Unsealed Fate

Chapter 23: One Step Closer.

How complicated can life be? You can be sincere and straightforward from the very beginning and still ends up as the villain.

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One Step Closer.

"Now let's see what we have here." The Professor said, adjusting his concave spectacles to sit properly on his nose bridge. He tilted his head up slightly and squinted to get a clearer vision. Most of the papers were scanning electron micrographs, X-rays, and laboratory test results.

"Yeah, about that," Zayn nodded, pointing at the report papers in his father's hand. "This file will guide you through some of the data we've been able to gather, and give you an introduction to the philosophy behind it." He pulled his chair closer toward his father so they could both get a better view of the papers.

"What is this?" Hassan questioned picking out one of the images; It was a photomicrograph of a thin section of the erythrocytes, a sample collected from the patient's blood. Zayn saw his father shrinking back in bewilderment. "And this?" There was another one, an image of a certain virus that seemed very familiar to Hassan.

"Those are images of the foreign components that were found in his system," Zayn explained and watched as his father instantly wore a panicked expression. This made him a little concerned.

"Are these all the images you took?"The Professor asked, rising to his feet, Zayn watched as he spread the papers across the table, scrutinizing them closely. "Do you have any idea what this is?"

 "Yes, I have tried everything I can think of, and I don't know what else to qualify this structure with. It doesn't look like anything I have seen before." He stood up swiftly, stepping around to join his father by the table. They stood beside each other while all of a sudden the Professor exclaimed as though he spotted something unusual.

"Wait!"He paused and a worried frown appeared in his eyes. " I recognized this structure." He whispered, turning to his son with a crooked smile. "It is similar to the one that was used to assassinate your grandfather." He added and although he was smiling, Zayn sensed something troubled and wounded beneath, dismay and disbelief glossed over his voice.

"I do understand what Marium meant by an artificially modified virus, but do you think she is right?" 

"She is in fact very correct. This is the structure of a Cabia."

"What is Cabia?"

"It is a special type of virus, an organic poison." To this, Zayn raised a curious brow. He already knew this but the name of the virus, he had never heard of it. "And just as your colleague suspected, it is a virulent strain of a particular virus that has been modified into what you now see in these micrographs. The modified version is of three types, if I remember correctly. Come here, let me show you something." 

He summoned Zayn to follow him. He showed him into his secret lab, a room with only two folding chairs and an Eames lounge chair, a long work slap, large shelves with all sorts of chemical compounds, biological specimens of animals and random substances kept safe in a jar, and a disorderly desk with piles of research papers scattered atop. 

Zayn smelled vinegar and antiseptic, ammonia, perhaps a fishy stench or something like that. His rising apprehension made him want to retch out his disgust for the lab was simply oozing something worse than what he presumed. He had a glimpse of his father, who was approaching a metal lab cabinet, made of stainless steel.

The Professor stood in front of the cabinet and slipped on his gloves. Then he opened it and gently brought out a white chest with a biohazard symbol atop. He carefully placed it on the slab in front of Zayn who was monitoring his father's every step.