Corporation

7

The blades of the aforementioned helicopters flashed overhead a couple of times, not at night, but the needles of the crowns and the glow of dawn on the scoreboard covered me reliably, and the helicopters were clearly not interested in me, but in the doppelganger, which was now taking them away from me further south, into the valley.

Lord, where is the end of all this. My throat was gurgling, my ears were ringing, before my eyes again blackness, and my legs go forward only when supported by a vertically placed board, which successfully replaced my crutches.

As a result, the house was drawn right in front of my nose. Dense, structured darkness in the very center of the field of view.

"Choose any entrance." It just now dawned on me.

Two wooden steps rested against a symmetrical door - to the right and to the left. So you have no idea where I am now. Thanks for the tip.

Opening the right door, I stumbled inside like a sack, rattling my mask against the floorboards and scattering clods of snow around my overalls.

The room was warm, and I immediately began to desperately fall asleep. So, you need to do something, otherwise I'll pass out here. However, at the mere thought of getting up and doing something, the circles in front of my eyes began to dance with a vengeance.

Pulling my hand out of my glove, I slipped my fingers through the collar of my turtleneck and listened. The pulse is terrible, tachycardia over one hundred and eighty. It was more difficult with the temperature, wet fingers crawled over the feverish skin. Who knows, maybe already under forty.

A new magic pill with such anamnesis is no longer shown to me, but something more powerful should be in store for me.

You only need... you only need...

Through force, I dodged like a snake, first - to throw off the strap of the backpack and roll over onto my back, then - to get out of the sleeves of the jacket. Even here, in the warmth, steam poured out from under the open valve.

Judging by the temperature, I'm about to go to hell.

With shaking hands and feet, I barely managed to get up on my knees, why is it so dark here. It was as if salt and sand had been poured into my eyes, everything was floating and shaking in front of me.

Raising my face somehow up the wall, I was unpleasantly surprised to find there two LED lamps burning properly under the ceiling. Not that it was all that dark in here. So, vision is everything.

It was not immediately possible to find the first-aid kit by touch, someone very quick-witted was smart enough to leave it on the table. Another exercise in strength and agility. Thank you for not having to deal with the content yet. Inside, under the Velcro, there was a single syringe pen. There was a piece of paper with instructions nearby, but I was one more reader. Without going into details, I slammed my forearm and fell on a wooden trestle bed that was knocked together right there along the wall.

I won’t be enough for more today, I thought, and fell into an unpleasant oblivion filled with vague voices and snowballs flying in my face.

I woke up to someone muttering. Looking around, I didn't realize where I was. The room seemed different from up here. In any case, the sharp glow of the lamps under the ceiling now looked familiar, not just a smoldering light from the other world, barely pushing through the viscous dusk. In addition to the annoying voice, it was now full of sounds. The hood was noisy, the thermostat hummed in the corner, pine boughs creaked behind the wall, and if it still whistled in my ears, it was at much more modest decibels.

The voice was talking to me.

“Ola, ombre, are you okay?”

Behind the pressure glass with two lab gloves in the middle loomed my doppelgänger. Must be back.

- Everything is good?

- There, outside?

No, damn it, I'm asking you about your well-being.

“Esta be, you are now being desperately sought ten kilometers down in the valley.

Well, fine.

Rising to my feet, I staggered slightly, but held my ground.

- Let's hurry up.

Ah, yes. I obediently rolled up the sleeve of my turtleneck, making a pumping motion with my fist. There must be somewhere in here... sure, there was a paper bag with a disposable tourniquet lying next to the first-aid kit. Having opened it with my teeth, I sideways sat down to the glass separating us and obediently stretched forward the bend of my elbow. The veins on the arm looked so creepy that they seemed black. Yeah.

The doppelganger in response put his hands into the flaps of his gloves, deftly taking out three horse-sized red vacuum containers from the transition box - 20 milliliters, no less. And they are not being modest here. I didn't really feel the needle prick.

Watching the viscous liquid reluctantly fill the test tubes, I again felt a wave of nausea come over me.

- How do you look, everything is bad?

The Catalan did not pay the slightest attention to my question, concentrating on manipulating the samples - take, collect, pack, put in a transitional box, repeat - but I didn’t really count on an answer. Do I need to be a great specialist in microbiology to guard me here in a forest hut on the border between Suisse and Tyrol.

“Thank you for your service,” he muttered at the end, and began to get ready. - You're on the road as not inherited?

Having pressed the wound with a napkin from the same package, I dissolved the tourniquet and moved my hand, bending and unbending as a test. Seems to be working for now.

— Tried not to inherit. What's the next plan?

This time, I didn't like his response at all.

- The effect of the drug will soon end, lie back down.

- I'll figure it out myself. What's the plan?

You will have three days to recover. Droppers, other nonsense - in the refrigerator, there is also water and dry food, if necessary. There’s a camera over there,” the doppelganger nodded to the far corner, “it’s watching you. If you stop showing signs of life earlier, deu no vulu, we will burn everything here remotely. After three days, in any case, go down, you have the coordinates of the next point.

"And if I don't leave?"

This house will burn down anyway.

Clear. So, "thank you for your service". However, what did you expect.

Only already fully assembled and buttoned up, the Catalan turned around at the door.

- What's really going on there?

You ask like it's a secret. Fences are built, as elsewhere. Swiss is no exception, right?

The doppelganger nodded thoughtfully as he sat down again on the edge of the bed.

- Since the outbreak of the "black death" in Lausanne, perhaps it has begun everywhere. Unless we will soon be walking in the mountains. Yes, and they, perhaps, that in a couple of years they will finally be blocked, as in the east.

They were silent. If even Swiss with its laboratories and its relatively small population began to close down so hard, what else is left for the rest to do.

“The more important it is to collect as many samples as possible before everything is shut down.

And expressively shook the backpack with my samples with his fist.

Yeah.

— Adeu, ombre.

And with these words he left. For some time I listened to how he creaked with snow there, and as the sounds of footsteps subsided, I lay back on the trestle bed.

How long I have left there, judging by the heat waves rolling again, no more than an hour, and I will turn off again. It is necessary to have time to stick a dropper with glucose before that, not that it helps, but still.

And most importantly, it turned out stupidly, when last night my pump yelled, I calmly dined at home. Pinot blanc, unpretentious, three-year-old, creamy Saint-Agur for a snack. For once, I decided to arrange a small party for one person. And where is that Saint-Agur now ...

Instructions in such cases were issued swiftly. Route, support, timings.

And what are the options, to surrender to the hospital until you have infected half the entrance? So all this is not treated, too easily the intracellular parasite leaves from under the radar of immunity. That is how he was conceived. The chances are exactly half in half, or you will survive, or not.

Now I'll be useful anyway.

Not alive, so in the form of laboratory samples.

And there, you see, we will still be able to overcome this rubbish.

At briefings, we were told for many hours about breakthrough technologies for targeted antigen mutagenesis, which, in theory, should have been able to provide each individual with the ability to almost instantly modify their own acquired immunity to new strains of pathogens. The immune response, which usually takes days or weeks for a person to develop, should miraculously occur by itself in a couple of hours. This is the only way to overcome the infection that regularly entered Europe. Each time, as if by chance, but continuously, as soon as the Forty Days War ended.

The long-term dream of mankind is a universal vaccine that will stop the series of more and more new pathogens that have swept the world, which have mowed down hundreds of thousands of people a month, devastating entire cities. And yes, to build protective perimeters everywhere, which, at the most, they were capable of, was to localize the next outbreak.

Saving no one from anything.

We built these walls. Our patents sold to a dozen multinational corporations. Let it be for now. But if our bioengineers do find a way to create controlled immunity… yes, we will again carefully distribute this technology, making humanity happy again.

What joy does it make me if I, my personal me, die here and now, on a wooden trestle bed in the middle of a deserted mountainous country?

The townsfolk like to speculate that, they say, it is good to die in the family circle, surrounded by children and grandchildren.

Ever since mankind got the hang of dying in hospitals, this idyllic picture has become even more delusional. Unfamiliar patients in neighboring beds and doctors hiding behind the plastic of special suits, God forbid, if not tiredly indifferent to everything after a daily duty, that's all you can really count on.

And even then, to die in any case is scary.

It doesn't matter if you serve something or not.

But someone close to you will feel sorry for you after death - this is not given to you to know for sure. And that's why it doesn't matter at all.

Feeling the onrushing wave, I wandered to the refrigerator standing in the corner for saline.

Try to make the most of your time. Try to survive.