Tobias, wide-eyed, pressed his hands over his mouth and nose as the door of the broom closet flung open. It slammed against the wall outside and a white beam ran across his covers. Tobias squeezed his eyes shut, shadows glancing through his eyelids. It was unlikely that the guard would be so diligent as to pick up the laboratory gear that covered him, but even the smallest chance was enough to steal the color and the warmth from every inch of the former hero's remaining pink flesh, leaving him pale and cold and shocked, but for that moment, at least, not shaking.

When the broom closet was closed again, he remained frozen, scarcely breathing, no longer recalling how to blink his eyes. His hands began to quake violently, his arms joining, fingers still glued over his lips, stuck. Even though the alarm, as Dizzy had promised, had gone silent many torturous seconds ago, Tobias could hear its wails echo in his ears, blaring like a police siren that for once in his life was not on his side.

"There is no one here," the guard grumbled, muted through the door and the howling of alarms imprinted in Tobias's mind, muted by his pounding heart and throbbing ears. "The alarm went off for all of, what, four seconds? If that? Was it just a blip in the system?"

"Looks like. Nothing on the cameras, here," a gravelly voice scratched through what was most likely a handheld radio. "That lab's restricted, though. There's some highly classified stuff in there. It would probably be best if you walked out and left it as if nothing happened. It looks as though HQ has been pinged—leave it to them."

"Roger."

Footsteps receded and the door out to the hall clicked quietly shut and locked with a mechanical whirr.

Tobias stared dead ahead at nothing at all, his mind whizzing a mile a minute. Team Defiance could arrive in anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes, and he saw they had a new member—an old member—that in one future glance sent his head spinning. He braced against the wall, feeling as if he were falling further and further from where and who he wanted to be. Falling, falling, vision spiraling in a chaotic kaleidoscope of possibilities as his concentration slipped and black spots fringed the edges of his vision.

Would she recognize him in his new disguise? His heart fluttered and he pressed a hand to his chest. He closed his eyes and began to accelerate the visions, retuning their perceived organization to ordered rows. This was complication. Viola Mae Reed was not part of the plan.

"Doctor?"

He jolted to his feet, clenching his jaw shut to stop the escape of a shout at the force of his scarred back hitting the wall. He grabbed a fistful of his hair. His visions sharpened.

"Doctor?" Dizzy repeated. "The guard is long gone. You're good to do your science-y stuff. Better get onto it quick, too, because I couldn't stop the signal to HQ, so—"

"The person on th-the security guard's radio. He didn't see me in the cameras?"

"I've been replacing all the feeds where the nightguard isn't with old recordings from their archives. I told you I would. Besides, technically, your face looks like Mr. Pinkerton's, who does have access to that lab. Right? You're luck you have the same color hair, too."

Tobias exhaled, shuddering. "Right." He pressed a hand over his heart. "But, I don't have I.D. And I have missing body parts, and I'm at least three inches taller than Pinkerton. And my hair's starting to curl again—I told you the hairspray—spray wouldn't---wouldn't last."

"Hey."

"What?"

"Calm down, Doc. I can hear your shaking from here. Aren't scientists supposed to have steady hands?"

Tobias scowled and reached for a protective coverall suit. "I can't help it. Ever since..." He stepped into it and pulled it up, sliding his arms into the sleeves. After zipping the suit up to his throat, he exited the broom closet with as much dignity as he could. The tremors had returned to just his hands at the voice of his snarky guardian angel, and his breathing was starting to level. "I need my hands to be mostly steady when I am working. Do you have a computer there? Look up something for me. I need a quick fix. Something plausible."

He washed his hands at a sink and dried them neatly with a paper towel, then pulled on two medium-sized blue latex gloves. He cleared his throat in thought, then tugged out a few pieces of towel from the dispenser over the sink and crunched them into roughly finger-shaped balls which he slid into the sagging plastic fingers of his right hand.

"Weed," Dizzy sniggered eventually.

Tobias fixed a blue mask over his mouth and nose and pulled the elastic-lined hood of his coverall over his head, fitting it snugly around his face. "Say again?"

He paused over a pair of rubber boots, thinking. He slipped on one and carried the other with him into the lab.

"Some people say weed helps," she explained. He heard her guffaw in his earpiece and glowered.

"Never mind." He took out the earpiece, muttering to himself, and tossed it onto his old desk at the far end of the lab, where all the computing equipment for his research sat, humming softly. Mice squeaked and rattled in their plain reinforced enclosures. The air smelled of perfect sterility; hinted with ethanol and the strange and unpleasant odor of latex and assorted shelved chemicals.

Tobias entered the large freezer and rolled a long rack out to access its many shelves. His finger traced the labelled petri dishes lining each level of the rack, which stood at his eye-level and stretched down to his toes. The perfect organization of his perfect system made for the efficient finding of what he needed. Since his visit there, a new scientist with a new project took over his lab, and I am sorry to say that Tobias's immaculate organization prowess fell to the wayside and all I found in that frigid freezer were unalphabetized jars of suspended organs with no apparent method to their arrangements. A monkey liver, for example, I found jammed between parrot brains and the heart of a shark.

Meanwhile, Tobias found the petri dish labeled "S.S. Inhibitory Virus" between dishes labeled respectively "Single Stranded Circular DNA Nucleic Acid; Unmodified, Virus A9" and "[TAC]30 Primer", then located "N.C Inhibitory Virus" before "N.C In Vitro; Mouse Embryo; 21.6" and after "Mouse 16; Blood Sample; 8.6".

He pushed the rack back on its guides and sealed the freezer behind himself and his two virus samples. He placed the samples in an incubator and turned on the machine, setting it to the correct thawing temperature; a temperature that would not be so high as to damage his virulent specimens, but would hopefully recover and activate each sample before his former team came along.

While he waited, Tobias began to pull out equipment and meticulously arrange a station on a bench where he would be able to get to work as soon as his samples were ready. I, myself, could not name a great many of the tools and substances that he lined on his bench until after a great deal of research dedicated over many nights in many libraries and private home offices to which I was not invited.

Perhaps the most startling word that I recognized before my research was the very same word that you, too, read and questioned. If you had no qualms with the word "virus", forgive me for assuming. If you did, allow me to explain that a virus is more than just a nasty disease like HIV or AIDs which can be transferred between living things through touch, taste, the breathing of infected air, or an injection by a wicked person with a large needle. A virus is an important—albeit, unwitting—medical soldier that can invade a subject and infect all the cells possessing targeted receptors; receptors a daring and adept scientist can choose in the editing of their virus. Receptors that Tobias MacClain researched, replicated, and crafted his viruses to target over multiple years.

In layman's terms, a well-edited virus acts like a key. It slots into a specific lock, or receptor, and by a unique process, causes an effect. Except, rather than opening a door or a triple-bolted chest dug up from your third childhood home's backyard, a virus hijacks the cell's processes in order to produce more virus and destroy the effected cell as a result.

Tobias's virus was never intended to harm Benjamin Jones or Poppy Tris, though he had created his two specimens based off sequences he had uncovered in samples of their DNA. The intention had been to prove that the impossible could be done; superpowers could be transferred to the typicals, and superpowers could be taken away from the nons. The only thing that had kept Dr. Tobias MacClain from receiving his well-deserved Ph. D in his "life" was the thesis paper that he had not quite finished perfecting before his untimely false demise.

The mice scrabbling about in their specialized cages against one wall expressed super strength and nature calling, the two powers which he had studied due to their easy-to-acquire DNA samples and accompanying consent. They squeaked and scuttled over wood shavings, eyes following the first covered-up person they had seen in a while. The caretaker left all the chemicals and samples where they were and entered the lab in jeans and a t-shirt solely to feed them, which meant that seeing the man who was not there to offer them nibbles set them on edge.

Tobias hushed them distractedly as they scrabbled up the glass enclosure walls; eight pairs of tiny claws tapping softly, repetitively, discordantly. Five more shuffled through wood chips, adding a curious rustling and crunching like a walk through a forest just before winter. Tobias straightened a small stack of paper towels by his neatly prepped station and stood back, studying his work. A checklist ticked in the back of his mind with each item he required and had in place and he nodded to himself with satisfaction and turned towards his computer.

He dragged a stool out from under the bench and, taking a seat, logged onto his account. Firstly, he pulled up a black and white microscopy feed received from the inside of the incubator and tilted his head at the two petri dishes. With no sign of movement from his samples, he opened an incognito browsing window and bumbled his trembling fingers over the keys in a search for a quick fix to shaky hands. The search results were overrun with small health blogs with unoriginal names that sounded equally as similar as uninteresting. To the right of the hyperlinks was an ad for an online casino that was also uninteresting, but at least not similar. Below that, was the ad for a choice piece of volcanic property situated in the center of all of Benediction, which Tobias frowned at with vague interest, but chose to ignore.

While he clicked links and scrolled through pages, he remained painfully aware of his approaching visit from the very superhero team that he was the least eager to see. In his shaking, three-and-a-half fingered hand, he scribbled a few methods of steadying on an empty notepad in a barely legible scrawl, then cast the pen aside and anxiously returned to the incubator monitor screen.

A few more minutes. Surely.

He closed his eyes and sucked in a long, deep breath.

It was a risk to have the viruses out, knowing that he would have guests, and more importantly, knowing that they would be unprotected—but the risk was all part of the plan at that time. If Poppy Tris bent close and sniffed at the N.C Inhibitory Virus when it was active, she would likely be infected and expressing the desired effect by the morning. If Benjamin Jones picked up S.S Inhibitory Virus to arrogantly investigate its apparently empty, translucent contents, the virus could find its way onto his fingers which could find their way to his mouth, where the virus could enter his system. Perhaps he could end it all, here. Perhaps he could expose Jones to the Super Strength Inhibitory Virus and Poppy Tris to the Nature Calling Inhibitory Virus and never have to worry about their powers again. It would ruin them. For life.

Tobias swallowed and shook his head, focusing again. The viruses would still be lethargic by the time that the heroes appeared. They could get contaminated, but without sustained direct touch, they likely would not. He should have been faster. He cursed at himself for spending too long knocking his knees in the broom closet, then slapped his cheek at the thought of how long he took dressing in protective gear, and how foolish he was not to warm up the incubator first thing instead of heading straight to the freezer.

Things were not going according to the plan. Tobias uneasily watched the monitor and reluctantly accepted this fact. The viruses would not be effectively active before the arrival of the heroes, so infection was not an option. At least... not simply through proximity.

Squinting at the black and white screen, he wrinkled his nose, then looked into the future, then back at the screen. One virus showed slight and constant motions while the other displayed nothing but a few barely noticeable twitches between pauses of stillness. He scratched the back of his neck. What was plan B?

Pursing his lips, he rose. There wasn't one. There was hardly a plan A after the part where "the virus inhibits the powers of Benjamin Jones and Poppy Tris to make them vulnerable". The just-barely waking viruses would have to do, along with some improvisation and thinking on the spot.

He strode to the incubator, sliding open the panel. S.S Inhibitory Virus shuffled out at his careful prodding and came into the palm of his hand. He pressed his other glove over the top to keep the lid secure and calm the tremors as he carefully stepped towards his station. Then he frantically switched directions to shove his peg foot in the spare boot because a tingling in the back of his mind told him it was too late to hesitate, and the crash of a forcefully knocked-down door outside thundered its agreement moments later. Tobias dragged his peg in its boot desperately across the floor as he shambled as fast as he could, lame-legged, towards his prepped station, petri dish clamped tightly shut between his gloved palms.

The door from the locker room creaked open and Tobias wildly looked around himself. She could come from anywhere. She could come from anywhere! He pressed the virus dish onto the bench and covered it with a paper towel, spun around in a panic, then indecisively pulled the towel off again, and finally placed it back to keep it safer from the many possible contaminants soon to enter.

The invisible woman prowled in the room.

The invisible Spectre prowled in the room, unscented, unseen, unforeseen, and Dr. MacClain was backed against his workbench with wide eyes and a spinning head, unable to detect from which direction she would strike, or when, or even how. It wasn't the first time that he was made to feel powerless, and it would not be the last.