by Jason Parent
Sergei lost Mary Rose as soon as she left the cafeteria. When he entered the hallway to follow, he found Alfonse and Sebastian standing in his path. He rose up on his toes, trying to see past them and escape the encounter without the mandatory pleasantries, but Alfonse’s meaty hand latched around Sergei’s arm. The grip was light, unthreatening, but it hurt Sergei all the same as his muscles were weak and achy, depleted of iron.
“Ciao, Sergei,” Alfonse said. “You don’t look so good, my friend.”
Sergei forced another smile. “I’m fine. I…I had trouble sleeping last night.”
“You sure that’s all?” Sebastian asked. “It looks like it’s been more than a night. Have you eaten yet? Alfie and I were heading into the mess hall to try and grab some grub to bring back to our rooms. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here? You’re welcome to join us if—”
“Can’t you see I’ve just come from there, you imbecile?” Sergei gritted his teeth, and spittle seethed through them. He took deep breaths but couldn’t stop his fuming.
Sebastian stepped dangerously closer. “Listen, you little—”
“Whoa.” Alfonse squeezed between them. The big man placed a hand on Sergei’s chest and gently pushed him back. “We’re your friends here….”
She’s getting away, Natalya whispered.
Alfonse kept talking, but Sergei heard only his daughter. He slapped Alfonse’s hand away and shoved past him then stormed down the hall.
“Asshole!” Sebastian called after him.
Sergei didn’t care. He had to find Mary Rose. She was the key. She was what Natalya wanted. He had to get Natalya what she wanted. He had to get her out of his head.
But Mary Rose was gone. He’d lost his chance.
She’s heading to her room.
“I don’t know which is hers,” he snapped. He took off running down the sparsely populated corridors, hallway after hallway, in the direction he guessed Mary Rose had gone. He guessed correctly. “Yes!”
Sergei skidded to a halt. He ironed out the wrinkles in his shirt and began to stalk toward Mary Rose, who stood smiling and chatting with that syrupy, brown-nosed brownnoser that talked like the kid from Slumdog Millionaire.
“It’s always good to see you, Anju,” Mary Rose said. “But we should probably head in.” She pointed to the door behind her. “This is me. There’s been a rather serious increase in the number of protestors lining up outside. If this is the work of a fanatic, well, I’m afraid these hallways are no place for the likes of us gentler folk.”
“Right as always, Dr. Thomas.” Anju patted the older woman’s hand. “If you need anything, I am right down the hall. Come and get me before heading out on your lonesome, would you?”
“I’m not senile yet, my dear.”
“I just meant—”
“I know. I’m just teasing you, dear. And please, don’t go out on your own either. As you said, I’m right down the hall.”
Anju smiled and gave her elder a slight bow. Sergei waited for the graduate student to walk away, pretending to tie his shoe only a few meters away from them. But Anju lingered. He’d caught her eyeing him suspiciously more than once. He stood, smiled, nodded at the women, and walked on past them. After rounding a corner, he ducked into a supply closet and peeked through a small glass window cut into the door until he saw that caramel-skinned kiss ass go by.
He backtracked to Mary Rose’s room and tried the knob. Shut and locked.
He knocked. After a moment, he heard footsteps inside.
“Yes?” the pathologist called.
“Dr. Thomas, it’s Sergei Kobozev. I was hoping I might have a word with you. It’s about the viruses we discovered.”
“Can it wait? We are supposed to be on lockdown, and—”
“It will only take a moment.”
A long pause.
Finally, he heard a click. Mary Rose cracked open the door and peered out with her unassuming eyes. “Yes? What is it? This doesn’t have anything to do with that explosion we heard?”
Her keycard, Papa. Get her keycard.
Sergei grinned. His gaze fell to the old woman’s waist, where the card hung from a lanyard. Then his smile fell from his face as he realized what he had to do. What she had always meant for him to do.
He kicked in the door.
Mary Rose cried out in pain when the door slammed into her shoulder. She tumbled backward and fell atop a coffee table, knocking magazines and papers onto the floor.
She started to scream for help, but Sergei leaped on top of her. “I don’t want to hurt her!” he shouted as his hands groped their way around her throat. The door slid closed behind him.
“Shh…. Shh-shhh,” Sergei pleaded as he strangled a woman who had been nothing but kind to him. He didn’t enjoy it, didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t have her screaming. He would just choke her until she passed out. Just quiet her for a while. She would be fine.
He just needed her to be quiet.
“Don’t fight. Go to sleep, Mary Rose.” His tone was soft, fatherly even. “Just go to sleep, my little ballerina.” He looked into the face changing color under him. His daughter’s face stared back at him, smiling. He kissed her forehead as his fingers tightened around her neck.
Mary Rose flopped beneath him, clawing at his forearms. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets. It brought tears to his eyes, seeing her terror and knowing he was its cause.
“It’ll all be over soon. I promise.”
Cross your heart and hope to die, Natalya said inside his mind. He thought he could hear his daughter laughing.
His promise came true. Mary Rose’s kicking soon grew sporadic then stopped altogether. She went to sleep. That was all Sergei wanted, for her to sleep.
Except her eyes did not close.
Good, Papa. Now, take the keycard.
Sergei grabbed the keycard and yanked it off her belt. The cord connecting the card to the lanyard snapped. He stood with the object of Natalya’s desires in his hand, listening to her cheers of approval. He left Mary Rose’s room and headed toward Bio-Lab 347.
There will be a guard.
“I know, my little ballerina.” Sergei grimaced. He grabbed the fork from his back pocket and slid it up his sleeve.
Sure enough, when Sergei entered the hallway leading to the clean room, a guard was posted at its door. His nametag read Flint.
“Please return to your room, mate,” the guard said. “The hallways are presently off-limits.”
Sergei smiled, but he could feel it shake and twitch upon his face. He wiped his hands repeatedly on his pants, unable to get them dry or clean. He knows. He can see right through me.
The guard tensed, his hand hovering closer to his gun.
Sergei wondered what he had done to raise suspicion, as he hadn’t even said a word. He suspects something, Papa. You’re so close.
“I know,” Sergei said.
“Good, then,” Flint said. “For a moment there, I thought you were going to be tr—”
The fork slid down Sergei’s arm and into his hand. Roaring like an animal, he charged.
“Oh, shit.” Flint went for his gun and had it drawn just as Sergei jabbed the fork into the guard’s eyeball. The gun went off, but the shot went wide, and the bullet buried itself in the wall. Flint fell on his ass, his arms covering his face. Sergei slammed his boot heel into the man over and over again.
Somehow, the guard found an opening and batted Sergei’s leg aside. Sergei retained his feet. Before Flint could gain his, Sergei ran for the door and slid the pathologist’s keycard through the magnetic-strip reader. The door beeped then unlocked. He slid inside and slammed it shut behind him.
Outside, Flint was groping simultaneously for his gun and the fork stuck in his eye. “Unknown organisms present in laboratory,” a computerized voice said through a sp
eaker built into the ceiling. “Air quality normal. Personnel decontamination will now begin. Please remain still and upon completion of the decontamination process, proceed with caution.” A white gas billowed over Sergei, followed by intense UV brilliance as the sterilization process went through its various stages.
When it was over, he walked through the entrance to the laboratory. Natalya sat waiting.
Chapter Eight
Clara knew crazy. Her father had lost his mind after watching his wife waste away. She’d cared for him until he’d become more than she could handle. She’d taken a sabbatical, done all she could for him even while largely confined to a wheelchair, until his dementia and violent confusion brought out one attack too many, sending her to a hospital with a couple of broken ribs and him to a home where she thought he would receive the care he needed.
Each time she had visited him thereafter, which wasn’t as often as she should have, her father would stare at her through eyes filled with contempt. He seemed to blame her for his dementia and worse, for his wife’s death.
He got worse. Obsessed with clean skin, he wouldn’t let anyone touch him, especially not Clara, who played with cancer cells all day. One night, her father had become convinced that fire would sterilize him. The orderlies heard him screaming well before they were able to kick in his door and douse the flames. No one ever told Clara how he’d gotten the gasoline and matches. They said he’d been screaming for help that would not come in time, for someone who had moved far away to escape the insanity, the living nightmare.
Screaming for Clara.
She saw him before he died, third-degree burns covering most of his body. One eye had been left unmarred, flesh having melted the other one shut. She was spared the sight of most of his burns due to his substantial wrappings – damn near mummification. But that one exposed eye, high on morphine, seemed already dead until it noticed her. It woke up then, filled with fire of its own, wide and terrible, a piercing gaze that had shot daggers into her heart.
When she looked at the man who’d entered the lab, she saw her father’s wide-eyed lunacy in his eyes. She saw her father’s fanaticism in that man whom she did not know. She saw danger, recklessness, fear, and madness – a volatile cocktail that could explode without reason or notice.
Clara’s first thought was to protect Molli. The thought of protecting herself took a distant second.
And seconds were all she had.
The stranger charged at the petri dish just as Clara snagged it from the table, his intentions unclear. Her hands were quick, and she counted herself lucky not to have spilled the dish’s contents. She held it aloft as the man studied her, feinting one way then the other but not moving in for the kill.
Clara didn’t dare move at all.
Who is he? Sickness rose in her throat. It threatened to curl her up, distracting her from the disheveled waif of a man who bore her unknown but certainly ill intent.
Or, if not her, perhaps Molli. Perhaps that desperation she saw in his twitching, bloodshot eyes was meant for grander deeds, inconceivable acts involving a viral outbreak of biblical proportions – if her own clumsiness and stupidity hadn’t brought it about already. I should have asked Monty to shoot me, just to be safe.
“What do you want?” she asked, a scolding bite to her tone. “The virus? It’s worthless. Didn’t you know? A great big dead nothing.”
The man didn’t respond, instead regarding her with that same manic, unstable glower. Every part of him jittered and twitched. His irises shot upward as if the voice of God were calling to him from above and only he could hear Him. When he listened to whatever he was listening to, his fidgeting and shuffling worsened. He looked like a man with bugs crawling all over his skin and no hands to swat them off.
A syrupy stink wafted into Clara’s nostrils, and her nose crinkled. She heard a sizzle and looked down to see the water in the dish roiling as if composed of a thousand molecule-sized Mexican jumping beans mid-fiesta. Despite the stranger who had invaded the laboratory, Clara watched the dish with car accident-gawker fascination. Somehow, each purple-plasmid drop landed safely back into the dish.
Until the lunatic seized the growth culture from her hands.
His thumbs disappeared into the test medium, splashing it and sending amoeba-Mollies bouncing over Clara’s cheek like barefooted children on hot pavement. The lines between the man’s fingers and the contents of the dish blurred.
The liquid tingled like soda on Clara’s skin. She winced, expecting burning, irritation, something. Down the bridge of her nose, she saw a single drop hanging from the outside of her nostril. It clung there until she felt it roll up her nose and slip into her eye.
The liquid on her cheeks likewise defied gravity. It moved into her eyes – crawled or slithered like something living, breathing, and conscious.
Something evil.
It spoke to her. I am this one now.
Clara screamed. She could feel the entity pulsating through her body, vying for control of her mind. My mind, for Christ’s sake! It was the only thing of value she had left.
That and her eyes, which seemed okay, but some chemicals didn’t burn right away. She rolled to the eye-washing station and forced her eyes to remain open as she shot water up into them, trying to flush out whatever had gotten in. She blinked out the water and wiped her cheeks with a paper towel.
Through her haze, Clara watched the frail man. Sergei! His name is Sergei! How she knew that, she did not know. She knew more too: how he’d lost a daughter to an accident and a wife through divorce; how he’d been hitting the bottle hard lately; and how he was the same Sergei she’d heard had discovered Molli. She knew everything there was to know about Sergei Kobozev. The only thing she didn’t know was why.
In the grand scheme of things, none of that mattered. At least, not at that moment. What mattered was the fact that Sergei was raising the petri dish to his lips, and – as certain about it as she was of all else she knew of the Russian astrobiologist – Clara knew he meant to drink it.
“No!” she screamed, her hand clawing through air as she reached for him. Pity smote her fears, an empty longing to save a man she didn’t know from self-destruction.
But what can I do? Stuck in her wheelchair, she felt useless. She couldn’t even stand. Her legs were….
Different? Clara could swear she felt them. Feeling…that alone was something. No time to think about it – she threw herself up, out of her wheelchair, and onto her feet.
She immediately fell forward and collapsed at Sergei’s feet. Her chin smacked hard against the floor, and she bit into her tongue. Sergei downed the wretched concoction as if he hadn’t even noticed her. Her legs had failed her. No surprise there. That wasn’t the first time. Except, for a moment there, she thought they might actually hold.
Clara didn’t bother to rise. The damage had been done. Whatever tricks Molli had up its dress, the pseudovirus would visit them upon Clara and her new roommate as it saw fit. She recalled how Molli’s cells had joined with the amoebas and considered her fate. Would it be mutation, disease…death? She smirked. Or perhaps evolution. Molli wasn’t like any of the girls she knew. Clara couldn’t begin to conceive of a countermeasure while the organism remained so dreadfully untested.
She laughed, and her injured mouth spat hot blood onto the floor. Well, testing should move forward more quickly now that we have a couple of human guinea pigs to evaluate.
Sergei started to seize. He dropped to his knees next to her, clutching his throat as white foam fizzled over his lips. Still twitching, he fell onto his stomach. After a few minutes, the twitching stopped.
Clara slid toward him and checked his pulse. Nothing. So much for evolution.
The clean room went silent. A clamor struck the hallway outside, bangs and thuds and other sounds Clara could not investigate. She was stuck where she was, helpless, confined with a dead man.
Chapter Nine
If people only knew how their offering-plate contributions were spent.
Dante had studied the center’s blueprints his organization had provided him. It had paid a small fortune to obtain them, leveraging an inside source at a Scandinavian architectural firm who had it under lock and key. His outfit was proficient at acquiring things that even professional thieves, con artists, and others in his line of work considered impossible to procure. He doubted he would have had any difficulty getting it. Where others used finesse, stealth, and cunning, which was all well and good for certain jobs, Dante would have used force – as much as needed to get the job done.
He hummed the tune of the latest La Bella Tarantella radio hit, catchy and poppy with no lyrical substance whatsoever, hating himself for it. He couldn’t understand why opera wasn’t on mainstream music-provider channels: its power, precision, and beauty – all art, none of the fluff. The stuff he did hear on the radio just solidified his view that the world was mostly composed of stupid people.
And the scientists in the research facility were the worst of the worst. Sure, they were book smart and could probably rattle off pi to the eighteenth decimal point – he could only get to 3.14159 – but did they know anything beyond their areas of study? Anything of art, music, philosophy, philanthropy, community, faith, humanity? To them, the world is a specimen on a slide. They see one finite detail clear as day but fail to see the bigger picture.
He loathed their tampering with the natural order. But that was a feeling he easily suppressed. The job came first.
Dante had memorized the plans to the facility, and assuming they weren’t forgeries, he probably could have found the clean room easily enough on his lonesome. The sounds of a man screaming and cursing kind of eliminated all guesswork.
He pulled out a long, narrow shiv he’d embedded along his jacket’s zipper. He’d designed the weapon to bypass metal detectors that, if set off, would simply alert their human counterparts to the zipper. It was thinner than a chopstick, but its point was much sharper. He hurried toward the sounds of agony, peeking around corners before rushing down hallways.