Infectious Invocation: Prologue

    “This is it!” The exclamation was out of her mouth before she was able to suppress it. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she threw a furtive look around, straining her ears for the slightest noise. Her blue-grey eyes glinted softly in the candlelight as it took in the heavy drapes that hid the windows, the cracked paint that covered the musty walls, and the heavy oak door that stood in the middle of the wall opposite her. This last, she stared at for a few moments, before looking away, satisfied that it was not going to open. She was not supposed to be there.

    The silence after her involuntary outcry went on for a moment without being broken. Having made sure that she remained alone, she took another glance at the object in her hand. The stoppered vial shone in the small, golden light provided by the three candles on the table in front of her -  the result of many sleepless nights.

    What seemed to the naked eye to be clear, pure water in fact contained a strain of microscopic bacteria that she had carefully selected and grown from various species. She had chosen the most vicious, resilient species and crossed them for the most infectious organism. Her many tests had proven just how robust her brainchild was; it as virtually indestructible by any known drugs, or any that could be created using existing knowledge or tools. As an epidemic-inducing bacterium, however, it had a single flaw: it could only enter the intended victims through cutaneous ruptures. Her experiments on the rats stolen from several different labs, exercised at another location, had been clear about that.

    Unknown to her, her lips pulled back in a fierce grin as she thought of her victim, and his reaction to the wave of rampant chaos that an organism smaller than a needle’s tip was going to trigger.