This is for a contest. |
Entry Four It was a dark night in the city. It had been a while since I had been there, and it had changed a lot. We went through one of the many deserted neighborhoods. A park we passed, not unlike the one I used to live near as a child, was shut down. The grass was brown and dead and not a tree was left standing. Trash was piled high on the open space that had once been green and beautiful. Things no one wanted, like a bent and broken tricycle, an old car tire from a time before flying vehicles, and a large mirror cracked down the middle. I hurried to get away from the place. It felt like a graveyard to me; all the life was gone. I followed the others down a small alleyway, sticking to the darkest shadows. None of us spoke until we reached a small metal door, partly hidden behind a row of empty dumpsters. The door said ‘Weapons, Human and Animal Legal Experimentation’. Under that, in much bigger, red letters, it said ‘NO ENTRY’. We had found the back door. I was a little surprised WHALE had put the name of the place on the door, since it was the one no one was supposed to know about. The one Matt had spent months looking for, hacking into government databases, before finally finding it. But it wasn’t like anyone lived anywhere around there anymore. “You got that code, Alice?” Chris asked. “Yep,” she said. She pushed aside a small metal plate next to the door, showing the computer screen underneath. On the screen was WHALE’s logo, an eight-legged creature similar to a tarantula, except for the fact that it was on fire. All of us knew that creature. It was a spider-bomb, one of WHALE’s first successful experiments. “Of course you do,” Chris said, practically rolling his eyes. She grinned and tapped her finger on the screen so that a number pad appeared. None of us saw which numbers she punched in, her fingers moved so quickly. The door slid silently upward. We were in. |