Broken Glass

Cynthia clutched the cracked tube against her chest, her fingers slick with the iridescent blue fluid. The wind howled through the steel beams of the trestle bridge, spraying the leaking chemical across her pale skin. Every drop that hit the iron mesh hissed, vaporizing into a thin, bitter vapor.

"Fix it, Thorne!" she screamed, her voice cracking into that terrifying, multi-layered echo. She took two uncoordinated steps toward the doctor, her boots trailing blackish fluid on the rails. "The grid lines in my head are going dark! Fix it now!"

Dr. Thorne backed further toward the dark tunnel exit. "I cannot fix a ruptured containment vessel in the middle of a gale, Cynthia! The molecular structure of the anchor destabilizes when exposed to oxygen! Inject what is left into your carotid artery immediately or your cognitive cortex will dissolve!"

Cynthia raised the shattered tube, her eyes scanning the remaining liquid. Less than a quarter of the blue serum remained. Her hand shook violently, a dark spasm ripping up her forearm and locking her elbow at an unnatural angle.

"Valerie," she whispered, turning her gaze to me. The black veins on her jaw were thickening, expanding like cracked slate toward her mouth. "You. Your bone marrow is the matching template. Thorne said so. I don’t need the tube if I take it directly from the source."

Garrison stepped in front of me, his knife raised, his gaze locking onto her. "You won’t touch her, Cynthia. Step back."

"Get out of my way, soldier!" she roared, launching herself forward.

She didn’t move with the fluid, blurred speed from the laboratory. The cognitive decay Thorne warned about was already hitting her motor skills. Her strike was heavy and telegraphed, her left hand swinging in a wide, desperate arc toward Garrison’s neck.

Garrison ducked beneath the blow, his boot planting into the side of her knee. A loud, wet pop echoed through the canyon as her joint buckled sideways. She didn’t scream or even slow down. She used her raw, unnatural muscle mass to twist her torso, her elbow slamming directly into Garrison’s chest armor.

The force of the impact lifted Garrison off his feet, throwing him hard against the side of the silver express car. His knife clattered over the side of the bridge, disappearing into the black void below.

"Garrison!" I yelled, reaching into my backpack for the surgical scissors I had salvaged.

Cynthia was already turning toward me, her face a mask of sweating, pale agony as the black lines reached her temples. "Give it to me, Valerie! Give me the blood! You owe me! Father gave everything to keep me safe, and you stole his sanctuary!"

"Father left you to die in that loading bay, Cynthia!" I shouted, keeping the scissors raised as she closed the distance. "He didn’t care about your heart! He cared about his own contract! He used you just like Thorne is using you right now!"

"Liar!" she shrieked, her hand reaching out to grab my throat.

I didn’t try to fight her strength. As her fingers closed around my neck, cutting off my air, I slammed the sharp steel blades of the scissors directly into the cracked tube she was still holding against her chest.

The remaining glass shattered completely, flooding both of our hands in the thick, freezing blue fluid.

The chemical reaction was instant. The moment the raw stabilizer fluid hit the open cuts on my fingers, a blinding, freezing pain shot up my arm, making my vision go entirely white. But for Cynthia, the effect was catastrophic.

The exposed serum, now fully contaminated by the mountain air and my human blood, turned from a brilliant blue to a dull, smoking black. It seeped into her open hand, her skin immediately blistering and turning a charred, dead gray wherever the fluid touched.

Cynthia let out a high-pitched, agonizing scream, her grip releasing from my throat as she fell to her knees on the iron tracks. She clawed at her own skin, the black veins across her face bursting and oozing the thick, dark fluid of the infected.

"The template is rejected!" Thorne screamed from the tunnel entrance, his face twisted in pure horror as he watched his creation collapse. "The open exposure caused a systemic mutation inversion! She is turning into a baseline worker!"

"Thorne!" Garrison’s voice boomed through the storm.

He was back on his feet, his jaw bleeding where he had struck the train carriage. He didn’t look at Cynthia. He sprinted past her writhing form, his eyes fixed entirely on the doctor who had engineered the apocalypse.

Thorne turned to run into the dark tunnel, but his polished leather shoes slipped on the wet metal ties of the track. He stumbled, a medium-sized silver box flying out of his hand and sliding across the bridge mesh until it caught on the safety rail right over the canyon.

Garrison caught him by the collar of his white laboratory coat before he could stand up. He lifted the doctor off the ground, pinning him against the rusted iron pillar of the bridge superstructure.