They Call Me Daring

Chapter 31

The wind whipped through my hair, seemingly for hours on end. I sat on the rood of the lookout shack, forty feet up from the street. My legs were crossed, and my eyes were closed, my arms resting on my knees, as I inhaled deeply, then exhaled, feeling the sunrise all around me, glowing on my skin and driving away the shadows.
And entire night of meditation... and nothing. I had thought for hours on end, exposed up in the cold night air, the wind, the moon on my skin. Why was my hair growing back to brown? Why had my eyes turned green?
I had come up with hundreds- thousands, of possible reasons. To name a few:

a) I had driven the creature from my mind... somehow...
b) I had drank or eaten something with a chemical that killed the virus
c) The disease was temporary, and I had gotten by long enough so that it began to burn itself out... why?
d) None of the above

I opened my eyes to the sunrise, watching the last of the night vanish behind the horizon. Maybe I would never know the reason... but I had to. Otherwise, how would I save everyone else?
They thought I was some sort of miracle, because I'd somehow lived... I guess it had been eight days, in all... I'd survived this far, and now I was turning human again.
That is, on the outside.
I hated the fact that I was fighting against my own mind. But it wasn't my mind... which was even worse. Some pathogen, bacteria, a tiny nano-virus, it was poking around in my brain, trying to erase who I was and replace it with something else entirely....
"Oh my God." I said aloud to the morning, as it fully hit me. I was such a freaking genius. I launched myself off the shack, remembered I was on the roof- too late, I was already flying through the air to the ground. I closed my eyes and let my defenses relax, the wind screaming in my ears.
When I opened my eyes, I knew exactly what to do, and executed it seamlessly. Let my knees bend to take away the impact at exactly the correct velocity and speed so I didn't ram my knees into the ground... tucked and rolled over one shoulder, multiple times the height had been so much, folding my arms in so I didn't injure myself.
Rolled up to my feet and then I was running. There was no time to even think about it; my feet flew over the ground, the tread of my shoes grabbing the ground and pulling me forward as I sprinted, faster than humanly possible, faster than ever before, the wind grabbing at my clothes, slapping me in the face- and then I was at the lab. Burst in the door. Up the stairs.
The Doc was hunched over a desk, his back turned to me. I hurtled over desks and exercise equipment in the space of a heartbeat, bouncing lightly next to him.
"Doc!" I shook him awake, and he cracked open his eyes. There were age lines on his face that were evident in the rising light from the window wall, and purple bags under his eyes. He looked ancient.
"Liam... what?" He grunted, blinking himself awake.
"The brain. It's the brain. That's what it is." I said in one breath.
"Wha... you're not making any sense-"
"Just trust me." I said with absolute certainty. "Trust me. I know how to kill them all at once... and how to heal myself."