Library:http://www.comicvine.com/forums/fan-fic-8/5th-column-comics-library-1589634/#4/
Chronology: This occurs directly after Blink #3 http://www.comicvine.com/forums/fan-fic-8/5th-column-comics-the-blight-3-1590796/#5 and ties into Impurestcheese’s Gaia http://www.comicvine.com/forums/fan-fic-8/5th-column-comics-gaia-1-1590435/#13/
**
I grab the phone “WHAT?”
“Um, whoa, okay.” The voice on the other end is startled by abruptness but I don’t care, I am paying these girls by the hour. “I got told to, um, call if, well, y’know something strange came into Indigo General and…um, well, I…”
“Fine! I’ll be there WHEN I’M FINISHED!” I toss my cell back onto the dresser and return to the business at hand. “So who wants it first?”
**
I stride into the hospital. The security guard goes to stop me but I simply flash my Xiphos Bio-Technology pass and he steps aside. Xiphos pretty much paid for this hospital, Dr Clayton is listed as one of the board even though she's been living in her cage…the ugly bitch! How they give that ugly, mean, beady eyed bitch the keys to the kingdom in bio-lab fifteen and I get stuck trying to make a better version of Rinderpest. Like the US military wants to kill cattle!
“Dr Corman Hooper?”
I glance at the young doctor saying my name and nod, “You’ve obviously never done this before.”
“Um, no, but Dr Carpenter sai…”
I grab his hand and yank him to walk alongside me. “Firstly, shut up! We’re going to walk. You’re going to look straight ahead and talk out the side of your mouth.”
“But…”
I stop, exhale and push him up against the wall “Stop. Talking.” I glare at him and tear his name photo i.d off his scrubs. “^%$#! Amateur hour! You will walk ahead to wherever this strange thing is. If you turn around, actually if you even talk to me again asides to agree with what I’m saying…Chad, I will hire some homeless guy from Lovecraft to break into your house and slit your throat. Are we clear Chad?”
“Y-yes…”
I give him a shove “Now show me what was so urgent at one in the morning!”
**
Chad unveils a man lying on a gurney, nothing overly unusual about that, this is a hospital. But then I notice the toe-tag, the grey mottled skin on his belly and groin area, the pustules and scabs on his chalky white hands and the, well it looks like a bullet wound, in his upper right thigh and kidney area. Then it breathes.
I take a cautious step back “Is that…a blight?”
Chad looks at me like a scolded dog.
“Oh speak you stupid boy!”
“Um, well…sir. He came in after midnight after he, um,” Chad pauses to watch the chest rise and fall. I click my fingers in his face to get him back. “Um, yeah. He’d been shot and dumped on the Broad River side of the Koontz Memorial coz…”
“Nobody picks up from Lovecraft,” I add knowingly. It’s a common derelict tactic. “Continue Chad.”
“Okay. The um, other EMT guys noticed he was like shaking like he was going into shock. Got taken into emergency where they um, cut his clothes off and noticed, well the grey stuff. Then he flat lined. We tried a resus but he was gone. I brought him down here for the mortician when he…” Chad points as the chest rises and falls again.
My eyes light up. It doesn’t look like a proper blight, like a hybrid or possibly mid transformation. But blights don’t breathe like it is doing.
“Chad, you will go and,” I toss him my car keys “And bring my car around. And if you scratch it,” I wave the scalpel at him “Now go!”
I close the door and lock it as I pull two blue gloves from a large box of them, “Maybe you my unusual friend prove to be my promotion and something to rub into Eloise’s piggy little face!”
**
I get Aaron Bubeck back to my lab smuggled in the trunk of my Bentley. His name was on the mouldy social security card in his pants which I had Chad throw into the hospital furnace with the rest of the filthy things. He stinks of bleach and burnt sweat even through the Vaseline under my nostrils.
But he is amazing! I’m recording this on my phone as opposed to using the in-house recording because I’m sure Eloise has got her tentacles watching everything. Aaron’s gunshot wound has begun healing, healing like a time lapse before my eyes.
“From what I can gather from Aaron’s condition, he may possibly be a carrier or a blight. Either way his physiology is astounding, amazing! Look, look at the skin knitting itself back together. Aaron could revolutionise our biological endeavours. From the skin samples I’ve taken from his stomach and hands it shows he has been exposed to the alien fumes from The Great Impact. Until I open him up I’ll know more, but my hypothesis is that he died from the inhalation of the fumes which triggered both the carrier gene as they are calling it, simultaneously as his body transformed into a blight.”
I move around the table to his stomach area “Somehow he lived and his body has been reassembling itself. But judging by the squalid condition of his clothes and the stench of bleach he’s been self treating himself which has kept him trapped in this weird state. If he’d been sensible instead of dousing himself and probably drinking bleach his body would’ve rectified itself and he’d be, god knows what he’d ack!”
I don’t see Aaron’s hand move but it’s clamped around my throat. His strength is amazing…how weird as I’m being choked out that’s what I think of…He says something loudly but I can’t make it out as I can feel his hands squeeze around my carotid and jugular. I fly across the room like a ragdoll and it’s dark.
**
“You are in serious trouble Dr Hooper,” states Stallion in that Texan drawl of his as he slaps my face and me into consciousness. I scramble upright slowly realising I’m naked.
“Where is he?” I croak trying to cover myself.
“Where is who?” he asks me as his hand rests upon his machine pistol on his hip. “Because according to the log it was just you in the lab and you checked out four hours ago.”
I gulp. I have breached procedure, protocol, my contract and possibly several laws. I open my mouth to explain only to get his big, black gloved hand over my mouth. Time slows as he looks deep into my eyes; it’s like staring at shark when there is slight hum. He unclips a phone.
“Yes Director Scahill.”
There is an eternity as he listens to my superior, I feel pee leak down my legs.
“Yes Director Scahill.”
Stallion hangs up and slams me into the wall “You splashed on my boots!”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“Bio-Lab Three has been compromised along with your swipe card. Director Scahill has recommended a month suspension and ejection from the facility immediately.”
I can’t believe my ears “Really?”
He smirks as the machine pistol comes up onto my forehead “No.”
**
Bio-Lab #15
Stallion tapped on the glass, Dr Clayton turned from what she was working on. “I have something that may be of interest to you, doctor.”
Eloise stepped up to the glass and looked at the cell phone in Stallion’s hand quizzically, “I have a phone.”
He smiled placing the phone on the ledge outside the biosphere container “Watch the recording. Have a nice day.”
**
To be continued directly in Blight #4 (coming soon) and also Impurestcheese’s Gaia
Notes:
Rinderpest is an actually disease that kills cattle ,just in case you wanted to know
Dr Corman Hooper gets his name from horror directors Roger Corman and Tobe Hooper
Indigo General Hospital is located in the top left hand corner of the Broad River section.
Xiphos Biotechnology is owned by Impurestcheese, please check with her is if you wish to use it to make sure
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