With Lieutenant Volkov eliminated, Roger turned and walked towards Gary. The soldier clutched his rifle energetically, fearful of the possibility that Roger would take out his anger against him. Gary had to react after seeing from his privileged seat the ease with which Roger had destroyed Volkov. He wondered if he could still trust him. Or otherwise, that ruthlessness that he’d used against the lieutenant had banished the humanity that Alissa had managed to help him retain. The soldier raised his rifle and pointed it at the head of Genesis.
Roger stopped short.
“What are you doing?” He said with absolute normality. “Put down the gun.”
“Are you Roger?” The soldier asked shakily.
“Of course I’m Roger!” Roger exclaimed, and moved back to the position of the soldier. Gary heard that Roger’s voice still sounded human and relaxed, and with a wince helped support his gun on the floor. He then explored his abdomen, coughed and spat a little blood.
“How are you?” Roger asked, as he sat beside him.
“I think I have a broken rib,” Gary said. “And you?”
Roger shook his head from side to side. The question was not a simple answer. How do I feel? I just busted open the head of a beast of more than one hundred twenty kilos and I’m sitting next to you like nothing. How do you think I feel? Actually he felt good, powerful, strong, invincible and happy because he had avenged the death of Alissa. The EB03 virus was something great. In addition to retaining his humanity. He could feel like any other human being and the fears of becoming a monster had dissipated. Roger leaned his head against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.
“You feel good, right?” Louis asked him. “Strong, energetic, unstoppable. You almost can’t contain the power that dwells within you. It’s like electricity running through your body wanting to escape. But your memories are becoming more distant. You even have to struggle to remember who I am. I’m just a vague memory in your mind,” said Louis, cryptically.
“No, that’s not true. I know who you are. I remember you.”
“You can’t say my name, and to you I am a shadow. Remember that we were once friends, but you have forgotten where I am. You preserve your feelings, but not your humanity. You’re not human, Roger. Accept it.
“You’re lying!”
“Roger! Roger!” Gary bellowed as he slapped him on the cheek trying to get Roger to react.
“What happened?” Roger asked confused.
“Are you okay? You lost consciousness for a few seconds,” Gary said. “Your eyes were blank.”
“Don’t worry. I’m just a little dizzy. I guess the stress is affecting me. Come, I’ll help you up. We still have to find Erika,” Roger explained.
“Before we check in what state the access to the underground facilities are. I need you to help me apply a compression bandage on my ribcage.”
Roger nodded and with the bandages that they had taken from the nurse’s office and hadn’t used on Garret. Roger made a compression bandage on the naked torso of the soldier. Gary winced while Roger tightened the bandages. Then he once again dressed in the SECOM uniform and they walked down toward the area where they calculated the explosion came from. As they passed the body of Lt. Volkov Gary returned and spit on it and took the last grenade from his coat.
“It may come in useful,” Gary said, anchoring the grenade to his uniform.
The two survivors entered a small room without lighting except for the flames of a small fire. The room was covered with debris. They found documents scattered around the room, office equipment, furniture, and even a steel door crumpled like cardboard that had been torn from its frame by the blast. The office should hide access to the secret facilities. Otherwise, it made no sense that Lieutenant Volkov would have blown it up.
“Two of the infected are approaching,” The soldier pointed toward the hallway. “You take care of them while I check the room.”
Again, an inhuman scream alerted them. It was the same scream that they had heard on the upper floors, but this time it sounded closer, as if a beast was stalking them. Whatever it was, Roger had no intention of facing this monster.
Roger pointed the gun towards the infected coming towards them. They walked slowly and were clumsy, spitting up blood, but they didn’t seem violent. Without food, the virus had degenerated their bodies to the point of making them two sacks of rotting flesh. He did not open fire on them. He trusted the skills he’d acquired for shooting that were induced by the virus, and was curious to observe them closely. The infected were dressed in white coats splattered with blood. They may have belonged to the medical personnel working in the underground facilities. One of them dragged his right leg with a broken tibia that emerged from the flesh. On the other man, they had severed both arms up to the biceps.
“Come here, Roger!” Gary yelled from the room next to the office. “I found an entrance.”
With relative calm, Roger pointed at the head of the infected and struck them down. Then he entered the office and jumping over the rubble, walked over to where Gary was. They crossed through the hole left by the explosion, and descended down metallic stairs that led to a hallway that was still smoking. The emergency lights had been torn off by the explosion, and posters that warned of a biohazard were covered with dust and soot.
“I always have found biohazard signs attractive,” said Roger.
“Me too.” Gary smiled. “They remind me of the video games I used to play in the nineties.”
The corridor leading to the entrance of the laboratories went in two directions. To the left, a ramp came to a small dock constructed in the rock of the island and could accommodate three speedboats. The sea water remained stagnant and a gate of major proportions blocked the way. In the air you could breathe saltpeter. To the right, a double steel door painted with yellow lines, separated them from the secret facility of Capital Tech in the prison. The armor plating of several centimeters had resisted the explosion and not even a considerable amount of Semtex had managed to cause a crack. Gary had the key that opened the door, and pulled from his pocket the hand of doctor Harrison. With the hope that his fingerprints had not been damaged during the fighting and the course of events to get there.
Gary placed the severed hand on the biometric scanner. Under the watchful gaze of his fellow escapee. After a moment of uncertainty, a red light lit up on the panel. “ACCESS DENIED” read the scanner monitor. Gary pulled back the hand and grimaced in concern. Then once again placed the hand on the scanner. After a few seconds of waiting, the screen again denied them access.
“Shit!” Gary said, disappointed. “If I can’t open this fucking door everything will have been pointless. All this shit ...”
“Calm down,” Roger said, placing his hand on the shoulder of the soldier.
Gary was upset, and in a way it was logical, because after several years on the trail of Erika. With the added uncertainty of not knowing whether he would find her dead or alive. He was closer than ever to finding her and was aware that he could be facing the last chance to find her. In the hard and painful journey between uncertainty, Gary had become a deserter from the Special Forces. He had been persecuted by the authorities and had sought refuge among the mercenaries. Who, almost certainly, had destroyed unceremoniously the research center in Iceland without stopping for a second to think about the workers.
“I Feel her closer than ever, but I sense that something is wrong,” Gary said ruefully, “and I fear the state in which I will find her.”
“Dead or alive. You will have found her,” Roger remarked. “At least you can rest and start a new life.”
Gary nodded, trying to calm himself so he wouldn’t tremble, and once again placed the hand on the biometric scanner and the reader recognized the fingerprints of Dr. Harrison.
“ACCESS ACCEPTED. Welcome, Dr. HARRISON.”
The compressors were activated and issued the characteristic sound of compressed air escaping from the accumulators. The door opened slowly, leaving a wide corridor in view with a negative slope, and barely lit by red lamps that gave it a frightening appearance.
Taking extreme caution to the possible presence of the infected. Roger and Gary went to the lower floor and they stopped at a hall where equipment for hospital use had accumulated: empty stretchers, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks ... The air down there was thick and choking, and a sort of fetid and nauseating smoke hung in the air, more tainted than the morgue of a Brazilian favela during a gang war.
They stopped in front of a security door that was ajar. Gary opened the door carefully and the first thing that he distinguished in the darkness was a stretcher where lay a body covered with a sheet stained with blood. Gary pointed his rifle towards the inside, and the light emitted by the tactical light fleetingly lit the corridor. It was narrow and with cells on both sides.
“Isolation,” Gary said.
The doors were made of steel and were anchored to a wall made of old stone. It was a place marked by the testimony of ruthless murderers who had left their mark there, engraved with bloody knife blow. Roger imagined the prisoners as they conversed between the cells, extolling their crimes, rejoicing in the blood, in macabre orgies that oozed suffering and pain. The hallway reeked of death and human decay.
“Let’s cross.”
They crossed the threshold and entered the hall of the isolation zone. Hearing their steps, something stirred inside some of the cells and banged on the doors violently.
“Come on,” Gary said, “There’s no time to lose.”
And when they had almost reached the exit, a voice asked desperately for help.
“Thank God, you came,” said a voice from inside the cell.
“Damn,” Roger muttered as he recognized the inmate with the help of the flashlight.
“I’ve been here for several days without food or water. Help me, please. I’m begging you.”
“It’s Kurt Straker, considered one of the bloodiest serial killers in the country. He killed ... How many innocent people, Kurt?”
“You’re lying.” Whispered the prisoner, “You’re lying. You lie!”
“You escaped Roosvell Prison in eighty-nine, and your two escape companions were found beheaded a few days later. Then your trail disappeared, as if hell had claimed one of his best pupils,” Roger explained.
Straker put his face close to the bars, and smiled. There was nothing more pleasant for him than to listen to his atrocities from the mouths of others, and he felt the erection in his crotch.
“Go on.” The inmate spit out.
“First you were a principal at a high school in the city of Silence Peek, Minnesota, until you became the mayor exploiting the pain of the few people who remained in the city after their misfortunes.”
“Eliphas Sorrow, the mayor of hell,” said Kurt Straker, releasing a laugh full of indecent merriment and devoid of humanity.
“And there, hidden, pretending to be an ordinary and honorable man. You shed the blood of many innocents.”
“You lie. In Silence Peek I did my best work and I assure you there my knives did not feed on innocents. No. Eliphas was not a murderer, but an artist who illustrated death with traces of divine justice. Once a year...”
“Fuck you,” Gary said as he squeezed the trigger. “Let’s keep going.”
Roger peered through the bars of the cell door to see Straker’s corpse. There he ended his days in a room without light, only five square meters large, and with his brains blown out. Too fast a death for a bastard of such caliber.”
“I think they gave me these memories,” Roger said.
“What memories?”
“I have flashes. It is as if I can see through the eyes of these psychopaths. I can even feel his rage and hunger to kill. It’s almost hard to remember who I am and yet, I know the life of some murderers as if I myself had lived them. I do not get it,” Roger explained.
“Maybe they have created a link between you and these bastards to make you more ruthless. While they introduced martial arts, shooting skill and strategic combat. They also have added perhaps those memories to your memory to modify your behavior,” Gary said.
“Oh, shit.”
They left the isolation zone and entered a large room without ventilation, and what they saw inside made them tremble with terror.