Parasite Lost

by Kyle Aho

  “Automated conversion? I’m feeling tingly in strange places,” Bren said as he admired the craftsmanship of her weapon.

  “That’s probably related to the blood loss,” she said.

  “What does it turn into, a carbine?” Dante asked.

  “Basically. Easier to handle in small spaces.”

  “It uses the same ammo too?”

  “Yeah I carry some discarding sabot rounds and hollow points that I can swap out for armor penetration or crowd control, whatever I need at the time.”

  “You are a terrifying woman and I love it,” Bren said.

  “Can we focus?” Alistair said.

  They made their way into the lobby area of the facility. They stayed close to the wall and used intermittent pillars as cover. Papers and office supplies were strewn around the area and panels on the walls displayed public service announcements and shout outs from upper management to the staff. Streaks of blood from around the lobby converged at a set of doors ahead of them as if someone had dragged a bloody sack to the facility beyond. A vending machine flickered and clicked as the machinations inside spun in an endless loop to deliver a product it no longer had. The only computers that weren’t still on were the ones in pieces on the floor. The blood streak continued beyond the sliding glass doors at the back of the lobby and they followed it to an intersection. A sign on the wall informed them that the security bay and research labs were to the left while the cafeteria and first hundred offices were to the right.

  “You think th’data we need is toward th’research bays?” Alistair asked.

  “Well we are looking for research data so I’d put my money on that, “ Bren said.

  They turned left toward the research bays and stopped. A man lay sprawled on the ground before them like a morbid doll. The floor around him was covered in blood. Multiple lacerations to his chest appeared to be the most likely cause of death and his face was covered in blood, as if someone had poured it over him.

  “Lovely,” Alistair muttered.

  “He’s having a bad day,” Bren said.

  “Well, it’s not like he’s getting up. Let’s keep going,” Dante said, with a tinge of reluctance. They continued down the hall and encountered more bodies, similarly mangled with their faces doused in blood. No one wanted to look like they were worried but in the back of everyone’s minds they knew something was definitely wrong. Up ahead they heard a terrified scream, followed by a hideous gurgling noise and a splash of liquid. A loud metal clang echoed down the hall.

  Bren motioned everyone to back up against the wall as he pulled out a well-polished knife. He edged along the wall and stopped at the corner, using the knife to peek around without actually exposing himself. All he saw was a body in the middle of a hallway freshly painted scarlet. At the end of the hallway was a door.

  “Nothing,” he said, putting away the knife and walking around the corner. The rest of the team followed, walking to the end of the hallway to examine the door. Drops of blood trailed up the wall and into nearby air duct. Like the first door they encountered to enter the facility, this one didn’t open when they walked up to it. The keypad to the right of it read LOCKED in blocky green letters.

  “Convenient,” Alistair said.

  “Can we hack it?” Bren asked before pressing buttons as if he knew what he was doing. He had little to no technical expertise but wanted to look useful.

  “Do you even know what you’re doing?” Alistair asked.

  Bren focused on the keypad, pretending not to notice his bluff being called.

  “Hold on, I can take care of it,” Apate said as she searched once more for her digi-key.

  “What’s this?” Dante said, hunching over the body of a scientist. He picked up a small card and wiped it off on his thigh, curling his lip a little as blood smeared over the fabric.

  He walked over to the keypad and swiped it through.

  SUCCESS.

  “Hell, that wasn’t hard,” he said with a big oafish grin.

  Bren glared as the door slid open.

  “Sweet mother o’ gods,” Alistair coughed.

  It was a laboratory, or at least what was left of one. Some twenty odd scientists lay about the floor in the same condition as every other human they had found thus far. The entire floor was a sticky carpet of red. Laboratory equipment was still running. Liquids were still boiling. Computers were humming. The air stank with the rusty tinge of blood.

  “Look alive. Whatever did this is close and I’d hate to disappoint it with a modest greeting,” Bren said as he armed his harpoons and walked into the room and to his left.

  Dante walked right and Alistair went up the middle. Apate crossed the room and turned the corner to examine a nearby hallway in case someone was, indeed, close. Their feet made sickly squeaks as they walked through the lab on the carpet of human fluids. They searched through lockers, cabinets, and under desks for anything that might be useful or at least clue them in to what was going on.

  Dante pumped his shotgun and an unfired shell fell to the ground. It was for effect. “Move a muscle and you’re dead.”

  Chapter IV

  Dante sat in the glossy waiting lobby of the penthouse office of MediSyn headquarters, a corporation devoted to advanced pharmaceutical and biological pursuits. The largest of its kind in human controlled space, MediSyn held a virtual monopoly on all pharmaceutical drugs and synthetic biological components such as cosmetic and performance enhancing surgical procedures. This included lab grown organs, genetic modifications, and even cybernetic hardware and software. They also trained and ‘leased’ the best medical professionals money could buy.

  A fairly new practice, MediSyn trained willing participants in advanced medical procedures for free under the stipulation that they work privately for the company a certain number of years at a reduced pay rate. This allowed companies like MediSyn to access a wide variety of professionals and advance their own research for drastically reduced costs. MediSyn pioneered this program, dubbing it the Aceso Initiative, and gained a reputation for having the best medical staff money could buy. A large team of loan officers, lawyers and other gatekeepers were employed around the clock to judge who is worthy of this staff, an unfortunate reality for those less privileged. Despite the high barrier for entry MediSyn continued to be the leading company for any medical solution imaginable. It also happened to be the company that Dante’s father, Sirus Opulen, built from the ground up.

  An attractive woman dressed in a way that suggested she was very comfortable with her figure approached Dante with a tray of refreshments. “Excuse me sir, would you like a drink?” she asked. Glowing purple eyes and the soothing metallic timber in voice identified her as an android.

  “No, thank you Sia,” Dante said with a dismissive wave.

  “Do let me know if there is anything I can-”

  “I know, I know, go away.”

  Sia, incapable of taking offense, bowed her head and went back to the desk in the corner of the room that also doubled as a charging panel and entered standby mode. Dante tapped his foot while he waited. He was uncomfortable for a multitude of reasons. The fact that his father’s waiting chairs weren’t made for men of his substantial height and brawn was somehow more irritating than the fact he was called to be there in the first place.

  Sirus and Dante never had a very good relationship and as a result Dante avoided contact with his father whenever possible. As a teenager his father’s response to making the winning point of the planetary youth gravball division was that the sport was for ‘worthless, brain-dead meatheads with no future’. When Dante earned his first medal of honor his father told him ‘good men had died to make sure he could get home safe and collect that trinket’. It was hard to impress a man who became a multi-trillionaire by the time he was twenty-five standard years old.

  Dante squirmed and shifted his weight while playing out various conversations in his head. He thought of what he would say and how his father would react. He tried to come up wi
th a response or reaction to every possible outcome because he knew his father was an experienced negotiator and diplomat. He had to be prepared.

  The office door slid open with a hiss. Dante’s father was sat at a large bloodmaple desk at the back of the room beyond.

  “Come in,” Sirus said as he stared into the eyes of a hologram floating above his desk. Dante stood up, much to the relief of the chair he was in, and walked into his father’s office. Dante tried to sit down but was promptly reminded that this chair was specially designed to be uncomfortable for people that actually did fit in it, let alone people twice their size. Sirus enjoyed making anyone who met with him physically uncomfortable so he had a psychological advantage over them before the meeting even began. Dante abandoned the idea of sitting and stood up, waiting for his father to finish his conversation.

  “You have company?” the disembodied head of an older man chewing on a cigar asked.

  “No, it’s fine. I told you if you want tickets to the gravball finals you just had to ask!”

  “I know, it just feels weird asking you for favors.”

  “I’m asking you for one aren’t I? Send me your guy and I’ll send you the tickets.”

  “Much appreciated Mr. Opulen,” the man smiled and the scars on his face stretched.

  “Keep in touch,” Sirus said as he ended the transmission, “what do you want?”

  “You were the one who called me.”

  “Oh, right.” Sirus looked at his tablet and navigated through some files. Dante forced himself to remain calm.

  “Could you at least look at me?”

  Sirus looked up from his tablet with a scowl. Dante cleared his throat.

  “I run a pretty tight ship Dante, I pride myself on that. Honestly, I’m surprised it went unnoticed this long,” Sirus began, a note of disgust in his voice. Dante already knew what he was going to talk about and his heart sank.

  “I should have suspected as much. You never could accomplish anything without my help.”

  “What do you want?” Dante asked, anticipating some kind of blackmail.

  “I want to maintain your spotless reputation in the public’s eye, that’s all. I would hate for the five-time Holo-film Academy award winner and decorated war hero to be shamed throughout the system. I’m pretty sure stealing billions of dollars worth of synthetic performance enhancing organs, genehancements, and bionics wouldn’t look good for you. That also means you not only stole from me but also that you used my company resources to grow said organs and probably bribed one of my surgeons to implant them. Those are all planetary offenses. Ones that normally I would hire a hit squad for.”

  “What do you want?” Dante asked again.

  Sirus glared with such intensity that Dante thought he might have to physically defend himself. Sirus looked back down at his tablet and a moment later the lights in the office dimmed, followed by the materialization of a hologram from the desk.

  The floating digital screen had several windows open including a map of a research facility, a satellite photo of the facility, a few news feeds, and a contract. “One of my remote research facilities is having some technical difficulties. They asked for help not long ago but have been silent since and the media coverage on their planet is making the situation very ugly.”

  “Technical difficulties?”

  It was normal for Sirus to speak cryptically. He had honed that skill from years of business and political arguments. Dante was used to reading between the lines.

  “If you want me to forget about you stealing from me, forget about you bribing my staff, and forget about the company property that is implanted within you then I suggest you do as I ask and visit my facility to sort things out.”

  “Why not just set up a CivOp contract and get some professionals to take care of it?”

  “I already have. I’ve found some candidates that would be good for the mission and I want you to accompany them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are free. And you have a history. If you solve this problem you will no doubt get some positive media coverage, which means I will get positive media coverage. I know you have the special skills required for this mission and I want someone I can trust to protect my interests around such a sensitive facility.”

  Dante wanted to ask why his father thought he could be trusted since they had never been on good terms but Sirus continued before Dante could speak. “If you don’t do this, I will freeze your assets and expose your theft of my property.”

  “I have my own money and a well paid PR team.”

  “I will also hire a squad to repossess said property. I’m sure your lovely Athene and the boys would be very upset about that.”

  Dante swallowed hard. His father was never a man to pull punches, literally or figuratively. He nodded and waited to be dismissed. Sirus looked his son up and down, curled his lip and waved him away. As Dante approached the exit Sirus called out, “Are you sure you’ve still got it?”

  He stopped and turned around to face his father. “I think I’ll be all right,” he said. Dante turned again and left the office. Once he had stepped into the elevator he realized that both of his hearts were pumping abnormally fast.

  A courtesy drone equipped with an umbrella sheltered Dante from the rain as he walked out onto the landing pad with his hovercraft. His pilot fired up the engines once he saw Dante. Thanks to his unnatural size Dante’s shoulders were getting wet despite the courtesy drone’s best efforts, an inconvenience he was used to. He brushed off each shoulder before stepping into the craft. The thrusters beneath adjusted their energy output and whined in protest. With a flick of his wrist he slid the door shut and the pilot soon took off.

  A soft chirp alerted Dante that his data tablet had finished downloading the mission details. He sat down and watched the courtesy drone hover back to its charge station as he pulled out his data tablet. He swiped a finger across the screen and sifted through mission data, stopping and reading things that caught his eye. Fortunately the specifics were as ambiguous as most high profile jobs so Dante didn’t have to read much. The gist of this mission was pretty much what his father had already told him. A top-secret project had gone bad and a CivOps bounty was put out for anyone willing to clean up the mess. There were no details on what the project was because it was classified. The location of the mission would only be revealed en route. Even the cleanup was cryptic, stating only that all hostiles were to be neutralized and all information was to be confiscated at any cost.

  Dante checked the Erythria Examiner, a popular tabloid feed on the planet, and discovered that there was an outbreak of some infection that originated from the facility he was to infiltrate. Footage of the infected was disturbing. Many people were vomiting blood, the first sign of infection, and some were dying from the resulting blood loss. Vicious attacks became a routine problem and the local population was on edge.

  So basically he had to go some backwater planet to do something dangerous he wasn’t aware of and kill everything trying to kill him in between. Then he would have to bring back information he did not know about in order to get a fat paycheck that he would not receive because his own father was blackmailing him. Fantastic.

  A loud crack came from the cockpit and the hovercraft jerked. Dante radioed to the pilot via his earpiece but received no response. It was probably just a communication error; maybe they hit some turbulence and the pilot’s headset came loose. It still wouldn’t hurt to check. Dante unbuckled from his seat, stood up, and walked to the cabin. He tried the door but, of course, it was locked. Dante knocked on the cabin door. A quick glance out a nearby window revealed that the hovercraft was pitched down at an uncomfortable angle, something Dante hadn’t noticed before because the hovercraft’s VIP passenger equilibrium plates had shifted to compensate.

  With a swift kick the deadbolt sheared and the cabin door ripped from its hinges. A gust of wind assaulted him as pressurized air in the passenger cabin got sucked out through the bullet-sized
hole in the windshield. The pressure change and cacophony of rushing air disoriented him for a moment. He stumbled as the craft jerked violently toward the starboard wing. Dante whipped his head toward the impact and watched a damaged antennae array tumble end over end cracking windows as it struck the side of the building. He turned back to the cockpit and saw the pilot sitting in a pool of his own blood.

  Dante leapt forward to grab the controls at the co-pilot’s seat and worked to steady the hovercraft. He had taken the reins of an aircraft several times while campaigning with the Human Liberation Army but that didn’t make it any less nerve wracking. He pulled up on the yoke to adjust his pitch and steady out the vehicle. With a flick of a switch he engaged the autopilot and issued a distress beacon, hoping that law enforcement in the area would come to his aid before this obvious assassination attempt turned out to be successful.

  Roaring wind prevented Dante from hearing the system’s multiple warnings and damage reports but a list of malfunctions started to float around the cabin space to compensate. A quick wave of his hand threw all the data floating around him back onto the nearby monitors where he could conveniently ignore it. Dante wasn’t a coroner but the fist-sized chunk of skull missing from the pilot’s head was a clear indication that nothing would bring him back. Two large black hovercrafts descended on either side of Dante’s ship, no doubt law enforcement entities coming to his aid. He glanced over their vehicles but couldn’t see the To Reprimand and Reform insignia that Vytal law enforcement was known for, or any identification for that matter.

  Passenger doors slid open on each vehicle and two men on either side of him armed with military grade assault rifles took aim. Dante dropped to the floor and used the doorframe as a handle to drag himself back into the passenger cabin as bullets ripped through the fuselage and tore into the operating machinery. Automatic gunfire shredded the main controls and the hovercraft’s VIP equilibrium plates shut down. Dante fought against the descending pitch of the craft as gravity took hold of him and pulled his massive body toward the nose. It wouldn’t be long before the unpiloted craft ran into something or, even worse, the ground.