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

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,