Kavir’s face took on a clear expression of apprehension. He seemed ready to act in self defense. Instead he disappeared leaving a puddle of slime in the sand.
“Yllera, what happened did he change back?” Max asked worriedly.
Yllera let a limp hand feel the puddle, “No, I think he teleported.”
Max felt his brow furrow, “Should he be able to do that?”
Yllera frowned, “I didn’t think so. Take a sample of the slime for Tina to analyze. Maybe she can come up with answers.”
Max shrugged and did as she suggested. Then he checked his pop-pad for their location. The surprise was his when his pad revealed he was no more than a few miles from where he had been searching out the old man. Max shuddered, now he had some idea what might have been causing the probability anomaly. It was likely his and Yllera’s predicament, and actions, most notably Kavir’s transformation from a water bound creature to a biped with the ability to freely teleport. No doubt Angela would be less than pleased with the news.
“Take me home Max,” Yllera shivered unaware of the fact she may be responsible for unleashing a new evil on the universe.
Max smiled weakly at her and nodded, she would have plenty of time to blame herself.
- - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 15
Good! Plan?
------------------------------------
“Kaaah-virrr, kaaah-virr,” Kavir crooned to himself. Cold, though no longer naked he stood over the unconscious forms of the handful of factors he had collected. The woman who had caused him to become a man, had given him much more than form. She had shared with him everything she was and knew. He almost worshiped her for it. She was the fullest and best of all woman-form and he wanted her. Her knowledge gave him a route to her. He had chosen to capture a handful of factor folk, that had been easy he could smell them from worlds away, alternate dimensions even. Then it was nothing to pour himself into them and wait while he-they became.
Kavir counted them on his fingers, eight, and thrilled at the depths and reach of abstract thought. It was boundless, he a blind sea-creature of barely more than instinct had been given the land and infinity. Awed by his every breath, only the stirrings of his prisoner’s minds as they became him were anything to be compared to the joy of seeing the sky.
Kavir scratched his newly minted crotch, moments later he drug up the realization that he needed to pass his water. Carefully, from his limited experience he knew that the outlet of his urogenital tract was sensitive and vulnerable, he relieved himself in a bush. The need to cover himself had come as a shock to Kavir, gender taboos, even the idea of gender or sex itself had come strangely to him. It was a wonder to be male, more so since she who had helped him become had been female. Logic, another new concept, told him he should have taken on a female form with his legs.
His prisoners had nearly fully become. He stirred their minds and awoke their bodies. They rose as one. He didn’t need to tell them their goal. They were to return home, to Sanctuary, to find she who had helped him to become, and to bring her to him. Whatever the cost or the obstacle she must be obtained. Max, the male she had changed Kavir to save must be made unconscious or dead. Kavir plucked bags holding slugs filled with his fluid of becoming from the streambed. He gave each of his factor-puppets one and they departed, to bring Yllera to their master.
He closed his eyes to better become with them, they all fought their way through Sanctuary’s security bio-filters, almost too easily making it through. Then through eight pairs of eyes Kavir searched for Yllera. Any time someone got in his way the slugs helped them to become, and they added to his sight.
Finally one pair of eyes fastened on Yllera, and Max. They were walking leisurely down the hall away from the medical wing. Kavir’s stolen factor knowledge told him they must have just passed their post mission physicals. Right now some doctor was probably learning more about Kavir than he knew about himself. Kavir redirected some of his servants to discover what Sanctuary’s finest medical minds knew. While he was at it, he sent others to learn more elsewhere. His main focus though stuck to Yllera.
“I was so scared Max, you know what it was like for it to try and take you. Your mind, no, your will dissolved in that mucous. I’ve seen enough mucous in my life to never want to sneeze again,” Yllera whimpered, clinging to Max’s arm. The touch caused heat to rise in Kavir, a heat born of anger and unsuppressed lust.
“Make that a double,” Max answered her. Kavir hated the way Yllera seemed to be warming to Max.
“I just can’t believe what I loosed on the universe. The repercussions. . .I don’t think I ever dare leave Sanctuary again. I’m just too dangerous!” Yllera said stiffening away from Max.
“Don’t blame yourself! You were trying to do your best to save us!” Max crooned back.
Kavir had enough, the corridor back and front was clear of all but Yllera, Max and Kavir’s servants. Two servants, with stun-capsules, disabled both Max and Yllera. Max was stuffed and sealed into a broom closet, while Yllera was teleported back to Kavir. He had his prize now all that remained was wooing her.
- - - - - - - - - -
Angela was sitting at her desk wading through paperwork when Tina’s smiling face lit up the display panel set into the desk top, “Hey chief, how about some lunch?”
Angela frowned at Tina’s image, “I’ll eat when I eat! Why is it you can just barge onto my screen without my even activating it?”
“I’m medical staff, I can do a lot of stuff ordinary folk can’t. Now, I insist you join me at Antonio’s Café. You know the place we’ve eaten there before. It’s an order, if you don’t I’ll steal all your paperwork and make you come anyway.”
Angela grunted an affirmative at the screen and it went blank once again. Then she obediently teleported to the café. The small café was emptier than usual, when Angela entered, making her way to Tina’s regular table. There were fewer than ten people in the dining room and that counted two waiters and a busboy. Angela brushed aside a tiny itch of concern wiggling around in the back of her mind. She couldn’t place it and frankly was relieved not to have the usual entourage of fans and admirers trying to eavesdrop on her every word. Angela seated herself and picked up the menu. She scanned the sandwich list intently.
“What’s up?” Tina asked in greeting.
Angela shrugged, “Nothing, everything’s quiet on all fronts for the moment.”
“Then why do you have your impending doom expression on?” Tina poked.
“I do not!” Angela searched her own face in the mirrored ceiling. There it was, the shallow scowl, the slightly unfocused gaze. A shiver passed up her spine and she glanced around the dining room again. She never got away with so much as a semi-public lunch without someone coming up to her by now. Her groupies never missed a public appearance, at least one of the goofs was on her trail from the moment she left her office to the moment she reached her apartment, or vice versa. For that matter the waiter should have come by now. The two in the dining room were still standing in almost the same position talking to the same customers, and the busboy was now returning the same dirty dishes to a different table, and then beginning to pick them up again. Something was wrong here.
“Well?”
“How long have you been here?” Angela asked turning to Tina.
“I got here just before you. I teleported in from my lab. I was doing some tests on Max and Yllera’s blood samples,” Tina answered, slowing as she too took notice of the strange behavior of the room’s other occupants.
“I’m not feeling so hungry right now. How about you?” Angela said rising hastily from the table.
“Me neither,” Tina refolded her napkin and sat it down on the table.
As if their rising were some cue, the room’s other occupants dropped pretense and started towards them. That was more warning than either woman needed. Both teleported back to Angela’s office.
“I knew I should’ve just eaten in my office,” Angela mumbled
sitting down in her chair.
Tina whipped out a pop-pad and began tapping away at it, “That wouldn’t have stopped whatever it is. You just would have had even less warning.”
Angela tapped her desk, turning on the media screen imbedded in its surface. She tapped closed the files she’d been working on before lunch and started bringing up the filter shield records for the past month. “Can’t be the dark,” Angela said scanning the chart, “unless they’ve figured out a way around the shields.”
“I think we can safely say that whatever it is has a way around, but I think you’re right,” Tina tapped her screen hard and a second grid came up on the shield records. She pointed to eight brief blips in quick succession, about two days before, “It's probably medical, a parasite of some sort.” Tina tapped some more at her pad and the segment of the chart filled the desk and was overlaid by a spectrographic analysis. “Oh crud! I recognize that signature!”
“What is it?”
“It looks a whole heck of a lot like a blending between Yllera and that creature that captured her and Max. I spent all morning looking at the sample they brought back,” Tina frowned and took a seat.
“I thought you checked to make sure the shields would bounce that back,” Angela brought up Yllera’s report on a small window and scanned it to refresh her memory.
“I did, and it shouldn’t and wouldn’t go through the shields. The problem is that this,” Tina tapped the desk for emphasis, “isn’t that. It’s a blending of it and Yllera. Even so, the shields almost bounced it back, but these secondary micro spikes here show that it adapted and slipped through.”
“Oh, well that makes all the difference!” Angela growled. She was terrified. She had built this place as a sanctuary from the worst the universe could throw at her, and now something had gotten in.
“What do we do about it?” Tina asked.
Angela stared at her in wide eyed panic, “You’re the doctor. I just know how to fight the bad guys. Germs are your job!”
“Yeah, and tactical decisions are yours! I diagnosed the problem, and can probably figure out a cure, but you are the one that is going to have to catch and contain the patients,” Tina growled back, “Chief.” Tina began tapping away at her pop-pad.
Angela’s inner child screamed silently in her head, “I don’t wanna play chief no more!” Angela steeled herself, despite her inner child choosing that time to throw a tantrum, “Well, first we need to figure out who it has and who we have.”
Tina nodded with a grim smile, “I think I can come up with a scan to figure out who’s on our side. Oh, I have also sealed Sanctuary off. It, rather he, can’t send in any more reinforcements, but we aren’t going to get any either.”
They both jumped as Angela’s door rattled from a knock.
“Do I let them in?” Angela asked herself out loud.
“Why are you asking me?” Tina flinched away from the door.
“Do you think it’s one of Them?” Angela asked.
Tina pulled out a medical scanner and waved it in front of the door. She checked her pad. “It’s your husband, as to whether or not he’s one of them I can’t say.”
“Does have the same signature anywhere on him?” Angela longed to see Daniel, she needed him.
“Can’t say, there’s a shielded door in the way. My gut says don’t take the risk,” Tina shrugged.
Angela couldn’t ignore the next batch of knocks, “Come in.”
Daniel came smiling into the room, “Honey, I got the sense that you were a little stressed out. How >bout lunch?”
Angela eyed him closely, “Sorry, lunch plans are cancelled until further notice. There’s something hinky going down.”
He held his arms out to offer a hug, Angela was drawn to him, she almost leapt over to get to him. He wrapped his arms around her and started kissing her, urgently. He started with her forehead, moved down her nose and just before he made it to her lips he went limp, slumping to the floor. Tina stood behind him with a stun capsule.
Angela felt betrayed until Tina held up her pop-pad, “The signature was definitely there.”
Angela looked down at her sleeping husband, a black oily mucus oozed from the corner of his mouth. Angela watched while Tina took a deep scan of Daniel. “We should get out of here, whatever it is inside of him is neutralizing the tranquilizer.”
Angela shivered, “Can you get it out of him?”
“Not yet, I don’t have enough information, and I haven’t had enough time for the information I have to be much use,” Tina replied. Daniel began to stir, Tina slipped him another dose of sedative, “We need to go somewhere where no one else will look for us, long enough to figure out what I need to do.”
“My paint room should be safe, no one but you and I know about it. There’s no reason for anyone else to even be there,” Angela responded.
“Good plan!”
- - - - - - - - - -
“Happy birthday to me,” Annette hummed to herself as she slipped into her swimsuit. Today was the first day of the year-end finals, and the pre-training classes were canceled for the week. Annette knew this, yet she couldn’t sleep in. Her internal clock was set for early calisthenics and her nerves over the tests obliterated every attempt to reset that clock. So, free to chose her own exercise routine and awake at her usual five in the morning, Annette chose to swim. She slipped into her purple suit, suddenly nostalgically realizing that this might be the last time she wore it. After the testing, she would officially be a third year student and her wardrobe color would become blue.
From her locker came the tweet of her pop-pad. Purposefully ignoring it’s summons, Annette telekinetically plucked her remote pin from her shirt and pinned it to her suit. She’d been developing her telekinesis for almost a year now. “Prima, your pin is waterproof isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss, do you want me to handle your calls,” Prima chirped.
Annette thought about it, she’d been trying hard to ignore the summons issued by her pad, “Could you figure out whether or not it was important. Oh never mind, they wouldn’t be calling at five a.m. if it weren’t,” Annette grabbed her pad and tapped it on.
Carl’s face greeted her, “Quick, I was hoping you’d be here before breakfast. I had something to show everyone.”
Annette smiled back at him, “I’m doing a morning swim, I’ll stop by before breakfast if you want, or you could show me during breakfast if you want.”
“No, it’ll wait,” Carl replied stiffly. Annette was beginning to get a bad feeling, something was wrong. Carl always called her Annette, never Quick like the other F.I.T.S. Then there was the limp nature of the message, he’d called at five in the morning but whatever it was could wait?
“Is anything wrong Carl?” Annette asked.
“No, Quick,” A bead of sweat broke out on his upper lip, “Everything’s fine I’ll see you at breakfast.” His hand tapped the screen on his side and the pad went blank.
Annette puzzled over the conversation. Twice he’d used her nickname, the second time in response to her questioning if anything was wrong. Something was wrong, and Carl had tried to tell her so. Annette’s gut squirmed, and she thought of contacting the chief. But what would she say, “It’s five a.m., my odd friend is acting weird and my gut is telling me it is a serious emergency?” No, it was probably nothing too serious. Annette shoved her things into her locker and locked it.
“Miss, I can handle your calls, really I’m ready!” Prima squeaked.
Annette grunted, then sighed. “Prima, I know. You are very helpful, but the trouble is that most of the people calling me at this point are wanting a real person, not just cyber simulation. They still see personal data organization programs as tools not people. If you fielded my calls you’d have about as much luck as I do with Chavez.”
“But I hardly get to do anything,” Prima whined.
Annette rolled her eyes, a gesture not picked up by the camera in Prima’s remote, “I’ll see what I can do about that,
later. For now shall we go for a swim?”
Annette padded through the pool exit from the locker room. The water was placid, not so much as a ripple disturbed its surface. Annette thought of running and jumping in but decided that with her luck she would slip and crack her skull open on the concrete. So Annette tiptoed over to the shallow end.
Slowly, and carefully she dipped her toe in, watching the tiny ripples. With as much control as her muscles could bear Annette slowly slipped into the water, trying to disturb it as little as possible. Even so, ripples spread out from her, echoing slowly back at her from the far end of the pool.
Enough, Annette splashed as she kicked off from the bottom. She pulled through the water with sure, crisp strokes, kicking mechanically. Annette focused on the form of each stroke, the pressure of the water, the taste of each breath. Her whole being was in the doing. She was so absorbed within herself and didn’t notice anyone entering the pool room. She missed Carl slipping slowly, as she had, into the pool. She would’ve swum right past him if he hadn’t made a grab for her.
Annette planted her feet on the bottom of the pool, and sputteringly yelped. She coughed out, “Carl! What are you thinking?”
“Sorry, um, Quick,” Carl responded, his mouth twitched, his overall look was strained, “I just thought I’d come see you.”
Annette felt a gut-wrenching urge to be somewhere else, anywhere else, as long as it was away from Carl. She began backing her way out of the pool. “What about?”
“Oh, nothing much I just have a surprise for you,” Carl answered following her out of the pool.
Annette felt the need to flee acutely. “I’m not up for surprises right now.”
Carl’s face flashed a blank emotionless expression, then his hand snapped around her wrist, pulling her to him. She sensed his intention to kiss her, and to her horror saw a black oily substance ooze from the corner of his mouth. All of her fear focused on the goo. Carl twisted her arm bringing her even closer, and grabbing at her other arm.
Annette took it as time to struggle. With the quick jab at his swimming trunks with her knee, Carl released her and doubled over. Annette took advantage of his incapacitation, and ran. At first she ran aimlessly away from him then she headed for the locker room. Briefly she thought she would be safe there, until reality hit her. Whatever was controlling him wouldn’t be stopped by a sign saying “girls.” Annette grabbed her duffle bag out of her locker and darted out of the other side of the locker room.
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