"Pathogena"

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter Select
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The concept for this story started out as a biopunk novel, but I tweaked it. So, now it's not going to be. But, that'll sort of give you a vague idea of what theme this will have.

Constructive criticism will be much appreciated.

Oh, and my chapters run longer than the character limit for one post goes, so they'll be split up.

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Chapter 1, Part 1

"The building is secure, sir." Paul Mayland reported.

Clayton Gray, a thin middle-aged man with a sleek, black crew cut, looked up from his expansive desk. The dull light from the tail end of sunset flowed in through the large, bulletproof windows. Security lights in the distance created a backdrop of obnoxious florescent white reflecting dully off the three ugly metal security walls that encircled the building. Beyond the walls was a massive stretch of dirt and rock that extended out until the drop-off that defined the edge of the high, manmade plateau. This highland extended out from the side of the inordinately altitudinous mountain. A lone malnourished black vulture sat pruning itself atop the closer of the two light posts visible from the executive suite. "Have the delivery trucks arrived yet?"

"I haven't seen them, sir." Replied Mayland with a sigh.

"Well then, why did you lock up the compound if we haven't had our deliveries yet?"

Mayland rolled his eyes. "Because those were your instructions, sir."

"I expected that you would wait until the trucks came in, but I guess that wasn't clear. Use some judgment, you idiot. Now go unsecure the building, watch for the deliverymen and then turn on the security grid after the trucks leave. Got it?" Gray ordered with a exasperated sneer.

Mayland sighed. "Yes, sir." He turned and walked across the immoderately sized office suite towards the heavy metal door on the other side of the room. He jammed his fingers into the keypad on the wall, entering his pass code, and the door hissed open. He longed for the days when doors weren't yet automatic so that he could still slam them in indignation. Mumbling under his breath, he sneered mockingly, "Mayland, close up the security grid and do it now. Make haste now Mayland, don't you dilly-dally. If you wait, I can't reprimand you and we wouldn't want that, now would we Mayland?"

Vincent Slater passed the young assistant in the hall and caught wind of the man's complaints, but he pretended not to understand. "What are you mumbling, Mayland?"

"Nothing, sir." Mayland murmured. Slater, a roly-poly man in his sixties with short salt-and-pepper hair and a trimmed gray beard, entered Gray's office. He walked across the room and laid a heavy elbow on the desk.

"How're you doing, Clay?" Slater asked.

"Shit. I'm overworked, tired and I'm tired of being incarcerated in an oversized steel box." Gray leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"Oh, come on now, Clay my boy." Slater smiled. "Think of it this way: the company's doing great and we're protected from the pathogena by feet of solid steel. Don't be such a pessimist."

"I suppose." Gray sat up again. "Do you know why the deliverymen are late? They're always here before eight, and it's past eight thirty."

"No, I haven't heard anything. Maybe they ran into a pack of pathogena and had to restock. Can you do me a big ol' favor and give them a ring? It would be a life saver."

Gray sighed. "Okay. I suppose I should give my eyes a break from these numbers."

"That's the spirit." Slater smiled and made his way towards the exit. "Don't kill yourself." He laughed as the door closed behind him. Gray stared upwards towards the ceiling at the round light piece with the bulb that needed replacing. It had been there for far too long already. It'll die by the end of the week at the longest. I'll get Mayland on it the next time I see him, he thought. Then he looked down at the expansive conglomeration of paperwork that had been building up on his desk at an excessively fast rate for the past two weeks. This merge is going to be the death of me.

Pushing a few folders aside, Gray picked up the landline receiver and punched in a number. It rang and it rang again. After eight times, an exuberant answering machine instructed him to leave a message. He tried again and got the same result, but managed to get through on the third. He sighed in relief. "Hello, this is Clayton Gray of Humanities Incorporated. I have a question... yes, it's about deliveries.... Yes our deliveries haven't arrived yet... What?!... You can't send out more... When's the next time you'll be able to... Tomorrow, okay... yes, okay, thank you." He hung up the phone and groaned. Damn it! Those damn monsters always fucking everything up! I best dial Slater. Unlike the deliverymen, Slater answered immediately, despite the fact that he had left his office mere minutes ago. He was always prompt and punctual, and this was no exception. "Vinnie, hey, I have shitty news... Yeah it's about the deliverymen. The three cargo trucks that they had sent out to our compound have been attacked by the damn pathogena. They fought them off but now the supplies are all infected, so they had to dispose of the stuff and head back to base. And now they won't send out any more trucks because they don't want to be out in total darkness." He spoke the words "out in total darkness" with mocking disgust. "They say they'll be here tomorrow... yes, I know it's not the end of the world... I am calm!... Okay, okay, I'll get some rest once I get done with a few more of these authorization forms. I just thought I should let you know... yeah, night."

Gray sighed and stood up, wiping his eyes of the tiredness that had been overcoming him ever since Slater and him had made the decision to buy out Lewis-King Inc. The smaller metal goods company was on the brink of going under when Slater offered the 3.4 million for the company, so Gray still wasn't sure how Slater had convinced him to co-sign the deal. He's one damn good smooth-talker, Gray figured. He stared down at the half-finished pile of paperwork that had been growing at an exponential rate and decided that it was time to call it a night. He trudged across the office suite with fatigued steps and slipped through the door into the empty hallway. He turned left, passed three ugly doors and practically fell through the fourth to the right. His master bedroom, the perk of being a CEO, was as lavish as one could get in those times (keeping in mind that everything is relative) with it's queen sized bed clothed in colorful sheets, thirty-six inch plasma television and private bathroom. A pale blue throw rug had been laid down in between the TV (to its left) and the bed (to its right). A wood dresser sat behind the rug against the back wall (painted a shade of blue only slightly different from the rug) with a shaded lamp on top. The room wasn't extraordinary in our sense of the word, but it far surpassed the 25 square foot dorms that the ordinary employees called their own. What was unique about the room was that it had its own personal elevator to the right of the bed (in the case of an attack, raid, infiltration or its most common use: trips to the kitchen).

Gray shed his suit and shoved it into his closet in return for sweat pants and a loose t-shirt. He didn't bother with his normal bedtime routine and instead crashed immediately down onto his bed. He sighed in relief as his head hit the pillow, but the feeling didn't last long. The telephone on his dresser rang its obnoxious ring, pulling him from his much-needed rest. Groaning, he stood up and picked up the receiver.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 1, Part 2

"Gray speaking." He answered. The voice of Martha Goodwin, one of the numerous burly chain-smoking secretaries that worked in the security office, greeted him in a very "I haven't had a cigarette in eight hours, so I won't put up with any of your crap" kind of fashion. She forwarded him the message that Mil Baker, the security chief, wanted to forward him a message and that Gray should dial extension 283 if he feels so inclined. Gray thanked Martha for her time as civilly as Martha's bad attitude would allow and bid her goodnight before hanging up the phone. He had no intension of dialing extension 283 any time in the next twelve hours. He didn't have the stamina to put up with the equally as irritable Mil Baker. Climbing back into bed, he flicked off his lamp and shut his eyes, waiting for sleep to come.

***

It was at certain times of the day, such as 6:30 in the morning, that Gray scourged the invention of telephones. The buzzing bastard dragged him from his sleep and onto the receiving end of Mil Baker's indignant wrath. She wrung him out, drilling him as to why he didn't call back her the night before, to which he replied with an only partially dishonest "I was busy." She scoffed, continuing on to give him an update on security issues he didn't bother to pay attention to as he stood up to stretch his legs. He searched out a pair of black socks (which he would exchange for a pair of white ones when he later discovered that the only color of clean dress pants he had was brown) and tugged off his dirty clothes. While still pretending to listen to Baker, he pulled together an outfit of office clothes that matched "good-enough." He walked into his bathroom and looked in the mirror at his tired face. I'm paler than usual, he thought, and I'm the palest Italian I know. His appearance was certainly enervated. He saw himself standing under the florescent lights too bright for that hour with his cordless phone pressed against his head and bags of purple hanging off the bottom of his half-open brown eyes.

Gray was pulled back to alertness by a string of profanities from Baker, who had caught on to Gray's lack of attention, and replied with a half-hearted "Sure, sure" to, "Were you listening at all, you executive fairy?" He hung up the phone and placed in on the left edge of the sink. However, when Gray went to turn on the tap, he knocked the clunky phone into the small trash bin beside the sink that, fortunately for the phone, had been emptied just the other day and hadn't had a chance to accumulate too much crud. Groaning, he splashed some warm water on his face before drying his hands and pulling the receiver out of the bin. He trudged out of the bathroom and over to his elevator, punching the down arrow and waiting for the not-built-to-code contraption to rise. When it finally did, he slipped inside and commanded it to descend down to the basement where he had been summoned, but it took four presses of the "B1" button for the oversized tin can to respond.

After a fast and turbulent ride down, the elevator doors slid open. In stark contrast to the incompetency of the maintenance department, the security department was organized, regulated and dependable. Floor B1, or as it was less-than-affectionately named "the floor right above hell" (referring a team of elitist physicists who utilized the structural stability of B2 to run their experiments), was the home base of security. Rows and rows of metal shelves arranged in lines perpendicular to the elevator wall held boxes of security and weaponry equipment meticulously organized by specific categories. The red overhead lights were not, as Gray was pleasantly surprised to find, merely red-tinted standard light bulbs, but rather developer's bulbs used to protect stored film equipment (Because, sure enough, the intelligence department had made such a mindless mistake a few months back and lost a number of light sensitive equipment, along with several dozen film rolls worth of developed photos). Gray walked through the rows heading for the opposite side of the expansive room where a bulletproof glass door led into the executive office of security.

Seeing Gray flash his identification, the security guard standing outside of the office, who was nonchalantly puffing on a cigarette and staring off in a different direction (as if to say, "I can look away but I'm still watching you"), unlocked the door and allowed Gray to pass with a grunt. As if on cue, the moment that Gray stepped inside the pleasantly warm office, Mil Baker stormed through the halls in her typical military fashion until she was standing six inches in front of his face.

By the average person's definition, Baker was gorgeous. She had flowing red hair like fire falling freely over her shoulders and down to the middle of her back. He figure was disciplined and her body muscular. Brilliant green eyes sat in the middle of her Irish face, which was surprisingly youthful in consideration of the inordinate amounts of stress she put herself under (partially voluntarily) on a day-to-day basis. She would have been the perfect image of innocence it weren't for the black security uniform, the two semi-automatic handguns that hung in their holsters around her waist, her black army boots and most of all, her attitude. Crossing her arms, she scoffed and stared Gray coldly in the eyes. "Well if it isn't the marvelous Mr. Clayton Gray here to bless us with his presence. I'm so sorry to have disturbed you, sir, from whatever task of upmost importance you must have been doing at the time of my call." She uncrossed her arms and pointed a slender finger in Gray's face. "Listen up, fairy. I don't know what the world looks like up in your administrative cloudland, but I won't have some pampered, prissy rich boy blowing me off like a common tramp. I don't give a damn how many digits are in your bloated salary. If I say jump, you say how the fuck high, not the other way around. Got it, pansy?" Before he could answer, Baker spun on her heels and headed forward, motioning for Gray to follow. She held her head high and moved quickly, as though she were intending to leave him behind.

The office was cold and unfriendly. Unlike the other departments which adorned their halls with pictures of various inanimate objects and lined their windowsills with genetically engineered flowers, there were no such decorations to be found down in security. There was only a layer of harsh white paint and coarse pale gray carpeting to make the office seem sterile and thoroughly void of absolutely all microorganisms. Even further, Gray could see the black eyes of security cameras embedded - one every three feet - into the walls and ceiling, staring cruelly down at him. What finally broke the sterility for Gray was a cloud of grungy cigarette smoke enveloping his face as he stood outside of Baker's office door. To his right sat the obese Martha Goodwin at her cluttered desk. Gray stopped to glare at her for the infraction of the company's rule against smoking indoors, but Martha replied with a cold "Keep it moving, fat-cat" and blew another puff in his face.

Baker's door, heavy and metal with an ugly, submarine-esque glass window, slid open with a hiss and they entered her office. It too had the décor of a hospital clean-room, except the medical equipment was replaced with half a dozen gargantuan flat-screen TV's and a large glass-and-metal desk sat where the bed would have been. There were no windows and the only source of lighting was a blaring florescent ceiling lamp that, to my disappointment, had no dimmer switch. Baker, neglecting to offer Gray a seat, sat down behind her desk in her own leather executive's chair and tossed a file in Gray's vague direction.

"Look through those photos." Baker barked, still bitter about his earlier rudeness.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 1, Part 3

Gray's standing position combined with Baker's erect posture and unyielding stare made him feel as though he was an employee being reviewed for disciplinary action. Nevertheless, he sifted through the file, unsure of what he was seeing. The pictures were images taken by the compound's external surveillance cameras positioned on the outermost security wall. They were black and white and depicted animals. Some were scratching at the steel barrier, others were sniffing around it and the rest were looking up. None of the creatures appeared to be out of the ordinary. There were some rats of a common variety found in the planes below the plateau. Two were of dark-colored rabbits and four were of a small number of large birds. Although the images were somewhat blurry, the birds appeared to be vultures that, again, were commonly found scavenging in the valley below.

Gray looked up at Baker with a confused look. "I don't understand what's so urgent about this. So the cameras got some shots of animals scratching at the gate. What's the big deal?"

Baker narrowed her already furious eyes. "You idiot. What are you, completely clueless? Look at the dates and times on the photos. You can read, can't you? All of them came on the exact same day - yesterday - in exactly one-hour intervals. They're pathogena."

Gray sighed, irritated that he was dragged out of bed for such a groundless cause. "The photos are in black in white; eye color isn't defined. There's no way to tell that they're pathogena other than baseless assumption. I told Mayland to hound Grace about getting color cameras, but until that happens we can't just assume that everything that skitters, scampers or flies by the compound is out to infiltrate the building."

Baker shot to her feet, enraged. "And we can't just turn a blind eye to security threats just because we don't have the cojones enough to deal with them!"

Gray smiled jeeringly. "Ah, I see what this is about."

"What, exactly, is it about, fairy?" Baker scorned, narrowing her eyes.

"You're just looking for an excuse to warm up to Phil for a raise. If you catch some bad guys, you'll be a little hero. Won't that look good on your employee records?"

"Don't point your iniquitous finger at me, you maladroit imbecile. We'll see who's laughing when those beasts infect your pampered ass." Baker snatched the file from Gray's hand and sat back down. "Now get the fuck out of my office, and tell that fatass closet dyke outside to stop smoking while you're at it."

Gray turned around and began to walk out, muttering at a perfectly audible volume from Baker's distance, "Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

[InsertFunnyUserName]

At 1/30/10 08:55 PM, angryglacier wrote: I really liked that! The sentences are all very descriptive with no confusing parts, the characters seem well thought out and I really want to know what happens next. Some things that aren't really necessary to improve on but I think will make it better would be to give it a bit of a reason to want to read it in the next chapters it's great but doesn't really pull you in.

Yeah, I usually try to leave chapters with a cliffhanger, but I saw this more of a character and context building part. I do see what you mean, though. It'll pick up in the second chapter, I promise. :]

[InsertFunnyUserName]

At 1/30/10 09:20 PM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote: Yeah, I usually try to leave chapters with a cliffhanger, but I saw this more of a character and context building part. I do see what you mean, though. It'll pick up in the second chapter, I promise. :]

Oh, another note:

The above part of the story wasn't written as though the chapter was going to be in parts. I split it up at the last full paragraph I fit in the text field, so if there isn't a cliffhanger in between posts in the same chapter, that would be why. I wish we had a higher character limit.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Here's chapter 2. Again, note that when I title the posts "part 1," "part 2," etc, that only means that I ran out of characters. I didn't structure the chapter to fit that format.

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Chapter 2, Part 1
The vulture's powerful muscles relaxed as she gracefully kept her balance upon the thin branch of the leafless tree outside of the Humanities Incorporated headquarters compound. The low winter's sun soaked into the large bird's black coat and warmed her skin. A solemn image of the gargantuan metal buildings illuminated by the light of midday was reflected in her eyes as she scanned the area, alert and observational. She spotted a surveillance cameras mounted on the compound's outer wall and stared into its blinking red eye. She swayed from side to side and watched the eye follow her. Knowing that this thing had its sight fixed on her, she extended her wings and took flight towards the camera, landing beside it to get a closer look. It turned in the vulture's direction and met her gaze, four inches from her menacing face. She puffed out her feathers at that contraption, but then turned her head to look in the direction of the compound. It was secure, solid steel and seemingly impenetrable. The vulture cocked her head, perplexed, and took off in the opposite direction, flying back to where it had come from.

***

"So tell me, Vinnie." Gray leaned forward over his cold turkey grinder and sunk his chin into his palms. "How the hell did you get me to agree to buying up a business that's been going under? It's dying for a reason. If they can't sell their goods, I'll be damned if we can."

"That's a good question. Well, let me put it this way. The less names out there, the better off we are. If people know they don't have many options," Slater paused to take a long drink of his ice water before continuing, "They'll be a hell of a lot more tentative to be asking for deals and sales. It's all about the bare principal of the matter, y'know?"

"Yeah, I see where you're coming from, I suppose." Gray stared down at the wooden conference table. It was round, antique and seemed a lot larger than normal with only him and Slater in the room. "It seems like organizing this thing is a lot more trouble than it's should be. Life should be simpler. Less work, less stress and less Mil Baker's. I'd like that."

"Ah, yes, I heard Mil woke you up before the sun. What'd she want?"

"She had some photos from outside of rats and was convinced they were pathogena."

"Oh, rats come up here all the time looking for what the vultures don't want. That woman needs some R and R. I have half a mind to put her on a three-day suspension so she'll take a breath for once." Slater took the last bite of his burger before pushing his plate aside and folding his hands on the table. "All this talk about pathogena. It's got the public all in a fuss over something they don't have to worry about anymore. What can these people do, turn into rats or birds and scratch at our walls? Worse comes to show, one gets in and you shoot it. You're not going to get infected unless you get close to 'em. No harm no fowl, if you don't mind the pun."

Gray smiled. Slater's jolly personality always seemed to take Gray's mind off his troubles. "If only I could keep the stress away all well as we can the pathogena."

"Yep, that'll surely kill you first. You just have to take a deep, soothing breath and know that everything will, eventually, work itself out. You know, yoga might do you some good. I can't do it with my old joints, but you're young. Younger than ol' me anyways." The two of them laughed together, happy to be taking a breath from their hectic days. "Well, I've got a meeting to get myself to, so I'll see you around."

"See you." Gray went back to tackling the sandwich that he didn't have much of an appetite for eating. He wanted something to get him through the day, however, so he took a few more bites and stared up at the ceiling lamp, somehow hoping that this position would give him some motivation. It didn't, however, so he was left to let his mind wander uneasily. All of a sudden, he was startled from his daydreaming by a loud thud from behind him. He stood up, turned around and stared at the large plane of glass that made up the right hand side of the wall. Walking over to it, he expected to see an imprint of a songbird that had mistaken the window for an unobstructed passageway. What he found when he got closer, however, was an ugly streak of blood on the outside of the glass. He had been correct about the songbird, but wrong about how it had flown. If he could have been outside at the time, he would have seen the dead and bloodied corpse of a small bird being thrown at the window. He would have watched the bird slide down and land in a bloodied heap on the ground below.

What Gray saw next shocked him into taking several leaps backwards. An enormous vulture, the size of which he'd never witnessed before in his life, appeared in front of him mere inches from the glass. Its screech was audible through the thick glass and its fiery red eyes seemed to burn holes in Gray's skin. It receded only to send itself with all of its power flying straight into the window. The enormous bird repeated this over and over and Gray was mesmerized by this display. But, upon the vulture's third slam, Gray was ripped back into reality upon hearing the horrifying sound of breaking glass. He moved towards the door, now half petrified with fear as the vulture's fifth attempt shattered the glass into pieces. It screamed its high-pitched squeal and glared ferociously at Gray as he fumbled with the door's keypad. The bird leaped at him as he ducked just in time to miss the strike of the vulture's beak. Finally managing to enter the correct pass-code, Gray leaped through the door and immediately slid it closed, catching one last glimpse of the creature's ferocious red eyes.

Gray leaned against the wall, eventually sliding down until he was sitting on the rough blue-gray carpet. His heart was pounding and the horrifying sounds of screeching and slamming coming from inside the conference room didn't help. After several minutes, he flipped out his cell phone and punched in a number. "Uh, hello Mil. There's a... uh, vulture in my conference room."

***

"Well hot damn, it's too bad arrogance doesn't repel vultures. Otherwise, you would have had everything you needed." Baker scoffed with a smirk as she sat triumphantly at the head of the large conference table in the executive department.

"What I want to know is how a vulture broke through six inches of bulletproof glass." Latifu Hisani, the slender young Kenyan refugee turned IT department director, was the first to raise the question, her speech adorned with a Kenyan accent.

"It's a pathogena, that's what. We ain't needin' no better explanation." John Becker, the janitor assigned to dealing with the intrusive bird, answered with a drunken sneer.

"Obviously it was a pathogena. But that doesn't account for the fact that a bird that size shouldn't have been able to break that glass." Michelle Booker, a passive woman in her forties, was the head of the company's scientific and medical development programs.

"It doesn't matter how the damn thing did it," Gray groaned, "The fact of the matter is now those beasts can get into our building with ease."

"It does matter because pathogena shouldn't have the power to do something like this and we need to -" Booker started, but was interrupted by Becker, who smelled strongly of alcohol.

"We have no idea what them things is doin', woman. We have no idea what them can do." Becker growled.

Booker sighed, "Please, don't address me as woman -"

"I'll address ya' however I please!" Becker yelled, twisting his face in anger.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 2, Part 2
"Would you kiddies please shut the hell up?" Baker barked, slamming her fist on the table. "We need to figure out what our first step will..." She trailed off at the sound of gunfire.

"What now?" Hisani stood up and moved towards the window before drawing the blinds and staring down at the scene below. "Oh shit..."

"What is it?" Becker rose from his seat and trudged over to the window with vodka hitting his bloodstream like a truck. "Move it, blacky, I wanna see!" He shoved Hisani to the side and pressed his chubby hands against the window. Hisani returned the favor and the drunken man toppled to the ground. Gray, Baker and Booker joined her at the window while Slater, who hadn't said a word during the entire meeting, remained in his seat.

The scene before them was astonishing. Vultures, numbering in the hundreds, had flocked to the security gates, terrorizing the gatemen. They watched as one of the big birds took an immobilizing hold on one of the guards while another ripped at his throat with its powerful beak. Blood sprayed into the air as the man dropped from the birds' grip to the hard ground below. Soldiers with automatic machine guns stood in formation between and around the walls, opening fire on the armada. As if they were synchronized, the flock let out a piercing screech and began to mobilize. One by one they dived towards the building and began to encircle it, flying in progressively smaller circles around the building.

"I'm getting the hell away from this window." Baker growled and dashed towards the door with Gray and Hisani quick to follow. Booker came last dragging the sleeping Becker behind her. But Slater stayed in his place, staring down at his clasped hands.

Gray stopped and stood in the doorway. "Vinnie, come on. We need to get away from here."

"You go. I need to take care of some things first." Slater's reply was calm and controlled, as though he had no fear.

Baker groaned. "Do whatever you want, but I'm locking the door."

"Mil wait -" Gray began, but the door had already latched shut.

"The suicidal bastard can open it himself if he wants out." Baker sneered before heading off down the hall.

Gray started to run after her, but she turned and warned him not to follow her. "Where the hell are you going, Mil?"

"Where the hell do you think? To warn the compound to stay away from rooms with windows. We have an intercom, you know. Or maybe you don't know, seeing as how you never listen to it..." Her words trailed off as she continued her leave.

***

Gray, Hisani and Booker sat around Booker's neatly organized desk in her third floor office suite. The room was the second safest area in the compound located at the core of the main building. The first was the basement floors; however, too great a number of the employees, terrified of the vultures, had fled downward as far as they could and chaos ran supreme. Video footage of the first vulture to have broken into the compound through the windows streamed on Booker's laptop.

Booker stared solemnly down at the footage. "This just doesn't make any sense to me. How does a vulture that, based on its size, should only weigh less than seven pounds, break through a plane of bulletproof glass six inches thick with such ease?"

"Well, the average pathogenaic human weighs 120 to 200 pounds. They can morph to animals, yes? It is possible that they can also alter their weights once they are in these animal forms?" Hisani proposed.

"Honestly," Booker sighed, sitting back in her seat and rubbing her temples with a tired expression. "Becker said it right. We have no idea what they can do. I would study them, but Baker never gives me the green light to have the ones we do capture transferred to my department."

Hisani raised an eyebrow and turned her head towards Booker. "We have captured some?"

"Yes. We cage whatever makes it passed the third wall." Booker replied curiously. "Ninety-five percent have been normal animals which we release back into the wild, but we managed to stumble across four pathogena in our history. Two died from injuries and the other two are still in captivity." She added a mumbled "Being used for monkey-in-the middle by the security and intelligence offices, and my department is the monkey" before inquiring why Hisani brought up the question.

Hisani stood up. "They will have the answers to these questions."

Gray rested his face in his palm. "If security couldn't get them to talk, what makes you think we can?"

"We do not need them to talk, we need them to transform." Hisani walked towards the door with her hands in the pockets of her charcoal-gray suit coat. "You can come with me or you can not."

"Latifu, wait. Mil doesn't even let me and Slater get anywhere near those things." Gray began. "We can't just -"

Hisani smiled. "Baker is not there right now. If she is not there, she cannot stop us, yes?"

***

Gray, Booker and Hisani stepped tentatively out of the elevator. They found themselves inside of Baker's office, which appeared to have been struck by a hurricane. Papers and manila folders had been strewn everywhere in a way that not even Baker could call "an organized mess." They walked through the warzone of text and images, traveling through the doorway where, to their puzzled shock, they found Martha still seated at her desk. She looked up at the three of them and groaned an apathetic "What are you doing here?" before blowing cigarette smoke in their faces.

"We are going to see someone." Hisani answered before beginning to walk forward again.

"If it's those two pathogena you're after, then don't even try." Martha growled and Hisani froze.

She turned her head to look at Martha. "How do you know about this?"

"Because," Martha laughed and took another drag on her cigarette. "The guards already turned Baker down. You should have seen her face, mumbling about insubordination."

The three executives let Martha return to reading her magazine and began to move again. Once they had completed their snaking rout through those sterile hallways, they found themselves standing in front of an ugly metal door. There was a sign above the door that read "PENITENTIARY" and through its window six armed guards were visible standing alert outside of what appeared to be an enclosed cell with no windows. Gray entered his pass-code and the door slid open. Before they could say a word, six AK-47 machine guns were pointed at them. The three raised their hands in surrender. Booker was the first to speak.

"I'm Michelle Booker, head of the scientific and medical developments department. We need to see the pathogena." She pleaded passively. "It's critical that we understand their abilities. I need them to be transferred to my department."

One of the guards, a young man with a crooked nose, stepped forward. "Yeah, I know who you are. No one's going in that cell, including you three.

"Please, if we don't know their powers, we can't defend ourselves against them, so we need to -" Booker started, but the crooked-nosed guard fired a shot into the air.

"I don't want to hear no bitching." He scowled. "Now turn your asses around and get the hell out."

Booker clenched her fists. "But, please -"

The guard scrunched up his face in anger. "I said, get out!"

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 2, Part 3
"Booker." A female voice came from behind. Booker turned around to see Baker standing in the doorway. "It's no use. I already tried." The three executives followed Mil out of the jail and back into her office where they stood around for several minutes without a word. Baker leaned against her desk and stared at the ceiling with an uncharacteristically tired expression while Gray paced back and forth.

At last, Hisani broke the silence. "Baker, can you take us to the military supplies room?"

Gray looked up from staring at his hands. "What for?"

***

The three department heads and the anxious CEO crouched at the foot of the penitentiary door out of view of the small window. Their hearts raced as they mentally prepared themselves for their next move, a move that could either destroy their careers or turn them into heroes. Hisani began her soft counting. She counted one, two, and three...

"Penitentiary security is down, go!" Baker hissed as she sat cross-legged against the wall with her laptop, keeping a close watch on the electronic security grid glowing dimly up from her screen. Hisani opened the door to toss an ominous glass ball at the soldiers' feet, making sure to keep her face out of sight, and then hastily shut the heavy door. The ball shattered and the soldiers, confused, stared down at it, unsure of its purpose. But within seconds, their question had been answered. The guard standing closest to the thing, the crooked nosed young man who soon lost his arrogant smile, dropped to the ground. The others rushed over, but they were quick to join him in unconsciousness. The sound of guns crashing to the floor could be heard as all six of the soldiers succumbed to the incapacitating gas that had diffused into the air.

"Kolokol-1 always does the job nice, yes." Hisani flashed scorning smirk. "But this gas will kill these men, so we must be quick, very fast, so they do not die."

"Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Go!" Baker hissed. Booker, Gray and Hisani slipped through the door, closing it behind them and holding their breaths. They dashed across the room, attempting to ignore the labored breathing of the soldiers. When they reached the holding cell, Gray entered his master code into the security keypad. They dived into the cell, pushing the door closed half way into its slide open. Safely inside the airtight space, they took deep breaths to replenish their lungs with oxygen. When they had gathered themselves, they took their first looks at the room around them. It was a steel box with nothing but a light on the ceiling, a toilet and sink on the far wall and a thick pane of glass splitting the room horizontally into two halves. But what was more disturbing than the atmosphere of that bleak metal cage was the image of a girl, eleven years old, sitting dejectedly against the left wall of the room on the other side of the glass. Her auburn hair, long and tangled, fell over her face in oily strands depictive of a person who has no access to a proper shower. Her face didn't leave its expressionless position nor did she look up as Booker approached the glass.

"H-hello. My name is Michelle Booker."

"You're new." The girl whispered. Her voice was barely audible. "Are you here to hurt me more?"

"N-no." Booker was nervous. The girl's fear had caught her off guard and she wondered whether her own fear was detectable to this young pathogena. "I... I am a doctor."

"We do not have time for this, this, how you say, small talk. I will not have the blood of dead soldiers on my hands, no I will not." Hisani warned impatiently. "We must leave now to call medical for these men."

"Okay." Booker sighed. She knew that the trip back to her department would be made all the more dangerous by a bad relationship with the girl; however, she knew it was imperative to leave as soon as possible. She took latex gloves and a surgical mask from her pocket and pulled them on. Her knees shook as she moved towards the glass, the sentence "This girl is contagious" running through her head over and over. Hesitating with her finger over the small red button that would draw back the divider, her heart raced as she stared at the child who had not moved a muscle since her arrival. Finally, she pressed the button and heard the hum of the sliding wall. Still, the girl did not budge.

"Get the fuck on with it, Michelle." Gray mumbled only loud enough for Hisani to hear, who nodded in solidarity and drummed her fingers on her leg. But Gray was not any less anxious to be near the young pathogena than Booker, who was finally handcuffing the girl and leading her towards the door.

"Alright, when I open this door, I need you to hold your breath until we get out of the next room, understand?" Booker tried to conceal her anxiety, but she wasn't sure if she had succeeded. But the girl nodded and when Gray opened the door, the four of them ran. Hisani, disturbed by the sight of the crooked nosed soldier hyperventilating on the ground, took the lead and almost dove into the hallway.

Baker looked up. "You're not bringing the other one?" At the sight of the security chief that had ordered her interrogations, the girl's face took on a mix of rage and fear. She flinched away, but couldn't pull herself from Booker's hold. Booker, knowing that the girl had the full ability to transform, tried in vain to calm her. It was Gray that suggested that Baker stay behind, and Baker agreed, claiming that she needed to deal with the medics anyhow. But in truth, she was as terrified as anyone was, though she would never admit it.

Hisani, Booker, Gray and the young pathogena returned to Baker's office. The sight only managed to extract a disapproving grunt from Martha who was more concerned with the fact that she had run out of cigarettes for the night than she was that a contagious prisoner was being stolen from her department. The four criminals entered Baker's elevator and ascended to the sciences department.

***

"Kolokol-1. That's pretty damn smart." Baker whipped her head around to see Slater's round form hovering in the hallway behind her.

"Let me guess, the disciplinary committee will love to hear about this?" Baker groaned, shutting down her laptop.

Slater laughed. "No, no, I'm not going to rat you out. But I hope you know, shutting off the security cameras wasn't really necessary, because they'll trace you back to the crime with those authorization codes you used."

Baker frowned. "It'll save the two other people involved. And Gray's too high up to be facing any significant consequences."

"Now, I've never known you to be the self-sacrificing type. Well, we'll just have to wait and see how this turns out." And with that, Slater disappeared into the sterile hallways and Baker was left with the biting suspicion that the man wouldn't keep his promise of silence.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 3: "The Prisoner and the Refugee," Part 1
"So, your name is Melanie Cole?" Just like a surgeon Booker stood in her latex gloves and facemask, looking down on the pathogena girl who's right wrist was handcuffed to the chair she was sitting in.

"Yes." Melanie replied as quiet as a mouse.

"And how old are you?"

"Eleven." The girl spoke with a tremor in her voice, keeping her head down and fiddling with her thumbs.

"Are you scared?" Booker attempted to appear as benign as she could manage, but the timid Emily fell silent at the invasive question. Hisani, who sat stilly in the background, watched the scene disapprovingly, adorning a distasteful frown each time she noticed the girl's hand hanging motionless in the air inside of its handcuff. When I am in bondage, she mused, I too do not wish to answer questions.

Booker frowned. "Emily, please, it's very important that you answer my questions." When the girl didn't respond, Booker continued. "It's okay, I'm a doctor. I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to know some things about you. Do you understand?"

"Maybe, if you did not talk to this girl like a mother to a toddler, she would answer." Hisani scorned.

Booker walked over to Hisani and attempted to speak as discretely as possible. "She's just a child. She's frightened. We can't grill her with interrogations like a common prisoner. We'll never get any response that way."

"Yes, because this method of yours is working impeccably." Hisani scoffed. "I will talk to her." She turned towards the girl, but Booker grabbed her arm.

"No, you can't harm relations -"

Hisani pulled her arm away and narrowed her eyes. "You misjudge me, woman. Child," She softened her expression and stood by Emily's chair. "I am like you." This drew the girl's head up.

"How?" Emily whispered, taken aback.

"I was once a prisoner, such as you, in a detainment camp." Hisani spoke softly.

"Hisani." Booker hissed, but she was disregarded.

Now with the girl's curious attention, Hisani continued. "I was a young girl of 13 years living with my mother and my father when the soldiers raided our town. It happened so quick, yes, and I was very scared. Me and my family ran from our little home and hid, but we were not fortunate. The soldiers found us and took us to this camp where they asked us many questions and if we did not answer or did not give them the answers that they wanted, they would hit us and burn us. This is what the people here did to you, yes?" Emily nodded with a dejected frown. "But there was one night, a very cold one as I remember, that men in black came to me and my cellmates. They took us into the halls and they asked us for our information. They said to us that they would give us our freedom if we told the truth. We told them that we were not criminals and they believed us. So we left with these men and fled from that awful town forever." Hisani's face reflected genuine compassion as she finished recanting her honest history. "If you work with us, we will set you free. But you must promise to tell the truth, like I did. Do you promise?"

The young girl bit her lip and nodded her head. Booker, with a frown, pulled Hisani over by the arm whispered to her, "We can't lie to her. Security will never let her go and you know that."

Hisani felt a wave of contempt flash through her. "I will make sure that this happens, yes I will. If I am fired for it, then I will have no regrets. I will not wish to work for a company so cruel and despicable."

***

Marshal Hitch stood with an arrogant posture at the head of the long, rectangular conference table. This particular table was one of the few not desecrated by the vultures, as the majority of the conference rooms had had windows installed. Although conscious of the fact that this logistical folly in the architecture of the building had been executed under his jurisdiction, Hitch held his head high, confident of his own self-declared magnificence. This wiry man's position in the company had no real title, but he vaguely fell under the management category. He signed paperwork and supposedly oversaw programs, with the authority of being Slater's nephew, for eight hours of every weekday. Gray, Slater, Baker and Mayland had taken their respective seats at the table. The almost-sober Becker, for some absurd reason, was also present. Kathy Efird and Amelia Cesar, presidents of the company's two major worker's unions; Amir Saad, head of the accounting department and the man responsible for overseeing the financing of the compound's necessary repairs; Phil Becker, Saad's personal lapdog and treasurer of the company; and Jack Otwell, the security captain on duty during the time of the vultures' attack, could all be found in their places as well. Absent from the room was any member of the physics or sciences departments as Hitch's official opinion on the situation was that scientific formulas don't kill pathogena.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a situation on our hands." Hitch emphasized his words harshly, swiveling his head to scan his audience. "As some of you may know," He frowned, throwing a look towards Cesar and Efird who had previously filed numerous ignored complaints regarding working conditions and exposure to disease. "We have a couple of captive pathogena. Or, I should say, we had a couple. Now we only have one. Does any one else see a problem with this?"

"Is it possible that she was taken in the raid?" Slater proposed, subtly giving a quick smile towards Baker and Gray.

"Impossible." Otwell scowled, taking the suggestion as an attack to his competency. "I had six armed men stationed outside that cell. Nothing could have gotten through, not even a mouse."

Slater rested his chin on his fist. "Now if I do recall, someone incapacitated those men. Medical can back me up on that one."

"Yes, I am aware of this." Otwell narrowed his eyes. "But are you aware of how our surveillance camera footage of that area has recorded ten minutes of blackness? Those cameras weren't damaged; they were turned off."

Hitch nodding, beginning to pace slowly. "Then this is coming from the inside. Where is Latifu Hisani?"

"Blacky ain't been answering the telephone." John Becker slammed his fist onto the table, as he felt useful in his own way.

Hitch glowered "Well, someone find her, then. Or Braxton, I don't care who, but I want someone who can find out for me who the hell hacked into our system."

***

"Emily, I need you to transform for me." Booker, with her gloves and her mask, stood trying to suppress the anxiety that had only declined slightly since her first encounter with the girl.

"W-what?" Emily looked up at the aging woman beside her, a familiar fear building.

"Please, I need to understand you." Booker pleaded, but the terrified young girl shook her head, keeping her eyes on the floor. Booker looked towards Hisani and frowned, but before she could say anything, the lab phone rang its obnoxious ring. She pulled the mask from her face and picked up the receiver. "Hello, Dr. Michelle Booker speaking... Baker, hello, what's... Oh no... How long do you estimate that we... O-okay... Yes, thank you." All color flushed from Booker's face as she hung up the phone with clenched fists.

"What is it?" Hisani watched the woman turn gravely towards her, making eye contact.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 3: "The Prisoner and the Refugee," Part 2
"Hitch is ordering security to search the records." Booker waved Hisani to come over to her, and then continued in a low whisper. "He's convinced this was an inside job, which it was, and he's looking to find out who shut down the security cameras last night. When that happens, Baker and Gray will be out to dry and it won't take a large leap in logic to trace the crime back to us. Baker's going to try to stall them so we can run our tests, but we need to be fast."

"She," Hisani glanced back at Emily, "Is not going to go fast."

Booker wore a desperate frown. "Emily, please, we really need you to do this for us. Both you and I are going to be in a lot of trouble if you don't."

Emily, seeing the panic in the scientist's face, was taken by the sudden realization of her current circumstances. She knew that she had become the focal point of a crime and, for a justifiable reason, she felt a dull wave of satisfaction. The pieces put themselves together in her head and she understood that this doctor and the men who had tortured her were not on the same side of an internal divide. She nodded her head and her fear became replaced with anxiety.

Booker sighed in relief and led the girl towards a large machine that reminded Emily of the glass elevators in the malls her parents used to bring her to before the epidemic. Except, there were no buttons and a blue light shined down from the top of the contraption. Emily stepped inside and Booker sat herself down behind the desktop computer with glowing duel monitors attached to the exterior.

Booker's monitor displayed a rotatable three-dimensional muscle map of the eleven-year-old child's body. Colors indicated the amount of energy being utilized by specific muscles. Dull yellow spots in her heart and lime colored blotches in her legs reflected the highest levels while blue and purple gathered around the areas at rest. Unbeknown to Emily, the machine was measuring energy in her body like an fMRI measures brain activity. "Okay Emily." The girl took a deep breath and cleared her mind. She concentrated on everything that she felt and closed her eyes. On Booker's screen, the model shifted from blues and yellows to a uniform orange and red. The figure began to shake as though it were dissipating. Emily was suddenly aware of every cell in her body as they began to break apart from each other. Even as her entire form dissolved, she could feel every sensation. The cells shifted and molded themselves as they rearranged their formation. Her own DNA, like a CD in the tray of a multidisc stereo, was pushed to the side to allow the dormant DNA of a raven to take its place. Proteins flushes as the cells brought themselves back together. On Booker's screen was no longer the diagram of a human, but that of a small bird. Booker sat astounded and lost for words.

But the look of astonishment on her face soon dissolved into horror as she heard the far-off sound of a sliding door. "Hisani," Booker whispered, her heart racing, as she shut down the machine, "Take the girl and hide." Needing no further explanation, Hisani nodded.

Having returned to her human form, Emily whispered a trembling, "What's happening?" as Hisani guided her out of the chamber.

"They can not find you. They will take all three of us to jail and we will not be heard of again." Hisani replied, leading the girl by the arm towards a desk on the opposite side of the room. The prisoner and the refugee crawled behind the desk, their bodies trapped between wood and metal. Booker paced, attempting to collect herself and formulate an alibi, as she pulled off her gloves and mask. Jack Otwell appeared in the doorway with the same intimidating scowl that he wore during criminal interrogations.

"Booker, how pleasant to see you are well." He sneered, making no attempt to mask his sarcasm. His dark eyes were on fire with contempt, set aflame by a potent combination of Hitch and Baker. With utmost care in perfecting his military image, he crossed his arms and concentrated on strengthening his unyielding stare. "Do you know anything about a missing pathogena?"

"N-no. I h-heard about it, but I'm sorry, I can't give you any information." Booker answered nervously. Hisani, from behind her desk, knew instantly that Otwell could see straight through Booker's sorry attempt at lying.

"Well, that's okay. Why don't you just come with me now," Otwell flashed a sinister smirk, "And we can discuss this in a more... appropriate setting." He grabbed Booker by the wrist and dragged her out of the room. Emily felt as though her heart was trying to climb its way out of her throat as she listened to the scene. When she heard the squealing of a closing door, she and Hisani rose from their hiding place and took in their circumstances. For Hisani, reality began to set in. In retrospect, she scoffed at her naïve assumption that escaping the building with the girl in tow would be a simple task. They hadn't accounted for the consequences of their actions. With childish glee they had seen the calamity of the invasion as the perfect cover for a covert operation, but they had not the foresight to realize what does and does not appear to be an inside job. She knew with perfect certainty that Hitch and Otwell would tighten security fourfold. Emily shook with the fear of knowing how alone she was. She, too, understood that leaving the compound would not be easy, but her anxieties lied in the awareness of her lack of allies. With Booker under the surveillance of Otwell and without trust in Gray or Baker, the girl felt a powerful wave of desolation and hopelessness. She couldn't prevent herself from blushing at how quickly she had believed that she would actually be free again.

***

"I will shoot him. Yes, I will kill this precious man." Hisani, with her back against the cold steel wall of the ground floor, gripped her pistol with a confident fist. She glowered at the seven disquieted men in black standing before her holding their automatic weapons in sweaty hands. "You do not shoot. You do not shoot or you can line your pockets with this man's blood!" She inched her way leftwards and snarled, "Open these doors!" Gray, wearing an expression that lied somewhere between consternation and pure panic, had no choice but to follow the woman's commands. He could feel the cold steel of the gun on the side of his head as he watched the scene with wide eyes. The creaking and groaning of metal echoed in his ears as the heavy gate slid upward, allowing the diffused light of a cloudy day to flood into the vast storage room. The bitter smell of diesel exhaust began to circulate as the engine of an armored truck sparked to life. As Hisani reached the doorway, her heart raced. She had a ten-meter run of vulnerability to get to the back of the escape vehicle ahead of her. Knowing she had no time to hesitate, she pushed Gray forward and, with her pistol still planted firmly against his head, ordered him to run. Bullets began to fly, as she could no longer shield her sides from the gunmen outside and in. A shot grazed passed her shoulder leaving an ugly red gash, but she continued on. She shoved Gray into the back of the truck and slammed the doors shut. In no time, the van was lurching towards the security gates that opened reluctantly before them.

[tigerkitty]

What a brilliant story! Your imagery is really well done. The shifting POV is an interesting way to go about things. Typically you choose a character and stick with them through the story, but I like how you change from one person to another.

Be careful of it though, so far you've done extremely well in ensuring we know who we're following, but it can be easy to slip into a shift without cluing the reader in on who the new POV is from.

I do sort of feel like I've been plonked into the middle of a story while missing some of the start of it. I get the idea that Pathogena is a sort of infection that allows people to transform into rats or birds (I think) but I don't see why it's such a terror... I mean the little girl seems completely reasonable and rational, yet you have the vultures which swooped down, killed people, and busted up windows. They give the impression that Pathogena are zombie-esque in their desire to go after regular humans.

Maybe it's still too early in the story yet to be able to piece all this together. But you already have characters putting themselves into risky situations when we don't even yet really know what's going on.

But saying that, I don't want you to get the wrong impression. I really like the story, it's very engaging and the imagery is well worded.

I look forward to reading more!

[InsertFunnyUserName]

At 2/19/10 03:43 PM, tigerkitty wrote: I do sort of feel like I've been plonked into the middle of a story while missing some of the start of it. I get the idea that Pathogena is a sort of infection that allows people to transform into rats or birds (I think) but I don't see why it's such a terror... I mean the little girl seems completely reasonable and rational, yet you have the vultures which swooped down, killed people, and busted up windows. They give the impression that Pathogena are zombie-esque in their desire to go after regular humans.

Yeah, I'll be explaining that later in the story, and thus the contrast is intetional. But, it's a good point that actually gives me a good idea of where to go with the next chapter. I'll try to address that and piece things together now.

I look forward to reading more!

Thanks for the review. :]

[WhoIsPaul]

Stories are awesome!!!

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 4: Part 1 of 3

Baker kept her hands planted firmly on the steering wheel as though her life depended on the physical contact. The bone of her knuckles glowed through the skin of her sweaty hands. Her body was tense and her face was contorted with the heavy weight of anxiety and anger that had stricken her since the moment she agreed to Hisani's plan of escape, one she found farcical to say the least. She was astonished to find that it had been executed almost without incident. But at the same time she felt a biting dejection in the back of her mind. Under a blend of doubt, pessimism and disappointment in herself, she found herself losing grip of her identity. She had been a loyal employee of Humanities Inc since the epidemic first began. For five years she had sacrificed her own personal happiness for the good of the company and the safety of those who cultivated it. Now she had thrown away her career. And for what, she thought, the pipe dreams of a corporate fairy and the guilt complex of a refugee? She shook her head, throwing her hair out of her eyes and with it her concerns into the back of her mind, and prepared to navigate the only road down from the company's high perch.

But to call that treacherous safety hazard a road would be inordinate flattery in the face of its preposterous dimensions. The van, not designed for off-road travel, belched disconcerting groans as its breaks strained against the steep decline. The trail wound around the mountain, as though it was a spiral staircase encircling a tower, like a ribbon of jagged tar left over from its first and only paving. Vengeful desert plants and boulders the sizes of suitcases were gradually creeping their way towards the middle of the passageway as the road dilapidated further. To make matters worse, the weak guardrail, decimated by rockslides, scrimmages and "accidents," still existed only in short bursts of metal. In the truck's cargo hold, Hisani leaned against the wall in a nonchalant expression of comfort while Gray, who had attempted to imitate the woman's posture, sat with crossed legs after a humbling fall on his face. However, Gray was taking pride in his acting skills; the scheme had worked and inside Hisani's coat pocket was a small mouse with beady red eyes.

Throughout the trip down, Baker feared an ambush, but the descent went as smoothly as it could ever have under the circumstances. When the four escapees reached the bottom of the mountain, they were treading on territory that three former department heads hadn't seen in five years. The land was dry with malnourished grasses protruding out of its cracks and in the distance were endless rows of alpine mountains. Behind the clouds, sunlight was fading as the minutes passed. They would cross the valley and rest in the safety of the mountains' rocky shelters.

***

"Hisani, how can you touch that thing?" Baker snarled, glancing over at the shadowed form of a sleeping girl that was tossing and turning in her sleep. The four runaways huddled under a rock overhang that spared them from the bitter retribution of the pounding rain. Storm clouds, turbulent and intrusive, erased all evidence that there ever was a moon in the midst of that tenebrous night.

"She is human." Hisani responded without interest. She lied on her back and stared up at the granite dangling above her.

Baker narrowed her eyes. "Bullshit! She isn't any different than those hellish miscreations that we've been cowering from for five years. She may look like a sweet little girl to you, but she's just another demon waiting for us to put our guard down. They've got one hell of a bloodlust, you just wait and see."

Without a hint of irritation, Hisani replied, "If that is so, why did you come with us?" Baker glared, but Hisani issued her no response. For Baker, the question was unanswerable, not only in the face of embarrassment, but due to the curious fact that she couldn't even come up with any semblance of an answer inside of her own head.

"That's beside the point." Baker shrugged in an unsuccessful attempt to save face. "She'll infect you with it and you'll be one of them. You'll be savage, lose your brain and your reason. Then you'll remember what I said and you will be sorry." She slumped down and leaned against the granite face of the mountain. "You'll be real fucking sorry."

"I think that if I become infected with this pathogena virus," Hisani smirked, "That you will not be the thing on my mind."

Indignant, Baker stood and stormed away, issuing a mumbled "I'm going for a walk" before being engulfed in biting rain.

The frigid water didn't faze her as she stumbled over the rocks, her rage seemingly forming a blanket of fiery warmth around her. She descended the mountain until she was engulfed in a forest of gnarled trees. Without any light, she had the wits to know she wouldn't fare well were she to delve further into the twisting forest, so she leaned her body against rough bark. The tree was old and, although it still bore a thin layer of leaves, it appeared to be dying. A cold wind, though slow, was beginning to pick up and as its icy feathers brushed passed Baker, it began to lift her anger from her. It was at that moment that the cold finally penetrated her fading coat of contempt. Shivering, she stared into nothing, but the unnatural rustling of leaves ended her eventless daydream. Baker whipped her head around, attempting to identify which direction the noise was coming from only to find that it had encircled her. Shadowed movement was all around her as she began to step back towards where she had come, but she froze as she heard the all too familiar sound of barking and the cocking of a gun.

***

Gray was the first to wake as the dawn's sun crept its way up into the sky. Still groggy from a night's worth of patchy sleep, he rose to a sitting position and massaged his neck. He found that he was unable to bend it leftwards without receiving a slap of pain, the product of lying motionless on the ground for seven and a half hours. Looking down at himself, he was satisfied to find that, in light of the previous day's preposterous sequence of events, he had been left uninjured, albeit dirty. But as he scanned their impromptu camping grounds, he frowned and pulled his body to its feet. Baker had never returned. He woke Hisani, and in effect brought Emily around to consciousness as well, with his distressed yelling.

The three of them gathered themselves and began descending the path that Baker had fled by, despite Hisani's acrimonious suggestion that they leave the woman to her own perils. The rocks were still wet and deceivingly deep puddles had been left for Gray to fall into, but the clouds had all but disappeared from the sky. Gray estimated that it had been over twenty minutes before the granite filtered into muddy soil, which was a substantially longer trip than the hike up from the other side of the mountain had been. The frigid air of dawn bit at him with ferocity through his suit that was lacking any semblance of insulation. As soon as they entered the twisting conglomeration of trees, the eerie whooshing of wings rang out from above. Looking up, Gray spotted the culprit: an emaciated owl with one eye that had been gouged and another that locked itself on Gray's form with it pupil as red as blood. It perched itself on a branch with erect posture, but gave no warning sign of attack, so the group moved along. We're in their territory now, Gray thought. As he continued walking, although the pathogenaic bird hadn't shown itself a second time, he couldn't shake the feeling that it was still watching them.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 4: "The Zookeeper" - Part 2 of 3

After nearly an hour of stumbling over overgrown vegetation and deformed trees that twisted themselves in illogical directions, confusion was Gray's first emotion as he tripped onto concrete. The road, beginning abruptly and leading off into the distance, couldn't have gone without a paving for more than a year. Eventually, after walking with a cautious paranoia for some minutes, they found a cargo truck idling with a rumble. Although it wasn't comprehensible to the two administrators why the empty convoy was stalling on a dead end road that led to the middle of a forest, they came to the conclusion that it would need to be heading somewhere. Somewhere, Hisani noted, that may have food and shelter. They climbed aboard, preying that the driver wouldn't notice his three hitchhikers and to their relief, he didn't seem to - or at least pretended not to - as the truck lurched into motion.

"I don't know how you talked me into this. Where ever we're going will be littered with pathogena." Gray whispered, aiming to have his voice be inaudible to both the driver and Emily as he leaned against the truck's cold steel walls. "We can't eat their food or drink their water unless we want to be infected."

"It is most likely that we will be killed on the spot." Hisani replied, calm and collected. "Being given the supplies to become infected will be a miracle from your god."

Gray rolled his eyes. "You say that so casually."

"I will not be afraid of this death. There is nothing to live for."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that. Our options are being painfully assassinated, dying of starvation or becoming pathogena and having our nervous systems corroded from the inside out. You can say all you want now, but when we're in the deep shit, that's when the fear comes."

***

When the truck began to slow, the runaways had thrown themselves out of the doors before a complete stop had even occurred. It was a dusty parking lot in front of a warehouse, archaic with barred windows. Gray caught the eye of the driver who only stared with confusion at the two suits and the child that had climbed out of his truck. The man didn't appear to be concerned, however, as he continued on with his sloppy parking job.

Gray, Hisani and Emily slipped through the buildings and reappeared from the concrete maze onto a narrow side street. Most of the buildings were old, abandoned and dilapidated by weather and vandalism. The midday sun fell from above and reflected off of the windows, some broken or partially boarded, and various litter. To Hisani, the area seemed desolate, but to Gray the absence of life came only as a warning sign. He was anxious, his heart racing as he remembered his own words. Humanities Inc had sent out scouts on numerous occasions to locations inhabited by populations of pathogena and the overheard conversations of his coworkers echoed crystal clear in his head. "None of 'em came back alive, can you believe that?" they would say. "I don't understand why they keep sending 'em out there. Those animals don't want to talk, they just want to kill."

As they reached a larger road, one with newer-looking buildings, they saw what they had never expected. There were people on the streets, pathogena of most ages, but their faces were expressionless. None of them moved or said a word; they merely stared. "Why aren't they attacking?" Gray whispered to Hisani.

"I do not know." Hisani replied.

"Hey suits!" A voice rang out from behind, drawing a handful of quiet gasps from the people in the streets. Gray turned to see the teenaged boy standing with three others. He was unkempt with arrogant posture, his hair flying out in all directions. His skin was ghostly white in contrast to his all-black attire. But the boy's most striking feature were the catastrophic burns on his hands and forearms.

"Chemical burns." Hisani gasped under her breath.

The boy walked towards them until he was face-to-face with Gray, who took a step back. "You 'fraid of me, suit?" The boy laughed. "Well, you should be." Reaching his hand into his pants' pocket, his pulled out a revolver that glistened silver in the sunlight. Gray's eyes widened as he took another step back, but Hisani's glance remained cold. The boy raised the gun and held it to Gray's temple. "See, I don't like outsiders, especially not businessmen." As the gun was clicked off of its safety lock, Gray felt himself begin to tremble. There was no doubt in his mind that the pathogenaic adolescent would pull the trigger. "Count to three." The boy ordered, but when he got no response, he mustered an indignant scowl. "I said count to three. If you don't, I'll kill you the painful way instead."

Gray had no choice but to comply. "One," he heard himself say. "Two," he bit his lip and closed his eyes.

"Put down the gun, Taylor." The words flooded down the street, ringing in Gray's ears.

The boy whipped his head around and snarled, "That's not my god damned name, you shit. And why should I? He's a suit, one of them."

The 59-year-old man stood with his hands in the pockets of his worn out coat. His beard, graying and astonishingly bushy, wrapped around his face all the way up to his hair. With a calm and gentle voice, he spoke, "Because son, you'll remind me too much of the man who killed your mother and I don't want to remember that."

Taken aback by the fuzzy-faced man's subtle but derisive comment, the boy's face flushed crimson. It was a blend of humiliation, shattered pride and indignation.

"Well, shit, you sure did kill the mood." The boy sneered, transparently embarrassed. "I'm out of here. This party has crashed itself." He turned his eyes to his friends. "Follow me if you want."

The man smiled. "You can't save face that way, son." Without any response more sophisticated than a contemptuous glare, the boy attempted to posture aloofness and disappeared in between the buildings.

***

"Excuse me for not introducing myself." The bearded man relaxed into his chair, twisting his bulbous facial hair back and forth between his fingers. "My name is Herald Mason; the townspeople call me the Zookeeper."

Gray sat across from Herald on the couch that threatened to engulf him in its assemblage of pillows. He felt uneasy, keeping a paranoid eye on the two dogs in the corner of the room that resembled wolves far more than Gray was comfortable with. "Can I ask why?"

"You could call me a kinda diplomat, I suppose. I take care of the town, negotiating with the corporate vultures that pass through here. I assume you understand the pun." Herald replied. "Plus, I'm a zoologist with a double major in anthropology."

"You are not a pathogena, I see." Hisani stood with her hands crammed in her coat pockets.

Herald smiled. "I get that reaction often. No, I'm not afflicted, and neither are my dogs." His face then turned solemn. "The virus isn't as contagious as the bigwigs in power would like you to believe. Hell, I doubt it's even a virus. It's something, but it's not what we've been told, that's for sure. All I know is that it's killing these people."

Hisani frowned. "Killing them?"

"The first wave of people to become pathogena, they're all dying now. They're losing their motor control, their sight, their hearing. And then they begin to become paralyzed, starting with the legs and rising. Once it reaches the chest, it stops their heart." Herald explained with a pained voice. "It's in the blood, we know that. I brought doctor with me when I first arrived in this town. He was mending an open wound, one of a small girl, when her blood soaked into a gash of his. A week later, his eyes were blood red. But it isn't in the food and it isn't in the air; I'm proof of that."

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Chapter 4: "The Zookeeper - Part 3 of 3

Marshal Hitch focused his sight on the scene before him. The contrast between the blaring lights of the containment chamber and the darkness of the observation room made his eyes water at times, but he kept his stone cold stare pointed forward nonetheless.

"Turn on the magnetics." A woman with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun ordered into a microphone with inordinate calmness.

"So," Hitch inquired, "What, exactly, the hell, are we doing?"

"We are attempting to force the boy to morph." Booker replied.

"Care to explain why?"

"I propose the theory that these afflicted persons are using the body's natural electromagnetic fields as a fuel for the reorganization of cells that occurs during the process and that pathogena have the conscious ability to control such energy. If we can force a mutation using electromagnetic radiation, then my theory will be correct."

"Is this humane?" Hitch sighed, tired of being an enabler for the irrational.

"No, probably not."

"So, we're running an invasive test using inhumane practices all for the sake of proving some ludicrous theory that's both borderline breaching the laws of physics and most probably is going to be an utterly useless discovery? And you're using company funds to do it?" Hitch rolled his eyes. The woman was two-faced with both heads stuck in the clouds.

"You're right about the test and the funds; however, you're incorrect about its usefulness." The woman turned to look at Hitch with a cold - but collected - expression. "If this works, its significance is unprecedented. With the right combination of forced electromagnetic transformations and a cocktail of psychoactive narcotics, we could turn these people into our ultimate weapon. We can wipe out their population for good. They're too contagious for us to attack them with armies, but with these captives on our side..." She trailed off, her poker face remaining perpetually in tack.

"That's brilliant. But Jesus, Booker," Hitch laughed, "You're reminding me more and more of myself every minute. Who would of thought that you would be on our side of this fiasco?"

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Feedback on this last chapter anyone?

[Wuggawoot]

At 4/18/10 05:40 PM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote: Feedback on this last chapter anyone?

Liked it, was really hoping for a page two of this thread. Maybe PM me if you post another one? I'd like to hear more.

[InsertFunnyUserName]

At 5/14/10 01:01 AM, Wuggawoot wrote: Liked it, was really hoping for a page two of this thread. Maybe PM me if you post another one? I'd like to hear more.

Currently, I'm taking on the national novel writing month concept for my English class so I won't have much time to work on this story until that's over (I'm already 4000 words behind), but I will be continuing this, that's for sure.

[Deathcon7]

I once had to go back and completely re-write a story I was working on because I happened to start it the wrong way. That issue carried itself forward until I hit a clear and definite breaking point.

What I'm trying to say is that, while the story seems engaging, the narrative isn't. It's very slow, and the characters themselves don't make up for it. There's a bit of something here and there, but for the most part it's just moving forward. There's no ups and downs, just a flatline.

Anyway, that's my suggestion. Perhaps even work out an outline so that you can know exactly where you want to go at any given time.