"Humans are so pitiful... aren't they?"
"This world... would be so much better off without them."
"And so, I will..."
"...Erase them all."
~ ~ ~
Three days had passed. Lindsey had settled back into her usual routine, while Ryuu had quietly begun his own investigation into Subject-X... on his own, without telling Lindsey or anyone else.
The virus was spreading further by the day. Access to public facilities had been shut down across the board. It had reached as far south as Australia and as far east as Papua New Guinea. The death toll from Subject-X continued to climb.
Lindsey, of course, was already aware... and already moving. Right now, she was at Roya Hospital with Dr. Rian, the two of them tucked away in a closed room, deep in discussion.
"So, Dr. Rian... what did the autopsy show?" Lindsey asked, narrowing her eyes.
Dr. Rian picked up a sheet of paper from beside him. "From what I found, the victims were infected with a virus that spreads at an extremely rapid rate," he said.
Lindsey exhaled. "Yeah, I know that much. What I mean is... how does it actually work? What kind of symptoms does it produce?" she replied, crossing her legs in her seat.
"Oh... right, fair point. Based on the data we've been able to observe, the virus causes lesions both inside and outside the body," Dr. Rian answered, nodding as he read through the papers in his hand.
Lindsey went quiet for a moment. "Lesions?" she murmured.
Dr. Rian nodded. "They infect the lungs, the brain, the digestive tract... and they even alter how the circulatory system functions," he said, his eyes sharpening.
"And these are no ordinary lesions... they spread through the body with terrifying speed," he added, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
"Alter," Lindsey echoed softly, her gaze dropping to the floor, one hand lifting to hold her chin as she thought.
"Doctor... do you think you could reproduce the capsules you told me about before?" she asked, reaching her hand out toward him.
Dr. Rian blinked, caught off guard. "R-reproduce them? What for?" he asked.
"If my guess is right, whoever stole those capsules didn't use them to create the virus," Lindsey said, her eyes narrowing. "They used them as the antidote."
Dr. Rian went very still. "I-is that so?" he breathed, his eyes going wide.
"But... even if that's true, it would take months to produce a single jar's worth," he said carefully.
"Then mass-produce them," Lindsey suggested, tilting her head.
"Whoa-whoa-whoa... it's not that simple," Dr. Rian protested immediately, waving both hands in front of his chest.
Lindsey hummed softly, then rose from her chair. "Alright, then," she said, beginning to walk slowly toward the door.
She paused just before leaving. "For now... produce as much as you're able. I want to see how far you can get," she added, then continued out of the room without looking back.
Walking through the corridor, Lindsey drifted into her own thoughts... turning over and over the question of how she was going to catch whoever was behind all of this. She was so deep in it that she didn't notice someone coming the other way. They collided. "Bwack..." The impact sent Lindsey stumbling backward and landing hard on the floor.
"Ah... sorry about that," said the other person. Her voice was warm and easy, unmistakably a woman's.
Lindsey held her aching back with a quiet grunt, then slowly opened her eyes. They widened.
She was looking at someone she felt certain she recognized. Long black hair with red-tipped ends, falling loose in front of her. That was enough. That's... Ryuu's sister? Lindsey thought to herself.
"Are you okay?" Rita asked, extending her hand down toward Lindsey.
"Oh... yeah, I'm fine," Lindsey replied, taking Rita's hand and pulling herself upright with some effort.
Though Lindsey had already figured out who Rita was, Rita had no idea who Lindsey was... and Lindsey, for her part, didn't yet know the name of the woman standing in front of her.
Hidden beneath the motion of her hand reaching up for Rita's help, Lindsey pressed a small transmitter fitted with a tiny microphone into the crease of Rita's sleeve... without Rita noticing a thing.
After that brief moment, Rita crouched down in front of Lindsey. "Hey... you're really okay, right?" she asked.
Lindsey gave a single nod and offered a small, reassuring smile. "I'm totally fine!" she said.
Rita stood back up. "Okay, good... I've gotta run, I'm kind of in a hurry," she said, then jogged off down the corridor with quiet, swift steps, giving Lindsey a quick wave as she went.
Lindsey waved back, then turned and made her way to an empty room not far from where she stood. She sat down on the floor beside a cabinet... a spot that was invisible from the doorway and safely out of range of any surveillance camera or window. She was in a complete blind spot.
She pulled a small earpiece from her pocket and fitted it into her right ear. A sound like crumpled paper... static... crackled for a moment before the signal locked in.
"Good thing I held on to this all these years," Lindsey murmured, pressing the earpiece gently against her ear.
Then, not long after, a voice came through.
"Has the autopsy report come in yet?" A woman's voice... Rita's.
The sound was coming from Dr. Rian's laboratory... the same one that had been broken into. Right now, Rita and Dr. Rian were in there together, apparently discussing something not so different from what Lindsey had been talking about with him earlier.
Dr. Rian rustled through his papers. "Yes. The autopsy confirms they were infected by a virus. And after cross-referencing the reactions we've observed... it really does behave very similarly to cancer. Just like you said before," he replied.
Listening from across the hospital, Oh... so Rita already had the same hypothesis I did, Lindsey thought, her eyes glinting.
Rita stood in thought for a moment, turning her thumb slowly against her lower lip in that classic thinking pose. "In that case... do you think you could reproduce the capsules that were stolen?" she asked, her gaze sharpening.
Dr. Rian startled. He was silent for a moment. Rita snapped her fingers a few times. "Doctor? Something wrong?" she asked, studying his expression.
"Ah... No, nothing. It's just... this is the second time I've been asked that today," he said, waving a hand in the air.
Rita blinked. "Wait... what? Who was the first?" she asked, stepping back slightly.
"Oh... a girl named Lindsey. Her grandfather passed away recently because of the virus, so she wanted to..." Dr. Rian started, but Rita cut him off before he could finish.
Rita's eyes went wide. She took several steps back. The name, the story... it all rang a bell, because Ryuu had told her about Lindsey more than once. "What does she look like?" Rita asked sharply, gripping Dr. Rian's shoulder.
"Huh? Oh! She's about this tall," he answered, holding his hand up somewhere around his midsection.
"Long black hair. And... oh! She has one strand of hair at the front that sticks out, white," he added, raising his finger as if just remembering the detail.
Rita's eyes went wide. She immediately checked the collar of her shirt, then the sleeve of her jacket. And there it was... the small transmitter Lindsey had planted on her just minutes ago.
"This..." Rita breathed, her expression caught between shock and disbelief. She pressed down hard on the transmitter and crushed it, sending a burst of crackling static through Lindsey's earpiece.
Lindsey reached up and pulled the earpiece out. "Caught already, huh," she murmured, completely unbothered. "No matter. I was planning on getting caught eventually... that's how I get her attention," she added, raising one shoulder in a small shrug.
"For now, I shouldn't linger here," she said, standing and slipping out of the room. She walked the corridor at a calm, measured pace until she emerged from the hospital... or more precisely, stepped out into the parking lot.
She pulled a phone from the pocket of her dress. "This is Ryuu's phone. I hope I can get some use out of it," she murmured, looking at the screen.
She turned it on. "I think... tap here to order," she murmured, figuring it out as she went.
Before long, a taxi pulled up in front of her. "For Ryuu Houdoug?" the driver asked.
Lindsey glanced down. That was fast, she thought. She climbed into the passenger seat and the car pulled away toward the next destination.
About fifteen minutes later, the taxi stopped outside a public cemetery. It seemed Lindsey had come to visit someone's grave. And yes... no one else but her grandfather. Yolan.
Lindsey stood in front of a headstone engraved with a single word: Yolan. She laid a white rose she had bought earlier gently on top of the grave.
"Grandfather..." she murmured, a small smile crossing her lips. "I still remember what you told me."
The memory came back to her then. From more than five years ago... Lindsey, Yolan's voice said, surfacing quietly from somewhere in her mind. Don't go looking at other people as burdens anymore, okay?
"Don't worry, Grandfather," Lindsey whispered, the smile staying on her lips... thin and quiet. Her hair drifted softly in the evening breeze. "I'll make sure to put them to good use."