VIRUS

Chapter 5- Wonders

    The five of us sat around a fire behind the base, wuietly eating the dinner that another base had brought to us. Even the other bases seemed nervous around Hamada. I wondered how many people knew what she really was.

    We sat in silence, eating our chicken and turkey legs without napkins. But no one seemed to care. We were all to focused on Hamada. I was the only one who seemed to be watching her, but I knew the others were thinking about what had happened. Hamada didn't seem to notice I was staring. Either that or she thought it best to just ignore me. Knowing her it was probably the latter.

That thing killed my family...

    "You gonna stop staring any time soon, Akiyama?" she asked suddenly, her piercing green eyes lit up with flecks of red  from the fire. I looked down, taking a bite out of the chicken leg in my hand.

    "Sorry, sir," I mumbled.

    "And quit calling me that," she said, furrowing her brows. I glanced at her. "Every one of us is the same rank. We're all in this together. Or did you forget?" No one spoke. "You all seem to have this big habit of making it me and you. It's not fair, and you should stop."

    She went back to eating, but she wiped the appetite out of all of us.

    Despite what the context was, we knew what she was talking about.

    I didn't look at her the rest of the night.

    Dinner was pretty silent after that.

----

    Eventually everyone went of on their own and chatted with people from other squads. Hamada disappeared somewhere, and I wasn't really sure where she went. No one followed her when she left, or looked for her now. I sat by the fire, thinking for a while. I wasn't really sure what I was thinking about. I was just thinking.

    "Hey, Brady," a familiar voice called. I looked up to see Magdalena walking towards me.

    "Hey." She sat next to me, and we sat in silence for a while. I expected her to bring up something about Hamada, but she didn't. Instead she mentioned something I forgot about...

"The funeral for Grace and the others will be soon," she spoke quietly. I glanced at her.

    "Did you know them well?" I asked. She nodded.

    "Well, less so Ryan and Apollo, but Grace and I were very close."

    "I'm sorry, Magdalena. That must be really hard." I didn't really care about anything else besides killing the viruses. But in that moment I wished I had been able to know them before they died. I wish I had talked to them.

    "Grace and I dated for a few years before joining the army," she whispered. "I almost wish we hadn't joined. At least not together." My heart sank when she said she was gay. I didn't mean to be selfish, and I really didn't want to be, especially not now.

"I'm sorry," I apologized again. "This must be hard." I wasn't sure why I was repeating myself. I suppose it was because I didn't know how to comfort someone who I barely knew, who just lost someone I never got the chance to know. Or maybe I was just at a loss of words. We sat in silence for a little while, staring at the flickering red and orange in front of us.

"I suppose you have questions that she didn't answer, huh?" Magdalena asked eventually. I knew immediately what she was talking about, and I mentally kicked myself for not caring about anything except the virus in our midst.
"Yeah," I replied quietly. She sighed.

"No use keeping them to yourself now. Might as well ask a few." I thought for a second, trying to decide which one I should ask first. I wanted to get the most important ones out of the way in case Hamada came back. But she was still nowhere to be seen.

"How come it doesn't infect us?" I asked quietly. "If she has a virus then the virus should be taking over us, as well."
"We asked Amelia that once," Magdalena replied, staring at the fire. "She said that she can only infect Clarissa."
So she's a One Soul virus, I thought.

    "What's it the virus of?" I asked skeptically. "If it was a Homicide virus or an Insanity virus, Hamada wouldn't be as sane as she is now."

    "We don't know," she replied.

    "Well, there aren't many types of One Soul viruses," I said, thinking. "There are only about three or four viruses that only afflict one person at a time." Magdalena looked over at me, the reflection of flames burning her eyes.
    "I never said she was a One Soul virus."

    "But you said that it can only possess Clarissa," I reminded her. "If she was a Multi-Soul virus, we would've been infected already."

    "No. I said that it can only possess Clarissa," she said evenly, repeating my words. She said the same words somehow differently. "Amelia can only possess Clarissa because Amelia can only possess Clarissa."

    "Now you're just repeating yourself," I said, rolling my eyes. She sighed.

    "Look, it's hard to explain. It's not like Amelia or Clarissa have given us any answers, either." I exhaled.

    "Then tell me what it did say," I requested calmly. She ran her hand through her hair.

    "Amelia says that she can only possess Clarissa because she owes Clarissa a favor. None of us know what that means, but we do know it means Amelia isn't a One Soul virus."

    "How do you figure?"

    "Well, if Clarissa had met her before, as Amelia makes it sound, then Amelia would have been a virus she met on the battlefield, infecting something else."

    "But it can't be a Multi-Soul," I protested. "It said it could only infect Hamada."

    "Sometimes Multi-Souls stop being Multi-Souls and become One Souls. It has to do with the virus getting weaker."

    "But if a virus that infected humans was a Multi-Soul before, we would've known about it. Hamada wouldn't be the first we found."

    "That's true," she replied, biting her nails. She sighed again. "Look Brady, we don't know much about Clarissa and Amelia, either. All we know is that she is a human with a virus, and that means very bad things for us."

    Are we even sure she's human? I almost asked, but I bit my tongue before I could. Of course she was. No demon looked like that. At least, not that we knew of...

    "It's getting late," she spoke, standing up and brushing herself off. "I want to get some work done before... You know..." I nodded.

    "Yeah, sure. I'll be here." She smiled and left. I half expected her to say something before she disappeared, but I suppose it was better if she didn't. What could you say after a conversation like that?

I stared at the fire a while more before walking back into the base. I was figuring out how to make my way around, although I still got lost a little bit. I made it to my room and lay down on my mattress. The walls were pitch black in this room. I could hardly tell where the walls were. I wondered if there had been a window in the room that had been painted over. I closed my eyes and drifted off. I don't remember what I dreamt, but I remember what I thought before I my consciousness drifted away.

I wonder if I'll ever have to kill her.