Necrocide

Chapter 62

Aaron pulled the box closer to him and Harry. A dusty old blueprint lay underneath the box, the word AMBR-051A "AMBROSIA" scribbled on top in faded white chalk. Underneath the words was a series of images of metallic cubes with lights all over them, traveling down what looked like a tunnel. It took Aaron a few seconds to realize the image represented microbes flowing through the human bloodstream.

"Well, Schaefer was right about one thing," he said. "There's something in our bodies that really shouldn't be there."

He returned his view to the recorder and picked it up, waving it around in his hand. It had been years since he had seen anything resembling modern technology, even if that device was anything but modern. He hadn't watched a movie or played a video game since he was twelve. The closest thing he had to technology was the radio that every other room in Matheson had. He noticed a piece of tape stuck to the bottom of the recorder, with the number 6 scrawled on in black marker.

"That looks like the kind of thing that should be heard in chronological order," Kyle said. "Don't you think?"

"Yeah, you're right," Aaron said. "Probably more in the box."

Harry jumped on top of the box and started ripping it apart as if it were his human prey. Ironically, the sight of him dismembering the box disturbed both of his undead friends along with Aaron. It was hard to tell if the contents of the box were still in tact during his little frenzy, especially since pieces of cardboard were flying all over the room.

"What the fuck, man?!" Kyle shouted.

Things got even weirder when Harry started eating a piece of cardboard and started shaking it around in his mouth like a dog with a bone. Jade had to smack him in the back of the head to get him to drop it.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I was starting to get hungry, so I got a little carried away."

"You're lucky none of the stuff in the box got destroyed," Aaron said, brushing away the remaining pieces of ravaged cardboard. Laying in front of him on top of the desk were three other recorders and a dirty white binder. In order, the recorders were labeled 1, 3, and 4.

"Let's start from the beginning," Aaron said as he grabbed the recorder marked number one. He pressed play and was greeted by static and the sound of Colonel Schaefer's voice.

Good evening, diary...I should probably think of a more masculine way to acknowledge these audio logs by.

Sorry. Not important right now. And I seriously hope Tabitha doesn't hear this...

"That's Schaefer?" Jade asked. "He sounds like a wimp."

Good evening, whoever's listening. I'm Troy Schaefer, known only as Zeus by the test subjects of the Ambrosia Project. I'm the leader of this facility and the mind behind our mission to design a makeshift immortality for usage by the British military.

However, even though we've barely started this project two months ago in January, I feel like we've hardly made any progress. Granted, we have been able to record the Ambrosia's successful healing qualities within some of our subjects' injuries...

"Ambrosia?" Kyle repeated.

"Healing qualities?" Aaron repeated as well.

Robert Thaxton, codenamed Janus by the Ambrosia Project's Greek-themed alias assignment system, died after receiving multiple fractures in all four of his limbs along with a shattered spine due to a mishap involving a combat droid gone mad...

"Holy shit," Jade winced.

As if that wasn't bad enough, two test subjects, a veteran identified by the system as Ares and a sprog taken directly from one of the camps known as Atlas, were apprehended by security last night after trying to sneak out of their sleeping quarters...