The oppressive silence in the laboratory, which had become a complicit force, was shattered by a distant, dull thud, followed by the shrieking sound of twisting metal. Kane and Lina startled, their eyes meeting in an instant of shared terror.
The blueprints on the monitor, with their intricate lines and code, suddenly seemed futile. Their meticulous planning was crumbling in the face of an event they had not foreseen: an accident in the containment lab.
A general alarm thundered to life, its shrill, chaotic pitch different from the monotonous wail of the Black Protocol. This was the alert no one wanted to hear. On the security screens, sector icons turned red, one after another.
"Sector 3 failure!" a metallic voice shouted over the loudspeakers. "Containment breach! Infection in Sector 3! Section lockdown!"
The airtight doors throughout the complex began to slide shut with a brutal urgency, not in an orderly fashion. Kane and Lina watched on the monitors as several technicians ran through the corridors, their faces distorted by terror, bumping into each other in their desperation to reach the safety doors.
One technician, still in his biosafety suit, stumbled. Behind him, a figure rose from a gurney. It wasn't a person. It was a thing. Slow and grotesque, it lunged at the technician struggling to get up.
Screams echoed over the loudspeakers before being abruptly cut off by a wet, tearing sound. Kane looked away, his face contorted by powerless fury. The deaths of several technicians were happening in real time, projected on the monitors.
"We have to go, now!" Lina screamed, her voice fractured by panic.
Kane, his mind forced into a state of glacial calm, grabbed Lina's hand. "We can't take the main route; the doors are sealed. We have to go underground. Follow me!"
They left the laboratory, venturing into a dark, narrow corridor. The light from their headlamps danced on the walls, revealing stretching, twisting shadows. The air, once filtered and sterile, had grown heavy with the metallic scent of blood and something else—a stench of decomposition.
The echo of screams and the alarm had become a chorus of horror, a constant reminder of the urgency of their situation.
Kane and Lina ran. The corridors felt like a labyrinth, each corner a potentially fatal encounter. The sound of their footsteps echoed in the silence. They saw an airtight door slam shut with brutal force just ahead of them, a dull thud that made them jump.
Kane realized they weren't just escaping the zombies, but also LyraGen's own security protocols, designed to trap everything inside.
Turning a corner, their lamp light fell on something. Not a zombie, but a man. A security guard, his suit torn. His face was a mask of fear, and his body convulsed on the floor from blood loss.
Kane and Lina stopped, watching as the frightened man tried to call for help, but his throat was shredded. They both knew the man didn't have much time left, and that when he died, he would rise again.
"Run!" Lina shouted.
Suddenly, a shuffling sound. It didn't come from the direction they expected, but from a maintenance room. The door opened slowly with a metallic screech. A reanimated subject emerged from the room, jaw slack and eyes vacant.
Its movements were slow and clumsy, but relentless. Its head swiveled toward them, and a guttural moan escaped its throat. The fear Kane felt was not of a supernatural creature, but of a biological killing machine. It was the perversion of life itself, and it was real.
The chase had begun. Kane and Lina's footsteps became faster, more frantic. They were running for their lives. The creature moved slowly, but its moans grew louder. There was nowhere to hide.
They reached a corridor intersection.
To the left, a dark hallway; to the right, a service door that Lina had located in their plan. But in the dark hallway, a shadow was shuffling. To the right, the service door had an active sensor, and a red light flashed. They were trapped between two horrors. This crossroads presented a fork in the road to hell.
Kane looked at Lina, his eyes gleaming with steel resolution in the gloom. There was no time to deliberate.
"The door, Lina! Now!" Kane yelled, pushing her toward the sensor.
The creature from the dark corridor let out a guttural moan, its twisted body straightening with a gaunt rigidity. It moved with a slowness more terrifying than any speed, dragging its feet and hands across the floor.
Lina, her fingers flying over the digital panel, tried to override the sensor, but LyraGen's security system was designed to be impenetrable.
"I can't! It's a closed system!" she cried, despair in her voice.
"To hell with the system!" Kane roared, raising the heavy wrench he had taken from the laboratory.
The zombie drew closer; its vacant eyes fixed on them. Time stopped. Kane didn't hesitate.
With a shout that released pent-up frustration, he lunged against the service door, striking the sensor with the wrench. The red light flickered, the sensor cracking with a crunch of plastic and sparks. A dull thud echoed in the corridor—a sound loud enough to attract more creatures.
The door opened a couple of inches. Not completely, but enough for them to squeeze through. Kane pushed Lina, helping her slide into the maintenance tunnel, and then followed. The corridor behind them was now filled with the sounds of growls, shuffling feet, and more moans.
They found themselves in a narrow, dark space, filled with cold pipes, cables hanging like snakes, and the smell of metal, rust, and damp earth. The light from their lamps bounced off the walls, creating a play of shadows that made them feel even more lost.
Kane couldn't see what was behind them, but he could hear it. The sound of the reanimated was a constant reminder that they were not alone.
Lina, her breath ragged, got to her feet.
"This way," she whispered, her voice almost inaudible. "The blueprints said the biological waste tunnel is here."
They ran, the urgency of escape a fire that consumed them.
They crawled on the floor, dodged pipes, and slid between cables. The air was heavy, suffocating, and Kane felt his lungs burning. The pursuit wasn't just from the outside—it was from their own bodies, from the fatigue that threatened to paralyze them.
Along the way, they found other tunnels, some sealed, others open but with a nauseating smell that made the hairs on their necks stand on end. Kane was forced to use his wrench to pry open a grate, his hands trembling with the effort. It felt like an eternity, but the grate finally yielded, opening a path to a rusted, rickety metal ladder.
They climbed, the sound of each step on the metal a dull thud in the tunnel's silence. Lina was on the verge of collapsing, her legs feeling like lead. Kane held her.
"We're almost there," he whispered. "Almost there."
Finally, light. Not LyraGen's artificial light, but the light of the moon. An exit, at the edge of the hill. Kane pushed a metal door. It opened with a screech, and the cold, fresh night air hit their faces.
They knelt on the ground, deeply inhaling the icy air, their lungs burning, their bodies trembling. Kane looked up. The hill was a perfect vantage point. The LyraGen laboratory loomed in the distance, a formidable fortress in the darkness of the night.
But it was not an impenetrable fortress.
From the main building, a column of dark smoke rose into the sky. It wasn't a fire; it was something else. The smoke was dense, black, and came from the laboratory area. The building's lights flickered erratically, and the sound of the alarms, muffled by the distance, still rang out.
A silent horror. A suffocated scream. The devastation was spreading.
Kane felt a shiver. He realized they had not escaped an accident, but a planned event. The Black Protocol wasn't for containing the zombies, but for sacrificing the personnel. The column of black smoke wasn't a fire—it was the incineration of evidence. And they, Kane and Lina, were the only witnesses, or so they knew.
Lina huddled beside him; her eyes fixed on the horizon.
"They're not going to let us go," she whispered, her voice broken. "They're going to come looking for us."
Kane looked at her.
"I know," he said. "But now, at least, we know the truth. And that's something LyraGen can never take away from us."
They stood; their eyes fixed on the building burning in the distance. The end of the world had not come from nature, but from human ambition.
And they were alone, with a terrible truth, in a world that was no longer their own.
Their only hope was that this hell had not spread to the whole world, and that this leak had only been contained within the laboratory.
Interlude 5: The Summit Meeting.
The air in the top-floor conference room of LyraGen in Capital City A was as cold and dense as ice. The bulletproof glass walls offered a panoramic view of the city, a tapestry of lights twinkling under a fine rain.
It was a scene of absolute control and order, a calculated contrast to the chaos now spreading across the world. In the center of the polished ebony table, a holographic map of the globe slowly rotated, dotted with red points. Each point represented an 'incident'.
At the head of the table, a man with an impassive face, the President of LyraGen Operations, led the meeting. At his side, Mercer remained silent, his gaze fixed on the map. Dr. Rivas, seated to his right, swiped through digital documents on a tablet, her face a mask of cold efficiency.
Three other department heads took their places, each the personification of a sector: security, logistics, and government relations.
"The 'anomaly' in Silo 12 has been contained," the President declared, his voice devoid of inflection. "The 'incident' in Sector 3 of the Beta Division is considered a controlled failure. The deployment of Phase Omega has been a partial success, but unforeseen variables continue to be a problem."
"President," the head of Security, a man with a military haircut and penetrating eyes, interrupted. "Our intelligence confirms that the incident in Sector 3 was exacerbated by sabotage. The maintenance doors did not fail by chance. The digital signature is from Wilpharma, our competitor."
A murmur of resignation rippled through the table. LyraGen was not only fighting chaos, but also its rivals, who sought to steal its technology and monopolize the future 'medicines' market.
"That explains the erratic spread patterns," said the head of Logistics, a woman with a weary expression. "We've seen the same signature at Silo 7 and Station 19. They are using our own protocols against us. The chaos is out of our control."
"It's not out of control," Mercer interjected in his grave voice, his first intervention. "It has simply evolved faster than we expected. It has gone viral, in the literal and figurative sense. This gives us the opportunity to observe its behavior in the field."
The President nodded, a barely perceptible smile on his face.
"And regarding the army's intervention… they are pushing for access to our research. They want a solution. They believe the agent is a biological weapon… And that, at this moment, benefits us."
The head of Government Relations nodded.
"We are managing the matter. We have given them access to a partial investigation, manipulating the data to send them down a false lead. At least for now, they trust our 'solution'."
"I must mention something, President," the head of Security continued. "With the competitor situation and the pressure from the army, I've proposed the idea of recruiting a very promising virologist. Dr. Robert Neville. His theories on immunity and cellular behavior could be of great use."
Rivas, who had remained silent, interjected. "I know Dr. Neville. His work is brilliant. But he worked in the military lab for a long time, and it's possible he's still working with them. Also, he has an ethical stance… that could clash with our operations. He's not like Subject K."
The President shook his head, a swift and ruthless decision. "Rejected. We cannot risk the corporation's security. Not with the pressure from the army. We don't need a genius, we need a pawn, and Dr. Neville is a man who won't be manipulated."
A heavy silence filled the room. Everyone understood the meaning of the President's words. Institutional denial was the foundation of their plan.
"As for the uncontrolled variables," the President continued, looking directly at Mercer. "I have ordered the loose ends to be tied up. Including Subject K. We want the data and then their elimination or containment. An escape incident, to be exact. They must not survive. One month. Starting today. And if you fail, the corporation will be the one to suffer."
Mercer nodded, without emotion. Rivas's gaze was the only one that showed a spark of intelligence. She understood the order.
They were not just eliminating a witness. They were eliminating a problem.
Subject K was no longer a pawn. He was a piece that had to be removed from the board. Or, if LyraGen had mercy, he would just be contained.
The meeting was over.
The fate of Kane and Lina had been sealed, and they didn't know it.
.
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
We finally have the lab escape, but Kane doesn't know what's happening outside.
Also, although they both escaped together, Kane has the impression that they know they've gotten out and that they'll soon come for him. So it's possible they're going their separate ways.
On the other hand, we have the presence of other labs.
Do you know Wilpharma? Do you know what game or movie it's from?
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Read my other novels
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 76)
#Vinland Kingdom: Race Against Time (Chapter 80)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 23)
You can find them on my profile.]