“If even a drop of that stuff falls into the ocean, it could spread everywhere,” Charline said. “It could be the end of life on Earth.”
"Which is why you're all gonna be very glad to see me," said a voice from the doorway. Linda didn't know who it was, but Beth and Charline were already raising their guns. She ducked to the floor, praying she could keep out of the way if the bullets started flying again.
Twelve
John reached the lab before Dan. Dan watched his friend yank the door open and then freeze in place just inside the lab. He skidded to a stop beside John, breathing hard from racing down the hall in his wheelchair. Dan had to lean in around John to get a view of what was going on. Even then, it took him a minute to understand the tableau displayed in the room.
The two techs assigned to study the various artifacts they'd brought back were still in the lab, crouched down behind a table. One of them had clearly set off the alarm. Neither of them seemed inclined to pop their heads up any time soon, and from the fresh holes in the wall above their heads they had good reason to be nervous.
Andy was also in the lab. He was very much awake. He was also armed with one of the rifles they'd acquired from the Naga. The weapons fired energy projectiles of some kind, tiny balls of force which could either stun or kill, depending on the weapon's setting. From the holes in the wall, Dan was betting the rifle wasn't set to stun. Andy was aiming the rifle he held at the little terrarium where they'd housed the Naga slug after the doctors pulled from Andy's ear.
But Andy wasn't looking especially stable. His face was deeply flushed. Sweat poured down his face, and his shirt was drenched. His eyes looked wild, and Dan wasn't sure the man was seeing the same things he was. Andy looked lost, like a man who was very far away from home, didn't know how he had gotten here, and didn't know if he'd ever be able to get back.
Still, Andy was his friend. He had to try something. Dan made to wheel forward, but John put gentle pressure on his arm. He looked up at John, who was shaking his head.
"He doesn't know you well enough," John said in a very soft voice. "He could shoot you. Let me try."
"He could shoot you too, and then where would we be?" Dan replied. But John had a point. If it came to dodging shots, Dan was about the worst choice possible. It wasn’t like he could easily dive aside to avoid gunfire. John would at least stand a chance, if it came to that.
"Probably with you in charge, God help the rest of them," John muttered, chuckling to himself. Then he stepped forward into the room to face Andy, who whirled in place at the sound of his approach. The muzzle of his rifle lifted away from the slug’s small prison and leveled directly at John.
Dan glanced at his watch. Less than a minute since the alarm sounded. Security would be there in another minute, tops. Once that happened this mess would turn into a stand-off, both sides armed. With Andy in the state he was, that scenario was going to end badly for someone. Probably more than one person. John had to hurry, but at the same time he couldn’t rush things. A sudden move would probably be enough to get Andy to pull the trigger.
“Andy, it’s John. What are you doing?”
The barrel of the gun rose slightly. John kept moving forward anyway. Dan could barely breathe. Andy wasn’t seeing what was in front of him anymore. Dan didn’t know what sort of visions he was having, but he knew the man would never raise a weapon at John. They were close. The bond they shared was even deeper than some fathers and sons. Was John going to be able to reach him, or would this end in tragedy? Dan opened his mouth to tell John to get back, and then closed it again without speaking the words. Andy would never forgive himself if he shot John. But John would likewise never forgive himself if he allowed Andy to come to harm because he was too frightened to save him. They’d found all of that out the hard way, back on the alien world.
“Andrew, I am here to help,” John said. He added some more force behind his words. “I have never left you. I never will. I will always come to help you. Let me help now.”
The muzzle of the gun wavered. For a moment Dan thought he saw sanity flashing across Andy’s face, like he was seeing what was really there for a moment. Then it was gone again, replaced by the same crazed look he’d been wearing before.
If he rushed forward right now, maybe he could crash his wheelchair into John and knock him aside before Andy fired? Or provide enough distraction that Andy would have too many targets, and John could close with him and disarm him? Part of the problem was going to be disarming their top close combat specialist in the first place. If Andy wanted to, he could kill both of them without breaking a sweat.
“Andrew,” John said, his voice soft and beseeching. “Please.”
The rifle wavered again, then dipped.
“John?” Andy said. “I feel so lost… So far away…”
Then he dropped the rifle and crumpled to his knees. John rushed forward to catch him before he hit the floor, cradling the young man in his arms.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” John said.
Dan heaved a huge sigh of relief. If he’d fired, Andy would never have forgiven himself. They had to figure out what the hell was going on with him. Before he hurt someone, or himself. He looked at the tank that had been the center of Andy’s attention before they arrived. The little alien slug was still there. It had ignored the dirt half of the terrarium, making immediately for the side they’d made into a watery pool. They had no idea what sort of environment the thing required to survive outside a host, so it made sense to give it options and hope for the best.
His eyes narrowed, watching the thing. Dan had the uncanny sense that it was able to see him somehow too, despite it having no eyes. They knew so damned little about it. Was it somehow responsible for what was happening to Andy, even now that it had been removed from his ear? It seemed like that was the case. After all, Andy had come to this place, and threatened the thing with a weapon. Whether he was acting because he knew the alien slug was hurting him or out of some sort of instinctive reaction was unclear. But to Dan there was no longer any doubt. Somehow that alien creature was still hurting his friend. They had to find a way to put a stop to it before someone was killed.
Thirteen
Charline recognized Cory at once. He stood in the doorway to the lab, still dressed in the black suit he’d been wearing when she saw him earlier. He looked a bit more rumpled now, but still wore a wicked grin. That grin vanished instantly when she raised her pistols and aimed at him. He raised his hands, showing her they were both empty.
“Whoa,” he said. “I’m on your side.”
“That’s what we thought about your boss, too. Until he busted into the lab,” Charline snapped.
“I gave you that gun, remember?” Cory replied.
She did. It had been a mystery before, but was just as confusing now. “Why?”
“Because I could tell something was up. I didn’t know what, though. Not until it was too late,” Cory said. “Those guys I was with - I’d never seen them before today. I was a few minutes late showing up for the detail. I had to rush over, it was a last minute call from John, he said he wanted extra manpower on site,” Cory said. “When I got there, those goons were waiting on the tarmac for you. I’d never seen them before, which raised some suspicions. But I don’t know everyone John hires for security.”
Charline took all this in quietly. He could be telling the truth. There was really only one way to find out. She needed to ask John.
“Beth, can you set up a call to John? I think we’re going to need some help on this anyway. And he can verify Cory’s story,” she said.
“Smart,” Cory said. He was still keeping his hands where she could see them, which she personally thought was also smart.
“What changed?” Charline asked him. “How’d you know?”
“Nothing. They were playing everything right. They knew all our security procedures, and everything looked fine. I just still had misgivings. And John said you could handle yourself, so I figured hav
ing a firearm might help you out if things went sideways,” Cory said. He glanced around the room. “Looks like I was right.”
“You were,” Charline said. She lowered the pistols. They were still in her hands, but aiming a gun at the guy seemed a little over the top if he was telling the truth. If he was one of the bad guys, why would he still be here? They’d even pulled their wounded and dead men out, under the cover of the automatic gunfire. They’d been careful to leave very little behind. Just some splashes of blood on the floor, and the ruin of the lab itself.
“They tried to shoot me as soon as you left the roof,” he said. “I had another pistol, but they pinned me down until it was too late for me to get in here and help you. I’m sorry.”
Charline was beginning to feel a little warmer to him, despite her reservations. “At least you tried.”
“Listen,” Cory said. “This is a military lab. The fire drill kept people out for a few minutes, but this place is going to be crawling with security in no time. We need to get you out of here.”
“How?” Charline asked.
“I’ve got a flyer on the way. You want to find those guys, right?”
Charline thought fast. He wasn’t wrong. She was surprised that security hadn’t already busted in here. Once they arrived, they’d detain everyone present. There would be questions, lots of them. They might even face arrest, since there was no way to explain what had happened without giving away far too much information. Even the best case scenario would slow them down far too much. There was little trail to begin with - she didn’t even know where to start looking. But whatever clues they might have would be dead cold by the time they were released. It would be too late to do anything.
“I don’t even know where to start looking,” Charline admitted. She’d failed. Her main task was to keep the black goo safe, and she blew it. She’d known from the beginning that she was the wrong person for this job. She’d tried to tell John as much. And now the worst had come to pass.
“I put a tracker on their air-car before they tried shooting me. Just in case.”
“Shit, really?” Charline’s eyes widened. Maybe they had a shot at tracking the bastards down after all. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did. Come with me - the flyer will be on the roof any minute.”
“I’m getting a response from the base,” Beth said, holding up her tablet. “But they’re saying John is indisposed right now. Some kind of emergency up there. You trust this guy?”
Charline thought about it for a moment. Strangely, she did. What he was saying rang true. “Yes.”
“Then lets go,” Beth replied. “They’ll fill John in ASAP and get us some backup as soon as they can. But for now, I say we go after these bastards and get back what they stole. Before things go even more sideways than they already have.”
Cory started out the door, Beth right behind him. Charline picked her way through the mess to follow, then stopped at a tug on her arm. It was Linda. She was shaking, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Charline felt a rush of sympathy for the woman. She knew what it was like to have your entire life turned upside down in an instant.
“You OK?” Charline asked.
“No,” Linda replied, wiping a tear away from her face. She drew her lips into a determined line. “But I will be. I want to help.”
Charline hesitated. “I don’t know that it’s a good idea…”
“Do you know shit about xenobiology?” Linda asked, clipping off each word sharply. Her face lost a lot of the fragility Charline had seen in it a moment before, taking on stubborn lines.
“No,” Charline replied.
“So if anything goes wrong in recovering this goo, don’t you think you ought to have someone on hand who can maybe do something about it?”
“People coming up the stairs,” Beth called from the doorway. “We’ve got to go now!”
Linda grasped Charline’s wrist in a tight grip. “You people have torn up my life, messed up my lab, and generally screwed up a pretty good thing I had going here. I want to see this through.”
It was time for a decision. Beth was right. There was no time left. They needed to get the hell out of here. She looked into Linda’s eyes. Just a few minutes ago, she’d been practically falling apart, but there was a new determination in her look that gave Charline pause. Linda wasn’t wrong. She could be a help - if she was really up to it. Or she could make things a hell of a lot worse… And there was no way to know in advance which she would be. Charline had to make a guess on the spot. Either path was a gamble.
“OK, you’re in. Now run!” Charline said. She took off after Beth, hitting the hallway and sprinting up the stairs toward the roof. Linda followed close behind.
Fourteen
Andrew began stirring, and John rushed to his bedside. He wanted to be right there when he woke. It had been a rough couple of hours since Andrew passed out in the lab, cradled in John’s arms. Security had arrived just seconds before a medical team. They’d loaded him onto a gurney and rushed him back upstairs to the main hospital wing, where he’d been under close medical supervision since.
All of Andrew’s vital signs were stable. There was nothing obviously wrong with the man. An MRI showed nothing unusual going on. His EKG was clean. The doctors were baffled. There was clearly something wrong with their patient. He’d passed out twice, had seizures associated with the first event, and been hallucinating during the second. But once again he was resting quietly, all the instruments and tests they could perform showing a man who was just asleep. Except nothing would wake him up, and John wondered what sort of shape Andrew was going to be in when he did finally rouse again.
John wished that he’d had the foresight to bring up systems to scan the brain on a more detailed level. He was willing to bet that there was a lot of unusual activity going on between Andrew’s synapses. Things the regular scans simply couldn’t measure. Everything started when they’d withdrawn the alien from Andrew’s ear. Up until then he’d been tired, sore, and injured, but his mental health had been fine. The strange behaviors and passing out were new symptoms, and they’d begun when the thing was removed.
The slug-like creature was telepathic. They knew that much from Andrew’s description. It projected the spoken words of beings around it into its host’s head as thoughts, translated into language the host could understand. If the thing could project into a mind, it stood to reason that perhaps it could impact the mind as well.
As much as he hated the idea, they might have to kill the slug to save Andrew. The only thing that had stayed his hand this long was that he didn’t know what effect killing the thing might have. If they were still bound together, then what repercussions might the death of one have on the other? He didn’t know. He had no way to find out except to risk it, which made it the option of last resort.
Andrew stirred and opened his eyes.
“You all right?” John asked him. Andrew looked calm, normal again. John couldn’t imagine being more glad. “You gave us a scare.”
“What happened?” Andrew asked. “I remember some things, but they’re foggy.”
“You tried to shoot the space slug,” Dan said from the other side of the bed. “And for a moment there I thought you were going to shoot John.”
“Shit. I was hoping that was just another part of the bad dreams,” Andrew said. “I’m so sorry, John. I never would have…”
“Shh. You didn’t. It’s OK,” John replied. It was more important to find out what was going on. “What sort of bad dreams?”
Andrew's eyes took on a haunted look. Whatever the dreams were, they were disturbing him a great deal. What was going on between him and the alien life-form?
"I keep dreaming of water," Andrew said. "Oceans of it. Waves pounding on surf, and currents running through reefs."
"That doesn't sound much like nightmare material," Dan commented with a grin. "Unless there is a big shark involved?"
"No, there's no shark," Andrew said. "Some big,
strange fishes swimming around, but no sharks. What bothers me isn't the images of the ocean. Those feel like home, like someplace I've missed. Even though I've never actually seen them. Is this making any sense at all?"
"Some, yes," John said. He kept his voice calm, soothing, and Andrew's agitation abated a little. "Keep talking. I need to hear as much of this as you can remember."
"Well, it's not the ocean that is the bad part of the dream. That's the good part," Andrew continued. His voice broke. "The problem is that I miss it. I miss it like it's a part of my soul that's been ripped from me. And I don’t even understand why.”
Andrew burst into uncontrollable tears, sobbing and unable to stop. Dan started back with alarm, unsure what to do to help. John grimaced. He had some sense of what was going on with Andrew. And it wasn't good. If it kept on as it had been, it might be enough to break his mind somehow, to permanently damage him.
John reached over and cradled the sobbing young man in his arms, crooning soothing noises to him. The rocking motion seemed to help him find a little peace. A doctor had already noticed his distress and was filling a syringe with some drug to help Andrew calm down. The doctor caught John's eye and tilted his head, holding the syringe up where John could see it. John nodded slowly, giving his assent.
The doctor added the medication to Andrew's IV line, a few drips at a time until the entire amount was released into his bloodstream. It didn't take long for Andrew to relax after that. His eyes fluttered, then closed.
"Ativan," the doctor said. "But we can't keep him on that dose indefinitely. We need a better solution."
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 30