[ WP ] In a world where almost everyone is an unfeeling psychopath , those who can show emotion are shunned -- being able to display or feel emotion is considered a mental illness .

A hand draped lazily over the side of the tub, scarlet rivulets crusting down her fingers; the pool below having coagulated days earlier. 
 
 She'd filled the tub with water, probably in an attempt to spare us the cleanup, and in the last few moments, probably changed her mind, but by that point, she would've lacked the energy to pull herself out. 
 
 We'd pumped the slurry out of the tub, where the lab could analyze and then sanitize it. 
 
 It seemed like reports rolled out every day about that symptom. I went to a conference a few years back hosted by a leading psychiatrist who surmised that it might be a temporal shift, a form of delusional dissociation caused by the dementia, in which the patient believed herself to have left the present and entered the future - that is to say, she *thought* she was living an hour, a day, a week ahead of where she was. 
 
 The next speaker agreed with the previous one, that it was a form of disembodied dementia, but that instead of living in the *future*, these people thought they were living in the *present*, but *in other people*. 
 
 Both theories worked here, I guess. She believed herself to be the one having to clean it, so she figured she might as well keep it as clean as possible. 
 
 Her plan would've worked, if she'd been found earlier. She left a note, which we'd burned to decontaminate, and had dated it back on Monday, so mystery solved. 
 
 This room would have to be sterilized. We knew it was transmissible by blood, but there was credible evidence to suggest that it was airborne, too, so we took no chances. 
 
 The landlord had found her, and, at first, showed no signs of infection. On the way to the slammer, he'd claimed that he had n't even entered the apartment, that he called us in because the rent payment had n't come in past the due date. 
 
 His symptoms exploded once we got him into quarantine. Blood flushed his face red, breathing became irregular, and he screamed, pounded on the walls, threw the plastic chair around his BSL-4 room; he was definitely hot, no doubt about it. We'd been right to put him there. This strain must've been *extremely* virulent; he'd gone from being completely asymptomatic to the crash within fourteen hours. 
 
 Shortly after the initial irritability, he'd tried to hide his symptoms from us entirely; telling us he was fine, that it had worked through his system, and his immune system was responsive. 
 
 He wavered back and forth between the vexation and the negotiation phase; for a few hours, he would offer us proof that he did n't have it, that he was clean, but then he would flair up again, threatening us, screaming uncontrollably about how we did n't have the right. 
 
 The most perplexing part about it all was that these patients did n't seem to *know* they'd contracted it. They were completely blind to their symptoms, chained to Plato's cave wall. It was like all rationality left them, and, even more mind-boggling, some thought that it made them *better*, wearing their positive status as a badge of some kind. 
 
 Some cases could be cured, with a full reversal of all symptoms, if we could start treatment prior to the lacrimation phase. At that point, there was nothing we could do. 
 
 So, when he reached that part, we sent a guy in with his positive pressure suit to retrieve the plastic chair, so we could cook the virus, to prevent it from replicating further. 
 
 Normally, during the lacrimation phase, the patients become sedentary, and are relatively harmless, but every once in a while, earlier symptoms can reappear, and that's exactly what happened here. As soon as the moon-walker got his hands on the chair, the patient flew into a frenzy, attacking him. 
 
 He ripped the air hose out of its socket, then cracked his visor with it, and tore into his Chemturion sleeve, teeth penetrating through the blue shield. 
 
 So we did all we could do. We sanitized both of them. 
 
 This agent was hot enough that mere exposure was as good as infection, and great resources could be saved by taking the Napalm approach. 
 
 The mobile version of that suit, with an autonomous, battery-operated air supply was standardized equipment to crash sites like this, so that's what I was wearing. We'd perform a necropsy on the body, to further our understanding of the virus' effect on the host. It was chimeric, enigmatic; great minds had died while trying to figure it out. 
 
 I directed my trainee to go for the bloated hands, and I would go for the swollen legs; we'd lift her up out of the bathtub and swing her onto the tarp next to it, then pack her for transport. 
 
 Once the pump was done emptying the tub, I wrapped my hands around her ankles, then we counted to three and lifted. 
 
 He inhaled sharply and dropped her; she rolled off the tub into the mat, a water-logged putrefying foot ripping off in my hand. 
 
 I looked up to see what the problem was, and saw him studying his hand; a blossom of red blooming on the inside of his space suit. He looked around, then down into the tub, and saw what had cut him: her razor had been underneath her. 
 
 He chuckled. 
 
 > not quite what you wanted, but I hope you enjoyed it!
