Vincent Memorial Hospital’s basement was a maze of hidden access corridors made from hundreds of eerily similar rust-colored concrete blocks. Ripped up and rebuilt over a hundred years, the medical labyrinth was often deemed unnavigable by most visitors.

  But what really confused the hell out of Freddy Spencer, was the blue steam pipes.

  Devoid of any helpful signs, the board of regents had long ago decided that the exposed utility pipes hanging from the ceiling would-be painted a specific color to represent a particular area of the basement. These visual guideposts would help anyone not familiar with the complex layout. Initially, this solution worked fine.

  However, during the hospital’s last remodel, a bean counter decided that it would be more cost effective to use only one color of paint on the pipes… blue. Typically, this confusion hardly mattered since the only people who ventured down there were orderlies and the sanitation staff.

  But five years ago, the morgue had to vacate their previous location and relocate to the basement. To combat the threat of lost time and lost workers, every incoming sheriff and their staff was supposed to receive a comprehensive tour of the area. Unfortunately, Freddy never had a chance to visit the morgue.

  And if things kept going like this, it seemed that he never would.

  “Blue pipes.” Everywhere Freddy turned three blue pipes were waiting to greet him. “How in the hell do you follow the blue pipes when all the pipes down here are blue?”

  This question was punctuated by another dead end that forced him to backtrack along the scuffed concrete floors. When he reached a familiar section of corridors, a thought wiggled free from the back of his mind. The maintenance guy who had given him directions to the morgue was fucking with him.

  “Screw this!” Standing in a dimly lit junction, Freddy shouted down a seemingly empty corridor where a flickering bulb barely gave off enough light to see beyond the never-ending blue pipes. After an hour of fruitless searching, he came to a decision. “If Bob wants the blood results so badly, he can just wait until Jonathan calls him.”

  Minutes later, Freddy found himself back on a recognizable path. Slightly confident this was the way out, he began retracing his wrong turns back toward the old service elevator near the hospital’s receiving bay. Two turns later, he joyously realized that the arduous journey back wasn’t going to take as long as getting lost.

  Near the laundry room, a disheveled maintenance man came into view. As they passed each other, the man nodded politely, then whispered something barely audible. When Freddy turned back around to ask the man what he had said, the enigmatic cleaner was already halfway down the corridor, and almost out of sight.

  For a second, he thought about chasing him down but quickly dismissed the idea in favor of getting the hell out of there.

  This same scenario repeated itself a couple of times. Around every corner, a stranger would appear and say something barely above a whisper, but they never stayed around long enough to provide any clarification. Then, as Freddy neared the freight elevator, the pattern suddenly changed.

  A man in his late fifties, dressed in worn blue scrubs, got off the elevator. He crossed Freddy’s path, only this time without saying anything. Flabbergasted, Freddy got onto the elevator and pressed the top button. However, before the doors began to close, the orderly turned around to face Freddy.

  “Now you know where they lead.” The old man said with a smile, not a laugh or a hint of ridicule, just a smile. “They lead nowhere.”

  As the doors closed on the basement with a dull thud, anger welled up within Freddy’s chest like it hadn’t in a long time. On the verge of exploding, he wanted to smash the buttons on the elevator controls until only a pile of broken numbers remained. Why the hell would anyone tell him to follow those blue pipes?

  Then, as the elevator rose, he wondered if the last hour of his life had been nothing more than a practical joke. He imagined the elevator doors opening onto a large group of hospital workers, some holding signs proclaiming his stupidity, while the others laughed their asses off at his naiveté.

  To his surprise, neither delusion came to pass. Because when the elevator doors opened, the only thing that greeted him was three out of place looking people.

  Two men and a woman stood together in matching blue coats, giving off a distinct government vibe. Though Freddy quickly dismissed that assumption given their casual manner of dress. After all, one guy had a satchel slung over his shoulder, while the girl wore a hurried ponytail and a pair of pink running shoes. No, the more likely conclusion was that they were college students.

  “Are you getting off?” The young woman asked after a moment of silence.

  He wasn’t quite sure. Before entering the elevator, Freddy meant to get the hell out of here and back to the office. Even with Bob and Rosie screaming their heads off, anywhere was better than down there. Now though, something about these strangers kept him from getting off the elevator.

  When it became apparent, he wasn’t getting off, the three just climbed aboard one by one. “So,” the girl’s hand hovered over the elevator controls. “Are you going down?”

  “Why?” Freddy asked, still disorientated from being down in the basement for so long. “The only thing below this level is the basement.”

  The shorter of the two men wore expensive glasses and had a laptop tucked under his arm. He responded to Freddy’s statement almost immediately.

  “Good.” The fashionable stranger laughed as the other two looked forward without responding. “Because that’s precisely where we are headed, the basement.”

  “Precisely, huh,” Freddy shook his head at the guy’s choice of words. “With that kind of vocabulary, I guess you guys aren’t heading for the laundry room. Are you?”

  “No,” the guy with the laptop chortled. “We’re headed for the morgue.”

  “Hah!!!” Freddy maniacally blurted out. The newcomers, unaware of his past tribulation, weren’t aware that his time in the basement had driven him slightly mad. But like all people who suffer, he was excited to know that someone else would soon be joining him. “Good luck with that.”

  Built in the forties, the elevator was an unsteady hybrid of metal and wood that loudly creaked whenever someone used it. And when someone did, they knew better than to be in a hurry. Burdened with time, Freddy leaned back against the far wall and listened to the strangers talk amongst themselves.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I still don’t understand why we are here again. What makes Hoover think this has anything to do with the signal?” The ponytail girl rocked back on her feet like an anxious child waiting in line. “How could it?”

  “I agree.” Laptop guy wiped his fingers against the elevator’s dust-covered frame. Instantly, he turned up his nose. “Traipsing around in a hospital basement is not the best use of our time. Besides,” he reluctantly wiped the dust off onto his designer pant leg, “I don’t really like hospitals.”

  “You think I like hospitals?” The satchel guy bent down to examine the elevator’s control panel. He played with some of the buttons. “Besides, I’ve seen a lot of worse places than this.”

  “Sorry.” Laptop guy shook his head apologetically. “I guess you have.”

  When the elevator finally reached the bottom floor, the whole thing vibrated terribly, and the doors didn’t open right away. But after what sounded like pieces of a chain breaking apart, the doors begrudgingly opened onto a damp patch of the basement. The three passengers waited to see what Freddy would do next out of politeness.

  Maybe it was the mysterious way they talked, or that the girl in the ponytail was so cute, but for some crazy reason, he got off the elevator.

  “I would tell you where the morgue is, but I honestly can’t. I spent an hour down here with no luck.” Freddy pointed down one of the dank hallways. “All these corridors look the same to me.”

  “It’s alright.” The man with the satchel happily said. “There was a nice man near the service entrance. He said all we had to do was follow the blue pipes. They’ll take us right there.”

  Freddy laughed so hard that he almost pissed himself. Someone else had fallen victim to their schemes. “Was it a fat guy sitting next to the receiving doors?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “He was extremely helpful.”

  “He said the same thing to me over an hour ago.” Freddy pointed to the pipes hanging above their heads and snickered. “All the pipes down here are painted blue, and these pipes go everywhere. There’s no way you’re going to find the morgue following those things. Believe me, I tried.”

  “You mean he was lying to us?” Satchel guy’s expression bordered somewhere between angelic and a newborn child. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it.” Freddy couldn’t help but pity the na?ve sap. “The guys around here like playing tricks on people they consider outsiders. You’re an outsider. He’s an asshole.”

  “Still,” Satchel guy stared at the pipes intently for a second. “I think we should be able to find the morgue if we try. These pipes don’t look exactly alike. Not really. Plus, I don’t think that man would have lied to us.”

  Ponytail coughed loudly enough to get satchel guy’s attention. “Maybe we should ask someone else. Time is a factor. I don’t think a delay would help matters all that much.”

  “Yeah,” The laptop guy seemed almost too inclined to take the careful approach. “I told you... nothing about a hospital is appealing to me. And just so you know, that includes getting lost in the basement.”

  “Careful, thinking like that is going to get that file of yours rewritten.” The man patted his satchel reassuringly and said, “Trust me.”

  Freddy took a step back as if mere proximity would make him crazy. Was he serious? There was no way in hell this egghead was going to find the morgue without a map. “I tell you what. Since you seem to be confident in your navigation skills, I think I’ll tag along.”

  “Fine by me,” He regarded the other two members of his group for their opinion. In response, both just shrugged their shoulders signifying they didn’t care. With tentative permission, he turned to Freddy and said, “Let’s go.”

  For the first couple of turns, satchel guy never even looked up at the pipes. Instead, he’d stop at every intersection, sniff the air, then turn whichever way he felt like turning. It wasn’t until the third junction that he finally looked up.

  “You see?” The man pointed to one of the more faded, water damaged pipes. “That shade of blue is a little different than the other ones we’ve seen so far.” Seemingly bolstered by his mundane observation, he chose a direction. “We should go this way.”

  “That blue isn’t any different.” Two steps behind, Freddy argued. “Maybe it’s a little more rusted, but not any different.”

  “It’s a little different.” Satchel’s voice was high pitched and excited.

  To which Freddy let out an exasperated laugh. “Then have at it, man. You’re the one that’s going to end up lost down here.”

  “We’re,” his myopic tour guide corrected him. “We’re going to be the ones lost down here.”

  “Yeah,” Freddy stopped smiling. “We’re going to be lost down here.”

  This scene repeated itself for three more intersections without fail or any sign of a pattern. Each time, the man with the satchel inspected the infernal pipes, then point out some irregularity about the color. That observation would lead them down another similar corridor with his three charges close in tow.

  All the while, the young game warden found the anger he felt in the elevator growing more intense, a phenomenon that doubled itself with every nonsensical turn.

  “Listen,” his limit for wandering reached. Freddy spun on the other two as they neared the middle of yet another hallway. “I can appreciate your friend’s ‘ability’ to tell the difference between one blue pipe from another. But I think we need to head back. People get lost down here.”

  He stared apprehensively up and down the corridor, thinking about childhood stories of kids going missing. “The kind of lost that never gets found again.”

  “Really?” The satchel guy had doubled back to join in on the half-assed mutiny. “Even with all these blue pipes to guide them?”

  The other two snickered amongst themselves as Freddy’s face slowly turned bright red. “Listen, you guys want to spend the rest of the day down here following this idiot, that’s fine by me. But I’m not. I’m heading back.”

  “What about the morgue?” The satchel man said with a sincere expression on his face. “I thought you were looking for it too?”

  “I was. I mean…. I am. I just don’t think you’re ever going to find it.”

  The man smiled broadly and pointed to a place on the wall directly over Freddy’s shoulder.

  At first, he refused to acknowledge the gesture. He wasn’t interested in another pointless lesson on what constituted the correct shade of blue. It wasn’t until ponytail girl pointed over his shoulder that he reluctantly spun around. To his horror, he found himself facing a nondescript metal door.

  Above it hung a sign that said: MORGUE.

  “But I did find it.” Satchel pointed to a rather disgusting looking navy hued pipe dripping water above his head. “And it was all thanks to the blue pipes.”

  Freddy felt the small veins in his neck beginning to bulge as he looked menacingly up at the pipe, trying to discern any difference in the paint. But there was nothing — no deviation from this pipe or all the other fucking pipes. After a couple of seconds of fighting off his anger, he let out a long-controlled breath.

  “Fuck you,” Freddy muttered aloud, “and those blue pipes.”

  Without thanks or further condemnation, he grabbed the door handle, twisted it firmly, and made his way inside. The girl with the ponytail walked up behind the guy with the satchel, barely containing her laughter. “Foster… what was that?”

  Mosley, who himself had been wondering what that hell was going on, took a flashlight out of his pocket. He shined it upon the same blue pipes that just a second ago Freddy had been inspecting. From what he could see, there wasn’t any difference in the color.

  “How did you do it? All these damn pipes look the same to me. Unless it was Hoover.”

  “Yep.” Foster tapped the small earpiece hidden underneath a tuft of his hair. “He has digital copies of the original blueprints along with each subsequent set. So, it wasn’t much of a problem for him to lead me straight here. Well, kind of straight here. We did take a couple of looping turns.”

  “Cruel, very cruel.” Mosley patted Foster on the back. “I don’t know what you were like before going into Wilson. But now, you’re one evil bastard.” He opened the door and hurried to follow Freddy inside the morgue.

  “That was mean.” Justine, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing. She felt like giving him a high five. “You know you’re an asshole? Right?”

  “Sometimes.” That same sly grin was plastered on his face. “But only to people who deserve it.”

  She smiled at his childish behavior. Two days ago, Foster had looked exactly like an escaped mental patient. Now, he looked like something very different, and that difference made her blush.

  Foster was about to seize upon this moment to talk some more when Hoover’s voice broke in over his earpiece.

  “Foster,” Hoover sounded pissed. “You better get in there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” His program did not know whether to laugh or scream. “That moronic medical examiner is about to do something extremely stupid.”