Warning: story contains non-consensual elements and moderate (nonsexual) violence.
*****
Doctor Brenner jerked awake when the alarms began blaring. For a moment, her world was nothing but a total confusion of flashing red lights and screeching noise. She stumbled to her feet, knocking over the chair she was sitting in and spilling documents and folders onto the floor. The chair tangled her legs, causing her to lose her balance and fall onto her ass.
"Fuck!" She hissed, her tailbone aching and her high-heels scrabbling on the polished concrete floor.
The sharp pain and accompanying surge of adrenaline helped to clear away the cobwebs and she remembered where she was. This was her office, a cramped little research office filled with test results, field reports and endless stacks of containment records. The Facility produced literal tons of paperwork every year. Digital storage was particularly vulnerable to Anomalies and so everything had to have a hard copy...and a backup hard copy...and two other backup copies to be shipped off-site.
She had been working late, trying to catch up on her own personal heap of paperwork: checking test results, adjusting medication levels and approving new tests. It was long, tedious work and a far cry from what she had dreamed of when she was recruited by the Facility. She had imagined herself doing fieldwork, hunting down Anomalies with a black ops squad at her back, or working with Project Rosetta, grappling with concepts that defied logic and science. Instead, she was assigned to level 13: the Icebox. Dedicated to long-term containment, all the Anomalies here were kept secured and unavailable for active testing. She was responsible for ensuring all the Anomalies in her charge were kept stable. It was no wonder she fell asleep in her office. Stable was safe. Stable was boring.
Or at least it used to be.
She found her footing and pulled herself upright once more, ass still smarting. Her office lights were out and the only illumination came from red emergency lights that pulsed in time with the klaxon. She checked her laptop and her phone. Both were unresponsive. She slid a panel aside next to her desk, revealing a video intercom. She pressed the large, cherry-red EMERGENCY button.
"Hello? This is Doctor Vera Brenner!" She yelled, trying to make herself heard over the sound of the alarms, "Hello? Can anybody hear me? This is Doctor Brenner in the Icebox, I need a status report!"
The display flickered to life. It was a mess of screen-tearing and jagged pixels, but she could barely make out the outline of a person. The colors looked like the uniform of ACS: the Anomalous Containment Squad. The speaker next to the screen screeched and hissed, but she could just barely make out a few words.
"Th--ha-b-n-a-co--nment br---code is---ow Ki---repe--he--de--Yellow King--n-AC- ---nn-l-re to re--t to G-mma--ctor f--tr-ction."
There was a shriek of feedback from the speaker and the screen went black. Dr. Brenner pressed the call button several more times, hoping to re-establish the connection, but it was no use. However, the few words she had managed to make out made her blood run cold.
Code Yellow King. It wasn't the worst emergency code, but it still was far from good. A Yellow King scenario was not simply a containment breach, it meant that the Anomaly that had escaped was one with the ability to breach containment on several other Anomalies. Which could potentially lead to more Yellow King breaches. Within hours a Yellow King scenario could spiral out of control and lead to a Red Sun scenario or, the absolute worst case: Nightmare Black.
Dr. Brenner stared at the blank screen for several minutes, heart pounding like a sledgehammer against her ribs. She'd been put through all the drills, but she'd never personally experienced anything worse than a "Blue Walker" scenario when a minor, feral Anomaly escaped its shipping crate and badly injured an ACS grunt.
She tried to calm herself and reviewed the procedure for a Yellow King scenario. Since she was a non-combatant she needed to evacuate as quickly as possible and get out of the way so ACS troopers could deal with the escaped Anomalies and initiate sterilization procedures if required. She was a head researcher so normally there would be an ACS team on the way to her office to get her out of danger.
But it was the middle of the night. She wasn't even supposed to be in her office right now and there was no telling how much, if any, of her message made it through the garbled intercom. She was probably on her own and it wouldn't be long until the Icebox went into complete lock-down to prevent the Yellow King situation from spiraling out of control.
That was when the shrieking alarms stuttered and emitted a long drawn off wail that trailed off and then died completely. Several of the red emergency lights flickered and dimmed as well.
That probably wasn't a very good sign.
Dr. Brenner reached under the desk, feeling the cold metal of the handgun held in a concealed holster. She may have been a non-combatant, but every employee of the Facility, even the kid who delivered the mail, was assigned a sidearm and required to spend two hours every month at the shooting range. The gun probably wouldn't be very effective against an Anomaly capable of causing a Yellow King scenario but it was better than nothing and it made her feel safer. At least if things escalated to Nightmare Black she could use it to...
She put the thought from her mind and darted to the door, opening it a crack and peeking into the hallway. It was empty and silent, lit only by the flickering emergency lights. She let out the breath she had been holding...better empty than crawling with horrors.
If she was going to get out of here she'd need to make it to Gamma sector where the emergency evacuation center was located. Fortunately, she had an excellent memory and knew exactly how to navigate the Facility's twisting corridors to get there. Unfortunately, her office was located in Alpha sector and she'd have to cross half the compound to get there. By herself.
For a moment she considered just hunkering down in her office. The doors were reinforced and featured several heavy deadbolts. She had her handgun in case anything managed to get through and she could potentially wait out this whole situation without the need to put herself in harm's way.
"Don't be stupid Vera," she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
Each containment chamber was secured with blast-proof vault doors, automated gun turrets and a dedicated security team. If the escaped Anomaly was able to breach its own containment and that of other Anomalies then her reinforced office door and dinky handgun didn't stand a chance. Not to mention that if the ACS couldn't regain control of the Icebox within 180 minutes or if the situation escalated to Red Sun then they would begin to sterilize the Icebox by pumping wide-spectrum neurotoxins into the air vents.
That left escape as the only viable option. She finally got up the nerve to step outside of her office door and padded as quietly as she could into the empty hallway, gun at the ready. Despite her best efforts, the clicking of her high-heels sounded painfully loud in the silent, concrete corridor. She pondered going barefoot, but the thought of stepping into blood, slime or worse with nothing but her stockings for protection was too much.
"Vera, after you get out of here you are never wearing heels again," She had a habit of talking to herself in stressful situations, "It's flats forever. Or combat boots. Big, stompy, head-kicking combat boots."
She felt herself regretting her fashion choices in general. Beneath her lab coat, she wore a short, tight black skirt and a button-up blouse that was slightly too small in the chest, hugging and lifting her breasts. Her long, black hair obscured her peripheral vision and she had to brush errant strands out of her eyes. To relieve her boredom she'd been gradually changing her wardrobe and enjoying the effect it had on her male colleagues. Poor junior researcher Wilkins had barely gotten any work done at all since she started leaving the top three buttons undone on her shirt. It was cruel, but she still made sure to take every opportunity to lean in close to him, providing a clear view of her ample cleavage and a glimpse of her lacy red bra.
