[h3]Zaqqum Research Center, Somewhere in the Grozny Emirate[/h3]

A few squeaks were let out as the rats took notice of the flickering heat lamp. A few of the rodents quickly lost interest, as they began running their paws through their head fur, or scratching themselves. The concerned squeaking resumed with the sound of the vivarium's lid being removed, as a large hand descended, grabbing a plump albino from the enclosure, as his fellow rats looked on in curiosity. The white rodent struggled as best he could, but the animal's efforts made little difference as he was carried off to the other side of the large room.

A single hand, clad in a blue glove, gripped the rigid corpse of the rat's predecessor, quickly tossing the deceased murid's body down a silver chute as quickly as the passage was opened, closing it as smoke began to rise from out of the shut vent. Unkown to him, the little white rat was going to be the next in a long line before him. The creature seemed to stop struggling as his feet met with the soft bedding in the tank, first scampering about in fear, but seeming to forget his concerns when the blue hand returned with a nice dish of water, which the rat was more than happy to greedily lap up.

Artem Kovalenko noted how quickly the animal took to the water. He had expected the culture would leave it unpalatable. Rat's were tricky like that, they were spoiled rotten by him. What animal would refuse the water for a minor taste, he had ruined these animals. Thankfully, they wouldn't be lasting long anyway. 

Artem thought for a second, thinking of how he ended up like this. He didn't suspect, when he was a student back in Moscow, that he would end up being holed up by a teenage mad-man in the mountains, feeding bacteria to rodents. The Emir assured him that this research would save lives. Chechen lives. But Artem was no Chechen. 

The research center was carved into the mountain face itself, a twisting labyrinth. Fittingly, the Emir's man for domestic projects called it the Zaqqum Research Center. The tree of hell, who's fruit burn the innards of the unbelievers. The name made the project seem more illustrious, more modern, than it actually was. One should not expect science-fiction weapons from a nation that must arm it's men with pipes full of gunpowder because a rifle is to hard to come by. Artem just sorted through whatever animal the Emir thought would be a good idea to let loose on enemy camps to try and take down a few guys before the real action started. 

The death, the sickness, this was more a prison than a laboratory. The methods were primitive in the extreme, and more than just rats were dying every day. Hell would be a welcome change from being stuck here. At least if the Jihadis had got him back in Dagestan, he'd already just be done with this all. Having his head sawed off almost felt better than whatever gruesome fate awaited him in these tunnels.

At least some silver lining came. News arrived to the researchers that the capture of a group of Circassian bandits contained a potential breakthrough. A prisoner, who had discovered some mice that stowed away on the bandits' vehicle, was showing unusual symptoms. The jailers though him to have a flu and naturally did nothing about it. A week later, the bandit was hacking blood from his mouth with the increasingly worse coughs, and marinading in his own piss, turned bright orange from a mix of dehydration and blood. It was around the same time that everyone in his cell started showing the same flu symptoms. 

The guards opted to shoot the men dead in their cells, but thankfully one of them had the foresight to send some blood, urine, and tissue samples to the center. 

It was plainly clear to Artem that the culprit was an orthohantavirus. The rodent-borne nature, and the bleeding and renal failures, it mirrored the deadly so-called Korean Hemorrhagic Fever the professors loved to speak about, but he had yet to see a disease of this severity. He termed the pathogen as 'Circassia Virus', a new strain of Hantavirus he supposed to be native to Circassia. Perhaps his medical training would actually come into some use. 

The animal would be farmed for feces until the virus finally claimed it as well. Artem could not help but feel a kind of pity for the creature, unaware of its fate as it happily lapped up water from its dish, unaware of the fate that befell not just it but all it would come in contact with. The Virus would need testing as well. The Emirate was never short on subjects. The Jihadis often found themselves integral to the naturalism they so reviled. He had come to hate it too, though he was no Muslim. The acts he had committed confirmed the absence of any God in this world. At least there was the relief of knowing no hellfire awaited him for these things.

The doctor, no, that term did not befit him in his own mind. A doctor is a healer, he had become little more than a bioweapon as much as the ones he helped create. He was no healer. He thought this as he watched the rat stand on its legs, beaconing him for food, and Artem obliging the pudgy little creature. It was going to die, but he didn't have to treat it like he knew that.