Misstaken ✓ | #Wattys2019

21. t h e b r o k e n p a s t

I could feel the heavy rise and fall of my chest as I stared into the eyes of Nicole Sheldon. However, it wasn't like I expected.

I thought she would be incredibly menacing and invariably furious, but she had stilled at the sight of me.

Instead, she was solemn, like I just brought back an unpleasant memory.

"Yuri Tanaka." Her voice cut through the quiet.

My jaw dropped open. It can't be. "You know Yuri? And Kylie?"

She nodded slowly, moving forward. "The twin children of Clint and Darcy Tanaka. I remember them."

I instinctively tucked the thumb drive into my back pocket, even though I knew there was no use. She had already seen it.

I prodded. "So... were they your patients?"

She sighed and took a seat on the table next to me, folding her arms. "Yes. It's a... long story."

"I'm ready to hear it. They're my friends."

"I heard. Your middle school and high school classmates, and now Yuri's your university lab mate. I knew our secret wouldn't last long when I heard that Nick was going to be working with him too."

"Does Nick know?" I gulped, afraid of the answer.

Right on cue, someone had joined us at the doorway.

"Do I know what?" The melodic voice I was all too familiar with sounded, sending shivers down my spine.

Nick looked between the two of us, the lopsided smile on his face slowly fading.

"Is something wrong? All I wanted to do was to make sure Emma hadn't lost her way..."

Then, his eyes went to the computer. He saw the flashing red signal, and the heading on top of it.
Breach: TNK303.

It was a pang to my gut when I saw the look in his eyes. He understood.

He knew.

"Not everything." Nicole said quickly. "The experiments happened when you two were extremely young."

The experiments. So that much was true, then.

"Did you ever read that novel about the Scarlet Plague? Well, a pandemic of that size could have happened if not for the experimental trials. The most interesting thing was, the vector originated from birth. The children of some parents who had a superbug started showing symptoms of the disease. We called them The Red."

"We recognized the new illness from children born in our maternity ward. Soon after, we made it a point to retrieve everyone who showed the symptoms. That required making a lot of connections, which is why we are still well-connected with many other parties today. Anyway, the children would bear painful red webbed marks spreading underneath their skin, slowly consuming them. It spread to all the other children in the nursery, and then to the nurses who came to take the newborns."

"The illness spread to everyone they came into contact with, and it killed them. A painful death, even. We knew we had to contain it. There were only a few children born in your year that had survived their illness — including Yuri, Kylie, Nicholas, and you."

I turned to Nicholas. After exchanging our look, his hands went down to his shirt. He pulled at the edge of his shirt, easing it up gently.

I gasped yet again. The red webs were all the more prominent, clawing at his abdomen. It was just like the red webbed scarson my collarbone.