End Of The World Challenge

 I had my try at something a little different to my usual flash fiction entries. The reason? Well, for this swanky little competition held on Emmie Mears' fabulous blog. 

Details of the competition can be found here.

I hope you enjoy my entry!
Date:  Saturday, July 28th, 9:19 pm

Update: Guess what?

I won the 'Chosen One' badge! Thank you to all who voted for me. This was a huge shock to me!

Lookie here, if you doubt me.

Long-Overdue

The lab guards’ bullets had slowed in the intruder’s liquid armour, freezing on the malleable surface and studding him like stars.

“Such a primitive race,” he’d barked, brushing them off like dust. “But it’s to be expected from humans.”

He’d approached her then and vowed peace with his curious eyes; green and red, like Christmas. Only he hadn’t known what Christmas was, and when she’d commented upon it, he’d demanded to see the ‘specimen named Jesus’.

Many stories later, they’d become oddly dependent on each other. She’d helped him adjust to Earth and he’d given her honest, albeit strange, company. It suited her well; no friends had ever much liked that her talks frequently took an intellectual bent, but this foreign male took interest in her words. And she did in his, particularly when the fellow scientist had divulged his reason for journeying here; that Earth was to stand as the location for his L-14V5 virus trials.

Humans were immune but as the only of his species to be, it was his responsibility to rectify. He’d withheld the account of the Hague planet’s attempt to extract his gene and weaponise it. His traumas concerned no-one and yet, she tried to engage him in personal talk as if she sensed his secrecy.
She straightened behind the microscope. “We’ve done it.”

They’d struggled for months with his uncooperative DNA. Outwardly, he was entirely human but delving further than his 46 chromosomes, he was a genetic conundrum with the structure of his inherent material so complex, it resembled a mesh of nucleotides with an incomprehensible base-pairing system. To further add to this, the Hydrogen bonds seemed to govern them into an unusual nebulous shape. Needless to say, isolation, then splicing for the recombinant DNA had not been without its challenges.

He snatched the vial and studied the fluid inside. “With this we can establish and eradicate the immunity?”

“You can protect your race now,” she smiled.

He replaced the anecdote and tipped her chin up.

Her breathing shallowed. “You haven’t done that in a while.”

“I was studying you then… I’d never seen a human before.”

“You have now.”

He braced her shoulders with sudden grip and crushed his lips to hers. She was forced backwards as one of his hands trailed down her waist, and tried to disengage herself but the wall gave way behind her. She gained her footing just as the transparent lab door sliced between them, and searched her coat pocket…he’d taken her access card.

“Don’t you dare!” she screamed, banging her fists on the glass in frustration.
But he downed a vial and stole his long-overdue death from its bottom. He’d not told her that his race was dead or that he’d extinguished the responsible planet, but he’d still felt a truthful bond with this woman before the end of the world.

When she was finally inside, she sat with his still body and stroked along his faint smile. Her bleary mind did not register the missing vials.

500 words

@Afsaneh_Dreams

Question: Can anyone tell me what the name of the virus is code for?