Chapter 4
Corruption
/ooOOOoo\
"Mrs. Purkinje, what is the meaning of this!" Golg's face burned to a darker hue when he saw his advisor.
Stella jumped and cringed in a distinctly guilty gesture. She turned to face the angry leader. "Mayor Golg, I- uh-
"What were you thinking! I thought I said specifically for you to report to me immediately on arrival. And here you are, taking off like this. You just brought a virus, the key so important to our survival, here without telling anyone? And why is there no security with you! Well!" His ranting and raving brought him within uncomfortable proximity of the humbled advisor.
Head lowered, Stella straightened her shoulders and answered with conviction in her voice. "The virus is ill. It became my prerogative to do anything I could to help him. A broken key helps no one, sir."
Taken aback by her defiance, Golg looked past Stella to get a better look at the small virus. He walked up to the hospital bed. Thrax was perfectly still, resting on his back; glazed eyes not looking at anything. There was a sheet covering him up to mid-abdomen, with his now unbound hands at his sides. A damp cloth was on his forehead. If it weren't for the heavy rise and fall of his thin chest, it would seem to all the world that the virus was deceased.
"This." Golg sneered. "We need someone to save us and they send a sick child. This is the end for us."
"Not until we give up. Look, can we at least discuss this outside?"
Golg gestured for her to lead the way and Stella complied, walking out into the hall where they were able to view the medical room through a large window.
/OOO\
Half-glancing at the two officials outside the window, who were no longer paying him attention, and pleasantly surprised that he hadn't been blamed for anything, Doctor Liam returned to tending the virus. There really was little he could do. He had no idea how this unexpected patient would react to heavy treatment. Liam rubbed at his face in anxiety.
For now, his only option was to try to manually lower the virus's temperature, but there were so many questions to be answered. What was the reason for the overheating in the first place? How high could his temperature get before being damaged? Could this even be normal? Liam didn't know, but what he did know was that empty stare the virus was aiming at the ceiling was unnerving in the extreme. He busied himself retrieving ice packs from a cooler.
Returning to the hospital bed, ice packs in hand, the doctor rested one at the side of Thrax's head. Thrax cringed away from the package and a sinister unearthly hiss emanated from somewhere in his chest. The yellow eyes focused their piercing gaze on Liam now, and the medical practitioner found he liked it much more when they were vacant and away from his person. After a second, Thrax relaxed and his eyes turned half-lidded as he slowly rested his head back on the ice pack. From that point on, he didn't react, except for a few flinches, when the others were placed at various locations across his body.
The muffled voices outside the window were becoming loud and vehement; apparently the discussion was not going well. Liam did his best to ignore it.
Not having much else to do but wait, the doctor eventually noticed the odd foreclaw on Thrax's left hand. Going over to investigate, he examined the unusual position the claw was bent into. With a moment's thought, he lifted the hand by the wrist and took hold of the bent joint between his index finger and thumb; gently trying to pry it out of the seemingly uncomfortable position. The long claw appeared to be locked in place and Liam was about to give up this pursuit when there was a sudden faint popping noise. He dropped the hand and looked up guiltily toward the window, but Golg and Stella were completely immersed in their discussion. Afterwards he turned to the virus to look for any signs of discomfort he might have caused.
Thrax was stirring. His eyes blinked and he shifted in his place on the hospital bed. The wrist and claws of his left hand twitched and flexed. Then, with a painful crackling sound, the foreclaw that had previously been completely immobile uncurled and stretched to its full length with a series of pops. It then fell to a position with the tip hovering just above the surface of the bed.
Gradually, the claw lost its dark grey tone to a dark red, which spread up Thrax's arm, across his chest, and over the rest of his body with a visible shudder, turning him a vastly different hue than before. The confused doctor Liam watched on as his patient struggled to sit up, appearing disoriented.
"You need to lie back down. You're weak and need to rest." Liam moved to guide Thrax back to his previous position on the bed when he was met with a glare intimidating and terrible on a child this age, virus or not. The long, dangerous foreclaw flared to a vibrant orange of its own volition, and tapped down on the solid siding of the bed. The framework broke out in cracks and started to melt, dripping to the floor. Liam blanched.
/OOO\
"I don't know what you want me to do, Ms. Purkinje. You are asking me to put my trust in a virus and risk the whole operation to failure."
"What you're proposing will be certain failure! I know he's a virus, but he's young still! We won't have to do things that way." Stella was at the point of pleading with the unannounced mayor of Linda. Golg only looked at her with disdain, but his continuing silence encouraged his advisor. "Let me work with him, I know I'll be able to make this work! He's just a child-"
Stella was interrupted by a garbled scream. Both brain cells whirled just in time to witness what was once Doctor Liam as he smacked into the window in a frenzy of hysteria. His membrane was splitting open and oozing viscous orange cytoplasm. Stella and Golg watched in horror as Liam boiled from the inside out, screaming hoarsely as his large stomach ruptured and splattered gore all over the wall and floor of the hospital room. Finally, just as the white blood cell was becoming indistinguishable, the screams ceased and he slipped to the floor with a sickening splat, leaving a trail of infected membrane and cytoplasm on the window as he fell.
Stella gaped in profound shock at the small virus sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, looking extremely confused and now violently shaking with cold. Golg recovered far quicker and soon the entire hall and medical room was swathed with security personnel who roughly detained Thrax despite the fact that he showed no further signs of aggressive behavior.
Mayor Golg looked at his open-mouthed advisor through the mass of guards and smirked without humor. "Permission granted."
