L`Univers:

The plague

    “Do you have it?” Alexander stood up from the chair of the laboratory as Raven entered inside carrying a container.

“Yes,” Raven placed a medicinal refrigerator like the ones used for organs on the desk.                                                                                                                                 

“All right carefully now,” Alexander opened it and the steam from the liquid nitrogen covered the surface around it as he carefully pulled out a vial filled with red matter from the refrigerator.                                                                              

“Wait!” Raven stopped him. “What if it`s airborne?”                                        

“What do you reckon we do then?” he asked her.                                                 

“How about fume hood?” she proposed. 

    “Look I am aware that is for scientific purposes and stuff and I agree with that, but I cannot just do that on a spaceship,” complained Zack.                                        

“What`s going on?” Benedict walked into the kitchen.                                        

“The virus from Earth, we want to study it, but the problem is that it may be airborne,” explained Alexander.                                                                                 

“Yeah, and they want me to build them a vacuum chamber or something” complained Zack.                                                                                                                        

“Yeah so make an aquarium and suck the air out with vacuum cleaner,” Benedict looked at him.                                                                                                

“An ideal vacuum,” Raven pointed out.                                                                       

“Look that thing made enough damage as it is, I say we incinerate it,” proposed Benedict.                                                                                                                          

“No, come on we might find a cure. If it returns one day we will be prepared,” said Alexander.                                                                                                                    

“Yeah, and are you aware that, the whole of human civilization wasn`t able to do that, and now you two?” Zack looked at him.                                                        

“The whole human civilization did not have us as their researchers,” said Raven.                                                                                                                      

“Heard you guys arguing about vacuum and stuff,” Simon walked in. “If you need a vacuum, you do realize we are in space right?” he looked at them as all of them looked at him.                                                                                                     

“How about that?” Zack asked.                                                                                  

“Okay…” nodded Alexander. “Still why not test it on both zero and Earth gravity?”                                                                                                                               

“Fine I`ll make you that damn chamber, but it better be worth it,” Zack took an apple and left the kitchen.

    “Anything new?” Azra asked Benedict as soon as he walked on the bridge.                                                                                                                     

“Yeah, Alexander and Raven got their hands on the vial that Khan gave them, now they want to test it.”                                                                                                 

“Is it safe for them to be doing it on board?” asked Sarah.                                 

“Nah they won`t do it on board, they will go in space and if Dave could be kind enough to provide them with a planet.”                                                                      

“Sure thing cap,” he instantly started up the scanners for a planet.                            

“I don`t know I am not sure about this whole thing,” said John.                      

“What do you mean?” asked Benedict as he sat down on the chair.                         

“That virus wiped out nearly all of human civilization, including our parents, is it a good idea to study about the killer that ruined our lives?” asked John.                                                                                                             “Suppose not, but I can`t just take it away from them, besides it may yield some crucial information so there is that,” explained Benedict.

A week later

    “How do you like it?” asked Zack as he showed Alexander and Raven the chamber.                                                                                                                                

“It`s decent,” said Alexander.                                                                                     

“Decent?” Zack looked at him.                                                                                         

“It`s rough around the edges, but it`ll do,” smiled Raven as they got to work.

“You know what? Next time you need anything, just do it yourself, we never get enough credit than what we deserve,” Zack slammed the table and left the room, he would have slammed the door if it was an ordinary door rather than an automatic that slides. Alexander placed his hands inside the gloves that were inside the chamber and opened the vial and pretty much nothing happened as he split the liquid into two vials and closed them.                       

“So?” Raven was curious.                                                                                           

“Nothing,” Alexander was a tad bit nervous. The next thing they did is injecting a mouse with the virus, and as expected the mouse died with the symptoms that they have been described but they still had no idea how it worked or what it is it was doing. “We are going to have to test it on zero gravity,” he said as he and Raven put on the radiation suits and visors and got out of the ship. “Ready?” asked Alexander.                                                                                          

“Do it,” confirmed Raven, Alexander pulled the lever and the oxygen was sucked out of the chamber, they started floating now they had a vacuum and zero gravity they were in open space. He opened it and the liquid just got out of the vial as it formed a bubble that just floated motionless in the vast universe until it began expanding in a bigger bubble and even bigger and bigger.                                                                                                                         

“Close it!!!” yelled Alexander, as Raven sucked it in with a syringe.               

“What the f**k?” Alexander was panicking.                                                             

“Did you see that?”,” asked Raven.

“I saw, I just don`t know what it is I`ve seen,” said Alexander.

“What do you think it is?” she asked.

“I don`t know…” in the remaining days both of them were at a loss, they had no idea what they were dealing with. Both of them sat down in the laboratory depressed, Raven was writing something down whilst Alexander sat on the chair and watched a video on the screen, spinning a pen between his fingers. How is it that the virus kills, with no symptoms? In fact, how do you cure something that shows no symptoms? Why did it expand in space? Alexander watched the video of the mouse over and over, one moment the mouse is normal and the next it`s just dead, no high fever, no bacteria, nothing…

“Raven!” he startled her as she scribbled on the paper that she was writing on.

“What?” she asked annoyed.  

“What if this is not a virus?” he asked her. “What if it`s not a sickness or nothing…”

“What are you saying?” she jumped from the chair.

“How didn`t I think of this earlier?” Alexander asked himself as he walked toward a table and looked behind some instruments, pushing them out of the way until he finally pulled out a microscope. He put on some gloves and grabbed the dead mouse.

“What are you doing?” Raven looked at him confused. He cut open the mouse revealing the insides of it and looked at it, it`s organs were destroyed and they were black, granted it was dead for some time but still it`s organs cannot decay that fast. He cut out a piece from the tissue of the mouse and placed it under the microscope, he looked from the eyepiece and saw the same image of decayed cells, it was no good if he was going to make progress. He grabbed the scalpel and cut himself on the finger leaving a drop of blood or two on the piece of glass that he then placed under the microscope, everything seemed normal, his blood was normal he wasn`t sick or anything until carefully with a syringe he brought the virus in the mixture. And sure enough, the particles from the virus attacked the white cells latching onto them and killing them fast, not killing them but decaying them it was like if your organs were aging faster than your body until they exploded or shut down completely.

“Look…” Alexander moved away as Raven looked at the microscope, she stared at it for a couple of seconds until she sprang up.

“f**k…” she was devastated.

“f**k indeed,” nodded Alexander. He took a piece of metal and placed it on the microscope and dropped a bit from the virus, the metal soon enough eroded and changed its color.

    “As you can see it`s the same conclusion that we saw in the video,” Alexander held a presentation to all of the crew. “The virus is not a virus rather than a remnant of our DNA.”                                                                                                         

“Okay I`m big-time confused, dumb it down please,” said Simon.                            

“You know how Azra showed us the video of the R-Bombs?” asked Raven.

“Well this is it, the radiation mixed up with our DNA and hid all this time until…”                                                                                                                       

“Until it was fed by radiation,” finished Zack.  

“The scientist back on Tera mixed whatever this thing is with radiation so that it would know to attack what it needs to attack,” said Raven.

“Right they made it so that it would only kill reptilians, attack the vital parts of a reptile,” nodded Azra.

“Except I think they forgot that it might evolve, not only it f***s up your metabolic system, but your blood and organs too,” finished Alexander.

“So it`s in all of us?” asked Sarah. “You said there are remnants left in our DNA?” 

“If Azra is correct that we come from the same humans on Tera then yes,” said Raven.

“If I am correct?” jumped Azra. “Half of the population died on Earth, and if I am correct?”                                                              

“But why now, It could have activated itself thousands of years ago?” asked Viktor.                                                                                                                                   

“Well that`s it, previous generations never had anything to do with radiation, until now, nuclear plants, Uranium, Chernobyl,” explained Dave.                                                                                                                        

“Damn, what do we do about it?” asked John.                                                 

“Nothing, radiation can be cured in small doses, but those small doses will feed the virus that will kill you off eventually,” said Raven.                                               

“What do we do then?” asked Sarah.                                                                                 

“I suppose, don`t eat bananas,” answered Alexander.                                             

“Right, radiation has always been a Kryptonite for humans, now it`s even more,” Benedict stood up. “Finish what you have to do on the planet and it`s time to leave this behind,” he told Alexander and Raven as they just nodded.

    Alexander and Raven landed on a planet that was habituated by some insects that were completely irrelevant and unloaded, they set up the fume hood onto the surface and connected it to the shuttle to power it up.

“How did you manage to find a planet with insects only?” Zack stood above Dave who was sitting on the chair.

“I don`t know, sometimes I even amaze myself, but most of the work it was done by the scanner, this thing sends pulses around and if it catches the slightest heartbeat or blood flowing it bounces back, it`s amazing,” he looked at Zack.

“Right let`s just hope that these insects are harmless and don`t come bitting us in the ass,” said Zack.

“Come on dude, it`s not like we are going to war against them,” scoffed Dave. Alexander put on the gloves again and opened the vial but again it did nothing, but as soon as he opened the one that was exposed to radiation the whole chamber exploded and pushed both of them aside and the bubble was floating again as it grew bigger and denser until it finally exploded and sent shockwaves of radiation across the planet as the insects were affected mutated so fast that they became masculine bloodthirsty predators that looked like dogs except they were not hairy but rather their skin was slimy and black, in other words, they were gross and dangerous.  

“Oh… f**k!” Alexander stood up.                                                                                                                   

“No!!!” Raven could not believe it.                                                                            

“Alexander, Raven, get out of there now!!!” Benedict yelled through the radio.                                                                                                                          

“Come on!” Alexander helped Raven get up and both of them ran toward the shuttle as they lifted off.                                                                                       

    As soon as they arrived on the ship they instantly ran toward the showers to wash themselves off from the radiation and came on the bridge to see the situation.                                                                                                                       

“There`s nothing you could have done,” Benedict turned toward them and removed himself from the eye of sight to the window as Alexander and Raven witnessed the planet getting swarmed by those gross monsters.                                                                                                                       

“What have we done?” cried Raven.                                                                                  

“Come on, it`s just a bunch of monsters, they will die off from the radiation or hunger, they pose no threat,” said Viktor.                                                                  

“Right let`s get out of here,” Benedict looked at John as he just nodded and pushed the lever as they vortexed out of there.