Both men looked through the thick glass pane that separated them from the corpse. Inside, a girl, wearing nothing but a small blue dress that was dirty and stained, lay on a stone pedestal, square and just big enough for her body. Even so, her leg was hanging over the side, dangerously close to the candles lit in a circle around her. In the right hand corner of the room, right next to the air vent, was a large fire, light from a four foot long pole, wrapped in kerosene soaked rags at the top. The entire room, about six meters by six meters, concrete insofar as could be discerned from the light around the candles, was darken and unlit, and the only thing that could be made out clearly was the body of the girl. All the candles and the torch really did was make the darkness deeper. Outside in the dimmed, small and clinically white room, the two men turned from the window to look at each other.
“Time of death?” asked the first.
“9.13 this morning,” responded the second.
“How’d she die Barry?” asked the first.
“Just like we predicted. Internal bleeding, massive haemorrhaging. This thing is potent Steve. Dangerous.”
“Yeah,” said Steve, worriedly. “I don’t like this. She wasn’t supposed to die. Why didn’t the cure work? What if the government finds out about this?”
“Our funding comes from the government,” replied Barry, as if speaking to a small child.
“I’m pretty sure the government didn’t want us to abduct a homeless girl for experiments! Did they provide funding for that?”
“You’d be surprised what the government doesn’t find out when it puts its mind to it. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to be told, okay?” asked Barry.
Silence.
“Okay?” he asked again, and this time there was an edge to his voice.
“Alright,” said Steve, sullenly. “That’s not the problem anyway. The problem is that the cure didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?”
“I have no idea. It just failed, spectacularly. The disease brushed it aside like it wasn’t even there. I don’t know what happened, but the cure is a failure and we’ve run out of time.”
“Can we synthesize one from the corpse?” asked Steve, gesturing towards the window.
“No go. I tried, but I suspect we need a live suspect and given the amount of time from infection to death, we just don’t have the time,” said Barry, shaking his head. He looked up.
“I’ll dispose of the body,” he said, moving to the window. He tapped a button on the control panel under it and a sheet of metal slid down over the window. Inside, there was the sound of flame igniting as highly flammable gas rushed through the ventilation, lighting itself on the torch which in turn threw a gout of flame towards the corpse, burning it to a crisp. That was the idea, at least. It hadn’t been tested before. Both men were relieved when the metal lifted and all that was left of the girl was a blackened pedestal. A moment of silence was had.
“Right,” said Barry. “We need to send a sample to the main lab and tell them we’ve succeeded.”
“Succeeded?”
“Yes. We needed to create a bioweapon and I’d like to think we’ve succeeded beyond expectation. Incapacitation in one hour, death in seven more! It’s the perfect weapon, the perfect disease.”
“Yes, and it’s a disease with no cure!” said Steve. “We can’t give the government this! You saw what it did to that girl!”
“Yes. She died. That’s sort of the point,” said Barry impatiently.
“But she died! That can’t be right! And there’s no cure, none!” said Steve, increasingly agitated.
“So what if there’s no cure? It’s supposed to be used on our enemies. We can’t risk getting their hands on a cure!”
“But what if they use it on us?”
“As if they know how.”
“But what if they do?”
“I don’t know, okay? We’ll just have to risk it. Now shut up and help me send this thing,” said Barry.
“What? No!” said Steve. He was starting to freak out. Barry turned to look at him.
“What?” He said quietly.
“I won’t let you! You could be endangering our own citizens! People will die!” said Steve. He was sweating now. Barry looked at him and took one step towards him.
“People always die. They always die. Who cares? Screw ‘em. If they die, it’s because they couldn’t prevent it and if they couldn’t prevent it we didn’t need ‘em anyway,” he said. “I can’t believe you got cold feet now.” Brushing aside his lab coat, Steve could clearly see the dark, reflective metal of a gun nestled in his hip.
“What are you – no. Back away, I’m not letting you do this!” said Steve, eyeing the gun. He took a step towards Barry, who moved back to the panel and drew the pistol, before turning around and tapping at the control panel, keeping the gun trained on Steve all the while.
Contained. Awaiting transfer order.
The cool, robotic female voice rang out from the speaker in the wall above them. Barry looked up for one second, which was all Steve needed. He jumped towards Barry, grabbed him and flung him into the wall opposite the panel. Barry punched him in the nose before roaring and charging, sending them both careening towards the panel. The second they hit it, the gun discharged. Steve gasped and what felt like a spear made of ice struck him in the stomach. Behind him came the scream of tortured metal as the bullet ripped into the electronics behind him. The female voice blared out from the speakers.
Warning. Containment failure. Warning. Containment failure. Warning. Containment failure. War-
Steve was floating in blackness. It was warm. Content to drift there, at least for a while, he closed his eyes. Something moved. He opened his eyes. He screamed, his voice causing no sound at all. In front of him lay the girl, wearing jeans and a tank top. She was sitting with her back against an invisible wall, indistinguishable from the blackness surrounding her. She had her eyes closed and she looked like she was sleeping, or dead. Then, to Steve’s utter horror, her eyes opened. She looked straight at him and in an attempt to grasp onto something normal in this black hell, Steve noticed that her eyes were green. She smiled at him and the smile filled him with more faceless, nameless terror than he had ever experience before. Blackness claimed him.