Virus X
Edward’s eyelids were peeled back, his retinas immediately stung harshly by a blinding, sickly yellow light. “He’s definitely infected,” came a far-off voice. “Looks like he’s had it about eight days, trying to hide it of course. Amazing he’s made it this long without showing any obvious symptoms. Well, let’s hurry and save what we can. The eyes, as usual, and I think Dr. Giovanni said he wanted some tongues to experiment on. Take the legs too, they can probably be saved.”
All this swirled into Edward’s subconsciousness, along with a relentless headache and a persistent delirium brought on by constant fever and the attempt to suppress it. He understood what was happening. He had Virus X. He had known for about a week now, that he had it for sure, and he also knew what happened to people with the virus. They were used for spare parts. There was no cure for Virus X. Sure, scientists were working on one, and had been for years. But this was too great a form of population control for any cures to actually surface.
Inbreeding, interbreeding, and all kinds of unhealthy patterns of mating had been going on for so long that, combined with radiation from numerous nuclear attacks and attempts to blot out the ultraviolet rays, it was almost impossible to find a human with all their limbs in correct and working order. Humans with one leg, three blind, milky eyes, and numerous nostrils oozing extra bodily fluids were not at all uncommon. So the more humans died of a mysterious disease, the better for the mutants, who wanted to be normal, although they would never quite think like everyone else. Of course, that was being worked on too.
* * *
Edward must have passed out again. Maybe for seconds, hours, weeks, he lay in a state of complete delirium. For some reason he kept slipping into an alternate reality inspired by a book he had once found in a deserted building. It was about an ancient world, living under a cold, dying, red sun. Only this was the opposite. The world was dying before its time, exposed to the harsh rays of the sun.
* * *
The next real, concrete sound Edward heard was the creaking of the cold, metal door being slowly opened. What Edward saw next, he was sure was a hallucination. A man in a white coat hobbled in, supported by one leg growing out of the center of his body. He walked using two prosthetic metal limbs, attached to his arms. They creaked in a rusty, tired way as he walked. That was not what took Edward aback. The most shocking thing about Dr. Giovanni was the fact that he had no real mouth or nose. Instead, there was just a gaping hole, ringed by a chapped, reddish-brown flap of skin. A hissing, gurgling noise came from it constantly, as if he were struggling to breathe.
A tall, gangly-looking female attendant followed the doctor into Edward’s room, looking around nervously as though she would any minute be infected by the Virus. “I’ve heard this one’s a goner,” Dr. Giovanni said in a mechanical voice, obviously coming from an implanted voice box. “Let’s operate.”
* * *
Before Edward knew what was happening, the doctor’s saw was digging into his leg.
