Round 3.1: Write a dystopian horror story (max 2K words). The story must incorporate the following two images and song:

https://youtu.be/zKQfxi8V5FA

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"Get in there, get in there!"

The rabbit kicked and squirmed in Seb's grip, white tufts of its fur coming loose and sticking to the bloody scratches on his hands. The animal's panicked chittering rose to high-pitched squeals as he forced it into the time machine's compartment.

Seb slammed the compartment hatch closed. 

When he reached for the notebook on the table, fur-speckled blood drops spattered across its label.

Terminus Project: Dr. Sébastien Michaud, PhD, DBMS
SynBio Division, Exordium Corp.

He managed a slippery hold on his pen given his slick fingers but he had no alternative.  No pesky Exordium tracking AI to catch his words on good old fashioned paper and ink.  Seb flipped open the notebook cover and turned to the  page of the first entry he'd made.

Test 1
Time Destination: 2525 CE
Duration: 300 seconds
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Outside the farmhouse, heat lightning crackled in the distance of a ruined sky. Through the grimy window pane, he could make out the stalks of corn swaying in the wind. The fields here had always yielded great crops. The soil fertile, rich in beneficial microorganisms.

Would anyone ever harvest the corn again? 

Another flash of lightning and he caught his reflection in the glass of the time machine's hatch. Sunken eyes peeled wide. Cheeks drawn in. Bald patches on his scalp. Grey pallor. 

His nose was bleeding.

The Exordium Corporation government members were all sealed up in their hermetic compound underground. Safe from the d-K0977c. That virus that they'd brought back from the past from the melted depths of Antarctic ice, from what would have been the airspace above a rich and fertile Late Cretaceous rainforest. That virus that'd escaped from Exordium's bioweapons lab. Seb's lab.

He jerked to attention and flipped to the next black page.

Test 2
Time destination–Seb paused, then wrote– Year 3535 CE.

A jump of 1010 years.  Why not?  Brigitte had once joked about angel numbers...repetitive sequences said to convey divine messages according to numerologists. Synchronicity mumbo-jumbo bullshit.  But Brigitte had been his angel. His first of two. So yes, why not.

The farmhouse had belonged to her grandparents. She'd been here with them and their son Evans when the Terminus lockdown was initiated.

She'd died in the first wave.  It had been a Wednesday afternoon. At 4:44 pm according to her biopulse watch that had registered her cessation of life functions and transmitted the information back to his.   

Duration: 300 seconds

Seb popped a mindfulness pill, hissing as his thumb sliced against the jagged crack of his mask's mouthpiece. That's right. He remembered now. The thing had shattered when he'd left the compound.

He'd driven the transport vehicle casually at first. His top-level security clearance had gotten him through all the underground level checkpoints, except for the last.

That final one, he'd sped through, smashing out the airlock.  It hadn't occurred to Exordium's structural engineers that anyone would seek to exit stage left in that manner.  Kamikaze pilots smashed in not out. 

Out.

Keep the infected out.

There'd been no security to contend with once outside. The pathogen tainted air was all the defence perimeter needed.  The barren city with rotting corpses everywhere testament to the now virulent atmosphere.

Seb shook his pill bottle.  Only four left. He had a passing thought to feed the pills to the rabbits to calm their nerves but decided he needed them more.

Damn!  He almost forgot the note.

Tearing off a section of blank page, Seb quickly scrawled How much longer will it take?

Intentionally vague. Should the message be intercepted, he wanted it to reveal nothing. The intended recipient would understand.

Wadding up the paper, he released the compartment's lock and did a fast enough open and shut to throw the note inside before the screeching rabbit could scramble out.

Sweat dripped into his eyes as he entered the time jump sequence on the machine's control panel.  The rabbit's scream was the last sound he heard before the blaze of light from inside the compartment flooded the dark room, casting stark shadows on the walls from the beams and cobwebs.

Pacing the seconds away, Seb rubbed his palms down his pants. His aching back and arms complaining he should perhaps sit. Instead he glanced at the shovel in the corner of the room.

A sharp beeping.  The time machine's countdown screen flashed 0:00. Seb lunged for the hatch and unlocked it.

With a cry of frustration, he scooped up the remains of the now dead rabbit. The note was untouched.  An exact repeat of Test 1.  He stomped over to the shovel and went outside to bury the rabbit as he had its predecessor.

The stalks were whipping in the hot wind that smelled of acid. At least he needn't worry about losing power for the time machine. The farmhouse had an independent generator. He needn't lose time...

Time. 

Time was the answer.  Time was the cure.  If digging into the past opened the door to humanity's extinction, reaching to the future could lock it up again.

The virus had gone dormant before, it could do so once more.  It was only a matter of finding the right era when earth's atmosphere would be viable again.

Yes. It was only a matter of time... which he was wasting. He rushed back to the farmhouse.

The shovel banged against the jamb as he raced back inside with it. Clumps of fresh dirt on its blade went flying across the wood floor and the orderly line of mud boots by the entryway.  Brigitte had been such a neat freak.  Everything had to be properly arranged and lined up. She refused to get any housebots, always claiming getting one's own hands dirty was the best kind of job satisfaction. If people let machines do everything, soon humans would have no need for arms and legs, she would say. Then she would chide him about how so many machines at work only kept him at his lab longer. That he spent too many hours there and not enough at home. Humanity had lost an integral part of itself when things became less hands on.

Seb raised his trembling hands and stared at his dirty nails and bloodied hands. He returned the shovel to the corner with care, then bent over to realign the boots neatly, shaking the dirt off them.

He finished writing up the last entry.

Right. Time to get another rabbit.

Back outside, he braced himself as he approached the hutch of rabbits Brigitte's grandparents had kept.  In the darkness, he spotted one cowering behind the rickety structure.  Where were all the others?  As he got closer to the animal, he frowned.  Another white one. But why was it so dirty?  Was that blood on its fur? Could the rabbits have been attacking each other? It was known to happen with d-K's mindrot.

What did it matter. He had no time to waste. Cramps had begun tearing through his abdomen,  This rabbit was here and he would take it. He'd look for the others after.

Test 3: Year 4545 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Test 4: Year 5555 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Test 5: Year 6565 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

To hell with the angel numbers.  A change in sequence was in order.

Test 6: Year 7510 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Test 7: Year 8510 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Seb rubbed hard at his face. The coppery stench of blood stung his nose. A crunch of glass preceded a sharp lance of pain through Seb's foot when he stepped forward.  He looked down.

His airmask was on the floor.

That's right. He'd removed it earlier.  The blood tears pooling in his eyes tinting his view through the visor a murderous red. 

Perhaps he should reconsider the angel numbers. Yes. Try them again. He restarted the sequence.

Test 8: Year 9595 CE
Result: Subject deceased. Note untouched.

Once again, he could only find one rabbit by the hutch. Its filthy, bloody white fur made it hard to spot...again? The gruesome headache ploughing into his temples all but knocked him out.

Get on with it.

Back before the time machine, rabbit in hand, he thrust the creature into the compartment with a savage jerk and repeated the exact same steps he'd been doing, with one exception. 

Test 9: Year 10,000 CE

There was no light this time.  Only the beeping.  Squinting through the hatch's portal, at first he thought the time machine's compartment was empty.  No.  There was something inside. Something... familiar-shaped.

Seb unsealed the hatch, and blinked.  His heart pounded in his chest.

In the middle of the compartment sat a yellow rubber duck, worn and muddied. Beside it, the crumpled note had been smoothed out. Beneath his message was written IT'S TIME NOW in a child's crooked block letters.

"Evans..."

Oh god...his son Evans. 

Heavy stomping pounded up the front porch.

Seb heard the farmhouse door swing open. A gust of hot wind pushed into his back.

"Dr. Michaud?" The voice was muffled, tinted with an electronic whine he recognized as coming from a speaker of an Exordium facemask. "Step away from the" –there was a brief pause– "microwave." 

Seb barely felt his arms grabbed from behind.  The icy touch of steel cuffs snapped over his wrists.  He was spun around and slammed back against the table. Gloved hands patted him down. 

From the corner of his eye, he watched one of the team of Exordium guards take the notebook, then press the side of his helmet to activate his communicator.

"Agent Zager reporting. Michaud located. Infected. d-K mind rot symptoms evident." The agent flipped through the notebook pages, scanning Seb's notes. "He's been putting rabbits in what he states is a time machine. There are fresh dug mounds and open holes on the property.  We believe he's been burying remains outside..."

Yes, that's right, Seb thought. That's why he'd come. To bury their remains.

There was a pause as the guard listened to a reply back. "Affirmative. Will bring back documents. Infection control to be initiated. Containment protocol in effect."

"At least he's made our job easier," another guard muttered. The man took the shovel from the corner.

"Normally we'd shoot you first," Agent Zager leaned close to Seb's face, "but this is payback for the two guards you killed on your joyride out."

Seb started laughing, choking up blood at the same time.   He put up no resistance as he was manhandled out the door. Through stinging eyes he watched a guard make quick work of digging a shallow trench in the loose soil.  Pushed forward, he climbed willingly into the hole and lay down on his back.  The scraping of the shovel overhead fell in time with the dirt being flung on him. 

Gazing past the Exordium guards looking down in their full containment suits, Seb spied a rare break of night sky.  The twinkling of starlight so very far away.

The sound of shifting soil beside his head made him look. And he watched in awe as a grubby little hand poked out of the wall of earth, a yellow rubber duck clutched in its fingers.

That's right. He'd buried Evans' remains with the boy's favourite toy.

Seb smiled as he took what was held out for him and pressed it to his heart.

"It's ok now, Papa. They're all coming back now" came his son's gritty whisper in his ear.

Seb's smile grew wider as the screams of the guards pierced the night above.