by Kyle Aho
Chapter VIII
It was no secret to anyone in the facility that security officer Apate Nevermore and Dr. Gideon Amontillado were together but they did their best to keep things professional all the same. Public displays of affection were extremely rare, almost to the point where it seemed like they made a conscious effort to ignore or put off one another instead of expressing their admiration. No one was fooled.
Due to conflicts of interest, most relationships were discouraged on expensive and important research projects such as this. Only because of Apate and Gideon’s exceeding professionalism, and the fact they were in separate departments, did the administrative body permit them to work together.
Gideon had proposed to her the day before arriving at the research facility that was to become their home for the next six to twelve months. Apate was overjoyed and accepted. They agreed to keep their engagement a secret until after the contract was complete and Gideon promised to make up for his poor timing by absconding with her to Pacifica, arguably the most popular, and expensive, luxury planet getaway in the solar system, once the contract was fulfilled.
By no means did this quench their passion for each other and despite their attempts at being responsible lovers Apate was pregnant within a few months. At first she didn’t tell Gideon because she wanted to be absolutely sure and, gods forbid, should anything happen to the baby during the early stages of pregnancy, she didn’t want to have that weigh on Gideon’s mind during his research. Then the project took an unexpected turn.
Some of the infected miners Gideon studied complained of severe headaches and suffered from intense muscle spasms. 1264A, the name Gideon coined to refer to the infection, began to attack the central nervous system of the infected and their bodies were shutting down. Most of the miners suffered a gradual descent into paralysis, foreshadowed by the splitting head pain and sporadic muscle twitching. If they were lucky the infected would die in their sleep from brain aneurisms or heart failure. More and more miners slipped into comas before death and the scientists studying the infection had trouble figuring out why. Not everyone died peacefully however.
Some of the miners, the ones that lived through their coma, began vomiting blood. At first this appalled everyone involved but upon closer study the scientists became fascinated with the act, Gideon in particular. He was the first to make the connection between the airborne parasites and their relation to the vomiting.
Gideon hypothesized that the host would inhale spores of the parasite, which would then lodge in the tissue of the lungs. Once inside the lungs the spores used the blood and nutrients of the host to incubate and undergo mitosis to form the next stage of the parasite’s life cycle and spread through the rest of the body at its leisure. It would chew through the tissue of the lungs and cause the host to bleed internally. The pooled blood would feed the new zygotes and help them develop further to create new spores. Part of a grotesque form of pollination, the host would vomit the blood out and attempt to spread the new spores to a different host. When Gideon had made this connection, he immediately asked for approval to test on animals for further study.
Apate remembered him being very upset about an ultimatum the funding company had provided and he refused to give her any details for fear of violating their contract and risking one of them getting removed from the project. This would have been particularly devastating since Apate was only a month or two away from having their child. Now forced to delegate most of her duties, Apate had assumed more of an administrative position than she was used to. She always preferred to be active. She liked to be doing something productive such as patrolling or dealing with physical confrontation personally but until she had the baby she would have to resign herself to paperwork and patiently watching security cameras.
Tensions were running high because the last few surviving miners had undergone some radical changes in the previous weeks. Their nails and teeth turned jagged and black. Each miner had complained about internal pains as well, a common note being that their ‘bones hurt’ and they were all becoming very testy. X-rays revealed that the miners’ bones were actually growing. Bone density had almost doubled and the bones were growing out towards the flesh in spiny tendrils. This would have accounted for the pain and possibly the increased aggression if every movement they made were as painful as they claimed. Animal testing hadn’t reached that stage in 1264A’s life cycle yet so it was difficult to draw any conclusions.
Apate was watching the monitors one day, paying extra attention to Gideon since they hadn’t spent much time together lately. He put on a haz-mat suit in preparation of running some routine tests on the surviving miners. Most of their fingers had turned to thick black claws at this point and one miner’s fingers had even begun fusing together into a single black spike.
Pacing irritably, the miners waited for Gideon to enter. They had done this dozens of times before, a quick blood sample, some x-rays, throat swabs, nothing particularly invasive. Gideon had mentioned his growing uneasiness at the miners’ behavior but refused Apate’s suggestions of a security escort. He didn’t want the men to feel like he didn’t trust them; they had enough to worry about.
Clad in his haz-mat suit, Gideon entered the quarantine chamber and stood with arms raised as the automated cleansing unit disinfected him and he waited for the second set of doors to open. All three miners shot him a suspicious glance and Gideon felt every hair on his body stand up. A chime signaled to Gideon that the disinfection process was complete and the second door bridging the quarantine chamber to the laboratory opened.
As soon as the door sealed behind him all three miners descended on him like a pack of hungry wolves. Apate watched in horror from her security bay as one miner tackled Gideon to the ground and slashed open his mask. He then vomited blood into the hole and drowned Gideon with it. She punched the emergency alert button and caused the whole complex to spiral into fear and confusion as Apate ordered all of her security staff to converge on the lab.
Watching him with guarded curiosity, the other two miners waited for something as Gideon rolled over and choked on the blood that had been sprayed into his suit. He spit it out in thick gobs and crawled into a corner for some modicum of protection, however insignificant it may be. Seemingly satisfied with whatever they were waiting for, the two miners followed the first as he ripped Gideon’s badge from his chest and used it to activate the door panel and exit the lab they were once confined to.
Apate’s chest hammered with dread as she watched the three miners spread throughout the facility and assault everyone they came in contact with, vomiting blood on them before moving on to the next victim. It was astonishing the amount of ground they covered in the minute or so it took for a security team to reach them. At least ten people were contaminated before security caught up.
The miners shrugged off blasts from security team’s shock weapons and attacked, infecting them in a few brutal seconds. Apate ordered an emergency lockdown of the entire area and loosed the security drones into the facility. She plugged in the safety override and granted the drones permission to kill. Quarantine doors locked and Apate couldn’t resist feeling a pang of guilt as some innocent uninfected people got trapped in the hallways. She could have overridden the doors but didn’t want to risk any more lives than necessary so she was forced to damn her comrades to the horrific embrace of the infected miners.
Four more people were attacked before the first drone arrived, charging its energy weapon and making a steaming meat puddle of the first infected miner. With a quick and simultaneous turn the other two miners assessed their new threat and attacked the drone, dodging several energy blasts and tearing the drone apart with their long black claws as if it were made of wet cardboard. Apate felt helpless as she watched the miners dismember the security drone effortlessly.
A second drone arrived in the hall and blasted at them with its energy weapon. This blast clipped the first drone and ripped apart the power cells, which caused it to explode and swallow up the mi
ners in a blaze. They screamed and flailed for a moment before sinking to their knees one after the other and slowly stopping all movement.
Apate watched for a few moments to make sure they were dead. The drone hovered nearby in anticipation of more commands. Once she was sure, Apate lifted the quarantine and ordered all medical personnel to help the wounded and secure the infected. She stood up from her console and ran as best as her pregnant body would allow to Gideon.
She overrode the door locks and ran into the lab to help him. She grabbed a nearby lab coat and used it to wipe blood from his eyes. He looked up at her and screamed. She stared in horror as Gideon backed away into a nearby bed.
“What are you doing here, are you insane?” he shouted.
She didn’t have an answer; wounded from his reaction to her being there, she just stared at him, mouth agape.
“Go! Get out of here, now!” he screamed, trying to get as far away from her as possible, coughing and choking from the effort.
A haz-mat team entered the room and she realized her mistake. By entering the room without protection she had just infected herself and her unborn child with 1264A.
Dr. Eris Malliny had taken over the research from Gideon, who was now under close observation in a lab guarded by a pair of armed security and a combat drone. Over a month had passed before he went into the coma that all infected eventually succumbed to. Apate waited for two weeks in her cell before she was informed that he came out of the coma. She wasn’t sure if she was happy that his body hadn’t rejected the parasite and killed him because that meant eventually he would mutate like all the rest. On top of these concerns she was burdened with the knowledge of what experiments the facility ran on the infected and that both her fiancé and newborn child were being subjected to such tests.
Apate had to have an emergency C-section after the incident. Since then all of the tests they ran showed signs of infection in the child but despite the existence of the parasite there seemed to be no ill effects. No one knew what that implied.
Dr. Malliny put Apate’s entire family under observation and forced them to undergo a daily barrage of tests based on new information they were getting from the animal experiments. Concerned with further exposure to the parasite, Apate hadn’t been allowed to hold her baby at all since he was taken from her belly. She also hadn’t been allowed to see Gideon and only heard stories from other doctors to update her on his progress.
Apate heard footsteps coming down the hall. One of the women on Gideon’s team walked toward her room staring at a digi-pad. It took a moment for Apate to remember the woman’s name.
“Chelle! Can you tell me how he is? How both of them are?”
Chelle’s attention was pulled from her digi-pad for a fraction of a second before her eyes lowered back to it without a word. Apate watched as she walked away. Right as Chelle was about to round a corner toward the cafeteria a voice turned her around. Dr. Malliny waved her hand and shouted down the hall for Chelle to join her. The two walked toward each other and stopped just outside Apate’s room.
“Dr. Malliny, can I see my boy?” Apate asked through the glass. Both Dr. Malliny and Chelle looked up at her. “Please? It’s been… almost a month I think, I can’t remember exactly. Even just a video feed of them?” Apate continued.
Chelle’s eyes softened.
“I’m sorry Apate, we-”
Dr. Malliny snapped her fingers and pointed into her own eyes. Chelle looked at her and then back to Apate only to be snapped at again. They finished discussing something about the alleles of the parasite that Apate didn’t understand before Dr. Malliny escorted Chelle down the hall.
“Eris please? I just want to see my fiancé and my child, please? Dr. Malliny!”
Apate slammed her fists against the glass and tried to use her access code to leave the room even though she knew it no longer worked. Many more days went by with similar results. Eventually Apate gave up. She fell into the familiar monotony of her tests and paced around what was effectively her cell, thinking about Gideon and what he could be turning into. She worried about what horrid things were being done to her child and how scared the infant must be. Apate felt her life deteriorating around her and it took every last iota of strength not to cry herself to sleep each night.
Months passed. She had become a hollow shell of her former self and no one bothered to help her. All she could do was pace her cell and worry, the knots in her gut growing tighter with each passing day. She hadn’t even had an opportunity to name the boy and had never officially agreed on one with Gideon before he was taken away from her. She realized they might never get to have that conversation.
She wanted to give him a name that would easily harbor a legacy. Something that wasn’t too weird or exotic like some of the more flamboyant parents had been coming up with but she didn’t want it to be too plain either. After mulling over it for some time she eventually decided on Raza for no particular reason other than she enjoyed the way it sounded. She thought Gideon would like it too and it gave her something to hold on to.
Apate spent day after day, test after test, with no inkling as to what happened outside the walls of her cell. She had once been the hub of knowledge around the complex. She had her finger on the pulse of the entire building and between official reports, camera feeds, and a steady stream of gossip she was as close to omniscient as one could get in that facility. Now she was completely in the dark.
It was maddening.
A woman in a haz-mat suit entered her cell. There had been no evidence that women were affected by the parasite but everyone still took precautions. She laid out a set of tools that had become standard for this routine procedure. First she set down a needle to draw blood, then some cotton swabs for throat cultures followed by some pills that Apate was unfamiliar with and finally a scalpel to shave off skin and nail samples.
Apate allowed her blood to be taken.
“Oh my, it’s filling up fast today. Are you nervous?” the woman asked, her voice muffled by the suit.
“I guess I still get anxious,” Apate lied, surprised that the woman offered any conversation at all. She opened her mouth and let the woman swab her throat. As the woman examined the end of the swab Apate glanced over to the table with the test materials. Apate felt the nurse’s eyes shift back in her direction and snapped her own back to meet the gaze. The corners of the nurse’s eyes scrunched as she forced a polite smile. The nurse began putting the throat culture into a sealed container, Apate took a deep breath to steel herself for the next few moments. She snatched the scalpel and stood up, shoving the woman’s shoulder to force her around while slashing open the haz-mat suit in one fluid motion.
The woman screamed as Apate ripped the mask off and gripped her from behind, holding the scalpel to her throat. “Walk,” she ordered.
“Apate, please don’t hurt me, I was only following-”
“Walk!”
They left the observation room and made their way toward the elevator so she could reach the labs she thought Gideon and Raza might be. She kept her back to a wall and chose her angles carefully so she couldn’t be surrounded at any particular intersection. Having intimate knowledge of the facility layout and camera positioning allowed her to sneak through several areas undetected. As they approached the elevator she heard voices. She clamped her hand over the nurse’s mouth and pressed her back to a nearby vending machine. The nurse shuddered as Apate pressed the scalpel against her jugular, a reminder to stay quiet.
“That drake specimen is remarkable, where did we find it?” a dark haired woman said.
“I don’t recall which planet it came from but I know it’s not local,” a shorter, blonde replied.
“I’m very curious to see if it is susceptible to the parasite as well. Though I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure we should have it here. What if we can’t contain it?”
“That’s what the security team is for, don’t worry.”
The two women spoke as they walked by the vendin
g machine, oblivious to Apate and her captive.
“Oh hold on, I want to get one of those drinks with Dante Opulen on the bottle,” the blonde said, an ounce of shame in her voice.
“Ugh, that guy is so obnoxious.”
“I know but I can still enjoy looking at him.”
Both women turned to approach the vending machine and screamed as they saw Apate holding her nurse with a blade to her throat.
“If you say anything I’ll-” Apate began but both women were already running. She gripped her hostage and went for the elevator. A moment later an alarm went off and a team of people clad in haz-mat suits and armed with shock rifles converged on her from all angles. With nowhere to run Apate pressed her back against the wall and used her nurse as a shield. The scalpel’s threat was enough to keep the security team at bay but she wasn’t sure for how long.
“Where is my son?” Apate demanded as the security team closed in.
“Put the weapon down or we will fire!” the lead guard said, his voice coming through his mask with a metallic tang.
“Where is my son?” she repeated, enunciating each word in way that made it perfectly clear they were not going to negotiate. Malliny had donned a suit and came to the fore of the scene.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“Bring me my son or I’ll paint the floor with her neck,” Apate replied as she moved the blade against the nurse’s throat and ignored her panicked breathing.
“Are you really going to kill her, Apate?” Dr. Malliny asked.
Apate slid the scalpel across the terrified woman’s throat and left a thin ribbon of blood in it its wake. It wasn’t deep enough to cause anything apart from superficial damage but everyone knew she meant business. Dr. Malliny stared at her for a moment from behind the safety of her mask and security team.
“Fine, shoot them both,” she ordered.
The security team hesitated. Apate’s jaw dropped, her power over the situation demolished. Her victim began hyperventilating.
“She has already been exposed to the parasite, we can’t take any chances,” Dr. Malliny continued.
“Why won’t you let me see my son?” Apate asked. Dr. Malliny stared for a moment, her eyes icy and resolute.
“It’s not my decision, I’m sorry.”
She turned around and walked through the security team, dismissing the situation as if it were no more important than a child having a tantrum.
Apate screamed in frustration and pushed the nurse toward the security team. She elbowed an intervening guard in the face and cracked his mask. As he fell to the ground she leapt for Dr. Malliny. A second guard attempted to tackle her but a quick change of her footing allowed her to catch the man as he came in and throw his weight over her hip, slamming him to the ground with enough force to shatter his ribcage.
A barrage of shocks from the security team’s rifles forced her body rigid. She lost control and crumbled to the floor. Her teeth felt like they were going to shatter as she ground them together against the pain and reached out with a livid claw in a vain attempt to strangle the woman keeping her from her child. Not a moment later a flurry of shocks sizzled against her skin as the security team closed in. The last thing she saw was a boot heading directly for her face.
An acrid smell that had never before polluted her nostrils woke her up. She could barely move. Her back felt stiff and bruised. Her chest throbbed with pain at every breath. One of her teeth was loose and wiggled uncomfortably in her mouth. She laid on something cold and lumpy. It took a few minutes before she could muster the strength to look around. Her shoulder screamed with pain, as if it had become dislocated. One glance confirmed that it had.
Then she realized what happened. Human and animal corpses in various states of decay surrounded her and she lay atop the pile like a discarded doll on a heap of trash. Apate retched and vomited onto the remains of a nearby dog. They had thrown her out like refuse, hoping the fall would kill her or possibly thinking she was already dead. They didn’t account for the mound of other bodies to break her fall.
She stumbled down the hill of flesh and bone and sloshed through the thick grime of the sewer network. Her brain could barely process the series of unfortunate events that had befallen her. Apate was devoid of emotion. Once the initial shock had subsided, she simply looked around for an escape as survival was her brain’s only function. A ways down the passage she found a maintenance door that led to control pump. The room also had a ladder that led to the outside world.
As she climbed the ladder against the wishes of her aching muscles, Apate vowed to gain her strength and find a way back and retrieve her son or die trying.
