BARGHEST

Chapter One: The Summoner

Joseph Zapata is two centimeters from biting into the dry, grayish chicken on his plate when the man next to him suddenly starts wheezing and coughing up blood.

"Rich? Dude, you good?" Patrick, one of the younger inmates asks in a warbled voice. He's still chewing on the lump of food he'd been working on for a minute, his expression vacant. His eyes blaze when he sees the spatter of blood on Richard's baggy uniform. The old man lets loose a wheeze that racks his whole body, his frail shoulders shaking with the violence of the coughing fit.  Joseph drops the piece of chicken before reaching over to catch Richard's head as it collides with the table.

"What the fuck!" Patrick gasps wetly. His chest trembles, his pale face going bright carmine before a coughing fit overtakes him. He heaves, then promptly ejects a clot of blood onto his tray where the unseasoned chicken had once lain. All around the cafeteria, hacking fits and grating breaths fill the air along with the confused cries of inmates still standing. Joseph looks down at his food, a sickness rising in his stomach.

It can't be. He wouldn't.

Surely, Dr. Taft would realize the global consequences of unleashing that into even a small section of the wilderness. Joseph springs back from his tray, scattering the food across the floor. His body already knows the answer, can picture Dr. Taft's face as clearly as if he'd been in the lab with him yesterday.

"Our sedatives aren't cutting it anymore, Dr. Zapata," the old man said angrily, leveling a glare at Thirty-Seven struggling in his straps on the exam table. "We need something stronger, something that can knock them down for a few days, even."

"Sir, I do not think we can ethically make something like that. Sedating the body with something that can have lasting effects for days... I don't know how to control that kind of dosage enough to not kill them." Joseph watched as some of the other doctors buzzed around Thirty-Seven, another dosage of sedative in hand. The specimen's veins bulged against his bluing skin, his eyes bloodshot and wild. He looked like a corpse, but perhaps that's what Dr. Taft had wanted all along.

"Don't speak to me about ethics, Joseph," the old doctor hissed, sending a pointed look to the skin sample and scalpel in Dr. Zapata's hand. The man shuddered. "If you won't make me something stronger, I'll just get someone else to do it. There are plenty around here who don't have hang ups about harming an experiment."

"Don't eat the food!" Joseph screams, knocking the remaining trays off the table completely. "Absolutely don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth either!" Beside him, another man coughs up a mouthful of blood, spattering Joseph's navy coveralls. Inmates are scrambling at the steel doors, shouting at guards who are equally confused to get them out.

Tables clatter as men scramble to clear away from the shuddering bodies of the poisoned inmates. Joseph staggers backward, his shoulders contacting with the cold brick wall. His eyes are wild as he watches the skin slowly start to cave in on the fallen men, blood leaking from their sunken orifices. The coughing fits are violent, and some are so brutal Joseph can hear the cracking of ribs. It's like their skeletons are made of powder the way their frames crumble in on themselves like soda cans. Their skin is gossamer and the blood is everywhere. He sees the faces of the mice so clearly now, the way their fur disintegrated and fell away to gaping wounds. He sees the unlucky specimens who met the same fate, the way their deterioration was slow and agonizing due to their healing factor.

"The rat tests for the new sedative were unsuccessful, just so you know, Joseph," Dr. Taft said in passing one day, the shadow of a grin on this thin lips. "But through it I found something better. Do you recall the story of diseased bodies being thrown into rivers, leading to the black plague? Biological warfare, my boy. It's all the rage nowadays."