Part 3: Weapon X

[WP] The mutations started to appear gradually. They were subtle at first. As the mutations spread they became more significant. As an investigative reporter, you discover that the mutations were not naturally occurring. The source was far more sinister.

*****

The drive from Derrick's house was ominously silent, filled with furtive glances from Anneliese and Derrick towards their captors. The two men who sat across, watching them carefully.

Edgar Roscoe, the President of the NNC fixed his glance on them as a predator would when it had cornered its prey. "You know, a part of me expected this, and yet, it stil shocks me. You cannot imagine how disappointed I am in..."

"Disappointment? Don't f*cling get me started with that!" Derrick spat, enraged. "What happened to truth? What happened to the integrity and prestige this corporation had? You had such a reputation for telling the truth, and you had to ruin it by..."

The gun leveled at his chest silenced him.

It was the other man in the car. He was in a nicely tailored three-piece suit, and had a sneer on his face.

"You were right about this one being a damn Saint! Why did you have him working for you anyway? All these loose ends we keep having to tie up are not good in my opinion; one mistake and all of this could blow up in our faces!"

Edgar just smiled ruefully. "He was the best reporter we had..not one of those fake ass wannabes who just smiled because they were paid to do so. We encouraged him to be the best investigative reporter there ever was, and he delivered as expected. Brought the big bucks to NNC. Well, that was just because he was being manipulated to suit our agenda..."

Derrick's head flicked up.

"Of course you know we couldn't possibly allow you to go about putting your nose in everyone's business. It's wrong. In order not to anger the wrong people, when rumours and information come on things happen all over the world, we carefully consider what to cover the whole truth about and what not to. We hand over the most sensational cases that we want to be fully exposed to you, and then keep the others to your colleagues who can play the game by our rules."

Derrick was visibly disgusted. He was just a pawn used for their lies and deceit. They were never really for the truth. They weren't any more different than the others.

"I know what you're thinking; you e been working for just another dirty lying news network, but not so. We carefully and critically curated what stories we would have exposed in full, and what we would hide. So in a sense, we were actually better than the competition."

Anneliese finally spoke up. "Then if this is true, why did you make an exception this time? Why did you choose Derrick this time?"

"Because I came into the equation," the other man suddenly spoke up. "I'm Allen Addison, the head of operations at the facility we're now headed to. I'm the one that is finalizing decades of research, work and dedication to this project."

"What project?"

"That'll be revealed shortly. The fact is that the formula was complete, and we'd started human trials. On a low key this time, with homeless people on the streets and..."

"No, no, no! No way you did that to..."

"I don't like to be interrupted. Next time you do that, I'll blast your knee caps into oblivion," Allen said, obviously irritated. "As I was saying, the homeless contribute nothing to the economy, hence, they are pretty much expendable. I used them and I was able to perfect my formula to the point where it could mutate the human bodies fast."

The car came to a halt, and soon men opened the car, dragging the duo out in cuffs as Edgar and Allen followed. They walked into a huge, ominous looking facility.

"As you can see, this place has been specially provided for this use. We prepared our agent and tried it on these lab rats, and it worked. We were able to cause extreme distortions by allowing the agent to cause mass cell replication in the body."

Anneliese quipped. "But if it worked here, what was the point of using it against members of the public?"

"There had to be a control experiment. The people here weren't particularly well fed, they were constantly afraid, so anxiety, stress and others had weakened their immune systems. I needed to know for sure how this agent worked against the normal people going about their day to day activities in the bustling city of Queens. And we were pleased to see that amazing results could be achieved within a week, take for example the man you both were talking about."

They walked till they reached a room with a one -way glass.

"We twiddled with the formula a little, and so were were able to create a Version 2.0 of sorts: mutations would happen in less than six minutes. Amazing, isn't it?"

Derrick and Anneliese had their mouths open as they started at the gaunt old man sitting down in the center of the room.

Allen pressed a button and a man in a hazmat suit entered with a double-decker sandwich on a platter, along with two cans of soda. The man wolfed it down with relish.

"Now that he's eaten his last supper, you cannlw administer the agent."

Some vents in the ceiling of the room released a vapor, and the sight was grotesque. The man's body vegan to distort, monstrous appendages appearing and his skin becoming tighter and lighter as it stretched around his frame. His bones dislocated one by one as s his body exploded and he was reduced to a grotesque amoebic shape on the ground.

"That is one of the effects. Severe body expansion, mutation and destruction of the skin and inner organs of the body. This man was reduced to mush in only minutes," she said as blood oozeed from all natural orifices.

"Next is step two and the final part. It has to do with the propagation of the causative agents amongst the targets. I have to make sure that the effects are widespread. That's why I added a viral strain to the agent."

Anneliese frowned. "I get it. The virus enters the body, causes the body cells to replicate, but these divisions have been reprogrammed to create more viral agents, which are then released into the air. They come in contact with more humans, and the chain reaction gies on!"

He had no idea he was climbing towards a maniacal crescendo as he spoke, until he calmed down.

'You both will be our first human trials on this chain reaction, right when we out you in a room with one of the biological bombs we've created!"

They both struggled against the cuffs , but it was of no use as they were forced into a room.

There was a woman in the far corner of the large room, strapped to the wall with a gas mask strapped to her face. A tube connected it to a vent on the ceiling. She struggled against her bonds, breathing hard and crying.

"There's no way this can be ethical. There's no way this 'resesrch' can..."

Allen's voice boomed over the intercom. "This is for science. This weapon will be the greatest thing since the Atomic Bomb in World War II. Silent and deadly, whole nations will be wiped out in days. And you should thank the god of science for permitting you to be a part of this movement!"

He pressed the button and they held each other, prepared for the death that was about to take them. But nothing happened. No fizzing, no hissing sound of gas moving in the vents. Nothing.

Then the door opened and a few scientists in a hazmat suit came and brought them out. It was after they'd been uncuffed that their senses returned and they noticed Allen and Edgar on the ground, groaning and struggling to get up.

"Wh..what?!"

The two men were pushed into the room.and the door was shut and locked. The woman who was supposed to be used as the lab rat was outside with them, so it was just the two men and the vent.

"Let us out, now!"

The man in the hazmat suit held up a taser. "We used this to subdue them. You two go outside, along with the other people we rescued. There's a vehicle waiting to take you to your homes..."

"And what about the homeless?"

"... we'll arrange something."

They both decided to face the elephant in the room. "And what about those two?" Anneliese asked, nodding towards the.men who now beat against the one-way glass, their faces a pure mask of terror as they screamed at Derrick and Anneliese.

"Those guys? Heh. They should be the first to experience the results of their own research and development," the man said, pressing the button. "For science," he added grimly.

Derrick held Anneliese shoulders as they walked off, hearing the two scream one last time and hearing the unmistakeable sounds of bones dislocating in rapid succession.

*****

I may have rushed the ending a bit, bemut I somewhat knew this was going to be a horror story, sort of. How did you like it? Leave a like and a comment, thanks.