by Greg Ramsay
Beautiful, isn’t it? he said.
It’s just a sword, she replied. The Leader mask looked insulted.
It could easily contend with your kynari! He retorted. She laughed at him.
It could, eh? Let’s see it then.
The Leader seemed pleased to prove his blade’s prowess; he immediately generated the memory of the area around Lia’s store. They stood facing each other. The Leader stood holding his new katana whilst Lia stood in front of him charging her kynari. She released her red vortex, the energy reached its climax, whipping up air and dust in a cyclone around it. She brought it into blade form like his. The Leader’s blade shone black as he gave it his energy; he charged for Lia.
They both jumped into the air, blades colliding. Their energies surged, threatening to reject the wielders from the force. They disengaged, landing on the ground, both combatants with blades at the ready. The Leader disappeared, attempting to appear behind Lia. She predicted his maneuver, disappearing to counter him. They reappeared simultaneously to clash again. Focusing the energy of her blade she made it rage towards him. He laughed, pointing the tip of his blade to hers he said, RELEASE. The energy in this new blade didn’t fire outward like a laser; it focused in the keen run of the blade, sharpening it exponentially. He brought it down upon her kynari’s energy blade. The blades clashed. Horrified, Lia watched as the Leader’s blade cut straight through hers - dissipating the energy - her blade exploded as though it had just been shattered. She looked at her kynari dismayed, watching its tip crack. Then it broke apart, falling from the body. Looking at the severed connection left by the tip, Lia saw it was joined by metallic threads. Carefully twisting, she removed the inner thread and looked towards the Leader. He stood looking down on her, his blade poised to counter her next move.
Are you done yet? he taunted her.
Not at all, she said.
She held out her kynari, praying it would still work. Thankfully she only focused her blade in one end and was overjoyed to see the vortex of her power explode outward from its second tip. When the blade formed it was slightly unfocused, so she compressed the energy into a smaller blade with her will. Hoping its new focus would be enough, she charged toward the Leader, appearing right in front of him. She swung her blade sideways above her head to counter his downward strike, then let go of the focus in her blade, using its catalyst force to deflect his blade. Lia ducked swiftly into his unguarded midsection and drove her already refocused blade into the Leader’s gut. He gasped in surprise as she withdrew her blade from his body. Lia saw his form begin to smoulder before it blew away like a dark ash just as it had done before. The memory of the area around her shop was cleared again. Once more Lia found herself looking again into the Leader mask’s eyes.
I won, she said.
At what cost? the Leader asked. Remember what happened to your kynari’s tip? In a real battle, it’s liable to overload due to the imbalance in its energy flow when you form energy blades with it! Only compressing the energy in a physical blade can potentially avoid that by providing material for the energy to dissipate through. Granted alphas don’t make energy blades, but still.
Lia looked at him resigned; she knew he was right. She could remember feeling the strain in the kynari’s body and remaining tip. Moments later Lia found herself out of the void. She was standing in the street surrounded by carnage and destroyed buildings. Inspecting the kynari proved what she already knew; it was fine. She then consumed the lesser creatures lying among the wreckage. Afterward went back to the cars she had seen before. She examined the guns that were strewn around the vehicles, but didn’t bother taking any.
After becoming bored, she continued down the road, she assumed towards MiraiCorp. She had to detour through some alleys due to blockages caused by the fallen buildings. Any lesser shifted she encountered were simply dispatched with her armoured hands. Lia was always cautious of larger groups of shifted. If she was overrun, he would take over and that could be the end of her, depending on his mood, she knew it. He didn’t care for her. He had to protect her to stay alive most likely. Why did she even wonder if he cared? He was just a monster that gained a personality once they were accidently forced to join. He existed to darken her life until she died, if she could even die now with him there. Those dark sad thoughts were all that filled Lia’s mind as she walked through the ghost city - towards more of the shifted.
Are you giving up, child? Leaving yourself, and your hope behind? You just want to die? I can arrange that. You think I can’t live without you, that you can just lie down, let yourself get shredded, and I’ll save you? Do you think I’m your friend? Are you that lonely - that weak - that you would seek my camaraderie? That you would give in just to have me take you over? Just so you can watch me move you, as time, and this life pass you by? Fine sit there, cry, wallow in your self-pity. Forsake the world reaching for your help. You make yourself nothing, garbage, worthless even to the lesser creatures. No retribution for the memory of those lost. Your pain drags you down. You will just rot with what remains of the human ‘world’ until you remember yourself, and rise above.
The voice of the Leader finally stopped mocking, goading, and pushing Lia. She found herself sitting in a dark alley, waiting for answers to come. Not even his painful grade of guidance was there now. She was truly alone and becoming increasingly angered by it.
She raged out on the carcasses of the ravaged and dead creatures, finding a way to make them more grotesque in her violence –– carving through them, hacking limbs, even ripping open their chests with her hands. Holding their severed innards in her hands, she pulverized them, throwing them around her. She took their hollowed remains for consumption like junk food, leaving the organs strewn about her like the soupy mess that was her memory. The mess itself felt like a signature to her, a reminder to the dusty ground of her pain, one borne of the unknown mixed with the madness suddenly filling her life. She looked up to the sky, tears of frustration streaming from her reddened eyes. She squinted up away from the sun to look at the clouds, the only stable thing the world showed her anymore.
With the last of her energy she screamed up at the clouds, like they were a benevolent entity holding her down. Then she collapsed to her knees, crying against the side of a building. Lia knew she was being ridiculous, but she didn’t care; no one lived in her memory –– let alone the world around her to witness her. Her tears streaked down her face, as well as the filthy concrete they landed on as they fell. Dirt turned the salty water black as it bonded with it. She closed her eyes to see what her mind would show her.
The first thing she saw was the strange symbol, the M logo. To Lia it was a stark reminder. She knew now what she had to do. MiraiCorp had to be explored. If answers were anywhere they might be there. If a cure for whatever this all was could be found it had to be distributed in some way, and if the one responsible for the infection hid there, they had to die. Regardless of what could happen to her, she knew her target now. Once she had a goal nothing was going to stop her. She wasn’t going to just live with her own monster, devouring them as they doubtless devoured others, she was going to stop it. She left her chaos behind, walking down the road again, this time with an unbreakable resolve.
Chapter 7 – The Unknown
The time passed quickly for Lia as she felt herself closing in on her target; she didn’t know why she was being drawn to the building, besides that of her will. She didn’t care, but felt she would find answers which would calm her tumultuous mind. She saw an immense complex ahead, four or five times the size of the complex she had discovered what seemed a long time ago. It was an ode to the purest of human ingenuity, as well as an ode to humanity’s materialistic complex. It resembled a castle made up of multiple smaller buildings. Even from a distance, Lia could see the same symbol that was on her letterhead. She knew she was there before she saw the signs. Two glazed glass signs stood on either side of a path connected to the main building that clearly read “MiraiCorp, building the futu
re of evolution. Biological Testing Main Laboratory”.
Lia looked up. Crows circled in the sky above the complex like a marker of her arrival. She turned her eyes from them, watching the building as she drew nearer. It stood like a foreboding behemoth before her. Lia walked toward it, warily expecting the worst. She followed the tree-lined path towards the main building’s huge industrial doors. When she got close to the doors, a camera scanned her. Then the doors began to slowly open, hissing like a sealed airlock.
As she walked through the opening into a large steel tiled hallway, Lia began to wonder who or what had opened the doors. She also wondered what was waiting for her beyond the ominous sterile lobby at the end of the hall. Lia walked into the lobby. The great industrial doors at the entrance slowly hissed closed behind her, clacking metallically as multiple locking mechanisms slid into place. Sensing there was no turning back, Lia glanced around wearily as large -fluorescent lights lit up the room. Steel tiles lined the floors and walls. Stiff-backed black leather chairs were lined up along the wall on either side of the doors. A large reception desk dominated the front of the room. There were two sets of doors on either side of the room that led farther into the complex. Lia walked slowly towards the main desk; a receptionist’s terminal sat dormant in the middle of the desk.
Large filing drawers were mounted inside the desk on either end of the terminal. Lia opened the unlocked drawers, but they only contained empty manila folders. She pried the locked drawer open with her clawed finger giving it a light twist which snapped the cheap mechanism from the drawer. She pulled the drawer open finding more alphabetized folders. She read enough to deduce they were nothing more than lists of expected shipments that the receptionist must have written. Leaving the desk, Lia examined the door to her left. A plaque beside the door said Medical Testing which seemed vaguely familiar to Lia; she felt drawn to exploring the area beyond the door. She tentatively pushed on the door and it easily swung open, revealing a long hallway.
The steel tiles followed through in the flooring of the hallway. The walls were whitewashed; small circular fluorescents spaced a foot apart lit the hall. The only window was on the left side wall. It was too close to the ceiling to be reached. Lia thought it would fit the perfect description of an old asylum minus the steel bars that were usually on its windows. Doors lined both sides of the hall beyond the window, closely spaced, with only numbers on them. All the doors were damaged or ajar. Upon inspection, each room contained only a cot, sink, and toilet. It became more eerie for Lia as she started to notice sentences scratched or scrawled in the walls of some of the rooms. They said things like: “We’ll be cured soon.” “These diseases won’t kill us.” “I’ll be able to go home and see my family.” “No more need for goodbyes.” More of these messages of hope were revealed to Lia as she searched.
Why were these people in a bio lab, and what happened to them? Lia thought to herself as she continued down the hall to its end. She opted not to look in any of the other rooms. She didn’t want to see any more etchings of their false hopes.
At the end of the hall was a single door which led into a large testing room. Blood was splattered on the walls. More dried pools of blood dotted the floor. Rodent cages lined shelves. Clipboards were placed on the large steel tables that were dotted in blood splatter. When Lia walked up to one of the terminals, she noticed Its screen was dark and blood had dried on the screen. She tapped the keyboard in front of it. The screen lit up, a welcome screen emblazoned with the corporation’s logo and slogan appeared, then that visual was replaced by a query list. Research logs, test results, and journal entries from the on-duty scientists were among the choices. She skimmed through the first three research logs, each one about a biological virus agent named the “L Strain”. Lia closed the research log window.
The test results window revealed a detailed description of how rodents were injected with different formulations of the L strain. Out of fifty test subjects, all died almost immediately. Some of the scientists logged that they donated their own DNA for extraction of the human genome, as a way to see the effects on a higher evolutionary plateau. The logs continued to explain how the L strain had bonded with the cell structures of the scientists’ DNA. It showed improvement in cell health when injected with other viruses. Further testing showed it could positively influence their genetic make-ups. Lia found references to specific journal entries in the test files. Curious, she followed the links to see what they said. Most of the scientists were overjoyed with the promising results shown in their preliminary testing of the L strain. The senior scientists wrote of sending out requests for permission to test terminal patients. Some were uneasy with the thought of immediate human testing. They repetitively stated they had expressed concern to the senior scientists in charge of the project. Many felt potential dangers would arise from injecting people with an agent that wasn’t yet tested for long-term adverse effects. They were all ignored due to political interests. Those who continued to resist the seniors’ ambitions were logged as having been dismissed from the project. Some were terminated entirely from any employment status. Lia closed the scientists’ journals.
She continued to read the test results. The scientists who remained, wrote of the testing being accelerated, despite their notations that the senior scientists’ requests had been denied. Tests were continued with volunteer scientists who had a hereditary condition, disease, or anything that had potential to be considered a threat to their lives. Later results showed those afflicted scientists who had submitted DNA samples to the L strain all showed immediate miraculous improvement beyond what any of them could have imagined. Further test logs described scientists who had brought in terminally ill family members. That’s a far leap from simple testing, Lia thought to herself. A few test result logs contained the promising effects of the L strain on its new test subjects, who were all noted as being held in the detention hall for observation. Lia assumed that title referred to the asylum like hall she had passed through to reach the lab.
As she kept reading she wondered if the scientists held there wrote those disturbing messages. What she read next confirmed her sinking suspicions. Later test result logs stated the senior scientists had assumed logging duty, as the others were all being observed, thus could no longer fulfill the duty. The senior scientists meticulously logged - in cold logical detail - the personalities and demeanours of the subjects had experienced a drastic decline. The test subjects had started acting like caged animals. One of the observing head scientists had written in his journal of having been attacked when he tried to bring the test subjects food. One of the senior scientists wrote of the test subjects getting much stronger physically and at an alarming rate. This was noted as: “The subjects’ bodies were experiencing unprecedented modification.”
A journal entry link was below the test entry. Opening it, she noticed it was written by a fearful scientist. He stated the others were too afraid of superiors’ opinions or of being fired, so they didn’t write all that was really happening. The scientist continued by writing that the test subjects had begun to turn pure black, their eyes sinking like voids. Their hands had become clawed although unlike any known animal. Their head and body formed frightening plates akin to medieval armour. The scientist noted the armour-like growths held no similarity to crustaceans or any known arthropods. The scientist wrote further of how all the other scientists were leaving, frightened by primal roaring coming from the hall. The last sentence in the entry said the scientist who wrote it heard the hinges of the detention doors break open, followed by people screaming. The entry then trailed off.
Lia brought the head scientist’s journal on-screen it was very coldly analytical, detailing numbers of different L strain versions created. It stated there were four variations of the strain created; the fourth version was the one responsible for the mutations noted previously. They were simply referred to as complications that formed during trials. The last entry in his journal was short, but it told Lia enough. It said t
he subjects were trying to stop him; they were coming for him, to stop his work. He then stated he had quickly formatted a fifth strain that was supposed to allow him to retain control of the adverse effects, then had injected it into himself. To end his journal, he wrote: Barton.
Lia left the Medical Testing section and walked across the lobby through the other doors marked Laboratory. As she walked through the labs, she could see syringes in refrigerated shelving units marked with hazard symbols. Lia felt it had to be the L strain biological virus, the poison that created the shifted within her. No rather, it had brought the Leader to ‘life’. Barton created the L strain, which apparently started it all. He had to answer to her now unless the changed scientists had gotten to him already. Spite continued to grow in her as her reading progressed.
Lia picked up a stool sitting by a table at one side of the lab hefting it like a bat before using it to smash the freezers one by one. Then she smashed all the syringes of L strain, watching as the vile black liquid spilled on the ground. She yelled angrily, throwing the stool hard into the wall; its seat busted off clattering loudly to the floor beside its legs. Suddenly she heard a quiet whirring sound.
Lia swerved towards the noise, staring directly into a security camera, its lens focused as if eyeing her intently. She had failed to notice it until then. Who’s behind the camera? she thought. She watched as it slowly turned away from her to face a silver elevator across the room, then its green light stopped blinking. Slowly she turned away from the camera, heading for the elevator it seemed to indicate, despite the sinking feeling in her gut. She pushed its call button then waited for the elevator to ascend immeasurable distances to reach her. The elevator finally arrived, its doors silently withdrawing into the recesses of its shaft. As Lia stepped inside, its single bulb of light flickered briefly. Undeterred, Lia looked to the digital panel; her only option was to go down. She pressed the panel quickly, and the elevator rapidly began its descent; its speed, compared to the time it took to come up, surprised Lia. There were no windows to judge how many floors she had passed, leaving her lost as her silent descent dragged on. Lia found herself wondering if there would be another way out in case Barton had mutated or something like that, if it was even him running the place. The elevator eventually began to slow, then stopped entirely, its doors opening with the same ghostly silence as before.