Chapter 09 Conversation in the Security Room

Security room fell silent.

Five people. One room. A bank of monitors showing Happy looking at them with bloody, all teeth smile.

And then—a bang.

 A full-fisted, desperate, angry bang that rattled the door in its frame.

Everyone jumped.

Leo's sidearm was out before his brain caught up. He was on his feet, moving toward the door, his finger off the trigger but ready. Chen grabbed her empty pistol anyway, positioning herself between the door and Aris. Sarah let out a small, strangled squeak and pressed herself against the wall. Ben-san's hands hovered over the keyboard, frozen.

 "Who's out there?"

A pause. Heavy breathing. Then a woman's voice, "Dio santo, Leo! It's me! Maka! Open the damn door before I come through it!"

Leo's shoulders dropped half an inch. He knew that voice. Everyone in the facility knew that voice.

Maka Rossini. Head chef of the Warren Center cafeteria. A woman who had once reduced a grown man to tears for putting salt on pasta before tasting it. A woman who spoke with her hands, cooked with her soul, and had single-handedly kept the entire facility from rioting over bad coffee.

Leo slid the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Maka stormed in like a hurricane in an apron.

"You took your cazzo time!" she shouted, slamming the door shut behind her and leaning against it. "I was out there! In the hallway! With the lunatics! Do you know what I saw? Do you? I saw Giuseppe from dishwashing, sweet Giuseppe, who cries at commercials. I saw him eating a body. A human body, Leo! With his teeth!"

"He was what?" Sarah whispered.

"Eating his guts! Like it was pasta! Like it was my nonna's lasagna! And when I tried to stop him, he looked at me, and his eyes..." Maka crossed herself. "Madonna mia. His eyes were cursed. Like a rabbit from hell. Like that maledetto rabbito that's been staring at me every morning for three years."

She grabbed Leo by the shoulders, her flour-covered hands leaving white prints on his uniform.

"What is happening? Tell me you know. Tell me someone knows."

Leo gently removed her hands. "We don't know, Maka. Not yet. We need a plan of action first. But we're figuring it out."

"Figuring it out? Figuring it out? I'm a chef, Leo! I make risotto! I make tiramisu! I don't make plans! The only plan I have is to not die in this schifo basement!"

"Then you're in the right place," Ben-san said from his desk. "Because right now, this is the safest room in the building."

Maka looked at him. Then at the monitors. Then at the faces of everyone in the room.

"You have wine?" she asked.

"No," Leo said.

"Cazzo."

Leo stood in the center of the room, his hands on his hips. He looked at each of them in turn.

"Okay. Here's where we are. Finch is down. Whatever he was working on, whatever leaked, it's out. People are turning. Or changing. Or something."

He pointed at Aris.

"Aris, you're second-in-command of the Warren Center. Protocol says if Finch is unavailable, you're in command. So, I'm asking you, what do we do?"

The weight of his words settled on her shoulders.

"I... First, we need full lock down. No one go in or out. Then, we need to inform headquarters. Tell them what's happening. Get help."

"Agreed. Ben-san, contact HQ. Use whatever channel you can. Landline, satellite, carrier pigeon. I don't care. Just get someone on the line."

Ben was already reaching for the radio. His fingers moved across the console, switching frequencies, testing channels, pressing buttons that should have lit up with response.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Nothing.

He looked up at Leo.

"Lines are dead. All of them."

"What do you mean, dead?"

"I mean dead. No signal. No dial tone. No nothing. I can't call HQ. I can't call the surface. I can't even get the intercom to work."

 "The intercom down too? What the fuck, Ben-san? They worked a minute ago."

"It's not responding. The whole system is down, Leo. I can't page anyone. I can't use the hallway speakers. I can't even make the elevator play music." Ben-san tapped the console. "Something's blocking everything. Or something's broken everything."

"What? Sabotage?" Chen asked.

"Or the leak," Aris said quietly. "Mayfly gas might affected electronics somehow. We don't know what else was in that lab. Finch was working on multiple compounds. Some of them could have been corrosive. Or conductive. Or—"

"No point guessing," Leo said. "The point is, we can't call for help. We're on our own."

"On our own? Madonna Santa. We're going to die in here."

"Not if we move fast," Leo said. "We need a plan. We need to get to the surface. We need to—"

"Wait." Aris stood up. "Before we do anything. Before we run. We need to understand what we're dealing with."

Leo turned to her. "You said it might be an airborne mutagen."

"I said I don't know. I'm a geneticist, Leo. I study aging. I study telomeres. I don't study... full body mutation like that. But I know it's not possible. I've spent twelve years studying cell mutation. What we're seeing should take years. Decades. A full-body transformation like this... It's not in any textbook. It's not in any theory."

"Then what are we dealing with?"

Aris was quiet for a moment. Thinking. Searching her memory.

"Finch... A few weeks ago. He was excited about something. He slipped. Said he'd acquired an undiscovered element. Something experimental. Something even the board didn't know about. I thought he was joking. Exaggerating. You know how Finch gets when he's excited." 

She pressed her fingers to her temples. "What if he wasn't joking?"

"You're saying he used some alien material in his experiments?"

"I'm saying I don't know. I'm saying there's a lot about the Mayfly project that Finch kept to himself. And whatever was in that syringe he was carrying, it was glowing, Leo. Glowing. I've never seen a compound behave like that. But if I'm being honest? I'd need a team of experts and months of samples to even begin understanding this. Right now? I'm as blind as you are. But I heard Finch. Before he... changed. He was mumbling about a leak. About the ventilation system. About breathing something for three days. There might be more to this than we think."

"You think we've all been exposed?" Chen asked.

"I think it's possible. I think... I think whatever it is, it's affecting people at an extreme rate. Faster than any pathogen I've ever studied. Faster than any mutagen should work."

"Like a virus?" Chen asked.

"Like something worse. Something that rewrites cells in minutes instead of days. And whatever Finch tried to inject me with, that syringe, that thing. It might have been the source. Or the catalyst. Or something even worse."

Maka crossed herself again.

"Dio ci salvi," she whispered. 

Leo looked at Aris. "So, you're saying we're dealing with something that turns people into monsters. Fast. And we can't call for help. And we're trapped in a basement with it."

Aris slowly nodded. "Yes."

"Then we need to get out. Now. Only then we initiate a full lockdown before it spreads further."

"No Leo, we need the lockdown as soon as possible. The surface. The town. If we spread this. We become the ones who killed Meadowbrook. Or worse."

"Then what, we stay here? We lock the doors? We wait for help until someone come?"

"Also, not a plan," Maka said.

She turned to face the room, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing.

"Leo! You. You're security. You have a gun. You have training. You have testa dura! What do you think we should do?"

Before anyone could speak, the intercom crackled.

Everyone froze.

Speaker on the wall that Ben-san had declared dead just minutes ago was hissing with static.

Then a voice came through.

"Leo? Leo, you there? God damn it! This is some bullshit! Someone answer me!"

"That's Jeff," Leo said.

The static crackled again. 

"Leo? Leo, you there? This is Jeff. I'm in the maintenance room. And I gotta say, this is some bullshit! Where the hell did all of you go! Answer!"

Leo's head snapped toward the speaker as he hit the button.

 "Jeff?"

"Yeah, Leo. It's me. The guy you were laughing at ten minutes ago. The guy with the high blood pressure and the bad knee. The guy who told you to get the hell out of his storage room. Who the fuck else could it be! You fucking jackass! So, I'm gonna ask you a question, and I want a straight answer. What! The! Hell! Is going on?"

Maka pressed a hand to her chest. "Madonna santa! He's alive! Dio buono. Finalmente qualcosa che funziona in questo posto di merda. Lo scorso giovedì nell'ripostiglio... mamma mia."

She fanned herself with her hand. Sarah glanced at her. "What did you say?"

Maka waved her off, still smiling. "Nothing, cara. Just thanking God. And remembering... things."

She winked.

"Forza, amore mio. Non morire lassù. Non ancora."

"We don't know what is happening, yet... Jeff? Where are you now?" Leo said.

"Maintenance room, you goddamn amateur. Where the hell do you think I am? I'm not exactly taking a vacation in Cabo right now."

"I'm just happy you're alive."

"No thanks to you clowns. I've been sitting here for twenty minutes listening to screaming and gunshots. What did you idiots do? Start a war?"

"Jeff, listen to me—"

"No, you listen to me, Sparky. I'm in my maintenance room. Doors locked. Lights are off. And I can hear them out there. Scratching. Paws. Little feet. Like a thousand rabbits trying to get in. And I've been sitting here, with a pipe in my hand, waiting for something to come through that door, and let me tell you, Leo, I am not in the mood for riddles."

Leo ran a hand through his hair. "Jeff, I don't know what to tell you. We don't know exactly what's happening. There was a leak. Finch's lab. Something got into the ventilation system."

"A leak? A leak? We're under a goddamn mountain, Leo! There's supposed to be containment! There's supposed to be protocols! I've been working in this shithole for years, and no one ever said anything about rabbit monsters coming out of the goddamn walls!"