Her heart plummeted, each beat echoing with dread. Trembling fingers clawed at her forearms, streaked with grime and sweat, as she scanned for puncture wounds. But stress blurred her vision, the world tilting as her breath hitched—every mole and scar morphing into phantom threats.
She clawed at her triceps, nails digging into flesh until she found it: a flare beneath her skin, throbbing red. Capillary congestion, she recalled from some forgotten textbook, but all she saw was red.
“What have you done to me?!” Her voice cracked, raw and urgent.
Unsettled by the thought that she might be afflicted with the primordial disease that would soon turn her nervous system into a mechanism for parasites.
She could sense them, their insidious cells coursing through her veins, proliferating inside her body. Soon their spikes would reach for her heart, and she'd never be the same again.
"The serum is still intact," the man remarked calmly, his hands behind his back.
She bent over, eyes narrowed, to inspect the full syringe in his palm. Then she directed a suspicious glare at him.
"You've still tried to plant it in my arm. Are you the one who's been going around infecting all these people?"
"No... This is a special sample—an antidote to the chaos unleashed. The contents of the stolen vial have already been released. Do you not smell the particles in the atmosphere? The stench of my failure?"
She sniffed around, her nose twitching, but the only thing Sadie could smell was her own reek after such a convulsing day. She pressed her hands against her temples because she had grown irritated with his constant riddles and revelations, which made her question her own sanity.
"Whatever, man. You've failed. And you've failed in your attempt to inoculate me. That makes you twice the failure. Now get out of my house because I need to shower," she said, as she secured her hair up in a loop.
He was not surprised by her numbed attitude. The sudden hike of fear followed by a momentary relief and then the constant stream of anxiety had exhausted her spirit. He could tell that her breaking line had been crossed. Her emotions depleted easily, and she was dangerously close to being devoid of any sentiment, which made her fearless and borderline amoral.
It was the reaction the foreigner expected from humans. They became a blank slate when faced with a crisis they considered insurmountable. Their instincts and mores turned numb when truly put to the test.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
As an immortal, he could never understand how they gave no thought to death, preoccupying themselves every minute of the day, working relentlessly to avoid pondering upon its inevitability. Sadie was no different. She welcomed what she did not know. A brief existence, then perdition.
She was hoping she'd be bothersome enough that even demons would not tolerate being in close proximity to her. Then she'd have the last laugh just before being cast into the eternity of the void.
"Listen to me, you'll need the serum to defeat the Ant Queen and spare your friends a gruesome death," he advised her. "This solution has a weakened strain of the virus and will not turn you into a fully fledged monster, but you will be endowed with advanced abilities to help you in your struggle to come."
Sadie felt that the stranger was turning from a rare occurrence to a weaselly salesman demystifying the heavenly realm. He lost her every time he blew things out of proportion. Gruesome death? Defeat the queen? What is that—some kind of comic panel?
This rhetoric was only effective on Sadie when it allowed her to feel superior to other hollow students. Besides, when has a needle of unknown providence transferred anything but misery?
"You’re a walking infomercial for doom. I am not interested in whatever abilities you offer," she told him.
"Oh, but they are not random," the aleck remarked. "They are extremely specific and will be entirely dependent on you. The serum does not cause the same molecular reactions in every being because the virus works by infiltrating the preconceived structure of the subconscious, where deep traumas are hid.
The interlinkage would trigger an accelerated evolution guided by the neuronal associations between contiguous events. Pangs of a guilty subconscious cause the most impact upon firing neurons. Such is why only the worst of sinners can be affected by the changes."
She could not believe her ears. She only understood the last line, but she bristled at his audacity.
"Not only have you tried turning me into a harmless version of a mutant, but you are also claiming I deserve such a fate because of my sin? What could I’ve possibly done in my miserable life to deserve that a virus genetically engineered eons ago by some lizard people would end up infecting me?"
"Not all the deadly sins are reactive. The seventh on the list is affectlessness.
Your indifference to your duties and obligations, your inert disposition, your lack of feeling or care about others—they are all caused by a deeply entrenched self-pity. And it can become the seed of your skills."
"So now my laziness will save the world? I pity you for believing that."
"Your friends need you, Sadie. The world as you know it will cease to exist without you."
She seemed to be giggling softly, tears pooling in her eyes, before changing expression— revealing her true feelings to a fooled man with a final statement:
"Then let the world end."
Her dead eyes were fixed on his, until he looked away. He had nothing else to say. He moved to the counter where her television used to be and placed the serum on top of it. He then proceeded to remove his watch and placed it near the syringe.
"Compensation for the broken TV," he said, before exiting through the door.
She did not bother to close it after him, but instead headed straight to the shower. She turned the knob to the hottest temperature, then sat fully clothed beneath the downpour, washing both herself and her clothes at the same time.