Vincent Svoboda sat on the very corner of the maroon leather sofa, scotch in one hand, a nearly burnt-out cigarette in the other. The one-bedroom condo apartment was dark, safe for the glare from the screen of the laptop teetering on the edge of the glass coffee table. The air was stale and dense with smoke. It was a hot and humid night in Rio, and although all the windows and doors to the flat were open, the air stood still. Vincent noticed he was holding his breath again. It seemed even the wind held its breath in these turbulent times. On the screen illuminating his face, was a news broadcast from three hours ago. The audio seemed muted, although in his current state of shock, the former biological engineer of Bio-Reach Research, could not tell for sure if it was or if his hearing had failed him. The segment cut rapidly through footage inside various emergency rooms across the city. Chaos defined every frame; doctors and nurses running in every direction; patients, vomiting on themselves while sitting in waiting rooms. Sweating, sickly-looking fathers were holding their unconscious children in their arms. Every gurney was full. People keeled over, lined up on each wall.


    Vincent rubbed his forehead with the shaky hand that held the now burnt-out cigarette. The ash blackened the inner edges of his index and middle fingers as they press together firmly against his forehead. He placed the glass of scotch on the side table next to the couch and tossed the butt weakly into the ashtray next to it, missing it by several inches.


    There was a weariness when he stood that made him light-headed and unstable as he walked out to the balcony overlooking the sleek, high-end apartment buildings of the blocks surrounding his apartment. The sky was black and starless. Sirens wailed in every corner of the city.


    Vincent felt the swelling heat of nausea rise from his chest through to his neck. He turned to the dead potted plant to his right just in time to vomit the contents of his stomach onto the dry, dusty leaves of the long-dead Sunrise Hibiscus. The husk of the once vibrantly coloured flower bush collapsed under the pressure of the projecting stomach bile. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Vincent knew that he, too, was now infected. From what he knew of the MC5045-R1 virus, he would be dead by the end of the week. The one difference between him and the other unfortunate, now terminally ill souls in the city below, being rushed here and there by ERMTs in and attempt to save them, was that Vincent was one of the few that deserved this fate. He was after all, one of the creators of this global death sentence.


    The group of three ambitious and egotistical bioengineers from the biohazards and mutations division of Bio Reach were responsible for the catastrophe at hand, yet creating and curing the “unstoppable” virus was the target of every bio-engineering facility in the world at this point in time. Everyone wanted to have the ultimate “bug” that they created and could subsequently eradicate. The theory was that if you could cure a virus designed to outrun the limits of human science and natural immunity within the controlled environment of a laboratory, you could cure any outbreak that arose in the natural world.


    Unfortunately, nature is an unpredictable beast, and the finite, complex organisms that made up pathologic viruses were not yet fully decoded by the scientific community. With limited understanding, these biohackers were feeling their way through a dark minefield. One slight change in temperature or particle shifting into the wrong place could revoke the small amount of control that an engineer may have over his microscopic Frankenstein. Subsequently, one carelessly washed hand could transport said micro-monster into the outside world. Trace amounts under the fingernail of an engineer with an affinity forfavellaprostitutes couldspread invisible terrors throughout the city like an August wildfire.


    Vincent fell to his knees onto the concrete, unsure of whether it was the bug currently ravishing the cells of his body or the extreme sense of guilt tightly bounding his chest was responsible for the sick rising once again in his throat. The first component of the project was a masterful success. They had undoubtedly created the mother of all viruses. These Founding Fathers of the extinction of humanity had not even given their creation a proper name. It would forever be known to the few that would survive its global devastation as The Sickness.