Juggernaut

Koell stepped into camera range carrying a hypodermic. He gave Ignatiev a shot in the arm. The man gasped and jerked awake.

Ignatiev looked around. He sobbed. Dragged from oblivion to endure more pain.

‘Tell me about the human trials,’ asked Koell.

‘Hassim was our first test subject. He was kept restrained in the Spektr containment area while we waited for the lab units to arrive. We told him help was on its way. A hospital train. There would be fresh diagnostic equipment to help track the spread of the disease, fresh drugs to treat the infection. I didn’t have the courage to tell him the truth. The locomotive was hauling a pathology lab on wheels. The lab units contained nothing that might conceivably cure his condition. Even as we soothed him, held water to his lips and pressed ice-packs to his forehead, we were planning his dissection.

‘We did our best for him. Dosed him with broad-spectrum antibiotics. Tetracycline, streptomycin, ciprofloxacin. Administered shock-doses of antiserum. Tried to lower his fever, clear the pneumonia fogging his lungs. But nothing halted his slow slide into psychotic dementia. He asked me the time of day, kept asking over and over like his mind got jammed in some weird repetitive cycle.

‘Sometimes he was lucid. He was calm. He prayed. But then his prayers would dissolve to gibberish and obscenity. He spat and swore as we injected him with morphine.

‘He slowly began to choke. His throat became obstructed by fine hairs that seemed to grow deep within his lungs. We gave him a tracheotomy.

‘He languished in a coma. Intracellular breakdown. Clots forming in his liver and kidneys. Gastrointestinal bleeding. His breathing was laboured and shallow. His mouth slowly filled with metal spines, slowly forcing his jaws apart.

‘Strange needles bristled from his flesh. His skin was mottled by blotches and ulcerated lesions. The virus attacked his ocular cavities. Burst blood vessels turned his eyes near black. Liquid metal leaked from his tear ducts.

‘He lay comatose for several hours. We took blood and saliva. We took liver biopsies and lung cell cultures. We drained spinal fluid. We drilled his skull and took brain tissue.

‘He woke. He roared, and snarled and tore at his restraints. Hassim had gone, and a monster had taken his place. I made the decision to end his suffering. I administered Demerol. It should have been a lethal dose. It should have paralysed his heart and lungs. But he arched his back and continued to fight.

‘I powered up the surgical drill, slotted it through the hole in his forehead and bored deep into his brain. He convulsed and died. Perhaps I should have preserved his brain intact. But I wanted to end his torment. Besides, subsequent human trials would allow us to study the precise manner this strange disease attacked the spine and brain stem.

‘The train arrived. It slid into the valley like a silver snake. Four lab units resting on flatbed wagons. I had the lab cars shunted into the tunnel. Jabril paid the Syrian crew with fistfuls of gold.

‘We used a crane truck to swing the lab units from the rail cars and set them down in the cavern beside the bio-dome.

‘The labs were well equipped, but I decided it would be inappropriate to perform a full autopsy of the dead cosmonaut. He needed to be shipped back to a proper research facility for extensive examination. I ordered Konstantin sealed in his triple-lined steel coffin and stored in Lab Four, the virus vault, ready for transport to a more appropriate site.

‘Hassim was a popular soldier. Jabril explained his absence to the men. He told them Hassim had died of septicaemia as a result of a cut sustained while exploring Spektr. It was a plausibly mundane account of his death.

‘We held a funeral. Buried a body bag full of rocks. Said solemn prayers over an empty grave. Gave him a soldier’s headstone: a rifle staked in the ground, helmet balanced on top. Later that night, when the men were singing and drinking, we began the dissection. Hassim would indeed get a funeral. When the autopsy was complete, when his body had been stripped of useful tissue. He would be little more than a jumble of bones, cartilage and hair. His eviscerated remains would be dumped in a deep pit and smothered in lime.’

‘Tell me about the dissection.’

‘We examined tissue removed from his cerebral cortex and spine. The structure and molecular composition of this pathogen is unlike anything I have ever seen. Forget the usual viral proteins. I’m not even sure it would class as a virus at all. This is a complex organism. The structure is almost crystalline. An ordered lattice. High-tensile strength yet it maintains a constant viscosity. It is a lethally efficient parasite. Swift dendritic growth. It commandeers flesh and bone for its own sinister purpose. Once the fibrous viral strands have penetrated the nervous system, fused with the cytoplasm of host cells, they immediately begin to interfere with neurotransmission.’