Canker

Chapter 1

It is 2 AM, and I am running out of time. I stand outside the glass office door, clicking my pen as I wait to be called in. Make haste before my work spoils. I have so much left to study in the lab, and not enough time before the samples begin to mutate…again. Don’t they know, everything down there is time sensitive?! A meeting at this time is not ideal, but one cannot say no to the governor.

The soldier escorting me, Aldrich, places her hand over mine to silence the clicking. She glances down at me, her green, almost golden eyes striking mine. Even though we grew up in the same class, I still don’t know her all that well. Our departments don’t collide all that often, so I’ve only spoken to her in passing.

In the white lit hallway, her skin illuminates paper white, almost with a grayish tint. Her ice white hair is short, chopped in a neat bob with streaks of dark brown running through. A strangely unhuman sight.

I glance into the office space, only to catch my reflection in the glass. My curly hair is matted against the side of my head. The dark circles under my eyes are hideously deep. I crack a cheesy smile to find the pearly whites yellow as piss. Perhaps I should stop drinking six cups of coffee every day and staying up till four every morning. Ew.

“You may enter now,” Aldrich instructs.

I quickly rake my hands through my hair, attempting to fix the unfixable. I take a step into the white office space, fixing my lab coat to be half presentable and the door shuts behind me. There are no decorations upon the walls, no books or pictures. Everything is plain and white or see through, as are most rooms in the bunker. I suppose it symbolizes the transparency between one another. The only thing special about this room is a picture frame behind the desk of the world before Canker.

“Good evening, Governor Everette. I wasn’t expecting you to summon me at this hour.” There’s a long pause as the governor flips through her packet of notes from the manila folder on the desk. I fold my hands in front of me, suppressing the urge to click my pen. “May I ask—”

“I have summoned you here, Dr. Carmichael, because you have committed a crime against Wayfell.” A gray strand of hair falls upon her face, yet she does not look up.

I stumble back into the glass door, the thud wavers against my back. “I committed a crime?”

Did she find—no, she couldn’t have. No one’s been in the lab besides my partners and I. I didn’t do anything wrong, so…

“You have been reported for tampering with DNA samples that could be a potential cure for the Canker disease.”

I exhale in relief, but wait. I did what now? “Ma’am…”

“I trusted you with my resources and here you are sabotaging years of work.” She looks up with her dull blue eyes. “Years of my work.”

Someone has been tampering with samples, but that person was not me! I was only doing my job. I am a researcher for Wayfell. I dedicated my whole twenty-three years of existence to find a cure. My father was a scientist. My mother was a researcher. How could I commit a crime against my very being of existence? Who reported me? Was it Dael, Marius? No, Marius would never. Damn it Dael, you old bastard.

“No, I don’t understand! Can you explain—”

Governor Everette holds her hand up for me to stop speaking. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Do you know how long it took humanity to rebuild after the Canker Flare destroyed us?” I nod. “Do you know how many people died from the disease?”

“Ninety-six percent of the human population. But that was sixty years ago and we’ve been underground ever since.”

“So you know why this would be an offense against Wayfell?”

“Of course, but—”

“Carmichael, you are hereby sentenced to exile. Your departure for the badlands is today at dawn.”

The door opens behind me, and Aldrich steps in. I swallow hard. No, no, no. She can’t send me out there to be eaten alive by those creatures! I don’t even know what I did wrong!

“Aldrich, take him to level thirty for holding.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Aldrich, you don’t understand! I wasn’t tampering with the samples. I discovered something that could change everything we know about Canker.”

She opens the glass door to a white containment room with a metal bucket in the corner. Great, a shit bucket. I shuffle into the doorway, not waiting for her command. I’m a scrawny man who sits in a lab for days. I can’t run, and I certainly can’t fight back. I don’t think there’s a way to influence her away from the word of Everette. How can I make someone unlearn something that’s been drilled into their head since birth? The answer is I can’t.

“I’ve been instructed to guard your door until morning,” she says as she closes the door between us. Her eyes are cold, an unwavering wall that I’m uncertain of. I can’t stay here, knowing my discovery could change within minutes.

“Aldrich.”

She turns around to face the long empty hallway of other holding cells, but we are the only ones down here. Her back makes the distance between us feel miles apart.

“Come on, Aldrich. You know me…kinda.” Maybe that was a bad choice of words. “I don’t even know what I did wrong. Why am I being exiled?!”

“Governor Everette has not told me, Carmichael.”

“She didn’t tell you, or you were not authorized to tell me?” Aldrich does not respond. I begin to pace around my small enclosure, clicking my pen like a madman. God, somebody tell me what’s going on! I chuck my pen into the shit bucket. “If I’m going to be sent out to die, will you at least listen to what I found?”

She glances at the corridor to see if anyone else is watching, but like before, it is only us. I walk back to the door, knocking on the glass to draw back her attention. I may not know her well, but I do know she has a want for knowledge. In class she would ask all the questions and never took no for an answer. Someone has to know before my time runs out. Maybe she’s it.

With a sigh, she folds her arms and leans against the door. “Fine.” The distance is closing.

“Well, this is going to sound rather strange. You know how we’re told everyone that lives in Wayfell is a hundred percent cleared of the Canker Flare?”

“Yes.”

“I discovered that is a hundred percent false.” Her head dips at my absurdities. “Look.” I shove my sleeve up to reveal the faint brown patches of dying skin beneath. The skin is swollen and bruised.

This and the yellowing of the iris are the first symptoms of Canker. After that, the tissue in the chest and stomach begin to bloat. Eventually the infected victim’s body will want to find a healthy host for nutrients, which leads to involuntary movements, such as biting or scratching. If a victim is left alive after this stage, they will become engorged creatures filled with acidic fluids. Their mental capacity will be so far buried in the disease, they’re practically mindless beings.

She glances over her shoulder, then immediately her hand flings to the gun at her hip and I throw my hands up. Her finger is steady on the trigger. “How are you infected?”

“We are all infected by Canker, Aldrich! But there is something different about soldiers like you!”

“Stop with your bullshit, Car!”

“My lab partner, Marius, found old files from early experiments in the basement. Everette has been withholding information and I think she’s the one tampering with our samples.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Haven’t you noticed how none of the soldiers who travel outside come back with infected symptoms even after making contact with Cankers?” Aldrich nods. “That’s because you are genetically modified to survive the outside world. If anyone else went outside, we would not survive more than ten minutes.”

She slides her card against the door reader, and the glass barrier pushes open. Aldrich shoves the door, never lowering her gun. She rushes towards me and I trip over my feet, hitting the wall behind me. Swiftly, she grips my collar and pins me against the wall.

“Before we were born, the government had been taking the surviving traits of the infected to create a new generation of humans,” I blurt. “The goal isn’t to rebuild humanity underground. They want to ensure humanity can survive the wasteland when underground is no longer sustainable.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“There is no cure for Canker. At least for those of us that weren’t modified, but we’re all infected with it. I’m pretty sure all this research we’ve been doing was to give everyone false hope to keep society going. Everette probably knew there was no cure this whole time.”

“You’re telling me I come from those monsters I was trained to kill?”

“Unfortunately yes, and I can show you the proof I have so far. I just need you to let me out.”

“You know I can’t, but…” her voice quivers. She lowers her gun and meets me eye to eye. A tear runs down her cheek. Oh, so she does have feelings after all, but why is she crying?

“If I’m wrong, if I’m lying to you, shoot me. Don’t hesitate, but someone has to know before it’s too late.”

“Show me.”

Aldrich swipes her card against the door and I dash over to my research table in the dimly lit space. Papers lie on the table, the floor, hell even in the cracks of the ceiling tiles. I turn on the light to my microscope, and to my surprise, nothing really changed. I gesture for Aldrich to come closer.

“I dyed the infected cells, including mine blue and the ‘cure’ sample magenta.” I project the microscope image onto the board so we can both see. “The infected cells eat up the ‘cure’ and spread the disease to the rest of the sample dish because it's always changing, quickly at that.”

I glance back to Aldrich as she studies the projection in silence. I hope this is convincing enough, though I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince at this point. She leans over the microscope and I scoot over for her to look in the lens.

“Say, why did you agree to let me out?”

“I don’t particularly like Everette. I also know who tampered with your samples.”

“I feel like nobody actually likes Everette. Was it Dael?”

“Yep, it was Dael. I don’t know why though.”

Dael is the head researcher in our wing. He’s well into his eighties at this point, so he would be one to know about the experiments. Damn it, it all makes sense now. Everyone higher up is working together.

“Can I prick your finger?” I ask.

She extends her pointer finger and I prick it with a needle, then swipe the blood droplet onto the dish. I smudge a swab of the infected cells next to the blood. Immediately after putting the new sample under the scope, the blood absorbs the infected cells, as if claiming it as its own.

“Your blood consumes the infected cells so it can’t attack nor grow. I still don’t completely understand it.”

“What do we do with this information?

“Tell it to the people you think will listen.There’s six hundred of us in the bunker. Surely there are people who want to know the truth.” I glance over to all the notes scattered throughout the lab. Maybe all of this really was for nothing. “Can you just promise me something?”

“Of course.” She cracks a small smile. I think the gap between us has finally closed. She will be the last person I see, and whether or not she truly believes me, I can only put my work into her hands.

“Protect my samples before Everette destroys them.”

A high pitch ringing rushes to my ears, then I see red rushing beneath me. A croaky cry escapes from my throat, the sharp pain running through my abdomen with hot blood spilling.

The sharp clicking of high heels cuts through the ringing. Only one person wears heels here.

“Aldrich,” the heels stop. “why did you let him out?” Governor Everette’s voice echoes behind me from the door.

I fall into Aldrich, gasping for air. The rippling pain slices through my abdomen. I cling to her forearm, begging for my knees to not buckle, but they fail me. She lowers my body steadily to the floor, my scarlet mark staining the white fabric of her uniform. The cold tiles press against my cheek as my body is engulfed in stifling warmth. She gazes down, those golden eyes washing over my red coat before snapping back to Everette. She maneuvers her hands behind her back, crossing her fingers out of Everette’s sight. “You wanted me to find and destroy the evidence, so I found it.”

“Aldrich,” I murmur, gripping at her ankles.

“Oh, well that's good. Unfortunate there’s a mess now.” Everette steps through the papers on the floor, picking up papers between the crevasse of the tables. She shrugs, observing the mess of a room. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, how unfortunate. You can leave the cleaning up to me.” This time our eyes meet. Her face blurs in the light projection, a strangely unhuman sight. She nods, a slight grin pulling at her lips. “I’ll get the rest of the job done.”