Chapter Twelve

Lauren Mallard held the telephone to her ear, and her grip on it left her with white knuckles. "I want you down there tomorrow morning, Kevin, do you hear me?" Her face was as red as the shirt she wore beneath her black pantsuit. "Because Daniel is an idiot, and I need things to go according to plan! Your broadcast isn't until later in the day, and don't think for a single second I care about the commute!" Her grip on the phone loosened a bit, and she lightened up on her tone. "Think about what would appease the Smiling God," she said in the singsong voice she often used when trying to coerce things to go her way. "And think about what would keep your heart beating. And your radio show on the air." She ended the phone call by slamming the phone into the receiver.

She sighed and rubbed at her temples, wishing that she had remembered to bring some Strexsprin, StrexCorp's patented low-dosage painkiller. She had some sort of headache that was only mounting with the incompetency of her underlings. She took a deep breath, steadying her brain, and walked to the radio broadcast room.

The few boxes in the corner were exactly what she was looking for. Labeled with the orange triangle logo of StrexCorp, the boxes were the real prize. If Ms. Wong had assumed that the T-virus was all that Lauren was interested in, with the paltry slave and master established relationship using las plagas—there was no way that she could have been more wrong.

The T-virus was nothing compared to what biological horrors StrexCorp was working on engineering. Their newest strains of mutagens were, for the lack of a better word, perfect. A blend of both viral and bacterial properties allowed the compound to be almost considered alive. This way it could do some of the spread on its own, without a host at all. It was the new future of bioweapons, and StrexCorp was going to be the company to pioneer the world into a new age.

Lauren lugged the boxes back to her office, where she, after making sure that the door was locked behind her, opened it up, finding all of the neat glass tubes of the infection arranged in Styrofoam packing, ready for use. Two syringes were packed near sides of the box, for application of the mutagen. Lauren pulled one of the small glass capsules and felt its strange warmth in her fingers. She grinned a devilish grin, and tucked it into her pocket. Then, she closed up the boxes, placing them neatly in a stack behind her desk.

The testing, at last, would begin tomorrow. They would appease the Smiling God.

Leon pulled the small Maglite out of his holster, where he kept it under a small strap beneath his extra clips. He clicked it on and shone the small beam around the garage. "No one's here," he said, though his voice was still only just above a whisper. "Come on in."

Cecil entered behind him, and the two men were able to look around the darkened garage. Dust wafted through the beam of light, and near the other side of the large room, they could see a couple of large municipal trucks parked. Rows of tool benches and cabinets for storage lined the back wall, below large, translucent fiberglass-covered windows. Leon swung the light to the right and they saw stacks of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall.

Leon crept closer, inspecting the boxes. They seemed to be unmarked from the side. He put the Maglite between his teeth and pulled one of the boxes off of the stack, placing it on the ground. Across the top, it was sealed shut with orange tape, upon which the biohazard symbol was printed, along with the words "HAZARDOUS MATERIAL: HANDLE WITH CARE."

"I think we've found what we're looking for," said Leon. Cecil pulled himself away from the tool benches to join Leon at the box. Leon used his knife to slice and even cut in the tape, and pulled the box open. Inside, he found, in individual plastic wrapping, surrounded by insulative bubble wrap, small vials of the vaccine for the T-virus. They had the Tricell logo on the packaging, and Leon sighed, standing up, and handed the one of the vaccines to Cecil. "You see that logo?" he asked, indicating the three pentagons pointing to each other on the plastic. "That's Tricell. They went out of business back in 2009, thanks to Captain Redfield and the B.S.A.A., after they discovered experimentation and testing in Africa dating back to the 60s…"

"But why would their vaccines being used now?" asked Cecil, handing the package back to Leon.

"It's got to be Ada," he said. "She's the only one who would have the access to the company's supplies before it went bust, and she's the only one who could have brought them here."

The first big door to the garage began to open, a rattling monstrosity receding into the ceiling. Leon shut off his Maglite and grabbed Cecil, pulling him back into the corner against the front wall. Light flooded in from the evening outside, mixed with the yellow headlights of a municipal vehicle. Leon and Cecil stayed silent as a large diesel municipal pickup truck rolled into the garage and shut off. Two men stepped out of it and slammed the doors behind them. The rattling began again, the door closing.

"Over here," said a voice, monotone as if from a grown-up speak and spell. "Put it with the others."

"Yes sir," said the other man, some sort of lackey. He carried a cardboard box not unlike the other boxes stacked against the wall and placed it on top of a pile. "Funny that just one box got left out, isn't it?"

"Amusement does not follow," replied the other man, a bit too quickly. "All is protocol. For the safety and betterment of the community." He stepped with stiff movements toward the pile of boxes and the other man. Cecil gasped, holding a hand to his mouth, reminding himself to stay quiet. The two men didn't seem to hear him.

"Alright, is there anything else we need to do tonight?" The man who had carried the box seemed to be a bit anxious now, fidgeting as he stood in the dark garage.

"Almost," replied the man, and in a swift, mechanical movement, punched his hand forward, fingers first, through the smaller man's chest. He pushed through to mid-forearm, and withdrew, letting the man drop to the ground, in the pool of blood that was already forming before he splashed into it. Cecil tensed next to Leon, pushing himself further into the shadows, wanting to scream but knowing, thanks to the training he went through in preparation for his "Surviving Bystander" badge in the Boy Scouts, that screaming would be a very bad idea. The murderer stood above the dead man, blood dripping from his own arm, and cast another glance over the boxes. That was when he noticed the open box on the floor, next to the body.

He went to it, picked it up, and held it to his eye level. His eyes narrowed as he inspected the box. Then, he placed it carefully in the stacks with the other boxes, making sure that the stack was stable with his hands. He stepped back and looked over his work. The boxes were impeccably straight, but there were smears of blood all down the sides of one stack where he had used his bloody arm. Impressed with his own work, the man turned and left through the small, people sized door that Cecil and Leon had entered through, closing and locking it behind him.

Leon and Cecil waited for a moment, Cecil's eyes wide, looking at the body on the ground. Then, Leon stepped from the shadows to inspect the man on the ground. "He's dead," he said. Cecil went to the door and tugged on the handle.

"He locked it," said Cecil. "We're stuck in here."

"I'm not getting pinned with this," said Leon. "If we get found in here with this body, they're going to think that we killed him, no matter what. And we need to get rid of that extra box they brought in."

Cecil joined Leon over the body. "That's you," he said. "I know of him. I don't know him personally, but I know about him, intimately."

Leon didn't make a comment on this. "Do you know who the man who killed him was?"

"That's Daniel," he said. "He's the radio station's new producer. What he was doing here, or what he had to do with Ada, I have no idea."

"Obviously, he didn't want anyone to know that there was an extra box of vaccines," said Leon, referring to the body on the floor. The blood pooled around it was running down to a drain in the cement floor behind the now parked truck. Leon turned from that to face the boxes and took down the box he had opened, placing it on another stack. Then, he took the box below it, the box that Daniel had brought in.

"This means that it's more than just Ada who's plotting against Night Vale," said Cecil. "And this could prove to be a bigger conspiracy than we originally anticipated." He did a little jump of glee. "I love conspiracies! They're so interesting!" He then realized that what was happening was a bit more serious than what he was acting, and he stood still. "And I'm interested to get to the bottom of it."

"Oh my God," said Leon, looking at the stacks of boxes.

"What is it?" asked Cecil.

"There's a door behind these boxes." He began moving boxes out of the way, revealing the small, unassuming door. "That's why he was being so careful about the stacking. The boxes were arranged so that this door was covered."

"This extra box is different from the others," said Cecil, pulling Leon away from the door for a moment. "Look at this," he said, pointing to the top of it. "There isn't a biohazard tape. And the box has writing on it. It's the StrexCorp logo."

"Okay," said Leon. "Which means that Daniel wanted this to seem like nothing special, a normal delivery. Nothing that anyone would want to check into."

"And StrexCorp is a big company," said Cecil. "I'll give that to them, even if they are from Desert Bluffs. They've got a hand in pretty much everything. No one would suspect a box from them."

"There's something different about these boxes," said Leon. "And if it was from Ada, and there's foul play, I'd be willing to bet that these 'vaccines' do the exact opposite of what they're intended to do." He opened the box and pulled out a packaged vaccine. He handed this and the other vaccine from the other box to Cecil. "We'll need to give these to Carlos, so he can figure out what's going on here."

"How can we?" asked Cecil. "Remember, we're trapped."

"I guess we follow that door," said Leon, jutting his thumb at the door he had uncovered from behind the boxes. "Or else we say with this guy," he nodded to the dead man on the floor, "until tomorrow morning when they come to pick up the vaccine. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to be here for that."

"Let's go through the door," said Cecil.