Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (87 page)

“Well, when you continue to zoom in, you’ll see the standard components — nucleocapsid, lipids, different protein amalgamations, etcetera.”
 

Dr. Torres nodded again, trying to hurry him along.
 

“But then if you
keep
increasing the magnification…” he paused to reset the microscope’s magnification wheels, “you’ll notice that the interior structure of the virion is completely crammed with foreign bodies.”
 

“Foreign? How can they be? They’re part of the virus.”
 

“Right — but that doesn’t mean they always were. The virus certainly doesn’t
look
like it wants them in there, does it? They’re all bulging at the seams, thanks to these spirillum pushing everything around.”
 

Dr. Torres looked up sharply. “Spirillum? What are you talking about?”
 

He zoomed in even more. As the microscopic components of the viral organism came into focus, she saw the unmistakable spiraling of one of the common bacterial shapes. The twisted object grew as Charlie pushed the microscope to its limits; the screen suddenly appearing grainy and slightly out of focus.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
 

“You didn’t see this before?” Charlie asked.
 

She shook her head.
 

“So, then, I’m guessing there weren’t two different samples?”
 

Both scientists were speechless as they stared at the TV monitor. The fuzzy black and white image was unmistakable.

“No. No, Charlie. There weren’t,” she said. “We’re looking at some sort of herpesvirus that contains a
living, breathing,
bacterial infection.”

“That’s impossible,” Charlie said. “There’s no way for the virions to provide livable conditions for the bacteria.”

“I know,” Dr. Torres said. “But we’re dealing with something completely different here; something outside the realm of what either of us has studied before.” As she spoke and stared at the screen in front of her, Dr. Torres grew more and more confident that what she was looking at was, in fact, what she said it was.

Impossible or not, what they were looking at was a living bacteria fully functioning
inside
a virus.

20

SIX MONTHS AGO

DR. MALCOLM Fischer gasped. Sucking in a huge breath of air, he tried to swallow. It was painful; somehow, something wasn’t right. He tried to look down, but had a hard time moving his head.
 

Weird.

He tried moving his hands instead. Nothing.
 

His fingers, maybe?
 

Nope.
 

Malcolm felt glued down, lying on his back. At least it was comfortable.
 

What
do
I have control over, then?
he wondered.
 

He opened his eyes, blinking once, twice. He moved his eyeballs around; at least he could see.
 

He tried to make sense of his surroundings. Bright lights, fluorescent. The kind used in offices and commercial buildings. Whitish walls, some sort of sterile color.
 

That was it.
 

Okay, what does that mean?
Malcolm tried to move his body. Anything. Nothing would give. It was as if he was —

Am I paralyzed?

He considered it a moment. He didn’t remember taking a fall, or any type of accident. Actually, now that he thought harder, he couldn’t remember of anything. There was…

A helicopter.
 

Oh, God.
 

The memory roared back into Malcolm’s mind in a flash.
The students…

He remembered being forced into the chopper at gunpoint, being pushed down into a seat and strapped in, then the gentle upward motion of the pilot’s expert takeoff. They ascended only a few feet off the ground.
 

The gun.
 

The horrid sound of hundreds of miniature explosions rocking the gunman back and forth on the side-mounted machine gun.
 

The one he’d fired into the students.
His
students.
 

A seizure of pain overtook him, but he couldn’t tell if it was merely psychological. He closed his eyes again, breathing. Still, his hands and legs and arms,
everything
, was frozen in place.
 

Where am I?
 

Just then, he heard a beeping sound. It had grown louder — or had he just now noticed it?
 

He pushed his eyelids apart and tried to look for the source of the sound. As his eyes opened, the beeping grew more intense; quicker.
 

He heard footsteps. Running.

“…Patient experiencing some sort of shock. Possible reaction…”
 

Voices drifted in and out. They were in the room.
 

Who were ‘they?’

Malcolm was growing agitated. He wanted answers, and he wanted to be able to
move.

“He’s awake!”
 

More footsteps.
 

Now he could hear multiple people — three?
— moving around his bed.
 

I’m in a hospital. It must be. I’m paralyzed.
 

“He’s no longer comatose?” one voice asked.
 

“No, he’s got his eyes open.”
 

The voices were hurried; frantic.
 

“Okay, let’s get some acetaminophen into him; he’s probably going to be a little rough around the edges.”
 

“Got it. We’re keeping him up?”
 

“No, no. That’s just to hold him over until he goes under again. It shouldn’t be long.”
 

Malcolm heard a popping sound, followed by the smell of something bitter. Some sort of chemical. A bag of liquid was suddenly passed directly over his face. He saw a strange assortment of letters and numbers, then a few letters that his brain computed as words.
 

Global. D-something Global.
 

“Ok, right. DG headquarters is going to be here tomorrow morning, and we need to get him back down.” Another pop, followed by a sloshing sound, reached Malcolm’s ears.
 

He tried to speak, but he wasn’t sure he had control of his vocal cords. It didn’t matter, anyway, as he realized he couldn’t even open his mouth.
 

A small hand pulled his chin down, forcing his mouth open, and he felt — sort of — a pill being inserted into it.
 

“It won’t matter — I’ve already reported that we’ve achieved success.”
 

“Yes, I know, I read the report,” the first voice — a man’s — said. “Still, they won’t want to see him awake. They’ll need him under for the final round of testing, so there’s no reason to let him become too aware.”
 

Malcolm tried to piece things together. He
was
paralyzed. Waking from a coma, anyway.
 

“How’d he wake up?” the second voice asked. It was a woman, probably the one who’d forced his mouth open.
 

“It’s a standard reaction to the chemical; almost like developing an immunity. Most subjects awaken after four to six months. He made it to five and a half.”
 

“Can we up the dosage?”
 

“No, a higher dosage will likely kill him. Keep the mg count steady; just track it closer. Any increase in heart rate or changes in sleep cycles, have someone come in and check it out.”
 

“Got it.”
 

Malcolm heard them finish up, then leave the room. He was left to his own thoughts and the slow, methodical beeping noise.
 

He suddenly felt the pricking of thousands of nerve endings flaring up in his neck and head, as if needles just below the surface of his skin were trying to poke their way out. It was painful, but it meant something else.
 

He could move his head.
 

It was the same feeling he’d had when a body part fell asleep. He could feel the line of nerves crawling up and around his face. Slowly, painfully, he tried to move the outer muscles in his face — cheeks, lips, ears. He thought he could feel the slightest of motions.
 

His face continued to “wake up.” He’d have preferred the traditional feeling of being awake, rather than the feeling of millions of ants crawling over his head, but he didn’t argue. He moved his mouth.
 

Using an unbelievable amount of energy, he tried lifting his head.
Yes!
It was moving. His head was lifting up from the bed, slowly, surely…

It fell. He could hold it no longer. His head fell backwards onto the pillow that had been placed below him.
 

With a deep, exhaling breath, he recovered and tried again. A little farther this time.
 

He could now see his body. It was covered in a sheet, and his feet poked out from the bottom of it. Behind that was the door to the room he was in. It too was white, the off-white color no doubt picked for its price and not is appeal.
 

Again, his head fell back to the pillow.
 

This is good,
he told himself.
I’m getting stronger each time.
 

As Malcolm tried for the third time, however, he realized something. They’d injected him with something. Possibly multiple things.
 

He was probably only minutes away from passing out into a coma once again.
 

I need to get out of here.
 

He lay back for a few extra seconds, summoning energy, then he tried once more to lift his head.
 

He wanted to scream. Pain shot through his head, worse than any migraine he’d ever experienced.
Don’t. Stop.
He chanted to himself over and over again.
Don’t. Stop.
 

His head was now fully upright, perpendicular to his body and the flat bed on which he rested.
Now what?
He forced his neck to each side, glancing down at the maze of tubes that were inserted into different parts of his body. He had no idea what they did or what human bodily function they were intended to perform. Some seemed empty — maybe those were waste tubes?
 

Others had clear liquids running through them, and a few had deep crimson liquid coursing through them.
 

He didn’t have much choice. He could still only move his head, and he didn’t have the luxury to wait around for more of his body to wake up. He looked down and to his right, noticing a small clear tube that had been inserted into the soft skin underneath his upper arm, just below his shoulder.
 

If I can reach that…

He struggled again, forcing his head forward and down.
A little more…

His lips were on the tube now, but there was no way his teeth were going to reach that far. He needed a little more.
Millimeters
more.
 

Come on, Malcolm.
He willed himself to push forward again. The pain was unbearable, his face no doubt bright red.

Just a few millimeters more.
It had to be.
 

Don’t. Stop.
 

He exhaled the last of the air that was in his lungs, and his face shot forward just enough. He could feel the cold steel of the IV line’s end hit his mouth, and he clamped down. He didn’t care what he yanked out, as long as he disconnected
something.
 

Yes!

He bit down as hard as he could with his teeth as his head forced itself back down and onto the pillow. He felt a dull throb in his shoulder, but he didn’t move. He waited a moment, letting his body regroup. Finally, he lifted his tongue up and felt for his prize.
 

It was there, cold steel and clear plastic tubing. It bumped up against his mouth as it fell, and he was ecstatic.
 

He’d done it.
 

He could see the plastic tube out of the corner of his eye, disappearing off the side of the bed and around the room somewhere, its contents no longer able to enter Malcolm’s body.
 

He smiled — or what he thought was a smile — and closed his eyes again.
 

Only a matter of time…

He waited for the drug’s effects to wear off; waited for the prickling line of needles to expand their reach, overtaking his body with the beautiful gift of motion. Any moment now, and he’d be able to move again.
 

What was that?

He felt something, or rather, understood something. It wasn’t a feeling as much as a sort of
knowing.
His body was crashing, falling again. He felt the line of needles receding, going back down into the surface of his body.
 

No!
 

Just a little more time.
 

But it was not to be. Malcolm’s body was going to sleep again. He could do nothing but watch, helpless, as his eyes closed out the world around him. He could hear his breathing, feel the rising and falling of his chest, but it was odd, as if it were not his own body that was controlling it.
 

To be sure, he tried lifting his head again.
Nothing.
 

He couldn’t cry out, couldn’t make a sound. His mind was shutting down, sending him to sleep once again, and he couldn’t think…

21

“ANY RESULTS YET?” DR. TORRES was beginning to get frustrated as she waited for her assistant, Charlie, to return to her table with the results of the latest tests they’d been putting the sample through.

“Not yet,” Charlie muttered under his breath. They’d put the sample through a battering ram of tests — the standard lab-required composition, attributes, and plausible generation tests, as well as a few others Dr. Torres ordered hours ago. Charlie was currently finishing with the last of these, a test to determine any possible effects external forces might have on the sample.