Operation 499

Chapter 2- What do you want?

As the drive continued, so did the silence.

"W-where are we going?" Ollie asked in a timid voice. He was still slightly scared of his father. Rightfully, so conserving he just threatened him.

Ollie was still scared to talk. So he sat there looking out his window. So far he recognized everything around them. He could tell they were going south of his house. That scared him even more knowing they weren't going to his house, even though he honestly never thought they were.

"Let's just say my current place of dwelling." His father responded.

Ollie looked out his window. The suburban areas he lived in were quickly changing to more rural areas. To his right was a potato field, edges dotted with trees. A few hundred meters from the field was a small barn-looking object.

He barely recognized where they were, but the names of some cross street sounded familiar. He had probably been down this road before, just not that often enough to remember it. Plus Ollie had a horrible sense of direction in his mind, especially out here in the rural areas, everything looks so similar.

Ollie and his mother lived in a small house towards the outskirts of town. He wasn't close enough to see the farms from his house, but about 2 minutes south you would easily be surrounded by farm fields.

He and his mother used to go on road trips a lot to the surrounding countrysides. They were just small one-day drives, but as a kid, he loved the sense of adventure.

About 2 hours passed in silence. His father said he would tell Ollie where they were going once he got in, but his father never did; Ollie never asked. He was focused on his breathing, trying not to freak out. 

He's my dad.  Ollie thought to himself. He won't want to hurt me. Right?  But Ollie still wasn't sure about this.

"Your awfully quiet you know." His dad responded breaking the silence as he looked over at Ollie.

Ollie hated being told this. He tried his best to talk to people, he just wasn't the best at it. But honestly who would be that talkative in this situation.

I just basically got kidnapped, What am I supposed to say? Ollie thought to himself. Usually after being told this Ollie tried to talk to the person and not seem weird. This time he just shrugs his shoulders in response.

A few minutes passed by. Ollie took a deep breath. I have to figure out what he wants with me and where hopefully we're going.

W-what do y-you want? Ollie asked in a really quiet voice. He didn't even try to sound confident. His voice broke the silence ending up sounding a lot louder than it was.

"You really want to know kid?" His father said with a sigh.

Ya" Ollie responded politely and quietly, but in his head, he was thinking "No, Duh! You owe me an explanation!"

His father took a deep sigh. "When you were a child,  a new vaccine came out. I worked for the company that tested the vaccine. The company was called Renaldas." His father said taking a pause.

"W-what does that have to do with me?" Ollie responded confused

"I was in charge of a study for the vaccine. The only thing was that this vaccine seemed sketchy. For starters, we got as little as research as necessary."

"Okay?" Ollie said slowly still confused how this he anything to do it's him.————————————————————————Flashback

"Boss" Ollies father (Tim) walked into an office the size of a small bedroom. To the right was a grey desk with little on besides computer paper and pencils. Straight ahead was an average-sized window with lots of space in front of it. Bookshelves lined the left side of the room. There weren't many books, so most of the bookshelves were pretty bare.

"Tim," A man standing in front of the window replied. The man was tall and had a very large frame. He was looking out the window at nothing in particular. His gaze seemed to hold sadness and regret.

"I think something went wrong with the information transfer," Tim said.

"On the vaccine." The boss said matter of factly like he already knew.

"Ya, that new vaccine," Tim said wanting a response.

"Don't worry about that. Just follow the simple instructions." His boss replied blankly.

"Oh, but you don't find that weird that they don't tell us about the previous studies and chemical information. I usually don't look at it too much...but."

"Just don't worry about it alright." Tom's boss responded a little too aggressively.

"Oh ok," Tom responded a little confused. ———————————————————————

" So I continued the study like normal." Ollie's father stated.

"The trial was fairly simple. Give the vaccine to a group of rats and study them. The results were, at least at first, normal. I thought it was a little weird. We didn't even do anything to them."Ollies father stated.

"You see usually we expose some of the rats to whatever type of virus the vaccine is supposed to protect against, but this time we just let them live an out there normal life. We didn't even know what the vaccine was for. " He continued on.

"So one night, I was alone...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tom was sitting at a wooden chair with three rat cages on the metal table sitting in front of him. To left was a bookshelf, although technically that's not what it was, that's what everyone called it. It was filled to the brim with rat cages, each with one singular rat labeled A-Z.

In front of Tim was his laptop and notes. They were pretty boring,  filled with standard facts and info needed for most trails: feeding information, temperatures,  exercise, etc. Tom and his crew had found nothing wrong with the vaccine so far. No abnormal behavior or sicknesses. Which was good and want they wanted. It was just a little weird. Usually, they at least had to fix something about the vaccine.

Tom was sitting in his chair scrolling on his phone. He knew he wasn't supposed to technically have it out at work, but he was extremely bored. He had written up all the reports on the rats from the previous day and fed them dinner. He had nothing work-related to do and no one to talk to. 

A few minutes passed by. All of a sudden he heard a squeak then another and another. It was like the rats were trying to talk to each other. The squeaking continues to increase and get louder.

Tom sat in shock for a few seconds before pulling himself out of a daze to pull out his laptop and start taking notes. He had never seen anything like this before. The strangest thing that had happened at this job was the unexplained disappearance of a rat on the last vaccine he was testing. But that was easily explained: he probably just ran away. This had no explanation and was extremely bizarre.

The squeaking had gotten to a point where Tom could barely stand the noise. He pulled out his phone and to called his boss.

Before he could call, the room went silent. Not even one squeak. That's odd. Tom thought.He got up and walked over to the shelf of rats. They looked dead. Tom unlocked and slide open one of the doors to the cage. He slipped his hand in to check the rat's pulse. It was still there. So did they all just faint?