Anomaly

With the end of the year approaching, various members of the organization, whether agents, scientists, or employees from other departments, started spending a good portion of their time talking about how they planned to spend the holidays. In the hallways, break rooms, and even during work breaks, it was common to hear someone talking about a trip, a family gathering, or simply the food they planned to make.

There was a somewhat lighter atmosphere on days like these, as if, for a little while, everyone was trying to forget the weight of the work they carried out every day. As expected, many of the employees would be given a few days off during this period. The organization made a point of allowing its members to spend some time with their families. After all, considering the kind of work they did, moments like these were more important than they might seem at first glance.

Of course, that didn't apply to everyone. Many members of the organization no longer had a family to return to. That wasn't exactly surprising, considering the current state of the world. Anomalies were constantly appearing somewhere on the planet, and although the organization did everything it could to contain them, it wasn't always possible to arrive in time.

Some incidents left cities in ruins, entire communities devastated, and, inevitably, families torn apart. A considerable number of agents and scientists had lost someone in anomaly-related incidents. In fact, for many of them, that had been precisely why they joined the organization in the first place. Some had chosen this path for genuinely noble reasons.

They wanted to prevent other people from experiencing the same pain they had gone through. They wanted to understand anomalies, find ways to contain them, and, above all, make sure tragedies like those didn't happen again. Others, though... Well, their reasons were considerably less noble.

Some had joined simply because they felt an almost morbid sense of satisfaction whenever they saw a dangerous anomaly captured, contained, and locked away in a cell where it couldn't hurt anyone. Yes, there were a few members like that scattered around.

In fact, at the facility where my sisters and I were kept, it was perfectly normal to encounter people who weren't exactly friendly toward us. Naturally, they didn't openly hate us. They didn't go around insulting us or making derogatory comments, but it was easy enough to tell when someone wasn't comfortable around us.

Some went out of their way to avoid contact, while others watched us strangely, as if they were always waiting for us to do something. Well... what could I do? It was impossible to please everyone. And personally, I wasn't sure I had the patience, or even the desire, to win over someone who simply didn't like me. I'd never been that kind of person.

Or, in this case... anomaly. I hadn't been like that even when I was still human. I never had much desire to change who I was just to fit other people's expectations. After I became an anomaly, that willingness disappeared completely. If someone didn't like me, fine. I didn't have to like them either.

Anyway, putting aside this somewhat depressing aspect of my social life with the facility's staff, it had started snowing quite heavily lately. That, by itself, wasn't necessarily strange. It was the end of the year, after all, and the city, along with some of the surrounding regions, tended to get considerably colder around this time of year.

The place where the facility was located, for example, was basically a massive desert. Snow shouldn't have been common around here, but the temperatures could still drop low enough for the cold to become dangerous for ordinary people. The thing was, the artificially created area that served as my home and my sisters' home was directly connected to the outside environment. It essentially mirrored the weather conditions outside the facility.

Because of that, I could follow the changing weather perfectly well. Every day, the temperature seemed to drop a little more. Personally, I didn't feel cold, so it wasn't as if it actually bothered me. It could snow for hours, the wind could howl outside, and the temperature could keep plummeting, and as far as I was concerned, everything would remain practically the same.

However... I looked out the window at the white landscape outside my cabin. Snow continued to fall in thick flakes, slowly covering the ground and rooftops as an increasingly thick layer accumulated over everything. I tilted my head slightly.

Wasn't this getting a little excessive? The end of the year was usually cold. That, by itself, wasn't exactly something worth making a fuss over. Lower temperatures were perfectly normal around this time of year, after all.

However, even I, with my body practically existing in a suspended state of fluctuation, where I didn't experience heat or cold the same way a normal person did, could tell that the temperature was dropping more and more with each passing day.

And it wasn't a small drop, either. Inside the facility, it wasn't nearly as noticeable. Various pipes scattered throughout the hallways and different floors constantly released warm air, keeping the interior at a comfortable temperature.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

It was easy to forget about the cold outside when you spent so much time surrounded by that artificial warmth. Still... For some reason, I simply couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. The weather. The steadily dropping temperatures. The way the cold seemed to intensify with every passing day... It all felt connected somehow.

I had no concrete evidence to support that thought. It was just a feeling. One of those unsettling hunches that surfaced in the back of my mind without any clear explanation for where they came from. Damn it.

I really hated having these kinds of hunches. Because almost every time I'd felt something like this, some kind of bullshit happened shortly afterward. And considering my track record, when I said "some kind of bullshit," I usually wasn't talking about something minor.

***

(POV - Emily Parker)

Emily, as always, was locked in a full-blown battle with paperwork. That was nothing new. Ironically, Emily was, at her core, a scientist. Still, considering the absurd amount of paperwork that crossed her desk every day, it was entirely possible that she spent more time signing reports, reviewing requests, and approving forms than actually doing any of the things someone would normally expect a scientist to do.

And it wasn't as though Emily was unaware of what was happening inside the facility. Quite the opposite. She probably had a better understanding of the situation than most of the people actually working in the laboratories. After all, a large portion of the documents she had to review and sign were directly related to the anomalies being kept at the facility.

Requests to conduct new tests, applications for access to certain areas, authorizations to use specific equipment, preliminary experiment reports, and all sorts of similar paperwork inevitably ended up on her desk.

Each request usually came with a detailed justification explaining the purpose of the experiment, the methods that would be used, the risks involved, and, most importantly, why the researchers believed the test was worth conducting.

So even though she wasn't physically present in every lab or personally overseeing every experiment, Emily still ended up being exposed to a considerable amount of information on a regular basis.

She knew which anomalies were being studied, which tests were being planned, and even which researchers were particularly interested in certain phenomena. In the end, the paperwork she hated so much also served as a sort of window into everything happening inside the facility.

It was just a shame that said window came with hundreds of pages that needed her signature. There were a few experiments involving [Angel of Death] and her sisters, but they were a minority. Those particular anomalies were practically impossible to work with depending on the type of test. Sometimes they refused to participate.

Other times, they simply ignored the researchers as though they weren't even there. That didn't bother Emily too much. She already had a pretty good idea of what those anomalies were capable of and, honestly, she'd much rather have them refuse to cooperate than find out the hard way what happened when they were genuinely pushed too far. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the higher-ups.

As always, the people at the top rarely interacted directly with the projects they funded. It was easy to authorize millions in resources when all they had to do was sign a few documents and receive carefully prepared reports. It was even easier when those projects involved something that, under normal circumstances, should have been considered an existential threat.

And in this particular case, they weren't just walking bombs. They were walking, sentient bombs. Or, more accurately, in the case of [Angel of Death] and her sisters, the apocalypse itself compressed into the bodies of cute, strangely androgynous little girls.

Emily sometimes wondered whether the people at the top had ever stopped to think about just how absurd the whole situation was. Probably not. After all, it was much more comfortable to look at numbers on a report than to stare directly at a creature capable of turning an entire city into nothing.

Requests for reports related to [Angel of Death] and her sisters were becoming more frequent than Emily cared to admit. And what, exactly, did those reports usually concern? Control. In the end, it seemed like that was what the entire world revolved around. Control.

Who had control over something, who didn't, who might lose that control, and, most importantly, who should be in charge if something went wrong. Emily honestly wanted to give those people at the top a big, beautiful middle finger.

Unfortunately, losing her salary, her position, getting arrested, and eventually disappearing somewhere in a desert or frozen wasteland wasn't exactly on her ten-year plan. So, for now, she'd have to settle for complaining about them in her head.

Emily let out a quiet sigh and turned her eyes back to the screen in front of her. Before she could continue working, however, a shiver ran through her body: “Brrr...” She subtly hunched into her chair, rubbing her arms on instinct.

Emily blinked a few times before looking toward the heater in the corner of the room. It seemed perfectly normal. The indicator lights were on, the unit was making its usual steady hum, and warm air was still coming through the vents.

So why the hell was it so cold? The past few days had been unusually chilly. Emily found herself thinking about it again as she rested her chin in one hand. There had also been an increase in cases of people getting sick because of the cold. Not that this was necessarily unusual considering the time of year.

Lower temperatures naturally brought that kind of problem with them. That said... She couldn't shake the feeling that something was different. The cold this year felt strange compared to previous years.

It wasn't just the temperature. It was a difficult sensation to put into words, almost as if the environment itself were... wrong. Emily frowned slightly. She was probably just imagining things.

After all, after spending so much time dealing with anomalies, maybe her brain was starting to see problems where none existed. She sighed again and returned her attention to the report: “I'm getting paranoid...” she muttered to herself.