Origin: Iridescent
My ears used to ring. The sound of jet engines and field tests used to shake them. I used to sit outside the barracks and try to catch a glimpse of the bombers mid test flight. By the time you hear them, they are already passed you.
My eyes used to sting. The dust from distant explosions and drone landings would clog them. I used to sit outside the hangers and feel the way the ground would tremble when a cargo plane would touch down. By the time you feel the shakes, it has already nearly stopped.
*
Got sick one day. Nothing too bad. The doctor gave me a dark yellow pill and sent me on my way. I just got sicker. I spent a couple days hooked up to an IV, getting weaker and weaker. I couldn't stop vomiting. My skin started going bad. By the time I realized what was happening, I couldn't lift my arms. They hurt too much. My skin was blistering.
*
I loved the silo. The base had been my home for a couple years, but I recently could be found roaming the silo. I was with my mother and one of the Lieutenants refilling the eyewash stations and learning how to preform a safety inspection. I went ahead so that I could look down at the missile from the top near the exit. Next thing I know, the alarms go off. A nearby soldier pulls me back down the stairs. We barely make it behind the blast doors before they close.
I am told mom died 3 days later. The soldier that pulled me out got really sick, but he lived. He got sent home a month later, about the same time I got that flu.
*
My memories flash in and out like bad dreams: the view of sterile hallway ceilings from a gurney, doctors in radiation suits scrapping what used to be my skin into lead-lined bags. I can still sometimes hear my father's voice as he explains what they did to me.
"You didn't react to the leak. Everyone else was vomiting, dizzy, had bloody diarrhea... you didn't even have a headache. I had to report it, you understand? You got that flu a month later. They decided to give you a higher dose to study your reaction. It seems you are like everyone else; it just takes more to poison you. Now we can't stop until we know what makes you more resistant. I am so sorry…"
Hit him. Yell. Something. Instead, I began to shake: my already blurry vision going white.
*
I wasn't the only one burning in the radiation wing. I could hear at least one other distinct voice at all times screaming in this section of the infirmary. I was the first one though... and the only one that didn't die in the first week. I was definitely the only to survive a whole month... a year? More? I don't know how long I have been here anymore.
*
I was used to the beeping. Heart monitors. Geiger counters. Blood oxygen meters. I was used to the doctors, nurses, and officers all barging in, poking and prodding at me. This officer didn't wear a rad suit. He was gentle when he had to touch my wrecked skin. An injection was added to my IV, and the fire overtook the burning.
*
Feeling my own heart stop was a strange sensation. What I remember most about that moment is the complete absence of pain. My throat still itched a bit, I suppose, but the relief I felt was indescribable. I couldn't focus on anything but how wonderful I felt for nearly 30 seconds. The voices eventually cut through to me.
"Called to pronounce Patient Zero. It is the 15th of September at 0347. There are no more wounds present. No pulse, absent any respirations." The owner of the voice reached forward and opened my eyelid, shining his flashlight on me. The military nurse behind him jumped backwards, her rad suit making her almost lose balance. His eyes widened, and he quickly turned the flashlight off. He turned to the heart monitor and flicked it back on. My own steady flat line sounded loudly in the quiet room. Their breathing increased; their heart rates elevated, wet and rushing like water. I was suddenly thirsty. "Pupil response is normal... well, no. Pupil response is active?"
I had left just the one eye open, not daring to try to move or look around. Why was I still aware? I had heard death pronouncements before. Something was wrong. I was not breathing, and my flat line was still sounding ominously through the room, yet I felt better than I could ever remember feeling. I felt alive, for lack of a better word.
They check the Geiger counters next. Nothing. Not a rad to be found. Not even background levels. Shouting. The room gets very busy. I still don't dare try to move, afraid that the moment I break the spell the pain will return.
*
I feel it before I see it: a wave of warmth, like opening the door on a hot day or checking on cookies in the oven. I can't stop my reaction. Warmth. I had been so long without comforting warmth. It had always been the burning. My left hand twitched towards the door just as it opened. The personnel in the room didn't seem to notice my slight hand movement. They were focused on rolling the warmth towards me.
It was a lead lined box used to store radioactive material. One man had a Geiger counter right next to me. He moved to my bedside with the box. Another man opened it. Immediately, the warmth escaped into the room. I could feel its strength and movement. It wasn't flowing or fog-like as I had previously imagined. It moved sporadically; whizzing about the room like fighter jets.
The Geiger counters in the room began going mad. I began to grow warm. Too warm. The burning was starting again. In my fear, I sat up, shredding the restraints and the IV needle with no effort. The room erupted with screams. I took in a breath, and the Geiger counters stopped beeping. The heat was too much like the burning, and I let out my breath in a scream of my own.
The room seemed to disappear in one single blast. White, flameless fire. I became the sun.
*
Gone is the girl she used to be. She is a dream, unable to associate the memories with what just happened. The burning in her throat is beginning to scare her. Too much like the fire. She tries to block it out, what the rad wing looks like after she became the sun. Can't think about it. Not real. Not real...
The blackened silhouettes of the doctors on the one wall that remained standing. Nothing else. Dust and quiet. Nakedness. Her clothes ashes among the dust of the desert. Their screams and hers echoing through her ears still.
Not real. Not real...
Climbing out of the crater, she walks over the rubble of her prison towards the sun.
*
Her skin glitters like diamonds due to the light of her twin in the sky. She sits down on the desert floor, breathes in the fresh air, and lifts the dirt to sift it through her fingers. The land and sky stretches so far, but the rays of light that make her sparkle are slowly making her warm. An echo of fear returns and she stands again, running back towards the abandoned silo. She is unbelievably fast.
She finds a place that doesn't make her warm, and she stares at the metal walls, counts the rivets, tries to remember what her mother looked like.
*
They come later in helicopters, looking for answers. They say the site went dark almost 12 hours ago. They find her curled against blast door 5 in the silo, her own fear causing her body to tremble. Most officers run off to continue searching and securing the site. One soldier kneels next to her and asks her if she is alright. She continues to stare at the wall.
"Ma'am, what is your designation?" He tries again. She finds her voice.
"Patient Zero."
"My God." He whispers to himself before asking louder. "It actually worked?" She looks up at him, meeting his gaze. He jumps back, startled by something he sees in her gaze, and gets on his radio. She is the only survivor. Her throat is beginning to burn now. It makes her curl up tighter, and she stops breathing. She closes her eyes. She doesn't move as they wheel her away and work around her. She is still, tries to ignore the burning starting again in her throat.
*
The moment the Sergeant's blood touches her tongue, Patient Zero disappears. The fire and burning are gone entirely. There is only satisfaction and desperation. This. This is what was missing.
He goes dry so quickly. The nearby nurse is frantically hitting the call button over and over again. She feels like new life is entering her as the blood hits her brain. More. The nurse fights back a bit, ripping her shirt uselessly with a scalpel that bends like a twig on contact with her skin. The nurse is dead just as a doctor enters the room. She is on him before he can even scream. The desperation has worn off enough now that she notices how he tastes... almost spicy and earthy like red curry.
She drops the dry corpse and looks around her. Tent. The rad wing is gone. She walks outside and sees the makeshift prison they had built around her. She feels powerful, unstoppable. Her body is unyeilding, full of fury and energy. No more little yellow pills. No more IVs. No more tests or pain.
They are fully armed, standing in a line barking orders at her as if she is still the worm that her father tortured and murdered... as if she is not something other now. She can feel the warmth buried in the earth beneath her, in the air and light shining down from space. She and that shining star are one. As the soldiers open fire, the bullets hitting her like heavy rainfall, she harnesses the fear and anger.
Purposefully, she breathes in, soaking the warmth from around her, from the silo where Patient Zero was born, and she screams.The blast seems to take away some of the confusion. The stillness afterward brings with it the reality of her actions. No. My actions. I am this thing. I am the sun, a murderer and a weapon. I am a weapon they could not control. I realize that I can walk away into the desert again, so I do.
I will never go back.
*
Safety? That's when you have the biggest gun. Security? That consists of access codes and keycards. Safety must be secured... behind steel doors and lead curtains. I was safety once. I was the answer. The problem is… the biggest gun always gets hidden behind the best locks, in the deepest holes. I dreamed for an age of the sun, of light, of warmth.
Instead, I became the sun.
*
A week later, the first reconnaissance team finds me. I tell them to leave me alone, but they open fire. I drink them and leave their bodies to the coyotes. After that, the coyotes don't seem to mind me, so I share their den.
*
More come. I ask the second team what their orders are: "Neutralize Patient Zero." I just laughed. They didn't seem to understand what was so funny. They open fire, panicking when they see how useless their lesser weapons are against their government's greatest creation. I stopped them when they tried to run though. I don't want to give up my location. I like it here. This cave is nice.
*
Sometimes my body still stings. There are little tingles for a moment in my wrists. I swear I feel my heart stutter, but I haven't had a pulse for a long time now. Is this the death I used to wish for?
*
The coyotes get hungry more than I do, so I catch smaller prey for them between my own kills. Rabbits and the like seem to satisfy them. When people wander out into the desert though, we feast. The hungry burn in my throat doesn't scare me anymore. Sometimes I don't even kill a person that comes near, and instead let the pain remind me that I am a weapon now… created to destroy. They can't make me kill though. I choose when I kill. That choice is all I have left.
*
I have a hard time keeping track of time unless I can see the sky. All that time burning made me lose track. I have no idea what year it is. Guess it doesn't matter. I am a fugitive, a murderer. I will wait in this cave to die, but I won't go back. I will never go back.
*
Voices. Talking. English, too. Strange in this area. Used to hearing Spanish now. Hungry.
*
That is the third recon team that got too close in the last year. Looking for Patient Zero. No. She is dead now. The fire finally took her. It was too much. She burned. I am all that is left: this dehydrated, glittering shell-casing. I don't know what to call myself; don't know what I am now. Not her though. Patient Zero is dead. She burned up.
