Sorry for the long wait. Honestly I have no excuses besides I'm a terrible human being with absolutely no organizational skills whatsoever. So let's just roll with that and get on with the story!

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Part Two

The Laboratory

Alan's P.O.V

For several moments Carl just stared at me, unblinking as he studied my face for any trace of a lie. Then, slowly, the side of his face that was still capable of movement began pulling downwards, his lips sagging into a scowl. His remaining eye dropped to the jungle floor, scanning the ground as if expecting to find an answer there. He must have failed to find one, because after a moment his eye was trained on me again.

"I don't understand," he said slowly.

I shook my head, struggling to think of a way to explain everything to him without making myself sound like a monster. "I... a year ago I was offered a job by this private organization to help develop cures and vaccines for a range of illnesses. Only, I found out that they were taking the research we were doing and using it to create new, mutated versions of the virus's instead of curing them."

Carl's eye began to squint accusingly, so I held up my hand quickly to defend myself. "But I swear I left as soon as I found out what they were doing!"

The answer didn't seem to appease him much, because he continued to glare at me. After awhile, eye still squinted, he asked, "You used to work here?" He pointed at the steel doors with the golden cross on them.

"Yeah, I... I already said that." I was expecting him to pounce on me, tackle me to the ground and claw one of my eyes out to replace the one he lost. But instead of doing anything like that, instead of blaming me for everything that's happened and accusing me of being able to stop it, he just gave this small nod of his head, as if he didn't quite understand what he'd just been told.

"Oh," he said after a moment, "OK."

I stared back at him, perplexed by his reaction. How could he not despise me when I despised myself? Although I never knew the true intentions of The Golden Cross, I knew their motivations for creating new viruses could only be sinister. When I left, I could have told people, done something. I could have prevented all of this from happening!

"That's it?" I asked, surprised by the anger that shook my voice. "OK? That's all you have to say?"

I wanted him to attack me, to hold me accountable, to make me pay for what I did, or really, what I didn't do. But Carl just stared at me and nodded again. It was only after studying his face, the side that wasn't burnt to a crisp, that I realized something was off. I didn't notice before because my attention was pulled to the burns – it was hard not to stare at them – but now that I saw the absent look in his eye it became apparent that he wasn't squinting at me out of hatred, but out of confusion.

He was struggling to understand anything I had said.

"Carl? How are you feeling?" I asked, taking a tentative step towards him, my arm reaching out in what I hoped he would interpret as a friendly gesture.

"A little... dizzy," he said, staring at my outstretched hand with an uncomprehending gaze of what was happening. At a closer distance I could see that his pupil was dilated, so much so that it was practically like an eclipse had taken his eye.

He was suffering from a concussion, that much was obvious. And there was only one place we could go where I knew I could treat him.

I glanced back at the steel doors and the golden cross that glinted in the stream of sunlight that managed to catch it. I didn't want to go down there. I wanted to get as far away as possible, to keep looking for Mel. But doing that would be a death sentence for Carl.

Shaking my head and muttering a curse, I grabbed a hold of Carl's shoulder and began leading him towards the door. A panel to the left, hidden by a thicket of overgrown vines, opened to reveal a number pad. I punched in the seven-digit-code I was given when I worked here, and was surprised to find that it still worked. The steel doors unlocked and I wrenched them aside to find a familiar set of stairs that led down into complete and utter darkness.

"Watch your step," I told Carl, who was putting more and more of his weight on me with every passing second. "And try to stay awake." It would be better for him to sleep to help recover from a concussion, but I didn't have the strength to carry him myself and I didn't know what else could be wrong with him.

Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, I felt along the wall and located another panel that swung open to reveal a row of light switches. I turned them all on and watched as lines of dim, blue lights that ran up and down the walls began flickering to life. I always thought the colour scheme was oddly reminiscent of being underwater. Right now we would be in a deep trench of the ocean, where it's dark and difficult to see. But the further down the tunnel we moved, the lights around us slowly turned from blue to white, as if we were swimming up from the ocean floor and about to reach the surface.

After what felt like an eternity if walking, struggling to keep Carl upright, doors began to line the walls on either side of us. Every room contained an expansive medical kit as a safety precaution against emergencies, and the supplies inside them were more advanced than anything available to the public. Finding one would be more than enough to fix Carl and myself up, so the first set of doors we reached I threw open.

The lights came on automatically to reveal a small work lab, benches covered in a mess of papers lining the walls. The underground facility had hundreds of rooms identical to this one. Sitting in the middle of the room was a table that I laid Carl down on while I retrieved the medical kit hanging on the wall. Ripping into it, I quickly found the small, yellow packet I was looking for. Holding it under Carl's nose, I snapped it in half and pulled back as he began spluttering out coughs. That would help with the concussion, now I needed something for the burns and the rest of his wounds.

I tossed aside a packet of ointment for chemical burns and found the ointment I was looking for beneath it. I poured the cream out into my hands and began rubbing it onto his face. Even this medicine wasn't advanced enough to heal him completely, the damage done would be irreparable, but this would definitely help stop any pain. Once that was done, I could see that Carl was slowly coming back to his senses.

There was one last thing that I wanted from the medical kit, and after digging around in it again, I found it. A small syringe with a clear liquid inside. It was one of the most incredible advances in medical technology I had ever seen, and I never understood why it wasn't available in hospitals. I stuck the needle into my own arm first, and injected half of the contents. After several seconds, the cuts that ran up and down my arms began to close and fade. It was most effective with minor open wounds, so I didn't know how well it would work on Carl's arm, but I figured it would do more good than harm.

After injecting the rest of the serum into his arm, I watched as the scrapes and cuts slowly disappeared from his body. He was looking down at himself as it was happening. "Incredible..." he muttered. After a moment, he unraveled the bandage from his arm to reveal that while the wound was still open, it had reduced significantly in size and stopped bleeding.

"Where the hell are we?" Carl asked, and I could tell from the sharp edge in his voice that most of his senses had now returned to him.

"We're in an underground laboratory," I explained, taking a step back in case he began to panic.

He clutched a hand to his head. "Wh... What happened?" he asked.

For a moment I hesitated to tell him, but he would learn of everything soon enough, so I took in a deep breath and explained all that had happened. From waking up on the beach, to finding him in the sand, to bringing him down here. He sat in silence through it all, nodding here and there but ultimately showing no real emotion. Even when I told him how I used to work here, there was no flickering expression of recognition. It was like he was still concussed, listening but not taking any of it in. But the questions he had proved that he was much more alert this time around.

"So, the virus that caused the infection... it originated here?" he asked slowly, the effects of the concussion clearly still lingering.

"Yes."

"And you helped create it?" he asked, still without expression.

I paused before responding, my gaze falling to the ground, no longer able to hold his. "Yes."

"But you didn't know? They tricked you?"

I looked up to find him scrutinizing me closely, intensely. I nodded, and after several seconds Carl leaned back, seemingly satisfied with this response. Years of being a cop would have made him into a pretty decent lie detector. He must have decided that I was telling the truth.

"Why would they want to make a virus like this?" Carl asked, shaking his head.

"I don't know." And really, I didn't. Things made perfect sense when I thought I was making cures, vaccines. The reasonings behind them were solid, not even needing explanation. When I found out what was really going on, I was dumbfounded, but there was no way of finding out The Golden Cross's true motives without letting slip that I had discovered the truth. And with a secret organization like this one, I was sure some sort of 'tragedy' would befall me if that happened.

"And Mel? There was no sign of her on the beach?"

I was about to tell him that we needed to go back up to the surface, to continue looking for her, when the sound of crackling static suddenly filled the air and I froze to the spot, knowing exactly what was going to come next. A voice, sickeningly sweet and one that never failed to send a chill down my spine said, "Well there's a face I certainly didn't expect to see again. Why don't you come join me in the main hall? I trust you remember your way around the place."

"What the hell was that?" Carl asked.

It took me a moment to collect myself enough to answer him. "That," I said through clenched teeth, "was my old boss." Tucked in the top left corner of the room was a bulbous, black eye, recording our every move. She must have been watching us from the moment we arrived.

I turned around and walked back out into the hall, making sure we were still alone. "Come on," I said, waving Carl out of the room. "We need to get out of here."

"Oh, come now. What's the rush? We haven't seen each other in so long." Melissa Drayne's voice rode over the static and echoed around the halls. It prickled my arms with goose flesh and made every strand of hair on my body stand on end. Even when I thought we were working on vaccines, Melissa always held a menacing aura about her, one that easily struck fear in your bones even when you were having nothing more than a pleasant chat.

And I doubted a pleasant chat was what she was after this time.

I began striding towards the exit, but I barely made it three steps before I heard the squeal of the metal doors sealing shut with a final hiss, the little amount of sunlight that was seeping in before now dissipating and leaving me in a darkness I felt I would never escape.

I turned around to find that Carl had stepped out of the small lab, his head swiveling up and down the hall. "Looks like there's only one way to go," he said.

"Yeah," I muttered, walking past him and up the hall. "Only it's not the way we want to go."

Melissa wasn't wrong. Despite it being over a year ago since I worked here, I remembered the layout perfectly, so much so that I didn't make a single wrong turn on the way to the main hall. During our walk, I handed Carl one of the pistols that were tucked in my waistband. Just as a precaution, because I wasn't expecting this meeting to go smoothly. When we arrived in the magnificent dome shaped room, which was really just a glamorous reception that was located in the centre of the facility, Melissa was already there, standing in front of a large set of doors in the centre of the now empty room.

"Alan!" she called, swinging her arms out as if beckoning me in for a hug. "What a wonderful surprise this is!"

"Melissa," I nodded, coming to a stop a considerable distance away from her. She hadn't changed much since I last saw her. Light, blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, clothed in the same black skirt and blouse that she always seemed to wear.

Her green eyes evaluated me for a moment before she realized I wasn't going to be getting any closer and let her arms fall back down at her sides.

"If I'd known you were in that helicopter crash I would have pulled you out, but I just assumed everyone inside was already dead. I was waiting for the smoke to clear before I was going to investigate further."

"Your concern is duly noted," I replied.

"Oh, come now! Don't be like that! I didn't take things personally when you abandoned the projects we were working on," she smiled ruefully, and it became clear to me that she was playing some sort of game, trying to coax a specific response from me. But I couldn't figure out exactly what it was she wanted.

"Seems like everyone else has abandoned you too," I said, casting a quick look around the empty room we were in. It was the main hall, it should have been bustling with people. The entire facility should have been, and yet there was no one here besides the three of us.

"Well now that majority of our work is completed they've all been moved to other facilities to begin new ventures," she shrugged, as if this was common knowledge.

Until now, Carl stood a distance behind me, but Melissa's remark prompted him to step forward. "And what new ventures would those be? More viruses that'll kill millions of people?" he sneered the question at her, every word practically spat at her feet.

Melissa regarded him with a bored look, then returned her attention to me. "You know, Alan, there's always been a place here for you if you ever wanted to come back." She tilted her head forward ever so slightly, as if gifting me with an incredible opportunity.

So that's the game she was playing, trying to recruit me back so I could help design more despicable ways of destroying humanity. Before I could even form a response, Carl pulled out the pistol I gave him and aimed it at Melissa's chest.

"How can you just stand there after what you've done? You've murdered innocent people! Children! Why?" His voice shook with animosity, yet still it did little to elicit a reaction from Melissa. "Why!"Carl barked again, and this time Melissa regarded him with an irritated look.

"Put that toy down, you look like an idiot."

"Tell me why or I'll put a fucking bullet through your chest!" Carl shouted.

Melissa took a moment to look him over, then she rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, I suppose the concept is simple enough that even your little brain should understand it. Overpopulation." She flourished her hands out. "Human's were destroying the Earth and since we aren't technologically advanced enough to colonize another planet or thrive in space, the only viable answer was to remove the parasite that was sucking the life-blood out of our planet."

The answer seemed so simple, although I hardly knew what I was expecting her to say. Carl shook his head at her. "So your answer was to just wipe out everyone? You didn't even think to consider other options?"

Melissa snorted at him. "Well of course we did. We'd been working on other methods for decades and they all proved fruitless. Climate change continued to worsen, air pollution only increased yada yada and so forth. We, people, were slowly suffocating ourselves. We had become like termites, infesting a home. And what do you do with a termite infested home? You gas the little buggers until they're all dead."

For a moment, Carl just stared at her, dumb-founded, then slowly he began shaking his head again. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. You're a monster!"

Melissa shrugged. "Maybe so, but a part of you knows that I'm right. Otherwise you would have shot me already."

Carl lowered the gun a fraction, clearly caught off guard by her analysis. This is what Melissa was always best at. Mind games.

"If you created the virus then you must have created a cure as well. It's somewhere here in this laboratory, isn't it?" Carl said, his grip on the pistol tightening.

Melissa gave a short laugh. "Cure? There is no cure! Why would I want to undo everything I've worked so hard on? In a few months the infected will die off on their own and if my statistics are correct, which I'm certain they are, then there should be around thirty-percent of the human population remaining."

"You're lying," Carl said, but he lowered the gun completely and it was clear that he already believed her. Melissa must have come to the same conclusion, deciding that the distraction that Carl posed was now taken care of, she turned her attention back to me.

"So what do you think, Alan? Would you like to work together again?" she asked, smiling.

I didn't even need to think of a response, the words left my tongue as if acting on instinct.

"Never."

Melissa cocked her head to the side, clearly not expecting this answer. "Hmm, such a shame. You were so talented." She shook her head. " I suppose I'll just have to have your friend dispose of you," she muttered, a show of glumness on her face that failed to appear the least bit genuine.

I shared a look with Carl, confused as to why she thought he would do anything Melissa said. But then the doors behind her parted, and slowly slid open to reveal the friend she was actually referring to.

Standing behind them, skin grey, and eyes an even lighter shade of it, was Melody.