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A low moan rolling under the laboratory door warned us that the plaguers had turned their attention to our door.
“Fuck!” Delight said, turning towards it. “Tens. Is that thing locked?”
“It’s locked, but I’ve taken off the electrical charge. These people are under duress; they may not deserve to die.”
I wanted to know who’d made him judge, jury and executioner, but I didn’t ask. Man had a point.
“How’s Mack?”
“Not showing symptoms, yet. The rest of the concourse is a mess.”
The technician looked up from her screen.
“Are any of you immunized?” she asked, and I realized, then, that neither she, nor her colleague were showing any signs of the disease.
I guess the look I exchanged with Delight was enough to give us away. Delight did a good impression of not being worried.
“That’s why we’re in a hurry,” she said. “We don’t know how long we’ve got.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Two hours, maybe a little bit more.”
“You’ve got another four before you start feeling it, maybe eight before the lesions show,” the technician explained.
“Unless it’s mutated,” the scientist added. “We could check.”
I looked at Delight, again, and she looked back at me. We both knew how I felt about needles... and checking would probably involve taking blood, and I was sooo not good with that.
“What are the chances?” I asked.
“We don’t know. Some bugs adapt faster than others.”
“When did you start?” I asked, pointing at the equipment attached to the air vent, and trying to remember how long it had been since I’d hacked into the security system the first time. No one in those feeds had seemed affected.
“Twenty-six hours ago. We got a call, telling us the plans had been moved up. When we said we didn’t have enough serum to vaccinate the station, we were told they were bringing in another supply, and not to worry, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely.” The technician stopped and looked up at her partner. He’d pressed his lips together, but he nodded.
“She’s right,” he said. “There was something off about that last call.”
I saw Delight’s gaze sharpen, and she took a step closer to the pair.
“What was off?”
The lead scientist flinched, and the technician’s fingers froze on the keyboard. Delight advanced a step towards them, and they both gasped. I didn’t blame them. There was something in the way Delight moved that radiated barely contained violence, and I didn’t know how she had hidden it before.
A loud thump on the lab door made us all jump—except Delight. She shifted her attention from the scientists to the door in one smooth motion, changing direction as she drew the Glazer and sighted on the door.
“Tens...” I said.
“Doors are locked, but you might want to brace it with one of those benches. There are...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but highlighted the security feed.
“Well, fuck me.”
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it emerged on a breathless whisper that had Delight in my head in seconds. She spun on her heel and pointed to one of the lab tables.
“We need that across the door, now,” she snapped, and then, when we hesitated, “Move!”
We moved. The scientists got the picture when I started to push the bench towards the door, hurrying out from behind the table with the computer terminal on it, to throw their weight behind it with me. It made a horrendous noise as it scraped across the floor, but that was nothing compared to the low moaning chorus seeping into the room around us.
“That sound,” the technician whimpered, but I turned the table side on the door, and tipped it over.
There was a clatter as what was on it hit the floor, and the high-pitched tinkle of glass shattering. I hoped it was nothing important, or irreplaceable.
“You’ll need to brace that,” Tens said over the intercom.
I nodded, breathing hard from pushing the weight of it hard up against the door. Together, the scientists and I turned for the next closest table, maneuvering it so it was wedged between the one across the door, and a bench that was hard-bolted to the floor. The door shook, and the moans rose to a howl.
“What the fuck is out there?” Delight demanded, and I glanced towards my two assistants.
Both were pale-faced as they stared at the door.
“We don’t know,” they whispered.
I glanced at Delight, and waved the pair back to the computer terminal.
“Work out how to fix it,” I said, putting an edge of command in my voice like the one I often heard in Mack’s. “We’ll watch the door.”
As I spoke, I caught sight of a shadow dropping out of the vent that had been used to funnel the virus into the station.
“No, you fucking don’t,” I told it, drawing and firing my own Glazer even as Delight reacted.
When she saw I had whatever it was under control, she moved so that we stood back-to-back and had a good view of all of the room around us.
“You got this?” she asked, as the scientists looked from me to the eight-limbed corpse on the floor.
“I need a bigger gun,” I said, and she gave a humorless snort.
“Don’t we all.”
“I’m not exactly loaded for bear.”
“How about loaded for those?”
She took out the two shadows that came out of the vent on the other wall, and I shot the third and fourth one that entered using the same shaft as the first.
The scientists stood, transfixed, two feet from the terminal they needed to be using.
“Find me an antidote!” I yelled, trying to work out a way to seal the ventilation shafts, as I wondered how they were getting past the security droids.
The droids.
Damnit.
“Tens?”
“Busy. Two minutes.”
We probably didn’t have two minutes.
“I’ll cover you.” Delight.
I glared at the two scientists.
“Move!” I growled, and they crowded close to the computer terminal.
Seeing them get down to work, I closed my eyes, sinking into the security system, and chasing the code that led to the droids. Strange how much they reminded me of the roving Ghoul patrols, in Bastien’s complex. Pushing that thought to one side, I found the protocols controlling then, and sent them the coordinates for the lab’s location.
It seemed selfish to pull them away from other areas that might contain people hiding from the spider mutants, or the plagued, but there was only one place the cure could be made, and it had priority. I wrote a program that had the remaining droids sweeping the ventilation shafts closest, and then I went looking for the nearest motion sensors, and coded their alarms as high priority response requirements.
Delight was shooting over my head, when I surfaced from the implant.
“Tens is right; that is some handicap,” she said, and I wondered how I came to be on my knees, with her hand on my shoulder.
Oh... yeah, she’d just applied pressure, and my body had obeyed while my mind was busy. I wasn’t sure I was okay with that, but it was better than having her shooting through my head.
She patted my shoulder, then shifted her grip to lift me to my feet.
“Now, you get it. Go see how the two stooges are getting on.”
I went.
“You ready?” I asked, as though they’d have had anywhere near enough time to work the process through.
Actually, given they’d already completed part of it, it wasn’t an unreasonable an expectation.
They raised their heads, and I cursed as I realized they’d been waiting for me to come out of my implant.
“We just need the replicators.”
“Where?”
They pointed to an alcove at the back of the room.
“Back there,” they said, and I could see why they hesitated; I couldn’t see beyond the corner, either.
“Delight?” I asked, and she started reversing towards the blind spot.
I moved with her.
“Bring what you need,” I ordered, and heard the hum of a printer.
Scanning the room, I found it, not far from the tumbled corpses under the vent Delight had been covering. I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder, pointing to it, as I headed in that direction.
“You two! With me!” she snapped, taking my Glazer as I passed and turning so she could aim in both directions. The scientists stepped up behind her, and I hurried over to collect what was coming off the printer.
I kept a close eye on the vents as I did, all too aware of the long, drawn-out scratching coming from the lab door. Occasionally, a thump would punctuate the sound, and we’d all jump. How long the door would hold was anyone’s guess. I hoped Odyssey’s reinforcements would arrive soon, but didn’t want to hope too hard.
There were limits as to how well anyone fought in a bio-suit, and I doubted they’d come in through the maintenance hatches, which meant they had a whole station of infected to subdue before they could reach us. The idea that they might not bother subduing the infected population crossed my mind, and I pushed it aside.
Odyssey’s reputation said different.
Mind you, that same reputation said I’d have been treated differently, and we all knew how that had turned out. It was another thought I shoved to one side. Maybe I was just an exception to the rule. I picked up the print-out and returned to the scientists.
“What else do you need?”
“It’ll be quicker if you cover us, and we get it,” the technician said, and I watched her senior colleague’s mouth drop open as though to protest.
She shot him a look that said more than any words, and he subsided, accepting the sheet of paper she gave him. Delight handed me back the Glazer, and signaled I should follow the technician. I guess she must have picked up the thought that it might be better just to shoot the guy and keep the technician, seeing as she seemed to be doing something constructive.
“Some people perform better under pressure than others,” Delight said, in my head, where the scientists couldn’t hear her. “At least he’s trying.”
As opposed to curling up in a ball on the ground and crying. I caught the thought before she could hide it, but she didn’t comment, just moved with her charge, as he grabbed a box and began gathering equipment. I left them to it, and followed the technician over to the refrigerators.
She collected a small basket from a stack near the coolers, and went to the first door, freezing momentarily when a terrible scream ripped out of the vents. It was accompanied by a high mechanical whine and several undefined bumps, and I guessed the drones were doing what I’d programmed them to.
“Keep going,” I said. “That’s one less to come out of the vents.”
I won’t say she relaxed, but she moved quickly from one fridge to the next, stacking bottles and vials in the basket, and then checking the list, one last time.
“Done,” she said, closing the final door, and moving back to the center of the lab.
I watched as she cast a wary look towards the vents, but I was already checking them, as well as the walls and the blind corner we needed to navigate next. Delight and her scientist reached the center as we did. We waited as the two bent their heads together checking their lists against the contents of the boxes they carried.
“We’re ready,” the technician said, casting an anxious look at her boss. “We should have enough to start venting it through the complex in the next half hour.”
Half an hour! It seemed impossibly soon, but also a terribly long way away. I wondered how Mack was doing.
“Just hurry!” and his communication sounded strained, even filtered by our implants.
I wanted to see what was making him sound like that, but he cut the thought short.
“No. You don’t. Just hurry!”
“Let’s go.” Delight’s voice cut through my conversation with Mack, and I wondered if she knew what she was interrupting. “Focus!”
Yeup, well, that answered that. I moved with her, as she took the lead scientist towards the dog-leg into the kitchenette where the replicators were kept. We kept the scientists between us as we went, but nothing was waiting for us when we entered.
The two scientists went right to work, while Delight and I took up positions that set us between them and the two points of entrance to the kitchenette: the vent set high in the wall at one end, and the open space leading back out into the lab. We could only hope the security drones were keeping the vents clear, because we’d lost sight of the ones leading into the lab, and wouldn’t get a lot of notice, if one of the spiders got through.
Stars, I hoped they were the only other mutants in the complex.
“How much you want to bet on it?” Delight murmured, and I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue.
It wasn’t a bet I wanted to take.
“Exactly.”
I divided my attention between the vent and the what the scientists were doing. Their fingers moved like lightning over the keys to program the replicators, but they only produced a small amount of serum each time. Or, rather, the technician programmed the replicators to only produce a small amount, and then passed the resulting liquid to her colleague.
After each batch, she’d stand and watch as he compared the two under one of the scanners they’d dragged in from the lab and set up on a bench. Half an hour, my ass! I lost count of the number of times they went through the process, before he turned to her.
“That’s the one, but we need to test it.”
“How? It’s not like we can open the door and ask for volunteers.” Delight’s sarcasm was palpable.
“We don’t need to,” the scientist replied. “We’ve got two infected people right here.”
I had just enough time to start turning to look at them, when Delight wrapped her arms around me.
“You’d better be quick,” Delight said. “Cutter doesn’t cope well with needles.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
I still couldn’t stop my feet trying to put some distance between me and the technician, and didn’t quite register it when Delight moved her hold from restraint to choke. She was back to guarding the entry to the alcove when I came round again, but she glanced down as I pushed myself into a sitting position, and then struggled slowly to my feet.
I glared, and she arched an eyebrow in a ‘whatcha gonna do about it’ kind of way, but I wasn’t ready to take her on. Later. There would be a later, I promised myself. She snickered, but I ignored her and turned to the scientists, instead.
“You get what you need?” I asked, taking three careful paces away from Delight, and retrieving my Glazer from the bench where it had been put.
The technician looked up from where she was observing what the scientist was doing with slides and a pipette. I noted the wary glance she cast at Delight, and then she opened the door on the nearest replicator, and pulled out a mug of, well, I don’t know what.
“You’ll need to drink this,” she said, passing it to me, and that’s when I noticed the beaker of blood in front of the scientist. It was a fairly large beaker. My world wavered a little at the sight of it.
“Is that mine?” I asked.
At which point, Delight took the mug from the technician and wrapped her arm around my shoulders, turning me towards the other wall.
“Drink,” she said.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
At least I knew why I was feeling lightheaded.
“How long was I out?” I asked, taking a sip from the mug. It didn’t taste too bad, sort of like a beef broth, and I didn’t want to know exactly what it was replicating. The fluid in the mug was still warm, so I must have shown signs of coming round, in time for them to heat it.
“Long enough.” Delight was unsympathetic.
“Did it work?”
“Almost,” said the scientist, at the same time as the technician said, “Yes.”
“Well, which is it?”
“We’ve made a vaccine, but we’re having trouble getting it into aerosol form.”
“Can you spread it by nanites?” I shook my head. “Do you even have nanites for that?”
“No nanites,” the technician said. “Not our department.”
“Can we find—”
“Forget the nanites,” Delight told me, and I had the feeling she might have already raised the idea.
“Fine. Where’s the problem?”
“We can get it into liquid form, but it stops working when you apply heat to vaporize it.”
“Oh.” I wondered exactly how much serum we’d lost working that one out.
“What about heating something else, then misting the serum into that vapor?”
“A two-step process,” the technician said. “If we can get it... Nah. And spraying the stuff into the faces of the plagued would work, but not before they’d attacked.”
“What about a way to stop them attacking? Can we knock them out, and then spray them?”
“N... Wait a minute...”
“We could gas the place,” the scientist said. “Pretty sure we’ve got what the replicators need to produce that.”
“Knockout gas would be good,” and wouldn’t I just like to know why Mack sounded like he’d been drinking. Man should not be slurring like that.
“Just hurry.”
“Do we have masks?” Delight wanted to know.
“We’ve got breathers and bio-suits,” which begged the question about why they’d been playing with this virus outside a proper lab.
“Where is the containment lab?”
They glanced at each other, and then back at Delight and me.
“On Costral.”
It was a good thing I was already leaning on the bench, because I felt a little weak at the knees.
“You mean...”
“Yes,” the lead scientist snapped. “Those madmen have been getting us to play with a highly contagious, goddamn virus outside of an appropriately equipped laboratory.”
He paused, then added softly, “And I’ve been going along with it because they have my wife, my parents, and my children in what they call ‘company’ accommodation’, and I couldn’t get them out.”
He looked so tired, and defeated, and disgusted with himself, that I almost sorry for him. Delight wasn’t so convinced.
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
“They monitored our comms.” He gulped, and then swallowed hard several times, his face growing paler than it already was. “That, and we saw happened to the guy who did... him and his family.”
The technician turned away from us, but not before we saw the tears start in her eyes, or the way she stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying. Her partner stood and awkwardly patted her back. He looked over at Delight.
“We didn’t know what we’d signed up for, and, by the time we did, it was too late. We could only hope a chance would come.”
Neither Delight nor I asked what chance. We both knew it was a chance to get away—and, up until we’d arrived, that chance hadn’t arrived. Anxiety showed on his face, as he started at us.
“That Mariner guy, do you think he’s got our families out, yet?”
Oh, stars, I hoped so, but I didn’t know for sure. I looked to Delight.
“I’ll ask for an update as soon as one’s available,” she said, and I saw her eyes take on a slightly distant look, as she did what I assumed was exactly that. I couldn’t be sure, because it wasn’t something I was privy to.
The technician gave a sniff, and gently pushed her colleague away. She reached out to tear off a piece of paper towel, so she could blow her nose and wipe her eyes, and then she squared her shoulders, and returned to the bench where they’d been working.
“Let’s do this,” she said. “We need to get the station clear if we’re to have half a chance of seeing our families, again.”
I watched them turn back to their task.
“What if you had an airborne counter-virus?” I asked, and they stopped, so I stumbled through the half-baked idea forming in my head. “I mean. What if you didn’t go for a cure, but for a virus that would attack the virus they’ve got?”
“It might kill them... and we don’t have years to get it right.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Shut-up and drink your soup,” Delight ordered, so I shut up, and drank my soup, and kept a good eye on the vent while I did it, leaving Delight to guard the alcove entrance.
