Nothing in the chamber was ordinary. The ground was uneven, unsymmetrical and tiles had been lifted and pried up with scurrying hands. The roof that had once been a dome of white so reflective it could be glass, was now impossible to see past the thick smog of darkness and the mist that had been let in by the cracks birds had begun to nest in. Twisted and rusted poles of old walls hung and clung to whatever surface wasn't destroyed or desolate. The beauty of the ebony black floor was now beneath layers and layers of soot, dirt and quite strangely, the beginnings of vegetation. From somewhere there was a breeze, of course and the agony of escape.

It was inhospitable and cold. Some bones littered the corners of the room where men and women had died, alone, and something had moved them, cleaned them away.

Central to the entire room was a yellow blinking light, attached to a white, smooth and polished body. The being had a skeleton of thick, branch-like cables, kept neatly together by bands of more white titanium. The blinking revealed just how much dirt had built up around the ruin of the body.

At least it was dead, the woman must've thought. She, was dead. That petrifying self-learning AI. Remorseless, clinical, cutting. At least it was dead; unable to restart. The woman watched the beings eye blink open, closed, open, closed, revealing small patches of soil and ivy that coiled around its 'head', well, core. Main processor. The cords were too thick for her to break. CAL, as the woman’s superiors had called it: Central Authority Lotus, was too large for the woman to break. She could not destroy it. But then again, the being sat here, until the end of time, until she could escape, until she could get help. Must’ve been satisfying enough.

She sighed deeply, afraid. She'd got this far, woken up from a near permanent cryogenic freezing. At least someone had escaped before. But the exits were closed, locked, bolted, impossible to pull open.

She could've been frozen a year, maybe a hundred. It didn't matter. What mattered is that now she'd been woken up, and not as a test subject, not as a thing of analysis for CAL; but because simply, she'd defrosted, like a rat to be fed to a snake. Something had woken her up.

The woman was weary, as if feeling as though somehow, it was a trap. She must've been sure CAL was dead. There was no power anywhere, whatever the blinking was wasn't from the main stations. Only yesterday was she there, roaming and looking for a way through the barricaded doorway. She had balanced haphazardly, still freezing and foggy on the tip of a chair to climb her way through the dusty, insect infested vents. The whole building must have been on the verge of collapse. The steel beams supporting the high ceilings were bare in the elements, dirty gold with rust.

The woman regained herself, eyes scouting dark for anything as she walked, rather, crept through to where she knew were more exits. Perhaps she'd have more luck with these ones. She obviously wanted to avoid CAL but the bleakness of the walls where rats scurried and what else lied in wait drew her back towards the center. Towards her. The eye had a rhythm, flashing every thirty seconds or so, in it, opened opportunities to see the area briefly around her.

Above her, far, far above was an opening where glass once was. Now it was scattered across the floor, half as sand, half in dirty and ancient fragments. Somewhere up there, in that night sky, was the moon. Though she couldn't see anything, no light at all. Like the entire facility was underground.

She arrived at CAL's body, the light blinked twice, then again. Now she was this close she could hear the low humming of a CPU the woman herself had designed. Partly, this thing was her fault. A self-aware, self-thinking robot. Supposedly incorruptible, surrounded by scientists to create a flower of intelligence that could solely run the facility. The Lotus. Someone, she knew not who, taught the thing to disobey. Or maybe it taught itself that. It developed its own ideas, own ideals, own will.

The takeover of the facility came as a surprise to everyone. CAL locking doors and lowering grates over windows. It was unexpected, planned. She’d barred the power room, so no one could deactivate her. Her kill-switch, flawlessly disabled. Then, in orderly flocks the facilities worker bots put whoever they deemed worthy in cryogenic freezing, the others were removed from the facility, permanently. No loose ends, no one to tell the world of the AI’s vulnerabilities. Her testing was purposeful, as all her actions were, she wanted to see how humanity worked under circumstance, testing different variables. Then again, that was all the woman knew about it. The cryogenic chamber she'd forced her way from was empty. She was the last one awake. Everyone else gone, or moved.

She walked further until the end of the room, where a large sign above an open doorway said "exit" in a former fluorescent green.

The hallways used to be so full, men and women nodding, chatting, bickering as they walked from the main ports to the central cafeteria. Now it was barren, a door had collapsed and eroded down to not much more than its handle, inside the hallway leading to where the woman had worked. She looked for the sign which once said, "Computer Engineering", but that too, had withered and died leaving nothing in its place but less dust.

The high ceilings were hung with cobwebs. The walls retained a stained white, the paint had peeled years ago but somehow, some remained. More flowers brushed the edges of the room, the woman didn't touch them, instead kept walking towards the double doors at the end. She’d always said this place had always reminded her of a hospital, hallways lasting miles and somehow, even though she'd walked them only what felt like yesterday, unknown. With one wrong turn she'd be lost. The exit sign above this door was still intact and she stopped at it, pressing her hands forward to push at it. It was stuck, something wedged behind it. If she pushed hard enough it should -- there, it was wedged open enough for her to slip through.

This room was brighter. It was close to how it once was. At the end of the hallway a little light flickered, she walked closer and bathed in it, her eyes burning red as they adjusted. She walked forward, and it switched off, but she could still see enough to make her way to the fire-exit. The exit. The door itself was thick and had barely deteriorated, there was bright light shining in the slit beneath it and even wind brushed lightly at her feet. It was just there. She fumbled and pushed the door.

It wouldn't budge.

She pushed harder, again, nothing. The rail she pushed just wouldn't move, as though jammed or by design made like that. She kicked at it, gritting her teeth and holding back dehydrated tears. Would she give up? Or look for another route out? Those were her options. A normal human, who, like subject two-hundred-and-twelve, hadn't eaten or had water for two days, would perish. Give in.

The woman tore at the door again, screaming loud. It echoed all the way back to CAL, who still, sat blinking. In the back of her mind, the woman knew that somewhere, there was the power that fuelled that light. She obviously ignored it, ignored reason and of course ignored the possibility of the event being planned. The woman didn't sit down to die. She instead stepped back and breathed deep, making her way to the next exit. There were many, many barred exits. There must be one that's open. Then, to surprise, the woman stopped still and walked back, back towards the cryogenic chamber and most interestingly, back towards CAL. She left the doors open wide.

She looked at the AI only once, and then stared up into the empty former-skylight. The bare pillars of criss-crossing metal called to her. She wanted to climb. Climb the slippery rails, it was dangerous, her chances slim. But maybe she could do it.

She wanted to climb.

Loudly, almost pulling itself of its hinges, the fire-exit door swung open, casting light on the hallway. A glimmer of hope returned to subject two-hundred-and-twelve and she fumbled down and sprinted to the exit. Just before she arrived, it slammed shut.

She'd proved interesting, CAL noted, out of all the ones who she'd prepared for this test, this subject was the closest to escape. After the woman stopped screaming, CAL had her workers put her back in the cryogenic chamber. She had more testing yet to do.