4.1

 

Lola was assigned to the elevator, to keep it on the second floor, locked down. Savanna stopped at a control panel and locked down Engineering to prevent entry. She closed the stair entry to floors above three. These measures could all be overridden, but it would cause a delay, perhaps the time they might need if the situation deteriorated further. They had to isolate Suresh and subdue him if needed. Ivanna and Maricia moved ahead, taking the single flight of stairs down. Ivanna in the lead, they exited the stairwell cautiously. Ivanna needed no display to find the locators and turned toward the Recreation area. Maricia called out, “Raul, Lucinda, where are you?”

There was no response for a long few seconds. “We are in Rec, having a discussion with Suresh,” Lucinda responded, a tremor in her voice.

Ivanna and Maricia entered. Lucinda stood naked in a corner, forearms crossed over her breasts, hyperventilating and dripping in sweat. They could barely see Raul behind Suresh. They were both trapped. “I found them together in blind passion,” said Suresh quietly. “I caught them in flagrante delicto.”

Ivanna responded, “Not everyone is strong like you, Dr. Parambi.” She inched forward.

Suresh looked over his shoulder. “Please do not interrupt me, doctor. I am going to make Mr. Trujillo stronger, more able to withstand the temptations of the flesh. Lust is one of the deadly sins, you know.” Suresh lifted a laser scalpel and waved it toward Ivanna.

“So is anger, doctor. Are you angry?” She continued to move forward, now about fifteen feet away.

“No. And you should move back, or I will do more than an orchiectomy on my friend here.” He moved the scalpel to the throat of Raul, whom he had pinned against the wall. The touch of a button, and his carotid artery would empty his life into the room. “Back off!” Suresh growled in a near whisper. Ivanna took a step back.

“Your wife is here, Raul,” Suresh said, looking at Maricia. Turning back he asked, “Does she know?”

Raul looked at Maricia with terror in his eyes. He did not answer. “Did she know you were double dipping?” Suresh asked with more emphasis and grunted as he lifted Raul two feet higher against the wall. “Answer me, Raul!”

Raul screamed in pain. He went higher, his head against the ceiling. A blue-gloved hand had lofted him by the perineum, his genitals bulging, exposed. He was naked. “Answer me, or I cut something off.”

“No, for chrissake.”

“Interesting choice of words, my brother. Are you adulterizing for Christ’s sake or for your own? Or for hers?” Suresh jerked his head toward Lucinda. “Why introduce Christ into this? Why?”

Raul shook his head, not knowing how to respond.

“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” He flicked across the scrotum. A testicle squirted out and dangled, tethered. Raul shrieked in pain, writhing and kicking.

Savanna entered to see Ivanna flash forward and grab Suresh’s right arm wielding the scalpel just as it lacerated Raul’s femoral artery and vein. There was the sickening sound of an elbow wrenched out of socket, deafening screams of Raul in shock and crashing to the floor, and, on top of that, Lucinda’s bleating as she lunged to hold pressure on the gushing laceration. Maricia moved cautiously forward with the dipronyl gun. Suresh bellowed in pain. Wearing nothing but an open robe, he brought a knee up into Ivanna’s abdomen, lifting her four feet in the air. Unfazed, she struck his larynx and twisted his dislocated forearm, bringing the large man to his knees then to the floor as she landed on him. He swung with a punch, but his arm was parried and paralyzed with a jab deep into the axilla. Without the use of either arm, Ivanna easily immobilized his neck with her foot, making him an easy target for Maricia’s sedative. In minutes, he was chemically incapacitated.

Lola entered with a stretcher. Raul, with fading consciousness, was loaded with naked Lucinda still compressing his left groin, blood oozing slowly out despite the pressure. He was traveling deep into the land of dipronyl, his screams mellowing to moans and snoring. Lola took over the management of bleeding as they moved quickly into the elevator.

Maricia did not follow. She stayed in Recreation, surveying the damage.

“There’s something unusual in the air,” Ivanna said as she attended to Suresh. She positioned his head and neck so he could breathe. “A chemical. Do you smell something, Maricia?”

The room stunk of sweat. “No. It stinks like a gym.” She wandered around and picked up Raul’s T-shirt. There was a subtle scent of sex. His shorts were farther away, where he had been pinned by Suresh. She lifted Lucinda’s shirt then dropped it with disgust where she found it.

She had never been angrier in her life. She wanted to hit something, to scream, to escape. Despite this, a warmth in her groin and a tickle in her nipples began and grew stronger. The erotic feelings disgusted her and were completely out of place. Her neck turned pink.

“Is something wrong?” Ivanna asked. “You’re blushing.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. I think it’s a weird reaction to something, this whole farce, the entire disgusting mess.”

“Do you not smell anything different?”

“No.”

“You should leave and bring me a stretcher. Then you should stay out of here. There’s something in the air making you react.”

Reacting she was. She hurried up the stairs to Medical.

Zhivago took one look at Raul and said, “Spaniard with a bullfighting injury. Typical matador injuries, except this one is clean, not ragged and full of dirt.”

Lucinda responded, “You could say that.” She pulled a sheet from a nearby stretcher as Jekyll took over hemostasis. Lucinda wrapped up and moved into a corner. She was filled with loathing of her weakness, of her infidelity. She wanted to cry, but she remained strangely sexually unsated. Tears would not form. Her crotch beckoned. Her fingers began to stray down below her navel. With effort, she pulled back. She looked in a mirror. Her chest and neck were glowing pink, her pupils dilated. She left the room, panting and growling, conflicted, disturbed, and unbalanced to an extreme.

Maricia saw her in the sheet disappearing up the stairs as she arrived. She was glad they had not come closer. She was not sure she could have kept herself from clawing, hitting, or scratching her best friend.