The constant, monotonous hum of the ventilation systems was the only sound in the LyraGen hallways, a backdrop of normalcy that masked the latent horror.
Kane's team, or what was left of it after the shocking revelation, worked in a tense silence. The atmosphere had changed. Scientific curiosity had been replaced by a nervous caution. The word 'zombie' was not spoken, but its shadow weighed heavily on every procedure.
Lina worked meticulously at her station, the data on her monitor flickering with a mathematical coldness, but her movements were slower, more cautious. Kane, in his own lab, reviewed notes, trying to find the missing puzzle piece that would explain the virus's activation without the intervention of his superiors.
Suddenly, a scream. Sharp and terrified, the sound of a man who had seen the unthinkable shattered the complex's silence. It came from a containment sector at the end of the hall, an area dedicated to the observation of test subjects. Kane and Lina looked at each other, the panic palpable in the air.
They rushed to the reinforced glass that looked into the containment chamber. Inside, a technician, his biosafety suit torn at the shoulder, was lurching backward, his face contorted with pain and terror. In front of him, the reanimated prisoner from Mercer's experiment, previously restrained to the gurney, had broken free. The creature moved with a slow, shuffling clumsiness, but with a brutal intent. A wet, macabre sound of bone and cartilage accompanied the movement of its jaw, grotesquely dislocated. Blood trickled down its chin.
"Isolator!" a scientist yelled, his voice hoarse with terror. "The Isolation Protocol, now!"
In the observation room, Dr. Rivas, who had arrived upon hearing the scream, remained unperturbed. Her face was a mask of cold professionalism. With a chilling calm, she approached a control panel and pressed a red button. She looked at Mercer, who nodded with a slight smile. "Proceed. It's for their own good," Rivas whispered, just low enough for only Kane and Lina to hear.
A strident, guttural alarm filled the corridors. A robotic, emotionless voice announced: "Black Protocol activated. Sector sealing in progress. I repeat, sector sealing in progress."
The metallic clang of the hermetic doors sliding and closing with a dull thud echoed throughout the complex. The crowd of scientists and technicians, their faces distorted by panic, ran blindly towards the exits, only to find themselves trapped. Kane saw a couple of scientists beating on the steel door, their faces twisted with desperation.
In the containment chamber, the prisoner was still wandering around the observation room. Everyone outside watched the action, and especially the faces of the technicians who were desperate to get out.
Kane watched the scene with an icy horror. He knew this was going to happen. He had warned them. No one had listened. Now, he and Lina, and everyone else, were trapped. The hallways, which had once been a sanctuary of control, had become a cage. Dr. Mercer, in the observation room, smiled slightly.
"An unforeseen, but controllable variable," he murmured to himself. Rivas stood firm, overseeing the chaos with an inhuman tranquility.
Kane felt his world crumbling. He was trapped between two threats. Outside, the corporation that had unleashed this horror. Inside, the monster they themselves had created. He wasn't alone, but he felt more isolated than ever, caught between zombies and bureaucrats.
The sound of desperate beating against the steel door echoed in the hallway, a ghoulish reminder that normalcy had ended and LyraGen's dream of security had shattered.
The sound of the alarm, a penetrating, monotonous wail, joined the lab's background hum. Kane stood motionless, staring at the reinforced steel door that had slammed shut, sealing his colleagues' desperation in the hallway. Rivas's coldness in activating the Black Protocol wasn't an act of panic, but a calculated decision.
It was a plan. Kane no longer had any doubt.
He rushed back to his lab. The space now felt like a high-tech cage. With trembling hands, he turned on his old personal laptop, the only machine he believed was not connected to the LyraGen network. His plan was simple and risky: to try and contact the external press and expose the truth before LyraGen buried it forever.
"Now that they are trying to deal with the outbreak, I can try to send information to the outside," Kane thought, hope igniting.
With every word he typed, his fury and desperation grew. He described the experiment, the universal virus, the reanimation of the prisoner, and his superiors' coldness. He attached data from his experimental notes, the post-mortem brain signature, and the autopsy recordings of the bodies. An act of defiance, a time capsule of the truth.
He pressed 'Send'.
A fraction of a second later, a message appeared on the screen, not from a mail server, but from an internal LyraGen system. The company logo was a cold, blue circle. The text was simple and terrifying:
"Message intercepted. Transmission aborted. Please return to your duties, Dr. Kane. We are here to serve you."
A cold sweat ran down his back. He was completely exposed. LyraGen was not just watching him, it was containing him. He couldn't even trust his personal equipment. The corporation's control was absolute.
The only thing that relieved him was that his personal notes were not on the personal computer, and these records would remain hidden from LyraGen. However, he also felt a sense of urgency because he didn't know when he would have the chance to get this information to the world. "I hope I can get there in time," he thought, disheartened.
"Kane, what's going on?" Lina's voice interrupted his panic. She was at his lab door, her face pale and her eyes filled with tears. She had witnessed everything through her own workstation screens. Her panic was real, visceral.
Kane showed her his laptop screen. The interception message. Lina put a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening in horrified silence. "No... there's no way out," she whispered. "We're trapped."
"We're not," Kane said, adrenaline now replacing fear. "They want us to believe that. But we have to think like them. How do you escape a prison you create yourself?"
With renewed determination, Lina ran back to her station. Her eyes, which had been filled with tears, dried, and despair gave way to a cold, calculating glint. "I'm in the Black Protocol logs," she announced, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "The main door to the containment sector... is programmed to reopen in 24 hours if no anomalies are detected. It's a security protocol. But there's a service door on the sub-level... it's not on the map. I see it on the construction plans."
"Can you open it?" Kane asked, hope igniting in his eyes.
"No, the security is biometric. And Rivas is monitoring everything," Lina replied, her voice firm.
Lina helped him secretly gather information, moving in a synchronized dance of conspiracy. As Kane reviewed the security data Lina passed him, they realized the terrible truth. The "Black Protocol" quarantine was not designed to contain the reanimated, but them. It was a trap. The zombies were just part of the plan, a controlled distraction.
They looked at each other, a silent understanding passing between them. Lina's fear had transformed into an iron will. Kane's desperation into a cold resolve.
"We have to escape. And we have to do it now," Lina said, looking at Kane with a conviction he hadn't seen before.
Kane nodded. They knew they had to escape soon. Time was their enemy. And the enemies they faced were not just the creatures wandering the halls, but the cold-blooded bureaucrats who had locked them in with them. The race for survival had begun.
Interlude 3: The Silenced Consequence
[SURVEILLANCE LOG - CLASSIFIED FILE - SECTOR BETA-4]
[TIME: 03:02 AM - T+15 minutes from Black Protocol initiation]
The hermetic doors of Containment Lab 4A slid open with an almost inaudible hiss. A team of three figures, uniformed in matte black combat security suits, entered without a sound. Their movements were precise and synchronized, devoid of the haste and panic of the research staff. They bore no names, only numbers: 'I-One,' 'I-Two,' and 'I-Three.'
The security camera, with its fisheye lens, captured the scene with impersonal coldness. In the center of the room, the reanimated subject was beating on the reinforced glass separating it from the observation room. Its movements were slow, but its strength was abnormal. 'I-One' observed it for a second, his posture unaltered, before giving a concise order.
"Subject 4-A. Status: Reanimated, hostile. Proceed with neutralization. I-Two, containment. I-Three, elimination."
'I-Two' deployed a pair of cylindrical devices. He launched them with mechanical precision at the zombie's feet. The subject did not react. The devices emitted an electric pulse that instantly paralyzed it, causing its body to fall to the floor with a dull thud. There was no growl, no complaint. Just an abrupt cessation of movement.
'I-Three' approached with a large-gauge syringe, injecting it into the base of the subject's skull. The needle, thin and sharp, entered with a muffled sound. In seconds, the reanimated body relaxed completely, its empty eyes slowly closing. The electric pulse stopped, but the body remained inert. The task had been executed with cold precision.
While this occurred, 'I-One' went to a corner of the room, where two technicians wept and trembled, beating on the sealed door. A third technician, the one who had been bitten, groaned on the floor in pain, his face terrified. 'I-One' knelt beside the one who was crying from the pain, checked the wound on his arm and lifted him up.
"Subject 4-B. Direct exposure. Transfer for containment and study. I-Two, take him. The others... to the relocation protocol."
[TIME: 03:04 AM - T+17 minutes from Black Protocol initiation]
'I-Two' took the bitten technician, who was now struggling to his feet.
'I-One' lifted the other two scientists who had panicked. He took them, dragging them towards the hermetic door, disregarding their pleas and tears. The team's alarming efficiency underscored that this was not an improvisation. It was a rehearsed contingency plan.
The camera log showed the three 'security' agents leaving the room, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The containment area was left sterile and empty, as if the horror that had just occurred had never existed. The room was pristine, ready for the next subject.
[FINAL LOG. FILE LABED 'BLACK PROTOCOL: SUCCESSFUL CONTAINMENT'.]
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
Here's a new chapter about the corporation most similar to Umbrella in this novel, LyraGen.
In this one, we've seen that the novel won't just be about the science of the virus.
Kane will go out and must survive in a world that seems to be falling apart. But is the same thing happening outside as in the lab?
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Read my other novels
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 74)
#Vinland Kingdom: Race Against Time (Chapter 77)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 21)
You can find them on my profile.]