Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 8: A Moment of Truth

It was a late evening. Claire sat in the living room watching television via the home entertainment system, waiting for Cyrus to get home. Being late was becoming his habit.

After her favorite show finished, she picked up her comms device, saw that, to no surprise, there were no messages from Cyrus, threw the device to the side and lay down on the sofa, stretching her arms. Awww that feels good. She fell asleep.

Clare was awoken way after midnight, when a message tagged as ‘important’ came in. The messenger on the communications gadget beeped annoyingly.

What the hell, who would write messages so late? With effort, which in her eyes looked heroic, she unwillingly picked the device up.

The message said: “Do not believe a word he says. S.”

Claire looked at the message in disbelief. A good joke Mr. S.

She turned the message tone off and attempted to put the device away. It vibrated. C’mon what now?

“Do not believe him. He sold his soul to Ermac. S.”

Ok, ok, whom should I not believe, eh?

The front door of her house smashed loudly, she heard someone falling and the door closed. Claire ran to the entrance. Cyrus was on the ground, trying to suppress the bleeding from his abdomen with his hands. Claire froze for a moment.

“D...d...darling what happened?”

“Quickly, bring me some towels and the med kit from my room.”

She came to her senses and acted instantly. Claire ran to the bathroom, falling once after stumbling on the doorstep, then she sped to Cyrus’s room and got the med kit.

“Here.”

“Thanks, don’t worry, it's nothing, it only looks terrible.” Cyrus wiped his wound and took out a medical gadget reminiscent to a flashlight, from the kit. He turned it on and a warm light beamed on the wound, sewing it up. “See, it’s ok.”

Claire clenched her fist and hit his shoulder as hard as she could.

“Where in the world have you been? I was worried sick! And here you jump in bleeding like a stuck pig." She took a second to calm down. “I can‘t decide – should I kill you or should I kiss you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Nothing, I swear."

"People rarely get stabbed for no reason at all."

"But I was. Listen. I was working late; then I heard someone’s steps outside of my lab—"

“Right…”

“I opened the door and saw my colleague walking towards the exit, the one I told you about, remember? That idiot followed me when I left the lab, he stabbed me and ran away, can you imagine that?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Go, clean yourself up, we will continue our conversation in the kitchen.”

Claire went to the kitchen and heated the dinner. As she was pouring the coffee to the cups Cyrus came in and sat on the other side of the table.

“Here.“ She pushed the cup towards him. “Now, start it all from the beginning, tell me, what was it that you were doing so late in the labs anyways? Doesn’t matter what the story is, first thing tomorrow we are reporting the incident. “

Cyrus nodded, took a sip of coffee and started talking. “I have this research project that I need to finish on a certain deadline. The project is related to the muscles and their ability to absorb energy from blood cells. We think if we altered blood cell structure quite a bit we could make energy transfer be more efficient, the problem is that if we tested our altered cells on a human subject he could die. Life threatening tests are not allowed on—" He looked at Claire, she was not amused. "Anyways, I was comparing samples taken from our test subjects, when I heard a noise. Someone was walking in the corridor. I opened the door and there was this man I had told you about, the one who killed his wife and daughter by an accident. “