The Laptev Virus

Room C12 was much like room C8, where Kevin had gone with Tammy, and all of the other mice storage rooms of the vivarium. It was a sterile-looking room, with white walls, a white ceiling embedded with two long rows of fluorescent lights. The floor and walls were a light tan color and they were made of a special polyurethane resin which ensured that there were no cracks or crevices where bacteria could possibly hide. A slightly musty smell, mixed with the scent of the furry animal bodies filled the air, though Molly rarely ever noticed it except when she had not been in the room for a long time. Stainless steel racks on wheels were lined up in rows, and the nesting cages were placed side-by-side on these racks.

The nesting cages were not too different from the hamster cage she had had when she was younger: they were transparent plastic bins, lined with a couple of inches of bedding and litter material, and over the top of each bin was an angled metallic rack which supported a water bottle and a tray of food so that the rodents could help themselves as they pleased. Brightly colored index cards fit into a slot on the front of the cage, and these were labeled with the type of mice found in the cage, their birth dates (the mice were mostly siblings of each other, though the males were kept separate from the females) and any other relevant information.

Each nesting cage held up to six mice. Technically the mice from different nesting cages were not supposed to mix with each other, Molly knew, but occasionally, when she was sure no one would find out, Molly did let the mice she cared for visit with one another. Mice were social creatures, she reasoned, and as long as she didn’t get them mixed up, there certainly was no harm in letting them be gregarious.

Besides, since the mice in C12 were control mice, it was not like they could contaminate each other with some dreadful disease. No, these were the “normal” mice, healthy and happy, to be used for comparison when researchers did experiments on the other mice from other rooms, so letting them have a little companionable time was of no consequence whatsoever. Still, in her heart of hearts, Molly knew that the researchers would not approve, so she kept her little secret to herself.

Molly walked to the correct rack and found the shelf and the empty cage where she could lodge the mouse for a few hours while she had lunch. Just before placing him in the cage, she examined him once more and he looked up at her with his perfectly round eyes and cute ears which laid back in complete trust. Although she didn’t usually pay much attention to individual mice, at that moment she felt a pang of regret and realized that she didn’t want to surrender the little guy to be put down. It simply wasn’t fair.

Instead of placing him in the cage, she walked over to the desk in the corner of the room and released him on the surface. She watched him sniff around, crawling over a pencil and nibbling on the corner of her notepad. Then something spooked him and he ran back to her gloved hand, sheltering in her curved palm. Her little penguin needed her.

She held him up, allowing him to crouch in her palm and examined him closely. He wasn’t perfectly white—there was a small light-brown patch on his left leg, which made it almost look like he was wearing a boot. Again he stared up at her with dark, trusting eyes that looked like perfect little black marbles.

“Aw, poor little thing,” she said softly, and looked furtively around to be sure that she was completely alone. She was. Without thinking too much about what she was doing, she slipped the mouse into the pocket of her lab coat and then strode out of the brightly lit animal room and walked across the hall to the changing room.

As she entered, her eyes swept over the rows of lockers where people stored their lab coats, backpacks and jackets. There were a couple of benches on one end, and a sink with strong-smelling antiseptic soap in the corner. The room was empty. Her heart racing, she strode to her locker and yanked it open. With quivering hands she surreptitiously withdrew the little mouse from her lab coat pocket and slid it into a mesh pouch inside her backpack. Then she quickly zipped everything shut.

“Hey, Molly, how’s it going?” said Kevin.

Molly’s hand jerked and she nearly dropped the backpack, but she recovered quickly and hung it on its hook. She had not heard him enter the changing room.

“Good,” she said, her voice squeaking slightly. She stuck her head back into the locker to cover her reddening face and pretended to be fiddling with her backpack.

“Did you get a chance to take that mouse to the Waiting Room?”

“I…” she said, and then cleared her throat and started again. “I put him in the cage back in C12 for a bit, but I’ll take him down to the other room right after lunch,” she said, trying to sound casual, and began unbuttoning her lab coat. “I’m meeting someone right now but I’ll be back right afterwards, if that’s okay?”