Chapter 4
She scrutinized the body she had laboriously dragged and bound to one of the metallic lab tables. Had she not seen it with her own eyes, she would struggle to believe the scene playing out before her. She set her notebook down on the table and flipped to a certain page. Pen in hand, she began to diagram the phenomena occurring before her.
On the surface, the man’s muscles appeared to be rapidly expanding and contracting. Veins flared as they spiderwebbed across his body with each pulse of his muscles. Many of the veins, she concluded, were not native to the human body.
Her diagram depicted three equally proportioned male bodies all aligned side-by-side. The left most body was a normal, non-infected body she was able to draw from memory. The middle body was drawn after analyzing a zombie corpse outside the lab with her ‘sight’. Finally, the right most body was drawn from the phenomena occurring in the body lying before her.
Using her ‘sight’, she could peal away the various body systems layer by layer to analyze the happenings beneath the skin. The middle drawing was identical to the left drawing save the addition of myriad thin black twines that spread out from the original bite wound to the rest of the body. These twines were like the roots of weeds that dug into anything they came across. They wrapped around vital organs and threaded in and out of body tissue; clearly, they were attempting to make themselves as difficult to remove as possible.
Strange…
On the other hand, despite their seemingly random distribution which differed in each corpse she examined, in all cases there was one commonality: the twines never caused any actual damage. If anything, the twines were careful around vital organs—
—Is it Parasitic?
If it were, that would explain why it did not kill the host and instead opted to just entrench itself.
The last drawing on the other hand, was radically different from the previous two. There were two nexuses from which the tendrils spiderwebbed out corresponding to two separate bite wounds: one on the left clavicle and another on the left forearm. Curiously, the tendrils from separate bite wounds appeared to combine wherever they met before redistributing throughout the body. This alone, however, was not enough to give her pause.
What baffled her was that the many twines in this body were bright red instead of the normal stark black, additionally, each twine was currently in the process of sprouting thousands of derivative tendrils that branched off from the parent twine.
Even more alarming however, was something that she did not even need her ‘sight’ to see: The bite wounds—deep enough to show bone—were rapidly scarring over at a rate discernable by the naked eye. The broken clavicle which was now no longer even visible without using her ‘sight’ was realigned and currently fusing back together.
She paused. Eyeing the body while drumming her pen on the surface of her notebook.
This virus… was not engineered by humans.
She thought this half out of knowing very well the limits of modern biology, and half out of reluctance to admit that if a human did create such a thing; then she had not even the faintest idea as to how they did so.
She mused for a few more minutes before turning back to her diagrams. It was unrealistic to capture every one of the thousands of tendrils spreading throughout the body, so she focused mostly on drawing parent twines while shading in areas where the child tendrils were most concentrated—mostly around larger muscles and vital organs.
---
Time always flew by when she worked. The 400’s building was silent—Lab 2A even more so. Before she knew it, an hour had passed since she had first laid down the body to study it. The muscle expansions and contractions had ceased. On the surface, the man’s body appeared not unlike how it did when it first stumbled into the lab room. The only glaring differences were that the two bite wounds had fully scarred over, and the broken clavicle had fused back together.
Suddenly, Leth’s eyes snapped open. His pupils immediately shrank as he averted his gaze from the light fixture that had been oriented only a few inches from his face.
“So. You are awake. I wonder, can you hear me?”
A familiar voice. He recognized it, but from where?
Ah, right—her.
Not that she mattered. More importantly, he realized, his body had been healed. Clutching his left fist tightly, his gaze crept to his left shoulder. The scarring looked gruesome on the surface, but aside from some stiffness, he felt no other discomfort.
“Hey. Are you ignoring me? Or have you turned into one of them?”
The girl chirped a few paces to his right. Rather than expect a response, her words seemed to have been uttered more to herself as she paced around the table Leth was bound to.
His lips twisted into a smile as he turned his head towards the female student. That she was still here at all meant she probably never left; likely, she could fill in some of the blanks for him. Suddenly, he was very interested in what she had to say.
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However.
“You. That light from earlier—your eyes, neat party trick.”
The girl paused mid stride. A finger raised to her cherry lips in pensive thought.
“I know one of your secrets—I suppose it is only fair that I share one of mine. An exchange of equal value. Yes.”
Leth did not interrupt her mumbling, so she continued:
“In truth, it was something I discovered mostly by accident—regrettably. So, I know not how I attained this ability. I had been documenting its effects when an injured man of dubious origins stumbled through my door before promptly collapsing.”
She folded her arms and gestured towards his restraints.
“…Being the ever-inquisitive mind that I am, I decided to test this ability on the guinea pig that had so conveniently appeared before me.”
Leth smiled in response to her choice of vocabulary, clearly unphased. He asked:
“Since you mentioned testing—I assume this ‘ability’ of yours does more than make your eyes light up?”
She chuckled. Her laughter was an unnerving mixture of cackle and song.
“That it does. Mm… Think of it like x-ray vision or something of that nature.”
He appreciated her ‘in laymen’s terms’ explanation. Although he suspected that she herself knew less about her own ability then she let on. He turned his gaze away from her and searched the room for a clock.
5:14
Over an hour... The serum has long worn off, so how am I still alive?
The zombie infection was mysterious. He had no idea how it worked. From observation, he knew that it turned intelligent humans into voracious creatures of instinct. After experiencing the impending change first hand—he knew how overwhelming it was.
The female student followed his gaze to the clock and nodded as she was thinking about the same thing:
“Using my sight, I observed the virus spreading inside you—but it was… different from the others I have seen so far.”
She described her observations to him. In conjunction with her diagrams, he was able to understand the general thrust of the situation.
“—and so, my running theory is mutation; as for how or why—I honestly have no clue.”
Interesting. But it hardly changes anything.
Skin-tingling snapping noises echoed out within the lab as Leth’s hands and feet contorted at odd angles, the bones comprising them visibly shifting and overlapping to slip their bonds. After sliding out from the ropes that bound them, they rapidly reformed to their original appearance.
The female student watched all of this occur without any change in her expression.
“That technique… as I thought: you are from the House of War!”
Leth slid off the table and stretched his left shoulder. Hearing her words, he only smiled back.
---
“Wh—?!”
“Your Identity. Now.”
The words, cold and mechanized, dug into Zahra’s ears like nails. She felt the cold blade of a knife pressing firmly up against her throat.
“I… My name is Zahra—Zahra Tenebris.”
The House of War deployed operatives throughout every stratum of society. Her family contracted a couple of them over the years as well. As a result, she knew that the only reason the blade at her throat had not drawn blood yet was the dull metallic coin hanging about her neck. An item she had been instructed to never remove.
The man’s foxlike eyes narrowed slightly as they scrutinized the small coin; the center of the coin was inscribed with faded Greek numerals that read: ‘VI’.
The blade retracted into his sleeve just as quickly as it appeared, like a viper slithering back into its hole. The man took a step back, his easy smile and arched eyes remaining unchanged.
“A-ha! So, it’s a young miss of the House of Engineering. Pardon my behavior.”
Zahra calmed her nerves and straightened her clothes before speaking:
“No, the fault is mine; in my… excitement I forgot myself and ignored protocol. Ah, but I am afraid you now have me at a disadvantage.”
He waved her apology off as he introduced himself: “Leth.”
Zahra’s face froze at the mention of his name. Her expression immediately turned cloudy.
“Hmm. Leth—where have I heard that name—Oh, I remember! The head of the House of War has two sons, does he not? If memory serves—and mine always does, you must be the eldest of the two! The younger brother… Ah, little Oliver! Tell me, how is he these days? Does he still talk with you after what you did?”
Her expression had warped into a full-on sneer by the time she finished speaking.
Leth only scratched the back of his neck in response. If this ‘Oliver’ character were important to him then his expression certainly suggested otherwise.
“Aha… How awkward—to discuss family issues with a stranger. Suppose’ It has been a while since we last spoke—but what a strange thing to bring up all of a sudden.”
His expression remained sunny, but the kindness in his smile evaporated. The husk that remained was only so because no other emotion rose to fill the void.
Seeing that Leth failed to react to her provocations, Zahra scoffed with a look of visible disgust marring her otherwise charming visage. Shaking her head, she closed her notebook and stashed it away in her school bag which she proceeded to sling over her shoulder.
“I see. Then it is as my father told me; you truly are a callous, selfish creature. Oh, Poor, poor Oliver.”
Leth continued smiling. “You’re a funny woman. Now, I have business to take care of.” His words carried a tone of finality as he pivoted towards the lab door. Mid pivot however…
“Quite right. I will be requiring your services after all, o’ mighty operative.”
She spoke, making sure to exaggerate ‘o’ mighty operative’ with mock seriousness. Leth was about to shoot her down—but stopped when he saw the small paper writ pinched between her index finger and thumb. The small slip of paper appeared ancient; blood red ink depicting nine intersecting red circles adorned the center. Each circle boasted a unique, ornate design and a corresponding set of Greek numerals. Inside one circle, the numerals ‘VI’ were written. In the center of the ring of circles was a red thumb print.
That thumb print was made by none other than Zahra.
Wordlessly, he snatched the writ from her non-resisting hands. After confirming its authenticity, he pocked it before smirking at Zahra.
“…The young miss is quite a heavy spender—did your parents never teach you to save these kinds of things for a rainy day?”
She ignored him and murmured under her breath as was her habit when faced with a new experience:
“A writ of command… It is my first time using one, let’s see if it works as the stories say—”
“Guard me.”
“…Will-do.”
She stared at Leth’s face, searching for some visible sign of struggle or hesitation. Nothing. She knew that once this transaction was completed, the operative in question would have no choice but to follow the orders of the one who initiated the exchange. Likely, the man had no idea he was being controlled; that his notions of risk and reward were being rewired—the brainwashing capabilities of the House of Truth were as terrifying as the rumors suggested.