H.A.L.F.: The Makers (21 page)

Xenos stood still and blinked at her.

Erika sighed. “A – cooler. Where you put things to keep them cold.”

Xenos moved to the left side of the room and unceremoniously pushed a hidden panel. The small door opened and light spilled into the room.

“Good girl!” Dr. Randall said. By the time Erika got to the refrigerator, Dr. Randall had apparently found what he was looking for. He held up a small packet wrapped in clear blue plastic and filled with tiny nodules that looked like bits of spaghetti.

“How do you know that’s the antiviral and not the virus?” Erika asked.

The look of joy melted from Dr. Randall’s face. “Blast it. I don’t know.” He stared at the blue packet in his hand. His eyes watered.

Xenos slowly reached her hand up and took the packet from Dr. Randall and briefly inspected it. “It is the medicine that you seek.”

“How do you know?” Dr. Randall asked.

“Blue,” she said.

“What color indicates the virus?”

“Green.”

Not how I would have done it.
In Erika’s world, green meant go. Green was the color of clean eating and environmentally friendly. Not the color of death. But the Conexus didn’t think like them.

“Are there more?” Erika asked. “We should take all they have with us.”

Dr. Randall nodded. He rifled through the shelves. “Green,” he mumbled. “Green.” Packets fell to the floor and rattled as he pushed them aside. “More green. Green. Yellow.” He held it up. “What is yellow?”

“I do not know,” Xenos said.

Dr. Randall shrugged. “Maybe it was a test batch. Quite a few of those too.”

“Any more blue?”

“I don’t see any.”

“I can’t believe that. In this whole stinking place there’s only one batch of medicine that can counteract their deadly virus?”

“Maybe they just got it to work and haven’t had time to synthesize more,” Dr. Randall offered.

Erika held up the packet of precious life-saving medicine and looked at it. “I was one lucky guinea pig, huh?” There was a space where a nodule had been removed.
My dose.
“There’s not much here.”

Dr. Randall met her eyes. “Looks like five doses.”

Erika quickly did the math. One dose for Ian. That left four doses to save countless people that could be infected.
What if my mom’s infected? Or Jack?
And then there was Ian’s family and Jack’s mom, not to mention Erika’s lengthy list of aunts and cousins.

Each of them had countless ripples of lives radiating out from them.
Everyone does.
All of them meant something to someone. There simply weren’t enough doses for everyone that meant something to her or someone she loved.

Dr. Randall touched her hand. His eyes were misty.

“Thousands could –”

“Possibly millions,” Dr. Randall said.

That thought didn’t comfort her.

“We’ll give a dose to Ian, of course. The rest we’ll have to save and take with us. Get it to the CDC. They should be able to reverse engineer it. They’ll need all of it they can get.”

Erika hoped that giving the precious antiviral to the CDC was the right thing. She wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, but she had little faith in institutions, companies or committees. She’d always had faith in the one thing she could count on. Herself. And after her time with Commander Sturgis, Erika’d lost what little confidence she’d ever had in the establishment.

Her skepticism must have been written on her face. “Don’t worry. The CDC isn’t controlled by Commander Sturgis. Or me. Guard that as though millions of lives depend on it.” Dr. Randall took an injector out of the cabinet above the refrigerator.

Erika’s pockets were full of grenades and bullets. She didn’t have a pouch or pack. She put the small packet of precious medicine in the safest place she could think of. She tucked it down her shirt between her breasts.

Dr. Randall raised an eyebrow and smiled. He nodded and turned to go but stopped. “My mind is tired. I’m a bit turned around. Xenos, would you be so kind as to lead the way back to our quarters?”

Xenos nodded and walked toward the door. Or rather, the whole they’d made in the wall. She’d gone only five feet or so before her hands flew to her temples, her rifle falling to the ground. She fell to her knees, her mouth open in a soundless ‘O’. Finally the screech found its way out of her. Her voice was like that of an animal caught in a trap.

Erika had slung her rifle over her shoulder while they searched for the antiviral. But at the first sign that something was wrong, she instinctively pulled it from her shoulder and got ready to shoot anything small and grey. She didn’t relish spilling more of their purple blood, but if they stood between her and Ian, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate. Her eyes darted from side to side, but there was no one in the room or the doorway.

Dr. Randall stood so still he looked frozen. He held a gun, but it shook in his trembling hands.

Erika didn’t wait for him to ask. She stepped out ahead of him and took point. She reached Xenos and knelt down to her. “Are they coming?” Her voice was a whisper.

Xenos held her hands to her head and cried in agony. She managed to nod.

Erika looked back at Dr. Randall and motioned for him to go to their left while she walked quietly and quickly to the right of the hole in the wall they’d made. A small thought slithered to the front of her mind.
It’s no use being secretive. They can read your mind, you know.
She did her best to build a wall around her thoughts. At the first sign of buzzing and pressure, she pushed back against it. It was exhausting work, but she hoped it kept them in the dark about their plans.

She planted herself with her back to the wall. She took deep breaths of the musty air. Her pulse beat in her neck as sweat dripped down her temples.

Erika focused all her attention to sounds. There was the rush of blood in her ears and the sound of Xenos still crying out. She listened more intently. A small rustle of fabric.
They’re coming.
She wished she could telepathically communicate that to Dr. Randall. She signaled to the hallway with her hand but wasn’t sure if Dr. Randall could see it in the dim light.

Erika kept her back to the wall but her eyes trained on the door. Her plan was to shoot at anything that crossed the threshold. But Dr. Randall apparently had another idea.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him gesture wildly at her. She squinted to see him. He had a grenade in his hand and was miming a throw with it. Then he motioned her to move back.

She didn’t need to be asked twice. Erika slowly backed along the wall, moving herself away from the door. As soon as she was clear, Dr. Randall pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade through the opening.

They waited for an explosion, but it didn’t come. A dud like the first torch.
I hope not all our ’nades are duds.

Xenos had stopped crying out and lay on the floor, writhing. Erika knew what pain the Conexus could cause. And she knew that Xenos wouldn’t last much longer.

The grenade lay on the rubble pile in the doorway like an impotent blob.
It needs a spark? I’ll give it a spark.

Erika stepped away from the wall and caught sight of bluish light reflecting off a pair of dark, mirrorlike Conexus eyes in the hallway, ready to approach the door. She opened fire at the pile of rubble, hoping to ignite the grenade and take out any Conexus that were in the hall. Some of the bullets actually fired; others didn’t. But she held her finger on the trigger and fired round after round. Bullets ricocheted off the blocks and stone. The room was filled with the echo of gun blasts and then an explosion as one of the shots finally hit her intended target and exploded the grenade.

The blast sent her to the ground. Her left leg felt like it was on fire. A piece of shrapnel was lodged in her thigh. She winced as she pulled it out and flung it to the ground. It was too dark to see how bad the injury was. Her pants leg was already soaked wet with blood. There was no time to look for a bandage.

She stood and winced again as she put pressure on the leg. Xenos was no longer writhing on the floor. She was still.

Oh no!
Erika limped back toward the small lump on the ground. She knelt and touched her neck. Xenos’ skin was cool to the touch and dry. At first Erika felt nothing. She pressed a bit harder and finally felt a faint pulse.

Dr. Randall had taken over point position and was inching his way toward the doorway again. He peeked around the corner, his gun up and ready to fire.

He stood on the pile of rubble and stopped. He gestured for her to come to him.

Erika limped over to Dr. Randall and winced with each step. Her leg burned.

“You got them,” he said. He pointed down with his gun, and there were two dead bodies in the hall.

“Doesn’t this seem almost –”

“Too easy? Yes, I was thinking the same thing. They attacked her. Why not us?”

“Exactly.”

“Unless? Maybe the humidity interferes with their wiring, so to speak. Perhaps they are unable to establish a mental interface with us when they’re impaired.”

“Maybe.” Erika hoped Dr. Randall was right, but it seemed unlikely that they’d be able to interface with Xenos yet be unable to use their mental weapon on the humans.

“You’re limping. Are you badly injured?”

“Not sure yet. I took some shrapnel in the leg. It hurts like a …” Erika shook her head and winced.

“Do you think you can make it back to Ian?”

“I don’t really see as how I have a choice, do you?”

Dr. Randall didn’t answer. He strode quickly back to the smooth plaster walls. He opened cabinets and rifled through them, all the while muttering under his breath and cursing aloud.

“Aha!” he said at last. Dr. Randall was carrying a small instrument that looked like something someone would caulk a window with. “Hop up on that table over there and show me the wound in your leg.”

Erika didn’t move. “What’s that stuff in your hand?” Nothing good had come out of this room. Erika wasn’t sure she wanted Dr. Randall to touch her with anything he’d found there.

“You’ll slow us down with that injury. You can barely walk. Now chop-chop. Up on the table.” He was using a ‘dad’ voice. It injected an authority to him that Erika had not seen in him before. Like it had been with her dad, she found she had no will to argue with him and did as he said.

“I wish I knew how to operate the overhead light,” Dr. Randall said. “I assume it’s mind controlled.”

No sooner had he said it than the light came on, nearly blinding Erika. She and Dr. Randall both shielded their eyes, unused to bright lights after their days in the dark recesses of this strange version of A.H.D.N.A.

Dr. Randall looked behind him, and Erika pulled her gun to the ready though she could not see beyond the cone of white light.

“It was Xenos,” Dr. Randall said. He told her ‘thank you’ then bent over Erika’s thigh. He peeled back the fabric of her pants and shook his head. “I thought you said it wasn’t that bad?”

“I said I didn’t know how bad it was.”

Dr. Randall used his knotted fingers to pull a piece of metal from Erika’s flesh.

Erika sucked in a deep breath and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

Dr. Randall held up the bloody shrapnel.

The sight of the bloody metal – on top of everything else – made her nearly hurl. She looked away and gagged. “Don’t show it to me.”

“Sorry,” he said and dropped the shrapnel to the floor. He put the tip of the thing that looked like a caulking gun to Erika’s thigh and pressed a lever. “I hope this is what I think it is.”

A gooey liquid squirted out in a ribbon across the wound. Erika braced herself for a burning sensation like when an open wound is cleaned with alcohol. But the goo caused no pain. In fact, it was cool and soothing.

For a few seconds.

The goo began to dry, and as it did, the rip in Erika’s flesh began to pull together, causing a painful stretching of her skin. She bit her lip and hit her fist on the stone slab to keep herself from screaming.

“Sorry. But it’s doing what I hoped it would. It’s a kind of suture glue, similar to what we have in our time. But it seems more advanced. The wound is coming together quite nicely.” Dr. Randall was bent over, his face mere inches from Erika’s thigh. His eyes lit up as he inspected the gel at work. “Intriguing.”

“Glad you’re having fun. Can we go now?”

“Oh, sorry. We have no time for scientific curiosity, do we?”

Erika chuckled softly as she gingerly hopped off the table. The pain was still there, but it had already eased considerably. “Sorry. No time for you to have a nerdfest over their tech.”

Dr. Randall shoved the suture glue into his pack. “Just in case.”

Erika clapped Dr. Randall lightly on the back. “Come on. Let’s go save a life.”

Tex followed the Regina away from the clones floating quietly in their purple liquid. He remained a few steps behind her as they moved swiftly through the halls of the world of the Conexus. His preternatural speed was back, allowing him to easily keep up with her. He was no longer fatigued or in pain. His limbs were strong, his mind clear. In fact, he had never felt better, not even when he had first escaped A.H.D.N.A. into the Arizona desert.

They entered a corridor that was bathed with a brighter light than any of the others. They moved toward the light at the end of the tunnel-like hall. The light was a familiar color, not the bluish-white that he had seen thus far on his journey. It was softer. Warmer. It reminded him of something he had known once.

The hall ended at a large arched doorway that opened to a huge cavern the size of a small city. The Regina stopped about ten feet into the place, and Tex stopped too. His head swiveled slowly from side to side, taking it in.

His mind raced to keep up with his senses. He knew this place.
But how could I know it? I have never been here.

“But you have.”

The artificial light that filtered from above was made to replicate sunlight. It was not as bright as it had been in Aphthartos, but it was the same color. Under his feet were crumbly rocks and dirt, but here and there bricks were embedded into the ground. The rust-red dirt was the remnants of bricks he had once walked on.