Star memories

Factory?

The street was silent, any people had perished or had gone into hiding. Starr kept her ears on high alert but was unable to hear anything. The street was very repetitive, the tall buildings were identical and spaced evenly for the most part. The street came to an end up ahead, the end of the street blocked in by three of the mysterious massive buildings. The one in the middle, at the end of the street was different. It had a large door, as big as a two-story house. When Starr approached the door started opening, instinctively Starr took cover in a nearby alley. That's when she heard it, the distinctive clip clop she had begun to fear only recently. It came from down the road opposite the building with the big door. She heard the sound, but now it was different, it wasn't moving as fast as before, and it wasn't rampaging anymore. It passed by the alley and entered the building with the door. Starr got her first good look at it as it passed by, as she had imagined before, it was a massive horse. A massive black metal giant horse. Sitting on top was a man, he himself was big as well, disproportionally big when compared to the oversized horse, but still bigger than any human Starr had seen before. The man wore a dark robe covering his whole body, preventing Starr from making out any part of him.
"Follow." Starr's guiding voice commanded. As much as Starr did not want to follow the big guy who was slaughtering people into the building, she had seen no other ways to go yet. So far, the layout of these trials has been rather consistent as well, she would meet some kind of power user, end them, and then take the next door out of here. That cloaked man could very well be the power user of this trial. Starr decided to follow him.

Here we go, Jasper flipped through the notes for the previous projects Alastair had done here.
He read aloud from the notes. "The subject begins to develop odd beliefs about the "trials" during the third one. It is unclear as to the why of this, but at this point the subjects are known to get a bit violent for no apparent reason. Still working on solution."
Jasper monitored Starr on his screen.
"Could that be why she chooses to willingly follow him into there, does Starr think she needs to kill him." Jasper laughed. "Damn Alastair really knows what he's doing here, training them to kill to get what they want."
"Mmmmmfffmmmeewa."
"Oh yea, I forgot you were here." Tied up and gagged in the back of the room behind Jasper was Alastair, compared to Jasper Alastair looked much older, but despite his age still seemed very fit. "Look I didn't want to tie you up or anything, I just need those notes on this one you named Starr, and since you won't give them to me, I'll just keep you here until I find them."

The inside of the building was huge, like a massive empty warehouse. The man was at the far end of the warehouse interacting with a large door, The man had parted from his massive horse, and Starr couldn't see where the horse had gone from her current position. Mechanical sounds seemed to emanate from every corner of the room. Starr made her way towards the man on the far side of the room, staying hidden as best as possible behind crates and other things in the room. Starr had only gotten halfway through the room when the man got the large door open, before entering he flipped a switch and hit a button next to the door. The switch turned the lights completely out in the already dimly lit room, and the button started the closing of the massive doorway that Starr had entered through. Once the door closed behind him the room became pitch black save for a few vents here and there that Starr could see a dim light from. In front of her just next to the door he had just went through was a vent big enough to crawl through. Starr kept in that direction, although it was a lot more difficult to walk now with the lights out. She kept bumping into crates and hitting shelves. She kept her eyes mainly focused on the vent ahead that she wanted to enter, but occasionally looked to the two vents at her left and right. Mechanical sounds still filled the room, but they were much quieter now, and as time went on Starr adjusted to the sound and pattern of them.... She heard something, also mechanical in nature, off to her left and looked over to that side instinctively. She couldn't see anything obviously... She couldn't see anything, even the vent that used to be there. Starr stopped moving, and kept her eyes focused on the direction the vent used to be in, was something here with her in the dark, no, most certainly there was just a crate or something in between her and the vent. The mechanical sounds, the ones that weren't there before continued, but Starr could now tell these sounds were moving. In a few seconds the left vent became visible again. Starr focused in on the noise, and tried her best to cancel out all other sources of sound, it was hard, but she could just vaguely make out the direction as the sound moved around her. And move around her it did, a few moments later and the vent in front of her that she was heading towards was blocked from sight. The sound stopped for a bit, Starr was very careful not to move or make any sounds. After a bit the sound continued until it was somewhere off to her right. Starr took this opportunity to continue forward making stops to recalibrate every time she lost track of the noise.
Starr was almost to the other side of the room now, the sound was somewhere behind her. The vent was a matter of seconds from Starr's grasp. When all of a sudden the lights in the room turned on. The door that the large man had exited through was slowly opening. The sound she had heard in the dark was somewhere far behind her close to where she had entered the room. After a few brief seconds the sound began moving towards her growing louder and gaining intensity the closer it got. Starr managed to catch a glimpse behind her, it was the horse that the large man was riding, except now it was moving in a very serpentine manner, dodging and weaving in between crates and making its way straight towards Starr, who was now running full sprint towards the vent on the far wall. With a quick flick of her wrist and some concentrated thinking the vent cover flew off, and she managed to just barely slide in before the beastly machine crashed into the wall behind her. She took a second to catch her breath the vent was big enough for her to crawl through, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She heard a scream behind her from the room with the beast followed by a sickening crunch of bones. Starr didn't look back, just forwards deeper into this building.