Away From the Sun by Jason D. Morrow

woman said. “You were infatuated with her.”
    “Willow was the perfect test subject.”  
    Willow?
    “She trusted me, and her family lives a thousand miles away,” he said. “These two were supposed to keep her here. I’m not sure what happened. I left for one minute.”
    A thought hit me like a truck. The text I got from Willow. She was supposed to meet with a professor. They met. I never heard from her again. This was the man that she made plans with. This was the man that killed her. And now some virus had spread across the entire campus. For all I knew, it had spread further. I wanted to throw up, but I knew I had to stay silent. I held my hand against my mouth, trying to stifle my shaking body. What was going on here?
    “Reporters are going to figure out it started in this lab,” the woman said. “They might even figure out that it was your super-vaccine gone bad.”
    “And I will deal with them accordingly,” he said. “They may ask questions at first, but soon, the news will divert from here. This thing is going to spread like wildfire. The world won’t know what to do.”
    “I don’t care about all that right now,” the woman said. “Let’s just get what we came for and get out of here. Where is the canister?”
    The man didn’t answer, but I could hear his footsteps moving closer to the closet. I just knew that’s where he was going. Was he going to find me? I gripped the gun tighter in my hands. I might have been shaky, but it would be hard to miss from this short of a distance. I sat on the floor, waiting. The doorknob twisted and I held the gun up, pointing it to where I thought his chest might be when the door opened. Light broke through as the door cracked outward. My finger was on the trigger ready to pump him full of bullets.
    But he stopped.  
    “Hold on,” he said. His hand let go of the doorknob. “That’s right, I moved the cooler over here.” His steps carried him away from the closet. I didn’t know I had been holding my breath until I finally breathed outward. I wasn’t sure who had been luckier—him or me.  
    “You only want the one?” he asked the woman.  
    “It’s the only one I care about for now,” she says. “I’ll make sure it is kept safe and stored away.”
    “You won’t keep it with you?” he asked.  
    “It will be safe,” she answered.  
    “Things could get ugly out there,” he said. “What if you find out that you need it and you aren’t near it? I highly recommend that you keep it near you.”
    “You shouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “I will find a way to transport it to me if I need it.”
    Nothing more was said. I don’t know what came over me, but for some reason I gained the confidence to move closer to the crack in the door. I wanted to see the killer. I wanted to see the man that was responsible for Willow’s death, for the crazy people that attacked anything that moved.  
    I didn’t touch the door. I tried to see out the best I could. At first, all I could see was the back of their heads as they walked toward the exit, the woman leading the way. Then, she stopped suddenly and turned around. Her blonde, cheek-length hair framed her face. She was pretty, maybe in her forties, but her blue stare was fierce.
    “Get out your gun,” she said. “We don’t know how many of those creatures are out there.”
    The man reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol.  
    Turn around, I thought. I want to see your face. I want to see the face of the man who is responsible for Willow’s death. The man that created this…virus.
    I never got that chance. Before I could blink twice, the two of them were out of the room and I wouldn’t see either of them again until this morning, when I saw the woman who was instructing Samuel—the woman who, now I’m sure, is Shadowface.

Chapter 6 - Waverly

    I sit on a cot in the same room I was locked in earlier, but now the door stands wide open. I stare at the cylinder in my hands, not