A red-skinned woman and a green-skinned man both walk around a corner in a corridor at the same time. The woman leapt backwards, dropped to a crouch and hissed threateningly at the stranger, revealing her sharp, pointed teeth. It was hard to tell who was more surprised by this reaction, the man or the woman. Looking somewhat embarrassed the woman straightened up and looked the man over, taking in the green, scaled skin, muscular physique, and most especially the small, black horns on his head.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You just woke up, you don’t remember much and you’re pretty sure you didn’t have those cool looking horns there before. Not that you remember when before was.”
The man visibly relaxed at her words. He hadn’t been sure if he should run in the other direction or try talking to this strange looking woman, if she was in fact even human. Right now he wasn’t even sure if he was human either.
“Good guess.” He smiled wryly then turned to look at a guard lying prone on the floor. “You left out the dead bodies though. When I came to I think I was in some sort of lab, or maybe a recovery room of some kind, and my only company was four dead guards and nine dead scientists or maybe they were doctors.”

She nodded. “Me too. Nearly all mine were guards though; maybe I’m more dangerous than you.” She winked at him.
“I think I believe you,” he laughed. “You certainly look it. Those are some pretty sharp looking teeth you’ve got there.”
“Yeah, I’ll probably go through a toothbrush a day with these babies.”
The man laughed along with her and then seemed to come to a decision. He held out his hand. “The name’s Burke.”
She frowned and tensed slightly. “You remember your name?” she asked.
“Ah no. The guard who used to own these clothes was called Mitchell Burke. Since I don’t seem to have a name I figured it was appropriate.” He shrugged and looked a little embarrassed.
“Well then I suppose you could call me Amy. I think that was the name of the woman I got these clothes from.” She shook Burke’s hand. She had a very firm grip, Burke noted.

Burke glanced around the corridor. It seemed to lead to even further corridors and every one had numerous doors distinguished only by the numbers on them. Everything looked so sterile and cold: tiles on the floor, plain white walls and ceiling, the same fluorescent lighting that he’d noticed in the lab room. The only thing that broke the monotony were the dead bodies. He returned his attention to the nearby guard. Rolling the man over he began to examine him for a cause of death.
“I can’t tell what this man died of. The ones in the lab were obviously shot but this man…” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“It was some kind of gas,” Amy said quietly.
Burke looked at her sharply. “What?”
“Gas,” she repeated. “I can smell what’s left of it on him from here. Turns my stomach.” She made a face and looked away.
“Neat trick,” Burke observed. “What else can you do?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Hmmm. Well, what do you reckon? Do we just try to find a way out or should we find out what this place and what we’re doing in it?”
Amy glared at the dead guard while she thought. The idea of sticking around this place any longer wasn’t appealing, but she woke up changed and she wanted to know why. More importantly she wanted to know what other anti-social tricks she had up her sleeve. Burke seemed like a decent guy but how long would he stick around if she got hungry again? It’s not like she had the best table manners in the world. It was childish and petulant, but she stamped her foot in frustration. “Fine. I really want to just get the hell out of here, but I can’t leave here either without finding out more. Let’s start checking the rooms down here.”

The first dozen doors revealed nothing at all: no weird looking people, dead bodies, not even any equipment. “What a waste of space,” growled Amy.
“Maybe they hadn’t been in business long,” said Burke calmly. “There’s an elevator down there; we’ll just check these last few doors and then we’ll try another floor.”
“Fine but if the next floor has nothing in it, I’m out of here. My curiosity isn’t limitless.” She stalked over to the next door and threw it open so hard the poor door nearly fell off it’s hinges.

Burke smiled. In the brief time he’d known Amy she’d nearly destroyed several doors, wrecked as many gurneys, and come out with language that was probably making some of the dead guards’ blush. He didn’t take any of it seriously though. For whatever reason, her usual nature or whatever they’d done to her, the constant dead ends were making her feel like a caged animal and this was how she coped with it. In sharp comparison, he’d noticed that he’d drawn a kind of calm around himself. It wasn’t that he wasn’t angered by their situation or that he wasn’t worried; it was more like he’d put it on hold for a while until a situation presented itself where he could punish those responsible for his situation. He’d leave it up to a trained psychologist to determine which was the healthiest.

“Hey, what do you know,” called Amy. “More dead people in this room, Burke, and they were neat.” Four dead bodies, stacked neatly in the middle of the room, not an arm or a leg out of place. Amy circled them, looking them over with interest. “Weird huh?”
“Very,” agreed Burke. He crouched down to get a closer look. “Yup, this lot were shot as well. That’s interesting, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, not very,” Amy snapped. The bodies were making her edgy. The ones in the corridors she could cope with since the lingering smell of the gas they’d inhaled turned her stomach. The ones in this room had simply been shot and the only thing they smelt like to her was lunch. At that thought, to her horror, her stomach rumbled loudly. She spun around to face the doorway and tried to think about something else, but she knew Burke was looking at her.
“So the next thing we need to find should be a cafeteria by the sounds of it,” he joked, thinking she was simply embarrassed by the loud noise.
“I’m fine,” she replied stiffly. “Just finish playing detective and let’s get going again.”
Burke shrugged. There wasn’t much else for him to look at there anyway. The arrangement of the corpses intrigued him though. Maybe it meant the killer had come to this room first and then ran out of time when he’d made it to the lab Burke woke up in. Why he’d killed scientists and guards but left him and Amy alive was another worry. If they’d been freed why hadn’t their rescuer stuck around? Out of the corner of his eye he could see Amy fidgeting in the corridor and gave up. “Alright Amy, keep your shirt on,” he said as he joined her. “We’ll try another room. There’s nothing else here anyway.”

“No, nothing and nobody,” agreed a tiny voice from inside the room.

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