Chapter 3: The Game

After vacating the warehouse, Sorrow and his servants had proceeded immediately to another hideout, an abandoned explosives factory formerly used to make blasting equipment. Jenna saw that it was completely set up and waiting for them, and was surprised at how well coordinated Sorrow’s plan was. There were no chains here; Sorrow merely used a collar and cable. He was rather busy now compared to how he had been, looking intently over his plans and speaking to several advance forms. The ones he spoke to directly were strep throat and staph advance forms, but Jenna also saw a single entity of a new type that went unidentified. Often, Sorrow would cease what he was doing, close his eyes, and just stand for several moments in a trance-like state, telepathically communicating with other, unseen advance forms. One thing, however, he spent a great deal of time on. He had what appeared to be a map, along with a few diagrams that Jenna thought looked strange. One of these appeared to be a triangle with a smaller, inverted triangle inside it, and the inverted triangle had several terrace-like ridges on its two inner lower sides. Sorrow studied this with particular interest, usually with another advance form at his side. “Maybe that’s what he’s here looking for,” Jenna thought. “But then…what is it?” About the time she wondered this, Sorrow ceased to study the papers and began speaking to a strep throat advance form with enough volume that she was able to catch what they were saying. “The plan will allow me plenty of time. I am fairly certain it’s the mountain nearest the one I landed on. It will take at least a day to search properly, so Nemesis will be in charge. And if I hear bad reports about anyone, that ‘anyone’ will have to suffer. I don’t want the plan endangered just because I’m not here. The most important thing is to keep Jenna from escaping; this place is far less contained, so do not let her off that cable for any reason, unless you must do it to prevent her dying. We cannot have her killed or damaged; the part she must play is not yet complete. I was not thinking earlier today when I was going to injure her; I am glad Balto arrived before I got the chance. I still need to still have a guaranteed way to force him to play my game.” “Undamaged, you say? Her injury could be great motivation for her husband…” “I have instructed Nemesis to kill anyone who tries to harm her, and you are dangerously close to giving me some motivation…to kill you right now.” He punched the advance form, sending it flying into the wall. “Now do as I say, without questions. If I want your ideas, I’ll request them. Behave yourself, and there won’t be any trouble. I told a staph advance form to give Balto the next clue, and the next attacker has been ordered to begin its task, so we have nothing left that has to be done for now.” Sorrow went out the door, and the strep throat advance form watched him as he walked away through the snow. When Sorrow was well away, it turned around and looked at Jenna. She swallowed hard, not liking the look on its face; she could tell it was very angry. “I would love to hurt someone,” it said. “And you know what? You’re the only one around right now.” It shut the door. Turning around, it walked up to Jenna. It raised a hand, and she screamed…

Sunlight streamed through holes in the canopy of the thick trees, diffusing slightly as it struck hazy mist rising in patches near the ground. A small village sat among the trees, the buildings looking dismal in the mist. Balto had no idea of why or how he was in a jungle, and he looked around, curious to discover where exactly this was. Near his position, there was a dirty sign that read “KU-YUBAM”. He noticed that it was strangely quiet; there was none of the ambient sound one would expect jungle wildlife to produce. There was just an eerie silence hanging in the humid air. Balto licked his lips, nagging thirst bothering him, and decided to look for a source of water. He approached one of the buildings, a house, but as he did, a ghastly dread overtook him. He wasn’t sure what it came from, but he thought it might be a smell that his nose was picking up, a smell that wasn’t quite right, coming from the door of the structure. It was at this moment that the first sound came to his ears: running water. “I guess that’s a river,” he said to himself, leaving the building and walking through the thick undergrowth. The sound grew louder, letting Balto know he was getting close. He pushed through a final pair of bushes…and stopped dead in his tracks. Indeed, there was a river. A river of blood. Every drop was bright crimson, and the gory smell of it permeated every breath that Balto took. “What is this?” he said aloud. Then, something caught his eye to his left, a few feet away, and he swung his head to look. It was a monkey, lying twisted and dead in a pool of its own blood. He gasped and shrank back. Across the river, there was a man with a rifle and a skinning knife, lying on the ground in the same manner. There was an antelope as well, and a different monkey. Both of them were just lying there, covered with their own blood. Balto looked around at them all, horrified. “What on earth happened?” he shouted. “Welcome,” a voice said, and Balto turned to see the speaker. It was a strange mass of yellow worms squirming atop a rock. Gradually, it changed its shape until it looked exactly like Balto, then stepped off the rock and spoke again. “You know me now. I am Ebola.” “Where is this place?” “This is my home, my roots. What you see before you is the Ebola River. Did you not wonder why everything is dead?” “So…they’re all Ebola victims?” “Oh, yes. The body cannot kill me. That is why I am so deadly.” It paused and looked over Balto’s shoulder. “Ah. Look who it is.” Balto turned around, wondering who else could possibly have arrived mysteriously in the jungle with him. Then he recognized her. Jenna. She half-stumbled toward him, taking in raspy breaths. There was blood, so much blood. Her ears, her nose, her eyes, her gums…they all dripped with red. “Balto…” she gasped, “help me…please…” She gagged, a soupy red substance dripping from her mouth, and vomited a tremendous amount of blood, spotted with black chunks of half-liquid entrails, and collapsed, blood pouring from her open mouth and spreading out in a pool over the ground. Balto was shaking violently, unable to move from the shock. “Jenna?!?” he cried, terror in his face. “Ebola infects many species,” said the beast behind him. Balto spun around to face the Ebola creature, and it spoke again. “Few victims escape death.” It raised one of its front legs, morphing it into a weapon that resembled a scorpion pincer. “You shall not be one of them.” It swung at him, and he ducked, the claws snapping together where his head would have been. As the monster kept trying to hit him, a splashing sound came from the river, and several large yellow worms, which Balto assumed were Ebola viruses, emerged and began circling the two rapidly, forming a ring. Balto was driven back by the beast, and the living boundary moved until it was halfway in the river. The creature backed Balto up onto a rock protruding over the blood, and his hind foot slipped a little on the edge. “I wouldn’t touch the river if I were you,” the beast said, with a wicked smile. “It is fatally hot with Ebola. You will die.” It thrust its pincer again, and Balto jumped into the air, the pincer taking a chunk out of the rock below him. He came down and bashed the monster in the face with a paw, running past it to get back on solid ground. The monster altered its shape so it faced Balto without having to actually turn around. As Balto approached the edge of the living ring, one of the viruses bit at him, and he dodged, only to have to avoid another attack from the Ebola creature. He backed up in a different direction, and got in a position where he happened to see Jenna. There was so much of her blood around her on the ground it looked as if every drop in her body had been spilled. She was clearly dead. Balto’s grief and fear fused together and grew, becoming unimaginable rage. “You killed her!” he roared, charging at the creature. It fell back under his assault, unable to stand its ground even with its tremendous power, yelling as Balto tore into its body, sending spurts of blood shooting out. Balto looked behind it, and an idea came to him. He turned around quickly and kicked the beast in the jaw with his hind legs. It flew backwards, and one of the viruses in the ring turned, opening its mouth. The back of the monster’s head went right to it, and it clamped its jaws together, teeth piercing straight into the beast’s brain. Its eyes bulged, and it opened its mouth for a death shriek. Blood began spewing from its mouth and ears as if from a burst pipe, but the scream went unhindered until the blood stopped, at which point the noise trailed off, and the beast died, its blood falling and spattering Balto like a morbid red shower of rain for several seconds. He turned around, looking at Jenna. “Please…” he moaned. “Jenna, wake up! Please! PLEASE!” He could see the viruses that had overwhelmed her, squirming on her and through her…

Balto jumped up from the floor, coming out of his sleep screaming. He turned back and forth, uttering bloodcurdling yells as he smashed supports, walls, a table, some boxes; anything within reach was destroyed by some tremendous strength that was suddenly erupting from inside him. Suddenly, he heard a loud buzz in his ears, and a ghostly yellow light appeared at the top of his vision. Somehow, he knew a sheet of broken metal from the ceiling was falling at him. He leapt back with lightning speed, and the metal crashed to the floor where he had been standing. He pounded the floor three times with the virus arms, crushing holes into the concrete. “JENNA!” he screamed. Slowly, as he stood there, his mind recovered from the nightmare as he