CH 08 | needle

Her heart sunk in her chest, she traced her grubby forearms anxiously, examining them for puncture wounds. But stress caused her vision to blur, making it difficult to discern a potential needle sting from her numerous moles. She mithered between short fast breaths, anxiety mounting as she broadened the scope of her search to include her triceps area.

There she found an inflamed erythema, the affected skin was abnormally reddened due to capillary congestion. What if these were the initial symptoms that the disease was spreading? She felt unsettled that she got possibly afflicted with the primordial disease that would soon turn her nervous system into a mechanism for parasites. She could sense them, their insidious cells coursing through her veins, proliferating inside of her body. Soon their spikes would reach for her heart, and she'd never be the same again.

"What have you done to me?!" She cried out

"The serum is still intact." He remarked calmly, his hands behind his back, to which she responded by bending over with squinted eyes to inspect the replete syringe in his palm, she then directed a suspicious glare at him. "You've still tried to plant it in my arm. Are you the one who's been going around infecting all these people?"

"No...this is a special sample, an antidote to the chaos unleashed. the content of the stolen vial was already released, do you not smell the particles in the atmosphere, the stench of my failure?"

She sniffed around, her nose twitching, but the only thing Sadie could smell was her own reek after such a convulsing day. She pressed her hands against her temples because she has grown irritated with his constant riddles/revelations which made her question her own sanity.

"Whatever man, you've failed. And you've failed in your attempt to inoculate me, that makes you twice the failure. Now get out of my house because I need to shower." She said as she secured her hair up in a loop.

He was not stunned of her sedated attitude, the sudden hike of fear followed by a momentary relief and then the constant stream of anxiety exhausted her spirit. He could tell that her breaking line has been crossed. Her emotions depleted easily, and she was dangerously close to being devoid of any sentiment, which made her fearless and borderline amoral.

It was the reaction that the foreigner expected from humans, they become a blank slate when faced with a crisis they consider insurmountable, their instincts and mores turn numb when truly put to the test. As an immortal, he could never understand how they gave no thought to death, preoccupying themselves every minute of the day, working relentlessly to avoid pondering upon Its inevitability. Sadie was no different, she welcomed what she did not know. A brief existence, then perdition.

She was hoping she'd be bothersome enough that even demons would not tolerate being in close proximity to her, then she'd have the last laugh just before being cast in the eternity of the void.

"Listen to me, you'll need the Serum to defeat the Ant Queen and spare your friends a gruesome death," He advised her. " This solution has a weakened strain of the virus and will not turn you into a fully fledged monster, but you will be endowed with advanced abilities to help you in your struggle to come."

Sadie felt that the stranger was turning from a rare occurence to a weasley salesman demystifying the heavenly realm, he lost her everytime he blew things out of proportions, gruesome death? Defeat the queen? What is that some sort of comic panel? This rhethoric was only effective on Sadie when it allowed her to feel superior to other hollow students. Besides, when has a needle of unknown providence transfer anything but misery.

"I am not interested in whatever abilities you offer." she told him.

"Oh but they are not random," the aleck remarked, "they are extremely specific and will be entirely dependant on you, the serum does not cause the same molecular reactions in every being because the virus works by infiltrating the preconceived structure of the subconscious where deep traumas are hid.

The interlinkage would trigger an accelerated evolution guided by the neuronal associations between contiguous events, pangs of a guilty subconscience cause the most impact upon firing neurons, such is why only the worst of sinners can be affected by the changes."

She could not believe her ears, she only understood the last line, but she felt asperse of his audacity. "Not only have you tried turning me into a harmless version of a mutant, but you are also claiming I deserve such a fate because of my sins? What could I've possibly done in my miserable life to deserve that a virus genetically engineereed aeons ago by some lizard people would end up infecting me."

"Not all the deathly sins are reactive, the seventh on the list is affectlessness. Your indifference to your duties and obligations, your inert disposition, your lack of feeling or care about others, they are all caused by a deeply entrenched self-pity. And it can become the seed of your skills,"

"I pity you for believing that"

"Your friends need you, Sadie. The world as you know it will cease to exist without you."

She seemed to be giggling softly, tears pooling in her eyes, before changing mien, revealing her true feelings to a fooled man with a final statement. "Then let the world end."

Her dead eyes were fixed in his, until he looked away. He had nothing else to say, he moved to the counter to where her television used to be, and posed the Serum on top of it, he then proceeded to remove his watch and fix it near the syringe. "Compensation for the broken tv." He said, before exiting through the door.

She did not bother to close it after him, but instead headed straight to the shower. She turned the knob to the hottest temperature, then sat fully clothed beneath the downpour. Washing both herself and her clothes at the same time.