Westvale

VII

VIII

The scientist, sprinting, almost tripped on his way down the stairs leading to the lab. Sweating and on the way to a panic attack, he frantically looked around the lab as to figure out why the alarms had sounded. Smoke had invaded the right side of the lab, immediately telling Denny that his servers concerned with the control of his satellite had overheated. He opened his cluster of portable computers and screens, quickly checking the satellite's stats. It had disconnected.

"Dammit!" he shouted, going over to the servers, shutting them off. Coughing and having trouble breathing, he turned half a dozen switches and levers in the other direction and got out of the smoke. His very own original satellite was lost, until he reconfigured the connection. That wasn't, however, the main priority. Finding the source of the apocalypse was. The smoke began to clear, slowly, though the smell of burnt wires and electronical components was still around. His chemistry equipment was laid out on one of the many long, white lab desks, ready for him to get busy. He had made the trip over to the lab, why not make the most of it? Venturing into one of the closets where a multitude of costumes were stored, he grabbed a fully white hazmat suit, and struggled for five minutes trying to remember how to put one on. Under somewhat pressure, he looked through his shelves, drawers, and tables, gathering materials he would use to collect water samples from the lake. After ten good minutes of preparation, he left the lab with a bag that was designed to resist mostly everything and anything and took off his hazmat suit for the time being, as he would start to sweat. The walk to the closest shore was only around eight minutes away. He did his best to get there in the fastest possible way, get everything done, and return quickly to reduce the chances of anything happening. Halfway there, he noticed a man walking in the general direction of the airport, with three duffel bags hung around his neck. He was too far away to notice the scientist holding a hazmat suit with a bag the color of aluminum foil and walking quickly as if someone was ready to hit him with a baseball bat from behind if he slowed down at any point.

The morning was very pleasant. The same awfully serene feeling persisted, along with a silence that could render one insane. To know that around 72 hours ago the town was still vibrant with whatever small life it sustained, and that now, you could walk the very same streets and not hear a sound, was simply sinister. Everything had transformed in such a short period of time. The lake's water had the color of fern and looked very murky. Tiny, weak waves hit the concrete contour of the lake. Denny kept his distance, putting his hazmat suit on and preparing for the collection of samples from a dozen meters away. Approaching the water, he ignored the steep incline of the shore, causing him to slip and fall in the water. Panicked, he bolted out, wet with the greenish water, if it even was water, and sat on the grass by the lake, behind the town. He knew he would be fine considering he was well equipped to handle unknown substances, especially radioactive ones, but being a clean freak, panicking was the least he had to do. Calming down, he went over to try again, this time taking into account the borderline, and with the vial and pipette in hand, reached out to the water laying down on his stomach as to not slip again, successfully filling the vial with the murky water. He repeated the process eight more times, as to make sure he had enough samples for the number of experiments he would be conducting. He left the site, having spent less than ten minutes, took the suit off as carefully as possible, as to avoid touching any of the remaining liquid on the suit. Soon enough, reactions were brewing, and things were reacting with other things as Denny was testing various substances with others, with hopes of ending up with some result that made decent sense. While everything else was at work, he went on to reestablish the connection with his satellite and take a shot at repairing whatever had been burnt when the servers overheated. He would return to the chemistry layout then go back to the servers and alternate in between the two. It would be a while before he'd be back.