On exit, the level’s setup was much the same, with the exception of a desk in the small foyer and a wall-mounted safe.
“Gun storage.” Tom nodded in its direction.
He had seen these cabinets a million times. Something about all this smelled of military.
As his light shone over the desk, his assessment was confirmed. In front of a large leather writing pad stood a nameplate with military insignia. Next to it sat a paperweight with a corporate logo. A gunnery sergeant had manned the post.
“Marines,” Tom thought out loud, recognizing the insignia of the Corps paired with the US coat of arms.
He had friends in the Marine Security Guard detachment, which normally provided security for embassies and other US government offices the world over. ‘But guarding a corporate medical lab?’ It certainly added a new dimension.
He picked up the paperweight. He had seen EUPHARM’s commercials in the past. Involved in anything from antacids to stem-cell research, he had heard that they had played an integral part in developing the Ebola vaccine during the last outbreak. It had arrived on the market with great fanfare, and hopes for complete eradication of the disease had been high. Ultimately though, it had failed, denting EUPHARM’s reputation and costing the company and its shareholders billions in potential revenues, not to mention a fortune spent on development.
Tom pointed at the paperweight, and the doctor frowned. She had never been a fan of Big Pharm, and this obvious pairing with military and government stakeholders instantly left a foul taste in her mouth.
Tom tried the heavy door at the rear of the desk, but this one wouldn’t budge. There also was no external release button, and so they resorted to again shining their lights through the bulletproof glass. The internal layout of the floor was very different from the one above, this one for the better part taken over by what looked like a giant freezer, accessible only via some kind of decontamination chamber.
The rest of the floor, as far as they could see, featured a few labs similar to B1; the only difference that instead of rows of folders, they contained empty cages of the size normally used to house hamsters or rabbits. One of the rooms contained terrariums and other glass containers with tropical plants, which glowed under a set of UV lights providing the only illumination. Here, too, nothing moved, and most of the floor remained dark. Not wanting to waste too much time, they moved on to B3.
Tom sensed the change in atmosphere as soon as the doors opened. Instinctively he took a step back against the elevator cabin’s back wall. A pungent smell of burned plastic and BBQ assaulted their nostrils. There were scorch marks around the main entrance. They gingerly stepped into the foyer, scanning the floor ahead with their lights. Papers, broken vials, and lab tools were strewn about. The doctor took a deep breath. A pair of pliers held what looked to be a human tooth. She turned away, blinding Tom with her head-mounted light in the process.
“Sorry!” She whispered and lowered her head.
Tom closed his eyes, and his vision slowly readjusted. Some kind of explosion had almost completely blown off the heavy steel access door. Precariously hanging from its top hinge it bulged, its frame twisted, bent outward by the blast. Mindful of its crushing power, they took great care not to touch it as they ducked to get through the gap.
Inside, the cause of the blast soon became apparent. While the doctor scanned the surrounding area, Tom trained his light on the centre, where several exploded gas cylinders lay near what looked like a dead campfire of files, paper, and anything else whoever had started it thought flammable enough to use.
A sharp breath by the doctor had Tom spin in her direction. Near the entrance to one of the corridors lay the charred body of one of the scientists, an agonizing death written all over its grotesquely twisted features. Shreds of a lab coat had melted into its flesh, the fire turning its skin into a black crusty bark. Its right arm was missing. Its left hand held the remnants of a propane torch.
“Looks like we’ve found our culprit,” Tom pointed with his light. “Poor bastard. Tried to set the whole place on fire.”
“Why would anyone do that?” The doctor asked the obvious question.
“I suspect we are about to find out.” Tom stepped over the stumps where the man’s legs had been and paused.
He had seen blast injuries before, but this was something else. The doctor stared down and swallowed hard. The stench of burnt human flesh and toxic fumes was getting the better of her.
“You Ok?” Tom asked, inspecting the wounds.
She covered her mouth with her sleeve and nodded.
There were only two corridors on this floor: One led to the right, and as far Tom could see, in the direction of where the hangar was situated two floors above them. The other went straight ahead, further underground. To their left was another walk-in freezer. It, too, had borne the brunt of the blast and caved inward, spilling its now defrosted contents all over the floor in a mush of lab samples and chemicals.
But it was the sloping corridor leading further underground that drew Tom’s attention away from the entrance. The doctor, keeping a careful distance, watched as he followed it until he almost completely disappeared in the dark beyond the reach of her headlamp.
Tom passed through another opening. The door that had once enclosed the space beyond was wide open. In contrast to the sophisticated portals they had seen so far, this one was rather crude, its metal grilles and padlock reminiscent more of a stockade than a Pharma lab.
The inescapable stench of rotten meat hit him no sooner as he stepped through, the odour of decaying flesh, damp, and faeces all rolled into one putrid mix. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand and held up the flashlight up with the other. The doctor had followed for a bit but stopped dead in her tracks at the entrance.
“That’s it. I am not going any further.” Trying hard not to gag, she dug her heels in.
Tom shone his light back and forth between what looked like several holding cells, each one with a hospital bed and electronic monitors, but on the whole a far cry from the clinical sterility of the other floors. It looked improvised, almost slapdash.
The walls were mouldy in parts and hadn’t been cleaned in months, if ever. Dried body fluids and odd-shaped chunks covered the floor. Tom couldn’t quite put his finger on what had been going on in this dungeon, but it had a malevolent aura about it that grew more intense by the minute.
He proceeded with caution along the sticky walkway. The first two cells were empty, sans the usual equipment, and a few charts on the wall, maps of different parts of the human and animal anatomies. Bloodied sheets covered the gurneys along the hallway. More lay bunched up in the corners.
A lonely light switch was mounted on the wall halfway into the wing. Passing it, Tom flicked it without expectation, but much to his surprise, the lights reacted. A row of single bulbs suspended from the ceiling first flashed and flickered but finally came to life, lighting up the scene in all its gore.
Tom could now see the massive trails of blood and snakelike strings of entrails that had caused his boots to squelch as he walked along the sticky floor. The air now smelled even fouler than before.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tom decided he had seen enough.
“The first sensible thing you have said since we started this damn expedition,” the doctor replied angrily.
She quietly cursed Tom for putting her into the environs they now found themselves in.
He was just about to turn back, when he noticed another lab off to the right, connecting their level to something on the other side. The door, unlike the rest of the level, seemed very much intact.
‘Might as well clear this level completely’, Tom thought and went ahead.
“Oh no, you won’t!” The doctor protested, but he had already entered the lab.
“Can’t get worse than this,” he replied with his back turned. “Want to wait here among the gunk or come with?”
It wasn’t a hard decision.
The inte
rior was surprisingly different from those they had seen on the other two floors. This had no containers with animal or plant life and, apart from a centrifuge, featured an array of equipment completely unknown to Tom. The doctor cast her eyes over the setup.
“This is high-tech,” she remarked with admiration as she explained the different pieces to Tom.
There were electrophoresis systems designed to separate DNA, RNA, and proteins, extraction heaters to quantitatively analyse organic substances, incubators, and furnaces, UV equipment, and ultrasonic cleaners, to name a few.
“These guys were into some heavy viral research.”
The setup piqued her interest.
Tom was ready to leave, but it was the doctor who suddenly seemed to have found a reason to stay. She fired up a laptop on a desk towards the rear, where a double-glazed bulkhead window provided the only glimpse into what lay beyond the otherwise tightly sealed door labelled ‘Sample Freezer.’ Prominently displayed above it, was a biohazard sticker and a sign labelled ‘L-4’.
“Yep, this is serious stuff down here.” The doctor skimmed over the laptop’s filing system.
“Level 4 Biosafety…where the nasties come out to play.” She managed a sombre smile.
Tom recognized the air valves and connectors, as well as the hazmat suits. He had gone through first responder drills more times than he cared to remember and even ended up in hospital once when they had forced his unit to wear the suits in the midday heat of their Afghanistan base.
The suits he was looking at now, though, had the appearance of having been attacked by a bunch of lunatics with scissors. Some of them were bloodied, while others, discarded in a hurry, were piled up in a heap. The air hoses that had connected them to the purification system now dangled uselessly from their mounts along the ceiling.
“Too bad we won’t be getting much out of him…” Tom thought aloud, looking back in the direction of where the charred corpse’s white teeth grinned in the limelight.
“Don’t be so sure,” the doctor mumbled, fully absorbed as a series of clicks from the computer’s hard drive announced boot up. “I can’t believe they have this type of setup and then protect their data with such a shitty system...sorry, I mean antiquated.”
She was in her element now. Tom chuckled.
“Make yourself useful and see if the guy still has his ID somewhere. If it’s not too charred, we might still be able to use it.” She pointed back up the walkway without as much as looking up.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tom replied, not without sarcasm.
He went back and reluctantly gave the corpse a once-over and, much to his surprise, without difficulty, found the man’s ID. The plastic card was a little blackened, warped and bubbled from the heat of the explosion, but otherwise intact.
He quickly returned and handed it over. “Look what I found!”
“Let’s see what happens.” The doctor forced the card into a reader attached to the computer.
The screen changed, welcoming Dr. Xiao and, wishing him a great day, asked for a four-digit PIN.
“Hmm…that makes it a little more complicated.” The doctor grumbled.
Cracking the PIN would take forever, and after a few attempts, access to the account would likely be frozen. Disappointed, she closed the laptop.
“Let me have a look.” Tom turned the machine over and grinned. “They may be scientists, but they’re only human.”
On the underside, right next to the serial number, was a post-it note with a list of 4-digit PINs. He tore it off and handed it to the doctor.
“Used to do that myself. Not smart, but it makes life easier.”
In an increasingly digital world, it had become almost impossible to keep track of all the passwords at work, and it had been a running joke in his unit how even their chief of staff, the old fashioned type in every sense of the word, had his written down on a Rolodex card atop his desk.
The doctor punched in the first code, and the display turned green, rattling through a long list of files before displaying a simple search window.
“Well, Dr. Xiao, let’s see what we’ve got then.”
The doctor enthusiastically started clicking on various links, none of which meant a whole lot to Tom. The screen flickered as documents opened and closed. Some looked like lab results, others were labelled ‘progress report,’ among them a long log with database entries by date.
“This is too much to go through right here and now.”
The doctor shook her head, fixated on the screen. She rummaged around the desk drawers and eventually retrieved a small thumb drive. She plugged it into the port and began transferring files. On the wall behind them, a small orange light started blinking.
“We done yet?” Tom was getting impatient.
Whatever was in the files wasn’t going to help them in their present predicament. If anything, stealing data from a government facility would make them popular with all the wrong people. On the other hand, whatever they found could become vital in identifying what diabolical bug they were dealing with and how to beat it.
“Sorry, just want to get back topside. Anything of value?” Tom watched as the doctor continued to browse the files.
“You want the long or the short version?” She finally dragged the last few files over onto the flash drive and pushed her chair away from the desk.
“Short will do for now. We can go through the extended version and bonus features once we’re back up there.” Tom smiled, but the doctor’s features darkened.
“They were doing research here, alright. But not on behalf of WHO and not exactly using conventional methods.” The doctor was itching to tell him to tell someone what had happened.
“I am not sure I’m following.” It was obvious that something more sinister was afoot here, but Tom wanted to know in no uncertain terms.
“Ok, sorry. Short version: Instead of trying to go down the vaccine route to combat Ebola, they engineered a Virophage. Essentially it’s a live virus that attacks other viruses by injecting its own DNA into them, forcing them to change. In layman’s terms, making them lose their identity.”
“Turn an Ebola virus into a harmless one? That would be a good thing, no?” Tom interjected, unsure about where this was going.
“Principally, yes. The only problem is, it looks like something went wrong during DNA manipulation of its payload. It looks like…,” she paused, choosing her words carefully, “…its effect wasn’t quite what they had aimed for.”
The doctor’s expression had turned to fear, and her eyes darted back and forth between the cells and the computer.
“To make it even shorter: I think we should get the hell out of here.”
And with that, she unplugged the memory stick and dashed past Tom. Leaving him where he stood, she ran for the elevator.
“Whatever you say doc,” Tom shrugged, surprised. “But this one’s coming with me. Just in case.” He grabbed the laptop, pulled the power cable from the wall socket, and made haste to follow the doctor, who had already pressed the elevator button.
“What’s up, doc?” Tom’s attempt at humour had no effect.
“Are you hurt? Let me see.” He tried to reach for her. The doctor, holding a tissue to her head, shied away.
“It’s nothing. Scratched myself on that twisted access door.” She held up the tissue.
There were but a couple of droplets of blood on it.
“See? Nothing!” She added grumpily and put the tissue back in her pocket.
She remained quiet and tense until they reached the hangar.
“Am I ever glad to see you!” Emile welcomed them back exuberantly. “How was it?”
The doctor ignored him, sat down on one of the pelican cases, and began to throw items into her backpack.
“Let’s just say it’s one of those been-there-done-that places. At least I won’t go back down there.” Tom’s sarcasm was enough message for Emile.
“We need to get out of here. Now.” The doctor insisted almo
st frantically. “We need to warn the others.”
Tom wondered whether she was about to lose it altogether when she suddenly jumped up and sprinted towards the door. He stepped in and, as gently as he could, held her back by the shoulders.
“You forget our fan club outside?”
Defeated, the doctor exhaled and slumped.
“We really need to leave,” she pleaded, almost whimpering now. Knowledge had always been the mote of her social awkwardness, but now even that had turned against her.
“I understand that,” Tom tried to reassure her. “So why don’t you help me understand. Really understand?” He looked over to Emile for support, but Emile just gawked, confused.
“Look, we may all be good at what we do, but at least speaking for Emile over here and myself, we are no scientists, so please keep it simple?”
“You are right. Scientists, you are not.” The hint of a smile flickered across her face.
“Take us through it then, step by step. The extended version, remember?” Tom guided her back to one of the boxes, and they sat down.
There were no windows, which made it impossible to tell time, but by Tom’s estimation, they were past midday by now. They would have to spend at least another night in the building. Even if somehow they were able to raise support via the sat phone, it would be too late in the day for anyone to attempt and reach them. He would attempt again in a moment, but for now, he needed to know what the doctor had been trying to explain.
“You see, the Ebola virus works by first disabling the immune system and then dismantling the vascular system. It sort of hijacks the host cells needed to mount an immune response. It kind of renders them useless from within.” She gestured as she spoke.
“But how do people end up bleeding out of just about every orifice?” Tom asked.
“When the virus multiplies, it travels to other parts of the body and gets eaten up by certain cells in the process. Once these cells themselves are infected, they release a protein causing coagulation, essentially blocking off blood supply to organs and other parts. They also release inflammatory proteins that begin damaging blood vessels. Once their work is complete, the vessels begin to haemorrhage. So basically, you die from a drop in blood pressure and internal organ failure. And we already know what that looks like.” The doctor grimaced at her own explanation.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere Page 9
