Cold, but Still Human

Chapter 2 - Eden

[August 21, 2017]

As the day comes to its end, the two girls return to their hotel room, with Katerina's parents in the room next door. Katerina posts a picture of the drink she got from the museum.

"It's only been two seconds," Katerina mumbles, "Everyone's liking my post so quickly. John, Olivia, Paul, Toula..."

Comments:

John: Ooohhh I want oneeee

Olivia: Prettyy <3

Paul: WOW WHY DIDN'T YOU BRING ME

Toula: Artsyyyy

Katerina laughs as she replies to all her comments. Eden rolls her eyes, "You think you're so popular, huh?"

"I'm not popular. I just have friends, unlike you!" Katerina starts to laugh, and Eden rolls her eyes, mildly offended, but laughs at the joke anyways. She quickly stands up and walks away.

"Hey wait up!" Katerina says, running after her, but accidentally trips and falls over.

"Katerina!" Eden reaches out a hand, her quick reaction breaking Katerina's fall as Katerina takes it and stands back up, "How do you survive your clumsiness every day?" Eden jokes, causing the two girls to burst into laughter.

They both sit on the bed, flipping to the first page.

Hypothesis: Gas will weaken the criminals' brain cells enough that we can brainwash them in a matter of one day.

Summary: Over the past few months, Gage and I have taken turns watching over different criminals that we used as test subjects. Our experimental gas was supposed to weaken their brain cells and let us take full control over them, but what happened was unprecedented. The gas' effects were way too powerful, destroying their brain tissue, and causing the subjects to go into a strange, but raging "high". Gage and I have recorded the similar three stages that they have all been through.

Stage One: The subjects begin to become "high" within a matter of just ten minutes of breathing the air.

Stage Two: They begin to act as if they were possessed by demons. They would say disturbing words like "Hungry... flesh...", and their faces became pale after a while.

Stage Three: The subjects begin to decompose. At this point, their brain tissue starts to rot, leaving the rest of their body to do the same.

After these three stages, victims of the gas basically become walking corpses. Only a small part of their brain is still working, allowing them to regain limited function, as well as an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

This was never planned. If you see this book before your subjects show the same symptoms, please be cautious, as this may become more dangerous than we had wished for it to be.

"What is this?" Katerina says to Eden, raising her eyebrows.

"I'm not entirely sure I know what we're up against, but I'm getting the gist..."

The two girls search through the rest of the notebook. It's filled with information, most with scientific terms too complicated for middle schoolers to decipher. It seems that the first few pages, the ones that were handwritten, were simply spontaneously written notes among the actual scientific research after it.

"Weaken their brain cells to take full control of them? That doesn't sound too good. Shouldn't we report it?" Katerina exclaims, resulting in Eden violently shaking her head.

"Kat. What does this say?" Eden points to a page with a large symbol in the shape of the letter 'K'. Underneath the logo, there's a small caption:

Kriss Enterprises.

Katerina squints her eyes after reading, "Didn't we learn about these guys in class? They're like ultra-famous and super-rich in the business and politics industry or whatever."

Eden looks back in confusion. "It's the Kriss family. The lady of the family owns the third-largest biotech company in the industry, in the world. I don't know where you got your information from, but from what I can see, the only way you could know about them is because their family name is printed onto every piece of lab equipment, and because of the fact that they're associated with Toula."

"I heard that it's because Toula's father was really close to Mr. Kriss during their youth. If Mr. Kriss and his family were that rich, would he mind sharing a bit of his wealth with Toula's family?"

"As much as I want Toula to buy me lunch everyday for the rest of my school career, we have to focus on what's actually happening. This seems like a big project that's been hidden under the government's nose. Mr. Kriss and his crew wouldn't leave a notebook of this worth just hanging on a table for anyone to grab. Thinking back to what the scientists in the lab said to each other, there's a fair chance that they left the book there on purpose. It was way too obvious that they wanted this information to spread through word of mouth. Either way, whatever happens I'm staying out of this."

"You have a good imagination, but I'll leave the thoughts up to you. I'm tired and we should sleep."

Eden sighs, putting the book away, "Glad we're out of here tomorrow morning." she whispers.

Katerina agrees, and the two rest for the night.