“Do you know why they call themselves ‘thwarters’?” Milton asked Sara.
“I couldn’t care any less,” replied Sara.
“They believe they will thwart the parasites from killing everyone,” he explained.
Sara couldn’t shake her head in disappointment, since Milton had strapped her forehead to the cot. She hadn’t moved from there in over two hours. Her limbs were still restricted, and her body was beginning to cramp. There was also the fact that Milton had administered anaesthesia by jamming a needle into her arm. God knows what ‘preliminary checkup’ he had done while she was under, and how long it had lasted. The only proof she had of anything happening was that her socks were gone, she was now in a hospital gown, and her hair was tied into a bun under a surgical cap.
“My ass they will,” she said. “They don’t even go after the leeches. They just hunt us down, and bring us here to be killed in the name of science and humanity.”
“The suffering will be over soon,” said Milton. “The serum has neared perfection. Hell, it might even be perfect now!”
“That’s what you shitheads kept saying when you rounded up all the survivors,” Sara said. “After promising us a ‘vaccine’, you just took our volunteers and tested on them like lab rats! And then after promising us it’d be perfect the next time, you took more volunteers and killed them too! Then what did you do when we refused to cooperate? You started abducting us! You guys are monsters!”
Milton didn’t seem to react. He then went on with what he was doing. He picked up a new syringe and peeled the cover off of it. He attached the needle, and then looked at Sara. “We wouldn’t be so close if it weren’t for them. This was necessary. Now you all have hidden away somewhere, making it hard for us to attain more test subjects.”
“Necessary? Necessary? Do you really believe that man?”
He didn’t respond to the question. He went to the rack and brought a round-bottomed flask plugged with a stopper. It contained a pale blue liquid. The bulb above Sara was still swinging, and she wondered if it would ever stop. Again, for the thousandth time, she tested her bonds by pulling on them, and like the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine times before, they didn’t loosen. She watched as Milton removed the cap off the needle and unplugged the stopper. He dipped the needle into the liquid. He pulled on the plunger and sucked the liquid into the syringe.
“This looks good, Sara,” he said as he inspected the syringe upright. “I feel very confident about this!”
“Like how you were confident about the last ‘subject’?” Sara asked.
She was ignored again. He tapped on the syringe, and the air bubbles in the liquid floated to the top. He then pressed the plunger and the air was expelled, along with some of the liquid. Sara was desperate now.
“Milton, you have to think about what you’re doing!” she pleaded. “There’s got to be another way of testing all this. Why the hell don’t you try it on animals?!”
“That’s because these parasites don’t parasitise other animals.”
“You said they controlled crickets and grasshoppers! What happened to that?”
“Not these mutated ones, Sara.” He sighed, tired of the barrage of questions he was receiving. “You think we haven’t tried all of it already?”
Sara thought there had to be some other alternative. “But what about — ”
“Tried-it-tried-it-tried-it-tried-it,” said Milton, impatiently. “Whatever you’ve thought of, we’ve tried it. We’ve tried things that you haven’t thought of too. This is the only way…”
Sara was beginning to shake in fear. “Please, don’t do this!”
She was ignored yet again. Milton brought the needle close to her throat.
“Please… PLEASE! I’m begging you, please don’t!” She tried her best to dislodge herself from her cot. She rattled it, wailing in terror.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to manhandle you to get this done, Sara.” With that, he grabbed Sara’s neck, stopping her from wailing. Holding her firm, he jammed the needle into the side of her neck and pushed the plunger in. All the blue liquid vanished into her body.
The deed was done. Sara stopped thrashing around and fell silent. She was going to die, and she couldn’t do anything to prevent it. If only she had jumped off the bridge instead of freezing in the trailer. Screw that, if only she had heeded Daniel and stayed back with the other survivors in the colony. She would have been safe, or at least her death would have been postponed. And now she was going to die horribly, just like the other test subjects. She stared at Milton hopelessly, all vigour drained from her. She was surprised to see Milton smiling, almost maniacally.
“No immediate symptoms? That’s an extremely good sign!” he said. “We must wait for a few more minutes to see if anything else happens.
And so they did, and nothing happened.
“Oh my God… Is this it? Have we done it?” Milton looked overjoyed. “Sara! How do you feel?!”
Sara tried spitting at his face again, and missed like before. This time he didn’t even seem to mind.
“Yes-yes-yes-yes!” he exclaimed. He took off, leaving Sara with the dangling light bulb. “It works… It works!” he screamed at his other colleagues. A collective gasp filled the room.
“But did you…” Sara heard someone trail off.
“No not yet,” said Milton, excitedly. “You all tend to your subjects and hope for the same results. Meanwhile, I’ll finish the test.”
Sara could hear him running back. He popped his head over her cot again. “Now, Sara, for the final test.”
Sara knew what it was going to be. “I can’t take it anymore. Please… please I beg you…”
“It’s almost over, Sara,” he said as he put on a mask and rubber gloves. “Just one more thing.”
He disappeared, and came back with a pair of tweezers. Caught in it was a small parasite.
“SOME DOCTOR YOU ARE!” Sara screamed.
Milton was taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“You? A doctor? I can’t take that bullshit!”
Milton seemed extremely perturbed. “How dare you say that!”
“What’s that fucking oath you took?”
“What?”
“Don’t you doctors take some stupid oath? What was it?”
Milton fell silent and Sara went on. “Something about saving people to the best of your ability? About warmth and sympathy outweighing your knives and medicines? You’re not a doctor. You’re a murderer. You’re following some crackhead’s psycho philosophy to kill people instead of saving them. YOU ARE NO DOCTOR!”
Milton was wearing a mask, so she couldn’t see if Milton’s expression was changing. “Didn’t you, at some point in your time here, find all this blasphemous?” Milton didn’t react.
“You have, haven’t you? But you must’ve gone on, scared of that crackhead Reid. Then he rubbed off on you, didn’t he? You actually got sucked into his ideology. You masked your disgust for it with shit like ‘saving humanity’ and… and ‘saving the world’. You’re pathetic!”
Milton took a few steps back, shaking his head.
“Don’t bullshit yourself, and let me out of here,” Sara said, in a much calmer tone, almost pitiful. “Let me out. Let me leave. Don’t do this shit again. Forget it.”
Milton was standing still. The whole room had fallen quiet.
“Milton, let me out,” she coaxed, hoping she’d gotten through to him.
He took a few steps forward and stared at Sara. His face was the same as before, stoic and unreadable.
“That was quite a rant there, Sara,” he said. “But let me tell you something about Mr. Reid’s philosophy. It’s inevitable.”
He brought the tweezers close to her mouth. She didn’t want that thing in her throat. She didn’t want to die. She tried to find anything that could keep her alive.
“I’ll tell you where the others are!” she blurted.
Milton took back the parasite. His eyes were gleaming with joy; his stoicism had disappeared . “What brought this about, Sara?”
“If I tell you where the other survivors are, you let me go, scot-free,” Sara said.
“That’s a fine deal indeed!” Milton was excited. “Tell me, where?”
“We formed a colony, north of the city. Gladison Square… there’s an old office building next to it. They’re all camped inside.”
Even though his mask was on, Sara could see that he was pleased.
“Thank you, Sara,” he said. He then brought the parasite back over her head.
Sara was confused. “Wait, wait! We made a deal! WE MADE A DEAL!”
“Now say aah,” he told Sara.
She clamped her jaws shut, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. She started fighting against her bonds again.
“Sara, there are other ways to get it to your throat,” said Milton.
He punched her hard in the gut and she got the wind knocked out of her. Still keeping her mouth shut, she inhaled through her nose. That’s when Milton plugged the tweezers into her nostril and let the parasite go.
Click here for Locked Down | Chapter 8
