Green Fields: Incubation

by Adrienne Lecter

  I couldn't help but shoot a sidelong glance at the man in question. He looked away from the screen long enough to stare back, but didn't say anything. Raleigh went on in the meantime.

  “If anyone doesn't need my protection, it's him. Shit, I don't even know where he is right now, and I'm not sure I would want to if I wasn't trapped down in this hellhole. We're not exactly on speaking terms, but that won't hinder him from tearing this entire fucking corporation apart, one brick at a time.”

  That phrase sounded awfully familiar, but as Raleigh was ranting on without pause, I filed it away for later consideration.

  “Unlike other little brothers, that sucker never needed my protection. He made a habit out of beating up schoolyard bullies when he was five, and if our mother hadn't been a psychologist, they would have thrown him into therapy when he was seven. I decided to go into biology when I found him vivisecting our neighbor's cat one day, just so we could claim that he was just imitating me and avoid being put on heavy medication. I bet the United fucking States of America are grateful to me now because I didn't shove him off the fast-track to becoming a full-blown psychopath.”

  Now it was much harder not to speak up, but another glance revealed that Nate was smiling fondly. Of course he would. The things you learn about the people you fuck…

  The video cut off there but went on after a few seconds. I checked the time stamp in the corner when Raleigh looked much worse for wear, with sweat covering his flushed face, his eyes too bright, the dark circles underneath more evident now. Two hours had passed.

  “You're really going to watch me die down here, aren't you? You fucking bitch.”

  He was obviously ranting at Thecla again. He let out a sigh of frustration as he wrenched a hand through his hair, making it stand even more on end.

  “Why are you doing this? Whatever's your beef with me, we could have resolved it peacefully. Is it envy? I know you're always going after everyone in your team who could one day outshine you, but, shit, kill me? Just a reminder, I was here first. I built this fucking project from scratch. They just let you have the stage three test runs when I balked.”

  He hesitated and settled back as if he was trying to get more comfortable on his perch at the foot-end rail of the bed.

  “Or did they order you to? You've always been such a trooper. So determined, so loyal. What did they offer you to instill that belief in them? Sure, we get to do some insanely fucked-up shit down here that we wouldn't get away with otherwise, and the pay's good, but at the end of the day it's still just a job. It’s not like we’re trying to save the world or something.” He smiled humorlessly as if that was an inside joke. “Now you killed a friend just because the company asked you to? That's fucked up. Just fucked up.”

  The video cut off again and resumed five hours later.

  The change was so drastic that I checked not just the time but date of the time stamp. Yup, just five hours later, but the progression of his physical deterioration was so advanced that I would have figured it being closer to thirty hours.

  His face was sunken, the skin a sallow color typical of prolonged illness. His eyes had taken on a yellow tint, likely caused by renal failure, with bright red veins in them. He was sweating heavily now, his hair plastered to his face, and there were lesions covering his jaw, neck, and one arm that I could see. There was also a vivid rash all over his hand. If it had been Ebola or another hemorrhagic fever, it would have taken days to cause that much damage, not hours.

  When he started talking, his voice was hoarse and lacking the energy that I'd always associated with him.

  “Guess I deserve this, on some level. A karmic bitch-slap, if you will. I helped build this fucking virus, why not die from it, too? The revolution eats its own children.”

  He then started rattling off symptoms that weren't visible, but just as bad. His tone was clinical, detached, but there was panic lurking in his eyes now—a doomed man clutching at any straws available.

  I was glad when the video cut off, but it came back on one last time at the twelve-hour mark.

  Raleigh was barely able to hold himself upright anymore and remained leaning against the wall right next to the terminal, giving a good view of the blood slowly leaking from his ear. My heart twisted in anguish, and I could only guess how his brother must be feeling seeing him like that.

  “I guess this will be the last rant of famous Raleigh Miller tonight,” he opened with, his voice low and cracking, making it hard to understand. He had to stop there and coughed, his hand coming away speckled with blood.

  “I'm pissing blood, shitting blood, breathing blood… this stopped feeling like a fucking vacation hours ago,” he summarized, then stared blankly into the camera for almost a minute. “Nate, I know you'll never see this, but, man, I fucking love you. You're like the dysfunctional copy of me that somehow always ends up making what I fuck up right. No wonder Nana wanted you to have her knife, because she knew that I'd just do something stupid, like slice up the fucking bitch who did this to me!”

  He tried to raise his voice at the end, but succumbed to a coughing fit instead. It took him over two minutes to gather himself enough to go on. He didn’t appear quite lucid anymore.

  “Want to know what the funny thing is? I had this grand plan of how to get out of this. I'm too much of an egotistical chickenshit to be a whistle-blower, but somewhere between watching mice convulse in so much pain that they cracked their own spine and reading your first report of how it wasn't much different in homo sapiens, I realized that this is the most fucked-up shit I've ever done, and that I can't live with this guilt anymore. Any decent human being would have just offed himself, but, noooo, I had to keep going for five fucking years, tweaking and streamlining this beast of a virus to finally stabilize it enough that we’d get an antidote. And why? Because it was my fucking creation, and I couldn't let anyone have it until it was perfect. Safe. See, I deserve this.”

  He trailed off as if he'd lost his train of thought, but then his eyes focused on the camera again.

  “Shit. It’s so damn hard to concentrate on anything I'm saying when I feel like my fucking brain is coming out through my eyes!”

  Raleigh seemed to notice then that his ear was bleeding, but he only stared at the blood on his fingers before looking back at the camera. A string of expletives followed but was abruptly ended by more coughing, and this time it took him a small eternity to return to the camera. Every second of it hurt me deep down, and although the tape was months old, it still made me feel like I could see his ghost standing hunched over where we were right now.

  “Shit, I think I need to lie down, and I'm not gonna get up again if I do. Nate, don't do anything stupid, bro. But if you do, make sure you drag them all down with you, every fucking one of them. No idea how far up this shit goes, but I'm sure that Greene's not involved. Walter Greene, I mean. His son's a fucking cocksucker who'd sell his soul for half of what I make each month thanks to this shit. If you tear down the whole house of cards, make sure you don't hurt too many innocents. Most of the people who work here have no fucking clue what's going on. I wish I didn’t. But I couldn’t let this go on, know what I mean? You know better than me that it’s out. And what it does. Fuck.”

  More coughing followed, giving me plenty of time for the knot in my stomach to solidify at the words “it” and “out.” But what did he mean about Nate knowing more about that virus?

  “I can't do this anymore. I love you, bro. Don't ever forget that.”

  He stared into the camera for another second, then the screen went black, and at Nate’s repeated tap reverted back to the file directory view.

  To say I was shaken didn't quite cut it. More like someone had pulled the rug from under my feet and I was still falling, not having hit rock bottom yet.

  There were so many things my mind clung to that it was hard to sort through the trivialities to get to the important stuff. Like that Nate had quoted what his brother had said at least twice. From the utter lack of e
motion on his face, I gathered that this had been the first time he'd seen the video, but he'd known what was on it, word by word.

  He'd known exactly where to look for what, and had clearly figured out who to turn to for help.

  The rational thing would have been to hate Raleigh right now—he certainly deserved it for what he'd confessed to—but even having all this information presented on a silver platter, it was impossible. True, I'd given him quite the mouthful, but he'd been quirky and sarcastic as he'd defended himself at that conference, and I'd always had a good feeling around him. He had made a couple of fundamentally bad decisions in his life and had ultimately paid the price for it, but that didn't negate that he was one of the good guys. Even with the video evidence pointing in a different direction, I just knew that there was more to this than just a young scientist going on the ego trip of his life, ignoring all possible consequences.

  And with that came the realization that I didn't feel much different about his brother, even though he had dumped enough shit on me to hate him for ten lifetimes.

  Today was shaping up to make me feel even less mentally stable than the day before.

  Chapter 18

  “Come on, let's get out of here,” Nate prompted. When I didn't react, he made as if to reach for me, but didn't finish the motion. Now he was getting hesitant? One thing was for sure. I had no clue what was going on inside his head—but judging from his brother's assessment, no one did. I hadn’t forgotten that tidbit about the cat.

  Turning toward the door, I unhooked my air hose, deposited it on the hanger, and with deliberate movements made my way out of the room.

  Whether it was because Raleigh's vid had overloaded whatever psychological pressure sensors my mind had, or because I still felt like everything that was going on around me was just unreal, my panic from before was completely gone. I felt like I was moving inside a bubble as I walked out of my old lab, then down the central hallway. Nate followed me—likely hard-pressed to keep up with my pace—but he didn't complain.

  At the exit I stopped and half turned to face him, but chose to look at somewhere between his shoulder and the wall.

  “We have to go through the decontamination showers to get out. It's a four minute chemical shower followed by a four minute rinse, then the doors will open on the other side and it's out of the scrubs for another round of thorough cleaning, three minutes with shampoo and soap in hot water. We normally do this one by one, but I get the feeling you're not yet done with your constant supervision routine?”

  He gave something that sounded like a snort over the com.

  “Get in there.”

  “Thought so,” I grumbled as he followed me.

  I waited until the door had sealed itself, then hit the button that started the chemical shower. The room was large enough to house five people easily at once, but I still made sure to retreat into the opposite corner from him so that we'd both get sprayed with the maximum amount of chemicals and water from all sides.

  The shower came on with it's usual blast of liquids I never wanted anywhere near my skin, and I shut my eyes instinctively. Decontamination used to be the part of the hot lab routine that made me relax, but now depriving my mind of stimulus and leaving it to stew on its own was not a very calming experience.

  Eight minutes later, the showers turned off and the display by the door informed me that it was okay to leave now. I waited until Nate had followed me out and closed the door, then unzipped my suit and laboriously climbed out of it. My hair and scrubs were plastered to my skin. Being out of the hot suit was heaven, but it barely registered right now. Regulations dictated that I should dry and hang up my suit, but I simply left it on the floor and trudged on into the showers.

  I shucked the scrubs, socks, and gloves in the basket by the door, then turned on the shower right next to me. The water was too hot, but I didn't care. Right then I didn't give much of a shit that I was naked in a shower room with a guy who was also getting very unclothed this very second, but just screwed my eyes shut and started to wash myself, facing the corner.

  I had to hand it to him, he left me to my own devices until I was ready to vacate the hot comfort of the shower, towel myself dry, and don my other set of scrubs. It felt like years since he'd given them to me in the shower room upstairs, not just a few hours.

  While I tucked up the pants, the photo inside the back pocket seemed to burn a hole into my skin. I glanced over to where he was busy dressing himself, and figured that the shoes alone would take him another minute. Turning my back on him, I got the picture out and ran a gentle finger down the side of Sam's face. Tears burned in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall; if I lost it now, there was no telling what I'd scream or do until I got a grip on myself again. It didn't really matter in the end—those were tears of grief and frustration, not longing and fear.

  Everything that I'd been ignoring for the past years—not just the last ten hours—came crashing down on me. Anger swept through the bleakness, speeding my pulse up and making it hard to draw even breaths. My muscles locked up and started to shake, but it was no longer that fear-driven tremor from before. Within seconds my mind cleared—gone was the stupor brought on by my epiphany. My fingers convulsed around the photo, crumbling it into a ball, and it took all my strength to smooth it back out and put it into my pocket again.

  “You've been awfully quiet,” Nate remarked from much closer than I was comfortable with.

  Whipping around, I glared at him, then took another step forward that put me right in his face.

  “What do you expect me to say, huh?”

  His eyes scanned my expression briefly before meeting my gaze, once again calm and collected.

  “Expect? Nothing specific, but I don't need mind-reading abilities to know that right now you're yearning to punch me in the face.”

  Was I? I couldn't say for sure, but the anger simmering in my gut was all for physical violence.

  “What the hell is wrong with you both that you think you have the right to just storm into my life and ruin it?”

  My voice was surprisingly even, but I was sure that he didn't miss any of the rage interlaced with my words.

  “Both?”

  “Don't sound so surprised,” I hissed, my outward calm falling away. “Yes, I might have been your brother's fangirl number one, and yes, getting the job as his assistant was a dream come true, but he clearly wouldn’t have hesitated a second to drag me into this! Without thinking for a moment that it would end my career, my relationship, everything I've worked for and dreamed of!”

  Nate didn't look impressed, but he also didn't make fun of me.

  “And your point is?”

  The muscles in my right arm contracted on their own volition, and it cost me a lot to not just slap him right there. I briefly wondered if he'd let me, and what might happen afterward. As angry as I was, I wasn't ready to find out, so I forced myself to relax again, grasping for the next available rational straw.

  “The way you looked at the screen, I figure you hadn't seen the video until then, but you damn well knew what was on it. That's why you chatted me up all those weeks ago in the park. Seduced me. Screwed me. Because you needed an ally!”

  He didn't deny my accusation, just offered a curt nod at the second part.

  “I had a transcript, yes.”

  I waited for more, but when it didn't come, I had to grind my teeth not to scream at him. My frustration was so palpable that it left a bad taste on my tongue.

  “And?”

  His lips quivered, but he didn't let the smile appear fully. When I kept staring at him, he folded.

  “Eighteen months ago someone put a lot of effort into delivering a transcript of the video we just watched while trying to stay anonymous. It took me two weeks to find someone to verify that it was genuine, five and a half months to drag up enough background information to plan the mission, four months to recruit the right people, and another couple of weeks to get substantial funding. The second thing I d
id, after asking Dolores to hack into the company servers and find me evidence that something was going on in the L4 lab that was outside of the company's mission statement, was to find out more about you. It took me less than three days to case your routines, read your personal files, and ascertain that you were in fact in a position where you might be of use to me later.”

  My skin started to itch with unease at the described invasion of my privacy, but that was not the part that my mind snagged on to.

  “When exactly was that?”

  His stare became a tad more intense, as if he knew already why I was asking.

  “About two months before your freak-out.”

  My mind went haywire with possibilities, but I shut down my paranoia before it could run rampant.

  “Did you have anything to do with that?”

  He looked at me as if I'd asked him if the sky was green, but after a second he shrugged.

  “You were only of use to me if you had access to the L4 lab; if anything, seeing you barred from it was a step back, not forward. I only gathered enough information to be able to judge how useful you'd be, then turned to more important things.”

  For whatever crazy reason it stung to be disregarded like that, but I told myself not to be so fucking stupid.

  “And that I ran into you in the park last month was no coincidence, obviously.”

  His mouth quirked up into the hint of a smile.

  “Of course it wasn’t.”

  Swallowing became hard for a second, but I forced myself to keep my gaze locked with his.

  “So, you figured you’d do what, fuck me into compliance?”

  His broadening smile let me know that he’d greatly enjoyed himself along the way, but he surprised me by shaking his head.

  “The plan was to get to know you, yes. Or, more importantly, for you to get to know me. Build some trust, a loose friendship, if you will. You had a dog as a kid, so I borrowed one from a friend. You often lingered in that park after work, so I figured it was the ideal place to run into you. You’re addicted to coffee, so taking you to get some was a no-brainer.”