by Ryan Casey
Contents
Copyright
Bonus Content
Title Page
0: Birth
i
ii
I: Growth
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
II: Rise
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
III: Hunt
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
IV: Spread
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
V: New World
Chapter Forty Seven
Keep Reading
About The Author
The Hunger
by Ryan Casey
Editor: Martin O’Hearn
Cover Design: Cormar Covers
Published March 2014 by Higher Bank Books
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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Ryan Casey
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THE HUNGER
0: BIRTH
— To give birth is a fearsome thing;
There is no hating the child one has borne
Even when injured by it.
— Sophocles
Inside every generation of humans lies a deeper desire to discover.
Sarah Appleton had been brought up to believe in the positive benefits of discovery. Trained by her father, a fellow chemist and also a specialist in human biology, her passion and drive had grown throughout her career at TCorps Pharmaceutical Labs. While the other scientists were settling for the classic “shampoo-in-rat-eye” methods to test the benefits of one hair product over another, she was taking the time to push things even further. She wanted to find something new. Something fresh.
Something that would make her dead daddy proud.
She walked across the main ledge of TCorps Labs, suitcase in hand, the metal clanking beneath her feet. TCorps was an impressive structure, circular, with a huge gap in the middle that went down for miles, like a man-made ant’s nest, sprawling with people and their secrets.
She had a secret of her own. Everybody had secrets here.
Keeping her head down and gripping her suitcase, she walked along the metal platform and towards her office room. She was on L78—the seventy-eighth floor. And she wasn’t even halfway up. There were plans to keep on digging further down; create more offices, more jobs, more opportunities.
But with more jobs and more opportunities came more secrets. Digging this hole even further would be akin to banging the shit out of Hell’s door. Only so many secrets could be confined to one building.
As she approached the freshly painted red door of her office, she reached into the pocket of her white lab coat for her keys.
“Evening, Sarah.”
The voice startled her. She turned around to her right, and saw that it was Alex.
“Oh, hi, Alex.” She slipped the key into her door and forced a smile. “How are you?”
Alex grinned at her. He had mousy brown hair and huge yellow teeth. Saliva gathered in the corner of his mouth. He’d fancied the fuck out of her ever since she’d first started working here eight years ago. But he was okay. Harmless enough.
Cheeky smile and a wink probably made his day, too.
“I’m good,” he said, his buckteeth somehow managing to remain visible as he spoke. He waved some papers at Sarah. “Just been recalibrating the particles in my—”
“I’m going to stop you right there, Alex,” Sarah said, holding up a hand as she opened the door to her private office. She smiled. “I’ve literally got one little thing to finish up and then I’ll be heading down to the cafeteria for some dinner. So I’ll be all yours for the evening.”
Alex’s cheeks blushed. He lowered the papers. His teeth seemed to glow when contrasted with his red cheeks.
“Catch you later,” Sarah said, leaning against the side of the door.
Alex nodded and shuffled along the metal platform in the direction that Sarah had just come from.
He didn’t say another word.
His smile was enough. Another day made.
Before closing the door to the office, Sarah took a look around the main section of the TCorps building. Above her head, she could hear the mechanical, electrical sounds of something being drilled. Below her, the rumbling of feet stamping along each and every metal platform, sending vibrations all the way through the building. Air conditioning vents that lined the middle section puffed out steam in a rhythm that was almost choreographed.
Industrial heaven, that’s what this place was.
Sarah stepped inside her office and closed the door. She checked the handle a couple of times, just to be sure it was locked, which it always was, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She stepped over to her silver metal blinds and turned them so that she was completely disconnected from the outside.
What she was about to do was strictly inside. Strictly personal.
She turned around to look at her office. Compared to the immense views in the main hub of the TCorps structure, the offices were pretty unremarkable, really. A computer on a desk in the left corner. Another desk with all sorts of laboratory equipment atop it—Bunsen burners, sieves, pipettes. To her right, a small incubator. Pretty standard laboratory stuff. Nothing to sing home about.
But it wasn’t the equipment that held the secrets of science, Daddy used to say. It was what the equipment could do for you if you dared to push it to its limits.
She placed the brown leather suitcase on her laboratory desk and took a step back. For a few moments, she just stared at it, its gold clips fastened. From here, it was just a case. Just a suitcase with some irrelevant chemicals inside.
Sarah knew it was more than that. Much, much more.
; All scientists had their secrets. After all, sharing a plan or experiment with another scientist was a recipe for disaster. What if they knew that missing formula that you weren’t aware of? They wouldn’t hesitate to steal your project and claim the credit all for themselves.
Especially when there were millions of dollars involved.
She stared at the suitcase for another few seconds. The sound of the drilling outside was drowned out in the paper-tight, soundproof walls of her office. No secrets could get in, no secrets could get out. World War III could start outside this place and TCorps staff would be none the wiser. TCorps was a world in itself, and inside that world were thousands of other little worlds, working away, hoping that they might just be the source of a major breakthrough.
She walked over to the case and opened the golden clips. A satisfying thunk emitted from the clips as she lifted them. She raised the top of the suitcase, being careful not to knock it or shake it. She couldn’t risk any sudden movements, not if she’d found what she thought she’d found.
The leather of the case creaked as it rested fully open. Sarah moved her clammy hands away and wiped them on her white lab coat. No contaminations. Contaminations would be disastrous, especially at this point. No major risks, not after how far she’d come.
Daddy would curse her all the way from the grave if she fucked things up now.
The contents of the suitcase were unremarkable to the untrained eye. A small bag of white powder on the left, like washing powder or cocaine. In the middle, a vial of clear blue liquid. And on the right, a bunch of clean syringes that she knew she needed to stock up on.
To the untrained eye, completely unremarkable. In fact, on their own, the chemicals were negligible. She could probably down the vial like a shot and feel no effects other than maybe a queasy stomach in the morning. She could force Alex to snort the white powder like coke, covering his stupid bucktoothed face with the stuff, and he wouldn’t have any real reaction.
But when mixed… Sarah’s heart pounded. When mixed… She had to be right.
She pushed the case in the direction of the loose lab equipment and crouched down. Underneath the desk, there was a cage with a black blanket over it. She gulped as she reached for it. At least it had behaved. At least it hadn’t made a sound.
She pulled the cage up and placed it on the desk, then moved away the black blanket.
A rat sat in the middle of the cage. It was black, with a thick pink tail. A little sawdust was sprinkled on its head. Its beady black eyes stared up at Sarah with confusion, but it didn’t fret. It was completely still, only its little breaths filling its lungs. Its red exercise wheel was completely static, never to be run on again.
Sarah smiled at the rodent and opened the lid of the cage. “Hello, fella,” she said. “You not been drinking your water?”
She patted the rat on its head. It flinched at first, then sniffed at her finger. She could see the dampness around its nose. The wet patches around its eyes. The untouched food and water.
She knew it was nearly dead.
Poor little thing. She’d had to give it a small dose of the HIV virus to weaken its already ravaged immune system completely. It wouldn’t be suffering, no more than a human with a common cold. But the next step wasn’t possible without the sickness. Without the sickness, Sarah had no way of ever knowing just how successful her discovery was.
It wouldn’t even be a “discovery.” Just another concept. Something that never was.
She took a look over at the blinds and the door. She couldn’t see a thing, and they couldn’t see in here either. Still, she wanted to get this done with quickly. TCorps had very strict rules on animal testing. All animal testing was to be done in a communal area as to avoid cruelty, and on Tcorps-approved rats.
There was no chance she was doing her tests in a communal area. Not a fucking chance. This was her discovery to make. Her research to run.
She stroked the soft fur of the rat. The animal curled around her finger, allowing her to tickle its neck.
“You’re a very special little man, you know that?” she said. “A very special man indeed.”
She moved her hand out of the cage, rinsed it in the white sink at the other side of the room, and returned to her case. Her stomach churned—she could eat a hot dog right now. She knew it was evening, but she wasn’t sure when exactly. She didn’t keep a watch. This place was timeless. It had a time zone of its own. It even had beds and apartments of its own for those especially committed to the cause. As for her, she returned home whenever she could to her boyfriend, Harry. Barely saw him, but it was the idea that counted, right? One could get very lonely in a place like TCorps. Very isolated. At least she knew she had something on the outside to distract her from her work from time to time.
Sarah set up her laboratory equipment. This wouldn’t take long. She’d already done all the legwork. She filled the Erlenmeyer flask with a base of warm water. Then she reached for the small bag of white powder and scraped a tiny amount of it up with a metal instrument and dropped it into the water. It sank to the bottom like unstirred sugar in a cup of tea.
Next, she picked up the small vial of blue liquid and opened the lid. She suspended it over the top of the Erlenmeyer flask as the weight of the whole situation began to build up in her mind again. What if she was wrong? What if all her hard work had been for nothing?
She shook her head, shaking free of the intrusive negative thoughts, and extracted a tiny bit of the liquid onto her pipette.
Then, she held the pipette over the flask and dripped the liquid in.
She expected it to fall in slow motion. For the solution to bubble up, and for atmospheric sounds to kick in as the liquid dropped into the flask.
Instead, she just heard the rat squeak. Hardly remarkable.
She stirred the solution, took it over to the incubator, then sat at her desk and waited.
Waiting was all she could do now. One final wait.
After two hours had passed—according to the timer on her computer—she returned to the incubator and pulled out the flask. The liquid had settled in a light sky-blue colour. It looked appetising, almost, like an alcopop.
A million—maybe billion—dollar alcopop, that’s what this was.
She placed it down beside the rat’s cage and reached back into her case for one of the syringes she’d brought in. She removed the film lid she’d put over the top of the flask and stuck the syringe in, extracting some of the liquid, which had gone thicker in the incubator. Incubator was a perfect name for those machines, really. Because this chemical was her baby. Her baby that needed protection and nurturing at the very start of its life.
Her baby that was finally about to get up and walk.
She opened the rat’s cage. The rat sat in the middle of it. Its eyes had gone slightly red, and it was breathing slower. It didn’t have long left—a couple of hours, at a push. The HIV she’d injected it with was very aggressive, very fast-moving. It manifested into AIDS almost instantly.
It needed to be that way. Maximum effectiveness, that’s what this was all about.
She hovered the syringe over the neck of the rat. The rat just helplessly looked up at it, not a care in the world, as it sat in the sawdust.
“Good lad,” Sarah said, lowering the syringe even further. “Good lad.”
In a swift movement, she grabbed the rat with her free hand, then prodded the syringe into the spongy flesh on the rat’s neck and pressed the syringe down. She watched as the blue liquid disappeared slowly, the rat struggling, kicking with its back legs, hissing and squeaking.
“Good lad,” she said again. “That’s it. All over now. All over.”
She pulled her hands from the cage. The rat ran into the back left corner of the cage and curled up. She could see that it was shaking. Its eyes were so wide that the light in the room reflected from them like little torches.
She closed the lid, placed the syringe in the sink and washed her hands.
Then, she
sealed the briefcase and slid it under her desk, along with the rat’s cage.
“You get some rest,” she said. “Get some rest and I’ll see you again soon.”
She pushed the cage further under the desk, keeping the black cloth off so the rat at least had a little bit of light, and then she stood to her feet and headed towards her office door.
She’d go grab something to eat, now. More waiting.
But this was the most important part. The most important part of all.
She returned to her office an hour and a half later. A little longer than planned, but she’d got hijacked by some girls from L54, so she didn’t really have a choice. They ate their canteen food—venison and new potatoes today’s special—and then chatted for a while. She didn’t even see Andy down there.
Thank God.
She closed the door of her office, drowning out the footsteps and the mechanical sounds outside. She didn’t have a clue what time it was now. Time was irrelevant in here. The whole concept of the working day was just an individual thing. A stellar idea, in Sarah’s opinion.
But her eyes were growing heavy. She yawned. She’d have to head home soon. Gather her things, then head home.
She grabbed her locker key from her desk, then made for the door.
As she did, she heard a squeaking underneath the other desk.
She stopped. Turned around to look. The rat never usually squeaked. It was usually pretty well-behaved. Maybe it was because she’d left the blanket off. Maybe it had seen her and was trying to get her attention.
Maybe it was dying a painful, unknown death.
She crouched down onto the cold tiled floor and looked over at the cage in the darkness under the desk. She couldn’t even see the rat. Besides, the solution wouldn’t kick in until tomorrow by her calculations, so she’d had no other intentions to check on the rat tonight, as excited as she was about the results. “Like watching your hard drive defragment,” Steve from 54th used to say. “Sucks the life from you, bit by bit.”
