Part II: The World Beyond The Water - Chapter 12
“ It wasn't any of those things and it certainly wasn't the full tanks that gave the place that creepy and eerie atmosphere.
It was the empty ones.”
12
The bank of monitors flickered to life, lighting up the desk in a monochromatic wave of colour, washing his little security area with the look and feel of days long gone by. Colin Hardy stirred at his paper cup of hospital quality coffee and glanced over the screens in front of him, momentarily washing his face in black and white, making him look like an extra in a movie from the 1930s. A quick check of the CCTV images told him that everything was in order and the building was secure. Installing the Complex 60-feet underground clearly wasn't secure enough for his employers. The company had decided to install state of the art security systems (it took 3 finger print locked doors just to go and take a shit) as if they still feared the place would fall victim to petty vandals and the opportune thief. Colin knew there was more to it than that, obviously, but he didn't like to think about it. Thinking leads to questions which leads to answers which leads to decisions that don't need to be made. No, Colin didn't like to think much; it only made life more of a conversation than it ought to be. If he'd thought about taking the job before he had accepted it, he probably wouldn't have taken it and therefore wouldn't be involved in something as potentially groundbreaking as this project promised it would be. Despite his work on Project Sims, (not the official name just his affectionate pet name) reduced effectively to that of a hospital porter, a glorified night watchman and a button pusher, he still felt a weird thrill at being involved in something so secret and so, well, cool. Any job he had before paled in comparison to this one. Jotting down the time 22:09 and ALL CLEAR in the log book, Colin moved away from the monitors, walked down the steps leading away from the Control Centre and moved through the finger-print panel doors into the main room. This was where all the magic happened. If the Control Centre was backstage then this was Front of House, the Director's box and the Main Stage all wrapped into one. This was the Tank Room.
This was where the cast were held and the show took place.
Swiping his keycard and pressing his thumb to the scanner, Colin let the doors slide shut behind him before turning to survey his room for the night. There was yet another set of CCTV monitors behind a desk in the centre of the room. The room itself curved round in a semi-circle, with a roof that rose so high above that Colin felt like he was at the bottom of a well. Some nights he would stare up at the roof from The Royal Box (this is what he called the CCTV Monitors and his desktop computer) and he wished he knew how to open the little door that was located on the roof so that he could find the stars. But he never did. Later, he would think how nice it would have been see the stars one last time. If only he'd known which button to push or had a ladder high enough.
Lining the curved wall, underneath the sealed and starless ceiling, were the 5 remaining participants of the programme. Their eyes closed, each of them were contained within their own individual metal tank. The tanks themselves were a dark green and were starting to rust. They were filled with what looked like water (but what Colin knew to be a cocktail of chemicals and drugs that he had never heard of) and there was a small monitor, which displayed the vitals and any essential information of the person inside the tank. There was a small, rectangular, glass window, through which the "sleeping" participants could be seen bobbing up and down peacefully, all manners of wires, drips and various pieces of equipment protruding out of them and into the metal casing of the tank which surrounded them. As he started to bring up each individual's condition reports he couldn't help but glance toward the only thing in the room that he didn't like. He didn't mind the 5 sleeping beauties bobbing up and down in the tanks. No, that wasn't what made his skin crawl or his spine shiver. Nor was it spending all night alone in a secret underground facility with nobody but the silent, floating bodies for company. It wasn't the cold wind that seemed to sneak in from above through what was supposed to be an airtight seal nor was it the fact the he would be the only soul left in the building for 10 hours. It wasn't any of those things and it certainly wasn't the full tanks that gave the place that creepy and eerie atmosphere.
It was the empty ones.
When the project began there had been 12 participants. Colin had been there from the beginning, everyone had. It was a momentous occasion; even representatives from The Wells Foundation, who had bankrolled the entire project, were there. They watched on as the 12 participants were lowered into the tanks. They were already sleeping, which would turn out only to be the smallest of mercies. The hatch doors at the top of each tank were spun shut and the chemicals promptly pumped in. They had all watched on as, at first, everything was going as predicted – smooth and without a hitch. But then things started to go wrong. One of the participants, the old lady (Mrs. Morgan if Colin remembered correctly) flat lined - her heart giving out as soon as the first of the chemicals hit her blood stream, her face blue by the time the last dose had. Then followed the young kid called Pete, who started to jerk violently when the chemicals took over, and whose brain seemingly just gave out and finally Miss Kingston, a middle aged black woman from upstate New York. Her death was the most troublesome for Colin, when he thought back, because she was awake for the whole thing. Whatever those chemicals were seemed to jerk her awake and she looked out at a room full of people who, by this point, were either looking away, burying their face into the shoulders of their colleagues or staring wide eyed and opened mouth. Miss Kingston then started to thrash about in the tank and opened her mouth screaming, "Let me out. LET ME OUT" and began smashing her head against the glass window in an attempt to escape. But it didn't break, not even a crack. The only thing it did was crack her skull as she smashed it against the rim of the metal tank door and flopped back unconscious, the split in her head turning the chemicals and water around her, a deep red. There had been a flurry of panic then. People were shouting to abandon the project then and there as the machines and monitors around the room started beeping and alarms started going off; whether it was the financers in their fancy suits or the Doctors in their white coat Colin couldn't recall. But Dr. Wyatt, the person responsible for dreaming this project up in the first place (or at least one half of it) remained calm and adamant that it was not to go ahead. The compromise target hadn't been reached (if 50% of the participants went down then they'd pull the plug) and until then the project would continue. Colin got on well with Dr. Wyatt. She was nice if not a little scary in her focus and he couldn't help but think that she'd grown up taking Sims a little too seriously – which made him pledge to himself that if he ever had kids they'd spend a lot more time outside in the grass than inside on their ass. That morning, though, she was different. When Mrs. Morgan and the rest had died she seemed cold and distant, not even flinching as a couple of guys in white coats took Mrs. Morgan, Pete and eventually Miss Kingston from the tank and wheeled her past them and out of sight. It was a sight Colin would never forget and it was the reason he hated the empty tanks so much. Because he knew what they meant and much rather that he didn't.
Shaking his mind back to the present, he tore his gaze away from the empty tanks and checked the vitals of the Final Five. Everything was good and he felt like he was in for what he expected to be another easy night as Colin the All Night Watcher. He smiled, remembering a song his father used to play to him until the tape ran out, a long time ago, by a Dutch band, and decided it was time to get to work. He had a lot of work to do and the first port of call was always making sure the place was clean and tidy. Taking out his earphones and plugging them in, he hit shuffle on his iPod and stuffed the sweet jams of Luke Morley, Danny Bowes and the rest of the Thunder boys in his ears. Colin knew that listening to music as he worked was slightly (absolutely) against protocol, but who would know? Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
Whirling around the control room, making his checks and logging what needed cleaned, he pictured himself in his own personal TARDIS, twirling nobs flicking switches and checking data. He imagined himself as the next Doctor in those moments, when in actual fact he was more so the overweight man Nedry from Jurassic Park. Heading to the cleaning cupboard, his mind was already on his break and the snack he had in his lunch box. The brown paper bag he'd packed them in (he'd always liked how that looked in the movies) beckoned the treat of Wensleydale and cranberry cheese with some crackers. It was the middle of July but Colin loved his dose of festive food whenever he could get it.
Turning back to face the room, he smiled. He loved working nights. It was like he came alive when the sun went down, ready to do all the things that those during the day weren't trained for. Colin was the man who kept everything in order, who was the clean up operation from the day staff and who nobody would think to thank the next day when they started. He was the man who kept things right during the night. He was like an owl, a midnight superhero.
Like, Batman.
Imagining what he'd look like behind the cowl and the blue and yellow of the Adam West era, (he was a purist) Colin started sweeping up the floor, turning his music loud as his personal jukebox moved on to the gut-busting riffs of AC/DC.
It was because of his attention to the music and to his tasks at hand that Colin didn't hear the beeping. It's because of his "slight" breaking of protocol that Colin had his back turned to the tanks and his head bowed low, only breaking the surface to do a quick bit of air guitar with his mop, that he wasn't keeping his eye on the participants.
If he had, then he would have registered the problem and perhaps there could have been some course correction to the mistake. But he didn't.
While he was lost in his music, his movie fantasies and the work that he had been given for that night, Colin didn't notice that from the tanks that weren't empty, the participants weres looking out at him, eyes wide as the day they were born.