Survival Bunker System Developer

Dr Helen Rockmiller

It was way past dinner time but Caleb wasn’t feeling too good. The buried body he saw earlier at the park kept haunting him. That skeleton hand he saw sticking out from the ground that the birds dug out made him question who would have done such a thing. Why bury someone in a park and so sloppily at that?

As expected, there wasn’t anything mentioned about PXE22 as of now. His assistant flipped the entire internet and still wasn’t able to find anything. However, Caleb did get information regarding research projects that the universities and research institutes in New York were currently working on. Anything related to DNA was added to the list and Caleb wondered if there was a relationship between the research and the government. Why would the government want to support such a dangerous project?

Among the information gathered, Caleb found out something rather interesting coming from the University of Rockfeller. That university was known to produce one of the world’s best scientists and was top of their game when it came to biology. The institute had worked on many prestigious works and was consistent with their results. It was natural that they were working on some DNA modification project as stated on their website. The research program was led by Dr Fellowes, an experienced scientist with more than thirty years of experience, and the lead assisting scientist was Dr Rockmiller, a young promising scientist whose most renowned works were about DNA evolution.

Rockfeller is usually very enthusiastic about publishing their progress in scientific journals every quarter. It was April and the last quarter’s release mentioned something about cannibalism being related to end of line evolution in the DNA coding. They were still unable to confirm if such a thing was true but Dr Fellowes announced that they were optimistic about the possibilities of creating a new generation of highly intelligent species using the modifications and pushing through the limitations of the DNA with their discovery. Sadly, nothing went the way they expected. About a week ago, Rockfeller University put their project on hold with an announcement that Dr Fellowes had to take an indefinite hiatus from the project due to personal reasons and the head researcher was changed to another senior scientist. Dr Helen Rockmiller was also removed from the team until further notice and all her classes at the university were suspended.

That news made Caleb very suspicious. Something must have gone wrong for the university to take such drastic actions. Caleb did a little more digging into what the students were talking about in the school as well as more background checks on the people involved in the research team with Dr Fellowes and Dr Rockmiller as his main interest.

The system developer wasn’t too far off the mark. The social media of get-well-soon wishes from Dr Fellowes’ students gave Caleb a hint to what hospital the scientist had admitted into. At the same time, he found out that Dr Rockmiller’s class suspensions were a last-minute decision by the University management. The students were unhappy at having class cancelled without prior notice as Dr Rockmiller was a rather popular lecturer. Many demanded reasons from the school but the management only responded that they will find a replacement for Dr Rockmiller’s classes.

Tweets about the class cancellation flew within the campus and there were rumours that Dr Rockmiller had done something to ruin the project hence she was suspended as a disciplinary action. She was also banned from entering the campus grounds. Caleb hacked the school’s network and looked through the security footage of the guards blocking a red-haired lady from entering the school. The rumours were true and Caleb decided to look through the other sources before coming back to Rockfeller University. Any further actions he took to confirm his suspicions about Rockfeller University would mean breaking the law completely and risking a life sentence in prison.

Unlike Rockfeller University, the other Universities didn’t have as much interesting news that matched the strange circumstances. Hence, Caleb was left with no choice but to break into Rockfeller University’s database and steal the information he required. Everything related to Dr Fellowes and Dr Rockmiller’s research was a priority. Getting Dr Rockmiller’s contact detail was secondary. He would only approach the lady and question her if he couldn’t find the answers he required.

At the same time, the system developer was waiting for results of the police investigation. He had an eye on an open tab and was nervous. Although he was a pro when it came to doing illegal things over the internet like hacking, Caleb wasn’t very ready to know the identity of the victim buried in the park. What if that was Dr Fellowes? He wasn’t ready to get too deeply involved with top-secret projects but he was tasked to save humanity.

While waiting for his program to pull out information about the new victim found today, Caleb easily bypassed the flimsy security and infiltrated into Rockfeller University’s administrative system. The institute didn’t invest much in a good IT team but that made sense. They would rather put more budget into better lab equipment than hire a competent IT engineer who only graduated with a degree and was called to fix projector connection issues more than anything else.

Once Caleb was inside, he started looking for everything related to Project PXE22. Unfortunately, PXE22 wasn’t found anywhere even after Caleb mass downloaded everything. Could it have gone by a different name? It wasn’t possible. Caleb clearly remembered that PXE22 was the official name of the project and virus. Still, he didn’t give up. Next on his priority list, Caleb downloaded everything related to Dr Fellowes’ DNA modification research and Dr Rockmiller’s DNA Evolution research papers.

At the same time, Caleb took down the details of Dr Rockmiller’s address, email and phone number. He would visit her soon to discuss further once he could confirm the origin of the virus.

This time, his efforts paid off. Dr Rockmiller’s research was documented in a lot more details than he thought it would be. Although it did not specify the project PXE22, Caleb now understood why he couldn’t find anything before. The University must have destroyed the evidence of her work to protect the information. If such contents about her theory of evolution and DNA modifications were to be made known publicly, there wouldn’t be anyone in the world who didn’t desire such a talented researcher.

Although it wasn’t possible to understand everything about a DNA coding or create successful interbreeding between two very different species, Dr Rockmiller’s research paper about evolution covered in detail how such things were possible taking the examples of how the world started with only micro-organisms before they became the complex animals that we now know. PXE22 wasn’t a virus. It was an artificial life form capable of taking over their hosts and merging with it to create a new generation of species. Dr Rockmiller’s research was breaking the laws of evolution and speeding it up with science.

Knowing what PXE22 truly was scared Caleb. The intelligent ghoul that he saw was only the beginning of a new species. The true potential of PXE22 is to create a new species forced to continuously evolve and carry on the intelligence it gains to the next generation. The artificially created micro-organism does not have a reproduction limit. It will clone itself repeatedly and devour anything that can provide it with the energy to do so until it develops a behaviour that follows the law of the jungle.

“At the end of every evolution, there is a DNA code that will surface, turning any species into a cannibal. In the initial stage of growth, expansion is required to gain experience that will be carried to the new generation. When experience has become stagnant and too many similar overlapping DNA are seen in a new generation, consolidation happens. To bring together all the cells of the species that originated as one cell, they seek out the same of their kind to consume and take over the unique memories to replace the old similar memories and undergo a forced transformation. That is evolution, a process that can take humanity to the next level with higher intellect and physique.”

Caleb couldn’t breathe. Human experimentation was forbidden but scientists have always been curious. With a method to create a super being more intelligent and powerful than humans are right now, wouldn’t the government be itching to get their hands on a bio-weapon like that? However, with this, he now understood how the ghouls came about. These micro-organisms that can ‘boost’ evolution are similar to parasites. They cling onto any living creature and take over their host’s body, assimilating themselves into the system to cultivate and gather resources for their next breakthrough.

The first generation of the virus would be the weakest. Hence, the host would only be seen falling ill. If they had a strong immune system, they would kill PXE22. If they were weak, they perished. The second generation of PXE22 who survived that first round would take the experience and learn how to counter the immune system. When it gains resistance, it will start to spread to preserve its existence. Right now, Caleb was looking at the second stage of PXE22 in the rats and birds.

The buried victim of PXE22 must have been in the late stages of PXE22. The virus had not succeeded in awakening completely to take over its hosts. Hence, there were no ghouls yet, at least in animals. He might be wrong but only Dr Rockmiller would know the answer to it.

Caleb saved the research he downloaded in an encrypted hard disk and moved to Rockfeller hospital to pull out security footage and roster records for Dr Fellowes who was admitted for two weeks now. The system developer was hoping to catch a glimpse of the scientist’s condition. It was very likely that Dr Fellowes was the first person to be infected with PXE22 because he was actively involved in the experiments.

Dr Rockmiller’s journal recorded the behaviour of lab rats that were infected with PXE22. They were in the early stages of cannibalism where they started fighting and eating each other. However, they showed no signs of expressing interest to eat anything else apart from one of their kind. Dr Rockmiller’s latest entry to the observation journal and hypothesis wrote that PXE22 might not be capable of adapting to other species since they started testing it on lab rats. The progress was slow and it took close to half a year for PXE22 to grow from stage one to stage two before they started seeing significant progress in the rats. Twelve generations of mice had been sacrificed to get this far and Dr Rockmiller didn’t know how many generations it would take for PXE22 to fully become self-aware like she had intended it to be. There was a disturbing passing comment that was added in a rush but Caleb confirmed that the rats had turned hostile and started trying to bite the scientists that fed it. This comment was made ten days before Dr Fellowes got admitted to the hospital.

Caleb found the camera that he was looking for and extracted all its footage. With plenty of time, Caleb grabbed a beer to sip while he watched the footage play at ten times the actual speed from the day Dr Fellowes was admitted. Due to the angle, he could not see everything that happened in the room clearly but it was enough for him to understand what kind of condition Dr Fellowes was in.

The doctor was treated for the bite wound and kept under observation just in case the virus infected him. Everyone was optimistic about it because the chances of a human watching a virus that affected an animal were very low. It took a lot for a virus to mutate enough to affect a different species.

For the first six hours, nothing much happened. The nurses and doctors came and went after they checked on Dr Fellowes. The scientist was an old man in his sixties so he slept rather early. However, somewhere around three in the morning, he called for a nurse and complained about a headache. The nurse checked his temperature and passed him some pills. Caleb matched that to the report he extracted from the patient database. Dr Fellowes was indeed suffering from a fever.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Caleb noticed that not only did the fever become worse but Dr Fellowes was becoming more violent and delusional almost as if he was a drug addict with withdrawal symptoms. He started to yell at the nurses and threw things but he was still coherent. Often he would apologise in a confused manner.

The next two days were no different. Dr Fellowes continued to display more aggressive behaviour and anger. He was also becoming more affected by his inability to control his body and actions. In the brief moments when he was sane, the doctor wrote down in his journal something that Caleb couldn’t see from the CCTV. Some of his lab assistants and researchers visited him and Dr Fellowes passed that journal to them when he could. They had a long talk with Dr Fellowes trying his best to suppress the agitation he felt in their presence.

Dr Fellowes ate what the hospital served but after five days, he no longer touched the food. Instead, the scientist would start attacking others on sight and he no longer spoke. He couldn’t express what he wanted and regressed into the state of a child without the knowledge of speech. He also was not able to comprehend what the nurses said. Due to his violent behaviour, the doctors had to strap him down and forbid visitors except for the scientists who were here to extract blood samples to find out what was wrong. Still, Caleb thought it was odd. Dr Rockmiller was Dr Fellowes’ closest partner so why didn’t she visit?

On the sixth day, a scientist came over to draw blood samples during visiting hours with a get-well-soon bouquet. There was a nurse in the room and Caleb cancelled the fast forward. Dr Fellowes broke loose from his restraints with abnormal strength and attacked the nurse who was checking his temperature. The scientist who came tried to pull Dr Fellowes off the nurse failed. At his wit’s end, he hit the emergency call button and smashed a chair over Dr Fellowes’ head to save the nurse. The nurse who got attacked was covered with blood where Dr Fellowes had bitten off a chunk of flesh from her neck and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. By the time a doctor arrived at the scene, the nurse was already dead and Dr Fellowes was unconscious. While the scientist and doctor tried to work the situation out about the dead nurse, nobody paid attention to Dr Fellowes who woke up.

Caleb cringed when the doctor’s neck was snapped. The scientist panicked when the ghoulified researcher turned to him and attacked. The scientist sacrificed his forearm that Dr Fellowes bit into so that he had enough time to stab the ghoulified doctor in the neck with the syringe that he brought along to get Dr Fellowes’ blood samples. The scene was so gory and even if Caleb couldn’t see everything, it was enough for him to know that there would be at least four infected victims. He didn’t know if all four victims were buried in the park but he didn’t have to find out to know that PXE22 was already in its self-conscious stage when it spread to the rats and birds. It wouldn’t be long before the ghoulified animals started attacking others, Caleb was out of time.

With all the evidence of Project PXE22 and his future knowledge, the system programmer made plans to do a house visit. He needed to talk with a certain red-haired scientist to understand more if he wanted to stop humanity from becoming extinct in the next three months.