The mask

The end would begin in Tokyo. The lurid lights of Roppongi would glare down as people first succumbed to the angry, weeping blisters, then the ragged cough, the shivering, and finally the blood-flecked vomit as the stomach ate itself.

Minoru Nakata stumbled into the road. People streamed past him, electrical impulses down the synapse of the street. Between their feet, oily neon reflections wallowed in dark puddles. Minoru lurched into the stream and grabbed someone by the shoulder. The man's eyes flashed with fear.

"Tanaka is a bastard," Minoru said, and the man twisted his shoulder loose of Minoru's grip, "They can't cut me out like that, I run that damn lab. And he's wrong. It wasn't my fault, it was an accident. Accidents happen in labs all the time."

The man wriggled away from him and was swept up into the flow. Minoru stepped in front of a girl.

"Tanaka thought I breached protocols, but everything was fine," he pushed his face right up close to hers. She wiped his spittle from her mouth.

"Leave me alone, you drunk!"

Minoru saw her storm away from him.

"Everything was fine," he said to himself, "I designed those damn protocols myself. The samples couldn't have been compromised. The breakage was dealt with, the room was sterilised. Nothing was overlooked, nothing could have gone wrong. I know, I was there. I was there, damn it! I was th..."

The traffic fumes had choked the streets in the still heat that afternoon. Breathing would have been unbearable without some kind of protection. He pulled the surgical mask from the pocket of his suit jacket and looked at it. He let it go. It fell to the ground like a snowflake.