Blaedergil's Host by C.M. Simpson (reading well .TXT) 📕

him. “Right. You heard me. Get back to work. There’s no point staring at shadows. They can’t get through the wall.”

He must have turned, and I saw him come back into view of the feed, watched as he began making the repetitive moves we needed to film of him keeping the viral feed even. His assistant came and went in three or four different ways, and I had to admire Tens’ choreography. Between the two of them, there was enough movement, and just enough variation for the looping pattern to be difficult to detect.

Delight sat quietly through the entire procedure, and I understood that Tens must have let her in on the plan, even though I hadn’t been privy to that communication. I was grateful, nonetheless. The minute we could move, we were going to deal with that motherfucking infection machine.

“And...done,” Tens said, and everyone in the lab stopped what they were doing.

The man who had been babbling, turned, anxiety written large upon his face.

“Can you really save them?” he asked, and Delight fixed him with a firm gaze.

“We are the only hope they have,” she said, “and we will do our best. Where are they?”

I listened in, as the scientists gave Delight and Tens the location of the families of the pharma researchers, and was surprised when the relay was answered by a new voice.

“Mariner Lead Scorvy. On way. Out.”

“Wh... Who was that?” the scientist wanted to know.

“The man who’s going to get your families back,” Delight replied, and I didn’t have to see her face to know the look of dark satisfaction masking it. “Now, tell me you have a cure.”

“Yes, but...”

“Can it be made airborne?”

“That wasn’t the delivery method we were told to design for.”

“Can it be made so, or not?” and Delight’s voice now held iron.

I waited, watching the scientist’s face.

“I... I don’t know,” he said, but his assistant was already sitting herself down behind the nearest computer.

She didn’t look at Delight, didn’t say a word, and I became suspicious, breaching her terminal in time to see her running through some hasty calculations, with nothing being sent anywhere.

“She’s clean,” Tens confirmed, a moment later. “Nothing hostile out, or in.”

“Anything non-hostile?” I asked.

I’d intended it to be sarcastic, but Tens vanished from the implant to check.

“Nothing,” he said, when he returned, “but good point. A warning might not have appeared hostile.”

“I have family, too,” the technician whispered, “and I want to see my baby, again.”

I felt chastened, but Tens was unrepentant.

“Can you aerosolize it?”

She continued working for a few more moments, and then her senior colleague joined her.

“Nice job,” he said, when he saw her calculations. “Yes. I think we can do this. We’re just going to need more serum.”

“Can you manufacture it?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“Not enough in time,” he said. “People are going to die.”

His face clouded, and his breath caught.

“My friends are going to die.”

“What about the replicator?” I asked. “Can it be...”

I caught the looks being shot in my direction, and let the words trail off, feeling my face heat with embarrassment.

“Sorry. Not my field. I’ll just go wait over here.”

“But it might work,” said the researcher. “It just might work. The cure’s just a formula. If we...” and he was off, travelling into a whole bunch of scientific terms for making the components of a cure using a machine designed to produce edibles, clothing, and alcohol.

“You catch that, Mack?” Delight asked. “We might be able to infect you all with a cure.”

I wondered if I was the only one who thought she could have put that better.

26—Counter-Measures

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