From Heaven's Door

Chapter 11

X

We spent the next hour hiding in the corner of the room and talking things over. We expected the surgery to have taken several hours, so we didn't expect anyone to come and see the suspicious-looking dead body on the floor. I explained everything else I knew and what Harlow had told me – Heaven, the something I was now calling "God," the Mad Rooms, the supposed intent of the program, everything. Mint calmly accepted everything and questioned me periodically. I was growing used to talking through a digital voice, even though the tube stung a little and I would've preferred to have heard words coming from my own lips.

As with Arno's room, in the lab's side room, there were a few set of clothes apparently meant for Mint at some point in time. I respectfully sheltered my eyes as they changed. They stepped out in a pair of white loafers with loose white socks, a frilly, laced skirt, and a black-and-white striped t-shirt. They too had no idea where their old clothes and items were. It wasn't much bother to them, anyways; they'd been attached to the toy staff but they could let it go easily and they wouldn't miss the ball. The glasses weren't really a good fit for their face; they slipped down Mint's nose at the slightest jostle and they continually adjusted and pushed them up. They looked like an adorable dork with them on and they didn't really seem to mind not having contacts, contrary to what had been stated in their profile.

We eventually got up and I outlined our final action plan. "We're gonna search this place, top to bottom, find Darby and any other survivors, and then we're gonna find the Director. If push comes to shove, we'll kill them and manually collapse the project, but I want answers and I want to know why they're doing this. The risks are way too obvious and Harlow was too quick to blow them off. I think there's a cover-up, and I only trust the Director to tell us about it. We're gonna stop them from opening a gate to Heaven, shut down this horrible place, and expose their crimes to the world. That sound good?"

Mint happily bobbed their head up and down and playfully mock-saluted. "Yes, siree!"

I smiled. I'd missed their unfailing optimism.

We got up. We were intending to search Darby's room and then go up the staircase. Any Red Clover members who found us out would be killed, and I hoped I wouldn't have to murder anyone else. Not necessarily out of remorse or aversion to killing them, but pragmatism. It was hard to hide a corpse and harder to hide a pool of blood. Mint still wasn't over the corpse in the room and refused to look at it. They absolutely refused to use lethal force themselves and implored me only to use it in the most desperate cases. No matter how many ways I tried to justify it, the fact that I'd already killed three people rattled them.

We finally got out of the corner, avoided stepping in the scarlet pool of blood around the corpse, which had long stopped bleeding, and headed back out for the hallway. Once more, we could hear nobody out in the hallway and I trusted that the people we'd already heard had left, and we proceeded onwards. Door #93 was on the left-side wall and near the very right end of the hallway. We cautiously reached the door, entered through the hallway, and entered the room. It, too, was in a complete jumble. Darby's file case wasn't on the counter, for once, but stashed up on a shelf beyond both of our reach with various over miscellaneous papers. Not paying attention to anything else in the room, Mint looked up.

"There's Darby's file," they whispered to me. "#93, right?"

I nodded. "Yup. Let's hope we find some nice things in there, huh?"

Mint beamed. "I'm sure Darby's profile will be great! I just wish you found yours as well. Knowing my stuff is dandy but I'm really curious about you as well!"

I gave them a warm smile. It faltered a little as I thought to myself. I refrained from telling them about what Harlow said about Darby. That they'd been a killer. I hoped Harlow was lying. Maybe he'd just diluted the context.

Mint feebly reached up to the shelf, hopped up, and failed to reach. "Can't reach it, Tango," they said with a sigh.

I wasn't going to make any progress. I wasn't much taller than Mint (only about 5'3, I estimated) and having only one arm impeded me even further.

"Stand up on my shoulders. I'll support you," I said.

Mint grinned. "O-Okay!"

I didn't think they'd be that heavy. The moment I hopped them onto my shoulders, I immediately regretted everything I'd said. Regardless of whether or not Mint was light or not, my pathetically skinny frame and only one arm to balance caused my legs to wobble and my rate of breath to immediately increase under their weight.

Holy s**t I regret everything oh God this hurts ow ow please get your foot out of my neck why

Mint grabbed onto the top shelf containing the papers and Darby's file. Steadying themselves and putting their hands on the shelf with my support about to completely give away, they took the file in hand.

"G-Got it!" they called out.

I was still straining, about to collapse, and my mind was exploding in pain-fueled obscenities.

MOTHERFUCKING MOTHERFUCKER f****d A MOTHERFUCKING MOTHERFUCK DOWN THE MOTHERFUCKING RIVER

Before they could step off, Mint accidentally jostled the top shelf a little too hard, causing it to unbolt itself from the wall and fall. Mint screamed out and fell from the sudden lack of something under their arms, and we both tumbled. Mint hit the ground behind me, the file skidding a bit out of their grasp. Papers scattered about everywhere and the shelf collided with the ground with a noticeable, echoing thud. I rubbed my head, now sprawled out on my stomach with my back and shoulders in immense soreness, and winced as the shelf loudly hit the ground.

God, if we hadn't been discovered already, we were in s**t now.

I immediately shot up to a sitting position and looked back at Mint, my voice hasty through the communicator. "Mint! Mint, did you get the file!? I don't want to be around when Red Clover members come flooding in here!"

Mint had gotten up to their hands and knees, whimpering a bit in pain, and were sweeping their hands across the floor, looking for something. I looked back and noticed their glasses had dislodged and had skidded a few feet behind them.

I called out as quietly as I could to avoid drawing any further "Mint! Mint, they're right-!"

I was immediately silenced by the faint sound of a door opening in the hallway outside. My heart plummeted, I pocketed the communicator, and I immediately snatched Darby's folder and dragged Mint by the hand as quickly as I could into the side room. I shut the door and knelt us down, shivering in dread.

Mint was straining their eyes, but quickly got the hint, keeping their voice at a near-inaudible whisper. "Oh, God, did we alert someone? I-I'm sorry, Tango, I-!"

I shushed them, quietly put my arm on their shoulder to calm them down, and hugged up against the wall. The only sound, for a few seconds, was our breath. Then, my worst fears were confirmed and the doors opened in the other room.

A mumbling voice went through the room and two pairs of footsteps echoed across the room. There was a quiet curse from the other side from one of the presences, and I tuned into the conversations.

To my horror, one of the people who had entered the room was Ash.

"The f**k happened here?" he said, his voice almost distant from the bar of the wall between us. "Did somethin' collapse or some s**t? Jesus, we need to take better fuckin' care of this place... Cost-cuttin' bastards."

Another voice of someone I didn't recognize replied to him. "Dr. Sharpe, since #59 is currently being refitted with the chip, might I suggest you keep your-"

There was a wet slap and a cry of pain from the other voice's as Ash's furious voice chewed them out. "Shut the f**k up, Marin. Just... what's this?" I could hear Ash picked something up and fiddle with something, then laugh to himself. "Holy s**t, I can't see nothin' through these!"

Mint looked at me with an anxious expression. "H-He's got my specs!"

I hastily put my finger over their mouth and hushed them. The two voices had already gone silent and my heart sunk into a black abyss. Ash's footsteps got closer. I looked up.

Through the window, I could see Ash peering back down at me, his pinprick eyes wide and his shark mouth agape in an ear-to-ear smile.

"Lil' cherry. How the f**k are you, mate?" he said in a whispered, perverted voice.

I scrambled back from the wall and stared up at him. Mint started freaking out again and followed me, their gaze darting around aimlessly as they looked around rapidly through squinted eyes.

"T-Tango? What's happening? Who's there?" they stammered.

Ash opened the door and I stood up, drawing the knife in my trembling hand. I was rearing protectively over Mint and Darby's file. Ash walked in, crossing his arms and lowering his toothy grin to a sickening smirk. The second person, Marin, walked behind him. She was clad in the generic black suit of the other Red Clover members, but her face was unmasked. She, by appearance, was Indian, with a prominent black birth mark by the left corner of her mouth and a troubled-looking expression. She had ruffled black hair that fell to the bottom of her neck, and there was a red mark on her face from where Ash had slapped her. She was with Red Clover, but I felt some trace of pity for her by sheer virtue of having to accompany Ash.

Ash leaned over. "Surprised you're still here, shortstack. Thought Harlow took you to get that s**t out of your brain. You and #59 are lookin' nice... That's real swell. You fuckin' break 'em out or somethin'?"

I did my best to glare at them. Ash cackled in response. Mint crawled forth, still sitting, and looked up at Ash.

"W-Who are you?" they said in terror.

Ash shrugged. "Just one of the fuckers responsible for carryin' out this dirty s**t. I'm gettin' paid good for it. That's all the reason I need, really." He casually tossed the glasses onto the floor a few feet away from Mint. "Here y'go, toots. Those things are fuckin' hideous on me anyways."

Mint, quietly sobbing and squinting, crawled over to where they'd heard their glasses land and started groping around the general area. From when they'd impacted the floor, there was now a small crack on the right lens of Mint's specs. As Ash watched with a dry amusement and I looked back in pity, Marin shuffled about uneasily.

"Dr. Sharpe," she begun, her voice begging, "we should really just tranq-"

Ash turned and suddenly socked her in the face. I almost looked away as Marin fell back with a cry of anguished surprise. Ash had a contemptuous sneer on his face as he watched her fall over from the punch.

"When I fuckin' tell you to shut up, b***h," he growled, "you fuckin' shut up! Fuckin' Christ..." He rubbed his forehead, then looked back at me. "Anyways, where were we? You really should've just fuckin' up and gone, kid. #48 saw too much on their first run-through; the only reason that screw-up is still kickin' is because they promised the Director they'd work. Work they fuckin' will, and as soon as we're done, boom. They're dead like the rest of the scum we brought into this shithole."

I felt disgust. Jilton was being forced to work for them under a false promise?

Ash sneered again. "I guess you're a little fuckin' suicidal, ain't ya? That's fine with me. A few of our applicants had a few depression problems... nothin' I couldn't weed out of them."

Arno. Mint. I remembered he'd done something to them. Ash got uncomfortably close again. I wanted to stab him, but my entire body had frozen up.

"The Director themselves personally requested your fuckin' removal from this place," Ash continued. "God fuckin' knows why, but I'm happy you decided to stay, lil' cherry. You know why?"

He brought his face close to mine, his breath odorous and as sharp as blades. He didn't even have to grab my face this time.

"Because now, I'll get to have some fuckin' fun with you," he rasped, directly in my ear.

That was all I could take.

I finally took the knife out and stabbed at his face. I couldn't see it properly through the whirl of the world around me as I did so, but I felt the knife cut through flesh and Ash scream in pain. I looked back. Mint was still desperately trying to find their glasses. I reared over them and kicked Ash back. Ash was holding the right side of his face in blind pain and fell back onto Marin, who cried out. Mint finally grasped the arm of their specs and put them back on.

"G-Got 'em!" they cried.

I sucked in a deep breath as Mint stood up with Darby's file in hand, and we both made a mad dash out the room. Mint stopped for one second at Ash and seemed to lean over in the corner of my eye, prompting me to whip my head back. They'd reared back over, pocketing something I couldn't see. Behind them, I could see Ash pause to savagely take out his wrath on Marin and start beating her to a bloody pulp. I couldn't stop him from doing so. Mint and I just went as fast as our legs could carry us. Ash's voice rung out, strung with fury, apparently into a transceiver. The alarm sounded and Ash's voice called out through an intercom built into the entire floor.

"Escapees on the prep rooms, #7 and #59! Detain 'em and bring 'em to me alive! Fuckin' alive!"

Everything had officially gone to s**t.

We barged out into the hall. We could already here Red Clover members piling down the stairs a bit above in the next room. Going up there was, evidently, a piss-poor idea. I looked at Mint, shared a nod of mutual understanding for what we were about to do, and we sprinted full speed down the hall. By the time we got to the card-locked door, about six Red Clover members had come down the stairs, aiming guns at us and roaring out "freeze!" towards our deaf ears. I kicked at the door, scrabbled at it, Mint doing the same and repeatedly looking behind them.

The door didn't budge. It was firmly sealed into the wall. Unless we wanted to make a mad dash and try taking the card directly from one of the Red Clover members, we'd essentially run ourselves into a literal corner. Hallelujah, alright, we were screwed. I stared back at the Red Clover members, who had spread out and blocked a path back from where we'd come, and I whipped out the knife. I wasn't going down without a fight.

The door beeped and I heard the door slide open behind me. I looked behind it, utterly dumbfounded for a second, before Mint suddenly shoved me inside. The Red Clover gunmen opened fire, Mint dove into the door, and slammed it close.

It was another goddamned elevator. Holy Christ, I'd never been so happy to see one. I looked back at Mint, and realized they'd used the split opportunity earlier to swipe a key card off Ash. Nice split-second thinking.

I looked at the button panel. There were six floors outlined and another, wide button at the bottom simply labeled "DROP-OFF." As soon as the bullets started hitting the door, I didn't hesitate to punch the button and let the elevator start moving. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a radio in this elevator. No disco music to calm down the moment. Just the sound of our own throbbing hearts. I looked at Mint, who was nervously giggling and wiggling their cracked glasses.

"Okay,"they said, "maybe I should've kept the contacts. Sorry for, um, getting us into this mess," they said.

I shook my head to indicate it was okay. In this mess or otherwise, I would've been toast without Mint's spur-of-the-moment theft.

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. The alarm was still faintly blaring overhead a few rooms up, but thank God, there didn't seem to be any other way down here. I wasn't taking any chances; the moment the elevator door closed, I plunged the knife into the card scanner, quietly hoping that would, by some miracle, stop the doors from opening on the other side. We looked around.

The room were were in carried the odd fragrance of bath water. Twenty shower nozzles, ten on each side, rowed the walls, having not been turned on for a while. Rickety brown benches, built into the wall, stretched the entire length of each wall, and there was a small pocket under each with several drains in them. The walls were white, bland, and featureless, tiled and with a small hint of mold growing in the bottom-left corner, right next to the elevator. There was another metallic, air-proof door at the very end of the room and a hall splitting to the left, ending at a scanner-locked door marked with a boxed, taped-off window and some text written on it.

Course Outline

Employees only

One part of me wanted a shower, because f*****g hell, I needed it. I stunk of sweat, dirt and grime. I was stressed as all hell and some hot water running down my back might've just as well been the cure. The other part of me wanted to take a look at this "course outline." Was everything correlating to this supposed multi-billion dollar program so conveniently open?

Mint was looking at the door. "We've got the key card and the file. Maybe it'd be best if we waited in there for a bit," they suggested.

I nodded, not bothering to take out the communicator yet. We paced down the hallway, unlocked the key, and opened the door. It was an office-looking room, with a carpeted floor, shelves stacked with books and folders and files I didn't even want to go through the trouble of searching through, and a squared, heavy black desk with a wheeled chair at the end of the room. Above that was a portrait.

There she was. Again. Cow-milk lady.

It was exactly as I remembered her, but without the haze of a broken memory to cloud it. Same fluffy yellow-blonde blonde hair, same undamaged smile, same perfectly smooth skin. Some part of me seemed to recognize her deep, deep within me. I read the caption at the bottom of the picture frame.

Tara Waits, Vice President of Red Clover

Vice President. My heart chilled. So Tara – whoever she was – was directly under the senior managing director of Red Clover. From an outwards appearance (although I'd long learned to never trust a book by its cover), she didn't seem like see was responsible for helping run a ludicrously amoral corporation of people like Ash. She seemed jovial. Motherly.

I took a seat in the wheelie chair, too upset to think clearly at the moment. I took out the communicator and looked at Mint, who had already placed down Darby's file.

"You feeling alright? We can take a break, if you want," they said. "I don't think they'll look for us here."

I put the tube in my neck, adjusted the communicator, and quietly sighed. "No, uh, I'm fine."

I looked up at Mint. They were looking at me, with an awkward, wide smile very ill-fitting for the circumstance. I couldn't help but resist a grin myself even with the lingering panic. Mint's happiness was contagious.

"What?" I pried.

"Nothing," they said, their smile growing wider. "I'm just so thrilled you can talk properly now."

Now I smiled. "Talk properly? Through this piece of s**t? Pfft. You might as well just give me text-to-speech. Microsoft Sam." We both shared a laugh.

"Well, even if it's Red Clover-supplied, it's something. I'm happy we can share a conversation with voices instead of actions."

"Me too. Thanks for sticking up for me this long, Mint."

They put a hand on my shoulder. "You kidding, Tango? Don't mention it!"

We both looked at the file, our mutual curiosity now focused on the contents of #93. I silently hoped the contents of the file wouldn't ruin the mood, and we opened it.

#93

Name: Billy Mackel

Biological s*x: Male

Identified gender: Cisgender

Age: 19

Height: 5'3

Weight: 130 lbs

Ethnicity: Australian

Nationality: Technically American – illegally living in New Jersey when he applied

Spoken languages: English, prominent accent

Notable ailments/deformities/attributes: None.

Notable mental abnormalities: None recorded – although we're not ruling out the possibility of undiagnosed sociopathy

Other abnormalities: None

Other notes: Billy's sort of run-of-the-mill for this project, the only real difference being how late he applied to the program. Billy had been living as an unregistered citizen of New Jersey with an associate, having moved back from Australia. He'd been hiding in the slums of New Jersey for about two years before he applied. He probably had a good reason; he was a triple murderer. He, outside the notice of his associate, had killed three people during his time in New Jersey. All of the victims had been identified as homeless vagrants around the area, each with their throats slit. He denied culpability for the first two weeks, but then suddenly owned up to everything once it was clear the legal system wasn't able to touch him anymore. Billy was caustic and unresponsive to many of our staff, and although he claimed to have been in a homosexual relationship with his associate back in New Jersey, his apparent impaired empathy and token for compulsive, erratic lying and attempted manipulation of the other subjects and staff, as well as a glorified self-image when asked about it, lead us to suspect Billy may have been a sociopath. The only person he seemed to get along with was Dr. Sharpe, who himself is a diagnosed low-functioning psychopath who nevertheless is a valuable addition to Red Clover due to his otherwise brilliant mind. The two hit it off admirably well during the interview sessions and Ashton seemed to be the only one his answers were reasonably consistent with. We made sure Ashton got the opportunity to prepare Billy directly as one of his first subjects.

-Dr. Harlow Grave

I closed the file. Mint's heart seemed to have shrunk and their eyes were wide in disbelief when I looked back at them.

"T-Triple murderer? That... That can't be right! Billy... Darby's not a sociopath!" they begged.

I sighed. "Harlow hinted ahead of time that Darby was a murderer. I didn't want to believe it then, but..."

Mint was firm with their response. "The Darby detailed in that file isn't the Darby we know. We have to find him. I don't care what the file says there. With the chips in our brains? We're different people."

I nodded. It was true; Alice, as detailed in their profile, seemed eccentric and secretive, a far cry from the down-to-Earth, unceasingly genuine Mint I knew. I just wondered what had happened outside the simple effects of the controlled amnesia that'd made us this way.

As if on cue, both of us sighted a file on the other side of the desk. It wasn't marked with a number, but instead simply as "Pre-Simulation Outline."

Pre-Simulation. What happened before it all.

I immediately snatched the file. Mint was looking at it. "Is that... a detail on the stuff directly before we were sent into Paradise?"

"I'd think. You wanna see the answers?"

"Yeah!"

We opened the file and looked at the first few pages. It was a detailed table graph detailing each of the one-hundred subjects (by number, not name, unfortunately) and some notes at the side of each page for each subject. We skimmed through the pages, found nothing of interest, and stopped at the fifth page, which wound into another series of notes by Harlow.

Pre-Simulation Notes

As part of the course outlined by Chayne Summers, the preparation supervisor and one of the other chief executives of this project as assigned by the Director, Dr. Sharpe will be taking full direct management of the pre-simulation tests himself under Summers's guidance. Almost two months have already gone by in the early preparation fields. All the applicants have been living in our government-funded facilities for the longest time. Some of them seem anxious. Others regretful. Some of them can't wait to get started. The days have been long, repetitive, and tedious, but we've kept all our applicants in line with Sharpe's "powder." It was Sharpe's direct suggestion to Summers – the black powder is a sort of artificial, powerful drug administered through injection or infusion with edible substances. Sharpe had been hooked to the stuff for several years, now, and we suspect it's a leading factor in what he's become at the time of this project. The black powder's effects are subtle but noticeable. It's a highly addictive substance that gradually retards the brain and slows down the recipient's mental faculties. Ash's mind had long deteriorated from constant use of the substance. It's a miracle he's still alive. He, however, was still lucid enough to realize that this drug would help for the pre-simulation tests. Summers took his offer swimmingly.

For the duration of the past fifty-six days, Summers and Sharpe have been infusing the powder with the applicants' "medication." Every single one of them has gradually and unknowingly been experiencing the effects of subconscious addiction and gradual mental deterioration over a course of weeks. They're ready for the pre-simulation tests.

Now, as said, Sharpe will be taking care of the pre-simulation tests himself under Summers's direct supervision. This means a few more administrations of some foreign substances into their bodies and finally surgeries for all one-hundred of the subjects to implant our chips into their heads and bring them to a state where they are ready to exist in the simulated environment.

I'm very excited for what we're about to gloss from this project.

-Dr. Harlow Grave

Update:

I never thought they'd go this far.

I can understand the practical effects of retarding the patients to a state where they'd be prime to operate on and even better to unconsciously wander the simulated environment. But what Summers and Sharpe have done goes beyond any protocol and violates God-knows how many rules we've established for this project – more egregious given the fact the Director has completely let the incident go unpunished and uninvestigated.

Sharpe couldn't control himself. One of the patients – #7, as I believe, already an avoidant, neurotic wreck – was subject to one attention too many by Sharpe. Post-surgery, Sharpe forced himself onto them before they'd even regained consciousness and then tortured them into a semi-conscious wreck with the medical supplies. #7 went completely catatonic after the incident and we fear they've permanently lost both their voice and the use of their right arm from the result of Sharpe's abuse, and they've shut down. The psychological damage is massive. Regardless, Summers was still completely insistent on inserting them into the simulated environment even in their less-than-desirable state. With the effects of the neurochip, the powder, and the trauma, #7 likely won't ever exist in a state where they'll be mentally sound ever again. They will not last long in the simulated environment – a shame, as Tara herself had registered them under undisclosed but special circumstances.

Sharpe cannot even remember what he did. He's unrepentant either way, and we have reason to suspect, based on some of the applicants' explicit aversion to Sharpe, that he's done this before outside our notice, and is using the tattered state of his own mind to forget to his own convenience. Chayne is equally at fault for failing to regulate his behavior and even more so for trying to cover it up. Most of all, however, the Director is flagrantly abusing their power by refusing to acknowledge this incident. One could say the machinations of what we have been doing here are morally dubious, but this cannot ever be allowed to fall into public consciousness.

Tara has not commented. Under pressure from the Director, I doubt she will.

Unfortunate as it is, I sincerely doubt Paradise Association will ever be allowed to hear of this, so this shall remain unpunished. I've grown to accept that.

-Dr. Harlow Grave

My mind exploded into a hundred different things at once. I kept re-reading the crucial bits at Harlow's update. Torture. Catatonic.

Never be the same again.

I staggered back from the file and fell back. Mint had just finished the file; their hands were covering their mouth in shock as they looked back at the file, then at me.

"Oh... Oh, G-God, Tango..." they said.

I curled into a fetal position and grabbed my head, trying to block everything out. I couldn't remember anything – be it deliberate repression of the memory or the effects of the chip – but I still felt violated and broken.

This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't f*****g happening.

Hatred. I wanted to f*****g gut Ash. I was terrified of him, but all at once, I wanted to kill him. Painfully. Slowly. My mind became a torrent, and for all of a second, I lived in my own world of anguish, oblivious to everything else.

"Tango!"

I felt a hand on me, immediately whipped out the knife out of blind instinct, and slashed out. I felt a cry of pain and a small spatter of blood against my arm, and I fell back in shock. I looked up. Mint had taken a surprised step back to when they'd stepped over to comfort me. There was a gash in their cheek now, and they were staring at me with wide eyes, their hand on the wound.

I looked at the now-bloodied knife, then back at Mint, my own eyes shrinking in horror.

I didn't want to live like this anymore.

In that instance, I just shut down. Curled up and let everything go black, even as Mint's voice desperately cried out to me.

I fell into the blackest, longest, loneliest sleep I'd ever go into.