“It’s not working!” James shouted, pressing the button again and again. Savic grabbed the tablet from him and pressed the button himself.
A was slippery with blood now, thrashing wildly against his bonds.
“Get us out of here!” Ceglowski shouted.
Everyone in the audience chamber was standing, watching through the glass.
With a roar, O snapped the chest bond and kicked the testing bed back away from him.
Shots were fired by the guard approximately 13 seconds into the demonstration, in an attempt to kill Private Gruin. The shots were unsuccessful.
O was on the guard in two steps. With a cry of joy, O began to beat the guard to death with his own rifle.
“Somebody do something!” Montez shouted in the observation chamber.
“Cha!” Massey shouted over the intercom. “Can you trigger the gel from in the room?”
Cha was cowering in the corner.
O had finished with the guard and turned toward Cha.
Blood type A was hemorrhaging freely now, more pulp than man, but still screaming. A horrible, wet cry.
“Hey!” Ceglowski yelled from his bed, seeing O headed towards Cha. “Hey you son of a bitch! Gruin! Over here!”
Eighteen seconds.
Private Ceglowski called Private Gruin to him, trying to distract him from Dr. Cha.
But O had Cha in his arms and crushed his rib cage with his bare hands, throwing the young doctor down on the floor like an old doll.
In the viewing room, Montez shouted to his aide. “That’s it! Give me your gun!”
“You can’t shoot through the glass!” James warned. The bullet would bounce back—it would ricochet.
“I know that,” Montez spat. He pushed through them all to the door. “I’ll kill him myself.”
“Wait!” Dr. Savic begged.
The clock read thirty-two seconds.
General Montez took the firearm from his aide and exited the viewing room. There was a guard in front of the entrance to the testing room, however I assume General Montez ordered him to stand aside. Montez must have also ordered the safety attendant to admit him through the isolation chamber and into the testing room. The door sealed and locked behind Montez, according to protocol.
Then Montez was in the test room, the gun extending naturally, like it was a part of his arm.
His first shot was not for O, but for A, who was bubbling now, his blood boiling like lava as it ran down the black testing bed.
His second shot caught O in the back. His third went through the neck, and by then O had turned and crossed the space between Ceglowski and Montez in one giant stride and had his hands around Montez’s throat.
Four and five went into O’s belly. Only then, with four bullet holes in him, did he die. He slid over to the side with a heavy, sludging sound.
For a moment, the only sound James heard was AB, who was reciting the Lord’s Prayer under his breath at top speed.
“He shot them,” Massey said, as if stating it for the record. “He shot them!”
Then Ceglowski said, “General Montez?!”
After shooting Private Sands (type A) and Private Gruin, General Montez began to show signs of exposure (approx. 45 seconds into demonstration).
Montez had sunk to the floor, covered with Gruin’s blood.
“A general who shoots his own men, Ceglowski. Don’t you see, this is all I am? In the end, I’m just a killer. This uniform—” He started scratching at his lapels. “These medals!” He started removing the medals.
“They are for killing. For killing. What was it for, what we went through? It was so I could kill more and more men. One by one. By the dozens, hundreds, thousands? What does it matter? I’m a killer. And so are they!”
He turned and pointed into the viewing room.
“Blood type AB,” Dr. Massey said, fascinated. “Paranoid delusions. There they are.”
“Killers, killers, killers. Murderers, all of us. Cannibals. Flesh eaters. And we did it to you, Ceglowski. A good boy like you and now we killed you.”
General Montez brought the gun up.
“General, don’t!” Ceglowski cried.
But Montez brought the gun up to his own face and placed the barrel in between his teeth and blew the back of his head off.
“Dear God,” said Dr. Savic. Tears were coursing down his face.
Then, the godforsaken gel showered down.
One minute, thirty-two seconds.
Whatever jam, whatever glitch there had been had resolved itself and now the gel fell, trapping MORS to the floor where it lay quietly along with the bodies of General Montez, the guard, the O, and Dr. Cha.
The gel turned into foam and bubbled up over the type A, whose bloody corpse was still bound to the tilted test bed, and the AB, who was quietly and steadily muttering, raving, and maybe even laughing.
Ceglowski sagged forward against his bonds, weeping as the material rained down on him.
“Get me out of here!” he railed.