The intruder appeared around seventeen years of age, curly brown hair, and a strong jaw. His jeans and Pantera band tee were tossed away in a biohazard disposal bag, leaving him in a plain white gown. A clear, plastic mask over his nose and mouth fed stabilizing gases to his lungs. Ankles and wrists locked down by buckled straps to the examination table, nodes connected him to monitors that beeped and fed information across a screen at the desk. Leo ceremoniously deposited the silver case beside an inlaid keyboard and began scrolling through medical data.
In the midst of analyzing the gathered values, identifying the viral strains his employee was testing, a brunette woman in a lab coat approached his right side. “Mister Leo, I’m so sorry about this. I have no idea what he was thinking. Can you help him?”
Leo ignored her, encompassed in a frozen fortress to concentrate on the results of blood samples that had been intermittently drawn from Shaun throughout the night. Each one carried mutations more fascinating and grotesque than the last. “Get me a fresh sample. Now.”
The two researchers moved into action, working together. One drew a fresh vial of blood for a full blood panel. The other squeezed a few drops on a slide and locked it into the microscope. The sample was prepared by the time Leo finished washing his hands and tugged on a pair of lilac colored latex gloves. His eyes drew near the lenses, adjusting the dials with practiced precision for clarity.
“It was a dare,” the brunette explained quietly, her words trembling. “His friends dared him to drink a test tube in my lab.”
“That, my dear, is precisely why we keep tight security. It seems your son had no respect for those measures,” he admonished with foreboding detachment. “Now, silence.”
Monitors beeped out a percussive melody, and the machine processing the vial of blood whirred quietly. “These mutations are remarkable,” Leo muttered, “but ultimately will destroy him on a molecular level.”
“Wh-what are you saying?”
Leo straightened his spine and sauntered toward the desk to review the tablet with Shaun’s blood results. “What I’m saying is that his body failed to merge with or fight the virus. We have no proven vaccine because this is still in the testing phase. Anything we do now won’t be enough to save his life. Before long, your son will be unrecognizable. This was Pred and Verm?” Her words stuck in her throat, but she nodded. “Both vaccines were administered. Though incomplete, the two strains have already evolved into something greater. Based on what I’m seeing, this new, evolved strain shows promise.” He passed the tablet to her, sharing the details that confirmed Leo’s already grim suspicions. He strode toward the examination table, making note of the increased amount and length of hair along his arms and legs. “Four and a quarter centimeters.” After fishing a small flashlight out of his lab coat, he shined it into Shaun’s bloodshot eye. The elongated iris sharply retracted, and resulted in an aggravated snarl. He wildly yanked at his arms and legs. Leo tapped the end of the microlight and it blinked off before he dropped it back in his pocket. “I can grant you one mercy, Nicole. Either keep him alive as a test subject until he eventually dies, or euthanize now so he doesn’t suffer.”
“No! No, there has to be something you can do,” she shrieked, crying.
“I cannot fight science. You see for yourself that he’s beyond the help of our current knowledge,” Leo icily informed. “Decide, before I choose for you.”
His back turned to the bawling researcher, returning to the desk to peel off the gloves. The locks on the briefcase clicked, and he opened it fully. From the foam interior, he set aside two syringes and a pistol.
“I need to consult his father,” Nicole protested.
“There’s no time. He will be uncontrollable in a matter of minutes, and I won’t risk the operation, the facility, or other employees for your sentimentality,” he cruelly advised, tapping a syringe of green liquid held up to the glaring fluorescent light. “Euthanize, or he gets locked up with the other test subjects. Choose.”
Nicole set the tablet down and rushed to Shaun’s side, taking his hand in a firm squeeze. He reciprocated, but his mounting strength constricted her knuckles until her hand cracked and bent. “Shaun, let go,” she wailed in pain. “Let go of my hand!”
Leo’s torso deflated with an exasperated sigh. He swiftly grabbed the IV tube in his fingers and pulled the lower port for delivering medicine closer. The needle skewered it and he pressed the plunger down slowly, sending the syringe’s deadly chemical concoction straight into Shaun’s blood stream.
“No,” Nicole screamed, sinking to one knee and then the other with her hand still imprisoned by Shaun’s angry, unrelenting grip. He yowled like a wounded animal as the injection flooded his circulatory system, swiftly poisoning and shutting down vital organs. She wept in morbid misery. Within seconds, his fingers went limp and the heart monitor squealed a flat line.
“Burn the corpse and sterilize this room within the hour,” Leo tersely ordered, a lethal, admonishing edge to his tone. The locks on the briefcase clicked again, securing the suitcase with the pistol and syringes inside. “Consider the incident contained.”
Kilena Shrelack 