The man with the cane selects the bags he wants and the custodians haul them inside the room, dumping them unceremoniously into different piles. When they are done, the custodians return the remaining items back into the cart, replace the tarpaulin and drag the cart back through the dirt and debris, out towards the elevator.
In the room, fluids begin to leak from some of the bags, mingling with the fresh footprints on the grimy floor. There are bags in four of the five corners of the room. The largest has been set aside and left in the centre.
On his own now, the man begins to examine his new arrivals.
Tap, tap, tap
Starting with one pile..
Tap, tap, tap…
before moving to another,
Tap, tap, tap…
and eventually,
Tap, tap, tap…
turning to the centre of the room.
Before he walks to the last bag, he flicks a switch on the wall then grabs a narrow set of drawers with wheels and drags it with him. As he makes his way to the centre of the room, the floor rises beneath the bag creating a table that reaches the man’s waist. He cannot see any identification on the bag, which is unsurprising. Turning to the set of drawers, he extracts a pair of rubber gloves and, without opening the bag more than a few inches, cautiously slips his arm in. He gropes around until he finally finds what he is looking for and extracts a slim folder. Snapping it open, his rheumy eyes flick through numbers and graphs, through pages of text and pages of photographs before snapping it shut again.
For a moment, he leans on the table, gazing at the closed binder. Then, he gently takes the zipper and slowly opens the bag fully. It is the first time that he has seen the affects of Substance Q on a live human subject. The next stage had begun. Something had to be done.
Taptaptaptaptaptaptap
He scrambles to the wall, sweeps the assortment of paperwork, coffee cups, Styrofoam containers and other odds and ends off the counters until he finds a First Aid box. Inside are phials of clear fluid. There are no labels on any of them. Rubbing his thumb over them, he selects one and rummages again until he finds a needle.
Taptaptaptaptaptaptap
Tearing off the seal with his teeth, he thrusts the needle into the phial, measures out 50ml and plunges it into the neck of the body. Her eyelids flick open. The pupils dilate. That was all he needed.
She cannot be reclaimed, but she can be recycled.
The next stage must begin immediately.