2 Unqualified

The door of storage room #207 closed, and the gray shelving units were jam-packed with items from top to bottom. Unless you've worked there the past 4 years, you would not notice that item #42194 had been taken from the second to the top of the second to the last row of shelves, and placed into the pocket of Dr. Xia.

Dr. Xia was a stern older man who always wore his white lab coat buttoned up, and always wore his identification card in clear sight around his neck. He always expected people to pay attention to what he had to say and had no time to say it again. He absolutely did not repeat himself. The other scientists and researchers kept out of his way, not only because of seniority but because Dr. Xia was a neat freak who expected everyone around him to adhere to the same code of conduct as him.

"Your identification card is not in sight, Dr. Lee!" he shouted at a passing coworker as he made his way to his room.

Before opening his lab door, he pulled out a tissue cloth from his side pocket and coughed into it. He crumbled it in his right gloved hand and took off the glove around the cloth. He placed the entire cloth-filled glove back into his pocket then opened the door with his still-gloved left hand. While he retrieved a new glove for his right hand, he glanced at his assistant.

"Mrs. Wright, those shoes are not acceptable footwear to be worn inside the workplace. I can't imagine what possessed you to come into work wearing such unpractical shoes. I'm going to have to factor this in on your performance review."

Mrs. Wright lowered her papers as her gaze sunk to her high heels. She had an important engagement to attend after work and thought she had left her flat footwear in her locker to change into when she arrived. Unfortunately, she had left her flat footwear at home beside her door with the rest of her shoes. She had continued on with her day hoping that Dr. Xia would be too preoccupied with their successful test results for item #42294. Unfortunately, Dr. Xia would not ever miss such a detail.

"You must not have read the rules on what clothing and footwear are acceptable, and what is considered prohibited. This is not only for your own safety but for my safety and the integrity of the work we do here. If my results are altered because you trip, fall, and disrupt this environment, therefore changing the parameters of the experiment, what do you expect us all to do? It is beyond selfish of you to expect us all to waste our time for you to change into better footwear before each and every important step is taken. I expect better from you, Mrs. Wright. You know better than anyone how important this work is. We don't have time for disruptions like this."

Dr. Xia placed item #42194 on the nearest table and continued on ranting. Mrs. Wright quickly placed her notes down on the desk behind her and muttered soft apologies to Dr. Xia.

Seeing her retreat from the room, he loudly exclaimed, "I have already retrieved item #42294, so make haste. We must not waste any more time with this tomfoolery. I shall wait ten minutes, and if you do not return, you will not be included in the rest of this project."

Mrs. Wright shook her head, grimaced at his loud tone, and made her way to the female staff locker room. Someone must have flats in their locker. She pulled her cell phone from her pants pocket and began calling her friendly coworker, Claire. She was a similar size as herself. Claire may have left her work flats during her shift last night. Mrs. Wright couldn't wait until they had the same shift again; she couldn't handle Dr. Xia alone. Lunch was especially stressful without a companion to vent to.

"Hello, Claire. Sorry to bother you—-"

Mrs. Wright strolled by storage room #207. Within storage room #207, on the second to the top of the second to the last row of shelves, there sat an empty box, and beside it lay the box labeled item #42294. It was exactly where it had always sat for four years.

Dr. Xia did not have any time to wait for Mrs. Wright. Indignantly, he snatched her notes off the table and flipped to the needed page. He did not need to look up to navigate by the tables and find the correct cage. He looked up at a clipboard hanging off the bars and skimmed the updated results with his gray eyes. His wrinkly hands tightly gripped Mrs. Wright's notes as shock overcame his face. He slackened his grip on the papers and tossed them at the nearest flat surface before he pulled the clipboard off the cage and flipped through the other recorded figures. Muttering to himself, he did not realize he had thrown Mrs. Wright's stapled notes at a chemical mixture that had already been spilled all over the surface of the table.

Mrs. Wright had reacted similarly to Dr. Xia when seeing the lizard cage's most recent test results. Her body had become unsteady and she knocked aside the vials onto the counter. She had sprung up and taken off her soiled gloves, erratically tossing them onto the ground and stepping away. She was just about to call a janitorial staff member when she heard Dr. Xia yelling at Dr. Lee about his name tag. With wide steps, she hurried to her desk and grabbed some notes in order to look productive when Dr. Xia opened the lab room door.

This was all unknown to Dr. Xia. What an unpleasant experience it was for him when he placed the clipboard back on the lizard cage and turned to retrieve Mrs. Wright's haphazardly placed notes. His gloved fingers began lightly steaming beneath the papers, but he did not notice this. He felt a bit dizzy but attributed that to the excitement he was feeling from the incredible results he had read.

"Stupendous!" he exclaimed.

The chemicals made his hand numb to the damage being done to it. Latex, skin, and blood trailed along the floor as Dr. Xia took quick steps toward his office. His short legs took him longer than it would someone like Mrs. Wright to enter his office, even while excited.

Before he could make it to his office, he swayed and stuck out a hand to grab the windowsill beside him. The blood loss was making him unstable, but he did not notice this.

"I need to exercise this body better," he thought to himself.

His left-hand went limp and the slimy stapled pages fell to the floor. The chemicals had mixed with his bloodstream and immediately attacked his nervous system. He decided to sit down and chuckled as he lowered himself to the floor. His lab coat protected his bottom from the unsanitary floor. He eyed it with a squint and noticed a dark substance marred the white tiled floors.

"I'll have to write a complaint about this to the janitorial supervisor. No one takes pride in a dirty workspace," he thought to himself as he wiped at the sweat on his forehead.

The motion smeared skin and blood onto his forehead, and he felt something tickle his brows. His eyes opened widely as he saw the mess the chemicals had made of his hand. Most of the latex glove had disintegrated, the tips of his last two fingers and around his wrist were the only places that you could still see latex material. His thumb, index and middle fingers were missing. They were brown, bloody, and gave off a foul smell.

He opened his mouth and bellowed a loud hellish cry from his pale lips. He threw the hand away from his face and looked back at the dark substance he had been criticizing beforehand. After he realized it was blood, he screamed out for help. He could barely get himself standing before he shambled to his office and grabbed the smartphone on his desk. One-handed, he went to his contacts and called the emergency medical wing of the facility. His voice was pathetic as he pled for help in room #212.

----

Sia slowly dragged the mop bucket alongside her to room #212 and stopped beside the biohazard container. She pulled her black hazmat gloves from her jumpsuit pocket and checked to make sure her respirator was snuggly fixed to her face.

"Clothing securely zipped and tucked? Check," her muffled voice declared.

She swiped away the caution tape and took some time to drag all her supplies and containers inside the room then closed the door behind herself.

"Ugh, did they slaughter an animal in here? What the..." Sia groaned in frustration and blew her breath as she saw the bloody tile floors.

The blood started off in small trickles between the long laboratory research tables, but chunks of flesh and blood led to the back room. Bloody shoe marks, hand prints, and a weird clear substance could be seen towards the back end of the room. The walls and floor were stained with more blood, and chunks of dried up vomit could clearly be seen as well. The tables were all cleared of vials and cages along the back of the room, but the desk with the placard reading Mrs. Wright still held paperwork and a clunky silver device that was tagged #42194.

"Rooooooon. This is.....oh my gawd. This is so disgusting," Sia whined in a high pitched keen.

She made quick work of all the disgusting solids first.

"Money is money. Money is money", she muttered under her breath over and over.

Eventually, she was calmed by the repetitive mopping motions and could ignore how the room previously looked and what it smelled of. She leaned on a cleared table and glanced over at Mrs. Wright's desk. Setting the mop into its bucket, she lowered her respirator and examined the silver device with her eyes.

"This looks like a video game part. I wonder what it--"

The room filled with red light and a loud computerized voice played, "Evacuation procedures must be taken immediately. Evacuation procedures must be taken immediately. Seek shelter within the basement levels of building R. Stop all activity and proceed to all exits in a timely fashion. Evacuation procedures must be taken immediately."

Before the message could repeat a second time, the earth quaked beneath Sia's feet, and she felt weightless for a moment before being slammed into the ground. Breathing quickly, she scrambled off the floor as the walls shook, and the glass windows along the back of the room shattered simultaneously. She fell against the desk and jumped away from the silver device as if it had stung her. It felt sharp and cold. The ceiling lights collapsed out of their holders and swung around on the wires.

She stood up once more and readied herself to charge at the metal frame of the door. Then she would hold on tight. Just as she got in front of it, she heard a high-pitched whistling sound, and her sight vanished. Intense pressure was felt all around her, and then a sharp pain inside her head.

ExplorerTech Industries had been wiped off the face of the earth. New Cinalia was the first casualty at the beginning of World War III.