Page 10 of The Hollowed

Luci rubbed her temples as the automated lab report scrolled across the screen

Trial 1217: Non-viable. Recombinant strain instability detected

Again.

She let out a sharp breath and stood up so fast her stool fell behind her. The thud was loud but no one came running. They never did. Over the past few days, her lab had become a graveyard of petri dishes and failed formulas, each one ordered, labeled precisely, and yet, still totally worthless to her.

She reset the centrifuge for the hundredth time that week, muttering under her breath as the machine beeped at her for inputting settings it had memorized by now. The pipettes were beginning to ache in her hands and her gloves were starting to stick together from the sweat collecting at her palms. She had already changed lab coats twice: once after spilling an unstable reagent solution on herself and again when she realized she’d been wearing yesterday’s coat.

Trial 1218.

She watched it mix with the Hollowed virus under the microscope, pulse once with promise, then fracture under the pressure like every other strain before it. A soft whine escapedher lips, and she slammed her hand against the metal table, not with enough force to break anything but enough to stop herself from screaming.

How the hell was she supposed to find a viable vaccine when she couldn’t even get a modified protein chain to hold?

She slumped in her chair, eyes burning as the screen loaded yet another data sheet filled with red alerts and error warnings. Her notes were starting to blur together in her mind. It felt like the cure was hovering just out of reach, mocking her with every near success that ended in failure.

But still, she refused to walk away.

She removed her gloves, disposed of them, then reached up to untie the messy bun she’d thrown together that morning. After smoothing out the flyaways, she retied it tighter so she’d have one less distraction. Taking a soothing breath, Luci stepped toward the secure isolation room just ten paces from her desk. Her arms folded tightly across her chest as her gaze locked onto the infected patient restrained on one of the cold, stainless steel morgue tables brought up from downstairs.

Its body lay still as it was kept in a medically induced coma through a potent cocktail of concentrated morphine and xylazine. The latter was a tranquilizer typically reserved for large animals like horses but it still required a high dose to subdue a patient like this. Luci liked to think of it as a subject rather than a monster, but the truth was that it hardly resembled a human anymore. The virus had a way of increasing the rate of decay, making the infected go frail and thin, their skin a strange hue of purple.

She could tell that her subject had been young from the lack of wrinkles on his face, and the first time she’d seen the man her gaze had caught on his uniform.

It was the same one Noah had worn for years.

When the outbreak first began, Luci had spent weeks drowning from the heartbreak of being unable to locate her brother. The chips implanted in their hands years ago should have offered some reassurance, a location ping or faint signal of life, but every time she asked, the answer was the same: there was nothing. Eventually, she stopped asking. The only explanation left was that he’d either been torn apart, or worse, he was out there, mindless and lost in a horde of the Hollowed.

Neither possibility offered her any peace.

Still, human nature demanded purpose in the face of devastation, and so, she’d poured herself

into the desperate hope of a cure. Her superiors had dismissed her ambition as delusional, and whispers of insanity from her peers followed her throughout the quarantine. But Luci had long since grown used to being underestimated. When she suggested capturing and studying an infected subject, the pushback had been even fiercer.

It was Alex who’d convinced them. He’d believed in her when no one else had.

The infected patient before her, held under layers of sedation and steel restraints, was his doing. A gift in some way — proof that she wasn’t entirely alone in this.

Every virus had a weakness, a loose seam in its armor. She just had to find it.

Luci drew closer to the glass, letting her breath fog the window before she raised her sleeve to brush it away. What remained of the corpse was being kept alive through an IV line dripping clear fluid and nutrients into its withered arm. Human medicine still worked despite the fact that the virus had taken over its mind. That had to mean that there was a solution to all of this.

A soft knock at the door pulled Luci from her thoughts. Alex stepped inside with two trays from the cafeteria balanced in onehand while Luna trotted faithfully at his side.

“I brought food,” he announced casually, holding up the trays like a peace offering. “Before you forget and try to survive on instant coffee and water again.”

Luci cracked the faintest smile and pulled up an extra stool for him. “How considerate.”

“Don’t act so surprised. I’m very nurturing,” he said playfully as he set everything out on the metal desk and pulled out two forks from his pocket. Luna curled up at Luci’s feet without a sound, waiting for something to drop from their plates.

They ate at her desk in silence, save for the soft humming of the air vents and the occasional metallic cling of their forks against their trays. It wasn’t until she was halfway through her zucchini noodles that Luci finally said something.

“What happens when someone gets bitten?” she asked, not looking up. “I mean…how fast does it happen? When they turn.”

Alex glanced up from his food, chewing slowly before answering. “It varies. Some go down in minutes, others fight it off for longer, hours if they’re lucky, but they always turn.”

Luci’s brow furrowed and she nodded slowly. “So no one has ever survived a bite?”