by Gwynn White
Venice fires, blasts of energy burning the creature. A loud, earsplitting shriek rips through the ship, inhuman and wordless, and we both wince in pain. Venice drops the zapper to cover his ears, even though that will do little to protect his eardrums. I can feel it all the way to my bones and circuits. The creature shrieking in pain.
With my own hands over my ears, I watch in horror as the creature lurches forward, whipping a swath of flesh towards him. It catches him across the face and spins him in a full circle before he collapses on the floor.
And that’s not all…
“Help me,” he gasps, grappling his ways towards me. I’m frozen to my spot as I watch him melt from outside in. His cheeks first, then the top of his head, exposing his gray matter before that, too, turns to goo and spills out on the floor.
I stagger back a step, but not before his hand strikes out and grabs me around the left ankle. My human ankle. His touch sears through me, and I seize up in pain as it rips through me as well. We’re both infected and spreading the virus right now.
We couldn’t stop the Infinity Virus. We’re helping it spread.
My feet tangle up with each other as his grip is tight, and I hit the floor, hard, landing in a splash of Venice. Then I feel his hand dissolve as well and spill out around me.
Venice melted within minutes. How long do I have? How do I stop it from ravaging across my body?
“Clementine?” I hear a voice gasp. “What happened?”
I painfully wrench my head up to see Orion standing in shock further down the hallway. He must have been on the bridge when he heard the commotion. And despite the fact that he’s an android, he looks horrified at the events unfolding around us.
“Don’t come near me!” I shout through my raw throat. “Don’t come anywhere near here!”
“What do I do?” he says. I hear his boots as he backs away from the mess—wisely so—and I hope it’s far enough.
“Don’t fire at it,” I say. I heave a breath. My internal scanners are telling me that there’s a foreign body in my human side, one that’s quickly wiping through me. “It won’t kill it. And it’s infecting the Pícara.”
I drag myself farther away from the mess.
“What do you want me to do, then?” he asks.
My vision swims, and I try pushing myself up on my hands and knees. My elbows buckle and I fall forward.
“We have to go to Alpha,” I whisper against the metal floor. Gore coats my cheek, and I try not to think about it being Venice or Louis. “We have to meet with Maas before it kills us all.”
I can’t help but wonder if I inadvertently infected the entire crew. Doomed them to a terrible death because we didn’t abandon ship. Or decide another course of action. Blast the quarantine room with fire. Try to kill it in other ways.
“Do not die, Clementine,” Orion says. “Do not let it take you over.”
But it’s too late now. And my foolish choices may have signed our death warrants.
A sharp pain wracks through me, and I shudder as I pass out.
18
Fluorescent lights glare just beyond my eyelids, both too bright and too painful for me to want to open my eyes. I move them in their sockets, grimacing at the intrusion of the lights. It’s painful, immediately giving me a headache. Have I gotten drunk again? I should really stay away from Venice’s moonshine.
Venice.
Reality hits me like a trillion-ton asteroid, and I thrash about with a gasp.
Venice was touched by the growth in the quarantine room and turned into the same mush as Louis. Not only that, the infection was spreading throughout the ship. It’s going to kill us.
What’s more, Venice touched me. I try to reach my ankle, to see what he had done to me. But my wrists are bound. In fact, something is restraining my entire body, and I’m strapped to some cot or board.
What the fuck is happening?
I take stock of my body. Other than my headache and a burn around my ankle, I seem to be in mostly okay condition. Perhaps a little banged up, and my temples pound.
But I’m alive.
My hearing comes back to me, bit by bit, almost like my brain had shut off that sense. I wonder if that’s because the cyborg part of my body was trying to keep me unconscious longer in order to get well, like an induced coma.
Or maybe not.
The voices I hear are unfamiliar to me, but they speak in short, clipped sentences, completely efficient in their communications with each other.
“This one is infected?”
“Yes. She was found in the discharge from the other human. Infected, but it seems to have stabilized within her system.”
“And the cook?”
“Yes.”
“Why has her cellular breakdown not occurred then?”
I recognize their speech patterns. Androids. Most likely medicinal androids. They were used when a situation is too dangerous to entrust to human hands and decision-making.
Meaning that I’m in some deep shit.
I open my eyes and see the oddly human faces talking to each other across my body. They’re identical female units, their expressions blank. They are utterly hairless, without eyebrows and hair, making them seem separate and different from other humans. Their faces aren’t covered by masks, so I can see their perfect noses and mouths, pressed into fine lines.
“The female is awake,” the one on my right says to the other one.
“Yes,” the other agrees.
“Where…” My throat is dry and I have to swallow a few times in order to get my tongue working correctly again. Even when I’m able to speak, my voice comes out in a scratchy whisper. “Where am I?”
The androids around me keeping working and talking to each other, completely ignoring me.
“Perhaps she has a natural immunity to the virus,” one suggests.
“For a manufactured pathogen?”
“Her biological structure may share some similarities with the original hosts that incubated the virus.”
“And what of her cyborg body parts?”
The other considers her answer. “It is most peculiar indeed.”
As they speak, I take stock of my surroundings. For the first time, I notice that I’m naked inside some sort of plastic coffin. I have a window where I can see the androids, but other than that, it’s white plastic with some sort of slippery substance on it.
Some sort of antiseptic perhaps? How would that stop a virus? Especially as one as dangerous as the Infinity Virus?
I struggle for a moment against my restraints, trying to fight the unfamiliar scene around me, only I’m held fast.
“Please,” I plead with them. “Where am I?”
One finally looks down at me, like I’m a tiny space maggot under a microscope. There is no emotion or remorse on her face, just calculated, programmed calm. It makes me appreciate how human Orion acts.
“You are on Syn-Tech Space Port Alpha,” she tells me. “In the quarantine wing.”
Panic settles in despite my cyborg half’s efforts to calm the adrenaline racing through my body.
All I can think of is that Venice was right. I am going to be dissected and peeled apart with my organs harvested so that Syn-Tech can re-engineer the virus. I’m stuck in this coffin, like a petri dish.
My life will no longer be my own. For a crazed moment, I wish that the virus had disintegrated me as well. Maybe I wouldn’t be feeling the sheer level of terror that I feel right now. If I were a blob on the floor of a spaceship, maybe I wouldn’t care what the fuck happened to me.
As it is right now, I can’t think straight.
“Where—?” I swallow again, wishing they’d give me some water. “Where is the rest of my crew?”
The two androids exchange glances, possibly relaying information to each other. I try to pick up if there are any signals, but it happens so fast before the other one looks down at me.
“The remaining crew of the ship Pícara is also in quarantine,” she says.
>
I freeze. What did she mean by the remaining crew? Had someone else been infected? Or was she just going off the manifest for the ship?
“Quarantine? Are they all right?”
“They are under observation until further notice.”
How did we get here? I immediately think of Orion, who had been standing so close to Venice and me. Had I accidentally infected him?
No. We had to have ended up in Alpha somehow. He must have steered the ship towards the space port and we must have docked. Which means that the Pícara is within range of other biological and mechanical forms to infect.
Which means that I failed everyone.
Tears spring to my right eye. “Please,” I say. “You have to destroy the ship. You have to stop this from spreading.”
The androids blink down at me at the exact same time. “That is why you are here, isn’t it?” they ask together in perfect sync. “You are here to stop the virus?”
“Yes,” I sob, thrashing against my restraints. But it’s no use. I’m not a strong fighter. All I can do is lay here while they continue working and experimenting on me. “Please, stop it…”
“She has gone into hysterics,” one android says.
“Perhaps she needs to be sedated. The Chairman is not ready to see her for another thirty-seven minutes.”
“Then she should be sedated.”
I see one of the androids move out of my field of view to prepare something. Half my world turns watery as tears start spilling from my biological eye. My cyborg half keeps trying to administer hormones and drugs to calm me down, but there’s nothing that can save me now.
I cry out as something pricks my arm. I turn my head to see a syringe sticking through a port in my enclosure. They’re giving me something. I don’t know what it is, but the world starts spinning around me.
A whine escapes my throat as I fight to stay awake.
“Thirty-six minutes until Chairman Maas comes,” one android warns. “Make sure the sedative is appropriately measured.
“Of course,” the other one chides, and through the thick gauze of my brain, I want to laugh at how much like siblings these two androids are acting. Even though there is an uncanniness to their expressions and mannerisms, there is still something so sincere about them.
“Definitely experiencing hysterics,” one says as I once again fall unconscious.
19
I’m still bound and trapped within my enclosure when I wake up.
“Right on time,” a familiar voice murmurs appreciatively. A voice that I didn’t think I’d ever hear in person, especially after what happened on the Pícara.
“Chairman Maas,” I say through chapped lips. I try shifting in my space to be able to see him. Unfortunately, my view through the window of the container is obstructed and limited. Great. Still, I trudge forward with fake bravado. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You, Miss Jones. You.”
Now, I see his face in the window. He must be standing directly to the left of this coffin. His face is far older than I would have thought, with deep, craggy wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, creating frown lines. Thinning white hair crowns his head—completely different from the blond head of hair he had earlier—and his skin is papery thin, almost transparent. He must be in his fourteenth decade, at least. Yet another difference between life in the protection of a company versus deep space. It’s rare for a Free Agent to ever live past eighty, but Lifers can live to be at least a 130 years old. That’s even more likely to happen if you’re the chairman of one of the companies.
His eyes are youthful, though, making me wonder if he’s had an eye transplant at one point. I know that instead of opting for cyborg parts, the rich just pay for human body parts from desperate souls. Another perk to being loaded with Space Yen.
“You’re much older than I thought you’d be,” I quip to him, hoping that the insult hurt. “I guess you use enhancing holograms to make yourself look better?”
He merely chuckles, but it’s humorless. “It’s amazing what technology can do with a face such as mine.” He strokes the side of his cheek, as if lost in his thoughts. “You surprised me, you know.”
“Why?”
He entwines his gnarled fingers as he looks down at me. “I planned on your getting infected on the Nova,” he says slowly. “But I thought that at the first hint of an outbreak that your crew would have come here first thing to get the cure.” He snickers. “You had me worried for a moment there.”
I grit my teeth. “Where is my crew?”
“They’re here,” he says almost proudly, “and so are you. And far more intact that I would have thought, Miss Jones. You should have been mush a long time ago. After all, it took your ship three hours to make it to Alpha from wherever it was you were hiding. Your navigational android was so damn worried about you, we had to shut him down to get to you.”
Orion was worried about me? He must have been the one to pilot the Pícara to Alpha. To try to save me. Where is everyone else? Are they infected, too?
I gulp down some air. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Surely you noticed that your biological side hasn’t been decimated like your two crewmates. Yet here you are, in one piece. And infected with the Infinity Virus, yet it’s stable enough within you to not be spreading to everything else you touch.” He strokes his chin. “You’re the first person we know who can carry the virus within her body without showing symptoms. Especially since the virus is a manufactured one that has not been exposed to a wide variety of lifeforms. To have immunity to it, well, that raises a lot of questions. Questions I want answered.”
“What do you mean?”
He runs a finger down the glass of the casket in an oddly affectionate gesture. “How long have you been a cyborg, Miss Jones?”
The question catches me off guard. “I’ve always been one.”
“Nonsense. Even the most cobbled-together cyborgs were once human. Even if you were incubated, there would have been one point in your life when you were a complete human. So, try answering that question again. How long have you been a cyborg?”
I shake my head slightly. “I—I don’t know. I was found on Darkhorse-1 when I was a child. No memory. I—”
“Ah,” he says abruptly, as if that answers everything. “So, you have no idea what caused your…condition?”
“What? No.”
On occasion, PC and I had speculated that maybe we were on a transport ship that had exploded. Or we’d been on an atmosphere-less moon and were hit with space debris. Any number of things—it’s common occurrence for Free Agents to just have missing body parts—it’s a fact of life. I shudder to think about the circumstances that would have led to a child losing half her body.
I’ve tried not to dwell on it. Some things are better left in the past.
“How old are you?” Maas asks.
I snort. “That’s not polite to ask a lady.” The chairman doesn’t seem impressed by my joke, and I falter. “I’m…not sure…They think I’m in my early twenties, but I don’t know…”
Maas glances at some spot to my left, a sinister, wondrous smile coming to his features. A grin does not look correct with the amount of frown lines he has, making him look like he’s grimacing.
“What are the odds?” he asks another person in the room, surprise evident on his face. “What are the odds that we thought we lost everything on Delta, only to have one of the original test subjects find it, and bring it back to us?”
Delta? As in the space station where everyone died of mysterious causes? I suddenly feel even more sick
“The odds are astronomical,” a female’s voice adds, disbelief lacing the word. “Improbable.”
“But not impossible,” Maas says thoughtfully.” In a galaxy filled with billions of stars, sometimes even the smallest chances come to fruition.” Maas looks down at me again, understanding on his face. “I guess it’s only fitting, then. I thought they’d all been destroyed. It appear
s I was wrong. . Makes me almost believe in a higher power.”
My retina tells me that my heartrate is too accelerated once again, telling me that I need to calm down or risk passing out again. “What do you mean, test subject?” I ask.
“Dr. Jackson,” Maas says, with a mock flourish as he steps aside, “I’ll let you explain.”
Someone else steps into view, a woman with a severe expression and her graying blond hair pulled back into a twist. Her cheekbones are sharp and her nose a little too pointed, reminding me a bit of the villains that they have in videos from old Earth.
She’s even wearing spectacles, which were once necessary for some people to see, but now serve as a functional accessory for the wealthy to have a computer readout in front of their eyes without the need for bionics.
“Miss Clementine Jones, is it?” she asks, and I can see her eyes reading the spectacles, feeding her information about me. “The chairman tells me that your crew has had an outbreak of the Infinity Virus after having contact with it on the STS Nova.”
I shake my head. “N—not an outbreak.”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow, peering over the edge of the frames at me. “Not an outbreak? Miss Jones, two of your crew are dead, you are infected yourself, and your ship is a biological hazard that my team is now trying to figure out what to do with. I do call that an outbreak, especially with how infectious this virus is.”
She didn’t mention the others. Maybe they’re still healthy. It sounds like my ship is in the scrapyards though.
“How infectious is it?” I ask.
She gives me a hard look before answering. “Are you familiar with prions, Miss Jones?”
“No.” My retina is checking for definitions, and I don’t like the disturbing details I’m being supplied.
She relishes my discomfort. “A prion is an infectious agent made of a protein.” She crosses her arms. “In biological terms, it easily transfers to other cells within the same vicinity, infecting them and spreading, infecting others and those infect others, changing their makeup to solely spread the disease. Like a virus in its own microcosm. On old Earth, humans were terrified of prions such as Mad Cow disease.” She pauses for effect. “For the past twenty-five years, we’ve been developing the Infinity Virus to act like a prion, but not just on biological matter—it does the same for inorganic objects as well. One virus, two different kinds of matter it affects. It combines both for a new kind of matter not seen in this universe. Not biological, not organic…something different.”