Sometimes when we hear glass shatter it’s followed by cheers of Mazel Tov! Or laughter as everyone in a restaurant enjoys the spectacle of a destroyed glass or plate. When it happens at home, people are concerned, immediately sweeping it off the floor for everyone’s safety. But there are some situations where glass breaking is a bad thing, a very bad thing.

I arrived at the lab late that morning. Groggy, irritated, and a little hungover I opened the door to the building where overly chipper colleagues of mine were discussing the progress of our latest scientific breakthrough. We were making strides in the medical world, albeit controversial ones, and creating a disease that could kill off any other disease in the human body without harming the host. However, it was imperative that it did not come in contact with the host until after a sample of the hosts’ original pathogen had been extracted first and introduced to the Batman Pathogen, that’s what we were calling it around the lab, in a petri dish. This would allow it to learn the other’s patterns and kill it on the spot while mutating itself to become less harmful. Once that was complete we could then introduce a healthy sample from the host and ol’ Batman would mutate again to meld safely with it. Then, and only then, we could introduce it into the host’s body where it would become one with the patient and multiply, taking over their older antibodies and creating stronger, defensible ones. It would be able to kill off any foreign bodies that tried to plague the person. It was fighting fire with fire and allowing for new growth to flourish.

We found out through our rodent experiments that if you first introduced the disease without the separation state that it would quickly destroy the rodent from the inside. Not in a shutting down internal organs kind of way, but in a visually horrific, rapid body decomposition kind of way. The rodent’s body had started to break down like a decrepit marionette, bones dislocating from their joints and popping from their sockets. Then their every orifice started to ooze blood like their body was being pressed out with a rolling pin. Eyes popped, chests exploded. It was truly monstrous.

When we discovered how life changing it was when it was done through the petri-dish first, the rodent absolutely thrived! It grew stronger in every regard. And for that reason, our research had to continue. We had to introduce this to the world, it was going to make sickness obsolete and humans nearly indestructible.

So that morning, groggy as I was, I put on my hazmat suit and proceeded down the hall to my station. Not but 10 feet from the door I saw Luke, my closest partner, carrying a tray of multiple test tubes of Batman. As he looked up and saw me he smiled and gave a head nod, but he did not notice the edge of the table as he smacked into it with just enough force. When they say tragic moments happen in slow motion, it couldn’t be further from the truth. It all happened in the blink of an eye to the point where I wasn’t even sure it had happened as I saw it. When he hit the table the test tubes were violently ejected from his hands and flown across the room. Each one shattered with such an audible, high pitched, shriek I couldn’t help but cringe from the resonating sound in my ear. One of the pieces hit the ground and richotted back to Luke, cutting a hole in his suit.

The glass shards rested on the ground and sparkled in the fluorescent lights, almost otherworldly in their appearance, having but the briefest moment to give off this incredible sense of beauty. I suppose that is one of life’s greatest ironies that something so incredibly dangerous could look ethereal.

Regaining my thoughts, I yanked open the lab door to try to wrench Luke from the room but another scientist grabbed me from behind and pulled me from the room. They hit the panic button in the hall and slammed the door to the room shut leaving Luke inside.

With the panic button now sounding throughout the whole building, it was going to go on lockdown within a matter of seconds. No one would be allowed to leave and the CDC would be sent out with haste to resolve the issue. The panic button was not meant to be used lightly, especially with our project, so everyone in the building knew, if it was going off, shit was about to hit the fan.

I ran to the door of the lab, which was now bolted shut and looked through the glass. Luke was now trapped inside eyes wide with sheer panic and desperation. He ran up to the window and began pounding on the glass. He was locked in his own coffin, and we both knew it.

I stared in disbelief and terror as his panic turned to pain. An unknowable, clearly unexplainable, amount of pain. I immediately took back the thought that tragic moments happened quickly because the glass may have shattered instantly, but his death occurred at the slowest, most cruel pace in my mind. Just like the rodents, his eyes burst right out of his head. They hit the window with a gruesome splat. His face drooped like a stroke victim’s until the skin itself began to slough off. His body was limp but didn't collapse under his weight yet. I could see his muscles convulsing and moving like waves in the ocean. Red saturated his lab coat from the inside out and finally, horribly, he crumpled to the floor like a disheveled coat.

Rhonda, who had pulled me back from the room before hitting the button, was throwing up next to me. I couldn’t even register her reaction until I felt liquid begin to pool by my feet. Snapped back into reality, I looked down and noticed it wasn’t just bile spilling across the floor, there was blood mixed in. My eyes shot up to her face and saw her head was dipped harshly to the side, clearly broken from the neck. She had been infected and she was going down, just as hellishly.

The disease was now airborne and it was traveling through the building. Through the vents and down the halls. There had been others walking past our sector and, succumbing to human curiosity, had gotten too close. Their demise was imminent and their shed blood continued the spread.

Bodies were dropping all around me, but I couldn’t escape. All of the doors out of the building were mechanically secured for the betterment of the world. The rodents dying had been one thing in my mind but seeing the catastrophic effects on humans was another thing entirely. All I could do now was pray. Pray that the CDC would arrive soon and burn this building to the ground. Pray that Batman would never make it out into the rest of society. I didn’t think I had much of a chance of survival myself, the suit saved me from initial impact, but I had a sense it was only a matter of time. I helped to create this monster, I shouldn’t be alive anyways. We all deserved to go down with the ship. You can’t play God and this was our punishment.

“Please, dear God, burn this place to the depths of hell where it belongs and wipe clear this abomination we have created.” I whispered to myself.

I could see the vans coming towards the building.

“Contain this plague and let it not see the light of day,” I continued.

The men came out in droves in hazmat suits, running towards the building.

“With your Will, let it be done. Please God, let it be done. Amen.”