He tried again to knock down the panic by shear will. It is possible to find a way out of any labyrinth. It is necessary to just go always along the right wall… or along the left one, the main thing is to choose it once and not change this decision once made. But when he tried to follow this principle, he found that he was walking around a huge cube. The principle works only for topologically connected labyrinths—provided he remembered correctly what topological connectivity was.
In despair he rushed forward, crashing in the darkness against the next wall and began to punching it. Based upon the sound, the wall was very thin (it even slightly caved in under his blows), and behind it there was an emptiness. He tried to cut the wall with the tablet corner, but, while thin, the barrier turned out to be too firm.
“It is not a labyrinth,” he thought. “It is a warehouse, and I am wandering between containers!”
This discovery, however, had not much improved his situation. He still had no idea how to get out from where he was in complete darkness—even again to the staircase, let alone to the outside. He tried to shift the next container in his path, but it was, of course, too heavy. Or maybe the issue was that metal bars which he periodically encountered probably served to fix containers on a place. Had he understood it it or just remembered it? That’s not important! The bars! The warehouse was obviously not full, and the containers, apparently, weren’t placed in a strict order, but the bars should stand at equal intervals and, most likely, form a rectangular grid. So if he went from one bar to another, counting them, then…
Suddenly something round rolled under his foot, and he almost fell down. He heard it, having turned out from under his foot, trundle on the floor in the opposite direction. What was it? Some small cylinder—maybe just garbage. Nevertheless he made some steps toward the sound, then went down on all fours, putting the tablet down momentarily, and began to rummage the floor with his hands—carefully, in order not to push whatever it was again. Where are you, you little bastard? Aha, here!
He felt his find. A smooth circle on one end, and something like a button on the side. Could it be a flashlight? He pressed the button, and a soft light flashed in his hand, lighting up suspicious dark stains on the floor and the wall of the next container with a lengthy number. Luck, luck at last!
He sprang to his feet, immediately receiving a blow by something long and firm on the head. A flash sparkled in his eyes, and he powerlessly tumbled down on the mucky floor.
Having come round, he lay for several seconds, stupidly looking at the flashlight which lay nearby and continued to shine. The beam, almost parallel to the floor, quite vividly illuminated all the dirt and dust. The top of his head ached, and he thought for certain there was quite a large lump. Then it hit him like a bolt of lightning: he should not be thinking about his head, but instead about the one who has struck him! But everything was still silent and it did not seem as though anybody was going to attack him again. The man very carefully turned his head and saw several pipes almost directly above him. They were not too thick, about two inches in diameter, with one end going into a wall of the nearest container. This wall seemed not to be solid, but perforated. He took the flashlight—still no one hindered him—and, having shone the light on the container, saw that it was indeed perforated. Then he sat up on the floor and moved his eyes and the beam to the opposite side, wishing to understand where the pipes led. At that very same moment he caught his breath in horror.
The beam of light tore from the darkness a silent figure, standing closer than two meters from him. The figure was dressed in (a shroud, it seemed to him at first) a white lab coat (apparently its only covering) and stood motionlessly, with its head inclined to the left shoulder in an unnaturally angle. Long black hair completely hid the face. The hands hung powerlessly. On deathly pale naked legs and feet ran streams of blood, coming from under the coat, but now dry.
It seemed that she (she, the amnesiac understood; it was a woman) was silently examining the uninvited intruder, smiling under a curtain of hair with a grin promising nothing good. He would have cried under this inscrutable look, but a spasm seized his throat. His fingers began to fumble convulsively on the floor in search of the tablet left somewhere abouts. But the next moment he had already realized that his horror and shock were caused only by unexpectedness. This woman was not likely the one who had struck him. He realized this because he had, at last, noticed the pipes, which had in several places ripped through her coat into her breast and solar plexus. She was punctured by these pipes, like an insect specimen pierced by several pins at once.
At the same moment the man understood that nobody had beaten him on a head. He had struck against these pipes himself when he sprang to his feet, being directly under them. He stood up and approached the dead woman. The free ends of the pipes, brown with blood, stuck out of her back no less than a meter. A pool has accumulated on a floor under them. From behind, the coat had been soaked red much more deeply than in the front, and the man rejected the idea of putting on these blood-stained rags (for, of course, he would at first have to remove the corpse from the pipes). He did, however, have the logical thought of searching the coat pockets.
There were only two of them. The right one was empty, but in the left he found a folded sheet of paper. The man unfolded it and brought to the flashlight. It was a list, written by hand (fortunately, this time not in blood):
Dr. Kalkrin — s-e
Dr. Hart — heart attack
Prof. Poplavska — madness
Dr. Silberschmied — s-e
Dr. Nakamura — s-e
Dr. Lebrun — coma
Prof. Ward — fire in lab, supp. s-e
Prof. Streicher — killed h-self in ment. clinic
Dr. Giroldini — death in road accident, supp. s-e
Dr. Wong — stroke
Prof. Kovaleva — took the veil, silence vow
The amnesiac twirled the paper in a hand. The mysterious “s-e” probably meant suicide (“Kill yourself now!”). But what does this list of the lost scientists mean? Not all of them, in fact, have died physically, but, anyway, all were lost for science. Whether is it possible, that all these corpses, which he saw in this place, are the people on this list? And he, in that case, is one of the survivors? For example, professor Poplavska… But no, it is, apparently, a female surname (he looked again at the dead woman standing near him). Then maybe, Lebrun, who had regained consciousness after a coma… Though this place was hardly similar to a functioning hospital… Yes, yes, he already thought of it… But whether a certain hybrid of coma and lethargy were possible, where a patient forsaken without any help for several months would not be capable of just surviving, but would also come round without aid? It seemed to be something out of pure fiction, though he, after all, still did not know what the experiment was essentially, even if it actually were an experiment.
And the others—a fire in the laboratory, a road accident—all this was not very similar to that, to what he saw here. However, he saw only four—more precisely, three, because on the fourth he had only stepped. But, if it were known about the deaths of the scientists, why were the bodies left here? Maybe the list on this piece of paper reflected merely the official version?
Or maybe all of them were left here simply because all those who knew about this place have died, gone mad, or fallen into a coma? No, that would be nonsense, such a huge building cannot be the initiative of a small group, something not reflected in governmental or corporate documents. But what could he tell for certain? He, who cannot remember even his name?