision that the control room had been attacked by a horde of monsters or, if it was just that one monster, how they weren't able to fight it off as easily as Adam did. Surely they had sidearms, at the minimum there. "What's going on?" He asked himself as he looked for the button, pushing papers around, throwing them to the floor as he kicked around other debris. The panels were foreign to him and he had no clue where to look. He had hoped to find someone in there, someone who could direct him, under the threat of death and at the point of a gun nonetheless, to where the panel was. He searched for almost a half hour, eyeing every single button on every single panel, studying them with care, looking for the one he wanted but he had a difficult task. Blood splattered on almost all of them as if some sort of fast moving, agile monster with sharp claws and razor sharp teeth, perhaps a humanized Raptor dinosaur or something akin to it tore through the control room in milliseconds, before anyone could move from their panels. Yet, he still wanted to know, where were all of the bodies. He didn't see nearly enough to justify the amount of blood and he didn't seem to understand what was fully happening either. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." It continued.

Adam couldn't take much more of it either. He dropped his rifle onto the flood and grabbed his head with his two hands as his whole body shrunk down to a crouch, his mouth echoing a shrill, harsh scream of unjustified or unmeasured pain. His yell nearly woke the dead as his heart continued to pound, sending the blood through his arteries and veins like the water through a fire hose. His body had been running on full steam for some time now and fatigue would soon set in but Adam had not noticed anything yet. The only fatigue he was experiencing was the utter pain being felt from the continued voice over the loudspeakers. His body began to shake now as the pain ruptured his insides and he continued to scream. "Make it stop!" He beckoned the invisible air around him. "Please make it stop!" He continued to shake back and fourth as he closed his eyes, so tight they nearly hurt as he saw millions of colors and shapes. Minutes went by and then an hour and he continued to shake and hide from the voice, the voice that pierced his ears, liquefied his brain, and turned his insides out as it repeated the same, exact sentences. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone."

The hour that passed had been an hour of impressive dimensions for Adam. His body continued to wear itself down as his adrenaline continued to flow at full rate. The time was nearly 5:00 a.m. and the sun would be rising soon. The concrete walls around him contained his shrill screams, despite the lack of a doorway into the control room. They were about to give way themselves when he stopped screaming, took his hands from his head, and stood up, a blank expression on his face. It was something odd and any sort of religious fellow watching would be convinced that he was possessed. His movements were sharp, calculated, and almost rhythmic in nature. It was as if he were a robot, moving carefully and solidly according to ball bearings or some sort of hydraulic system. "I will defeat you!" He said as he picked up his rifle and decided that the control room was no longer his place of attention. He had another goal now, a different location, also in Sector One that would give him a sort of blissful existence, should he reach it and accomplish his task. This was now his "plan B" and though it was hastily thought out, it had merit and it had potential.

He departed the control room and the security sector all together and headed towards the opposite end of the sector. It wasn't a far walk, especially not when the place was as empty as it was but it required him to go through several different security doors and locking stations. His clearance alone was sufficient though, to get most of the way. To get into the final quadrant though, he would need to resort to some sort of crafty maneuver. The thumb and card he had would do him no good in this area, which meant he could discard them, though he didn't. His brain wasn't functioning at that high of a level, part of the reason why he had no "plan B" and why, when he finally thought of a "plan B," it had so many loose ends. The corridors were, as he left them, empty. Without any opposition, this would go smoother, quicker, and much more effectively. "Challenge me!" He said to himself, "I dare you!" He seemingly had no audience to speak to but his own inner voices, a legion of demons that commanded his every movement. He obliged them and moved through the various corridors, with one destination in mind, a destination that was now, significantly crucial to the entirety of the survival of the Treblinka Research Facility.

Adam moved quickly down the main corridor away from the security center and towards a section of Sector One that was both secluded and well secured. It was the machinery area, off on the opposite side of the building but, at the same time, it was also nearest to the entrance of the compound. The receiving department was in the rear and the security center at its core. A variety of upper level floors mostly contained living quarters and executive offices, conference rooms, medical, and a variety of other areas but none of them were too important for Adam, who remained on the first floor. There was a steady core of security throughout the building, from the top to the very bottom and the sector and its own stairwells and elevators, which were only accessible inside of it. The same went for the machinery area, which extended from the bottom of the complex all the way to the top and, it too, had its own service elevators and stairs. Adam wasn't too concerned with them though. He would use the stairwell to reach his goal but, otherwise, he gave them little thought as he walked up to the first set of doors.

He swiped his own card and used his own thumb to gain access. The system lit up green and allowed him access to the outer maintenance area. He wouldn't be able to get much further on his own though and he quickly ducked underneath the rising door. All of the doors automatically closed after thirty-five seconds, unless their sensors detected movement or personnel, in which case, they could stay open indefinitely, except in the case of a lock down. In that case, they would only be opened manually and would not be allowed to stay open for longer than thirty-five seconds. Adam was underneath them before the doors were halfway up and long gone before they began to close again. He was just moving that fast and though he was now weighed down with the extra gear he picked up in the security center, he still didn't skip a step. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." The voice continued overhead.

Adam walked through the outer corridors of the maintenance sector and made turn after turn, past dozens of supply closets, workshops, and offices. He listened intently for any sound that would reveal the presence of a person but he heard none. The only sounds he heard were his footsteps, his beating heart, and the incessant voice overhead. It was a voice that was meant to be mellow, soothing, and calming. It produced the total opposite reaction in Adam. His entire body was geared towards stopping it and though he failed at the security center, he vowed to succeed this time.

After a few more turns, Adam came up to the next set of doors, the second of three. These, he wouldn't simply be able to pass through and he knew it, in the back of his head. Despite this, he scanned his card several times and watched the console light up red, denying him access. He groaned in frustration and kicked the door several times, thinking it would work. "WHY!" He yelled out as he turned around and looked for the first door he could find. It wasn't too far away and he opened it to look at a broom closet. He searched it hastily, kicking over a few buckets and boxes of cleaning product, spilling half of it on the floor before he left. Systematically, he checked each and every door and, if the door was locked, he kicked it or shot its lock and broke himself in, searching it. Methodically and systematically, he went through each and every one of them for nearly an hour, the sun fast rising on the eastern horizon as he searched. It took over an hour but he finally came to something useful and he found it in one of the main offices. It was a keycard, an all access blue and gold one, a sought after piece of plastic that was every bit a status symbol as it was a useful tool. This keycard could allow him access into nearly all of the areas in Sector One and above ground. He smiled when he saw it, its shiny colors registering immediately in his brain. "We are currently in a code four lock down. Please remain in your sectors and at your designated safety locations. All residents are advised to return to their quarters, if they are accessible. If they are not accessible, please remain where you are. Our security personnel will be along shortly to attend to your needs. Please await further instructions before proceeding alone." The voice continued to repeat itself and he smirked as he looked up at the ceiling, brandishing the card to this invisible person above him. "I've got you now!" He said with a sinister laugh and a maniacal voice as he rushed out of the office and back towards the door to swipe the card.

Standing in front of the keypad, Adam's heart continued to race, his blood moving through his veins, weariness on the horizon, taking over him but not casting him into darkness yet. He swiped the card, the sweat gushing from his brow and his pores as the tension thickened. What took only a second or two felt like an eternity, or two. The keypad buzzed, lit up green, and instantly began to open the door. With an all access card, one wasn't required to put in their thumbprint. It was sort of a security loophole but, then again, those who had these cards would never let them out of their sights. How this one got out of sight was a mystery and Adam's brain was incapable of processing the logic. He ventured inward and found himself in the midst of an entirely different scenario. He leveled his rifle towards it and his eyes widened to take in what was in front of him.