'The Virus' - A True Pandemic

8

Lydia Rogers was a government analyst and linguist. She was a strong woman, pretty, charming, attractive, and the dream of every young man during her reign of time when she was still only twenty-four and had just moved into Seattle.

But that was her past, and this was her present:

Lydia didn't need her skills as an analyst to identify the mess of a situation she had been in since their visit to China. It had all been so overwhelming and quick that her mind – no matter how adequate and intelligent – was not able to process the chain of events ensuing one after the other as if some giant had kicked the first piece of domino in a huge landscape of a portrait – and now all the other pieces kept tumbling down one after the other in perpetuity.

She decided that she had had enough. After she had reported to that vicious, maleficent and bad excuse of a human being and had returned to her office, she knew that this was her only opportunity. The halls were empty, the guards were all out on a break and the obedient little pets – cladded with bombs, guns, and vests – the man had who did all his dirty work for him were nowhere to be seen.

Regardless, Lydia had already made up her mind a very long time ago. Ever since she was enlightened with the saddening fact of Doctor Forrester's demise she was certain and confident that these animals would execute her as well, once whatever they needed from her came to its fulfillment. That is why Lydia tried and prolong her task for as long as she could until she was prepared to make her break from this facility. But she could never find that apt opportunity she needed to escape.

Until now.

Lydia Rogers was a woman of principles. Her nature was such that she always carried around her objects of need with her no matter where she went. However, these were one of those times when every human had to make his/her own sacrifice in order to survive. Hence, Lydia got control over her wrinkled and trembling hands, copied all the important files, documents, and data into her USB – her hazel brown eyes sifting through all the files first and identifying what to keep and what to delete before she copied – and then pocketed the flash drive.

Lydia leaving her bag of appliances behind in her office to rot was one of her own personal sacrifices. Perhaps a small price to pay. It would be worth it if she could get these details to the officials and help them cook a cure to this disease.

She walked down the corridor fast and was surprised that there was no one to be found walking around. Usually, there were at least a dozen people scurrying around with clipboards and blood samples trying to please their boss so that they wouldn't be the ones flying from the roof and breaking open like an egg as they collided with the ground below.

Right now, however, it was all empty.

Of course, she was pinged with the sudden ominous and pessimistic feeling that something didn't seem right. But she had already passed the point of no return and there was no way that she could go back now-

Her head began to swim. Her blonde hair which came to her shoulders began to fall on the ground in a group of hundreds. Her hazel eyes began to burn as if someone had sprayed pepper spray into them and her nose flowed like a fosset. She began to hit her chest and gasped for air as her lungs began to malfunction. Then she collapsed on the ground. All of this happened simultaneously and all at once which completely and utterly blew her away – rendering her too delirious and petrified to even feel scared, overwhelmed, or frightened of the oncoming events.

She opened her fifty-year-old mouth to bring forth her scream of agony in order to inform people about her sudden pain – hoping that someone would show up and help her out. But when she opened her mouth nothing but a minimal groan full of grief escaped her throat until closing up forever. This was because Lydia could feel her tonsils inflating. When she traced her shivering hands to her tanned and wrinkled neck she could feel the swelling – so big that it could explode anytime.

Darkness encapsulated her from all four corners.

She felt sweat trickling down her attractive jawline and high cheekbones that made her look younger than her age. Her perfectly uniformed teeth began to clatter as she began to sob – perceiving the fact that her death had finally found her.

Her very first instinct of deduction was that she had contracted the disease like everyone else and was going to follow their footsteps and rot away. But then, right before she lost all consciousness, she saw the dark shadowy figure of a big man looming over her...

***

Lydia Rogers opened her eyes and allowed her vision to fall into place in its own time.

The first thing that she realized was that she could breathe. Her respiratory process which had malfunctioned was back up and running its usual course.

That made her feel good.

Until she tried getting up, which is when she realized that her hands, legs, waist, even her head were all latched down on the ground firmly using metallic tubes.

Her veins pricked out on her neck as she exerted her full energy to rid herself of these shackles. But no matter how hard she tried she could not even move a muscle.

However, that wasn't the worst bit of all.

The worst was when her vision fell into place and she noticed some sort of glass encapsulating her from all corners – the one that they use for lab rats and guinea pigs – big enough to fit a human inside.

In this scenario, she was the lab rat.

"You're up,"

The voice was eerily familiar to her.

It was the same voice that had given her nightmares. The same voice that had been the catalyst of all the reckoning and destruction occurring in her world. The same voice that was the penultimate source of the deaths of human beings at such a large scale.

The same voice that she had been running away from before she had collapsed.

"Humans!" it scoffed in disgust. "Petty, idiotic, stupid and reckless humans!"

The carrier of the voice came into view and stared at the captive Lydia. It was only now she noticed that one of his eyes – the left one – was completely white; not pale but intense milky white with no pupil or cornea or any other substance which would constitute a normal eye sitting within the socket.

Even though she was confined within this large glass tube she could still smell the rancid stench clinging onto his body like bloodsuckers.

Lydia tried screaming, she tried crying, she tried pushing words out of her mouth...but she could not. The inflammation that had affected her throat was still there. She knew this because she felt the sharp sting in her throat when she tried to gulp.

She could not speak. And the mere revelation of this factor brought forth the streams of tears pouring down her eyes.

The man staring at her from the outside seemed to take pleasure in her misery, and so he smiled. He smiled and kept staring for as long as a minute. Then, he got bored, and so he began to talk.

And Lydia Rogers had no other option but to listen...

He boasted of his plans and of his intentions; how he was going to execute them, how everything was already in place, how they had been planning all of this for centuries, and how she – Lydia – had to watch as her world and everyone living in it was destroyed and killed...bit by bit...and then when the dust settled, she had to watch her world being reshaped into what they wanted.

He was never one of those men who liked to talk much. He believed in talking only when it was necessary, otherwise, he had figured that listening was much more beneficial than talking. Right now, however, he wasn't just talking, he was gloating. He always enjoyed having his trophy...Lydia Rogers was his trophy.

For now; until he got bored and disposed of her like all the others.

Once he was done explaining to her his phenomenal plans, he turned around and looked at the several LED screen in front of him and saw his orders being executed...all at once.