The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 369

He shoved his son firmly behind him, yanked out his phone, and dialed Assistant Dawson. His words were razor-sharp and impossibly fast: "Third-floor lab entrance. Initiate Level 3 Bio-Safety Protocol. Right now."

Dawson practically tumbled down the stairs.

He arrived hauling a portable isolation kit: hazmat suits, respirators, and a negative-pressure stretcher.

Garrison barked a few hushed orders into his ear. Dawson gave a curt nod, stepped forward swiftly, and crouched in front of Quinn. She reached out, weakly grabbing his sleeve, trying to choke out a plea. Dawson merely swatted her hand away and clinically bundled her tightly into an isolation blanket.

Garrison signaled security to haul Archie away immediately, then ordered an absolute lockdown, clearing every single person off the floor.

Once the corridor was completely empty, he pulled on a pair of heavy-duty biohazard gloves. Approaching the lab door, he crouched down and picked up the fractured cryogenic vial.

There was no label on the glass, but he would recognize that pale blue liquid in his sleep.

He dropped it into a biohazard evidence bag, sealed it airtight, and shoved it into the hands of a fully suited nurse, barking strict orders for emergency sterilization protocols. Then, he stood up and strode toward the isolation ward.

*

The second the heavy isolation doors locked behind him, Garrison barely recognized the woman thrashing on the bed.

Quinn's skin was rotting in real time.

The vicious, chemical-burn redness had already crawled from her fingertips halfway up her forearm. The blisters on her hand had totally ruptured, weeping a grotesque mixture of cloudy plasma and blood from the shredded edges of her skin.

Her face wasn't spared, either. A horrifying patch of deep crimson had bloomed across her left jaw up to her ear, the edges breaking out into hundreds of microscopic, pinpoint hemorrhages. It looked like someone was violently tattooing a mosaic of blood directly beneath her skin.

Quinn pushed against the mattress with her decaying hand, trying to drag herself upright, only to collapse back down with a choked scream of agony. "What about the clinical trials? What about the... the volunteers?"

"Those patients died years ago, you already know that!" Garrison's voice exploded in volume before dropping into a deadly, hollow rasp. "The clinical trials all failed."

Then, he hesitated.

The pause was infinitesimal. It lasted barely a second, but Quinn caught it. She was a doctor, too. In that split second of deafening silence, she heard everything he desperately wasn't saying. *There was a survivor.*

And in the very next heartbeat, she remembered the woman she had bumped into in the hallway that afternoon. Sloane Taylor. Standing in the sunlight, wrapped in a plain hospital gown, holding a cat. She had looked healthier than she had in years.

Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was practically glowing. Her eyes were impossibly bright!