The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 09: Betrayal

At least he wasn't alone here.

Blake turned his attention to the fusebox. He walked over to it and studied it. After a moment, he decided he could fix it. He spent a few minutes working on it, only singeing his fingers twice, and abruptly the lights snapped to life. He closed the box and turned around. Immediately, he saw something he'd missed in the main room.

A corpse, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Frowning, Blake moved cautiously over to it. He kicked it over onto its back, and found the lifeless gray eyes of Doctor Faraday staring up at him. An ugly hole was in his forehead. So that was the shot he'd heard in his dreams.

"Who shot you?" Blake muttered as he knelt and cautiously patted the man down. But his pockets were empty, too.

Blake sighed and stood back up. Now what? He noticed a blinking computer monitor and walked over to it. Booting it up, he found a typed out message.

Dr. Shaun Faraday

Chief Medical Researcher

Gen-Inc.

Initial bio profile of Subject 873 (R. C. Whitley) suggests a high risk of cellular rejection if implanted with the B4 Strain of the Cloud Virus. This is by no means conclusive but it leads me to think that Subject 873 may not be suitable due to illness and company status.

Whitley was trying to injected himself with the damned virus? Was he really that insane? Did he think he could control it?

Blake suddenly had a vision of Whitley and Faraday standing in this room. It made sense that Whitley would be furious with Faraday if he turned him down, if he really was that nuts to implant himself with the virus. Insane and angry were a bad combination. Had Whitley shot Faraday in the head? He suddenly remembered Whitley shooting him in the neck. He reached up and rubbed his neck. It must've been a tranquilizer dart.

Well, he sure hadn't shot Faraday with a dart.

Blake shook his head, turned from the monitor.

Now what?

He couldn't go into the room with the Scuttlers. No weapons, no way to take them down. Besides, that area looked like a dead end anyway. That just left...he turned and looked at the Walker, still stomping around. How to get past it? He thought for a long moment, then finally came to an unhappy conclusion. He was going to have to lure it in here, then run out and close the door behind him. Really stupid, really dangerous.

And really his only choice.

Blake groaned and walked over to the door. He stared out at the ugly thing. It seemed to have finally noticed him. He popped his neck, his back, his shoulders, his fingers, tried to loosen up, get ready for some running. Finally, realizing that he wasn't going to be okay with this no matter how long he prepared himself, Blake hit the button next to the door and rushed back into the room, behind the examination table.

The Walker let out a shriek of triumph and raced into the room. Blake waited to see which direction it would choose to go around the table. It broke left, he broke right, ran out of the room and slammed his fist on the close button once he was outside. Blake let out a heavy sigh of relief, then leaped back, startled, as a door to his immediate left opened up. The man in the white jumpsuit stepped out, holding an MP-5, covering Blake.

"That was brave," he said.

"Yeah," Blake replied, studying him. He was older, in his mid forties, his head shaved bald. There was a red cross on the front of his suit, next to the Gen Inc. biohazard logo. "Who are you?"