Destiny’s Truth

Mildred agreed. “Let’s just hope we’re right.”

With Doc’s assistance, which the older man confined to obeying her instructions alone, reasoning that she knew far better than he what to do, Mildred busied herself. The cultures in the dishes on the fourth bench were markedly different, and it took her only a little time to acquaint herself with the process for distilling the results into a solution.

By the wall length cupboards lining the far corner of the room was a freestanding comp terminal, and Mildred punched in a few commands to access the system. There was no security code as this was a lab terminal, and the relevant information could be readily accessed. From this she was able to find a brief statistical history of the disease, and also confirm that the solution she had just distilled was, in fact, the antidote. It could prevent the disease being contracted, but there was no indication of whether the disease could actually be cured beyond a certain stage of contraction. These were the experiments that were being carried out on the subhumans they had seen in the chasm.

On opening the cupboards, she found shrink wrapped syringes, and also a store of the antidote, bottled and labeled. Thanking God for the tidy minds of the Illuminated Ones, she turned to Doc and outlined what she had discovered.

“There’s no guarantee this will cure us, or that it won’t kill us any quicker,” she finished.

Doc divested himself of his jacket, rolling up his sleeve. “My dear Doctor,” he said quickly, “you must try it on me. At least if I buy the farm quickly, you will know not to try it yourself. It is imperative that you survive long enough to pass this knowledge onward. For my part, my work is done. The last useful task will be to fulfill this function. And if I am still alive in a few moments, then perhaps it will effect a cure.”

Mildred filled a syringe and increased the dose from that outlined on the comp stats. She explained this to Doc, finishing, “You sure you want to go through with this?”

“Madam, it will just kill me quicker. Without it, I am already dead, am I not?”

Mildred pursed her lips. It was an unassailable argument. Nodding, she swabbed Doc’s arm and pushed in the needle, gently pressuring the plunger so that the liquid was forced into Doc’s bloodstream.

Despite everything that he had seen and endured over the years, Doc still found himself grow faint at the sight of the needle—an irrational fear that even time couldn’t conquer. He looked away as the liquid from the syringe flowed into his arm. The solution was the same consistency as blood plasma, but felt corrosive and hot. A wave of nausea swept over him as he felt the solution travel around his body, heating him so that his skin turned red and his face was awash in perspiration.

“Doc, how you doing?” Mildred asked in concern, still holding the older man’s arm and feeling the muscles spasm beneath her fingers.

“I have felt better,” he gasped, trying hard to catch his breath between the clenching of his gut and the weakness spreading to his legs. He tried to relax, counting inside his head and conjuring up pictures of his beloved wife, Emily, and children, Rachel and Jolyon—all long since departed from the world, many years before even the nukecaust—nurturing the thought that if he didn’t recover, then at least he may see them before too long had elapsed.

It seemed to be forever, but in truth must only have been a few seconds before the waves of heat and the muscle spasms subsided, leaving Doc slumped against the wall of the lab, Mildred still holding his arm.

“Well, at least I am still alive, so it will be worth trying to inoculate yourself and Jak, at the very least,” Doc commented wearily as he straightened himself. “Are you ready for this?”

“No,” Mildred said as she prepared another syringe, “but I don’t see there’s any choice. Hold me, Doc—I may just need it.”

“Madam, it will be a privilege, but pray hurry,” Doc uttered, “for we must move.”