world today, is that when you have different religions and political ideologies, people will never be able to coexist. Think of Dewan and all of the others. They’re all victims of what society has produced-the unfortunate leftovers.”
They came to the end of the hall where Marx opened a door. Parris followed her inside and saw Hashimoto, and three other men dressed in white lab jackets. What they worked on she didn’t know. The room was a typical laboratory with all the usual equipment found inside one. This lab had an adjoining chamber, separated by a fifteen-by-ten-foot shatterproof glass wall. Inside the chamber, Parris saw a mechanical arm attached to the ceiling.
Hashimoto turned around to greet them. “Welcome back, Dr. Parris. You’ll be among the first to witness the new and improved variant of Pandora.”
Parris looked at Marx. “New?”
“Yes,” Marx replied. “This is where we come to the second step in changing the world. Thanks to the resources of Hexagon Pharmaceuticals, and my research, we have ourselves the perfect weapon that will bring about the change we want.”
“With Pandora?” asked Parris. “If we used this we’d also destroy the animal kingdom. There’d be no food.”
“That’s with the old variant of Pandora. That one was believed to have wiped out populations a few millennia ago, and was what was brought back from the Canadian Arctic,” Marx replied.
“Where did the new variant come from?” asked Parris.
Marx smiled. “You’ll know soon enough, after the demonstration.” She gestured towards the window and looked at Parris. “Take a look behind the glass and tell us what you see.”
Parris walked up to the window, as Hashimoto stepped aside. Inside, she saw two men whose faces were so bloodied and mutilated that they were unidentifiable. But then she noticed their different physiques-Levickis and Dobbs had similar physiques. She put both hands to her mouth at the revelation. Oh my God, it’s them. But there was also a third person beside them, an Asian man. Only he was not in the same condition as the others. Then, there was the small cage beside him, with four mice-the only active ones in the chamber.
She dropped her hands and looked at Marx. “Those are my colleagues, I mean, were my colleagues.” Something then caught her eye, it was the Asian man. His stomach moved…he was breathing. “That man’s still alive.”
“Yes.” Marx walked up and stood beside Parris. “For now, anyway. But it won’t matter. Pandora works just as well on the living as on the dead.”
Parris looked up at her. “Who is he?”
Hashimoto approached Parris on the opposite side. “He’s a Boeisho agent who infiltrated our group-one of three. The other two have been disposed of. I wanted to have him executed in a traditional style, decapitation by sword, but Dr. Marx thought it best to use him for live human testing.”
Marx pointed, with a smirk, to the man. “Your other former colleague, Ridley Fox, thinks that he’s with this man as we speak. Now you’ll get to see how Pandora’s been improved to our standards.”
Marx looked at Parris and gestured to a red button on the console. “Would you care to do the honors?”
Parris went up to the console, and she saw some movement in the chamber. The Boeisho agent sat up and looked around him. When he saw Parris, she took her hand off of the red button. Moments later he noticed the corpses and jumped back. Several hours ago she would have done everything to save this man’s life. Now she didn’t feel the same way. That scared her.
“What’s the matter?” asked Marx.
“I…I don’t know,” she answered.
“There’s no court of law that’ll punish this man. The world doesn’t want us to exist, that’s why this man was sent to spy on us.”
Parris’s hand moved closer to the button.
“This man represents everything we’re against,” said Marx. “He must be punished. Push the button.”
She’s right. He’s guilty. And without another moment’s hesitation, she pressed the button.
Parris felt the button vibrate under her hands and she immediately stood back from the console. Red- fluorescent smoke began to blow inside the chamber, from a ceiling panel. An uncomforting hissing sound soon followed. As the smoke became thicker it also got brighter. The hissing got louder. The man looked up and saw the cloud descending on him. He backed away until he bounced into the window, scratching his arm and chest. When Parris saw him turn around, she gasped at the sight of blood pouring out of his eyes, and then she jumped back. The man screamed and pounded violently on the window, but it didn’t give way. He then threw his weight on it, twice, before falling to the ground in convulsions.
When Parris looked behind, she saw that Dr. Marx’s assistants had turned away. Hashimoto had his arms crossed while he stared at the floor. Marx, however, watched the entire show without any signs of trepidation. In fact, Parris thought that she saw a hint of a smile curve up on one corner of her mouth. The man’s screams were garbled, and when Parris turned back to him, she was in time to see his eyeballs burst from their sockets, spitting out a bloody ooze that rolled down the window like egg yolk.
Parris stormed away, past Marx and Hashimoto, and turned around. “Why me?” she screamed. She caught everyone off guard. Marx’s two guards were about to intervene, but Marx raised an open palm to face level, stopping them.
“Why was I allowed to live? I’m far worse than any of the others in The Promise.” A few tears rolled down Parris’s cheeks.
Marx shook her head. “You must not say those things.” She then took Parris by her forearms. “Now look at me. Those men in there who died, they were beyond saving, but you weren’t. I believe in you, do you understand me?”
Parris didn’t want to understand. Just give me a scalpel for me to slit my wrists. That should make things even.
“Nita!” Marx said this louder and got Parris’s full attention. There was something about those eyes of hers that she couldn’t ignore.
“Yes, Dr. Marx.” She nodded. Marx then smiled as she put one arm around Parris and walked her back to the window as she wiped away her tears with her sleeve.
By this time, the entire laboratory had a reddish glow. The cloud on the other side of the window was so dense that nothing could be seen inside.
Hashimoto went to the console and pressed another button. There was another vibration and loud noise that sounded like a series of fans. Less than five minutes later, the cherry cloud thinned out and was sucked into three separate vents above the chamber.
When Parris looked inside the chamber, the bodies of Levickis, Dobbs, and the Boeisho agent were also gone. Only their clothes remained, in a sticky, dark pile of slime. But in the cage, the mice continued to play around. She looked at Marx. “You’ve genetically engineered Pandora to specifically target human DNA.”
Marx smiled with a chuckle. “Human protein chains derived from DNA to be precise. This is the one thing Ares couldn’t accomplish.”
Marx took her hand off Parris. “When it fell into their hands, they did a lot of research on it. With help from a former member-you should know him as Mr. Valerik-I was able to monitor their progress from a safe distance, while I kept my cover as one of the head scientists working for the CDC.
While Ares played with their samples, I covertly worked on a theoretic approach to engineer it so that it would target humans specifically. It was also important to increase its virulence so that it attacked faster. Once that was done, I needed the original Pandora back, in order to finish my work on it.”
“That’s when we raided their facility in Belarus,” said Hashimoto.
“And now they’re going to try to take it back from us.” Marx walked slowly away and then stopped.
Parris smoothened out an eyebrow and turned to Hashimoto. “If they murdered my former colleagues, then they’d have a lot of info on Pandora. That’s what my former colleagues and I were trying to steal.”
“Exactly. Now we have another crisis on our hands,” said Hashimoto.
“Calm down.” Marx rolled her eyes and turned to Hashimoto, keeping her composure. She then turned back to Parris. “Who else knew of your whereabouts?”
“Walsh knew. In fact, he was in charge of the operation, only he wasn’t on site. Levickis and Dobbs were
