PANIC ROOM • KENJI KON

XXV. We're Not Alone

Chapter Twenty Five:  We're Not Alone

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The girls entered the lab through the front door, and Yaz led the way through a maze of walkways, until the four girls stood outside a closed door. Sammy and Eva dug their fingers into the opening, pulling the door open so they could all enter. It opened with a loud squeak, surprisingly staying open.

"Indominus Rex, the hum, Mantah Corp?" Brooklynn listed, the first to enter the room.

The room was different from the one they had been in previously, but was still built like a lab complete with DNA pictures on the walls, a mess of papers, and those siberian mammoth remains from the other room. All of the lights were out, and the whole place was deserted, including that of dinosaurs.

"Mantah Corp?" Sammy whispered.

Brooklynn shrugged as she stepped further into the room. "Yeah, it all connects here. Dr. Wu was up to something big, something secret."

Yasmina's hands flew over the light switch, knocking it up and down a few times. "No power."

Sammy entered the room further and began looking atop a desk, then under it. "Who— who do you think took everything?"

"Something's gotta be here," she responded, determined. She exited the room and ran down the hall. Sammy took one look at Eva before following after her.

Yasmina turned to Eva, "After you, Preppy."

Eva narrowed her eyes. "Shut up," she said with an eyeroll. Yasmina didn't take it to heart, because the blonde was also smiling.

The two followed after the others.

Brooklynn led the girls into the other laboratory room they met that lab worker a few weeks prior. The pink haired girl entered the room first, her baseball bat posed and ready in case of danger.

Eva wandered over to the half eaten cake and tapped it, cringing when the sound it made sounded like that of tapping a rock.

"That birthday guy! Of course!" Brooklynn shouted, on Eva's right. She was holding a picture frame, which Eva could vaguely see containing the birthday lab worker they ran into, and Dr. Wu.

"Who?" Yaz asked.

"The van-stealing birthday weirdo, remember?" Brooklynn crawled across the floor, searching the messy papers. "He mentioned something about the 'other guys'? And that no one knew what was really going on here. Could he have also been working for Mantah Corp?" She gathered the papers in hand, then tossed them in the air before falling back onto her bottom. "Again, nothing!"

"Brooklynn. What did you expect to find?"

"I don't know." She pulled her knees to her chest. "Something big. Something important. I came here to unbox Jurass..." She scoffed, "You know."

All of a sudden, a dinosaur screech echoed down the hallway. Everyone gasped in fear, and quickly gathered behind an overturned table.

Damn it, couldn't they have one adventure without being chased or hunted or even in the proximity of a vicious dinosaur? This shit was getting really tiring, and they had only been stuck on the island for three weeks.

Sammy peeped over the top of the table before squatting back down. "It's Chaos," She whispered. "I named the Baryonyxes Chaos, Grim, and Limbo."

"After that hacker gang in episode sixty eight?" Eva whispered back.