The Undergrad

by Mela NoLeuca

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Ares' POV

  I learned three things today.

  First of, never run to a person capable of killing you unarmed.

  Secondly, when you have an army ready to protect you, never run away from them. Ever.

  And lastly, when given the choice between an IV pole and a metal chart, always always always go for something longer even if the other one seemed sharp. I mean come on, when it's the dawn of the zombie apocalypse would you rather kill with a dagger or kill with a spear?

  There you go. That alone is already an invalid argument.

  Because, obviously, the spear wins along with the back up and the part where you do not run towards danger. Anyone in the right mind would go away from danger and keep safe being the selfish bastards we all are.

  It's pretty funny how I found myself in this situation. Normally, I would have thought ahead into the future and would have a plan with me. Maybe today just wasn't my day. Like any other normal people, a bad day for them would include having a break up, losing a job and your pet fish Ringo dying on you the day you bought it. Those were normal bad days.

  Unfortunately, those bad days weren't made for me.

  If you were me your bad day would include limited time to a life threatening project, losing the person you like twice and finding out things kept from you for so many years all by yourself (okay maybe not by yourself, but you get my point, right?). Anyone would enter a state of depression, stress and maybe end up in the Psych ward for a bit. Okay, maybe not the psych ward.

  Trust me, I would love to mope around all day, but because of who I was and the responsibility Fate burdened on me, I had no choice but to suck it all up and face it head on with a big fat smile on my face like it was nothing to me. It wasn't nothing to me.

  It meant everything not only to me, but to everyone else around me as well.

  I know, no pressure right?

  Hahaha, okay okay, I'm not going to give you that bullshit.

  But I hope that was enough reason why I am so out of my game right now.

  Hiding behind one of the long white table in the laboratory, I was hugging the metal chart to against my chest. Because of the detected threat, the power was killed so that the entire west wing was sealed in.

  So there I was hiding in the dark right where the killer was. She wasn't exactly a killer though, she was actually quite lovely to be with if you looked past all that angry murderous vibes.

  A cacophony of glass shattering, metal moaning and audible female grunts reverberating outside the lab only meant she was getting closer and closer to where I was at. From the way I imagined things with all that noise, she was trying to trying to manually break open the sealed doors that locked us both in.

  I wonder how long it would take before someone would come rescue me and probably sedate her successfully so I could help her. There were still some things that needed to be settled.

  Why did I even run out here in the first place?

  Oh right. I came back for my potential antidotes that Robyn needed, but now that I have them all lined up in my breast pocket (I made a total of three at the moment), what do I do now?

  Yes I know it might sound pathetic that I spent another several hours trying to make lots of antidotes but only came down with three. But hey, never count your chickens until they've hatched. Or in this case, never count your--

  Crash!

  I slightly jumped; palpating my breast pocket just to make sure they were still there I took a peek ever so slightly above the table managing to catch a glimpse of the scary blonde marching right into the lab. I ducked low.

  This is so not cool!

  How can I inject them from a distance? Should I just play darts with these syringes and hope for the best? I actually considered it for a moment before I decided against it, concluding that I should make every shot count.

  I know you must be thinking why I should be here cowering in fear when I have a nanobot inside my system. But see, that's the thing!

  I only have one nanobot, and that bot is lodged in my brain!

  It's my brother, Ethan, who should actually be here. He has more bots to spare should he ever bleed. After all, like what Emily said, I was built for the brains and my brother was built for the brawns.

  Given a situation where you a hand gun to protect yourself, but once you're mugged with a knife against your throat you feel powerless right? And that was all because you're too afraid. Sometimes your hormones mess up and the need to live would weigh more than the need to defend yourself just like the fight or flight mechanism we all have. I would rather flee than fight if you asked me, like probably throw a smoke bomb if she ever saw me and when the smoke clears up I'm gone already.

  That would be really nice.

  Wait a minute.

  Oh no I can't. I considered electrocuting her for a moment, but then remembered that if she had another dose of electricity into her system, her heart might give out. Permanently. Now I wouldn't want that happening under my watch. I was a man of my words and I promised her and Ethan her safety.

  Since that was out of the question, what do I do now?

  I looked around the lab expecting a little creativity out of my brain right now. I wasn't really a Van Gogh person I was more an Einstein kind of guy, if you get what I'm saying. So if you brought me to an art gallery, I would try to find ways how to make the Thinking Man statue solve formulae in Thermodynamics rather than think about what he could possibly be thinking. Who'd give a damn what he was thinking about? I'd give him a damn reason to think!

  So there I was hopelessly searching for anything useful in the dark laboratory and then it was like someone lit a light bulb on my head; I realized how poor eyesight plus dark room did not result to helpfulness. I'm doomed, yay for me.

  Okay, so that's definitely not working for me either.

  Icy spiders scattered throughout my skin the moment I felt someone grab the collar of my lab gown. I didn't have to look over my shoulder to accept the fact that Robyn had me under her mercy.

  Before I could react she threw me across the room, I tried to maneuver myself like what Ethan always did, but it was useless as I crashed through a shelf full of test tubes. Though pain hadn't registered fully in my mind, the impact that knocked the air out of my lungs left me struggling to get back on my feet. My legs were shaking and I was trembling all over, as I looked around, it wasn't really helpful that I could see everything especially with the fact there she was a few meters away from.

  She was walking towards me again with a cold, blank expression on her face. I should have least amped up my stats with my Rubrix before facing this freaky cyborg. Yeah, I know I was pretty reckless for running straight to the belly of the monster. But I can regret all the way to my grave because it really wasn't helping me right now. If I was going down, I might as well just put up a fight.

  She was just a foot away from me now.

  I grabbed syringes A and B from my breast pocket and uncapped it as she came to lift me off the ground the again. Quickly as I possibly could, I stabbed her arms with the syringes and injected the antidotes simultaneously.

  She didn't even wince in pain; instead she looked at them then back at me, drew back a fist and punched me in the gut. I crumpled in mid air before she tossed me to the side again.

  Oh boy was she angry.

  I was coughing pretty badly until I gagged a lot as bile climbed up my throat. I retched out the contents before I felt a solid impact collided onto my side. It took a moment for my brain to register that she kicked my left flank, I skidded across the cold tiles and whimpered when my back hit something that stopped me from going any further.

  My regeneration rate, though faster than the average human, was nothing compared to Ethan's. My head began to throb dully as a growing headache gnawed at my brain. I lifted my head, looked around and found myself semi-lounging on shelves that was once filled with serums. All the liquid poured into the floor, others rolled off and crashed to the ground addin
g more to the mess.

  I glanced at my wristwatch and barely ten seconds had gone by. I wasn't sure for how much longer I could stand being the punching bag, this was already pushing my body to the limits, and if this kept going any further...

  This better work real fast, and if it doesn't the third syringe needs to work.

  Because if that, too, doesn't work.

  Then I failed.

  Robyn was coming for me again, this time she had a confident smirk playing on her lips. Despite the fact that her hair was a messy mat of blonde locks and she was now dressed in a dirty patient's gown, she looked more like a killing mental patient than she did look like a person in need of help.

  It was pretty funny how this reminded me of those early days when I held her captive along with Ethan and Craw. Back then she was pathetically making her escape, but here she was now probably getting her revenge, only she wasn't. I found morbid humor in that.

  She grabbed a large petri dish and smashed it so it was a sharp-looking shard of glass. There's only so much words could to for a person and I knew I wouldn't stand a chance with something like that in her possession. I needed to get out of here. Fast!

  I forced myself to move faster. My body felt like lead, and even if I could move my extremities I found difficulty in trying to move less clumsily. My arms and legs suddenly didn't feel like it belonged to me, I had to throw in extra effort to grab any support to lift my weight off the broken shelves and just when I did, she kneed me in the chest so that I collapsed on my back again.

  This time, I've exhausted all my energy. Pain began surfacing from every nerve ending I could possibly have, my body was aching everywhere as if I had been lifting a ton of screwdrivers everyday. The damage done to me earlier was finally taking its toll.

  If this was how, I, Ares Portley--Gould, I meant Ares Gould was going to die I might as well bring her down with me.

  "Look Robyn," I began, my voice cracking, "I don't want to hurt you," I really meant it. But if I failed to cure her and I die, I might as well say goodbye to human civilization because I'm the only one who has the chance of cracking the code. Unless of course Ethan and Emily manages to get here in time, and by the looks of it, it was far from possible consider how she now knelt down next to me.

  She pressed the broken glass against my neck. I was already uncapping the third syringe, though I hesitated, I knew I was doing the lesser evil; in a blink of an eye I jabbed the needle against her right hamstring and injected a full 10mL of its contents.

  The deed has been done.

  "Robyn, I'm so sorry," I muttered, I saw her falling limp already, "I mean Helen."

  As I wrenched my hand away from the syringe, something gave way in me. I wasn't sure what, but I could feel the familiar tingling sensation scurry along my extremities making their way to my core before taking a detour to my brain; at any moment, I was bound to lose consciousness.

  "Did you know," I let out a short chuckle as the realization fluttered by like a warm, gentle breeze, "you shared the same name my mother had?"

  It was a useless thing to say at this point but somehow, I just felt like she needed to know. If my peripheral vision was a canvas and grainy spots were the paint brush I wouldn't mind telling you how much texture was outlining everything I was seeing, right now, my eyes focused on the frightened expression Robyn had at the moment.

  Her big blue puffy eyes was rapidly searching blindly and she was clutching at her chest, her face was reddened as she seemed to struggle for something. A spine-chilling wave cascaded down my as quick as an unforgiving downpour before I barely caught a glimpse of her falling limp to the ground, the epiphany of glass breaking was dulled beyond layers and layers of fuzziness and I could only hear myself loud and clear.

  I had a chance of staying conscious and held on to that hope as I carried on, "Helen Gould, my mother's name was Helen Gould." I beginning to have a harder time keeping track of what I was saying, "Having met you was so much of a coincidence,"

  My vision blurred, I wasn't sure if I was crying or passing out. But I'm pretty sure she threw me pretty hard that I hit my head, chances of wrecking the Alpha bot was pretty high.

  I heard a voice trying to say something but whatever it said, though nearby, felt muffled and distant. Faintly make out the images meshed together in my field of vision; it was hard to tell if fleshy blob monsters wanted to eat my brains or orange oversized amoebae where here to drown me.

  Was I dying? As I tried to hang on to that piece of rope that held my conscious, I tried pulling myself out from a deep trance. I knew I could, my will power was swelling so greatly it was actually overwhelming.

  But at the same time, the thought of letting go was just so easy.

  Why should I bother going through all the troubles, when I could just simply let go?

  I wonder what Emily would do when I'm gone, at least Ethan was there to watch over her. Guilt no longer registered in my brain, but my regrets did. I shouldn't have given up when I knew she was the enemy, but my better judgment got the best of me. If only we could start over, then maybe she would have tied the knot with me and eloped into the sunset.

  Maybe in another life I would meet her again and then we could start our happy ever after. Happiness didn't have to end.

  I would be the man she would marry; we probably would have two children and a dog named Dr. Finiakis. That might piss her off, but who cares. All I cared about was the life that could be waiting for me.

  I saw a flash of light and after that, a comforting steady beat lulled me to sleep.

  That simple thought alone was more than enough to comfort me.