03: The Hope
Days after the plague had been released, the city of Sivarsi Nine had sunk into an unnatural silence. All the panic, all the terror filled screams, when people finally realized what was happening had died out with the last living beings, the only thing giving away that they had ever existed was the red gooey mass their bodies had disintegrated into. The ground on which they'd been walking and on the lower portions of the buildings against which they'd leant as agony tore through them where all stained by the aftermath of the red death.
But not humans alone was targeted by the uncontrollable death, any animal that would come in contact with it would perish as well; would it be a pet curious about what was going on with its human owner or a wild animal like a bird or a stray cat that approached the puddles on the ground.
All over the city auto-ops had broken down when their work-load had grown from the occasional littering of uncaring people or a dog taking a crap on the walkway to suddenly expand to an infinite waste to be cleaned up. It had proved to be a challenge too great for the auto-ops, and one by one they had crashed into the ground or into buildings as their circuits fried, to be scattered all around.
Though, to say that Sivarsi Nine was all doomed and deserted was wrong, even if at first glance you'd think so. There among death and decay a lone figure was wandering.
He, a young man at nineteen years old, had been at work when he'd noticed that something was wrong. Going on a break he'd seen those red stains on the floor that looked remarkably much like blood, and he'd followed them alongside the row of cubicles, till it led into the one at the row's very end.
At first glance it was empty, and it appeared that its occupant had left, hadn't it been for the muffled pained sound coming from the corner on his left which he couldn't see from where he was standing just outside looking in.
He stepped forward, but halted when he saw a blood red pool, ever expanding, emerged from the corner, where the sound had originated, to the spot where he was about to put his foot down. He peeked around the wall and his eyes went wide at the sight he was met by.
On the floor, leaning heavily against the wall, and in obvious pain was a man. The man's face, arms and hands, all the skin visible was covered in fine lines, as if the skin had gone too small to contain the body and had burst, and blood was trickling from all over. The man gave another pain filled cry as the tears in his skin grew wider, and he lifted his face which till then had been turned down to the ground and their eyes met, revealing that blood was spilling from the eyes, nose and mouth as well.
"P-please he-help me…" the man stuttered, the voice strained at the verge of breaking. "Pl-please… Hel-hel-"
The man was cut short as his body tore completely and broke down into a thick mass that spread over the floor, pooling around the young man's shoes as it slowly gained ground.
Stunned, he stared incredulous at the happening, not knowing what it was about or what he could possibly have done to help the other man.
Nicola, or Nico as he more often was called, would come to witness more mysterious deaths like that one as the day went on, as minutes became hours more and more of the people around him met the same fate as the man in the cubicle. At that point he hadn't known what was going on, not till later when he looked through whatever news archives he could find, thinking that if there was some kind of virus spreading it would most likely be mentioned, starting with the most recent broadcasts. He didn't find must of interest there, till he came by a broadcast that in mid-sequence had been cut off and the well-known to everybody face of Anton Prosper had shown up on the screen.
"Citizens of Sivarsi Nine, this is Anton prosper speaking. I've interrupted the normal broadcast to warn you about the so called 'perma-youth project'. I shall do so only once.
I, Anton Prosper the forth, am the sole inventor of the attomon formula. This formula was stolen and now – in the name of greed – the Trankule Corporation is marketing a criminally mismanaged version of it to anybody willing to pay the price. The commercial announcements you've heard, promising eternal youth and health, are visible and verbal lies generated to exploit the gullible. Know that you buy into them at the cost of your very lives.
Attomons are infinitely smaller than state-of-the-art nanos. Their programming is far too delicate for the government mainframe to oversee. Malfunction is, therefore, inevitable. Within hours - no more than days- a bio-technical plague will spread, like a red death, through the bodies of any and all taken in by the perma-youth project. Anyone coming in contact with affected tissues and fluids will also die.
Due to Trankule's incompetence, the corrupt attomons will replicate ceaselessly. He has no means to deactivate or destroy them. To receive them is to guarantee hideous, agonizing death! There will be excruciating pain, bleeding from every orifice, then dissolution. Your mall paths will run red with gore.
The plague will rampage on, uncontained and uncontainable – long after every inhabitant of Sivarsi Nine has disintegrated into a viscous mass!"
Nico had been staring at the screen blankly for a long while after the broadcast had ended and the original one had continued. It had been a warning, he thought, one that had obviously gone unheeded and now one and all was to pay for the ignorance. What he'd seen, it had to be what Prosper had been talking about, it had happened as he said.
Anyone coming in contact with affected tissues or fluids will also die.
A cold feeling spreading through him he'd slowly turned to stare down at his shoes, which had merely an hour earlier bathed in the liquidized remains of the man, soaking his feet. Was that to mean… that he'd been infected as well?
Hearing a thudding sound of something, or someone most likely, falling to the ground somewhere around, he swallowed the panic that had risen in him and urged himself to be calm. Running around like a headless chicken wouldn't help much.
Having accomplished calm, his thoughts left his own state of health but to instead wander in the direction of his family, were they okay or had the plague reached them too? At that the panic arose again and this time he wouldn't be able to hold it down. He raced the straightest way to his family's home, hoping for the best yet fearing for the worst.
As he arrived it had been all very quiet and no one had come to open for him as he rang the door bell so he let himself in, he had moved a couple of months earlier to live with Alana but he still had the access code to the door in memory. Inside there was no sight, nor sound, of his parents or of his sister. He moved from room to room, searching and hoping that the silence was because they were out and not because they'd turned into a tormented tomato soup.
Passing through the door to the dining-room he froze, unwilling to believe what he saw. There on the chairs and on the floor around the table were three red puddles. With sinking heart Nico approached the nearest of them and crouched down by it, doing all but poke around in it with his hands to get a good look at what it was that was swimming in the puddle.
Taking a fork that had been dropped on the floor he dug about to fish up the object. It was a bracelet, looking exactly like the one his sister's boyfriend had given her the year before for her sixteenth birthday. His hands began to shake uncontrollable and the bracelet slipped off the fork to land in the puddle again.
At seeing the family's remains the full impact of the situation hit him, the plague that Prosper had been talking about was real and it was in its own pace eating the world.
That was days ago, but Nico was, under the circumstances, feeling well, although he on more than one occasion had had come in contact with the blood and whatever else. He didn't understand but was far beyond caring about why anymore, now he just wanted to find others, then he could proceed to figure out why he hadn't been infected.
Glancing about in the setting darkness, he came still when seeing that in the windows of the second floor of a building light was spilling out. Taking his eyes of the windows he approached the building, a building like any other a sterile steel giant – the construction meant to in its size and shape to impress on the observer.
He entered through the door, which after some delay had had given way to grant him entrance, and was surprised when he was actually shocked to feel like he'd hit a wall at entering being met by the foul smell of the decay.
A cleanup had been initiated, but before it was completely done it had been abandoned, leaving faint red stains all around. Scanning the lobby, finding it empty, his attention went to the stairs leading up to the second floor. He crossed the lobby and climbed the stairs, feeling his feet sink into the thin, but soaked, carpet.
Having reached the top of the stairs he stepped into a hallway, which was significantly cleaner than anywhere else he'd been, as if he'd instead of climbed the stairs had entered another building in a place where the plague hadn't happened.
While the lobby had been lit alone by the dim light coming in through the big windows, the floor above bathed in light, painfully bright to his eyes.
He edged forward, hearing his every step softly echoing between the walls of the corridor. He opened doors and peeked inside but with no satisfying result, he could find no living being although the obvious efforts to make that part of the place habitable for humans spoke for it.
The corridor ended in another door, different in appearance from the other four that was flanking the corridor with two on each side. While the others were the plain kind you would find everywhere with that keypad you'd use to open it mounted next to it on the wall, this door went a little more advanced than that with all kinds of locks, alarms and other security features. Obviously there was someone who was very keen about keeping people out of there.
Nico was about to walk up to the door, when he felt a sudden sting to his neck, like an insect bite. He raised his hand to brush it away, but halfway there the hand fell back down to his side too heavy to move, and his mind went cloudy. He tried to turn around, at the very least look over his shoulder, to see who was behind him, but his body wouldn't obey him.
Feeling nothing and with the corridor fading away, he tumbled to the ground lifelessly, while a figure leaning on a cane limped over to the door, pressing keys and in other ways giving commands to unlock it. Then he turned back to the young man passed out on the floor, a grimace, the closest his twisted features would come to resemble a smile, creeping onto his face.
His plan had worked.