14. 14
I’d never been in this room before, but I recognized enough of the equipment for the process to work. The equipment was arranged in rows, but not in any particular order. I’d be bouncing around the room from machine to machine to make this happen.
Gloves were the first priority, and boxes were hung on every wall. I grabbed a pair, protecting my skin from whatever I might encounter.
“Where is cold storage?” I asked, looking around.
Elias pointed to a door at the back of the room. “Is it that one? The labeled door?”
A sliding door labeled “Cold Storage” opened automatically as I approached it.
It was colder than the main area since a few of the freezers in the room were cryogenic, but the space itself was not refrigerated.
Freezers lined the walls, and I opened each one, looking for the virus.
Wisps of icy air billowed out, chilling my hands.
Hundreds of vials were labeled with letters and numbers I didn’t recognize, as my work here had been dedicated to a single pathogen.
Elias walked in behind me and joined in on the search.
“They’ve got everything in here,” he mused. “Rabies, even. That’s not a fun vaccine.”
I looked up. “At least they don’t give it to you in your stomach anymore,” I said. “You’ve gotten vaccinated for rabies? Why?”
“It was the muscle aches the vaccine gave me. It made my workouts hell.” He pondered for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been given every vaccine that exists. I’ve been deployed to every corner of the world,” he said. “It just comes with the territory.”
“That makes sense. Sorry, sometimes I forget that you’re not really the janitor.”
“Even when I’m dressed like this?” He laughed. “You’re funny.”
We hunted for the virus, finally pulling out a shelf filled with Variant-13 samples.
“Got it!” I exclaimed, shutting the freezer door, noting the place I pulled the vial from in case I needed more. I grabbed another vial I’d spotted earlier, one that contained something of my own design, realizing now that the sole reason I got this job was for this moment.
I’d spied the sequencer earlier, shoved into the corner of the room. It was older than I had expected, more so than the one I had used in college, but it worked the same as any other. Loading the sample into the machine, I waited, watching it whirl and flash a pattern I was all too familiar with.
If the samples in this lab were degraded in any way, developing this vaccine might be impossible.
The screen lit up, the virus’s genome presented brightly on the display.
“Thank God,” I said, relieved.
“What is it?” Asked Elias, who was hovering over me now.
“This sample is stable. I was worried we wouldn’t have anything to work with.”
“Wow,” he said. “I never even considered that as a possibility. Anything else that could go wrong today that I need to worry about?”
“Yes, plenty. But let’s not.”
I stepped around him, and he spun, still watching me and not doing much to get out of the way.
With the sample in hand, the next step was extracting a piece of the virus’s genetic material, isolating only what caused the immune response, and choosing a vector to carry it safely into the body.
I’d done this countless times. This was easy.
But with this virus, I had only managed to choose a singular vector capable of standing up to an active virus.
A modified adenovirus strain. Months and months of research and experimentation went into the little vial. I was practically holding my degree in my hand, my job, my life.
“What are you doing now?” Elias asked.
“Well,” I said, patting the machine. “This will help me extract a little piece of the virus. Then I put that in another virus that won’t kill you.”
“What’s the safer virus?”
“It’s something of my own creation, really,” I said. “I’ve worked on a lot of different viruses, and adenovirus is really great for this sort of vaccine, but a large portion of the country has had adenovirus, or at least some immunity to it from other vaccines and such. So I had to tweak it a bit.”
“You tweaked it?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions,” I pointed out.
“Obviously,” Elias said. “I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“So, I changed the DNA of the virus just enough that the body won’t recognize it as something they have immunity to and attack it. Now your body isn’t very smart, it just fires at will, making a bunch of little killer cells. Not to brag, but I’ve solved that problem with this strain.”
“Cassie,” he breathed. “Holy shit.”
“Well, I’ve been working with it, and I finally was able to stop Variant-13 from replicating in human cells. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. We don’t know if our immune system will be strong enough to destroy the virus.”
“That’s enough, Cassie. That’s definitely enough. Are you a genius? A sexy genius?” He asked, eyebrows raised.
“My elementary school teacher told me I was gifted,” I admitted.
“Gifted?” he repeated.
I nodded. “Gifted.”
Elias perched on a stool, watching me pace back and forth in the lab, hopping between machines. I was arched over the machinery, sweaty palms flat on the counter, waiting for the adenovirus and Variant-13 fragments to bind together.
“Where did you learn to do this?” He asked.
“Are you asking me where I went to college?”
“Maybe, I don’t know,” he admitted. “Just. . . all of this." He made a wide gesture with his arms.
“I did my undergrad at Michigan State, but I went to the University of Michigan for graduate school. I love them both, but U of M has more resources. Both are fantastic research schools, but Michigan is a lot more involved. They get more money, have better opportunities, you know. Then, after I graduated, I started working here.”
“I’m impressed, but I think I’d be impressed no matter what you said." Elias never went to college, I remembered. Straight into the Army. “Were you at the top of your class?”
“No,” I admitted. “I did well in graduate school, though. Undergrad was a different story, I was a bit of a degenerate and I had to spend an extra year working on getting my grades back up.”
“Oh, yeah?” The corner of Elias’s mouth twitched.
“Lansing was a lot different than where I grew up, so I went a bit wild. Smoked too much weed, spent my free time shaking my drunk ass at the bar. . . I indulged in the lifestyle a bit too much. I definitely paid for it though.”
Elias stared at me, a small grin on his face. “I would have loved to see that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you would have.” I paused, realizing that Elias had no idea how old I was. “I don’t know if you care, but I’m twenty-eight. I just had my birthday in September. I didn’t want you to think I was like co-ed age or something.”
“I can tell you’re a grown woman.” He laughed. “Happy belated, I guess. I hope you like your party.”
“I hate it actually, but I liked your gift. Well, gifts,” I teased.
He cocked his head, searching for the answers on my face. I watched as he realized. “Oh,” he said, swatting at the air. “No problem. I was happy just to watch your face as you unwrapped them.”
I winked, then moved the vial into the bioreactor, messing with the settings until I was happy.
“Now we wait for this to replicate, and we hope that it does so properly. Then we clean it up, and we’re done! That’s simplified of course, but that’s the gist.”
“And you thought you couldn’t do it, but here you are,” he said.
“I would still rather be in your bed,” I said, looking down.
He groaned. “You can’t say that shit when we are supposed to be working. I’m going to get distracted, thinking about you bent over this counter. See? There I go.”
“Apologies. I thought my dirty, ill-fitting clothes would be enough of a deterrent for you.”
“Definitely not,” he said. “First of all, they’re my clothes. I like seeing you in my clothes, and now you’re doing your hot scientist stuff. Add a lab coat and I’ll lose it.” He adjusted himself on the stool.
“Are you actually hard right now?” I asked, incredulous.
“A little.” Elias was not ashamed, just slightly uncomfortable.
“You’re insatiable,” I said, turning away, checking on the vaccine. “Also insane.”
“Only for you.” His voice came out a little deeper than I expected and it hit me in the gut.
I fanned myself, the room much hotter than it was a minute ago. I heard Elias stand and close the distance between us. Chin on my shoulder, arms around my waist, I melted into him. He kissed my cheek, pulling me further into his chest.
“What happened to your self control from the other night?” I asked.
“The problem is now I know what I’m missing.” His voice was soft, right in my ear. “How much time do we have?”
“A few minutes until it needs to be moved,” I breathed. Not long enough for what he wanted, but long enough for something, surely. It could be our last opportunity.
“Hmm,” he contemplated, kissing the top of my head. “Better not.” He exhaled, setting his chin back on my shoulder. “You know, my birthday is February 29th? In thirty years I’ve only had my birthday seven times.”
I chuckled, jarred by how quickly the conversation changed. “How unlucky is that?”
“Story of my life, Cassie. Story of my life.”
“So, when do you celebrate? The day before or the day after?” I asked.
“Normally the day before.”
After a beep, the machine stopped, and Elias let go of me, his hands lingering on my arms as he backed away. He sat back on the stool and watched me work. A few microliters of a stabilizer and the vial was ready for the centrifuge.
“After this, it goes into the incubator, then I’ll put it in some liquid nitrogen to transport it.”
“Just like that?” Elias asked.
“Yep,” I said, nodding.
Something scraped against the outside of the door.
Elias jumped up, gun raised, aiming at the sound.
The card reader beeped, and the door slid open to reveal an infected man with a machete.
His face had been stapled like it had been blown apart and stitched back together, and the features of his face were nearly destroyed.
His eyes were there, though they were a bloody mess, too.
He staggered forward, not nearly as fast as the others had been, but aware enough to look me right in the eye.
“Keep working, Cassie,” Elias said. He shot at the man, a few bullets toward his head. Instead of impact, they deflected around the room, like his head was made of steel.
“What the hell,” I said, panic panging my voice. We were almost done, almost free. I needed ten more minutes and then we could run away from here.
The mutant swung his machete at Elias’s head, but he ducked out of the way, and the weapon bounced off of one of the incubators, the last piece of equipment I needed. If we escaped, that is.
“Finish the vaccine and run, Cassia. No matter what happens that is your priority,” Elias ordered.
“I can’t let this thing kill you!” I argued as the brute marched forward.
“If you die, then we’ve done this for nothing.” Elias kicked the machete out of the man’s hand, and it went flying behind him. Unsure if he should shoot or not, Elias pulled out his own knife and stabbed it into the creature’s eye. “I’ll be fine,” he grunted, taking a few steps back.
The infected man was unfazed, still staggering toward Elias. Unwilling to let the brute any closer to me, Elias stood like a stone in his path, and sent a kick straight to the man’s chest, and he fell back to the floor.
It wasn’t until I saw his socks that I recognized who it was. He had worn striped socks everyday, and he reassured me that it was okay to have a little fun at work. Those were Dr. Fassi’s socks.
Someone had reassembled Dr. Fassi.
Elias leapt on top of Dr. Fassi, removed the knife from his eye, and stabbed him again, but it did not subdue him. He threw Elias backward, into the machinery on the counter, and it clattered to the floor.
Elias grabbed at his arm, but stood, moving toward Dr. Fassi once more, swinging his arm toward the side of his face. Elias cried out in pain, and Dr. Fassi took the opportunity to grab him by the throat and lift him up.
Struggling against his iron clad grip, Elias kicked at him, tried to pry his fingers off of his throat, but Dr. Fassi had grown too strong.
Dr. Fassi slammed Elias into the wall, and I looked on in horror as Elias’s head bounced off the painted brick.
Twice more he hit the wall, until he went limp in the Doctor’s hand.
Dr. Fassi was seemingly satisfied with this, and threw Elias over his shoulder.
“Dr. Fassi, don’t do this!” I yelled after him. He didn’t look back.
He was alive, I hoped. If Dr. Fassi had wanted to infect him, he could have so easily.
Instead, he knocked him out, right? He was just unconscious.
Maybe he’d torture him, or test on him, but he could stay alive, have a chance.
Maybe he was infecting him now, out of my view so I couldn’t stop him, and if that was the case, then he’d need a cure.
Something also told me that Dr. Fassi wasn’t making the decisions.
Elias had told me to finish the vaccine and run, but I had no intentions of running.