Page 4 of Glass Rose
I spin around to see Jack standing inside the dead subject’s cell while Mia hovers at the threshold. Peter’s across the hall in another one, his small camera recording the motionless figure.
“Are you kidding me?” My voice scrapes out like sandpaper. “Get out of there! Now!”
“Relax, Doc. Dude’s super dead.” Jack pokes the subject’s arm with a pen. “See? No reaction.”
My stomach drops through the floor. “That’s not?—”
“Holy shit, this one’s got restraints,” Peter calls from the other cell. “Why restrain a corpse?”
Yes… Why? It doesn’t make sense.
Alex’s hand catches my wrist. “Sofia, calm down. We need this footage.”
Jack leans closer to the subject, his camera inches from the gray face. “Can you get a sample or something? Blood? Tissue?”
The words barely leave his mouth when the subject’s eyes snap open—milky white, pupils contracted to pinpoints. A gurgling sound bubbles from its throat.
No… He’s supposed to be dead. Dead. Like really fucking dead.
“What the fuck!” Jack’s shoulder blades slam against the cell wall as the subject jerks upright with unnatural speed, spasmodic yet purposeful.
“Get out!” I scream.
He scrambles toward the door, sneakers squeaking against the tiles, but the subject is faster, fingers curled like clawslatching onto his forearm with a wetslap.Blood sprays across the sterile white floor, spattering the walls.
“That’s not possible…” Am I dreaming?
The virus.
The fucking compliance virus.
“The footage!” Mia stretches her arm toward the expensive equipment, fingers trembling just inches from Jack’s abandoned camera. “Fuck!”
I lunge forward, but Alex yanks me back, his fingers digging into my skin. “Don’t?—”
Jack’s scream becomes a wet gurgle as the subject—the thing—tears into his throat next with blackened teeth. His body convulses, legs kicking against the floor tiles.
“Guys?” Peter turns, camera still rolling. “What’s happening?”
The subject in his cell twitches.
“Behind you!” I point over his shoulder.
He pivots, camera swinging wildly. “What the?—”
The restraints snap as the subject charges at him, teeth sinking into Peter’s shoulder, ripping through his lab coat and into flesh.
“Run. Now!” Alex drags me backward.
“But they’re?—”
“They’re dead,” he hisses in my ear. “You can’t help them.”
Think! Containment protocols. Isolation procedures. “The security door—down the hall—we can seal it!”
Mia rushes toward us, face pale and sweaty, the precious stupid camera in hand. “Oh god, oh god, they’re?—”
The subject who attacked Jack looks at us, blood and tissue dripping from its chin. It releases him, his body crumpling to the floor.
