Chapter Text
The room was dull. Dull, grey and cold. No natural light penetrated the thick, metallic walls, and no natural air flowed through the air vents. It was artificial, all of it artificial. Pure white light streamed out of the ceiling tiles, making the room harshly bright. The air was crisp, and had a sharp coldness drifting through it.
There was an emptiness about the place. Despite the humming of high-tech machinery and the bubbling of strange fluids, despite the gadgets and scientific equipment and futuristic objects that filled the space almost entirely, there was no atmosphere. The spark of human interaction was not there, there were no hushed conversations or loud murmuring. It was just lonely.
A solitary woman paced through the room, amongst the ordered-chaos that she had accumulated over the past few months. The thin fabric of her tights matched with the simplicity of tight skirt she wore, both of which where an un-imaginative shade of charcoal-grey. The starchy navy-blue shirt she wore hugged her body tightly, the buttons of which were done up precariously lowly for an outfit of such obvious formality. A long, still white lab-coat swished around her as she walked, sitting snugly on her arms and upper body, and draping down to just above her knees. Her deep red converse off-setted the entire ensemble, adding a touch of immaturity, of youth to the otherwise grown up and formal attire.
A large vial of simmering purple liquid, the viscosity of glue, suddenly died down. Fumes of a putrid violet shade licked at the edges of the glass, before simply dissolving into the small amount of air trapped above the liquid. A slow tapping sound echoed around the room as she strode towards the table upon which the vial was held. She furrowed her brow, and held to vial up to her face, silently studying its contents.
A large thud penetrated the quiet, causing her to jump, and drop the vile into the floor.
"Damn it!" She grumbled. The noise had seemed to come from the storage cupboard, in the corner of the room. That's strange, she thought. Cautiously, she made her way across the room, and pressed her ear against the door. The cupboard was still making an extraordinary amount of noise, as through something was rattling around inside of it.
Slowly, she turned the handle of the cupboard, and peered inside. Just as something from inside, came tumbling out.
"Ahh!!" She shouted, as a person fell out of the cupboard, and landed on top of her. The man who had fallen out of the cupboard was very gangly. His tall, slender frame was covered in bright blue suit. A red tie was hanging down from his neck, matching with the bright red converse he wore in his feet, the same as hers. His hair was unruly, gelled directly upwards. He certainly did not look like a scientist.
"Oh, umm, sorry." He began to babble, pulling himself and the young woman up from the floor. "I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere. I'll just be going now...." He strode back into the cupboard, and began scanning the walls of it with what looked like a pen with a glowing blue light on the end, but she knew it to be a sonic device.
".....you won't get out of there." She said, looking rather confusedly at the surprise arrival.
"I have scanned it with every device possible, and it's impenetrable. The walls are made of six feet of concrete."
"Oh. Well there must be another way out. A back exit, or a front door...." He made his way towards the front door of the room, and the woman panicked.
"No! What do you think you're doing?! You're going to get yourself killed! There's no way out of here!" She exclaimed, pulling the man away from the door. He turned, and studied the room.
"But this is a laboratory! Why are you trapped in a laboratory?" He glanced around the room. There wasn't a single window in the entire room, and in each corner if the ceiling a security camera was mounted.
"This isn't a laboratory. It's a labour camp." She said, watching the horrified look on his face. "....do you really not know where you are?" She asked. He shook his head. She sighed. She hated teaching the new ones about the place, it was so tedious.
"This is The Institute. But I suppose the big letters on the wall kind of tell you that." She nodded towards the large mural on the wall. "Some criminal mastermind keeps stealing scientists, the best ones around the world, and put them here. We're never aloud to leave. The guards would make that impossible anyway. We have to do research for them. Weapons and warfare type stuff." She frowned slightly. He looked at her in horror.
"That's....horrible!" He looked truly disgusted. "....how long have you been here?"
"Five years." She said, a sad glint in her eye. "I was one of the first. Which I suppose is quite flattering, obviously I'm a pretty good scientist." She grinned. Her spirits were rather hight for someone who'd been kidnapped for five years, and he respected that.
"But haven't you tried to escape?" The thought of staying stuck in here for five years making him feel a little sick.
She sighed. "I have, unsuccessfully. But not recently. The last person to attempt it got tortured and killed. And they made us watch...." She shuddered at the thought. "No one has tried to escape since. Everyone else is too terrified of what will happen to them. I'm the only one who has attempted to get any kind of freedom since then." She looked directly into one of the security cameras. "They only see what I want them to see. So in here, I can do what I like." She smirked. It had been two years, and they still hadn't noticed that what the cameras were filming was fake.
"No! You've wired a chameleon circuit into the processor of the cameras! And ghats a handmade chameleon circuit!! Ohhh that's....that's genius!" She grinned.
"Thank you." She said, before tending to a vile of a putrid yellow gas, that had started to spark. "So what's your science?" She asked, putting on goggles and rubber gloves, before mixing that vile with another one.
"Sorry?" He asked, transfixed with the business of all of the bubbling and fizzing voles in front of him.
"We'll you're at the institute. You must be some kind of scientist, so what field are you?" She asked, hoping that they were the same. She hated working on her own.
"Oh....umm....I'm not a scientist." She threw him a very confused look.
"But you have got be! I mean, no one gets taken here unless they're a scientist!"
"I was just passing by. In my.....vehicle, and I woke up in that cupboard. Do you think you could invest in some kind of carpeting in there, that metal floor isn't very comfy." He gave her a cheeky grin, that she couldn't help but smile at. He was cute....
"Oh...." She said, pondering what exactly he meant. "....was it a spaceship, by any chance?" He didn't reply, and instead just looked stunned. Which answered her question for her.
"There's no need to look surprised. The amount of advanced technology in here was bound to affect some interstellar transport. Professor Stokes in engineering has been experimenting with alien technology. I told him this would happen, but he didn't listen to me." She shook her head at the professors stupidity. He'd managed to cause someone else to be trapped down here as well. And she was well aware of the existence of spaceships and aliens. She, unlike the rest of the scientists in the facility, and managed to get access to the Internet. And in the outside world, there had been some very strange things happening indeed.
"I must say, you're very handsome for an alien." She said, throwing him a wink. He tried not to blush.
"Well you're not bad for a human." He grinned at her, and she turned bright red, which caused him to chuckle.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name." She said, adjusting a Bunsen burner flame underneath a beaker full of a strange green solid.
"The doctor." He said, smiling as she raised an eyebrow at him
"Is that an alien thing, or are you just pretentious?" She grinned at him. "Doctor Sophia Kensington. It's a pleasure to meet you... Doctor."