Page 8 of Alpha Infected
“Exactly. Company profits and the CEO’s own personal bonus were at stake. Mr. Eagen had the test subjects injected with strength enhancer RX-2 yesterday morning. And the results of that demonstration were muchmuchworse than I anticipated.”
“You’re telling me all of that mayhem out there is the result of corporate greed?” Hazard asked in disbelief.
“I’m afraid so, yes.” Dr. Burke answered.
Ice’s lips curled in a sneer. “Fucking pathetic,” he spat in disgust.
Colonel Gibbs spoke next.
“What exactly does SE RX-2 do?”
“As I said, it’s a strength and performance enhancer. It’s original purpose is to make the user stronger, faster, and more aggressive. The injection also heightens awareness and reflexes, blocks pain receptors, and speeds up health and injury recovery. It works beyond anything anyone has previously created.”
Jax leaned forward in his chair to ask the doctor a question. “Does it work on both humans and shifters?”
“Yes. Although I haven’t done many trials with shifter cells so I don’t have a complete workup on the full results for them.”
Gibbs swore. “If the wrong people got their hands on a drug like that, they could use it to create super soldiers.”
Dr. Burke nodded. “That is a possibility. However, KV Perkins doesn’t have any military contracts. So this was strictly for commercial use.”
“Why isn’t SE RX-2 fit for human use yet?” Hazard asked.
Ice wanted to know the answer to that too. Because in that answer would lie the explanation for why the enhancer turned people into face-eating zombies.
Dr. Burke paused before answering. “We discovered that Lyssavirus had qualities that worked especially well to enhance strength and aggression and isolated them to use in our product. Unfortunately, we couldn’t completely eliminate the virus’s usual side effects.”
“Lyssavirus?” Ortiz asked with a frown.
Dr. Burke shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Ice easily clocked the movement, along with the way the man’s eyes suddenly refused to meet any of theirs, as signs of guilt. He knew he wasn’t going to like whatever the doctor said next.
“Lyssavirus is a genus that includes rabies. That’s what causes the feral rage, hair loss, drooling, and biting in the infected.”
At that bombshell, the room went dead silent for several long, stunned moments. Ice could barely wrap his head around the doctor’s reveal.
“You injected people withrabies?” The question burst out of Jax, breaking the silence.
“Ididn’t inject -.” Burke stopped and shook his head. “No. I need to accept responsibility for my role in this. I should have never started this project to begin with. The risks were too high.” Squaring his shoulders, he met their eyes again. “I can’t turn back what I did. But I can help put an end to it. When I left, I managed to sneak out files of my work.”
The doctor rested a hand atop the toy castle on the table. Opening the draw bridge, he pulled out three floppy disks from inside. “These disks have most of the files for the SE RX-2 project, including my notes for the antidote I created.”
“Most?” Ortiz asked with a brow raised in question.
“We’re not allowed to make copies of our work or take any proprietary information home. I had to sneak and copy my research whenever I could. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do so for the last few weeks, which means I don’t have the completed product on these disks. But I can rebuild the project with what I do have and from there I can recreate the antidote.”
“How long will that take?”
“At least two weeks.”
“Shit,” Ortiz cursed. “If we wait that long, this virus can potentially spread throughout the entire country. It’ll be the worse Code Z we’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah. And we won’t be able to keep the fact that these outbreaks aren’t just urban legends a secret from the wider public.”
“The top brass won’t let that happen,” Stone said. “They’ll green light a full-scale elimination of Tulsa before it gets to that point.”
Ice wanted to curse too. Instead, he sat there silently, dread heavy in his gut.
