Venom

Kade

Dax led Scarlet away, I didn’t like the way his hand was on her. I’m about to go after her, plead with her not to go, but Mikey and Ben held me back.

“It’s the only way Kade, we’ve been through this enough times. We will get Lucy and Scarlet back. Hell, we will get them all out.” Mikey holds me by my shoulders staring into my eyes.

“It’s almost go time for us anyway, hopefully by the time Scarlet gets to the compound it won’t be long before we bust in.” He squeezes my shoulder to be sure I’m listening. “You need to have your head on straight, I’m not going in there to get fucking killed because you were worrying and thinking too much about Scarlet. She needs you, Lucy needs you.”

“Alright,” I agree, snapping out of my funk and slapped Mikey’s back.

“Let’s go over the plans one more time.”

We run through everything, Ben is starting to panic, he’s worried he is going to fuck it up. I think we are all nervous as hell. Fuck, none of us have done anything like this before. I’ve gone down for petty crimes but this one will get me killed, get us all killed. I’ve got to keep it together.

We arrive outside the Biotech headquarters. From the notes on the delivery sheet I took, they are expecting an 11 AM drop-off at the compound. There are two vans sitting in the yard.

“Which one do we take?” Ben questions me as he looks between both of them.

Shit, what if we hijack the wrong van and turn up with something completely different from what they expect?

The first part of our plan was beginning to fuck up already and our time was limited.

“You two stay at the side, I’m going to ‘talk’ to that guy.” With a quick glance, I ran up behind him.

“Move or say a word and I’ll blow your fucking head off!” I said holding the gun just at the base of the back of his head. He slowly lifted his arms over his head.

“I’m just the delivery guy, man.”

“What are you delivering?” I asked, taking a quick look in the boxes without dropping my guard or my gun.

“They’re drugs or something but I don’t know. They don’t tell me shit,” he said fearfully.

“Where are you delivering to?” I grabbed his collar and forced him to walk to the driver’s side door.

“The hospital downtown!” He responded and I knew right then it was the other van we needed.

“Get out of here. If you don’t want your brain splattered on this dashboard you won’t fucking tell anyone I was here. Got it?”

“Ya, I-I got it!” He fumbled quickly putting the keys in the ignition and driving away.

I jumped into the other van and found the keys were missing. “Fuck.” I slam my hands down on the steering wheel. The side door opens and in a flash, I have my gun pointing at the passenger side door ready to shoot when Mikey’s head appears.

“Watch where you point that thing.” He holds up a hand in defense.

“Jesus fucking christ! Don’t do that!” I sigh with relief, my nerves were already shot to pieces. “We have another problem, there are no keys.”

“Jeez, you’re useless at everything Kade. Move over.” Ben hops in the driver’s seat after I hopped in the back keeping my head ducked down. Mikey and I watch in fascination as he leans down to the ignition barrel, yanking parts off and slamming a screwdriver into the ignition then he starts it up.

“Fuck, when did you learn how to jump-start a car?” I smile broadly at Ben, he is full of hidden talents.

“I used to ‘buy and sell cars’, if you know what I mean?” he chuckled, pleased with himself.

I direct him on which way to go. I know we have to get there fast and hope that the company doesn’t ring the government compound tipping them off. We close in on our destination, Mikey and Ben slip the caps on their heads showing the company’s logo.

“Slow down and I’ll jump in the back, Mikey close the doors behind me and pray.” I know this is probably the worst idea ever, but it was the only one. Mikey gave the van a quick hammer with his fist from inside the cabin and we were on the move again. The back was full of boxes with only numbers printed on the outside. I feel the van slow down to a crawl, I guess we must have reached the security gates on the outside but I’m surprised Ben never stopped and the van kept moving.

“We’re through, Kade!” they holler to the back at me and Ben puts the van in park.

“Hand me the cap, stay in the van and keep your head down!” I throw on the hat, store my gun in the back of my jeans and hop out of the van. Mikey comes around and we each grab a box from the back, walking it up and knocking on the back door.

The guard answers looking me and Mikey up and down.

“Who are you guys? Where’s Oliver?”

“He got canned. I’m his replacement. Liam here is training me.” I nod to Mikey and the guard gestures with his head for us to follow.

Leading us down the horribly bright fluorescent-lit corridor, I glanced in every room I passed. It looked like a doctor’s office with small exam rooms on both sides of the hallway. The chairs resembled a dental chair but had metal bracelets attached to the armrests and feet. This must be where they take them for tests and injections. The guard glanced back and smirked, noticing I was analyzing the rooms.

“Didn’t they tell you what happens in here when you got the job?” The guard asks slightly laughing and I decide to go along with the stupid act.

“I was a quick fill-in for Oliver but what he did tell me was you guys turn people into...vampires as a means to take out government-wanted criminals,” I said hesitantly.

“That’s the gist of it,” he chuckled, turning the corner as he continued to lead the way.

“Honestly I thought they were fucking with me when I found out.” Mikey chimed in going along with it too.

“So where are they? The vampires?” I ask and the guard looks at me, questionably and laughs cockily.

“Kept in cells on the level beneath us. They are only brought up here for testing and their phases of transformation. Here we are.” He stops and fumbles through all the jiggling keys on his belt before finding the right one and opening a giant storage closet.

“Boxes that are labeled 528 go on the right side. Boxes 491 go on the left. Don’t fuck it up!” he orders us.

“What’s the difference?” I ask casually hoping he’s dumb enough to spill all the details.

“These are the antidotes,” he points to the boxes already piled high on the left side of the storage room and I can’t help but smirk to myself as Mikey gives me a look that we struck gold.

“Antidotes?” Mikey probs him further.

“They keep it locked up in case something goes wrong. Given in time, it will deactivate the venom in our system if we’re bitten. It’s so powerful it could probably revert the subjects back to their normal human state.”

“Have they tried it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Why would they try it on the subjects.” He wasn’t looking at me as he spoke. I put down the last box from the cart and whipped out my gun, pointing it straight at his face.

“Well, we’re about to find out.” I clicked the trigger back just as he turned and saw the barrel of the gun pointing straight between his eyes.

“Mikey! Strip his clothes off! We might need a guard’s outfit to get us down to the cells. Take his weapons too!” I directed Mikey and he got right to it as I never dropped the gun from the guard’s face.

Once Mikey stripped his clothes he cuffed his hands behind his back, I go to the side with the antidote and open one up. Smaller individual boxes are packaged inside.

“You’d think they would make it easier to get a hold of in an emergency,” I mutter to Mikey as I manage to get one of the smaller boxes open and pull out a couple of vials.

“YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!”

The scream was deafening and it was Scarlet’s. Mikey took one look at me and pointed down a corridor.

“Go man, I got him!” Mikey says pointing the guard’s gun at him.

I ran off down the corridor to where I heard Scarlet screaming. Crashing through the door with my adrenaline pumping, I was just going with every instinct rushing through my body.

“Inject her now!” The man in a white lab coat that I recognized from the internet as Doctor Edison Jenkins screamed as his evil glare stared straight at me. Scarlet’s body was strapped down to a chair and I was nearly sick at the sight of another doctor holding a needle to her neck.

“YOU TOUCH HER, YOU’RE DEAD!”

Noticing his name tag read Doctor Kirkland on his lab coat before I aimed the gun at his hand and fired. I missed but the shot shattered the syringe with the liquid exploding everywhere, leaving the needle still stuck in the side of Scarlet’s neck.

Ben appeared in the doorway and as I turned to check on him, the man Kirkland took the opportunity to knock my gun out of my hands and lunge his body at me. We rolled around the floor each trying to grab the gun. I punched him straight in the face, knocking him to the side. Just as I reached for the gun, I saw Jenkins push a terrified Ben out of the way and race out of the room. I grabbed the gun and turned in time as Kirkland was about to lunge at me again and fired, shooting him in the stomach and he fell back to the floor.

“Kade!” Scarlet’s voice called out to me.

“Shit, baby are you alright?” I move towards her casting my eyes over her straps and her neck which is bleeding.

“You watch him, Ben.” I tuck my gun in the back of my jeans and start to unstrap Scarlet. Managing to release the first buckle she moved her wrist before reaching up and pulled the needle from her neck.

“Are you alright?” I asked as I hurried to unstrap the rest of them. The second she was free I pulled her in my arms practically squeezing the life out of her.

“I knew you’d come in time,” she said and I pulled my head from hers and caress her cheek. As I go to kiss her, a loud blaring alarm begins to ring from the ceiling speakers.

“THIS UNIT WILL RELEASE NOXIOUS GAS WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES. COUNTDOWN STARTING NOW.” The alarm kept blaring as the voice spoke.

I turned to Scarlet and she looks just as terrified as I was. I heard Kirkland let out a chuckle as he bled out on the floor with Ben hovering his body.

“What does that fucking mean?” I rush over to his body grabbing the collar of his blood-soaked coat and shake him to speak.

“You’re not going to get away with this. It’s too late now,” Kirkland spat out the words like they were venom in his mouth before a cruel smirk appeared. I brought my fist to his face, punching him again and again until he was covered in blood.

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?”

“Jenkins...he pressed the kill switch. It releases a gas into the cell chambers to kill everyone as a last resort. None of you will get out of here alive now.”

“HOW DO I SHUT IT OFF?” Spit comes flying out of my mouth as the anger seethed through me. Kirkland began choking on the blood in his throat but I needed answers. I pulled his limp body up and continued to shake him.

“HOW DO I SHUT IT OFF?”

“The device Jenkins has...Y-you ha-ave to-” he choked some more and his eyes began to roll back until he let out a heavy breath and his head tipped backwards. He was fucking dead.

“FUUUUCK!”