The Store

Monday, 6:42 a.m.

The alarm clock rang in his ear - its shrill whine piercing the thin veil of sleep. His hand blindly reached out and felt the surface of the electronic device. His fingers finally found what they were looking for - the snooze button. He pressed it, granting him another ten minutes of solitude in his bed.

By the third time he pressed the button, something inside his head became resigned to the fact that he really wasn't going to fall back to sleep. He rolled over one last time and looked at the alarm clock. The electronic display read 6:42. A sigh escaped from his lips as he flung back the bed covers.

"Time to get up." he muttered to himself.

****

From the opposite side of the street she watched. His behaviour was predictable in the extreme. Each day, the same routine. She could have finished the job from here, but the contract specifically stated that she had to acquire what he possessed before she made sure no one else could duplicate his work. She took another sip from the cup of coffee before she returned to the window.

****

The key stuck fast in the lock. He jiggled the key around slightly, tilting it upwards as he turned it - careful not to apply too much pressure and risk snapping the frail piece of metal in the lock as he had done several times in the two years he'd owned the shop. After a few moments, the tumblers within the lock aligned - and the door opened.

He stepped over the pile of post that was wedged behind the door, blocking his entrance. He closed the door behind him, locking it once again. He knelt down and picked up the post that sat on the doormat. Walking past one of the many freestanding display units stacked with comic books, he made his way to a small staircase that led up to the first floor.

This area of the building doubled up as a makeshift office and storage area, and also contained the kitchenette he'd had installed just after taking possession of the building. Dropping his bag at a desk he switched the kettle on. Picking up his mug he dumped two spoons of coffee into it, then opened the fridge, picked up the milk and poured it into the ceramic container.

The kettle made a clicking noise as it finished boiling. He poured the hot water into the mug and stirred with a spoon. Picking the mug up, he returned to the desk and switched on the computer that sat upon it. Opening up the e-mails he'd received from several of his distribution companies, he paused only to take a sip of the hot liquid in his mug. As he placed it back on a nearby coaster he heard the faint sound of the front door of the shop opening and closing. That meant only one thing.

Moz had arrived for work.

****

Moz had been in the shop for less than fifteen minutes and already he was on his third cigarette. Tim leaned against the main counter as Moz blew the smoke out of the open front door.

"How was your weekend?" Tim asked as he took another drink from his mug.

"Shit." Moz replied. "I took Maxine and the baby to see Paige and Jasmine at my Mom's house, and then we ran into Jo on the way out."

"Messy." Tim said. "Let me guess - Max and Jo had a row?"

"Bingo." Moz said as he took another drag from the cigarette. "Pretty unreasonable if you ask me."

"Hang on - the ex-missus and the current missus meet each other and have a row - what did you expect the outcome to be?" Tim asked. "All sweetness and light? I'm not being funny Moz, but that's hardly an unpredictable event was it - they couldn't stand each other even before you ditched Jo for Max - she probably knows you were shagging Max for a couple of months before it was all official, why on Earth would you think it would be any different now?"

"I don't know." Moz said. "People change, attitudes mellow you know. Time heals all wounds as they say." he mused.

"It's only been ten months for fucks sake." Tim said. "I think that phrase refers to a much longer timescale than that." Moz paused for a minute.

"I guess it does." he said. "How was your weekend?"

"Oh, you know - busy." Tim said. "We had abit of a rush on Saturday afternoon for some reason. The kids haven't broken up yet have they?"

"Yeah, I think they did actually." Moz replied. Tim nodded.

"Oh, that explains it then." he said.

"Christ I'm hungry - you want anything from McDonalds?" Tim began to fish around the pocket in his jeans and then removed some change from it.

"Yeah - banana milkshake." he said as he handed a pound coin to Moz.

"I'll be back in a minute." Moz said as he dropped the exhausted cigarette to the floor and stepped on it.

**** She'd already done some preliminary work on the layout -- a conventional enough unit overall. There was the main shop floor, a rudimentary office above and some sort of storage in a basement below. However, after acquiring a copy of the building plans a week into the job she realised that he must live above the store itself. A corporate group that she'd never heard of before owned the whole building -- four shop units with apartments above them -- although this didn't really interest her. While this posed no logistical issue it did mean that it was likely the object she had to retrieve was in the living quarters above the store rather than in it.

She rolled her shoulders as she lay down on the bed. After closing her eyes for a moment her mobile phone rang. Flipping it open connected the call.

"It's Ron." The voice on the other end of the line spoke. "You said you might need some support?"

"Yeah." She replied. "Tonight -- 8 pm. Meet me at the Queensway, at the comic book store called The Neutral Zone."

****

Tim looked at his watch and then scratched his head. Moz handed him a cup of tea before picking up a copy of The Walking Dead from the display stand. He stood and read the comic for a few minutes before turning to look at his friend.

"It's quarter too eight." Tim said. "You can shoot off if you like -- no one is in here and it's been a quiet day." Moz looked at him, then nodded.

"Right then, if that's okay with you, I'll grab my coat and leg it home." Tim nodded and Moz headed upstairs. As he returned to the shop floor the door opened and a dark haired young woman entered the shop, dressed in casual jeans and a dark jacket. A burly looking man who was walking behind her accompanied her. Tim said hello to them as Moz walked over to him. "Isn't that X-Men girl?" he asked as he nodded in the direction of the customers who had just entered.

"Yeah, think so. I think her name is Kelly or something like that." Tim replied. "Looks like she's here with her boyfriend." He joked.

"Yeah -- he's built like a brick shit-house." Moz replied. "Okay then mate, I'll see you tomorrow morning." Moz walked out of the shop and into the early evening air. Tim took another look at his watch and glanced over to his two customers.

"I'll be closing up in ten minutes folks." Tim called out. He watched the young woman walking towards the counter. He didn't pay any attention to her as he knelt down to switch off the stereo. As he got back up he found two pistols pointing at his head.

"You have something that I want." The woman -- Kelly -- spoke calmly, her voice even and assertive. Tim looked at her.

"What? The contents of the till?" He replied as he looked at both of them. Inwardly Kelly was surprised -- most people who had a gun in their face were sweating after thirty seconds and blabbering incoherently after sixty. So far, she couldn't see any visible signs of stress on Tim's face or in the way he spoke to her. "You can have it if that's what you want. It's been a slow day."

"No." Kelly replied. "Something else." Tim raised his eyebrows, suddenly realising what she was referring to.

"Oh, that. Right." He said. "Well, if it's alright with you I'd like to change the sign on the door to closed and lock up." Tim looked at the woman and then the man.

"You make one move I don't like, I'm going to paint the wall with the contents of your skull." The unidentified man spat at him. Tim shrugged.

"I'm sure that's a good look in your apartment." Tim said as he walked around the till and approached the door. He turned the key in the lock and flipped the sign over. "There you go, now no one is going to be coming in here now."

"Good," Kelly said, still keeping her pistol trained on Tim. "Now let's get this over with. Where is it?"

"Downstairs." Tim said. "In the cellar." Kelly looked at her associate.

"You stay up here and make sure no one tries to come in," she ordered. She returned her attention to Tim. "Okay -- let's go."

****

The cellar was lit by one single light bulb. As they made their way down the steps Tim found his mind swirling with questions. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs he turned to face the woman with the gun.

"You know, I thought there was something screwy about you -- you never purchased the issues in sequential order. One minute copies of Uncanny X-Men, then Astonishing, Amazing then Ultimate, never the same series twice. So, who are you working for?" He asked. "Biotech? Future Corps? Gen-Next?"

"It's not important." Kelly replied. "Where is it?"

"I think it is important -- I think it's important to know who's paid you to retrieve what's down here before you put a bullet in my skull." Kelly betrayed a momentary reaction to Tim's statement. "Ah, that's it -- it's not enough just to kill me, you don't get paid unless you get the sample as well. Interesting -- that puts a whole new spin on it all."

"I'll happily shoot you right now and tear this place apart to find it if I have to," Kelly said. "But it's easier for me if you just give me the sample you stole." Tim shrugged and turned around.

"Interesting choice of words those," he said as he began to move some boxes. "As to steal implies ownership by someone else, and everyone who worked at Portland Down was employed by the Ministry of Defence, so technically it was public property."

"Tim, just shut the fuck up and give me the sample." Kelly barked at him. This was taking far too long in her opinion and it was making her nervous.

"Okay -- found it." Tim said, making a mental note that she'd used his name for the first time since coming into the shop. He turned around holding a box about the same size as a shoebox; only this was made of a dull metallic substance. He held it out to her.

"Put it on the floor and slide it over to me." Kelly said. Tim obliged, placing the box on the floor and pushing it over to her with his foot. It skidded across the stone surface and was stopped by Kelly's foot. Even without picking it up she could tell it was heavy by the impact it made against her appendage. Keeping the pistol trained on Tim, she knelt down and lifted the lid.

Inside the box was what appeared to be a pile of blue-grey goo that looked very much like the play-dough that she had toyed with as a child. As she looked at it, it moved slightly, causing her to step back from the box. She looked up at Tim.

"Turn around." She said as she pulled the bolt of the pistol back, chambering a round from the magazine as he did as she asked. As she raised her arm and aimed the gun at the back of his head something grasped her leg -- momentarily followed by a searing burning sensation and the smell of charred flesh. Kelly screamed and fell to the floor, dropping her pistol.

Tim turned around and saw Kelly on the floor clutching the wound on her calf. Blood was seeping through her fingers as she rolled slightly, pounding her other foot against the floor. Tim looked at the stairs -- he could see the sample push its way out through the door and into the main shop floor. A moment later there was a gunshot, followed by a blood curdling scream and the sound of glass breaking.

"Hold on -- I've got something for that." He shouted to Kelly, hoping she could hear him above her own suppressed screams. Thinking as fast as he could he pulled a first aid kit from the shelf and opened it. Unravelling a section of bandage he wrapped it around the four-inch hole of exposed, bleeding flesh, binding skin against denim as tightly as he dared. Already he could see that the wound was quite deep, something which frightened him.

"Jesus...Jesus...what...what the fuck...?" Kelly said between screams that were filling the room. Tim pulled out a small hypodermic needle and a glass bottle. Her eyes opened wide at the sight of this. Physically she wasn't sure she could fight him off with the pain she was experiencing in her leg. "No...no...please...I..."

"Just shut up and stop struggling." Tim said. "I'm not going to hurt you. This will help with the pain." He stabbed it into her leg and forced the fluid into her body. "It should also stop the acid from doing its job too."

"Acid...?" The pain killing part of the injection was almost immediate -- providing Kelly with the ability to correlate what had just happened to her. She grabbed at the collar of Tim's shirt and pulled him close to her. "What was in that box?"

"What do you think was in there? That was what you were sent to retrieve." Tim said as he found himself surprised by her strength. "Look we don't have time for this -- it's escaped." He managed to pry himself free from her grasp and turned around, scooping up the pistol and helping Kelly back to her feet. As she stood he handed her the gun. "You might need this."

"What?" She said as Tim picked up the first aid kit and started to climb the stairs. "What's going on?" He ignored her has he continued to make his way up to the shop floor.

****

They both stood in silence for a moment. Kelly had seen her fair share of dead bodies -- many as a result of her own actions -- but the sight before her made her stomach turn. Most of Ron's torso was missing, as if something had torn straight through it -- only there was very little viscera around his body. However, where she would have expected to have seen the remnants of internal organs and bone as a result of a close range gun shot there was nothing, just a gapping hole about a foot in diameter.

"Oh great..." Tim muttered as he stepped past the remains and made his way to the stairs leading to the first floor office. "I need to get something from upstairs." Kelly leaned against one of the bookstands as she waited for him. A few minutes passed before he returned with a small black bag in his hand. He motioned for Kelly to follow him as he walked across to the now fractured pane of glass where his front door had once been. Kelly hobbled across to him as he unlocked the broken door.

"What the hell is that thing?" She said as she grabbed his shoulder. She pulled him back and rammed the barrel of the pistol into his stomach. "Tell me right now or I'll kill you where you stand."

"That wouldn't be the wisest thing to do right now would it?" The tone of his voice made it crystal clear to her what he thought of that suggestion. "Or maybe you'd like to go looking for that thing on your own? You know, end up like your little friend over there? How's that work out for you?" Kelly looked at his eyes and saw that they were serious. She pulled the gun away and secured it in the holster at the rear of her jeans.

"Okay -- point taken." Kelly said. "So, are you going to tell me how we stop this thing?"

"You got a car nearby?" Tim countered. Kelly nodded. "Good -- give me the keys and I'll tell you on the way."

****

The Audi Quattro growled as it powered out of the underground car park, it's powerful headlights turning night to day for a few brief seconds as it darted through the city streets. Kelly grimaced as she found herself being slung around the bucket seat of her own car. As they turned a corner Tim pulled a small black box from his jacket pocket and placed in on the dashboard. It suddenly sprang to life and the satellite navigation system in the Audi began to display a red dot moving ahead of them,

"Be careful, this thing is very sensitive." She said as Tim turned the wheel viciously in his hands. She indicated towards the display. "Is that it? You can track it?" Tim nodded.

"It's a modified GPS system -- it tracks a particular radioactive isotope in two six one." He paused for a minute. "So, your car is sensitive? Well, so is sample two six one. It only attacked you because it reasoned -- correctly -- that you were about to hurt me. That's one pissed off blob of protomatter right now." He replied. Kelly shook her head. "Look, I'm sorry about your friend back there."

"He wasn't my friend, just some muscle I hired in case I needed crowd control." Kelly replied. "What is that stuff anyway? Play dough from Mars?"

"Close -- the Moon." Tim said.

"You're kidding -- that thing is...is..." Kelly tried to say the word but something in her head stopped it from slipping past her lips.

"Alien, yes." Tim followed up. "Look, I'm an exo-biologist by trade," Kelly looked at him with a blank expression. "I study alien biological structures, well, theoretical ones anyway. That play dough as you call it represents the culmination of over five years work on a micro-organism found in one of the moon rocks from the Apollo program back in the 1960s. It can secrete an organic acid that will eat through three inch thick steel in forty five seconds, it's made of a complex string of proteins and amino acids, it's about as smart as a really bright Labrador and I believe it's DNA markers make it out to be inherently female."

"I've slipped into some sort of a nightmare." Kelly said. "I should never have taken this job -- I knew it when they offered it to me, too much money for a simple hit."

"Well, whatever they said they were going to pay you was probably monopoly money anyway." Tim said as he turned the car onto the main road leading up to the city's civic centre. "When Biotech wanted a sample of H5N1 they sent someone just like you to the analysis lab in China. The lab was attacked, everyone inside killed and a sample taken, but somewhere along the way the canister containing the sample was cracked. The poor sap who they paid to do the job contracted bird flu and died before he ever got chance to spend whatever they paid him. The boys at Biotech carved up his body to their heart's content."

"What?" Kelly said. "You're telling me that this whole thing is a set up?"

"I don't know -- maybe, maybe not." Tim replied. "All I know is that they don't usually pay out to external contractors, and if they ask to meet you I'd expect there to be three or four goons that show up along with your contact." The GPS device began to emit a high-pitched squeal. "Bingo! Think you're up to this?" Kelly nodded. "Okay, let's go before it does anymore damage."

****

The streets around the civic centre were quiet -- pretty much as Tim would have expected at nearly nine o'clock on a Monday night. Kelly hobbled behind him, occasionally grabbing him for support. The pain in her leg was becoming more pronounced with each step that they took.

"Jesus..." she muttered as she stopped and leaned against a wall. Tim looked at her. "Is this going to get infected?"

"How should I know? I'm a exo-biologist, not a doctor." He said as he knelt down to look at the wound. "Well it's not bleeding so the coagulant seems to have done it's job. Man, that stuff is fast." He couldn't contain his admiration at the substance that he'd injected into Kelly's leg. He looked up at her. "Come on, you'll be okay for a couple more hours before I'll need to give you another shot." He stood up and helped her to her feet.

"Why are you doing this?" She asked. Tim looked at her.

"What do you mean?"

"Helping me -- I was about to shoot you, you could have killed me in the cellar and gotten clean away." Tim shrugged his shoulders.

"You may still have to do that, it depends how things pan out." He muttered under his breath. "Look, that thing is possibly the single biggest threat to life on this planet. It's a living bio-weapon of mass destruction -- if it wanted to it could wipe out all life on Earth within two weeks, and I have no desire to see that getting exploited by anyone. I need your help to catch this thing and two of us stand a much better chance than just one." They stumbled along the street for a few more steps before Tim spoke again. "Besides, I think you're kind of cute and prior to tonight I was going to ask you out for dinner."