Chapter 3: A meal interrupted

In the eastern wing of the institution, to the furthest right of the administration block, stood an interconnected research and

innovation centre. The space was divided into three and harboured by the same

number of buildings each having its own specific field of study.

One third was an amalgam of rooms that told the story of physics itself, its evolution from classical mechanics to quantum theories all crammed within them. Two of rooms storing a galaxy of tools and materials: copper wires coiled like metallic snakes, metal sheets and fabrics stacked respectively, capacitors neatly stored in labeled bins and cogs arranged on poles from the smallest to largest. One room used to conduct radioactive experiments. It had a thick glass wall dividing it into two halves, to protect the scientists conducting the experiments. The last two included a classroom where students learnt theory and one where both residents and surgeons were allowed to let their creativity run wild, essentially the invention room. They crafted equipment and weapons to help them in their line of work; both combat and surgery.

The second third was occupied by chemistry laboratories, a realm where ancient knowledge in alchemy met modern discoveries behind heavy wooden doors. A sharp, clean scent of ethanol mingled with the earthy undertones of brewing solutions,

creating that distinct laboratory perfume that clung to lab coats upon hours of experimenting. Residents had work stations in two of the rooms, each a self contained universe of knowledge and discovery. Another one of the rooms served as a storage facility for apparatus and chemicals. Black epoxy counter tops, scarred by years of dropped reagents and enthusiastic solutions that had dozens of ring stands supporting intricate glassware arrangements. Truly, a chemist's wet dream.

The last third was the biology laboratories, a pristine realm where artificial lights cast their steady glow over gleaming stainless steel and unusually spotless white surfaces. The space was divided into three zones each serving its own distinct purpose in moulding future medical professionals and discoveries. The main teaching laboratory hummed with the quiet efficiency of multiple climate control systems. Work stations hosted microscopes, their oculars waiting patiently for eager eyes. The second lab buzzed with the gentle whir of centrifuges and the steady rhythm of pipettes. Here's where biochemical experiments were conducted. It also served as a hospital allowing for ailing personnel from the school and from outside the school to be attended to by medical professionals. The last one usually was loud and chaotic especially that specific afternoon.

The three were interconnected such that two diverging hallways connected each to the other two forming a triangle from a plan view. This was to allow for collaboration due to the fact that they needed each other to essentially have the required tools or materials to conduct certain experiments. For example, the biology laboratories would require chemical compounds from the chemistry laboratories that would be used to run experiments.

On this particular afternoon, the biology laboratories were quite busy. From the outside one could hardly tell what went on inside due to a lot of factors. They had augmented glass for these places which allowed people inside to see whatever happened outside but the opposite was almost impossible. The walls were also fortified with a special foam fabric that worked like a sound absorber preventing extreme cases of sound pollution.

Inside the biology laboratories, a plague doctor by the name Charlotte Swynford was having the time of her life. She walked the marble floor with measured steps, hands behind her back and head held high. Each click of her boots harmonising with the lullaby she hummed. Her path wound between the grand pillars of the blood smeared room in lazy curves as if she was merely admiring the massacre that lay before her.

She wore a dark plague suit, her mask took the shape of an owl with a light grey color. Her body, moving with grace that defied her proportions. Her neck almost inhumanely long giving her an uncanny yet elegant figure. With each step she seemed taller and taller. The mask's pointed beak caught the purposefully dim light at odd angles, creating shadows that shouldn't exist, suggesting expressions that shouldn't be real.

The room was a testament to carnage. Gore, thick and viscous, pooled on the floor. It clang to the ceiling, some dripping with a mucousy texture and accompanied by occasional brain matter. It painted the walls the grotesque murals of the carnage within. Chunks of flesh, dismembered limbs and organs lay scattered amongst the crimson tide, a macabre tableau of human suffering. A symphony of death.

The air in the room was thick with the stench of fear and the metallic tang of blood. Huddled together in a corner of the cold, stone floor, a group of captives or in their case specimen, knelt, their bodies trembling. Their mouths were gagged with rough cloth, their hands bound tightly behind their backs rendering them helpless. Despair painted their faces; fear, confusion and for some defiance that refused to be extinguished entirely.

This group consisted of the young and the old, male and female, all huddled up like fugitives facing an ungodly trial. Towering over them stood ten residents, figures of grim authority. Their masks, impermeable to the emotions expressed by their specimen which may have triggered remorse. They barely even looked down at them, all focused on their instructor. Upon orders, they surveyed and brought forth their captives with a chilling indifference while the specimen, could only wait, their fate hanging in the balance.

"That one, the boy with the long hair," ordered Charlotte before she went back to her humming. The boy in question was groaning and in tears, shaken by his soon to be fate. Quickly, the resident next to him, distinct by the curved reverse daggers by her hips, effortlessly pulled him to his feet and shoved him towards Charlotte.

Upon reaching her, she merely slid the tip of her index finger on his bindings and immediately they snapped, this attributed by the long, silvery talons that curved and extended past the tips of her fingers, her weapons.

The boy shed tears upon tears, as he trembled uncomfortably. His breath hitched, a ragged gasp escaping his gagged jaws as he watched her move. Charlotte so tall that his whole world was casted into darkness, overshadowed by this predator. Each shift of her weight sent a jolt if terror down through him.

"Shhhh," she muttered softly, "It'll all be over soon." As she said so, she slowly slid her talons down his juvenile face, leaving behind

a fine line, an open cut invisible to the human eye. One that only exposed itself by the bulges of blood that emerged after.

She turned to her procedure trolley, on it were about a dozen syringes containing a yellowish fluid. Slowly, she picked one and held it between her and the boy, pushed the piston ejecting out drops of the substance.

She turned to the boy and grabbed him abruptly sinking her talons into his jaw

and neck as she forcibly turned his head exposing more surface area.

The poor child could only cry as he waited for the impending doom. Slowly, she drove the needle into his neck and began pushing the piston down. The whole cylinder was emptied into him before she pulled it out. She then stepped back giving room to him.

For a moment, it seemed like nothing was going to happen, "Hmm, success?" She wondered before thick, boil-like bulges began to pop up all over the boy's skin. He shrieked in pain but, no one was coming for the poor thing. The bulges, they grew larger and larger, especially concentrating around his neck area. In mere moments the left side of his neck hand grown thicker than his head, throbbing and protuberant. Then, splat! The tumour exploded tossing him to the right and smearing even more blood and tissue all over his left side.

He lay there, on the floor, neck gone and his head attached to his body by half an inch of skin tissue. Blood oozed out of him as his limbs twitched, life evaporating out of him. His body was still full of bulges, he was almost unrecognisable from what he looked like prior to the injection.

"Hmm, most of his body is still intact, we're close, I can smell it. Next!" She exclaimed, her voice a chilling blend of amusement and

anticipation. Each syllable drawn out like a predator savouring it's prey. They couldn't see her face but it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to tell, she was enjoying herself.

"What in the world is happening here?!" Asked doctor Willem stunned by the utter chaos that lay scattered before him. His plague mask was off but he was in his plague suit. For a moment, he stood at the entrance, increasing the room's light intensity by the switch next to him to get a clearer view. His eyes catalogued everything, though his mind slightly struggled to process the scope. It wasn't the first time he had seen such a massacre but it was not something you just overlook even in his line of work.

"Dr Willem, how nice of you to join us. We were just testing out different bacteria strains that cause cancer. A mutated Salmonella typhi strain that causes cells to replicate quickly. It's been a bit of a slow burn but, I believe we're close," She said to him almost bouncing on her boots, nigh vibrating with a bit of excitement.

The Chief Surgeon's hands had been clenching into fists so hard his knuckles had turned white. A vein pulsed visibly at his temple, that shook the residents to their core. They could tell something was horribly wrong. His breathing had turned sharp and measured, like someone who was counting

backwards from ten.

At that point, it was clear to everyone he was about to blow a fuse. His usual mask of calm, was now etched by lines of anger. "Dr Swynford, a word," he said, his voice barely a whisper but the underlying threat unmistakable.

He then walked out of the room, striding aggressively. She placed the syringe on the trolley next to her and followed behind him. The room filled with sobs and sniffles.

"What are you doing?!" He growled, each syllable a venomous split and his eyes narrowed into slits of fury.

The two were now in the hallway connecting the biology laboratories to the chemistry laboratories. She took off her mask, slightly

flinching her eyes a bit squinted with confusion from confusion.

"As I stated earlier, we were test..." She began calmly before he aggressively interrupted him.

"That's not what I mean! Why are you using people as specimen?" He asked her, his voice a low, menacing growl.

"Ohh, that's what you mean. Well Dr Willem, you and I both know that there is no rule in the institution prohibiting us from doing so.

Furthermore, they agreed to it. I mean come on doctor, they're homeless peasants. Picked from the vilest streets of Elkhum. Besides, they chose to be here, I offered them a contract and they signed it," said Charlotte sure of herself. She was very calm and collected, unshaken by the raging authority that stood before her. Throughout this exchange, she maintained eye contact in fact her eyes were at that point blurting condescension.

"Contract? I saw children in torn garments crying for their lives and you're telling me about a contract? So you manipulated misinformed people, children! And for what? Please tell me what exactly was worth their lives?" He asked her his rage piling up bit by bit, gradually disappointed by every

utterance from her.

"Food," She said in a low tone almost hesitantly. It wasn't out of fear, it was out of realization that it would not suffice.

Sarcastically, he scuffled, "So let me get this straight, you convinced them to sign their lives away for a meal?"

"Yes , yes I did. These 'people' as you call them were living on the streets of Elkhum, they would've frozen to death in this winter

season, this is mercy. I gave them a purpose, a reason for their unwelcome existence. I saved them," She said almost unironically smiling. Her confidence was so sincere that he wasn't sure whether to be angry or concerned. After a short pause and stare, he spoke.

"You will seize your unethical experiments with immediate effect, those children will be dropped off to an orphanage. Let this be the last time I find you or anyone conducting experiments on people. Am I clear?" He said staring at her but barely seeing her, instead he saw a sadistic monster that wore the face of his comrade. He chocked back a sob, the rage threatening to consume him.

"Crystal," She answered before he strode away. She stared at him, squinting her eyes. One could see the seething anger welling within her. She turned back to the laboratory.

"Take them out of this place, you will return the adults to the streets and later, escort the children to the local orphanages," She ordered her gaze flickering on the specimen. Her mind, a restless bee darting from

thought to thought wondering who had granted the Chief Surgeon authority to

reshape the school's 'teaching' methods. She watched disappointed as her play

things were dragged away.

Meanwhile, out in Ostrum, Elkhum's main county, Ayaan casually strode along its foot paths. The cobblestone street hummed with mechanical life, a symphony of casted-iron,

brass and steam that momentarily lifted her spirits. Pneumatic carriages hissed and glided past, their copper-plated wheels spinning with precise, rhythmic movements. Overhead, aerial trams dangled from intricate networks of steel cables, their gondolas swaying gently against the cloud filled afternoon sky. Towering buildings of red brick and wrought iron rose around her, their facades adorned with elaborate gear-driven driven clockwork mechanisms that ticked and whirred, transforming even the nigh fully stone architecture into a living, breathing

mechanism. 

For a breath, Ayaan was transfixed, the city's mechanical ballet entranced her, pulling her momentarily from the weight of her recent

sorrow. But then, like a sudden draft of cold air, memory crept back. Her discontinuation, her failed attempt at becoming a plague doctor, her trampled dreams, they all rushed back, puncturing the momentary wonder. The gleaming streets and marvellous machines suddenly felt distant and cold, just another reminder that no matter what she went through, the world continued spinning regardless.

She took a deep breath and walked on. Her house wasn't far off from those streets, in fact it was merely a walking distance away. A short moment later she was by her front

door. Hesitantly, she knocked on it. It was quiet for a bit with the occasional light blizzard blowing by.

After a moments wait, her sister, Adele opened the door. Her eyes grew wide with excitement, and why not, it's not everyone who's loved one served as a plague doctor and came back home in one piece. Adele embraced her almost shading tears while at it, Ayaan on the other had wasn't sure how to

feel. She was glad to see her older sister, but at what cost.