Jaspre Bark - Dawn Over Doomsday

Greaves had backed up to the other door. There wasn't a keypad next to it. There were no other visible means of opening it. He would have to get quickly back out the way he had entered. Joe was walking towards him and was now directly between Greaves and the exit.

"You're right of course," said Greaves. "I didn't realise you were handling live specimens. I'll go suit up."

"How could you not realise I was handling live specimens? That's what we do in the farm. Who are you anyway?"

Joe was right in front of him now. Greaves stepped to his left and Joe moved to block him. Greaves tried to walk around him and Joe stepped back in front of him. He wasn't going to let him out until he had answers. Greaves could think of nothing to say.

He pointed behind Joe to the door. "Look here he is. Now we'll get this sorted."

Joe turned around to look and Greaves rushed him. He pushed Joe hard and he fell, taking Greaves down with him. The pain from his wounds was so great that Greaves had white flashes before his eyes. He was less steady on his feet than he realised but he was the first back on them and he bolted for the door. Joe grabbed his ankle and Greaves tried to kick him off but it was too painful. Joe started to pull him over again. Greaves cast about for something to grab hold of and his hand landed on a metal stool.

He swung the stool and smashed it into the side of Joe's head. Joe yelped with pain and let go.

Greaves rushed from the lab and closed the door behind him. Joe didn't attempt to follow, instead he lunged for a button under a bench top. An alarm began to blare.

No, this couldn't be happening. Not now. Not after everything he'd been through. Not when he was so close to saving the world. He was cleverer than them, he'd proved that.

Wait, all this could be turned to his advantage. He wasn't beaten yet. He still had the whole place on lock down.

Cortez charged into the room with the caged animals as three armed guards ran up to the door and began banging on the glass. "What happened? Why are their guards here?"

Greaves pointed to the virology farm. "We had company. I only saw him at the last minute and I managed to lock him in that room. Unfortunately he set off the alarm."

"Do you want me to kill him?"

"No. We can use him as a hostage. In fact, I've just had a better idea." Greaves hobbled past the cages and out into the rest of the lab. Beyond the far door six glass walled rooms were laid out in a hexagonal grid. In the centre was a long thin booth with six walls.

Anna was pressed up against the glass of one wall. She looked like a starving child gazing through a window onto a feast. Inside the booth were six titanium containers. They looked like huge metal eggs with LCD displays monitoring their temperature and large tubes pumping liquid nitrogen into each.

Even at sub-zero temperatures, when most other organic matter would have no energy to move, Greaves knew that inside the containers the Doomsday Virus would be frenetic with excitement. Bursting with longing for its last surviving host, a longing that was about to be fulfilled.

Greaves shuffled past Anna into a room filled with consoles and keyboards. He booted up a mainframe and hacked straight into the complex's intranet. He was home again. There was nothing he couldn't do in this space. It didn't matter how many guards the complex had, or how well armed they were, all the hi-tech equipment they'd managed to maintain wouldn't help them. Greaves was untouchable.

As Cortez joined him in the room the polymer coating on one of the glass walls became a large screen. Doctor Joseph Sinnot stared down at them. He wore a stern expression and looked like he had just had just woken and dressed hastily.

Sinnot hadn't changed much since Greaves had last seen him. The chestnut hair that fringed his bald pate was flecked with more grey and the furrows on his brow were deeper, aside from that he was the same old smug asshole.

Smug, but shocked enough by the sight of Greaves to lose his composure for a second. "Matthew Greaves! We thought you were dead."

"Very much alive I'm afraid Sinnot."

"Not from the look of you and not for much longer when we get to you. What are you doing in my complex?"

"I'm concluding our research. Putting our discoveries to the correct use."

Sinnot laughed with derision. "Our research? I think you flatter yourself. I seem to recall you worked as a lab assistant on the project. It was your job to wash the flasks, tidy the draws and sweep the floor. I imagine you told your cohorts you were an important scientist. But the truth is you were paid less than the janitors and your duties were practically the same."

"I was responsible for more breakthroughs in the development of the virus than any other person you employed," said Greaves, who hadn't stopped typing throughout the whole conversation. "You couldn't even have started without the papers I published in the first place."

"Ah yes. The papers you published when you were only twenty-three. The last time you did anything of merit. Six months after gaining your third PHD and less than a year before you were institutionalised. It was your father who had you sectioned wasn't it? Just after your mother died. As I recall, the judge agreed you were a danger to yourself. Sad little Matthew Greaves, such a promising start you had, such a pathetic waste of potential your life has been ever since."

Greaves knew what Sinnot was trying to do. He wasn't going to be distracted though. He wouldn't rise to the taunts. He was under pressure to turn this situation to his advantage. He wouldn't buckle this time. He was stronger now.

Things had been different back then. There had been so much expectation about his work. So many job offers. His peers were envious and in awe of him. Everyone was waiting to see when he was going to trip and fall. The tension was too great. Rather than trip he dived head first over the edge. His mother died, then his nerve went and for a short while so did his mind.

"A whole decade and nothing to show for it," said Sinnot. "Three PHDs and you couldn't even get a job flipping burgers. Then one of my colleagues recognised your name on a job application. She took pity on you and convinced me to take you on. We threw you a few tiny crumbs of research to occupy you while you did your menial chores and suddenly you think you're leading the project. Such pathetic delusions of grandeur."

Sinnot was twisting the truth. But then he always had. They'd thrown him more than a few crumbs of research. They were getting nowhere when they hired him as a lab assistant. The researchers had all read his papers, so they began discussing theories and problems with him in the canteen.

After a while he was attending weekly debriefings. He went over their findings with meticulous care and suggested new lines of enquiry. Suggestions that led to breakthroughs and the project's first real successes. He hadn't done this alone, but they had been struggling until he joined the project.

The whole time this was happening Sinnot had been promising Greaves a full time research fellowship. Dangling it in front of him like a carrot. But the fellowship never materialised and they kept paying him the tiny pittance he got as a lab assistant.

Sinnot never ran out of excuses as to why Greaves hadn't been made a fellow on the project. It was always just around the corner, it was only a matter of funding, or bureaucratic procedure, or a company policy hurdle that needed to be overcome.

Finally Sinnot realised that Greaves knew far too much about a project his shadowy pay masters wanted to keep secret. He probably figured it was cheaper to get rid of Greaves than to buy him off with a fellowship and tie him into the project. Whatever the case, Greaves narrowly escaped with his life and went underground.