Ezra sat on the edge of the thin mattress, leg bouncing, eyes fixated on the door. She didn't know how long she'd been in there, but it had to be close to morning. She hadn't slept, not a wink, for several reasons. Namely, she was a captive in God knows where under what looked to be a government outfit. But this was also the first night she'd truly been away from home, away from Dad and Shaki; away from that bustling, ever-present noise that rattled their flimsy windows as it zoomed by.

The room was far too silent, and she was far too lonely—and scared. Besides, there was no way she was going to let anyone walk in on her unprepared again. She gripped tight to the pen she had found on the small metal desk bolted to the floor. It could stab somebody in the eye, or go for their carotid... not that she knew exactly where that would be. She hadn't paid attention in Anatomy 101; too busy ogling Luke Arden to care about that. This was the moment she regretted it. And she wasn't exactly gripping a sharp scalpel.

Minutes morphed into hours. Tiredness caught up with her. Just as her head lolled forward, jerking her awake, the sound of keystrokes on an electronic pad outside reached her.

Ezra snapped her head up, her knuckles turning white against the pen. She sat straighter, her core tightening—ready for fight or flight. Most likely the latter. From what she remembered, the men were likely armed.

She half expected Captain Rai to enter, spouting orders in his soft, accented English she couldn't quite place. Where was he from? He was tanned yet, broad shoulders, South Asian perhaps from his eyes. The accent tripped her though, sounding partly British but not, partly Indian but not.

A hulking figure peered at her through the doorway, his hair red as the sunrise. He was not the soft-spoken Rai. His eyes were hard as diamonds, whereas Rai's had been kind. Skipping the pleasantries, he stomped inside, making the room shrinking around him, like the walls were closed in. He grabbed her by her arm then and hoisted her up, practically dragging her out of the room like a prisoner.

"Who are you? And where are we going?" Ezra struggled against his grip, only to have his hand winch tighter around her, a vice.

Behind them, another soldier marched the deserted corridor. His hand rested on the gun in his holster.

Ezra knew then exactly where she stood. She was a prisoner, but to what end?

Neither man talked, marching her down the corridors—left turn, right turn, right turn, left—discombobulating her. Even if she could attempt to flee, she would have no luck finding an exit.

"Where's Captain Rai?" she asked, seeking any form of interaction she may deem positive. If they saw her as a person, they'd be less likely to be cruel. At least, that's what she hoped.

The soldier at the back made a sound to answer her, but the one dragging her still—she had to hurry her steps every few seconds to catch up with his strides and not fall—cleared his throat. Clearly, these men had instructions not to converse with her. Driving home that uncomfortable feeling she had. I'm a prisoner.

"What about the General?" Panic welled in her throat. Are they taking me somewhere to execute? Though she saw no reason for it. Why would they kidnap her, give her a fairly comfortable quarter, only to dispose of her the next day? What could they gain from that?

"We've been walking a while..." she tried, but her protests and questions stopped when they came upon a door with another keypad and biometric scanners on both sides.

Talk about an overkill. Ezra watched her captives step forward to a panel each. The one with his grip on her dragged her after him. They scanned their faces and keyed in a password when prompted, almost synchronously, as if they'd done this many times.

The two paneled doors swung heavily on their hinges, revealing a short corridor at the end of which stood an elevator.

Ezra swallowed what little saliva she had. "Wher—where are we—we going?" She hadn't realised she'd started shaking, so much so that her voice cracked.

The soldier with his hold on her shoved her forward into the space and followed with his peer, allowing the doors to swing shut behind them once more. It was only then he let go of her arm.

"Get in the lift." His voice was a guttural grind; a voice of doom!

Ezra hinged forward on her hip and pressed the button. Silence ticked on as the lift creaked into its dock and opened.

The men shoved her into the large freight-size lift, stepped in, blocking her path, and the smaller one pressed B1.

Basement? Ezra watched the red ring of glow around the button. Below it, nine more levels sat down to B10. How many basement levels did the facility have? She'd known they were already underground the whole time she'd been there by the lack of window or source of sunlight, but ten floors down? Suffocation clawed at her throat.

The doors opened to what looked like an observation room. The room was longer than it was wider. Foggy glass lined one wall. Before it sat a long built-in shelf that resembled a desk, and on it sat some panels with buttons and multiple screens. There were three office chairs tucked under the desk. The room was dark. The only light was a soft glow filtering through the wall-length glass.

"What's this—?" Ezra faced the men just in time to see the elevator doors close behind her, taking the men with it.

She was alone once more.

Ezra could almost hear her heart thrumming. Knocking. Get out of here! it screamed. And she wished she knew how. All around her were walls. Solid walls and that long glass panel she suspected was a two-way mirror. But no doors. No doors, other than the panels that hid the elevator that had brought her there and spat her out. Panels she could barely make out.

Are the doors recessed? Hidden?

She squinted at the dark murky blue walls, trying to spot an exit sign, any way out. Even a vent would do—if she could crawl through it and somehow get out before anyone saw her.

She walked to one end of the wall and ran a hand across it. Visibility was shite, but she should be able to feel dips and grooves between the walls and potential escape routes. She'd feel a door, right?

With her breath shallow, her heart racing and her palms sweating, Ezra began walking, gliding her hand across the wall. Slowly at first, then faster, worrying that any moment someone else would come down through those elevators and she'd miss her chance to escape.

But she need not have worried about that. On the far side of the long rectangular room, a panel silently yawned open, bathing the room in incremental increases of light. At the doorway, framed by the white light of fluorescent tubes, stood a stalky man. Behind him were a couple more uniformed figures. Their faces were hard-set. Like robots.

The man at the door, however, was all shadows. She couldn't see his face, but she recognised his stance. General Watergate.

As soon as he stepped in, dim downlights flickered on in the room as if turned on by some pressure switch on the floor—for there were no visible switches on the walls that Ezra could see now that the room was lit.

The men folded into the room, cutting her off from the only other exit. All five of them. None of whom were Rai. That alone made her fear for her life. At least if he'd had orders to dispose of her, she thought he'd be quick and kind about it. These men? She wasn't so sure.

One stood guard by the door as if they had already preempted her attempt to run. Foolish.

Ezra felt dizzy. Perhaps from lack of sleep, or perhaps from the fact that her heart was galloping like a racehorse.

Ezra steadied herself, palms steady on the wall where she stood. It was then she took the diplomatic route, nodding her head at the man in charge as if it was what she'd always done. "General Watergate."

"Dr Mayur." The man gestured her to him, near the panels, where two other men sat turning on the computers.

"What is this place?" Ezra eyed the one at the door and the one who seemed like Watergate's bodyguard, as she stepped up.

"You'll see." He jerked his chin towards the glass and said, "Men."

The two at the panels nodded simultaneously, and the opaque glass cleared.

Ezra gasped at the sight. Before them, meters below, was a sprawling open-floor lab, housed in a large warehouse-like structure. Stations after stations stood. Equipped with the latest in technologies. Anything a geneticist or a microbiologist could want was there. Even machines she'd never seen, only read about. Proprietary technologies for gene splicing.

And amongst those millions of dollars' worth of equipment, several personnel clad in hazmat suits moved around like ants in a giant maze.

Without meaning to, she leaned closer to the glass. "What is this place?" Her question was all but a whisper, awed.

"The best-equipped genetics lab on this planet. Brainchild of Dr Archer, whom I believe you know... or should I say, knew?"

Dr Archer? What does this have to do with Archer? Ezra stole a glance at the General before returning to the lab before her. She watched a few of the hazmat suits as they worked carefully. And pretty soon, within a person or three, she saw the pattern, what they were doing.

"They are deep cleaning." She frowned. She could tell a deep clean was happening when she saw one. But doing it wearing such high-grade, hermetically sealed hazmat suits as the ones they'd use for Biosafety Level 4? That was unusual.

Something big happened here. Something dangerous.

"What happened down there?" she asked, as a scientist. Curiosity was their curse, especially when it came to Biosafety.

"Show her."

One man at the panel nodded and on his screen, many image files loaded one after the other in quick succession. They had blurred or cropped all and any identifiers from the bodies. Only their white lab coats revealed they'd been working in a lab at the time of their deaths.

On one particular photograph, even in that millisecond glimpse before another obscured it, Ezra saw something that made her heart drop to her shoes. Archer. She'd recognise the dark mole on the right thumb anywhere. She'd remarked on it several times, advising her boss to get it frozen off, but he'd refused, claiming it was part of him. What made him him! And he wasn't wrong. They'd blurred out his face, his ID on his lapel, but it was Archer all right. Archer, whom she'd thought was dead given the volume of blood they'd found on his office carpet. Archer whom she'd grieved.

But there he was, ten years later, popping up on some gruesome photographs of a biological accident on a secret military base.

What were you doing here, Archer? What were you doing with these men? Did they kidnap you too? Just like me?

Her eyes glazed with tears as she eyed the flashes of images. Bodies upon bodies as the soldier opened them one at a time. They all showed various signs of yellow pustules and raw red blisters and legions. Hemorrhaging from visible orifices. It reminded her of an Ebola outbreak, but the close-ups of the blisters resembled Herpes simplex or cold sores.

She dreaded seeing the one with the closeup of Archer's hand, blistered and covered in legions.

Instead, Ezra turned to the General, studying him for several moments before she repeated her earlier question, "What happened here?"

"What do you think happened here?" His hard eyes stared at her squarely. He wasn't giving her much. He wanted her to guess. To use her intellect—as a fellow scientist.

As someone who worked with Archer once, the uncomfortable thought wormed in. That's why I'm here. To figure out what happened to Archer and his scientists. That's why they brought me here. Maybe they are not the bad guys...

Ezra eyed the lab again, scanning the floor with a far more scrutinising gaze than before. That's when she noticed a large industrial cart down the far end with what looked like sacks. A cart two hazmat suits were pushing into a freight elevator on the opposing wall.

Bodies? Her eyes widened in horror. They couldn't be anything else. Nothing—no specimens—in any labs she'd ever seen could be that big unless they were animal testing. But these bags looked more like the bags in those homicide pictures Dad used to bring home and pour over in the middle of the night when he thought she and Shaki were asleep. Ezra had given herself nightmares for months after taking a sneak peek of them when she was eight. An incident after which Dad resorted to locking up his files unless they were in his hands.

"Wait. This happened recently, didn't it? There was a level four pathogen leak in the lab, and it spread, infecting everyone exposed. But it had to be quick... almost aerosolised to infect so many so quickly..."

"You're good." General tapped his men's shoulders and their screens turned blank. "The incident occurred last night, at eighteen hundred hours. Just before good men and women retired for the day, or you bounded off to your party, Dr Mayur." His tone was almost accusatory.

Ezra glared. "It wasn't my idea."

"Nevertheless." The General turned back to the lab to watch the suits work. "We think it was the aerosolising team...their test might have accidentally breached safety protocols and leaked into the lab's open space."

"So that's why I'm here. To help you clean this up properly? Before it ever escapes the lab and into the population." Ezra felt nausea tickle the back of her throat. She gripped the edge of the desk, a feeling of dread washing over her; an icy big wave of it. "May I ask what the pathogen was?"

"The best person to answer that"—General Watergate turned to her then, not a flicker of emotions on his face—"would have been your former boss. He is the one that designed it, based on your original proposal, I believe. That paper was yours, was it not, Dr Mayur? The one I had read from last night?"

Ezra doubled over then, hurling what little she had in her stomach into the corner of the room.

"I take it you weren't aware he stole your theory," the General said matter of fact.

"It was an exercise he assigned us in uni one year. It's not a theory." Ezra stood, blinking away the tears from her eyes and trying to swallow the taste of bile from her mouth.

A brief smile tugged at the General's lips then. "Clever man, using the fresh, unbiased brains to come up with ideas for him and his purpose."

A throb began at the back of Ezra's head. "What purpose? I don't know what you're talking about, General Watergate. It was just an exercise, designed to allow him to hire the best brains for his lab, GenDesign."

"His lab. Precisely, but not GenDesign, I'm afraid." The General tucked his hands in his pocket.

Ezra's confusion deepened. Her knees began shaking, and she eyed the empty office chair, wishing she could melt into a puddle on it and cry. What the hell was happening? Archer stole her ridiculous paper and based some research on it? Research that not only killed him, but countless other scientists?

"Sit. You'll look like you're about to faint." The General pulled out the chair for her and waited. He wasn't wrong. Ezra felt lightheaded. But this wasn't the time to lose her senses.

"Let me get this straight... Archer took a crazy 'what-if' paper I wrote for my application, fourteen years ago, and used it as the basis for the design of some crazy genetically-modified pathogen—deadlier than I've ever seen—and now you've brought me here to find out what he was working on and destroy it? Is that right?"

"Not exactly."

Ezra's head snapped up. The General was stoic. Unreadable. Not exactly? What did that mean?

Her expression must have asked him that question, for he answered it with, "We want you to refine it."

The room spun like crazy then. The five men grew and shortened in front of her like some hallucination. Ezra gripped the edge of the table and lowered herself onto the proffered chair. "What?"

"Exactly what you heard. You're his prodigy! He often commented on how smoothly the project would run if you were in on the research. It is technically your theory he was bringing to life here. Your designer microbe. Is that not your specialty, Dr Mayur? Designing the perfect genetics?"

Ezra felt the bile rise in her throat again. "I don't understand."

"Let me make it clear, then." The General took a step closer to her then. "Dr Archer successfully created the deadliest pathogen known to man, but in order for Project Rescue to work, we need the pathogen to not be hundred percent efficient. We would like some pockets of humanity to survive after the 'reduction', as you called it."

Ezra folded over her knees, struggling to pull the air into her lungs. What the fuck have I done? Project Rescue was what she's called her paper when she'd written it. Instead of the word 'cull'—which had made her ill just thinking of it—she'd replaced it with the word 'reduction', reduction of the human population by design, to be precise.

"You can't be serious?" She cried. "It's, it's..."

"It's necessary," the General said, "our population is about to breach twelve billion in a matter of months. The world is crumbling. Whether you like it or not, Dr Mayur, humans will die—far slower and more painful death: from hunger, from dehydration, from lack of any medical care. Women are already becoming infertile. The earth is begging for help. If we want humanity to survive, then we must get the numbers under control. This is the last resort."

"I can't." Ezra shook her head. "I can't do what you want me to. I won't kill people."

"You have no choice, I'm afraid." The General advanced on her then, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him. "Either work with us and complete your damn project, or you will force us to think up creative ways to make you comply. Either you do this, or we find some other genius."

He let go of her and stepped back. "Do this and we will give you and your family housing in our fall-out bunkers, plenty of food, all the facilities you never had, including a lab, and green light any project you desire. Keep you safe from the reduction. Don't do it, and your family will never know what happened to you last night, and when Project Rescue goes live, they may become the casualties of war. Your decision."

The General turned towards the door from where he'd entered. "Think about it, but don't take too long. Offer expires at midnight tonight, and we will do what we have to."

With that, he headed for the door, with a passing remark to his men to take her to her room when she was ready.

Ezra didn't know if it was then that she fainted, or a few minutes after, but the room blacked out sometime then.

A/N: Holy smokes, my apologies. I didn't expect this chapter to be as long as it became but I just couldn't stop writing it once I started. Ezra landed in some hot sauce.

Also, sorry, this chapter is yet unedited and may contain errors and typos. If you see any, please help and point them out. I don't mind. 😃

I tried to keep the tension going and the pace, and I'm hoping it works well enough.

Was there any part you found issues with?
What do you think of this scene?
What about Ezra? Any thoughts at all, don't hesitate to share!

Thank you so much for continuing to read VIRULENT. ❤️