I woke up and didn’t know how long I had been sleeping, with no windows to tell me that the time on the clock ticking on the wall was the actual time or not. The laboratory I was contained in was dim now, with the overhead lights turned off and only a few sconces around the room lighting up the benches of beakers, tubing and the carefully labelled jars and bottles of chemicals lining the shelves about the counters. I was alone, wondering what our next steps will be.

I got up, appreciating that Daniel made me shower and dress in fresh clothes before being kidnapped by Justine and deposited here, in what I assumed was an underground facility not far from the cabin where Daniel handed me over. My mouth was dry and tasted like stale coffee. I looked around the room to see if there was potable water somewhere that I could at least rinse my mouth out and splash on my face, and saw an ajar door to a bathroom near the back. I went over and found a sink and toilet, and to my surprise, a few sealed bottles of spring water and some unwrapped toiletries on a shelf. I refreshed myself and looked in the mirror for the first time in hours or days, and almost dropped my toothbrush in the toilet at what I saw staring back at me in shock. The man in the mirror wasn’t me, it was a stranger I did not recognize.

The locked door to the laboratory opened, and Dr. Vasquez stepped in quickly, locking the door again behind her. I was on my cot again, bewildered that I wasn’t in the bathroom. As the door closed behind her I got a glimpse behind it that it was an small room behind it and another locked door, an airlock of some kind.

“Good morning, Al! I hope you had a nice rest? We got a lot accoomplished yesterday.” She reached over to help me up, and gave me a clean handkerchief. “It looks like you have some toothpaste around your mouth. I’m glad you found the overnight bag with supplies left in the small bathroom attached to the lab.”

I looked back at the room thinking, yes, I was just there. But something happened that upset me and that little room now terrified me.

“You look a little off balance, Al. Did you not have a restful sleep? Maybe we should wait a bit before continuing our research,” Elena said with a look of concern.

“I’m OK. I kind of had a bizarre dream, you know one of those where you are dreaming about the room you are sleeping in, making you wonder if you are sleepwalking.” I nervously glanced at the ajar bathroom door again.

“Those kinds of dreams are disconcerting, aren’t they? Would you like something to eat?” she asked, sitting down in our work area, which I noted had been scoured clean of all our notes and research material. There was no trace of what we had accomplished before I fell asleep.

“No, I’m not hungry right now. Just thirsty,” I said nervously, dreading the thought of going back into the bathroom to get a bottle of spring water.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost in there. I can assure you nothing unnatural has happened anywhere in this laboratory. We’re safe here.”

I got up and went into the bathroom, grabbing a water bottle from the shelf, never turning on the light or looking in the mirror. Elena was not watching me, but rather was looking like she was preparing to ask me something extremely consequential. I opened the bottle and a few gulps of the lukewarm water and sat down across from here. “You have something to share with me?”

The doctor looked down at the table and then looked me directly in the eye, quietly deciding to not sugar-coat what she was about to ask. “Al, we have a decision to make together, and I have already made up my mind, regardless of what you decide.” She took a deep breath and asked plainly, “Will you infect yourself with multiple strains of the spores we have in storage, so that we can test our hypothesis that our chemical trigger blocker preventing germination will work? If you are not willing, I will ingest the spores myself and be the test subject. I’m a dead woman walking anyway, but you will have to continue the research if it fails.”

I hesitated at the choice presented to me. It was a terrible risk, and the face of the strange man in the mirror haunted me.

Seeing I was torn on making an immediate decision, Elena’s face melted from impassiveness to wrenching guilt. “I have a confession to make. At that dinner where myself and my colleagues were initially infected, I had switched place settings with a dear friend. He died that night because I was the one selected for termination. You can see why I took the dangerous chance to defect to Canada from Valdoria.”

I put my hands to my head, making sure I wasn’t sleeping on the cot again, that this decision had real consequences. I felt my hands press on my temples, so I put my hands down and gave Dr. Vasquez, and whoever was listening in on us, my definitive answer.

I sat with the weight of her confession pressing down on me like the stale air in that windowless room. The image of the stranger in the mirror still flickered at the edge of my vision—a face I didn’t recognize, wearing my clothes, staring back at me with eyes that seemed to know something I didn’t.

Elena watched me with the patience of someone who had already made peace with dying. That was the part that unsettled me most. She wasn’t asking me to save her. She was asking me to choose—and she was prepared to be the one on the table either way.

I thought about Daniel. About the way he had held me down while Justine clicked the handcuffs closed. About the way he had said, “This is bigger than you can comprehend.”

I thought about the Turkish Delight. The sweet imitation of something real.

And I thought about the man in the mirror. The stranger who was me, but wasn’t.

I looked at Elena. “You switched place settings with a friend. He died. And you’ve been carrying that ever since.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“That’s not a confession, Dr. Vasquez. That’s a wound. And I don’t think you’re trying to spare me—I think you’re trying to spare yourself from watching someone else die because of a choice you made.”

She flinched, but didn’t look away.

“So here’s my answer.” I stood up, walked to the cold storage vault, and waited for her to open it. “You’re not a dead woman walking. You’re a scientist who’s been running on guilt and coffee for eighteen months. If I let you do this, and it fails, you’ll die believing you killed another person by choice. And I’ll have to finish the work alone, without the one person who actually understands the biochemistry.”

But that stranger in the mirror haunted me more than her guilt. Whatever they’d done to me during the kidnapping, whatever Daniel and Justine had orchestrated, I was already changed. Already compromised. The reflection that wasn’t mine proved that much.

“I’ll do it,” I heard myself say, the words emerging with surprising calm. “Infect me with the spores.”

Elena’s eyes widened. “Al, you don’t understand the risk—”

“You’re the scientist here. You’re the one who developed the blocker, who understands the molecular structure. If something goes wrong, if the chemical trigger fails, you’re the only one who might figure out how to reverse it.”

She shook her head. “But I’m already—”

“Already what? Already guilty? Already dead?” I picked up one of the folders, scanning the handwritten notes inside. “That’s exactly why you need to stay clean. Your guilt doesn’t make you expendable, Elena. It makes you essential.”

The truth was simpler than my rational arguments. I trusted her science more than I trusted my own survival instincts. And that face in the mirror—whoever I was becoming, whatever they’d already done to me—maybe infection was just the next logical step in a transformation already begun.

“Besides,” I added, attempting something like humor, “I’m curious to see if spores can take root in someone who might not be entirely human anymore.”

I looked at her. “If I do this, and it works, we both get to walk out of here. If it fails, you’ll have to finish the work without me. But you’ll be alive to do it. And I think you deserve that more than you deserve to be a martyr.”

Elena stared at me for a long moment. Then she opened the vault.

“You’re sure?”

“No.” I stepped forward. “But I’m not sure about anything anymore. The mirror showed me a stranger this morning. Maybe that’s who I am now—someone who doesn’t have a script to follow. So let’s find out what this stranger can do.”

She handed me the vial. The grey powder shimmered under the fluorescent light.

“These are a mixed strain sample. Multiple triggers, multiple activation profiles. If the inhibitor works across all of them, we’ll know we’ve found something universal.”

“How long does it take to administer?”

“Minutes. I’ll prepare the inhibitor first, then introduce the spores. We’ll monitor your vitals for six hours. If there’s no germination, we test the trigger compounds. If there’s no reaction, we’ve succeeded.”

I sat down on the cot. She prepped the equipment, her hands steady despite the weight of the moment. I watched her work, wondering if Daniel had ever anticipated this—if he had ever imagined his assistant volunteering to be infected with a bioweapon in a windowless room beneath a mountain.

Probably not, I thought. But that’s the point.

Elena turned to me, a syringe in her hand.

“Ready?”

I looked at the ceiling. No windows. No stars. No telescope. But I did notice some ceiling speakers and it triggered memories of Daniel looking in the space above him and of something Justine said back at the cabin: “Only a fool would trust a Valdorian. A Valdorian only does what is in the best interest of the Valdorian.”

I put up my hand up to Dr. Vasquez and said, “No, on second thought I’m not doing this.”

Elena’s face contorted into disappointment and anger. “So you’re asking me to do the test on myself?”

“No, I’m saying we’re not doing any testing today on anyone.” I called out loudly, “Justine! I’ve given what you and the Valdorians were looking for. You can let me go now!”

The overhead speakers crackled to life, and Justine’s cheery voice chimed in, “Oh Sweet Cheeks! What a performance! I think you’ve spent way too much time with Daniel, he’s ruined you. You’re still cute though. I’m coming down now.”

Barely hiding her contempt, Dr. Vasquez returned the vial of spores and the blocking serum to storage, locking it securely away. She turned to me and scowled, “We were so close to resolving the lytic parasite infections and loosening Valdorian control over its operatives!”

“Yes, but at what cost? I’ll let you know what gave away your intentions: whether it happened or not, you switch place settings with a friend, knowing full well that the King of Valdoria double-crosses anyone in his path. That included you. Does that spore detector device even work, or was that a ruse to get me to trust you?”

“I guess you’ll never know, now will you?” The doctor sat down and crossed her legs, and looked away.

We could hear that someone was opening the the outside door and in a few moments, opened the inside door. Justine stepped in, covered head to toe in personal protective gear, her sparkling blue eyes peeking out from behind the googles of a full face gas mask. She grabbed my arm with a rubber-gloved hand and pulled me into the airlock, where another set of protective gear was hanging on a hook. As the door closed behind us to re-seal Dr. Vasquez in her prison of a lab, Justine helped me into the protective suit and mask, checked that I was properly sealed off, and then pulled me through the outer door.

“Well, we’re going to have to put you in quarantine for a day or so and check your stool for possible infection. Would you like a nice tall glass of cooking oil, as you advised JD Ruff?” she smirked, almost pushing me into another room down the hall the size that looked very much like a prison cell, with an open toilet and a bunk bed. At least it had an opaque skylight, so I could get some indication of the time of day. She closed the door behind me and sealed it, leaving me in my tight little new home away from home. “If you want to talk, just call out anytime!” she shouted through the door, and I looked up to see the same kind of ceiling speaker above the bed.

I removed the protective gear and left it all in a pile in a corner of the room and lay down in the bed, noting there was no mirror over the wall-mounted sink; the room was very sparsely furnished indeed. Instead I stared at the bright skylight and decided that Daniel had betrayed me for exactly the reason he stated: it was beyond my comprehension and I knew I belonged by his side.

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***