“What-what do you mean release it?” Dev asked, sensing that all too familiar rush of a panic attack tickling the edge of his brain. 

“I said extended, didn’t I?” Eric clarified. “Sorry, I looked this all up and everything. Wanted to do this right. The one with the long incubation period, with the asymptomatic shedding. It killed nearly all the animals in the lab, save for Eeyore the Rhesus monkey. Lucky little dude.”

“I destroyed it!” Dev blurted. “Just today. It-it’s gone.”

Eric scoffed and shook his head, and Dev felt his heart flutter at the dark look on the man’s face. 

“You and I both know that’s not true, doctor. You said yourself that you’re sending it on to the Boston lab so that they can replicate the results of your vaccine. It’s going to be here until Tuesday. It’s currently 11:22 pm on Friday night. By the end of this weekend, you’re going to help me release your virus into the world.”

Dev shook his head adamantly, “No, absolutely not. I do my work to save lives. There is no conceivable path where I release my virus  anywhere.”

“I know you think that now, I understand. I used to think like you. I used to believe the world was full of good people that needed to be saved, but then I watched them. I watched what they were doing every day to destroy each other and the very planet we live on. I saw them raping and pillaging our natural resources with no intention of repairing the damage. I witnessed them use and use and use until there was nothing left, then move on to the next area and purge and destroy all of nature and her beauty. Drill baby drill.”

“Eric,” Dev cleared his throat, which was extremely dry now, and swallowed against his rising fear, “I understand that you’re frustrated. That you’re angry. But this is not the way. We can get you help. There are resources, therapists. I’m seeing one myself, it’s been life-changi-”

“It’s too late for that,” Eric said. “Our species needs to step aside. The survivors will flourish or they will fall. That is on them.”

“Eric, you’ve had some sort of mental break, but I promise you there is help out there. Please, you have to release me. You have to let me go. We’ll walk out of here together. I’ll get you help, I promise.”

Eric chuckled and shook his head, “You’re not getting it, Dr. Raj. I’m past the point of no return. I’ve been plotting this for months. The current administration gutted this place beyond any reasonable chance at actual security, and I’ve got all the access I could ever need. How do you think I brought in those handcuffs? And it’s not the only thing I slipped past security when I made sure they were looking the other way. Hell, how do you think I managed to get you all the way down here when Edward has access to the cameras? This whole thing is going to end how I say it will end.”

Dev’s head was spinning. He felt very close to throwing up, and forced himself to take several deep breaths as he tried to process everything that Eric had just said. 

This was it. 

Worst case scenario. 

They had trained for this, but the training hadn’t involved being chained to a pillar, or having the attacker hacked into the security system to this extent and with this much intimate knowledge of the building and its systems.  

Dev shook his head back and forth, trying to take a moment, to think of something to say or do to fix this. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something sticking out of one of the file boxes. Pages were clipped together with the familiar silver spiral of a paperclip. 

If he could just…

“B-breathe,” he muttered, forcing himself to start hyperventilating. He wasn’t in full panic mode yet, but it was easy enough to pretend. He was curious about just how versed Eric was in pharmaceuticals.

“What is it?” Eric asked, looking genuinely concerned. 

“Need my-need-beta-blocker, in my desk,” his breathing was loud and raspy now. Frantic, like a real panic attack. He wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t one. 

“The Propranolol?” Eric asked. 

Dev nodded, deciding not to concern himself at the moment with exactly why Eric had such intimate knowledge about him. 

“Okay,” Eric said, seeming to take a moment to collect himself, “okay, I’ll be right back. Just hang on, alright?”

Dev didn’t answer as he continued with the panic performance. He watched as Eric rushed to the door, listened as he headed out and closed it behind him, and his footsteps took off down the hall. When Dev felt Eric was far enough away, he immediately began to maneuver toward the nearest file box. It was impossible to reach with his hands. 

He succeeded in knocking the box down, dragging it toward him with his shoe, and just managed to pull some of the papers up onto the mat. The nearest pages had a paperclip hanging at the top, and he twisted around to shove the papers toward his hands until he was able to grasp the pages with his fingers. 

With a deep shaky breath, he pulled the paperclip off, and pulled one end straight, before using his fingers to find the keyhole of the cuffs. As he searched blindly, it occurred to him that he had never done this before, never had cause to. Wasn’t even sure if he could. But the alternative was unthinkable. He winced at the repeated clanging of the metal of the cuffs on the pillar as he finally pushed the paperclip into the circular keyhole and twisted it around, hoping for a click or release or something. 

Instead, he found himself fumbling the paperclip, which went flying out of his hands in his frenzy. 

“No, no,” he breathed, reaching around for it behind him but unable to find it. The cuffs clicked and clanged against the pillar. 

“Who’s there?!”

Dev straightened up immediately at the sound of a familiar voice in the hallway. It wasn’t Eric. 

“Here!” Dev called, clanging the cuffs repeatedly against the pillar to make as much noise as he could. “In here! Help me! Please!”

His heart leapt as he heard footsteps rushing across the hall, then the door swung open, and Edward was there looking at him in surprise.

“What the hell!” Edward breathed. 

“It’s Eric!” Dev gasped. “He’s had some sort of psychotic break! He wants to release a virus from the bsl-4 lab! You have to get me out of here!”

Edward shook his head, “I knew something was up when his car was still in the lot, but this?”

Edward was looking around, clearly trying to find something that could release Dev. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. He was starting to dial a number when in one horrible instant, an arm came around the front of him, sliding something silver smoothly across his throat. A waterfall of crimson came spraying from his jugular veins, and Dev cried out in horror as Edward collapsed to his knees, clutching his hemorrhaging throat. Eric stood behind him, breathing heavily, staring passively at the man who was now collapsed on his front on the ground, gurgling, choking violently on his own blood as he died. 

The panic attack was real this time. It crashed over Dev in a wave, locking him in tight, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Rapid breaths in and out as his head swam, as his vision blurred and his chest tightened. 

“It’s okay,” said Eric, getting on his knees on the mat next to Dev. “I’m sorry about that. He wasn’t supposed to come down here.”

Dev was not in control as wave after wave of panic washed over him. He began to wonder if he would pass out. Eric was too far gone to reason with, and now Dev was completely at the man’s whim, and an innocent person had been murdered. 

“Breathe, just breathe. Slow down,” Eric said, placing his hands on Dev’s knees and forcing Dev to meet his gaze rather than continue to stare at the pool of blood growing across the room, flowing out from Edward’s throat.

He couldn’t. 

Dev couldn’t rein it in. 

He continued to hyperventilate, fighting to get oxygen into his lungs, to surpass the moment where he felt like his heart would explode in his chest. 

“Hey!” Eric gripped his head, forcing Dev’s gaze toward him and only him. “Deep breath in. Deep breath out.”

Dev struggled past the shuddering breaths to suck in as much oxygen as he could. He let it out again in one long shaky exhalation. 

“In, and out,” Eric repeated. 

Dev did as he was told, breathing in and out again, trying to focus. 

“In and out.”

Over and over he did this, until finally he managed to trick his body into thinking he was okay. That he wasn’t at the whim of a madman who had just murdered their coworker. 

That he wasn’t being forced to annihilate humanity.