Invasive Procedures Read Online Free

terror, shook the bars again vigorously, screaming in a panicked frenzy.
    Frank felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t often that he used animals as test subjects, but sometimes the occasion required it. When it did, the cold detachment necessary for such work somehow eluded him. He found himself liking the animals, giving them names, even—the cardinal sin of science.
    “It’s only a sedative,” he said, annoyed for feeling the need to explain himself. “It’s not going to kill you.”
    The monkey continued screaming.
    “I can’t have you biting me. If you’d keep your trap shut when I’m in there, we wouldn’t have to do it this way.”
    The gas billowed into the animal’s face.
    After a moment, the monkey staggered, then slumped lazily to the cage floor, fast asleep.
    Frank entered another command into the computer, and the ventilation fan stopped and spun in the opposite direction, sucking the gas back up into the air shaft. A loud buzzer followed, sounding an all clear, then the holding-cell door hissed open. Frank waddled inside, opened the cage, and clipped a heart monitor on one of the monkey’s fingers. The monitor beeped, and a bead of light, bouncing up and down rhythmically, appeared on the LCD screen.
    Good, he thought. Heart rate’s normal.
    He set the monitor aside and lifted the monkey’s limp right arm. Then, being careful not to prick himself, he uncapped a needle, found a suitable vein, and took a small blood sample. When done, he dropped the used syringe into the biohazard chute at the back of the cell and slid the vial of blood into a pouch at his hip.
    The monkey sighed quietly but didn’t move.
    Almost done, girl.
    Frank removed the injection gun from his holster and turned off the safety. A vial of red serum sloshed inside the injection tube. He placed the tip of the gun against the monkey’s thigh and squeezed the trigger. The serum shot into the monkey’s leg. When the needle retracted, Frank holstered the gun and gathered his things.
    “This could be your last dose, girl. If you keep getting better, I’ll get you a really big banana.”
    He exited the holding cell and went through a series of doors until he reached the main lab and heart of Level 4. It was an expansive room, filled with humming diagnostic machines centered around a twelve-foot-tall electron microscope in the middle of the room.
    Frank put the vial of monkey’s blood into a glass containment box and vacuum-sealed the lid. Then he sat in front of the box and inserted his gloved hands into the gloves attached to the box. It was cumbersome working this way, gloves on top of gloves, but he couldn’t risk contaminating the sample.
    Carefully he uncapped the vial and, using an eyedropper, placed a drop of blood onto a slide. A robotic arm whisked the slide away and slid it into the electron microscope.
    Moments later, the electron micrograph appeared on the monitor.
    It looked clean. There were no virions that Frank could see. The blood appeared completely virus free.
    Frank knew better than to get too excited. The monkey was only a single subject. He couldn’t be certain that it had been the red countervirus he had been administering that was responsible for eradicating the virus.
    Still, after all the success he had had in eradicating the virus in petri dishes using the same red countervirus, Frank felt optimistic.
    There was a beep in his headset, and a woman’s voice sounded. “Dr. Hartman?”
    Frank recognized the singsonginess of the voice at once and resisted the urge to sigh audibly. It was General Temin’s secretary, and her calling meant only one thing.
    “This is Dr. Hartman,” he said.
    “Your presence is requested in General Temin’s office immediately,” she said. The words came out of her so sweetly that it was almost as if sheconsidered the message the best of news, as if Frank did nothing more than sit around all day idly waiting for the good general to bless him with his presence.
    Rather than