7. 7
More mindful of my mood when Elias’s watch woke us up the next day, I turned to him with a smile on my face. “Wow! I’m so excited to start the day!”
Elias’s hand came between us and his index finger poked me in the center of my forehead. “You’re a menace.” He smiled when he said it, unable to ignore my comedic genius.
“You love that about me,” I said, giving him a quick kiss.
“Maybe.” Love. That word again. I never could escape it, but I never could come outright and say it either. Just the possibility that he might love something about me made my heart stutter, and I changed the subject before I could dwell on it.
I rolled to my back, stretching out. “I’m going to go to the lab today and look at everything I can under the microscope,” I said. “Are you gonna watch?”
“Do you think that will be okay?”
“I don’t see why not,” I mused. “No one was there when Dr. Novikov showed me around.”
Elias laid his head on my shoulder, snuggling into me again. His voice was muffled when he spoke. “That’s not too surprising, there are two other labs that I found, and they seemed to be quite busy.”
“Do you think that the virus that no one wants to touch gets its own lab?” I wondered.
He took a deep breath, exhaling into a sigh. “Probably.”
“I’m going to shower and then get to work, then. You wanna come with?” I asked.
He shook his head against me. “Do I want to come with you in our shower? Yes. Do I want to come with you in that shower? No.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“I guess,” he murmured. “But I found a treadmill yesterday so I’m gonna go spend some time with it.”
“It’s our first vacation and you’re ditching me?”
He groaned, placing kisses from my shoulder to my neck. “Please stop referring to this as our first vacation. I promise as soon as we leave here I’ll take you anywhere you want to go if you stop.”
“Relax,” I said, crawling over him to get out of bed. He was hesitant to let me go. “I’ll stop pointing out that this is our first vacation.”
Elias was less than pleased with my response, but got out of bed with me, and we went our separate ways. I was sure he’d eventually cart me off to whatever room housed the weights and treadmill, but for now, it was time for me to get to work.
As I expected, the lab was empty, and I wasted no time. Grabbing a pair of gloves out of the box on the counter, I explored the small space, grabbing slides, pipettes, anything I thought I might need. I cleared off a small section of the metal counter, and organized my supplies in neat rows.
This was where I was meant to be, and I felt myself relaxing as I settled into a routine I was familiar with. Even in a strange place, this was where I was comfortable.
I skipped over to the storage freezer and removed a tray of samples, as well as various chemicals and compounds that I could mess around with. Preparing a few slides with the virus, I took one and set it on the microscope and had a look.
While similar to the photo I was given, this sample of the virus looked more advanced in a way.
I assumed I was looking at NT02 in a rat’s cell.
I wasn’t certain about the host, but I was positive that this sample had been given more time to mutate before it was stored.
The cell membrane didn’t resemble that of a mammal at all anymore, instead, it reminded me of what I’d seen in the metallurgy class I had taken in undergrad.
If not labeled, and if I hadn’t seen the photo evidence of what the virus could accomplish, I would be unconvinced that this was real.
But it was.
I set it to the side and started to play mixologist. Trying everything, I added a different reagent to each slide I’d prepared, sometimes combining multiple just to see what would happen.
It was seeming impossible, slide after slide, whatever compound was introduced merely surrounded the infected cells, unable to penetrate that metallic wall.
If all I needed to do was break through metal, I could use fire, or some sort of acid to break it down, but it wasn’t realistic to inject a person with hydrofluoric acid as a vaccine.
Now, if someone was already infected and feral, it might be possible to use a corrosive to kill them, but it wouldn’t be a viable solution for a cure.
Stepping away from the microscope, I began to dig around the room looking for acids, particularly volatile ones.
The metal shelving in the room housed all sorts of materials, and they had both English and Russian labels on them, so I was able to successfully locate one.
Hydrochloric acid would be as good a place to start as any.
I sat back down, sucking up a few microliters of the acid with a pipette, and added it directly to the slide as I watched through the eyepiece.
The virus’s wall faltered, and its innards spilled out, slowly dissolving in the acid.
It seemed rudimentary, that a metal would act like a metal, but if the acid did nothing, then I would’ve had much bigger problems. I was not prepared to discover a new impenetrable element, so the fact that it was weakened by the acid was a great comfort.
The door swung open behind me, and a pair of feet stopped as their owner spotted me. “I am sorry. I only come to grab supplies.” His accent was thick.
“It’s okay,” I said, waving him in. “I’m just messing around.”
“Messing?” He asked. He was a meager looking man, short, dark hair, and a chubby face.
“I’m not getting much work done,” I clarified.
He walked to a metal shelf near the wall and pulled a box down, digging through it until he found what he needed.
“Does no one else work in this lab?” I asked.
“No, we only come here to take things.” He held up a box of extra large gloves, walking toward me. “One of the doctors has very big hands.”
I let out a small laugh. “I’m Cassie. What’s your name?”
“Misha,” he said, extending a hand before thinking twice about it. “I do not wish to shake your hands while you work with that.”
Context clues were enough to know the answer to the question I was going to ask before I asked it, but I felt compelled to do so anyway. “No one else is working on this virus, are they?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That is why you are here. They say you have done it before.”
“The vaccine I made was for a virus way less complex than this,” I said. “I can barely understand what I’m looking at, here.”
“What about your friend?”
“Elias?” I cackled. “He can’t help me with this. He’s the muscles of the operation.” By no means was Elias an idiot, but I couldn’t exactly say who he was. It was best to play up the bodyguard role of his.
“We all assumed he was some sort of American Spy. Is he not a spy?” Misha asked. Every conversation I’d had so far with strangers consisted entirely of the two of us extracting as much information from each other as possible without being overtly rude. This was rather forward, but understandable.
“He’s only here to make sure I don’t die,” I lied. He was here to spy, too, but his personal objective was my safety, at least.
“We are not going to kill you.”
“If this virus were to infect one of you, you definitely would try to kill me,” I argued.
“One of the doctors is ill. You think she will kill us?” Misha’s eyes widened.
I jumped up, nearly knocking off the samples from the counter. “What did you just say?” I asked, nearly shouting at the poor man.
Like he had a “Cassie’s Heartrate Alarm,” Elias swung open the door, not in a panic, but more forceful than he might have opened it if he hadn’t heard me yell. “What’s going on?” He asked, hand twitching toward his weapon.
“Repeat what you just said, Misha,” I ordered.
“One of the doctors is ill. She is in quarantine," he repeated.
It was Elias’s turn to shout. “What did you just say?”
“Do not make me say it a third time,” Misha said. “Tell me what will happen to her.”
“We don’t know what will happen to her, that’s the problem, but it’s not going to be good, I can tell you that.”
“Can you take us to her?” Elias asked.
Misha glanced toward the door. “Dr. Novikov has not mentioned this to you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “When did this happen?”
“I regret speaking,” said Misha. He backed away from me, turning toward Elias who was still near the only entrance to the room. Elias didn’t put a hand on him, didn’t move to stop him, and Misha maneuvered through the small space and out the door.
Elias and I stared at each other in awe as Misha squeaked out of the room after dropping a bomb on us.
“What the fuck?” I said, throwing my hands into the air. I ripped off my gloves and tossed them into a nearby trashcan. “What the actual fuck? Is this a joke?”
I could tell by his face that Eli was gone. He wore no expression now, the wheels turning in his head. The only man left in the room was the Special Agent.
“I’m going to track down Dr. Novikov. Go to our room and get a gun. Don’t leave the room without one ever again,” he directed.
“Elias.” My voice was firm but hushed. “You know that we can’t shoot them. They’re like Dr. Fassi. It will just bounce off.”
“We find the soft tissue that’s left and exploit it, end of story,” he said. “While you’re at it, grab the knife, too. It’s not on me.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, my anxieties from the previous day showing themselves to be true. “What did you bring?”
“Just two pistols. Beretta is on me, Glock is in the room,” he said, making a face. “Why does that matter? Go get it.”
I took a step closer so no one else could hear us. Evidently, more than just Dr. Novikov could speak English. “I don’t think a 9mm is going to cut it.”
He leaned back, turning his head upward to face the ceiling. He exhaled sharply before looking back down at me. “Oh, I’m sorry, Cassia, I didn’t think a body guard would be toting a Deagle. That’s my bad for trying to be inconspicuous.”