This post was inspired by a prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #772 - Abandoned Lab
I tried an experiment with this; although I had an idea of the kind of genre I felt like writing, I put the prompt into the AI art generator I use word for word, just to see what it came up with. It gave me two hugely evocative images I fell in love with, so I scrapped what I'd thought about writing and made something totally different.
Enjoy !
Images created by AI in NightCafe Studio
The abandoned laboratory loomed before them, its shattered windows and overgrown vines whispering secrets of forgotten experiments. Captain Randall held a hand up, bidding his team hang back.
"Let me go first," he said in a stage whisper. "It pays to be careful. Even if it's abandoned, they wouldn't hide a lab this deep in the Amazonian jungle and leave it unprotected."
Drawing his service revolver with his right hand, and keeping the machete in his left, Randall emerged from the treeline and moved towards the double doors that were the entrance to this god forsaken place. The left one hung at a crazy angle on one twisted hinge, while the right-hand door was still held in place by slide-locks top and bottom.
Peering in, he could smell the dampness. A musty aroma of fungus, composted plant matter and quietly rotting wooden floorboards. There was no movement inside more hazardous than the occasional spider or scorpion, no threat to experienced explorers like Randall. Testing the floor, he decided that the condition was satisfactory, and he waved back to his companions to advance.
The next to enter was Doctor Lily Fazakerley, PhD. She stepped in cautiously, pulling out her notebook and looking all around at the derelict mess.
"Hmmm, why would the Imperial Special Service put a lab in a place this obscure ? And go to the expense of bringing in genuine Crittal windows ? Definitely not a low-budget, low-priority location."
Randall laughed, a sharp bark. "Trust you to know who made the windows ! But what of all this gear on the desk ? What do you make of it ?"
Moving carefully over to the desk, Lily peered at the equipment there, turning small objects over with the back end of her pencil, occasionally muttering to herself and making notes.
Then reaching down, she pulled the middle drawer open before jumping back with a shriek. With an angry hiss, the occupant of the drawer registered it's displeasure at being disturbed. A club-shaped head on a spring-like subtly striped brown body rose from the drawer, drawing back to strike.
There was a "thunk !" as Randall's machete struck down, severing the head against the drawer edge as it started to jab forward.
As he picked the still writhing body up with the back of the blade and tossed it away, he calmly said "Fer-de-lance. Young one, judging by the length. The venom of the juveniles is deadlier than the adults, you'd have been dead within the day."
Shuddering slightly, Lily pulled a leather-bound book from the now safe drawer. "Some kind of journal, by the look of it."
The third member of their team, Benjamin Marwell, called over to them. He'd been working the periphery of the room while the other two examined the desk. He was nominally a journalist, but in reality he, too, was a trusted officer in Her Majesty's Intelligence Service (Overseas Exploration Division).
"Look over here, chaps. Found a secret door."
The three carefully pulled vines free of the left-most bookcase and pulled it back; it hinged on the right, revealing a short corridor with an open door at the end. The room it revealed was far more utilitarian; black Bakelite instead of wood panelling, and a floor tiled in black stone slabs instead of floorboards.
There was a desk in here, too, more of a podium covered in electrical equipment, dials and buttons, as well as a headset that acted as the input for a Babbage Difference Calculator. The jungle was trying to reclaim this room also, but through the vines growing across the floor they could make out a tangled confusion of wires and electrical cables.
Against one wall, the vines grew more lush and thick than elsewhere. Randall used his machete to carefully pull them away. Beneath them was a chair. Held fast in the chair by rusted shackles was a skeleton, the remains of a man.
At the back of the group, Lily had been flicking through the journal. As she looked through the mildewed tome full of crabbed handwriting and sketched diagrams, her face grew pale.
"Captain, my technical German is rusty, but I think I have worked out what they might have been attempting. There's a phrase repeated over and over - Überlegener Soldat - it translates as superior soldier. I think they were experimenting on the tribesmen hereabouts, using electrical impulses to try to make vastly augmented warriors in preparation for the Europe-wide war they predict will break out in the next few years."
Randall stroked his chin and paused for a while before asking the question. "Did they succeed ?"
Lily's face wrinkled with a worried expression. "I don't know....."