M.A.R.A 9

The room was still and undisturbed, each tool rested in perfect order along the medical tables. A thick layer of dust coated every surface, and the fluorescent lights hummed while they lit every corner of the room preventing any darkness from entering. The only window was on the door. The small window provided an inadequate view of an insignificant corridor in the vast and unusually silent facility. There were no doctors, no scientists, and no pesky sponsors dying to get a look at the merchandise, just complete and utter silence. It had been like this for a while. Something had happened but there was no one around to say what.

In the far right corner of the room there were four cylindrical incubators. Three out of four had gone dark and their contents were undetectable through the thick and dark fluid they contained. However, one incubator was as clear as day and the girl inside had completely matured. Her silvery hair slowly bounced around the tank as air from her filter spouted bubbles

up to the top of the tank. The tank emitted an eerie green light that flashed on and off every other second. She floated undisturbed while strange tubes and electrodes protruded from her frail body recording information that no one was expecting.  She would have stayed there undisturbed for several more years had the power not gone out.

The room went dark as did the rest of the facility. The backup generator did trigger but only gave up enough power to keep the emergency lights on. The machine keeping her in a semi-permanent hibernation had shutdown prompting her abrupt awakening. She awoke slowly. Upon gasping for air she received a lung full of thick and sour fluid. She panicked. She tore the tubes and pads from her skin and began to bang violently at the glass. She was scared and confused. She continued to bang on the glass as the fluid began to drain from the tank. The tank fluid was replaced with a concentrated dose of oxygen before opening. She stumbled to catch her footing as she exited the tank. She had never used her legs before and so had trouble standing but-it didn’t take her long before she’d gotten the hang of it. A dim red light began to flash within the room and was accompanied by a faint siren that seemed to have its origins somewhere else in the facility. She looked back at the other three tanks. She watched as they emptied, revealing the bodies of three other girls who looked identical to her, when their tanks opened their bodies oxidized and years of deterioration occurred in mere moments. The girl examined the words painted in black above the row of incubators: M.A.R.A.6, M.A.R.A 7, M.A.R.A. 8, and M.A.R.A. 9. She placed her hand over her incubator and then touched her face, “M.A.R.A 9” She said silently.

M.A.R.A 9 walked over to the door and ran her fingers over the cold metal, trying to figure out how to open it. She eventually disturbed the control panel prompting one of the buttons to flash green.  She pushed the button and watched in awe as the door opened. The red lights continued to flash through the corridor and she followed them forwards until she noticed a foul smell coming from a door to her left. The door was broken open and was covered with dark goo. M.A.R.A 9 was curious to see what was inside the room. The room was a lot like the one she had been kept in except this room only contained one incubator. This incubator was about five times the size of the one she had been kept it. The glass to the incubator had been shattered and the floor was covered in the dark goo that she’d see on the door. She also discovered a red and thick liquid that had been smeared across both the walls and the floor. She ran her fingers through the liquid and tasted it. “blood,” She said quietly. She didn’t know where she’d learned the word; she just knew that was what the red liquid was. The blood trailed into the far corner of the room, and being as curious as she was, she followed it. The red liquid led to a corpse, but this one was different from those she’d seen in her room. For starters this one was wearing a white lab coat that had been stained red. It was also male. The most notable difference would be that this body was missing its head and had its intestines strewn about in front of it. M.A.R.A 9 picked up the smaller of the two intestines and examined them in her hands before losing interest in them. She walked back to the incubator and read the words written above: M.A.R.A 5.

M.A.R.A 9 grew tired of the room. she left and continued to follow the red lights down the corridor. As she continued down the corridor she notice that the air thickened with the smell of blood and the dark goo. She also noticed that there was blood smeared along the walls, but this time it was different from when she saw it in the room. There was something written in the blood. M.A.R.A 9 examined the walls closely to see if she could spell out what was written on them. “Outbreak in wing 1,” she whispered. She walked slowly down the hall and found more messages smeared across them, “wing 6 overrun.”

As M.A.R.A 9 readied to leave she noticed that there was something written under the blood. She used her hand and wiped away as much of the blood as she could, “ORA LABS”.  Before she had time to question what she’d read she heard a noise coming from behind a door at the end of the hall.

            M.A.R.A 9 quickly ran to the end of the hall to see where the noise was coming from. She searched around for a control panel. She found it and she pushed all the buttons until the green light flashed and she was able to open it. The noise was much louder now but the source remained unknown. In an attempt to locate the source of the noise M.A.R.A 9 explored the room. It was different from the ones she’d been in before. There was a large surgical table in the center of this room. On it was the corpse of a girl. Her abdomen had been pried open. However, unlike the previous corpse she had seen, this girl’s abdomen had been cut open not torn and her insides where missing. She came closer to the girl and she began to realize that the sound was coming from inside of her stomach. M.A.R.A 9 reached into the girl’s hollow abdomen and reached around until she found what was making the noise. It was a small recording device. She fumbled around with the device until she was able to get the recording to play back correctly:

“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman--a rope over an abyss...

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under...”

The voice on the recording penetrated her ears without mercy and rang with confidence and discernment. She was taken aback by the sheer enthusiasm of the speaker. This speaker’s voice was so over powering and terrifying to her. She’d only ever heard her own small and smooth voice before. She set the recorder down next to the girl and listened as it repeated the same message over and over again. She only stirred when she heard a loud crash coming from the hall way. 

M.A.R.A 9 quickly got up and headed back into the hall to find out what this new noise was. She followed it to another room. It was a knocking noise. It came in threes:  knock, knock, knock. It stopped for a moment and then started up again. M.A.R.A 9 hurried to the door where the noise was coming from. The door was closed and locked but she was so eager to see what was inside that once the three knocks sounded again, she knocked three times in return. The knocking didn’t resume. So she knocked three times again. The next thing she heard was a loud violent growl. M.A.R.A 9 wasn’t afraid of what lay beyond the door. There was no reason for fear. She had never heard a growl before and therefore had nothing to associate it with. However she was even more curious to see what was on the other side of the door. The knocking began again, this time more violent than before. The door began to dent and rip apart. M.A.R.A 9 stepped to the side as the door was forced off the hinges. A large humanoid creature emerged from the room and charged off down the hall. M.A.R.A 9 didn’t get a good look at the creature but she did notice that its greyish body was oozing translucent goo. She watched as the odd creature ran away trailing the transparent goo everywhere it stepped.

Once the creature was out of sight M.A.R.A 9 entered the room and found it to be in complete disarray much like the last room she was in. The room was also covered in blood but unlike the other room there were no bodies to be found here. Instead, there were three large incubators, two of which had been mashed and were covered in the dark goo. The other incubator had been opened just like the one M.A.R.A 9 had been in. The name on top of the incubators was too faded to read, but there were words scratched into the walls:

“It didn’t work!”  As M.A.R.A 9 readied to leave the room she saw something familiar in the corner of her eye, it was another recorder. She picked it up from the cluttered desk and turned it on:

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.”

M.A.R.A 9 was confused, “Chaos in yourselves?” She wondered what that meant. She knew what chaos was but she was curious as to how it could be contained inside of someone. She listened to the recording a second time before leaving the room. She wanted to find more recordings. She wanted to make sense of the facility.

The deeper she traveled within the facility the more she found written on the walls, “WE FAILED!” M.A.R.A 9 was confused: who were they? And what had they failed? The further she traveled the more gruesome the halls became. She found more bodies and more goo. The halls were so filled with blood and goo that her feet became almost completely submerged in the foul and thick mixture and her hair had become stained and heavy from the blood dripping from the ceiling vents. Her hair clung to her body like a second skin. She paid no mind to the cold blood and goo that had invaded the corners of her body.

She heard a loud growl, getting louder and louder. She turned to see the very same creature she’d seen before but now it was charging towards her. The creature had begun to secrete the dark goo that covered the facility and its skin had turned black in color. The creature was a lot larger than M.A.R.A. 9. It walked in a primitive way with its knees bent and it’s back hunched over so it could use its knuckles as a second pair of legs. The creature stopped a few feet away from M.A.R.A 9 and snarled. Goo dripped down from its saber like fangs and onto the ground.  The creature leaped head first towards M.A.R.A 9. She did nothing to try and avoid the creatures impeding attack; instead she raised her hand and grabbed the creature by the head. The creature bit into her hand, but she felt no pain. When her blood flowed onto the creature it’s growling changed to a shrill shrieking. The grotesque exterior of the creature melted away to reveal the body of another girl.

When M.A.R.A 9 let go of her the girl examined her new body. The girl was terrified she writhed around on the ground screaming and crying. The girl was experiencing some kind of pain that M.A.R.A 9 would never understand. M.A.R.A 9 grabbed the girl and held her still and watched as the black goo was expelled from the girl in spews of painful vomiting and coughing. When the girl stopped vomiting she came to her senses and pushed M.A.R.A 9 away from her. She crawled to the wall opposite of M.A.R.A 9 and stared in horror as she examined her surroundings.

M.A.R.A 9 was in no rush to go anywhere so she sat down and examined the girl. The girl was taller than M.A.R.A 9 and she had a thicker frame. M.A.R.A 9 was also confused as to why this girl had no hair. M.A.R.A 9 had never seen another living girl before. She just wanted to touch the girl once more to get a better idea of what she was. M.A.R.A 9 watched as the girl struggled to wipe the goo and blood off of her body. It confused her as to why the goo and blood were a problem. M.A.R.A 9 walked over to the girl and jabbed her in the back. The girl whined and crawled away from M.A.R.A 9. That didn’t stop her from following the girl around the hallway. “M.A.R.A 9” she finally said.

The girl wiped the tears from her face and glanced back at M.A.R.A 9, “K.A.L.I 1,” she replied. She stood up, “M.A.R.A 9?” she asked.

M.A.R.A 9 nodded, “M.A.R.A 9” she said pointing to herself.

K.A.L.I 1 gestured for M.A.R.A 9 to follow her, and so she did. She led M.A.R.A 9 to a set of large doors that had been smashed open. K.A.L.I 1 hurried into the room and started shuffling through the masses of destroyed furniture and the array of scattered papers. M.A.R.A 9 could tell that this room had been recently destroyed. The dust that had made its home on the surfaces had been disturbed and had yet to settle again. The floors and furniture were also covered in a warm black goo. She looked around the room and found it to be the most peculiar looking room she’d seen. There were no incubators or odd machinery just desks and filing cabinets. M.A.R.A 9 started to explore the room herself while she waited for K.A.L.I 1 to find what she was looking for. While M.A.R.A 9 was looking around the room she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. It was another recorder. She hastily grabbed the recorder and turned it on:

"I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.”

“Overman?” she asked herself. She didn’t have time to replay the recording because K.A.L.I 1 had found what she was looking for and started yelling, “M.A.R.A 9! M.A.R.A 9! M.A.R.A. 9!” Her voice was so shrill and loud that M.A.R.A 9 couldn’t hear the recording again. M.A.R.A 9 put the recorder down to see what K.A.L.I 1 needed her for.  K.A.L.I 1 waved a large box in front of M.A.R.A 9. On the front of the box in big black letters was the first part of her name and some numbers, “M.A.R.A 1-9,” she read. She grabbed the box from K.A.L.I 1 and rummaged through it until she found anything that interested her. Most of the papers were ruined and covered in the black goo. M.A.R.A 9 was able to salvage a few pieces of paper and made an attempt to piece together the information, “M.A.R.A program failure.” she read, “Failure to isolate crucial stem-cells.” She continued to read, “Failure to pass on immunity.”

            M.A.R.A 9 suddenly understood what had happened in the hallway when K.A.L.I 1 had changed from a creature into a girl. It was M.A.R.A 9’s blood that had spurred the sudden change. The creatures weren’t intentionally bred to be that way. Something had gone wrong and the M.A.R.A program was meant to be a solution.  Before M.A.R.A 9 had time to re-read the files K.A.L.I 1 grabbed her and pulled her out of the room. She once again gestured for M.A.R.A 9 to follow her.

            K.A.L.I 1 led M.A.R.A 9 to a set of steel doors that had been left wide open. M.A.R.A 9 could see something written on each side of the doors. On one side, “The Cure is a Lie” and on the other, “All is Lost.”  M.A.R.A 9 followed K.A.L.I 1 through the doors and was introduced to a world outside the facility. The world she saw was plagued by the creatures that had escaped the facility.  Everything was destroyed and the land was covered in the black goo. There was a large statue standing in front of the facility. It was the only thing that still stood in its entirety. M.A.R.A 9 walked over to the statue and wiped away the goo from the plaque located at the bottom, “In Loving Memory of Doctor Fredrik Mara: Head Scientist and Founder of Pandora Labs.” M.A.R.A 9 smiled. She gestured for K.A.L.I 1 to follow her and they set out to explore the world.