Slowly, Jori sets Gecko Man on the floor and backs away. His face is pale and fixed in a fearful grimace, a strange expression for a strong man who has the upper hand.
Kristen stands next to James, her features impassive and calculated. She looks like someone who knows exactly what to expect. In contrast, James bites his lower lips, eyes unblinking, fixed on the lab specimen that now lays at our feet.
Across from us, Blare and Rheema stand side by side. The former seeming unfazed, the latter with a hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes full of something I can’t quite put a finger on.
After a long hushed moment, Gecko Man stirs. His feet jerk. His hands twitch. He sits up with difficulty and looks around, rubbing the back of his neck, wincing.
“You bastards,” he hisses through clenched teeth.
A thrill of disappointment runs through everyone. The other Eklyptor regains some of his color and seems to relax somewhat. I look to Kristen for a reaction. She’s still looking on calmly, expectant.
Gecko Man spits on the floor, his long, fleshy tongue flicking out of his mouth like a party horn. “You can play your little games. You can hold out hope, but your efforts are pitiful. We are the dominant species now. You are … you are …” He gives a slow blink, opens and closes his mouth ineffectually.
His impossibly big eyes grow bigger still. He looks over to his Eklyptor companion, then down at the crook of his elbow. Sweat breaks on his receding hairline and slides to the protruding ridges that border the top of his eyes like bony eyelashes. His entire body begins to shake.
“What … w-what have you …?” A convulsive fit comes over him. His spine arches backward. His limbs thrash.
I press closer to Aydan as if he could spare me this horror, this cruel uncertainty. He wraps an arm around me, and we practically shake in unison.
Gecko Man collapses to the floor, quaking uncontrollably.
“Oh, no. Oh, no!” his companion cries out.
“God.” Rheema pulls back and turns, unable to bear witness to whatever this is.
White foam spills from one corner of Gecko Man’s mouth. His fat, pink tongue lolls out, draping across his cheek and falling all the way down to his ear.
He suddenly goes still. Very still.
I stare intently at his chest, my eyelids petrified in an unblinking, open position. I watch his breathing go from agitated to shallow to none in less than a minute.
Kristen kneels by his motionless shape, presses two fingers to his neck. Her expression remains stern, giving nothing away. Slowly, she pulls a stethoscope from her lab coat and listens for Gecko Man’s heartbeat. After a drawn out minute, she puts the implement away and stands.
James searches her face. She simply shakes her head.
“What was all that?” Blare demands. “Care to explain?”
It’s what we are all thinking but can hardly ask in our current state of shock.
“Cure trial,” Kristen says.
“Looks like a bust,” Blare puts in.
“For someone as advanced as this man, yes.” Kristen pulls out a second syringe from her pocket.
“No! Not me. Stay away from me!” The more normal Eklyptor cries out, scooting backward from his kneeling position, but running into Spencer’s tree-trunk legs.
“How long have you been infecting this body?” Kristen asks him.
“Stay away from me! Stay away!” he continues to cry out, his eyes wide and staring fixedly at the syringe in Kristen’s hand.
“How long have you been infecting this body?” Kristen asks again, raising her voice.
But the Eklyptor is beside himself, gone into full hysterics, begging over and over to be left alone.
Kristen shrugs and gestures to Jori and Spencer to subdue him. She’s about to plunge the syringe into his arm when Rheema’s voice resonates hollowly through the warehouse.
“Is no one concerned with the ethical aspects of this trial?”
Kristen caps the syringe and puts it back in her pocket. The Eklyptor whimpers and curls into a ball.
Rheema’s eyes move over the crowd, searching for—what?—a sounding board? A challenger? An ally?
“Ethics were forgone the moment they started stealing bodies,” Kristen says calmly.
“Are you saying we aren’t any better than they are?”
“It’s not about better, at this point. It’s about smarter and stronger. If you want to survive, that is.”
“I do,” Rheema says, her eyes flickering down.
“At what cost?” Kristen challenges.
Rheema doesn’t answer.
“At what cost?” Kristen insists.
“At any cost,” Rheema admits, lowering her chin in embarrassment.
Kristen’s intense gaze goes around in a circle, making eye contact with everyone.
My mind reels with more questions than before. When Kristen’s gaze locks with mine, my thoughts freeze. She searches, reaches deep inside of me for doubt, disapproval, defiance, anything. I’m unable to offer her any of those. Her eyes are clear, offering no judgment, no recrimination. She wants a consensus, an honest one. We either agree and go on with this, or we don’t.
But if we don’t, then what?
We know that without a cure our chances are none to zero. So yeah, as unethical as this might be, it seems I’m on board.
At any cost.
“At any cost,” Aydan whispers next to me.
“At any cost. At any cost. At any cost.” Kristen’s words are repeated quietly, but confidently by everyone.
Rheema shakes her head, turns away and walks to the back of the room. No one judges her for the challenge, for her humanity. I know I don’t. We’re all thinking the same things. It’s just some of us are less emotional than others, more logical than others, more battered than others.
Whatever the reason, it all boils down to one thing … We are selfishly human.
With everyone’s consensus, Kristen wastes no time and plunges the contents of her second syringe into a struggling, but easily subdued Eklyptor.
We wait in suspense for the seizure, the foaming at the mouth, the stillness, but only the latter comes.
The Eklyptor passes out at Jori and Spencer’s feet. He lays immobile, breathing heavily for a long moment. We inch closer, focused on his chest and twitching face.
Kristen checks his vitals, then orders him moved to a cot. She runs back toward the lab and returns with a blood pressure cuff. She sits at the edge of the cot, pumps air into the cuff and listens with her stethoscope, her face less indifferent by the moment.
Aydan and I exchange many charged glances, standing at a short distance like faithful sentinels.
“How are his vitals?” James inquires five minutes later.
“Normal, now,” Kristen says.
“Why isn’t he … coming to?”
“I don’t know. If it worked, it could take time for his consciousness to find its way out.”
We watch on, barely breathing. After another five long minutes, the surge of hope that rippled through the group seems to have deflated. Blare makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat and walks away.
The man groans and stirs.
Blare turns on her heel and returns.
His eyes open one millimeter at a time. He grimaces and puts a hand to his brow as if the light is too much for him to bear.
He groans again, shaking his head from side to side, heaving as if he’s been running. He swallows with difficulty and croaks out a word.
Kristen leans in closer. “What is it?” she asks.
“Water,” he says a little louder.
“God, his buzzing is gone,” Aydan murmurs at my side, touching a hand to his head. I blink, noticing this for the first time. My heart stops.
It worked. It worked!
Jori hurries off to the side and returns with a metal canteen. He hands it to Kristen who lets the man take a few swigs. He licks his lips and looks around. At the sight of those around him, he seems to want to melt into the cot. His eyes are wide and full of fear.
“W-where am I?”
“You’re safe,” Kristen says in a sweet reassuring tone. “You’re safe now.”