Toxic (55 page)

“They aren’t dangerous! There’s no risk that their weapons will harm us. Neutralize them without killing them and find the radio.”

A series of violent explosions shook the T-J, from which he was following the operations. Balls of fire appeared almost everywhere on the site. Clearly, the humans had booby-trapped the facilities.

The explosions pulverized the buildings haphazardly. Debris hit the sides of the apparatus. Jave saw females coming out of the ground. He commanded a close up. They were coming out of a sort of well.

“They have built an underground complex,” he announced on the tactical network.

A whistle from Kjet reached him through bone conduction.

“They freed the spoiled products from the enclosure. They are coming from everywhere.”

Their adversaries were adding confusion to the chaos. This seemed like a delirious strategy consisting in spreading fire and blood without any other objective than sowing terror. First of all, they needed to stop the explosions, Jave decided. The feed from a drone appeared in the middle of the image of the battle field. A man with white hair, dressed in a large habit with a hood, was walking around in the middle of the camp, his arms raised, dragging a procession of infected behind him. In one of his hands was a gun and in the other one, a large metallic box. He yelled inaudible words, covered up by the clamor of the weapons and bombs. The Lynian observed him closer up. The man was reciting phrases, punctuating each of them with a movement of his thumb. Each time he pressed on the box, an explosion happened nearby. Jave reacted immediately. He activated a program that aimed an antenna to isolate the transmission frequency of the remote control. He obtained the frequency in a fraction of a second. The systems then jammed it. The man pushed on the button several times, and when he saw that nothing had happened, he threw himself on the ground in rage. He opened fire on the infected and then continued, yelling in frustration. After having killed several of them, he got back on his way, overwhelmed by their numbers.

The communication interface vibrated on the edge of his visor. Jave almost moved the message bubble away, but then he saw who it was from. The Säzkari hadn’t chosen the best moment, he told himself, but he still accepted the call.

“Emissary Jave, I have the first results of my analyses on the sample you entrusted to me.”

“Perfect. I’m listening to you.”

All the while listening to the whistled words of the reptilian, he continued to watch the progress of the tactical situation. A burst of light illuminated the virtual display. A shed burst out in smoke on the edge of the camp. A dozen humans ran along a neighboring path.

“My first conclusion is that it is the precursor to a biological weapon in its first stages.”

Jave absorbed the information.

“A weapon?”

“Yes. Two separate products aren’t dangerous, but once they are brought together, they become a weapon. The simplest are binary.”

“Of what nature is this one here?”

He easily imagined the movement of the forked tongue of the mercenaries’ head doctor accompanied by a prolonged whistle as a sign of satisfaction. The Säzkari had made a discovery, and maybe even a breakthrough, he hoped.

“Very different. Under a second analysis, it seems that it’s not a weapon, even if its use is based on an identical principle.”

Jave anticipated his next words.

“A precursor to the cure?”

“Exactly,” he heard. “Here, you only have one part of the antidote, not the complete formula.”

“According to you, how many stages are there?”

“It’s hard to say without doing more thorough tests and trials on subjects. Three, of course, and maybe more. There is also one detail that has been bugging me. The composition reveals the presence of tri-cyclo-atrinamine, a molecule that doesn’t exist on earth and which the local civilization is far from being able to synthesize.”

“I see. Other elements?”

“
Njet
.”

“I’ll get back in touch with you, and most of all, remember that you are working exclusively for me on this project.”

Jave cut the conversation. A video feed caught his attention.

A drone was flying over a rectangular excavation. Dozens of creatures were agglomerating around a shelter with bars where two units were taking refuge. Not far from them, the infected had just devoured an unrecognizable human. The emissary spotted a tuft of blond hair in the middle of a sea of blood. There, on top of the threatened cage, two females were trying to escape, surrounded by the horde. He didn’t recognize the first, who grabbed the cable, but the second...

“
Knaj ishou navvit njet pa’a,
”
he said in his native language.

Humans had a word to describe this sort of situation: destiny. His talent suddenly awoke, rushing towards an urgent decision.

T
he fall lasted an eternity.

The things patients claimed about their life flashing before their eyes at their moment of death were a lie, Elaine thought. She didn’t see anything like that, not even an image of her parents or her as a child that she had forgotten, hidden in the furthest depths of her atavistic memory. Yet she blinked her eyes as a call for help, to live out that regression in the hopes of running into one of her family members. Nothing. She didn’t feel any type of happiness at the thought of her coming death, as if her time had not yet come. So she prepared to suffer, her eyes closed and her fists clenched. She felt her body hit a solid surface and lost her breath. No noise of crushed meat and no sensation of plunging into the middle of a slimy sea. Not even pain. To her surprise, the teeth didn’t attack her flesh and the hooked fingers didn’t rip at her skin. Impossible, her mind cried out.

She opened her eyes. Her fingers hesitated and then touched a surface similar to a salty crust. The explosions had ceased, but not the crackling of the AKs or the M16s, which were nosier than the Russian weapons. She brought her hands in front of her face. They were dirty but had no blood on them. She wondered why and was thrown into confusion. The smell of fire stunk up the heavy, humid air. It had replaced that of the L-Ds. Elaine got up, disoriented, in the middle of the pit. Around her, the creatures had disappeared, vaporized without explanation. A wall of infected was growing at twenty, maybe thirty meters from her. They moved around and grunted without moving towards her, blocked from moving forward, banging against a sort of invisible wall which they scratched at with their gnawed limbs.

She swallowed and plugged her nose when she smelled her own stench. Her clothes were stuck to her flesh like a second skin filled with putrid whiffs. The unbearable fragrance made her empty stomach curl. She bent to the side and vomited up bile. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth. A moving metallic form and then two caught her attention behind the tide of broken faces. Brilliant blades cut up the zombies with a surreal, inhuman speed, like a mechanical reaper at full speed. The chrome gladiators moved around floating in the middle of the horde, which they decimated methodically. They pushed the infected towards the transparent wall. Their bodies were cut down and their entrails spread out in a horrific portrait painted by an artist forced to use nothing but red watercolors.

A presence sent shivers down her spine and put goose bumps on her forearm. She turned around slowly and stiffened suddenly: she immediately recognized the purple armor, similar to the one she had crossed paths with in the garden in the Bahamas. The metal statue remained motionless and a blade vibrated in its thick hands. Four fingers, she noted. What did they look like? What type of creature was hiding behind this high-tech armor?

She would have liked an answer before leaving for the other world, and then she remembered having escaped death on the navy transport as well. Did she owe it her life?

“You again, right?”

The alien approached her and offered her a chrome-plated arm. In all earth’s cultures, this friendly gesture signified helping one another and support. Humans sealed peace agreements with a shake of the hand. Did this creature represent the same thing to her? If that was the case, these beings from space seemed capable of compassion.

She accepted its offer.

His rescue had succeeded, Jave congratulated himself, climbing back on board the T-J. By only a quarter of a second.

Putting a confinement field around the human had saved her from the effects of the thermobaric detonator, thrown just under her. The expansion charge had liquefied and then vitrified the creatures that threatened to shred her to bits. His escort of troopers undertook the cleaning of the pit. He then ordered them to aid the troops surrounding the pockets of resistance. He put the female down on a seat in the cargo area, which was too big for her, and then looked at the progress of the tactical situation. Explosions had reduced other buildings and sheds to pieces. None of them were standing any longer. He was interested in the reports on losses.

With the exception of the shooter killed by the troopers at the beginning of the battle, the humans had been killed by fratricidal shots from their own people. The mercenaries had even screened them off in the hopes of protecting healthy products to capture them. A tough core of fighters was putting up a desperate last stand from the tunnels, which were the unpleasant surprise of the day. He saw three of them in front of an entrance. They held a sort of metal sheet above their heads. The situation, chaotic for a moment, was now under control, he told himself, and they didn’t even have one wounded among them.

The emissary ordered the T-J, which was in automatic mode, to move away from the area. Kjet intervened immediately.

“Humans succeeded at crossing the perimeter,” Jave lied, “likely by taking the underground tunnels.”

Between two shots of the neutralizer, Naakrit’s lieutenant told him to be careful. The Lynian cut the link. He went back to the female. Their paths had crossed once again, each time under dramatic circumstances. She was standing up, her gaze fixed on him. Her body and clothing smelled like a mix of burning, sweat and rotten organic matter. Jave also smelled her fear. Her skin showed a reddish color in parts and crimson stains dotted up to her face with its hard features. She didn’t move, clearly terrified. All humans were in the presence of a mercenary.

She stared to speak, and her lips stretched into an expression that he had learned to recognize: the nervousness of anxiety. The emissary activated the translator.

“Before dying, I’d like to know what you look like. Are you so terrifying that you need to hide under your armor?”

Jave was confused for a moment and then started to take off his helmet. A hissing noise came out of it. The female jumped. She recoiled when she saw his smooth features, so different from that of her species and her vast array of expressions. Nerves and muscles ran along the sub-cutaneous layers in a dense network, he recited for himself.

“I’m Jave. I’m a Lynian and I’m not going to kill you.”

“Elaine, I’m... a nurse,” she hesitated.

His nasal vents closed and then opened once again. He consulted the tera-servers, which indicated that no country with that name existed, but that it was likely a function within society. The emissary found the reference under healthcare workers. The human was therefore a sort of Säzkari. Interesting, he thought.

“Why did you save me from the island and on the ship, Site B? Do you want me alive, to question me or to dissect me?”

He himself didn’t have an answer. In a certain way, he was trusting his instinct, his talent.

“I came to help you, and to help your people. You are the best chance for your civilization.”

“Me?”

“And your group, which is made up of remarkable individuals.”

“Dewei?”

Was she talking about the person who miraculously survived the horde? Jave needed to clarify this point.

“He survived contact with the infected.”

“You could have taken him to study him. You had the chance,” the human retorted.

“I wouldn’t have been able to save him from the greed of the mercenaries. He was safer with you.”