novelraw Chapter 85: Why Are You Doing This
Chapter 85: Why Are You Doing This
"Feeling better?" Sera asked softly when she and Zubair were far enough away from the cabin not to be overheard. There were at least 10 centimetres of snow on the ground, but Zubair was so hot, he was like a walking sauna, complete with steam coming up around him.
"What happened?" asked Zubair, running his fingers through his hair. "Why..." he started before cutting himself off with a shake of his head.
"Do you want the truth or a lie?" asked Sera, walking over to a massive tree and leaning against it. Her legs were crossed in front of her at the ankles and her arms were in front of her chest. "This is the only time I am going to make this offer, so pick wisely."
Suddenly, Zubair was back in the cage with Noah taunting him that he had made the wrong choice and that this was his punishment.
"The truth," hissed Zubair through his teeth.
"Only a zombie Alpha can produce more zombies, and that is normally done consciously. Being scratched by a regular horde member like that wouldn’t cause anything to happen," said Sera slowly as she looked around the woods.
Zubair copied her actions. The woods were quieter than he remembered, and he didn’t know how he felt about that.
"But I clearly had a reaction to it," pressed Zubair. If this was the only chance he had to get the information he and his team needed, then he would take it.
"No, your body had a reaction to the vaccine, the stress of the past few days, and the flight, fight, or freeze instinct of the horde attacking us in the store. Lachlan’s transformation probably hit you hard, too."
"I don’t understand," growled Zubair, tired of half answers and more questions.
"The military gave you a vaccine," started Sera, straightening up from the tree and starting to walk deeper into the wood. "It wasn’t the same kind of vaccine that Country M had made, that much is obvious, but it must have been in the same family."
She paused, but this time, Zubair didn’t push.
"Hydra, with the support and financing of Country M, decided to try genetic manipulation in order to produce better soldiers. Marines, to be exact. They had been working on it for years, but every time they fucked around, they found out that they weren’t God, no matter how much they wanted to be."
"I—" started Zubair, only to shut up when Sera gave him a look.
"You want the answers, I will give them to you, but shut up until I am done," she grumbled under her breath. "Where was I?"
"Playing God," reminded Zubair.
"Right. So every time they fucked up, they cremated the body, and no one knew differently. But then they ran out of people willing to be subjected to biological enhancements. So they moved on to the general population. They created a biological weapon, and then promised a vaccine to cure it. But the vaccine was just another genetic manipulation prototype. When the EMP hit Country M from Country S, at the same time that Country S and Country K were hit by Country M, all the locks that the zombies were being held under by snapped and the zombie apocalypse happened."
"That explains Country M, but what about us?" asked Zubair, unconsciously following her as she continued to go even deeper into the woods until the came across a small lake in the middle of nowhere.
"No idea," she shrugged. "That’s why I said that I don’t know what happened to you, or what your vaccine is. But I do know that what you experienced is a direct result of your vaccine."
"We took something from Country K... a vaccine called R3AV3R. What do you know about it?"
Sera cocked her head to the side before shaking her head. "I don’t know. While Adam didn’t have any problems taking in front of me, he didn’t really seem impressed with anything that came out of Country K. But I know that they had created something for someone who had transformed into a zombie to go back to being normal. It didn’t turn out the way they wanted... Adam found that funny, but they had to be a zombie before they could take the vaccine."
"So what the fuck am I?" demanded Zubair just as Sera took off her boots, her pants, and her shirt. "What are you doing?"
"Going for a swim in the moonlight," she smirked before wading into the water. "And based on how hot you are? I would say a fire power user. But that’s just me."
Zubair watched as she ducked under the water and started scrubbing her face. When she came back to the surface, his eyes narrowed.
"Are you purple?" he demanded. She looked almost alien in the moonlight—limbs fluid, skin iridescent, eyes reflecting the night like a predator’s. Whatever she was now... she wasn’t just human.
"Yup," she agreed, swimming out even further. "You wanted to kill Elias," she continued, changing the subject. "I heard that some times the fever dreams showed images of a life that never happened. A past life... or a potential future. Adam never quite figured that one out."
"You keep talking about Adam. What Adam?"
"Now he is a long story, and not part of yours. If it is any consolation, whatever Elias did to you in your dream, it hasn’t happened yet. You have the chance to change that, or you can keep going forward and see if you managed to change your fate," Sera dove beneath the surface, only to come up with a trout in her hand.
"I was supposed to get Alexei a bear, but hopefully he’ll be okay with fish until I can find another one. I could use more fur rugs."
"Why are you helping me right now?" asked Zubair as he watched, mesmerized as Sera walked out of the water. Every last inch of her seemed to glow beneath the moonlight, like a homing beacon to Zubair.
"Because I know what it feels like to be experimented on without your consent. They didn’t tell you want was in the vaccine that they gave you. They didn’t tell you that you might turn into an indestructible monster that can’t ever die. They didn’t tell you that you might develop powers if the gene sequence hits you perfectly. So, I am fixing their mistakes."
"I tried to kill you," sighed Zubair as Sera handed him the fish.
"Haven’t you figured it out yet?" she chuckled as she got dressed. "There is nothing you can do to kill me," she continued. "But that doesn’t mean that I can’t kill you."