33
Staropramenná 2, Prague, Czech Republic
November 29
Eva and Pyotr rushed back into the room, and saw a refrigerated locker, off to the side… a desperate face calling out to them from a narrow window at the side. They ran to him, started pulling the door handle, but were stopped by a fierce slam against the glass.
“No!” shouted the man inside, his cheeks hollow, lips blue. “Please, no. It’s airborne. I need a mask first. Please tell me you have one.”
Eva looked to Pyotr, who shook his head.
“We only got two,” he said weakly.
The man inside pressed his forehead against the glass, seemed to be weeping. His fist pounded the glass again, thin and wretched. Eva grabbed the projector arm from Pyotr, nodded.
“Go back to the storeroom and get another,” she said.
“What?” Pyotr gasped. “Eva, even running that’s going to take me at least ten minutes! And whatever did that—” he motioned to the shredded bodies, “might come back and find you!”
Eva swung the projector arm back and forth lightly, smirked.
“I’ll manage.”
“Eva, please… this is insane.”
Eva pointed at the carnage of the room angrily.
“No, that is insane. This here, this is me putting some sanity back into the world. Go get the mask. I’ll be fine.”
Pyotr shook his head at her, but took off into a sprint. She waited until she couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore, then turned back to the man in the refrigerator. He had tears in his eyes, was choking back sobs.
“Thank you,” he said loudly, his voice barely passing through the thickness of the door. “I… I don’t know how long I’ve been in here. I’m so hungry, I can’t even…”
He trailed off, disappeared from view. Eva leaned closer to the glass, tried to see in.
“Hey! What happened here? How did this happen?”
The man appeared back at the window, looking away from Eva, trembling.
“We made it,” he whimpered. “We all made it, and it killed us.”
“Made what? Who’s ‘us’?”
“The xFacto team,” he said, with an odd mixture of sorrow and pride.
Eva’s mouth dropped open beneath her mask.
“Wait, you’re a virus crew? The same one that made the Pardubice smallpox?”
He nodded.
“Yes, but that was a mistake. We don’t target Czechs.”
“You… what?”
“We… we’re the only ones standing between Russia and the complete genocide of the Czech race.”
The words were thick with self-important propaganda, and it made her sick. Eva put a gloved hand to her forehead, turned around.
“This is all you? These people, that girl next door… you made a virus that… that…”
“It breaks down the wall between reality and paranoia,” he said, proud. “It makes you see things your subconscious dreads. It’s like a living nightmare you can’t wake up from.”
Eva slammed an angry hand against the glass, and the man recoiled back.
“What kind of idiots are you?”
“We were trying to keep the Russians at bay! If they’re tearing themselves apart, they’d have to leave us alone! It would save us all!”
“Yeah, until one of them finds out it was you, and launches a counter-attack into Prague!”
“We wouldn’t let that happen!” he boomed defiantly, then collapsed out of view again, and she heard sobbing. She sat at the other side of the door, her back to the cold steel, watching the entrance where Pyotr had left.
There was a faint thump from inside the locker.
“It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” he cried. “It wasn’t made to be airborne.”
Eva frowned, looked up at the window. The man was staring out at the room, hand dragging down the glass slowly.
“The vector was going to be a hospital in St Petersburg. Untraceable, but direct. Aerosolizing it was never part of the plan. It’s too messy that way.”
“So what, you built it wrong?”
“No,” he sobbed. “There’s no way. Our incubator was broken, didn’t have the aerosol option in the first place. Believe me, we tried to use it. If it’s airborne, it was someone else, like that woman.”
“What woman?” Eva asked, getting to her feet quickly and leaning into the door.
“She came here… two days before Siman showed symptoms. She must have done something… modified the code.”
“What was her name?” Eva asked urgently.
“I don’t know. Some doctor. I don’t know how she knew about us. Kept saying she was looking for Dr Krejci.”
“Where is he? Dr Krejci, where is he now?”
“He died in the Battinger’s outbreak, before we claimed the building. Did… did you know him?”
“Used to,” Eva sighed, distant.
“He was a great man. Taught me everything I know. I mean, to a point. I don’t know how he’d feel about… you know… all this…”
Eva said nothing.
“We put a little tribute to him in all our viruses. A quote, buried with our name: ‘And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.’ He… he used to write it on the blackboard at the start of each semester.”
Eva pressed her forehead against the door, felt her temples surge with pain.
“That woman, the doctor… what did you do to her?”
“Do? Nothing! Rayna was looking to infect her with something, but she took off before we could. Probably because she’d hacked our code and didn’t want to be near when things went wrong.”
Eva looked through the window, narrow eyes furious above her mask.
“I wish to god I hadn’t sent Pyotr off to save your life,” she seethed.
“You don’t know me,” he said, eyes darting down to see if the door was opening. “You don’t have the right to judge me.”
Eva controlled her breathing, kept quiet.
“Once I get out of here,” he seethed. “I’m going to find that fucking bitch and dose her with everything we ever made. She’ll die so many ways at once they’ll never know what got her.”
Eva met his eyes, dead and empty.
She unlocked the door with a hiss.
“No!” screamed the man, trying desperately to pull it closed again, but Eva yanked harder, swinging it all the way out until he collapsed on the ground, covering his mouth with too-thin hands.
“Go on, hold your breath,” she growled. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
He flailed about, trying to avoid the air, but it was no use. He dropped to his hands and knees, squeezing his face up, trying so hard… He reached a frail hand towards her, trying to grab her shin, but she kicked it away. It was too much, and he gasped a long, slow breath, and broke into tears, bowing his head against the floor.
Eva watched him, cold eyes blazing, without a word.
Then he started to laugh. He slammed a fist against the ground, staggered to his feet.
“Fine,” he spat. “Fine, whatever. You got me. Good for you. But I’ve got at least twelve hours before I’m symptomatic, and that’s plenty of time to find you and slice you all to pieces.”
Eva cocked her head, then took a swing at his left knee with the metal piping. She heard a soft crack, and he collapsed sideways, back onto the floor, screaming madly, clutching his leg as it bent the wrong way. Eva nodded to him.
“Good luck with that.”
He roared, flipped to his stomach, buried his face in his hand, panting.
“You’re fucking dead!” he cried.
“No,” she said coldly. “You’re dead. You and your xFacto buddies. You all die here. That’s the end of it. I’ve had enough of this shit from you people, you and your kind. Your nightmare virus won’t ever see the light of day, do you hear me?”
He looked up at her with wet, terrible eyes, half-laughing, half-crying.
“It’s too late for that,” he cackled. “The buyer’s already got the package. It’s on its way to be deployed right now.”
“What?”
“Hell, it might be out there already.”
Eva held the projector arm up like a bat, threatening, adjusting her stance to dominate him. He didn’t seem to notice; he rolled himself onto his back, staring at the ceiling, laughing at nothing.
“Who is the buyer?” she demanded.
“Fuck you.”
She swung the bar down onto his shoulder, cracking bone, and he screamed, kept laughing.
“Who is the buyer?” she yelled.
“Fine… fine, whatever…” he cried. “Have it your way. You’ll never find him. He’s probably—”
But before he could say another word, a huge menacing form leapt down onto him, shoving a blood-dried hand around his neck and slamming it down onto the ground so suddenly it snapped, killing him instantly. Eva backed up quickly, weapon at the ready, as the monstrous man tore his victim’s eyes out, squeezing them into his pocket, then stroking the savaged face gently.
“Shh…” he said softly. “Quiet, I found them. They’re safe now.”
His face had a heavy beard, marked with dark red scratches along his cheeks, down his neck, and all over his bare torso. His cargo pants were so thick with dried blood they were almost black, and his bare feet were scarred with scabs and open wounds from all the broken glass around the building.
“What?” he said suddenly, to the air around him. “Again? Where?”
He looked down at the body below him, traced a careful line down the shoulder, to the left arm, and stopped at the elbow.
“No, that won’t do,” he mumbled, then pulled a worn scalpel from his back pocket. Eva moved back even further, edging towards the door.
“This won’t take a minute,” he said, jabbing at the arm wildly with the scalpel, and then began screaming as if he were the one being attacked. Eva was nearly at the door, eyes never leaving the scene, when her heel cracked a bit of glass.
The monster looked up at her suddenly, eyes wide.
She made no move.
“Yes,” he said to the air, but looking straight at her. “Yes, she has ants in her too.”
Eva stumbled further back, ready to fight. He made no move to follow her, just stared.
“Just stay back,” she warned. “Stay there and everything will be fine.”
His eyes shifted slightly, and it was clear he now saw her fully.
“I’ll get the ants out, and she’ll feel better,” he said, then bounded towards her like a demonic gorilla, screaming as he made the final approach. It was so terrifying, Eva nearly missed her chance: she swung at him, hitting his shoulder instead of his head, sending him back onto the ground, and sending her to her knees from the momentum. Her wrist burned angrily, and she lost her grip with that hand.
The monster quickly skittered to his feet and ran at her again, and she took off towards the door, slipping on the glass on the floor, and only just reaching it before he grabbed at her heel. He pulled, and she flipped over onto her back, dropping the projector arm. He yanked her back in one, two, three painful lurches. She tried to kick him off, but he was just too strong.
He straddled her, eyes utterly mad, and licked his lips.
“Those ants must go,” he said serenely, and reached back a bloodied hand.
Then his chest popped open. Once, twice, and the third time he collapsed backwards into the glass, and Eva covered her ears, ringing from the boom of the gunshots. She rolled to her chest, looked back, and there at the door was Pyotr, smoking pistol in his trembling hand.
“I guess you don’t need the mask after all, huh?” he asked.