Miss Keebly rushed back to the library after the meeting. It was dark and patches of snow littered the ground. The moon was hardly enough to light her path.
As she approached the doors of the Library she started to fumble around in her pockets looking for the key. She soon found the key and let herself in and then locking the door behind her.
She walked to the sitting room and gathered loges and stacked them in the fire place ready to lite. The matches were located on the mantelpiece and she soon had a fire roaring in the fireplace. She warmed herself for a minute and then remembered what her original plane was when she came through the door.
She walked back into the front room and towards her desk. With her cold fingers, she searched the underside of her desk.
"Where is it?" She whispered. She had pushed the hidden button a million times, but that night she couldn't find it. It didn't move around the underside of her desk or anything. She eventually found it. She pushed it with a determined force.
The sound of a loud click echoed through the large marble floored room. A creaking of hinges soon fallowed.
"I need to make a note to oil those hinges." She said, brushed a strand of blond hair out of her face.
She walked back into the sitting room.
The fireplace had rearranged itself to be ajar. A gape larger enough for a person to walk through had opened between it and the wall.
She sidestepped into the gape and fallowed a narrow corridor and down some steps into a well lit room. She pushed a little green button on the side of the room. The noise of the fireplace closing echoed throughout her little laboratory.
She walked to a shelf that was stuffed with papers and book, and took a four inch thick book down and laid it open on the work bench.
"Test one thousand and thirty-six." She wrote on the open page.
The meeting had sparked encouragement within her to try again, for the one-thousandth and thirty-sixth time. She had failed 1,035 times, creating all sorts of mutant bacteria that she quickly killed before they could course any havoc.
She walked over to what looked like a refrigerator and opened it. She took a small air tight bag out of it and closed the door. She took the material that the bag held and placed it onto a petri dish under a microscope.
Nothing. She sighed, placing the petri dish to one side. She grabbed another sample out of the refrigerator and placed it under her microscope.
At first, she saw a blur. Focusing the microscope, she began to see the bacteria's structure.
"Nothing is impossible." She whispered to herself for reinsurance. Placing a droplet of strengthened antibiotics, hoping it would take effect.
She watched, waiting for a change. The antibiotics started to attack the bacteria. She held her breath, watching. The effect of the antibiotics would take several hours, so she decided to make herself a cup of tea in the meantime.
She walked back up the steps and through the little corridor. She pressed a button located to one side of the smooth back of the fireplace. The gape appeared again and she slipped through it into the open sitting room. The fire was still burning and the room started to become warmer.
She left the fireplace ajar, knowing that no one would come poking around at this hour of the night.
She walked to the kitchen and placed a kettle on the gas stove and got herself a mug and a tea bag ready. She then sat down waiting while the kettle boiled. Her thoughts wondered.
She had gathered information from the old books that lay untouched for hundreds of years in dusty abounded rooms in the library on how the ancestors had slowed the effect of the disease on hives a thousand years ago. Sadly, all the papers about the cure had been burned by the QC when the rebellion tried to take over in 2293 AD. She knew antibiotics wouldn't work. That was why the ancestors had a world war, and why China created a cure. It was funny how the QC had covered that information up from the public for the past two hundred years and blamed China for the World War. The whistle of the kettle broke her line of thought.
She poured herself out a cup of hot water and let her tea steep in it. She preferred black tea when working in her lab, so she didn't bother with the milk.
The antibiotics will have to do, for the mean time. She thought. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
She carried the cup of tea with her back to the ajar fire place and sat down on one of the soft reading chairs. She took a sip of her tea.
The rebellion will soon want another report on how she was doing with finding a cure. She didn't know how she would reply. "I found an antibiotic that will prolong the life of the hive." Or "I am getting close to it, a couple of days now." She shook her head.
The fire crackled.
Why did she have to stumble on the disease and make it stronger. If only the QC had not removed her status as head scientist in microbiology, she would be able to find a cure with their technology for sure. She thought.
The sound of something knocking on the glass front door of the library made Miss Keebly jump in her chair. She got up and rushed through to the receptionists front room to see what had mead the noise. She couldn't see anyone. Perhaps it was the wind. She thought.
Snow had started to fall again. The moon had already set for the night so outside was pitch black.
She walked back to the big warm sitting room and lifted her mug of tea and brought it with her through the gape next to the fireplace and down to her laboratory. She took a sip from it on the way.
She placed it down next to her microscope and glanced at a newspaper clipping on the wall. It was an article about the orders for her arrest and that if anyone should come in contact with her, they should contact the QC Police straight away. The article made the hate in her for the QC grow stronger and it helped her concentrate on her work.
She stared into the microscope hoping for positive results. The bacteria had with stood the antibiotics. Her disappointment grow into anger.
She grabbed a blow torch that she normally used for getting rid of failed bacteria trials, and turned the flame on high and pointed it towards the microscope. The microscope slowly melted and the glass petri dish exploded into many small pieces.
"Take that QC!" she shouted. She switched the blowtorch off and then sat on the floor with her back to the counter and cried.
She failed, again. For the one thousand and thirty sixth time. Maybe it was IMPOSSIBLE.
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