27 Mistakes

Sia crawls from under the desk and makes for the door to see how many have come in. She still has her respirator hanging around her neck, but her protective eyewear has clattered to the floor. Peeking through the small window in the door, she can see two roaches have been doused with the boric acid powder. She sees a few more come in and eat at the plastic around the MREs left on the ground.

'Ahahaha. Yessss.'

She has squeezed in loads of powder into those food packages. A small roach would probably have avoided it, but the large ones eat tables. The poison is scentless, and Sia is sure they won't stop eating because of the texture of the clumps of powder.

One of the roaches grabs a package and leaves the 3rd floor. Sia ducks as a few of them come up nearby her door. They travel by without noticing her.

She waits until they all pass by to slip out of the chemistry room.

'I'm gonna need that super speed for this.'

ENHANCING LOWER EXTREMITIES BY 70%

There are no roaches in the main hall, they have passed the corner where she had set up her other trap. She speeds to the corner and peeks. They are looking for more food down there. Quickly, she grabs the lighter in her pocket and lights the drain cleaner bottles. After they all are lit, she throws them as fast as she can, before grabbing the boxes of boric acid and running back to the main hall.

She hears hissing as the flaming bottles hit their forms.

The ones that were hit scramble around and bump into others. The other roaches pass by their injured comrades to pursue the attacker.

Sia stands by the door of the black room. She watches the roaches come toward her. They crawl over each other to get to her.

Their antennae tap against the ceiling as they scurry to their prey.

She holds the boric acid close to her chest before opening the door to the black room. She leaves it open, wraps both arms around the boxes and flees to the storage room at the back.

The roaches scramble in. They see the storage room door shut. The entrance to the room closes behind them. Some roaches go straight for the back room, but others go for the buckets of chloroform. The room is full of the strong scent of chloroform.

Sia has been holding her breath since she got outside the door. The roaches continue breathing it in and even start gnawing at the buckets. A few of the roaches collapse and then some more until they are twitching on the ground.

Sia exits the storage room with the boric acid. She stands on a table and douses as many of them as she can.

'Aaagh. I dropped my protective glasses.'

She turns her head away as she wildly shakes the containers left and right. Then she speeds to the entrance of the room. The aerosol cans have rolled a bit away from the entrance, but she can spot them almost right away. She avoids their bodies as she moves.

Sia has never tested how much stimuli a roach can ignore while asleep, but she hopes they all stay asleep as she avoids the others outside the door. She slips one aerosol can into her pocket and leaves the room. There are a few burnt roaches coming down the hall. Most of them seem to have missing antennae.

Sia shakes the can and sprays toward the roaches nearest to her while turning on her lighter. They shriek and back off. She continues spraying as she backs to the stairwell. Then she sprints into the stairwell and up a flight of steps. They follow.

She exits onto the 4th floor. The food she left behind before is gone.

She runs to the supply closet and closes the door behind herself. Those critters might be fast, but they lose sight of Sia the moment she gets to the stairs. By the time they follow to the 4th floor, they have no idea where she has hidden. Sia stays there for the rest of the day.

The night is quiet. Sia activates B1ack.0ut once again, so she doesn't have to wait anxiously for the results of her attack.

"Ugh," Sia groans and smacks her lips at the dryness within her mouth.

The respirator hanging from her neck itches at her throat. She pulls it off and holds onto the straps while scratching her throat. Her eyes are closed. She hasn't felt so groggy in a while.

"So thirsty." Her hoarse voice mutters.

'How long has it been?'

18 HOURS

Sia sits up off the floor and grabs a shelf to stand up. The shelf can't take her weight and falls in. All of the materials on it clatters to the floor. Sia freezes up while she listens for insects to swarm the supply closet.

1 second

2 seconds

10 seconds

Nothing approaches the supply closet.

"Puter?"

AFFIRMATIVE

"I can hear myself, but have I gone deaf?"

NEGATIVE

Elation bubbles under Sia's skin as she grabs her backpack and creeps the door open. Sia makes sure her straps are tight around her shoulders before making her way to the 3rd floor and then…the final test, the first floor.

The stairwell appears to be clear. She looks over the railing and cannot see anything at the bottom. She keeps herself from making any noises anyway. This could still end badly.

She opens the door to the 3rd floor and cringes at the noise it makes. Even though she knows it's coming it jolts her heart with fear that her plan has failed. She grinds her teeth and rushes into the main hallway with her lighter out and an aerosol can in hand.

Nothing comes at her.

Sia doesn't lower her guard. This is when the jump scares are used in horror movies.

'You think I'm not onto you? Ha Ha. I've seen them all.'

Sia's steps along the dusty linoleum floor as if touching the wrong spot may detonate a bomb. Her tense arms are steady. The synthetic intelligence device has all sensors working double time.

NO PERIPLANETA AMERICANA DETECTED

Sia checks the black room. The door is off its hinges, the chloroform was aired out of the room and the roaches went back to their colony. She stalks down the hall to the corner, takes a deep breath, and jumps out into the open of the connecting hallway.

Nothing.

'Some stray antennae. Hello, there…'

Sia walks down that hallway and then the next, and back to the main hallway. No cockroaches. Just singed remains.

Sia goes to the chemistry room and gets some water from her backpack. Her dry mouth is finally cured.

"Aaaaah."

Room temperature water hasn't always tasted this refreshing to Sia but put a person through an apocalyptic experience and they begin to appreciate the little things. She drinks the entire water bottle down to the last droplets.

'Okay. Time for the final check.'

Sia plans to retreat out the lobby into the parking lot if the colony has not been killed. Unfortunately, she didn't factor in oversleeping. The sun has already set. If the colony is still alive, she will have to run out into the dark.

'Let's get this over with.'

She takes more time going down those stairs, then she did the first time she ran up them. It feels like she is walking to her funeral.

'Any injuries I get can be healed, right?'

AFFIRMATIVE

UNLESS DIRECTLY IMPALED BY AN OBJECT THROUGH YOUR CEREBRUM

Sia swallows at that. She looks down at the bottom of the stairs and pauses.

PERIPLANETA AMERICANA DETECTED

Sia doesn't wait for any other signal and roasts the roach. She jumps down the last of the steps and stumbles.

She hits the wall beside the entrance door, scrambles to open it one handed and stumbles out backward. She lets out one last burst of fire before dropping the can and turning her backpack to get another can. Her feet bump into a solid object and she falls onto her butt.

NUMEROUS PERIPLANETA AMERICANA DETECTED

THEY APPEAR TO BE DEAD

Sia rolls into a crouch and almost cries with relief. She can see several large roach carcasses laying across the floor. They are on their backs with their limbs up in the air pointing at different angles. A sticky film of material has formed on the outside of their bodies. Sia can feel it on her bottom and arm.

The roach in the stairwell is dead.

She steps over the bodies and is in the lobby. There are a few dropped bodies here as well.

CROWBAR SPOTTED

"Huh?"

Sia can't see any crowbars. Color doesn't really work with this night vision ability.

CROWBAR SPOTTED BEHIND RECEPTIONIST DESK

'Oh yeah.'

Sia jogs over to the desk and taps her foot around the floor until she feels it catch on a heavy metal bar. She puts the aerosol can and lighter in her pockets and experimentally swings the crowbar a few times.

'I feel safer with this.'

With the many roach trophies on display for the universe to see her triumph in this game of evolved cat and mutated mouse, Sia smiles. It looks like things are looking up. She has a little bit of a bounce in each step as she goes down the dark hallway. She leisurely swings the crowbar as she strolls towards the cafeteria.

The cafeteria is full of roaches and the entrance to the kitchen is cluttered with dead forms. She doesn't further inspect the place. Sia has won.

"Hahaha. Talk about...talk about," Sia stands in the middle of her roach cemetery, "talk about storming the castle."

She turns around in a circle and guffaws at the total domination of her plan.

Sia swings her crowbar at a roach corpse and the body caves in. She almost loses her balance, but the device steadies her. The crowbar is covered in goop.

Sia shakes it vigorously and then glares at the roach.

"Even after death, you torment me. Touché."

While withdrawing from the roach cemetery, Sia has her head held high, back straightened, and her right arm wiggling trying to get more of the viscous substance off her weapon.

The rest of the night has Sia running around looking for the purple keys and any helpful material.

She searches the supervisors closet, the locker room for Janitor staff, and even finds the locker room for the more educated employees. The latter locker room was incredibly luxurious, as Sia would expect. ExplorerTech didn't penny-pinch their better employees.

'Friggin tightfisted upper-class butt kissers.' Sia thinks as she sits back in a blue suede armchair.

Sia has acquired three more sets of keys, two clean green uniform jumpsuits, a backpack filled with a clean change of clothes, and a candy bar. While she had been rooting through the supervisor's belongings, she had found pens and an almost empty notebook. She doesn't rip out any of the pages that have been written on. It might help confuse someone who is snooping on her.

She almost consumed the candy bar on the spot, but she thinks better of it and tosses it into her new backpack. The keys she pulls out of the backpack have a lot of different colors, but Sia can see that only one of them has the legendary – always sought after- purple key.

Sia must resist holding the key into the sunlight that streams into the room past the broken shutters.

"It almost looks golden." She whispers as she cradles the key to her chest.

She sighs with sweet relief. Things are truly going her way at last.

With the rising sun, Chen Sia rises from her blue throne and marches down into the dark depths of the ExplorerTech Industries underground chamber -basement-. She has tasted victory, and nothing can destroy her mirthful spirits.

Sia almost whistles down in the tight tunnel, but the echo makes it appear more sinister than she wanted. When she gets back to the gated area and unlocks the fence, she is disappointed that no fanfare accompanies the event. Then she gets down to business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The River City division of ExplorerTech Industries had many shortcomings, but they never skimped on training their employees. Janitorial staff were taught how to evacuate all the employees, floor by floor, and how to hide the employees in case of a lockdown event. Ever get snowed in? The janitorial staff could operate all sorts of winter equipment. Most importantly, they were trained to know how to shut off the gas, electricity, and water. Which means they were trained to turn it all back on as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sia doesn't need to think hard about what to do. She finished all her training courses only 2 months ago. A month of training and following behind a more experienced staff member really pays off in the apocalypse.

'I tell ya. Thank goodness I didn't take that office job at my father's place. Talk about useless.'

The generator starts up with a rumble. Sia goes over to the wall with all the switches to the building. She switches off all of them except for the 3rd floor. She wants to be able to stay in this building if possible, and letting it light up like a Christmas tree won't keep anything away.

'People will start for this place like a moth to a flame…'

ACTIVATE THE ELEVATORS

"Lazy much? Tired of climbing stairs?"

ELEVATORS COULD ASSIST

DIVERSIONARY TACTICS

"Huh. You smart. This is why I leave the background stuff to you…and everything else."

Sia flips the elevator switches.

AFFIRMATIVE

"Okay, now, it seems like you're bragging. Cut it out," Sia gestures at the walls around them. "You know I took out an army of roaches. I mean you helped a little, but it was my plan. So. Catch up."

Silence.

This is a step in the right direction. It's only been a few days. No disaster has ever been overcome in such a short amount of time, but Sia can taste a favorable ending to this circumstance. The sour coating has faded away, and she can savor the sweet taste of success.

The sweat on her skin, the foul smells in the air, all these tribulations…they've seasoned this dish of perspective, and Sia can see how fortunate she's always been. She's learned so many things. So many lessons make sense now. They were tough to swallow, but she can feel it all nourishing her spirit.

She feels worthy of going home.