Six Months Contract With The Mafia God

It took approximately two minutes.

The man’s breathing became increasingly labored. His chest rose and fell in shallow, desperate movements. His eyes went wide with panic as whatever was happening in his body became absolutely undeniable.

Then the panic faded.

Then consciousness faded.

Then his breathing stopped.

The monitors flatlined in sequence. Heart rate: 0. Respiratory rate: 0. The man who’d been injected with a weaponized virus only 30 hours earlier was now simply a body.

”Excellent,” Elizabeth said, reviewing the data that had been collected during the process. ”Clean termination. Vital signs decline was steady and predictable. We have comprehensive data through the point of organ failure.”

She turned to Dimitri.

”Observations, Dr. Volkov?”

Dimitri had been watching the entire process. Had seen the fear in the man’s eyes. Had heard the plea for mercy that went unanswered.

And he’d maintained his expression of clinical interest.

”The progression was remarkably clean,” he said, his voice steady. ”The immunocompromised baseline really does accelerate the cascade failure. In a deployed scenario with urban populations....which tend to have higher rates of immunocompromise due to poverty and disease prevalence....we’d be looking at mortality rates approaching 95%, maybe higher.”

He was speaking the language of genocide while a man’s body was being wheeled away to the facility morgue.

It was necessary.

It was the only way to maintain his cover.

But something inside him was dying at the exact same rate that Specimen 143 had died.

***

By 11 PM on Tuesday, Dimitri had placed two more bombs.

One in the basement mechanical systems that supported the holding cells.

One in the data storage room on the third floor where The Covenant kept their research records.

Four bombs placed.

Twelve still needed.

But his time was running out.

***

At 2 AM on Wednesday morning, alarms began to sound throughout the facility.

Dimitri woke to the emergency klaxons and the immediate realization:

His cover was blown.

The alarms screamed through the facility again at 2:17 AM.

Dimitri was already moving before his brain fully registered the sound. He’d been lying in his quarters, fully clothed, waiting for this moment. The moment when someone would discover the access logs. The moment when security would realize that Dr. Aleksandr Volkov had been in places he shouldn’t have been.

The moment when the Covenant’s careful operation would begin to understand that they had a saboteur in their midst.

He pulled the watch from his wrist.

The mechanism was elegant, a standard Omega chronograph that looked completely unremarkable except for the electronic override system concealed within the mechanism. One specific sequence of button presses would activate all fourteen devices simultaneously.

Dimitri executed the sequence.

The first explosion occurred 4.3 seconds later.

It came from beneath the facility....the basement structural supports detonating in a carefully calculated chain reaction. The blast force was powerful enough to shatter the primary columns supporting the weight of the building.

Alarms shifted from standard alert to emergency protocols.

Red lights began flashing throughout the corridors.

A voice came through the intercom: ”SECURITY BREACH. ALL PERSONNEL TO EVACUATION ASSEMBLY POINTS. REPEAT: SECURITY BREACH IN PROGRESS.”

Dimitri moved into the hallway.

The facility was chaos. Staff members were running toward the emergency exits, following evacuation procedures that had been drilled into them. Security personnel were moving toward the basement to assess the damage.

No one was paying attention to Dr. Volkov.

The second explosion hit the secure lab on the second floor, the one containing the viral samples. The blast was precisely calibrated to destroy the refrigeration unit and everything inside it while not bringing down the entire floor.

But it was enough.

The shock wave traveled through the facility’s ventilation system, and suddenly smoke was everywhere. Alarms were screaming. The lights flickered.

Dimitri moved downward.

Toward the basement.

Toward James.

The stairwell to the basement was already filling with smoke. The emergency lighting had activated, bathing everything in a hellish red glow.

Dimitri descended quickly, his hand on the railing, his eyes watering from the smoke.

Behind him, he heard the third explosion, the one detonating in the data storage room on the third floor. The concussive force was powerful enough to be felt even at the basement level.

The facility was collapsing inward exactly as designed.

When he reached the basement level two, he found chaos.

The holding cells were in chaos. The subjects who were still conscious enough to understand that something catastrophic was happening were screaming. Some were trying to break out of their cells. Others were lying on their cots, too sick to move, waiting to be rescued or to die.

The technical staff had abandoned the basement. The security personnel had evacuated to upper levels.

Dimitri moved through the corridor, looking at each cell, searching for a face he’d recognize anywhere.

James Conley.

The man who’d walked into this hell deliberately so that Dimitri would have the intelligence he needed to destroy it.

He found James in cell 17...basement level 2.

The man was barely alive.

His body was skeletal beneath hospital scrubs that were soaked with blood and sweat. His breathing was labored, wet sounds coming from his lungs that indicated advanced pneumonia. His skin was pale except for the areas covered with hemorrhagic rash....the virus breaking down tissue, blood seeping through skin.

But his eyes opened when Dimitri approached.

And they were alert.

”Boss?” James rasped, his voice barely a whisper.

”Yes it’s me,” Dimitri said, and forced the cell door open using the electronic override he’d acquired during his time here. The mechanism fought him for a moment, then gave way. ”Hang on, I’m getting you out of here.”

James tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t obey. His muscles had deteriorated too severely. His immune system had cannibalized his own tissue in its desperate fight against the virus.

”Leave me,” James said. ”Can’t... can’t move. Just get out.”

”No,” Dimitri said simply, and pulled James up in his arms.

James weighed almost nothing. The virus had consumed him from the inside out, leaving barely more than skeleton and skin. But his arms came around Dimitri’s neck in an instinctive grip.

”Go,” James said. ”Please... go.”