Disclaimer: I own nothing except my characters, NaughtyDog owns The Last of Us.
Enjoy!
"Ugh, I hate working this late, not to mention everyone else has gone home for the night", Monty thought to himself as he crouched over his microscope trying to focus the lens. He was the newest scientist at the lab, so he always got the boring jobs. For the past week he has been tracking the growth rate of B. bassiana on ants. He had to look at over a dozen different specimens, and right now he's currently only on the fourth one.
With a frustrated sigh he looks over at the remaining specimens. They are all in an unsealed container that is next to a Plexiglas container that contained a large colony of ants that one of his colleagues is studying. Monty decides that since he's most likely going to be at the lab all night he might as well have a little fun. With a slight smirk he walks over to the container with the ants in it. When he gets to the container he picks up some of the sugary substance that his colleague has been feeding the colony. Lifting the lid off the container, his smirk turns to worry as he sees many of the small ants dead.
"Shit!" he swears loudly as he quickly identifies the killer of the ants. Quickly grabbing one of the dead ants, he runs over to his microscope and places it on a new slide. He focuses the lens and adjusts the light so he can clearly see the ant. "Yep, that's definitely cordyceps". He decides it would be a good idea to get a count of how many ants had succumbed to the fungus, and find out how it had spread to the live ants. Looking at the ant colony, he quickly decides that over 90% of the colony has been wiped out.
He closely inspects the ant colony and finds the fatal flaw: not only is it too close to the container that holds his dead specimens, but some spores had started blowing into the ant colony. He knew instantly that he should have told Chavez, his colleague, to put his colony elsewhere. He pulls his phone out and sends a text message to Chavez, alerting him to the fact that his ants are all dead. A quick glance at the time on his cell tells him that he is probably asleep and won't be able to see the text.
Putting his cell phone away, Monty walks over to the break room so he can drink some water and write down a report of what has happened. As he gulps down the ice cold water, he notices a slight itching feeling in his throat. "Must be allergies." he thinks as he uses his sleeve to wipe the excess water off of his lips. Halfway through writing his report, he begins to notice that his vision seems a little blurry. He brushes it off as him just being tired, because after all, it is 1 am. Monty gets up to get some more of the coffee that he had made earlier. On his way over to the coffee pot he stumbles a little bit which worries him. "What the hell is wrong with me?" he ponders aloud. He thinks back to what he had done earlier today. He realizes that he had been breathing in the spores of the cordyceps all day, and it has been known to cause some issues. Thinking that he has solved the problem, he decides to dump the cup of coffee down the drain and clean up the mess that is left of Chavez's ant colony.
While walking to the ant colony, he once again loses his footing. He brushes it off once again, since he assumes that it is just a simple side effect of inhaling the spores. Once he arrives at the table where the colony is, it surprised him to discover that he is quite dizzy, dizzy enough to have to grip the table to keep standing. It doesn't help though, because as soon as he places his hands on the table, he collapses, bringing down the table and everything on it with him.
So, what did you think? I'm already working on the second chapter which will probably be the last, but I'm not sure. I'm writing this because it REALLY bothered me how they never really said how the whole infection got started. Please review if you liked it, or even if you didn't! Expect the next chapter before Saturday.