Virulent

Chapter 11: Truth

LOG: 2

DATE: 24 December 2098

TIME: 10:23 AM

LOCATION: Army/Gov Research Laboratory. (No idea where.)

Dr. Ezra Mayur, Microbiologist & Epidemiologist. Expertise: Designer Pathogens. (I wish I wasn't)

Dad's birthday was two days ago. I've never missed it. Until now. And what a terrible way to miss it. He probably thinks I'm dead, and he won't stop until he finds my body. But here I am, alive and healthy. Maybe I'm closer to them than I think. What if this facility is close to home? An hour out? Under some obscure building? A ruin? What if it's in some basement? Sometimes, I feel like I hear the faint sound of trains above us. Sometimes I feel like I hear the city sounds. Other days, I feel like I can hear the thunder ripping the sky amidst mind-numbing silence, where there is nothing around us for miles – like today. The skylight, my only window to the world, feels small now. Small and so far away. I wish I had a ladder long enough to get up there and pop my head out. Get a lung full of fresh air other than this stale circulated air that carries with it the faint odor of men's sweat.

Ezra paused for a moment, eyeing the door to her room, her brows furrowed. Men. That's all she'd seen since the two months she'd been there. Men. Were there any women on this base? Maybe out of sight? Was the bunker attached to other bunkers in what looked like a futuristic, underground city, through tunnels, and they housed her in the men-only side? Were there any women out there nearby? Or was she purposefully isolated? More women would mean she didn't feel so alone, so alone and ready—desperate to do anything they asked of her for that tiny chance she'd see the world again? More women would mean more distraction for the testosterone-high, bulked-up men. What did they do? Spend hours in some gym, bulking up for hand-to-hand combat in the future?

To protect their ungodly project! She doubted any woman in her right mind would volunteer to come aboard such a project, no matter how its name made it sound like it was a saviour: Project Rescue. A devil in an angel's disguise. No woman would do it. Agree to be part of mass genocide, would they?

Am I the only woman here? She wracked her brain, trying to remember if, in all her weeks there, she'd spotted anyone remotely feminine, not that she expected army folks to look at all like the females she was used to. But if she could find a kindred spirit, another disturbed soul, maybe she'd find a way to warn the world, get a message out there, ahead of calamity. For she could see it now. There was no stopping this. Delay it, yes. A year, five years, ten, but in the end, one government or another would have to take drastic action or condemn the whole of humanity to terror and anarchy they can no longer contain, no longer return to order from. People, even good people, would kill to feed themselves and their families. Anarchy was only a few more mouths to feed away. In that way, Watergate was right. Something had to be done before civilisation collapsed beyond repair and the only way forward would be what you'd do with a pest out of control. Cull.

She saw it now. Even if she didn't want to and that familiar nausea she'd felt while writing her hypothetical paper came bubbling to the surface. A knock on the heavy, vault-like door interrupted it. If only there was a lock inside. Guess they didn't trust her enough to give her that level of privacy.

"Dr Mayur?"

"A minute please!" Ezra startled, scrambling off the bed, trying to figure out where she could hide the laptop.

Think, Ezzie, think. Where can I stash the laptop?

When another knock sounded, Ezra did the only thing she could. She threw it under the unkempt bed and hoped its many folds would camouflage that there was anything hidden underneath it.