The smell of formalin and boiled away sulfur hit the air like a wall of acid.
Even forty yards away inside the cryo-vault, Arthur’s eyes began to water wildly as the acrid, skin-burning vapor pierced the seals of his breathing mask. Outside in the main tiered arena, the eighty-four liberated young chimeras began to cough and wheeze. Their sensitive breathing tracts burned as the heavy, yellowish-gray gas drifted downward from the ceiling vents like a headsman’s blanket.
“Formalin and sulfur mustard!” Arthur yelled, coughing into his mask as he sprinted out of the vault into the main hall. “It’s heavier than air! In ninety seconds, it will pool along the floor where the juveniles are resting and penetrate the permeable membranes of the incubation vats!”
“The air-flow shut-off valves are locked behind air-powered deadbolts on the ceiling narrow high walkways!” Tanya shouted, holding her rifle as she directed her rangers to wet emergency fleece blankets with saline to cover the younger animals. “We can’t climb up there without our respirators melting through!”
Arthur’s mind operated with the cold, hyper-sped up care of a trauma surgeon in a mass-casualty crisis. He didn’t panic. He analyzed the chemical properties of the threat. Formalin is formaldehyde gas dissolved in water, highly soluble. Then he rapidly stopped by bitter-salt ammonia and hot steam. Sulfur mustard is an alkylating agent whose toxic vesicant properties can be hydrolyzed by hypertonic bitter-salt solutions.
