“We need to establish some trust, doctor,” Eric said, once Dev had managed to calm down. “I got all the way to your office before it occurred to me that your beta-blocker wouldn’t work fast enough to stop your panic attack, that you were trying to get me out of the room. And now look what’s happened to poor Edward. The man was only here because he agreed to take on a double shift tonight. Unfortunately, this does accelerate things a bit. We’re going to need to get a move on before his coverage gets here in eight hours. I can’t keep stabbing everyone who comes into the building, you know?”

Dev nodded, unsure of what else to do as he looked at the pond of blood behind Eric. His gaze trailed to the socks on Eric’s feet, which were now soaked in blood. It occurred to Dev that Eric must have removed his shoes in order to make a sneak attack on Edward. The forethought was frightening. The man really did think of everything. 

Eric looked behind him at the body, then clicked his tongue, “Let me just take care of this really quick.”

Dev didn’t respond. 

Eric stepped over and crouched low over Edward’s body, before lifting him with a grunt and dragging him awkwardly into the bathroom. Dev heard the thumps, thuds, and clear sound of a door in the bathroom being shut. He continued to focus on keeping his breathing steady so that he didn’t go into another attack at he looked out his blurry glasses at the streaks and pools of blood leading into the bathroom. 

They reminded him of the effects of his virus on the poor monkeys, a hemorrhagic fever inducing virus that came with violent expulsion of blood and bodily fluids. No amount of painkillers could make the monkeys’ passing any less horrific, and Dev deeply regretted it every time. But he did it to save others. He created a vaccine that would stop the most terrifying hemorrhagic virus known to man or nature, then with some tweaks could be used for other similar strains. 

He had created his specifically when he learned of a longer asymptomatic contagion window on an ebola adjacent virus occurring in nature that had caused the death of almost an entire village in Zaire. Nearly unheard of, but nature was ever changing. Rapidly accelerating at this point with climate change and habitat destruction so rampant. 

He had also created an accelerated virus of the same strain to help speed up the process of his vaccine. It worked at the speed of the common cold, showing symptoms within 12 hours. At the moment, he desperately wished he had destroyed all of his samples. 

Eric came back into the room, fussing about as he cleaned up as much of the mess of blood and papers as he could. He shoved the bloody papers all into a box out of the way. 

Eric left the room and returned a moment later with a wheelchair, which he set up across from Dev. He was just about to sit down when he glanced at Dev and noticed something. He crossed the room and crouched down on the mat, reaching out a hand towards Dev’s face.

“Mmm,” Dev flinched away instinctively. 

“You’ve got blood on your glasses-oh,” Eric trailed off, looking at the blood all over his own hands. “I’m sorry about that.” He gently removed the glasses from Dev’s face, and walked to the bathroom. Dev could hear the sink water running and the sound of soap as Eric presumably washed his hands. 

Dev was staring into the distance, feeling dazed,  when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over to see, even with his fuzzy vision, the unmistakable shape of a phone, Edward’s phone, just out of Eric’s line of sight, under a shelf next to the bathroom. It must have slid across the room in all the chaos, and neither man had noticed.

Eric returned with visibly cleaner hands, and Dev’s glasses. He carefully positioned them on Dev’s face, before taking a seat on the chair across from him so that they were once more eye to eye. 

“Now doctor, let’s-”

“I have to pee,” interrupted Dev.

Eric raised an eyebrow in surprise, but nodded after a moment. 

“Of course. I want you to be comfortable. Straight to the bathroom and back, okay? I’ll leave you uncuffed for this, but don’t try anything.”

“I won’t,” Dev said, half glancing again at the phone. He would have to do this very carefully. 

“If you can be chill about this, you won’t have to stay in the restraints while we have our talk. How does that sound?” Eric asked. 

“Preferable,” Dev said, breath hitching as Eric leaned down close to him to undo the cuffs. Dev gave an audible groan as he pulled his arms around to rub his wrists and stretch his back. He moved his head back and forth to relieve the ache in his neck, feeling the hours of tension still twinging throughout his body. 

In all honesty, he did have to pee, so that at least wasn’t a lie. Eric helped him up and he walked toward the bathroom, purposely managing to slip on a pool of blood, catch his foot on the wheelchair, and go crashing to the floor with a gasp. He hoped it looked believable, and he realized with horror that his purple scrubs were now coated in Edward’s blood. 

“Sorry,” he murmured, subtly snatching up the phone as he stood up, “my legs are stiff.”

“Leave the door open a crack,” Eric warned. 

Dev nodded as he stepped into the bathroom, phone down at his left side as he swiped up the emergency phone icon from the lock-screen, desperately trying not to think of the body tucked away in the closet behind him. He unzipped and began to relieve himself as he glanced down at the phone, quietly tapping the emergency number icon and typing in 9-1-1 and the green call button. He kept glancing at the doorway as he did so.

The call stalled.

Dev’s heart thundered as he hit end-call and tried again. No luck. There was no signal. He tried to swipe the phone open, but it was locked of course, so there was no chance to attempt a text message. He tried the police one more time, shoving the phone into his pocket as he went to wash his hands. Checking it after he dried his hands with a paper towel.

“No signal down here.”

Dev jumped, the phone clattering from his hands as Eric stood in the doorway, looking at him with something like disappointment. 

It was now or never, he realized. He was unrestrained, and though Eric had several inches on him, Dev was still fit for a man just turned fifty. He charged forward, shoving bodily into Eric, knocking him backwards into the nearest shelf. Dev booked it past him, slipping and sliding on the pool of blood, his legs definitely cramped from how he had been sitting. He made it to the door of the filing room when he felt the excruciating arc of electricity travel through his body, collapsing him on the spot. 

Moments later, he was being dragged to the pillar, his wrists secured behind him once more. Eric slumped down in the chair, breathing heavily, looking pissed, a taser held in his right hand.

When Dev managed to recover, he collected his thoughts, chest heaving as he looked at Eric. 

“I will not release that virus, and there is nothing you can say or do that will change my mind. My sole purpose in life is to save others. To protect lives.”

“Tell it to the monkeys,” Eric snapped. 

“I understand the concerns you have for nature. The compassion you have for living beings. You are aware that this virus crosses species? That humans aren’t the only ones that will suffer.”

“People always talk about getting rid of parasites and disease, but you and I both know that there’s a reason they exist, doctor. To restore balance to the system. People will die. Animals will die. Then it’ll stop, and nature will flourish again without the blight of mankind to smother her. And perhaps the greatest minds will remain, scientists that we can personally save to make a better world. A better humanity. To start over from a broken system and create something pure and good and worth saving. You and I could be masters of a new world, doctor. We could be its shepherds.” 

Dev shook his head, “You sound just like every eugenics lunatic who ever decided that they knew what the world needed to be perfect. That is not our place. Not our right.”

“You mean just like the men who murdered your wife, Dr. Raj? The white supremacists whose goal was to rid the world of those “lesser humans”” Eric made quotation marks with his fingers for emphasis, “choosing their victims merely from selection of skintone and culture. You think I’m like those men? The ones who stalked the both of you in that park, leaving you for dead and beating your wife again and again?”

“Stop,” Dev breathed, seeing that night, that moment smashing its way into his memories unbidden.

“I saw the footage, doctor. I watched over and over again the moment they took your whole world from you and ran away, never to be found. Never to be brought to justice. Are you going to tell me you want to protect men like that?”

Dev closed his eyes and shook his head, attempting to pull away from the conversation. 

“Can you imagine the breakthroughs your wife might have had, were she still alive? She was a doctor too, right? Working in pediatric research. All of the suffering she could have ended if that merry band of meatheads wasn’t around to end her.”

Dev felt his tremor coming on. It was so strong that it was rattling the handcuffs against the pillar. 

He had thought of killing those men. The ones who had beaten him bloody with a tire iron, then smashed his beloved Indira on the head until she collapsed in agonal breathing and he was unable to reach her, held down by the beasts in their white masks. When Indira had taken her last breath, the men freaked out and let Dev go before bolting away into the darkness. 

Dev vividly recalled crawling over the pathway to his wife, pulling her close to him. His phone had been taken, smashed. Pictures of Indira and Anika lost forever. He had begun CPR, crying out for help. Eventually, an older man heard him and came over, calling 9-1-1, but it was too late. Indira was pronounced dead at the hospital.

“Think of all the shitheads we could wipe out in a matter of weeks. Even if someone managed to mass produce your vaccine, do you think these idiots would take it? You and I both know they would be exterminated with the rest of them.”

“The rest of them,” Dev repeated, opening his eyes. “Everyone else. Children, mothers, fathers, great thinkers, innocent men and women across the world would suffer a horrible fate for your ego. You’ve seen those monkeys, Eric. You’ve seen them hacking up literal chunks of their lungs, drowning in their own blood. You know perfectly well the effects of this virus. Humanity isn’t just going to disappear, it’s going to suffer horribly for days, all ages, all walks of life, the worst and the best of us. Nothing makes that okay.”

“We’re already in the midst of the next great extinction. Humanity will suffer either way. All ages. And they’ll do it in a way that there will be nothing left for anyone. No possibility of sustaining life once we’ve decimated Earth’s resources. You have samples of the vaccine doctor. We take that, release the virus in a few weeks, a month, two months from now the world will be a much better place.”

“I won’t do it,” Dev said. “You’re going to have to face that, Eric. No matter what you do to me, I will not.”

“Of course, Anika would be first in line for the vaccine,” Eric said quietly. 

Dev’s blood went cold. 

“She’s one of those brilliant minds in our new world. I’ve looked into her. Talented and beautiful like her parents. Imagine the things she could do with that brilliant mind. Top of her class, right? Accelerated to her post-doc in a fraction of the time it takes others to do so. A doctorate in ecology. Think of what she could do for the future.”

“What did you do to her?” Dev hissed.

“Nothing yet. She’s on her way to this facility now, I expect her in,” Eric checked his watch, “just over an hour. I’ll head out to the gate to meet up with her. See, Terry there always takes his nighttime bathroom break around that time, not much to guard around 1am. With all the cuts, there’s no security backup. Perfect time to bring Anika in, and, well, Edward won’t be around to say anything.”

Dev shifted up, body trembling and straining, feeling utterly helpless as Eric talked so casually, so evilly about the most precious person in his life. 

“You’re lying,” Dev insisted. 

“Am I? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we,” said Eric. “And maybe we can come to a decision about the future we want for Anika. The one where she’s protected and safe in a flourishing new world, or, well-” 

He gestured around the room at the crimson pools of blood.