Mark robber's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Mark stood with his back to the door, breathing hard. The pink pulse in his fist had calmed, but his head had not. The inside of the building was bright and clean. A sleek laptop hummed on a low table, its screen looping diagrams of past experiments. Wires ran along the floor like roots. Someone had built this room to study something. He just did not know what yet. He stepped deeper in. A wooden bulletin board hung on the far wall, papers pinned in neat rows. The banner across the top read TEST FINDINGS. Below it, in shaky marker: THIS IS A TEST PLACE AND THIS IS WHAT WE FOUND OUT. Mark read the notes one by one. Air samples. Bacteria counts. Warnings about something in the dust outside. His stomach dropped. He had been breathing it for three days. In the corner sat a heavy yellow suit on a stand, a black gas mask hanging from its hood. Beside it, a clipboard listed names crossed out one by one. Someone else had been here. Someone else had tried. Mark's hands shook as he unzipped the suit and climbed in. The mask sealed with a soft hiss. The world through the visor went a shade darker, but his lungs, for the first time, felt clean. He understood now. The building was not a door home. It was a lab, and the dimming device was only telling him the air inside was safe. The way out was still out there. But this time, when he stepped back through that door, he would not be breathing the poison alone.