Project Firestar - Nicole Y (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

and she smiled. When she opened the door she looked at Autumn and said "She should be okay now." "Who are you?" Autumn asked. The woman smiled and said "Sarah Chapman." as she extended her hand for a proper introduction. "I was just here to meet with Ruth Myers to work out the details for a fundraiser. "I am sorry if I overstepped by going into the room with the girl, I only wanted to help." still a little amazed Autumn said "No it's okay I'm grateful. "I'm Autumn, Autumn Stevens, Ruth should be back in a few minutes." Sarah turned back to the girl and Autumn and said "She should be okay I told her that I would come back when I'm done and say bye to her." The little girl looked up at both women and smiled and waved to Sarah. Sarah returned the gesture. The little girl spotted a stack of coloring books and a box of crayons and seemed content for the moment. "Why don't you come to my desk and wait for Ruth?" "Thank you." Sarah replied. And that was that. Autumn couldn't remember a time after that when they had not been the closest friends. For the last six years they had been close like sisters. She was silently praying that Ben had not sent them on a snipe hunt. She couldn't imagine never seeing Sarah again and she damn sure didn't want to attend her funeral until they were both old, bitter, divorced women who always went grocery shopping together and supported one another's bitching about everything from the price of preparation H to the ungrateful grandchildren who never came to visit.
Jane had a sudden rush of nervous excitement as her hand slowly dialed the numbers into the combination. Part of it was the excitement she always felt when she was on the verge of a discovery when she was working on a big story. But this time it was more than that. This time the excitement was rolling up from deep within her. She couldn't explain it. The feelings were mixed as if a great truth was about to be uncovered but a sense of foreboding at what that truth would mean for her and her friends. The pounding in her chest grew loud in her ears. Autumn and Kim had fallen silent their attention focused on Jane as if they could sense the power of what she was feeling as it spilled out of her fiercely beating heart all she could hear now was the click, click, click of the turning dial and the tumblers of the internal locking mechanism as they fell into place one by one. Finally there came a loud clank as the final tumbler fell and they all aligned unlocking the door. She reached for the primary release handle and was almost hesitant to turn it. She breathed deeply and pulled. The two thousand pound vault door released and moved gently on its precision hinges. She turned to the others and said in a solemn serious tone "Lets pray that this leads us one step closer to finding Sarah."
"I really don't want to go in there." Kim revealed to her friends. She looked at Jane and Autumn and said "What if their are dead bodies in here?" Autumn looked at her friend and said in a soft voice "It'll be alright. There is nothing to be afraid of." "Thank you Autumn" Kim said and the girls walked into the room.
The room was far bigger than any of the girls had expected. A long row of fluorescent lights ignited one after the other, flickering to life and slowly revealing the depth of the room. "Whoa!" Kim exclaimed "No way this was part of the original blueprints on this house." Autumns eyes were wide with wonder "What would you need all this space for?" she asked. The girls moved slowly into the massive room entranced and overwhelmed at all of the equipment and devices lining the walls. Further down in the center of the room was a large table filled with all manner of test tubes, glass beakers, and interconnecting tubes filled with unidentified liquids and unlit bunsen burner. "It's like a chemistry set on steroids." Kim said. "This place just screams mad scientist."
Jane replied. Autumn thought of all the old black and white B movies she had seen and began to visualize an unattractive odd looking man in a long white lab coat and black rubber gloves pouring bubbling chemicals from one test tube into another and laughing hysterically with that gleam of insanity in his eyes. She realized how ridiculous it was but she just couldn't help it. She smiled at the thought.
Autumn stared at the lengthy rows of specimen jars lined up on the shelf and began to form a picture in her mind of one of those old side show freaks attractions people would see when they visited the traveling carnivals. She saw a barker standing on a worn platform in front of a large ratty old tent worn from being put up and torn down a thousand times. Wearing his straw hat and making over exaggerated gestures with his thin bamboo cane bellowing his huckstering cries to a gathering crowd. "Step right up folks, come one come all to see one of the most morbid collections of natures abominations, scientific failures, evolutionary dead ends, and genetically induced deformities in all the world. Admission is only one thin dime and your promise not to puke in the tent! Yes sir gaze upon man kinds attempt to play god in the name of science but be warned folks this exhibit is not for the faint of heart and will likely scar you for life. You will be sure to have nightmares for years to come. Yes sir you can't get family entertainment like this anywhere else!" The girls stood in silence until Kim said "Wow! Insane much?" Jane's attention was drawn to a row of file cabinets against the opposite wall. Autumn and Kim were still mesmerized by the jars. Kim was actually pretty frightened by what she was seeing. "What have we gotten into here?" she thought. She came to a jar that had been covered by some type of black cloth and her curiosity overpowered her rational mind which was screaming. "Just leave it alone." She thought to herself, but she reached out and tugged gently at the cloth. It slid off the jar and revealed an image that would be etched in her psyche for years to come.
At first it just didn't register in her mind. Those first few seconds her brain was employing some ancient primordial defense mechanism by refusing to recognize the visual input. Choosing instead to feed an image of some benign object that would require little or no additional thought or action. So at first it actually looked like a simple lump of nondescript matter suspended in some random liquid. But the inevitable realization rushed in and landed on her brain like a flaming
jet liner in a crash landing. Back instinctively trying to increase the distance between herself and the jar. There in this giant sized jar was an impossibly large human head. Far bigger than any normal persons head. But this observation quickly gave way to even more disturbing details. The decapitated craniums left eye was popped out and floating freely near the forehead tattered by a thin and withered optic nerve that wound it's way into the black gaping eye socket like some pink tinted worm boring into the skull. A row of large sutures that looked more like black yarn trailed from the hair line to the chin in a snaking pattern that ran down the middle of the face. Just above that hair line it became clear that the top of the skull had been removed fully, exposing it's brain. The mouth, which was obviously locked by rigor mortise, hug wide open with the lower jaw offset at an insane angle. It made the head appear to be screaming in some nightmarish combination of terror and pain. Kim wasn't handling what she was seeing quite well as Autumn. In her mind she began seeing images of her own head in a jar sitting right next to the decapitated heads of Autumn and Jane as well. Three perfect jars perfectly in line on one of these shelves. She couldn't scream. Gasping for air she started to hyperventilate. A sudden uncontrollable impulse to run hit her like a bolt of lightning. She started for the exit in a blind run. She plowed right into Autumn as if she couldn't see her and knocked Autumn into the shelf. The shelf rocked and the large jar teetered on the edge of it's perch. Kim fell to the floor from the collision and was trying to get up when the jar finally lost it's brief battle with physics and shattered across the concrete floor just inches from her head.
The smell of the formaldehyde filled the air. It was very strong and it almost made Autumn sick. She quickly covered her face up with her shirt. Kim was worried about her new shoes getting brain matter on them to notice the smell. Kim was still on the floor when she noticed her shoes were covered with the content of the jar. She let out a cry of absolute terror. "Get it off, Get it off!" she started kicking her legs around trying to get the gray gelatinous goo off them. Autumn would have laughed at Kim if the smell wasn't so overwhelming. "You really shouldn't be worried about your shoes." Autumn said "And why not?" Kim shot back at her. "Because you have some of it in your hair." Kim stopped kicking her legs and started to swat at her hair as if she had a hundred spiders living in there. This time Autumn couldn't help but laugh at her. "It's not Funny Autumn!" Kim said dancing around the room. "We told you not to wear those shoes here." Autumn replied. "Yeah, well now's not the time for I told you so Autumn." Kim cried out. "You know Autumn, pay backs a bitch, you just wait." Wait for what, I wasn't the one who bumped into the shelf and made the jar fall." "No, but you laughed at me." Kim said. "The two girls started yelling at each other and Kim was just about to slap Autumn until Jane stepped in and said "That's enough!" Jane yelled out to her friends. "She started it." Kim said. "What, are you like in the forth grade now?" Autumn snapped. "I really don't care who started it, we have more important things to think about like finding our friend. Autumn help Kim to the kitchen so she can get cleaned up." Jane replied. Kim snapped "I don't need help getting to the kitchen. What I really need help with is finding better friends." "What the hell did I do? Jane asked. Kim scowled, but couldn't hide the grin struggling to take control of her lips when she said "You were here, that's enough!" She turned and stomped up the stairs. Autumn and Jane make a mock angry faces at each other and smiled, then Autumn turned to follow Kim up to make sure she didn't bust her ass on the stairs. "That's all I need, Kim is at her limit and would turn into a complete uncontrollable bitch if she suffered another embarrassing near death experience today." She thought.
Jane quickly turned back to the file cabinet and began rapidly shuffling through each drawer selecting and file that seemed relevant and shoving them into her satchel. She raised her head for a moment as she picked up in a faint beeping sound. It was coming from a part of the room where there were no lights, she followed it to the back