Chapter 24: Into the Core
It was strange feeling. I remembered everything, as if nothing had changed. It was like reliving a life that hadn’t existed for two years, though I didn’t know if I really wanted the memories back. It was so much easier not knowing, to not remember what I did, or didn’t do. The thought of killing countless people shook me to the core.
These installations were built years before we’d arrived to transform them into delivery systems for the aerosol spray of the five thousand effect. The facility was built deep in the ground, and was comprised of several corridors and labs.
I reached the bottom and turned to see only one corridor leading in the opposite direction. It would eventually split off and deviate from there. Electricity would be running, emitting from the power source, but I would still use the flashlight. Everything was made of concrete. I followed the corridor and it ran only a short distance.
Soon I arrived at the central hub. Computers and instruments lined the walls. They still hummed with numbers blinking on the screens. This wasn’t where I needed to be, but it would help. Every installation was built different, so when the reactor was placed, it was always somewhere else. And even though I had the full capacity of my memories, I didn’t remember where the power source would have been.
I walked over to a computer that appeared to be going through some coding and typed in a few lines of text that brought up the file database. I clicked on a folder and a diagram of the building unfolded. In three dimensions, the outlay of the foundation appeared. From there in the control room I would have to take the stairs off to the right, and go down two levels. The core would be right around there.
A scream erupted from down the hallway, distant but terrifying. That was why I had to arm myself. Even though they should be dead from lack of nutrients, we never got a chance to fully understand the turning. It could have been that their systems went into hibernation mode, or something like that. Maybe they didn’t even need food or water, who knew?
There used to be science division down there trying to study the virus. They even had a few living specimens. Everyone was infected with the virus, dormant or not. If the virus or the specimens broke containment then it would infect the entire installation. And it appeared that was exactly what happened.
I drew the gun from my belt and moved the flashlight about. Hopefully the creatures weren’t shouting in realization that a new presence had entered their territory.
Bending around a corner to the right, I moved to the stairwell. I wondered why they wouldn’t cut power to the secondary systems to save on the electricity, but I remembered the core was meant to run for thirty years. And if the virus wasn’t cured, most studies showed a full saturation rate of ninety-nine point nine percent, meaning the world would be over anyway. No reason to worry about saving power in a dead earth.
The door leading to the stairwell was solid metal with no glass to peek into the corridor. Walking slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible, I approached the door with the gun ready to fire. Nothing inhuman remained here. Gliding through the door, I moved into a dark stairwell. I took one step at a time. I didn’t want to have the same incident as before.
Never had the darkness scared me this much. Confined, slow-going and quiet, this stairwell had me lost in a timeless bubble of my own guilt.
After a few agonizing minutes a door loomed in the flashlight’s glare and declared that I had reached the bottom of the stairwell. Slowly letting the door open, I peeked out into the dimly-lit corridor and looked around. Nothing was out of place, and any screams that had echoed in the darkness before were all gone. I slipped through the door, my heartbeat slowing just a bit.
This level should hold the core. The floor plan was huge. Several walls ran in a circle around the core itself. They were heavy duty, reinforced steel walls that would protect the installation in case the core exploded. Though that was a moot point since all the tests showed it would never detonate anyway. A soft blue hue radiated in the hallways, forcing the idea that something bloomed with life down here.
I followed the signs and headed off to the right. I passed rooms labeled ‘Genetics,’ ‘Thermodynamics,’ ‘Quantum Mechanics,’ ‘Chronometric Alteration,’ and other rooms with signs reading what would be inside. Several scientists and doctors would have been housed down here. If the scientists had turned, or been killed by the creatures, then there’d be no one to maintain the equipment, especially the core, even if it was meant to be self-sustaining.
The turning process abruptly filtered into my mind, and I remember the first time I’d witnessed a potential subject taking my fabled cancer cure.
Before the virus had been accidently released, and before we knew about the potential affects, we were testing it on Andrew Fuller. Andrew was an old family friend of my Father’s, and worked in the accounting department of our business. He was seventy-two and dying of lung cancer, a constant smoker of two packs a day since he was twelve. It was a death sentence when we diagnosed him a mere two months before our trials.
With Fuller, the drug took effect immediately. It healed his grave illness. But it didn’t take long after that before his skin began to crack and bleed. His eyes changed color to a milky substance, and blinded him. Soon he was screaming and thrashing violently, attacking the doctors and breaking containment, or at least, running into the hallways. The security buried a few well-placed shots into his forehead, and my greatest triumph suddenly became the world’s worst virus.
The mice we tested never showed any symptoms like what happened to Andrew. Needlessly, we tried the treatment on others. They understood what could happen, but all the subjects were dying one way or another. We strapped down the subjects and pumped them full of the “cure”. Every one of the older subjects turned moments after administering the drug, or died from the reaction. But for whatever reason, the younger patients never had the same response. Anyone under the age of twenty-six took fully to the drug, healing their illness. But the turning remained dormant until their coming of age.
No forms of sedation worked to calm the patients once they’d turned. They never slept, never ate, only howled insanely. The timeline for the turning was usually the same. After about five days they would lose most of their hair and teeth. Their eyes would grow a deep shade of purple, though they would be completely blind.
The one thing that every subject showed was increased sensitivity to hearing, as well as communicating somehow with the others who had also turned. Even though they weren’t located in the same rooms, all of those who’d turned seemed to notice the others. We had to put down the subjects once they started to grow claws since it became too dangerous to hold them.
That was a month before the outbreak. A whole month to have done something. Maybe I could have destroyed the samples or the “cure”. But the firm, and in particular, the board, which my father headed, refused to bomb the whole trials because of “some unfortunate incidents”. I contemplated firebombing the entire office and work labs, but the samples had been moved and duplicated at several installations. I had wasted too much time deciding what to do.
Snapping back to reality, I passed by an opening to my left. A blue glow pulsated with energy, a dying energy. I looked around but nothing stirred from the shadows, and only the constant whining of the reactor hummed in the air. The blue light flickered for a moment, returning my eyesight to the object at hand. Through double paneled, bulletproof and moisture-resistance glass, the reactor sat within a confined room.