I sat back as the room filled into its groups, the suspected immuno-group on the right and the volatile group on the left. I made preparations for the gas to be administered into the room, Colonel Blackwood cleared his throat.
"May I do the honors, Doctor Taylor?" Blackwood asked, smiling as he sat up.
I thought for a moment, "May I ask why?" I turned my body towards him.
"Same reason I enlisted, to have someone's life in your hand is exhilarating. To be a button or a trigger pull away from being their personal reaper, well I'm sure I don't have to explain the rush to you, Doctor," Colonel Blackwood seemed genuinely excited, maybe this is why he was my new guard.
"By all means, have at it," I smiled standing up, and trading seats with The Colonel. I quickly pressed the intercom button closest to me, "Ladies and gentlemen, the test will now commence."
I took my hand off the intercom button, I didn't bother taking questions this time like all the previous tests. I knew the questions that would be asked, I knew the lies I would tell, but I was exhausted. I watched as the Colonel administered the chemical agent into the room, starting a stop watch I had pulled from my lab coat.
The next few seconds dragged on, the ticking on my stopwatch was maddening. I watched as the subjects looked around confused, the 10 second mark hit and I watched the gas masks eagerly as they began to melt well into the 15 second mark. More ticks followed, it clicked and clicked until the 25 second mark. Subjects began removing their gas masks, but nothing happened. That was impossible, this shouldn't be possible. I looked through the files, frantic, as I confirmed that half of them should be unimmune.
"End the test." I commanded, using whatever authority I had.
Colonel Blackwood opened the chamber and directed all of the subjects into the room, then sucked the room of all of its oxygen. He began the decontamination process, I sat back down in my chair and took deep breaths. My hands had started to shake as I put my stopwatch away, the room fell silent.
"What happened?" Blackwood asked, sitting back as well.
"I don't know, the gas should've killed them. But it didn't, I don't understand what happened this time," I stared at the files. "Maybe too many people, the gas may have been spread too thin. Get the subjects to the medical bay and let's up the dose for the next group of subjects." I said, calming my nerves.
"Up the dose? This kills the bloodstream! It stops the heart by piercing it with dry blood, and it failed spectacularly!" Ward shouted. "When do you stop to count the bodies, to step back and take the toll of this experiment!"
As Ward shouted the alarm blared in my ears, I shot up straight and ran to the decontamination room. One of the subjects from the non-immune group had dropped to the floor and started seizing. Blood crystals had ripped his flesh apart, the other subjects clung to the wall as I watched more flesh tear open.
"Do we open up the room and save them, Dr. Taylor," Blackwood called from behind me. "The glass will hold but can we watch all those people die, hell, can you?"
I watched through the glass panel doors as his seizures stopped, blood crystals grew more as the subject stood up slowly. The sounds of glass rubbing together and breaking echoed out in the air, the sounds of dread hung low as I stepped away from the door. The subject turned to an immune subject and lunged, biting his arm and pulling off flesh. The scream that was howled out was inhuman, it almost bursted my eardrums as another non-immune subject fell to the floor and seized as well.
A smile came to my face, instinctively, as the scene unfolded. I was right and my tests could continue, maybe with some tweaks to see if full immunity could be gained through microdoses. My satisfaction was cut short as Ward ran out and commanded guards to come over and save the survivors, Blackwood watched idly waiting for my protest.
"Dr.Taylor, should I stop Captain Ward?" He bended down to whisper.
"No, I need the bite victim alive though. He needs to be studied," I responded. "And the other non-immune subjects, I need to see how the virus differs in their blood."
"You heard the man Ward, save everyone but the two who are already dying," Blackwood called out, straightening his stance.
"Sir, yes sir." Ward answered through gritted teeth.
The moment the keycard was swiped the survivors of the exchange ran out, the small force of ten guards restrained them. Ward aimed his gun at the infected and shot once through its head, following it to the ground as it thrashed around violently. His gun turned to the subject seizing and fired once again, the seizures continued but quickly stopped.
"Save the corpse of the infected, burn the other," I said, looking at the crystallized corpse.
"We should keep the next one alive, see how it reacts to certain stimuli Doctor," Blackwood replied, moving towards Ward. "Better way to experiment."
"We'll have our chance, take the subjects to the isolation tanks. Take our immune friends, and the bite victim to the medical bay," I said, holding my hands behind my back.
"Jeremiah, stop this! Look around, you could've killed these people!" Ward shouted at me, in harsh tones, in my face.
I heard a gun's slide pull back to hear a click as a round loaded into the chamber of a 1911, "Captain Ward, step back from The Doctor," Blackwood said, gun removed from its holster.
"You gonna shoot me, War? You gonna put a round between my eyes?" Ward got in Blackwood's face next.
Blackwood smiled, his grin was malevolent as he put his gun to Ward's head. The barrel was pressed right to his temple, Blackwood spoke with no uncertainty, "You know they pulled me from the frontlines to be here Ward? I chose to be here to discover something that can save our troops from more unnecessary deaths. This isn't a Cold War, it's a global crisis, now step away or I will execute you in this country's name."
Ward's resolve was thoroughly challenged, and as I expected he backed down. Ward walked away, quickly, his shoes drumming on the tiled floor. Blackwood took the magazine out of his gun and pulled the slide back popping the round out and catching it, he slid the round back in its magazine and reloaded the gun.
"Good job, maybe we can finally be unhindered in my-" I turned and looked at Blackwood. "No," I chuckled a bit at the thought of sharing paper credit with a Colonel, "Our experiments."
I led Blackwood to the medical bay, the immune subjects sat near Julie talking about the 'Faults' in my testing. The bite victim had sweat beading down his forehead, as the blood in the initial bite wound had crystallized. Could it be that the immuno response shown to the gas didn't work on human bites? If so then the weapon could be considered a full blown success, I just needed to change the method of delivery. Doing that could require dosage or even concentration changes, but it would be worth it if I could possibly infect everyone. I could potentially make the gas less dangerous to gas mask users, and directly infect the blood stream with bullets or even bite. There was too much speculation, I wouldn't know until I investigated further, and that's where my focus needed to be.
I stepped up to the bite victim and smiled, "Hello, I'm Dr. Taylor, may I look at your arm?"