For Vivid Shadows, a horror themed collaboration event by https://twitter.com/JSuccubus and https://twitter.com/monstrifex
Based on art by: https://twitter.com/monstrifex/status/1446937217264336896
IX. INSECT
Thenextstep.msg
I could have stopped her. More than anyone else, I knew what was going through her head and how the research had progressed. When my phone vibrated that night and woke me up with a start it was only the long-awaited punctuation to this strained and arduous story. No; By then it was far too late. And deep down it was exactly where I thought this would all end up.
I was tired. Long shifts at the lab left me a mess fumbling through that same rusty door and falling asleep and crumbling in the shower. The bed covers were my only rest and I fell asleep for months with my phone in my hand and laid somewhere across my person. When my phone buzzed I awoke with the trained response of someone who had been on call for three years straight. Half the time the buzzing of my phone meant a return trip to the lab for the next few hours before returning to sleep for what was left of the night, only to then return again for the dawn. When I lifted my phone the screen was still on and my battery was nearly drained. 9% remained on the battery icon. And in the center of the screen was the message.
You have received a Video Message from Veronica L.
Everything ached when I woke up so all my immediate thoughts was any excuse to go back to bed. I thought, Didn’t Veronica know I wasn’t the Geneticist on call that night? And wasn’t she supposed to be at home?! She’s not on the night team either and the director forbid her from crunching anymore, her fucking overtime was insane. I lifted the phone to my face and slid my finger across the screen.
The first thing I saw was Veronica’s palm. She was messing with the phone. “Stupid… Never used one of these phone tripod things… There!” Her voice was muffled, and it sounded like she wasn’t aware of her phone’s mic range. She backed away in the bright sterile lights of the lab, so she was in view. She had long black hair and thick black glasses. She wore her white lab coat over a thin black shirt and a pair of black pants. I saw the reflection of the phone’s video call preview in her glasses as she lined everything up so she could be in view. The stand the phone was on tilted a bit to the right and then overcorrected to the left before settling on this cautious yet perfect angle. It was too much effort to go through for a casual call. To me, it felt like preamble to a performance.
“I um… don’t know who all I am sending this video to yet. Director Sinclair you are absolutely going to be seeing this video if it goes well!” There was this nervous hope that made her voice waver. “But, besides you… I think I’ll also send this video to Claire. I know she’d want to see this because… this was our work!” I noticed something after she said my name. The message… she didn’t CC the director. She only sent the video to me.
I sat up in my bed now. I was tired so I didn’t check the video length or act on anything else. It was that flash bulb moment, that second when you realize that you’re hooked on this thread and all you can do is watch with all this adrenaline and concern waiting to see if there even is anything you can act upon. She clears her throat.
“Um…” She fixed her posture and pushed her chest forward and her hands behind her back. I could see all the little fidgets she did to make herself less anxious. On queue her hand went to her hair and adjusted it. Her fingers spread out in their most trained automatic movement and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Director Sinclair… I believe that the decision to stop Project Cicada was foolish. I never spoke up during the meeting because at the time I was too scared to stand up to you. I saw what happened to the experiments…”
Rats. They grew fierce and predatory and addicted to the substance. The best behaved became dependent on the water spiked with Project Cicada and the worst behaved manifested strange growths and attacked the control rats. If we sent that medication to any decent health and safety board, we’d be tried for war crimes.
Veronica cried in my arms for an hour when the report came back from the clinical guys. We went to the bar and sang the dumbest songs on the radio, and I kept trying to talk to her. I helped her talk through a resignation letter and even started working on her resume. And now that same woman was shaking on screen with a syringe in her hand.
“I saw what happened. You didn’t, Director Sinclair.” She wiped her hair; She fixed her glasses. “The report didn’t mention any of the positive results I saw. And when I requested a second trial on smaller dosages you refused! I understand why you did! But… but I now no longer believe you should have. Claire… Claire you were right. I need to be more willing to take risks, and I need to do what is right for me. During my overtime I have continued work on Project Cicada, committing every spark in me I had. And tonight…” She looked more firmly at the camera. “Director, I intend to give you an experiment more reliable than what your team is capable of. With all due respect it’s about time you see real results!”
She raised her fist that held the syringe and she — Stopped. She faltered right before her arm was injected and looked to the phone once more. The red recording dot reflected in her glasses. She looked away until she was looking only at the syringe, and that flashing scarlet eye aligned with her own in the reflection of her glasses. She pushed the syringe in and lowered the plunger.
I nearly dropped my phone. I couldn’t believe what I was watching! I screamed in my head, We saw the tests Veronica, we both did, and we both talked about them! We knew what the formula was doing in its current form, and I thought… At the time I thought we agreed. But deep down I knew we hadn’t really. I knew because you asked me to keep helping you. You wanted to wrap up your work, put in one more good push until that day where I thought you had quit for good. It was a while after the bad tests. We had ran laps on working on Cicada until the bags under our eyes had darkened to nearly purple and could have their own zip codes with how large they had become. When we started collapsing in the middle of our work you finally said we should stop. Falling asleep on your shoulder… I couldn’t help but agree.
A part of me back then… felt like you were going to keep going. A whisper that knew you better than the rest of me, that part of me that could sense who the secret Veronica was. But I didn’t do anything. I think me even helping you all those nights was what gave you the courage to build up to that night you sunk the syringe in your arm. The Veronica on the screen hunched over. She looked like she was in pain as she grasped her stomach, but I knew why she was acting out like that. A few bad calls had her hunched like this before. It was just another habit to control anxiety. Veronica almost looked excited.
What spread over your face was a new smile. Lips blistered and waved with a nervous energy. The smile was weak, but the corners of your face were strong and drawn tight. That smile could falter and weaken but you would keep the corners of the grin stapled high like a tightrope in the air. “Where… Where your experiments were drawn wrong, Director, was in the procedure of the investigation…”
I tried to calm myself. All I could do was watch what Veronica did on my phone and try and stop my head from racing. She wiped at her brow. Hands adjusted her hair. “Nine days. You waited nine days for the first data collection of one… exceptional sample.” She winced and stared down at her arm. A pause followed as her eyes scanned up and down her dimly lit sleeve. She turned back to the camera. “By the time I was given a second opinion my experiment had perished. Mycardial infarction was all that was written on the report! Not a single mention of everything I wrote about those nine days prior…”
Before me, Veronica was developing new nervous habits in the palm of my hand. By now I had moved to the edge of the bed and my feet were on the cold wooden floor beneath. I watched as Veronica pushed her crossed arms down the opposing sides of her body, pushing her coat closer against her. She looked like she was cold but the shivers were too fierce and sudden with long gaps between them. Those weren’t shivers, they were convulsions.
Laughter came distorted out of my phone. “Increased strength… heightened libido, greater senses! That rat was practically a super soldier for those nine days. The cause of death was never determined, Director! That note in the report was left empty. No medical investigation?! The rat died because Veronica’s experiment killed it! Put it in the trash can, let it go to the landfill. No further information needed!” She squeezed her hands into fists and knotted her arms tight into another cross, digging her nails into the shoulders of her coat. The shadows danced across her face as she walked unsteadily closer to the camera. Her coat burgeoned in the light, seemingly moved by the winds of her stride. But nothing looked right for those brief seconds that passed in the grainy dark phone footage.
“You considered it… a heart attack in a needle. You said that further development of it was a waste of resources when other, more conservative projects were moving along at a fair pace and needed some help getting over the hill. If you had your way, I would have spent the best years of my life testing insulin replacements and measuring bacteria in stool samples. No… Claire…!” Her eyes shot open, and she smiled. There was no weakness anymore.
“Claire, you always understood me. That night at the bar was when I realized… I realized that I loved you. More than a friend, more than anyone else! You were so selfless. You clocked in that morning hours before I did, and you still went out with me to the bar and talked and talked and guided me through this minefield in my head…” She squeezed at her head and gently shook it. Her hair became a messy black curtain that webbed out in long unkempt tangents and made me see things that weren’t there like shadows in a pantomime. I was still reeling from the confession.
I never knew how she felt. I never knew how I felt. Yes, I was closer to her than anyone else and no one knew her thoughts better than me, but I never knew she would do this or how deep her feelings went. A pang of white-hot guilt struck my insides like a meal exploding in an overheated oven, but it was fizzled against the shrill and ashy cold that had overtaken my skin.
“We worked in secret… pushing Project Cicada further along. You put in so much extra work, guided me so patiently. I didn’t know anyone who worked harder than you and you still found the energy to keep pushing me. You even came up with the idea to try testing the project on insects after you read about heamatotoxocity assays that used them. You… you tried to tell me to stop. You said I was starting to seem… crazy. And maybe you weren’t wrong. Hrgh…” She hunched over, her hair on her back the only thing visible. Something was shimmering in the darkness now.
Suddenly, Veronica had lifted the phone and began running with it. She bolted through the doors and broke down the hall. The doors to the bathroom opened and slammed shut. All I had was her voice in a pant from her sudden chase as the screen was swallowed by the chaotic black snow. “I only told you I was done testing it because I didn’t want to worry you, Claire! Claire! I’m so sorry I did this in secret, but you thinking I had gone too far broke my heart! You were everything to me, the last person in my square. When even you lost faith, I should’ve taken it as a sign… but I wanted so badly to show you… To show you what I saw, what we both saw become reality!”
The sounds that were filling the air were so… bizarre. My eyes stung like chlorine was in them. I felt a cold sweat that made my clothes cling to me like I just dragged myself out of cold river. The air around me was so congested and my ears were filled with the sound of blood pumping through my skull.
Clothes were rustling and her breathing was heavy and distorted. She had the phone close and was moving it in a rush. The camera was flying around. I saw the rim of her pants get tugged down. I saw her coat get pulled aside. And I saw her stomach and hips widen and rip her black shirt open. I saw the sheen of her skin in the dim light from only her phone. It seemed to shine as contours were dug deeper in the trenches of her muscles.
“I know you saw it… I know you SAW it!” She was fighting back a scream in her throat, muffled but trembling with power. The phone found her face again. Her tongue looked blue in that light, her glasses glimmering a few shades brighter with their reflection. “We were SO close! Hrghh! Why else? Why else would you give up all those nights? Were you just humoring your CRAZY friend?! Scared what would happen if I really thought no one was on my side? No, I know you really believed me… Which is why… Which is why I need to SHOW you! I need to get you back on my side. You were my closest and only friend when everyone ahhn…! Hrghhh… When everyone… Hrhhhhhhh!!!” She was scrunching over, and the camera was facing up as her hand neared the floor. Her other hand was on her knee. I heard ripping. I heard a fleshy sound, something like plates scraping against each other, but lighter. Suddenly, something lifted her phone. She watched it rise…
And the smile on her face would haunt me. That was confidant, powerful, and even amused. Proud. Her eyes shined bright cyan in the reflection of her glasses… only her glasses had drooped down her nose and she hadn’t adjusted them in a long while. She stared at her phone, eyes scanning around her hand a dozen times before she simply started to laugh. “M…more! MORE!”
More ripping filled the air and her hair danced again as something crawled out from the black thicket. “Hrghh! Yes… Just… just a bit more!” The phone fell to the floor. “I will SHOW you Claire! WE were so close! So DAMN close! And it’s because of you… all because of you! That Director Sinclair… that BASTARD!”
CRASH!!!
Shards of glass hit the floor and showered over the lens of the phone. They shined like gun fire and crackled against the floor and echoed. “Haha… haha… hnngh… The Director… will never… EVER hold us back again. This… this is proof of it…”
I was on my feet. I don’t remember when I stood. I was still hypnotized. My palm hurt from the heat from my phone and had turned red. That cold sweat reached every inch of my body. My thoughts were frozen still. I was waiting for her. Waiting to see what…
She raised the phone. I saw her for a flash before the phone suddenly was pushed aside. She spun around, looking back to the entrance. Did she hear something? The sensitive microphone didn’t pick up a single sound. “Almost… done… I feel… I feel so GOOD. Claire… Claire Claire Claire Claire CLAIRE!” The camera was slowly lifted. In its path it rose past her shoulder and past the outline of the arm in front of the arm now holding the phone. Both arms were on the same side of her body. I saw the armored spikes of her shoulder like toothy hills. And then she showed me the mirror…
“You said… Ahhhnh! You said I was CRAZY… hah, hahaha!! Now look… hnnNNH! Just LOOK! Don’t you SEE what our research is CAPABLE OF?” She laughed through the hissing moans.
“Ah… but if I have learned anything… Anything at all… Hnghhh… haha… It’s that clinic evidence? Records? They can be deleted. No… I need to show you… I need to show you in person.” She raised her new additional arms and shook away the loose webbing of her destroyed black top and slipped down the remnants trapped around her hips. “I think I remember where you live… the night I was drunk at the bar… haha… hnrgh… You let me sleep on your couch. Yes… You live at 119 Co—”
My phone screen went blank. I stared back at myself from the inky void of my dead phone.
I ran to my living room and plugged my phone in and desperately clung to it, tapping at the power button to no avail. No one else knew what happened at the lab. I didn’t know what to do. I hurried back to my room and got dressed as quickly as I could. I found my knife in the sink but… no! I didn’t grab it; I didn’t grab anything. My head was an explosion of conflict. I felt hollow and cold and hot. My fingers and toes were numb but my cheeks were hot and my heart was pumping and my…
My phone charged to just one percent. I picked it up and began to dial when I felt a finger at my lips. I looked up. Veronica was hanging from my ceiling.
I could have stopped her…
…
And I chose not to.
One last time. To who it may concern…
She helped me REMEMBER.
Project Cicada is the next step. I see it now so clearly that I feel genuinely foolish. It might seem scary, but no harm ever befell me.
Veronica was shy as ever, Director, so it falls upon me to be the one to contact you concerning progress on the project. Project Cicada has borne fruit. Two successful experiments have been conducted. And if you need proof, we would be happy to SHOW you.
– Claire