They sealed the room.
Not just the door—everything.
Airflow dampened to a controlled hiss. Pressure equalized. Warning lights switched from amber to red. The lab's hum deepened into something industrial and alive, like the building itself had inhaled and decided not to let go.
Ellis watched it all through a narrowing tunnel of focus.
Behind the glass, Daniel Price thrashed against restraints that had already been reinforced twice. His chest heaved in violent, arrhythmic bursts. The skin around the bite on his forearm had gone from dark to almost black, veins branching outward like lightning trapped beneath flesh. His eyes tracked movement with an animal sharpness now—no confusion, no fear. Just fixation.
Hunger without thought.
Mike stood beside Ellis, already halfway into his hazmat suit, fingers moving fast, excited in a way that would've been obscene in any other context.
"A live specimen," Mike said, breathless, almost reverent. "Ellis, do you understand how rare this is?"
Ellis didn't look at him. "I understand exactly what it is."
Mike grinned behind the clear face shield as he sealed it. "We've been cutting corpses. Guessing. Reading echoes. This—" He gestured at Daniel, who slammed his head back hard enough to crack the mattress frame. "—this is the thing in motion."
Ellis pulled on his own suit slower.
Deliberate.
Every seal clicked into place like a decision he couldn't undo.
"This man is still alive," Ellis said.
Mike nodded, unbothered. "For now."
That word landed wrong.
Ellis sealed his gloves.
Through the glass, Daniel let out a sound that wasn't a scream. It was deeper. Thicker. Like something trying to force itself out through a throat that no longer belonged to it.
"Sedation isn't holding," a tech said over comms. "Heart rate's unstable. Neural activity is—Jesus—"
"I know," Mike said lightly. "That's why we don't wait."
They entered.
The smell hit even through the filtration system.
Copper. Rot. Something sweet and wrong, like meat left too long in heat. Daniel's sweat had taken on a sour tang, soaking the sheets beneath him. Spit frothed at his lips, stringing and snapping as his jaw worked.
Ellis moved to the head of the table.
Daniel's eyes locked on him instantly.
Recognition flickered.
Not Daniel's.
The thing inside him's.
Ellis's chest tightened despite himself.
Justin, his mind supplied, unbidden.
Where are you?
"Focus," Mike said, already prepping instruments. "We start peripheral."
Ellis nodded once.
"Teeth," Mike said. "I want the teeth."
Daniel snapped as the first clamp touched his mouth.
Hard.
Fast.
The sound of teeth slamming together echoed off the walls like gunfire.
Ellis shoved the mouth guard in with practiced force, pinning Daniel's jaw open despite the violent resistance. The muscles in Daniel's neck bulged, cords standing out like cables under strain.
He didn't scream.
He snarled.
Mike leaned in with pliers—not medical, not delicate—and grabbed a molar.
"Still innervated," Mike murmured. "Good."
The tooth came out with a wet crack.
Blood poured immediately, darker than it should've been, thick and slow. Daniel convulsed, restraints screaming as he thrashed, his back arching violently.
He was alive.
He felt it.
Ellis's hands didn't shake.
He thought of Justin's hands—how they'd looked the last time he'd seen them, grease under the nails from working on the Jeep, steady and capable and young.
Mike dropped the tooth into a sterile tray. "Enamel's altered. Look at that coloration."
Ellis nodded distantly.
Next was hair.
Mike cut a thick chunk from Daniel's scalp. Daniel roared this time—raw and furious—blood seeping immediately from the ragged cut. The hair clung together, stiff with something viscous that wasn't sweat.
"Follicles intact," Mike said. "Let's see if it colonizes there too."
Ellis adjusted the lights.
"Eye," Mike said.
Ellis paused.
Just a fraction.
Daniel's left eye twitched, rolling wildly, the sclera veined and bloodshot. Tears streamed down the side of his face, mixing with blood and foam.
Ellis swallowed.
Then he steadied Daniel's head.
The scalpel slid in clean.
The eye came free with a sickening pop, optic nerve stretching before snapping like overcooked tendon.
Daniel screamed.
A true scream this time—high, broken, human enough to punch through Ellis's chest and lodge there, burning.
The sound cut off mid-note.
Daniel's jaw worked soundlessly now, blood bubbling from his mouth.
Mike dropped the eye into solution. "Incredible," he breathed. "The vitreous humor—look at the particulate."
Ellis stared at Daniel's ruined face.
I'm sorry, he thought—not to Daniel, but to Sharon. To Justin. To the man he was becoming again because the world demanded it.
They moved fast after that.
Ear.
The scalpel slid behind cartilage, peeling it away. Wax oozed thick and dark, almost tar-like.
Mike scraped it carefully, eyes alight. "Reservoir," he muttered. "It's everywhere."
Bone next.
Ellis drilled into the forearm, the sound vibrating through the table, through Daniel's body. Bone dust sprayed fine and pale, immediately darkening as blood seeped up through it.
Daniel's heart monitor spiked—then steadied.
He wasn't dying.
He was adapting.
"Jesus," a tech whispered over comms.
Ellis ignored it.
"Brain," Mike said.
Ellis hesitated again—longer this time.
Daniel's chest still rose and fell.
Slowly now.
Wet.
Ellis positioned the saw.
The skull gave way with resistance and then sudden release. The smell changed instantly—hot, iron-rich, unmistakable.
They lifted the cranial plate.
The brain pulsed.
Still alive.
Still firing.
Ellis stared.
Neural tissue glistened unnaturally, slick with a sheen that caught the light wrong. Veins twitched. Synapses fired in erratic storms, lighting up monitors like fireworks.
"This isn't necrosis," Mike whispered, awed. "It's occupation."
Ellis thought of the bitten turning. The scratched not. The line being drawn in blood.
He thought of Justin running.
Running into noise. Into death.
Mike carefully excised a section of the frontal lobe.
Daniel's body convulsed violently one last time.
Then stilled.
Flatline screamed.
Ellis didn't look at the monitor.
He was staring at the brain in Mike's hands.
At the thing that had hijacked it.
At the thing that would spread whether they understood it or not.
Mike broke the silence, voice shaking with excitement. "Ellis… this isn't a virus."
Ellis finally looked at him.
"It's a system," Mike continued. "A process. It rewrites. Overrides. Repurposes."
Ellis closed his eyes.
Justin, please, he thought again. Please be smarter than me.
They stood in silence, blood-soaked and sealed away from the world, holding pieces of a living man who had died on their table so others might not.
Outside the lab, alarms wailed faintly.
Inside Ellis's chest, something cracked.
And the knowledge kept growing.