Paragon

Chapter 7:

The next day I woke up with a terrible headache. I told the others that I couldn't go with them, secretly relieved. I sat on my bed, watching the city outside. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in." I called.

Delta entered.

"Why aren't you with your team?" He asked.

"Feel sick." I replied. "Think I've got the flu or something."

He sat down on a chair beside the door. "You've never been sick in all the time I've known you."

"I get headaches." I said after a moment.

"You've never told me."

"I thought that they'd go away. I've had them ever since I was injected with the serum."

Delta frowned. "Do the others get them?"

I shook my head. "Never. Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"Is the Silver Jackal good?"

He shrugged. "Depends on what you mean by good."

"I mean, does he have our best interests at heart?"

"How should I know?" He snapped. "And why do you care?"

"The thing is, I think it did something to my serum. It told me it injected 4% of Lazarus Serum into me."

Delta got to his feet and crossed over to the bed. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "It told me."

He turned away. "Why would it do that? It knows the serum isn't ready."

"What is Lazarus Serum?"

"We don't know." He went over to the minibar and took out a small container of alcohol. "That's the point. We think we do, but not really."

"Delta, tell me."

"Before I came to Theta Sigma..." He paused. "My wife and I were researchers looking for the cause of an outbreak in a little town in the Alps."

"You found the body of the superhuman." I replied quietly. "Homo Ultimus."

He gave me a strange look. "How do you know about that?"

"I don't know. I heard it somewhere. But anyway, continue."

"We were there to create a cure for the outbreak." He said. "But while we were studying it, we discovered something strange. The disease caused bodies not to decay. In fact, after seventy-two hours, the bodies would begin to repair themselves. In ninety-six, the dead could be brought back."

"That's...impossible."

He nodded. "That's what my wife and I thought. But the more we studied it, the more we became certain. Finally we went up into the mountains and tracked the source of the disease to the water source of the village. Frozen at the bottom of the pool we found the body of Homo Ultimus. Somehow he'd gotten a cut on his arm, probably from a rock that fell into the pool. His blood was the contaminant causing the people to sicken. We told the Prime Order we were creating a cure, but in fact we were studying its effects. Finally, after nearly two years of work, we decided that we needed a new testing facility. We poisoned the water of another nearby town with it. Several hundred people, that was all. The idea was that the people would die, then come back."

"Did it work?"

"Perfectly. But we didn't realize what would happen after." He took a drink. "People aren't meant to come back like that. It completely shattered their minds. Made them hyper aggressive. And the change isn't permanent, either. After two days they died and we were dragged off to prison."