"The Grief"

The survivor lay strapped tight to a table, powerless to make anything but the slightest movements. He was completely naked, his captors denying him even the smallest dignity. The room was a brilliant shade of white, giving him the illusion that he wasn't in a room at all. If he was able to relax, if he allowed his vision to blur, it would seem as if he was in the middle of a void, nothing but an empty white field as far as he could see. The room was almost barren, its only features being the table he'd come to accept as a prison, and a two-way mirror on the right-hand wall. He knew it wasn't a real mirror. They didn't have the simple decency to even make it clear he was being watched. He wasn't angry at them, though. He couldn't be angry. At this point his brain had the capacity for only one thought, only one idea. He needed to get rid of the thing in his chest. He could feel it eating away at his insides. Every second the pain found a way to grow worse. It had to go away, he told himself.

"So what is it?" asked the woman behind the mirror. "This man is the...what was it...the Aetos Kaukasios you've been talking about?"

"No, no," dismissed the man. "The Aetos Kaukasios is inside of him. That poor bastard," he said with a tap at the window, "is just the container. The guy cursed to protect the world."

"You aren't making any sense," said the woman. "Explain the whole story to me."

"The only one who knows the whole story is him, and he's not willing to talk about it. Or anything else for that matter, really. What we do know is this. He was with a woman, we're not sure who, when she killed herself."

"Killed herself?" repeated the woman, a shocked look on her face. "Good God, why?"

"We don't know. We assume it has to do with this...thing. Maybe it was born inside of her, maybe she was just another of its many victims. Hell, maybe what she did had nothing to do with it. But she killed herself, and that's when it spread."

"When what spread?" asked the woman, standing up from her seat. "What does that thing have to do with it?"

"We have an eyewitness. Landlord who heard too much noise and barged into the apartment at the last minute. He saw...something black. Didn't have a real shape. It was almost like a liquid. A tangible shadow. The thing leapt from her body, and then just...seeped through his skin."

"And then what happened? Was he hurt?"

"No, but he wanted to be. He lost the capacity for intelligent speech mere minutes afterwards. 'Burning,' he kept repeating. Burning, burning, burning..." The man flicked his thumb each time he said the word, as if there was a lighter in his hand. "He scrambled around the apartment and reached for a knife in the girl's kitchen. Fortunately, the landlord managed to restrain him. He called the police, the police called the government, and the government..." The man smirked. "Well, they called us."

"But what about the thing itself?" asked the woman impatiently. "Just what does it do?" The man opened a nearby folder and pulled out two small photographs.

"This is a healthy human liver," said the man, showing one of the pictures to the woman. "Now, this is his." He showed her a second picture, most of the liver being obscured by an inky blackness.

"Just what is this supposed to be?"

"I wish I could answer that. Performing a chemical analysis would mean opening him up for a sample, and we're afraid to so much as stick a syringe into him. Whatever it is, though, I'll tell you one thing: It should never, ever be inside a human body."

"Why?" asked the woman. The man looked up at her.

"You're sure you want to hear this?"

"It's my job to hear it," she said indignantly. The man shrugged.

"It's eating him. It's slowly...very slowly, I should say, eating away at his organs. If there's a pain worse than what he has to go through, I don't want to hear about it. And just as soon as his innards disappear, they regenerate, making sure the pain never ends."

"What about his mental state? That's affected too, right?"

"Like I said, he developed overwhelming suicidal urges almost immediately, and he'll do whatever he can to put his life at an end. Give him a free hand, and he'll dig at his chest until he's managed to pull his heart out. Maybe that thing messes with his brain, or maybe he's just acting how any normal person would in his situation. I don't know."

"That's awful," said the woman, looking out the window. The survivor was writhing around as much as his straps would allow. "At least it'd have to end sometime, though, right?" The man sighed.

"He hasn't eaten or slept in nearly two weeks. As far as natural causes go, that...thing has made him practically immortal. Maybe it's different if his death comes through unnatural means. Maybe. We're sure as hell not going to try and find out."

"Kill me, you bastards!" yelled the survivor. "I know you're there! Kill me kill me kill me!" The woman put her hand on the window.

"Doctor, this organization may have a history of shady activity, but I can't possibly allow you to let this man keep suffering like this. If you can't get rid of the thing, at least put him out of his misery."

"You think it breaks your heart?" scoffed the man. "My job's to watch him every day. But, well...you said 'if we can't get rid of the thing.' This is the closest thing we can do to that."

"What in God's name do you mean?" asked the woman, putting her hands to her hips. "You've got one minute to justify yourself or I'm shooting him and firing you."

"Remember, it transferred to him when that woman killed herself," explained the man. "We don't know much about him, or the woman he was with, but we know the two must have been close. Our theory is that Aetos Kaukasios is...some type of organism. An organism that reproduces through grief."

"Reproducing through grief?" repeated the woman. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Let's say this thing inhabits a host body. A human body. For some reason or other, this host kills themselves. We believe that somehow, this creature detects every person that will end up feeling grief over the host's death. Maybe...maybe it splits up, makes a host out of every last one of them, fills them with the same pain this guy's going through. They all kill themselves, and Aetos Kaukasios has a newer, larger generation of grieving hosts to consume."

"My God..." said the woman, imagining the beast's potential.

"We were lucky enough to capture this thing while it was young. We don't know who this woman was...God, I wish I was able to apologize to her for what happened...but it seems like she didn't have the best life. This subject is the only host for our little monster that we know of. That we know of. You'd better hope we know right. Now, imagine if we let him have his way. If he kills himself, everyone he knows will get infected with the grief. They kill themselves, and then..."

"So it's let one person suffer or let the whole world die," said the woman, looking back at the survivor through the window.

"Not an easy decision," added the man.

"But what's going to happen to him?" asked the woman. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"We're looking into it, I promise you. Of course, easy solutions are always hard to come by. Right now, it doesn't seem like there's anything we can do." The man looked out the window. The survivor was vainly moving his hands, almost as if he wished to tear open his stomach and remove the beast himself.

"As far as we know," said the man solemnly. "He has no choice but to just stay there. To stay and live with the grief. Forever."