There was a low, humming noise, the sound of a whirring siren, and yellow-orange flashers scattered eerie lights across the dimly lit room as the door groaned open. Thomas pushed it as wide as it seemed to be able to go, and crossed the threshold into the entryway in a stunned silence, the others trickling in after him.
There were bodies everywhere, bloodied and cold and frozen still. Some had been kicked aside, or pushed up against the walls, or just left lying in the middle of the floor, joints twisted at awkward angles like broken dolls.
The room seemed to be completely modern; all sleek metal and panelled glass. There was blood in rivulets all over the walls and the floor, and it was glistening, pungent and metallic and almost fresh. These corpses clearly hadn't been corpses for long.
To the side there was a huge window, glass frosted up and spiderwebbing with cracks and chips. Through it, dimly, Emis could see another room, with two operating tables in the centre. There were bodies on the tables, covered entirely in white sheets, and they could have been asleep or unconscious if it weren't for the fact that each had a gaping bullet hole in the middle of their chest.
She looked away from the window, feeling slightly nauseous. Newt squeezed her hand again, and drew her away from it wordlessly.
"What happened here?" Winston asked, in a voice tight and hoarse with shock.
At the end of the entryway there stood a pair of double, frosted glass doors. Upon closer inspection, however, Emis realised that the glass panelling in the doors was only frosted because it was littered with bullet holes. And only one of the doors had any glass in it at all.
Thomas stepped through the other door carefully, picking his way through to avoid the jagged glass that lined the edge.
The doors lead into a wide, geometrical-shaped room. There were screens everywhere, fuzzing and crackling slightly, deep fluorescent blue and littered with graphs and co-ordinates and maps and anatomical models. There was a huge platform in the centre of the room, made of steel and glass, the edge lined with spotlights as if it were some sort of stage. Holograms and screens were hanging over it, and it was surrounded by a solid ring that was one, huge circular desk, its surface a scatter of papers and charts. Emis took a closer look, and realised that there was an upright mug of coffee on the edge of the desk, still intact, its surface still steaming.
