“Execution seems a bit harsh for a thief…” the man thought as he shovelled a spoonful of snow-white rice coated in mars-red curry.
The scent of the aromatic sauce filled the inside of the man’s mask as he ate it through the filter.
He sat on a wooden stool located outside the small inn, a wooden podium was erected in the centre of the town, around it, a protective layer of chain-link fences and two dozen guards.
The execution wasn’t meant to take place until later that day, however, the whole area was being sterilized by a group of masked individuals.
They walked around with large tanks on their backs, seemingly converted boilers.
“In fact, this whole thing seems like overkill…” he thought taking another spoonful of curry into his mouth.
Once he finished his meal, he set the plate aside and grabbed the rucksack from his shoulder.
It was brown and worn out.
He unzipped it and pulled out a small leather-bound notebook, within its pages was a rough sketch of a map showing the partially flooded, partially desertified Europe.
Dozens of small ‘X’s marked the places he visited on his pilgrimage to the north.
Judging from the map, the stranger travelled by boat to Greece where he was currently, not that borders meant anything nowadays.
“Are you the one hired by the innkeeper earlier?” one of them asked.
The stranger looked up to see two figures clad in green hazmat suits with a bulletproof vest strapped on.
“Are you guys here for the taxes? I kind of ate the curry already so that’ll be tough…” he replied gesturing to the plate.
One of them stepped forward revealing a pair of handcuffs.
“You need to be taken in for a check-up, the thief was a carrier for a virus, as you know that’s highly illegal.” they explained.
The stranger placed a hand over his double-masked face and gasped.
“How scary!” he remarked, “By all means bring me to the doctor!” he continued.
The two exchanged confused looks before nodding to each other.
One of the guards grabbed his rucksack and placed it into a big black binbag.
“Alright, follow us…” they said before placing the handcuffs on the man’s wrists.
The stranger was led to a large, fenced-off facility, at one point it may have been a factory or a prison, now it looked like a demented idea of a hospital.
Large furnaces stood around the guarded premises where cages stood with plastic bags stitched together into removable walls attached to their sides.
“Any idea what the virus does?” the stranger asked.
One of the hazmat-guards shrugged.
“No idea, allegedly the thief managed to almost escape the facility so it’s probably an agility or speed boosting virus,” he replied.
The stranger nodded.
“How frightening, I barely managed to catch her yesterday!” he laughed.
The two guards didn’t comment.
They led him into the building and down to an underground lab.
Shelves of labelled vials filled the room where a black-haired man with round glasses sat, he wore a green sweater over a dark blue shirt and had a lab coat over them.
“Is this the one?” he asked.
The two nodded.
“Alright…” the exhausted man sighed.
He gestured the stranger down to a doctor’s chair in the centre of the room.
“Just… sit down or something,” he shrugged.
The stranger did as instructed and sat down on the chair, his hands still bound.
The two guards made their way over to him and strapped his torso and legs onto the chair.
“Hold on, what’s this all about?” he asked nervously.
The scientist approached the stranger with a syringe of red liquid.
“I, am going to kill you now.” He said squeezing the excess air from the tip of the syringe.
“Well, damn, really not beating around the bush, are you?” the stranger remarked.
The doctor pulled the stranger’s sleeve up with his gloved hands and buried the needle into his shoulder.
“Ow!”
“Don’t be a baby, it’ll be over soon…” the scientist remarked pushing the liquid into his veins.
He pushed almost all of the solution into him leaving about one-tenth in the syringe.
“That thief girl has an interesting virus… I can’t have people spreading my new product for free…” he remarked plainly.
The doctor lowered the man’s sleeve and patted the stranger on the head.
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“There, have a lollipop,” he offered tossing the man a decades-old strawberry lollipop.
In mere seconds the double-masked man began to tremble.
“Looks like the ‘assassin virus’ is really working well on you, too bad, no interesting viruses to harvest from your corpse I guess…” he sighed.
“I harvested it from a drunk a few years back, to think he would waste this kind of ability on extorting drinks…” the man shook his head, when he looked over to the stranger, he noticed that he was already limp.
“Well, I suppose that’s that…” he said with a shrug, he turned towards the two guards and gestured them towards the stranger’s corpse with a move of his head.
He moved towards a large glass beaker of crimson liquid where he squirted the excess ‘assassin virus’ so as not to waste any.
The two guards moved towards the stranger, removing his restraints and handcuffs before grabbing him by the arms and legs.
The scientist removed his gloves and tossed them in the small bin before noticing something which shook him to his very core.
The large beaker of red liquid became clear and upon further analysis was simply water with suspended virus particles floating around lifelessly.
He spun around seeing the double-masked man scratching his recently-pierced arm next to the two dead guards.
Both of their necks were snapped.
“I am very hurt by your remark…” he said with a lollipop sticking out his air filter.
“I’ll have you know I do have a virus…” he said reaching for his rucksack from one of the guards and pulling out a knife.
“It’s not very cool though…”
Desperate, the scientist reached for a scalpel from the table and charged at the masked man.
“Jokes on you!” he laughed as the man became completely invisible.
“What the hell…” thought the masked stranger,
“An invisibility-virus? That’s new…”
A voice came from nowhere and everywhere in the room at once.
“That’s right! This is my virus, one that I managed to cross-breed over years of hard work! I call it ‘the invisible virus!’” the scientist exclaimed seemingly awaiting some sort of praise.
“I mean… props for the virus… the name kind of sucks ass though…” said the stranger as he slashed the lower section of his palm.
With one swift motion, he splattered his blood all around him.
It wasn’t long after that when he heard the panicked scientist.
“What the hell did you do!?” he was slowly becoming visible starting with the patches of his skin the blood touched.
“Your virus lives on your body, not inside, so you’ll be healthy soon enough,” said the stranger as his virus-killing virus spread across the man’s entire body and clothes.
The blood that landed on the walls and samples single-handily destroyed years of the man’s research.
The stranger turned towards the scientist as the now-visible man dropped his scalpel and fell to the ground in defeat.
“…” he didn’t say anything as the stranger approached him and by grabbing his chin and pulling it up to where his ear was away from him, snapping the man’s neck with a crunch.
From the man’s lab coat pocket fell out a revolver.
“Some doctor you were…” he remarked before grabbing a roll of bandages from his desk and using them to treat his bleeding hand.
A few minutes later, a man wearing a green hazmat suit with a gas mask and a regular mask over it left the doctor’s room.
In his hand was one of the assault rifles from the first hazmat-guy, on his back was the assault rifle from the second guy, and just in case, he carried the doctor’s revolver in his pocket under the hazmat suit.
Over the suit, he wore two bulletproof vests.
“Now then… I suppose finding the thief is a must…” he sighed remembering what the man said about her carrying some unique virus.
Meanwhile, on the top floor of the facility.
The thief sat anxiously in a cell, the walls were thick, there were no windows, the only light came from outside the steel door with bullet-proof glass which distorted whatever lay behind it.
She sat on a bed which was really just the mattress, except with the metal springs removed.
She could feel the bruise on her arm from where her blood was taken.
“As soon as one of those bastards steps inside I’m going for the throat…”
“If I’m fast enough I’ll slit their jugular, if I’m not then I might as well die attempting murder…”
Suddenly the ringing of an alarm could be heard throughout the entire facility.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The sound of dozens of armed guards could be heard, they shouted orders.
Then they began to fire.
Constant bullet fire could be heard as the thief felt her ears ringing from the combination of the alarm and shooting.
Moments later the sounds of gunfire stopped as they became replaced with the barely audible sound of footsteps.
The stranger stood on the other side of the metal door as he held one of the guards by the legs and arms as he huffed and he puffed and he smashed the guard’s head against the door until he gave him the combination to the lock.
On the other side of the door, the thief could hear the man say a “Thanks!” followed by a gunshot.
The stranger kicked the now-unlocked door open, leaving two corpses in the doorway to make sure he doesn’t get locked in by a gust of wind or surviving guard.
“Hello?” asked the muffled voice of the blood-soaked stranger stepping into the room where the visibly terrified thief stared at the man in horror.
“…”
“…”
The man approached the thief and grabbed her hand.
“What are you-” she was cut off when he slashed at her hand with a knife.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?” she demanded.
Her constant struggling made the task of squirting his blood into her open wound difficult.
“STAY STILL, I’M TRYING TO INFECT YOU!” he explained.
Surprisingly, she was not swayed by this argument.
After a long, difficult battle, he successfully got his blood onto her wound at which point he got up, patted his clothes clean of some of the blood and turned towards the door.
“DON’T THINK YOU’RE GETTING AWAY THAT EASY!” she exclaimed running after the man only to feel weak and sluggish.
“What… did you do…?!” she demanded.
She tried to swing her hand at the air in hopes of building up anywhere near the previous amount of momentum she was capable of easily generating.
“Your virus, I got rid of it,” he replied with a thumbs up.
“YOU WHAT!?” she demanded.
Even in her regular state, she mustered more than enough strength to grab the man by the collar and shake him violently.
“WHO ASKED YOU TO REMOVE MY COOL JUMPY STABBY POWERS?!” she yelled.
He folded his arms.
“So, are you saying you wanted to be harvested and killed by these guys?” he asked.
“Technically my virus stores the genetic data of any virus it kills, so I CAN give it back, but it’s not like your wall-jumping is all that discrete,” he shrugged.
“Hold on… so not only did you delete my power… YOU ALSO STOLE IT!?” she demanded.
After a few seconds of silence, he nodded.
“I mean, it’s not like I can use it, if I ever switch from my virus-killer virus everyone I cured will regain their powers,” he explained, “So the best I can do is give people powers… which is precisely the opposite of what I’m doing!” he elaborated.
The thief went silent as the man breathed a sombre sigh.
“Trust me, it’s for the best. Go ask someone for a job, that’s how I got curry after all,” he replied in a serious tone before turning to leave.
“You think that’s gonna work?” she asked.
The man shrugged.
“I dunno, it’s a decent start though!”
The thief didn’t reply for a few seconds before looking up with folded arms.
“Alright, give me a job.” She said confidently.
“…”
“…”
“I’m sorry, what?” the man asked.
“You’re a traveller so my reputation wouldn’t matter, you do a fair amount of fighting and you can give me abilities back if the need was to arise, you’d be the perfect person to work for,”
“Not to mention I can’t even get into my house since I can’t jump around like before…”
The man scratched the back of his head.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m literally going to the north pole, that’s pretty far!”
“Ok, longer journey longer employment.” She shrugged.
“A lot of people are after me, you know…”
“Same, I’m sure rumours about this whole mess will spread!” She replied.
“Besides, I’m sure you could use someone on the sneakier side!” she added.
The man folded his arms.
“I’m plenty sneaky!” he replied as the alarm finally stopped ringing.
“…”
“…”
“Fine…” the man relented.
He tossed her his rucksack.
“You have been promoted to my baggage carrier…” he said stepping over the body laying in the way of the cell door.
“A baggage carrier?!” she demanded following him outside.
“You haven’t been working for me for a full minute yet and you’re already complaining…” he sighed.