Visage | ONC 2023

EIGHT:

What was I supposed to say to Gerry? I couldn't imagine killing and burying someone I loved. Shit, knowing Riley was struggling out there hurt, but she was alive. She was breathing. If I had hurt her, eaten her like my thoughts wanted me to do, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. That's dark. Dark as shit.

After admitting his truths, Gerry pushed up from the table and walked away, down the hall until he turned into a room. The door slammed.

I closed my eyes. "Um," my questions weren't done, "do you know how close we are to a cure?"

"Close enough." Mertz drummed his fingers over the table. "We need, maybe, one more mutated to have enough samples to build the cure's base."

One more mutated person. That was hard. If everyone within our walls were too afraid to venture out to the others they thought we were infected, none of us would change. We'd remain inside the government's ignorance, wrapped blissfully; we needed to open our eyes.

Passing my tongue over my bottom, I looked into the hall leading to the room Gerry disappeared into. The shadows couldn't hide the pictures on the wall; all those photos of Jonathon. The kid that looked just like me. It was the only reason I was here. Gerry missed his son.

"What about Kyle?" I looked back at Mertz. "The guy who died outside Bundo's. The one I killed. Was he used as a sample?"

Mertz nodded. "Yes, him. And a woman before him."

My brows shot up. A woman. Abigail.

Gerry knew she was infected and made it seem like it'd been in passing that he found out. Considering Mertz was his friend—a discreet friend—I wondered if Abigail was 'offered' to this cure experiment. I wouldn't think any of us would willingly walk into this knowing our dead bodies would be cut open; none of us would care about the bigger picture we couldn't be a part of.

Am I next?

I scratched my chin, focusing hard on Mertz. I needed to know his intentions. It now felt like Gerry kept me here... as an offering to science.

I've mutated. But Gerry did, too.

"Do we need to be dead for this to happen?" I chewed on the insides of my cheeks. "Couldn't you just... draw our blood?"

"We need more than blood."

What was more than that? "Bone? Muscle?" I pressed my tongue up against my canine teeth, remembering Jimmy's licorice flesh and the thoughts that came with it. "Brain... tissue?"

Mertz pointed at me and clicked his teeth. "That's it," he said. "We need membrane from the brain, preferably the brain stem, to get this to work..."

All right. That was intrusive. "And I'm assuming you tried this on someone who was alive to know... they needed to be dead."

Mertz's hand dropped. His gaze fell with it. "No one would volunteer to be cut open and experimented on like that," he said. "We take what we get."

Take. Easier to cut someone up without asking... they couldn't say no if they weren't breathing.

I finally took the offer to sit. My coffee was cold, but I grabbed the cup, anyway. Rubbing my thumb over the side of the yellow ceramic helped me get my thoughts together. I looked at Mertz. "It's hard to get volunteers when they've been lied to for some."

Mertz pursed his lips. There was nothing to say to that. If they—whoever he was with, the government, medicinal facilities—had taken a different approach from the beginning, then maybe... there would be a cure already. Humans were selfish and destructive, but there would be a few people who would sacrifice some of their life for the good of others.