Chapter 5
Gabriel’s fist lashed out at the mangrove and struck something hard and unyielding. He coughed, and thick viscous fluid bubbled up through his throat. The warm water receded around him with soft gurgles. Both ears popped, and he opened his eyes.
The river and the mangrove were gone, leaving behind nothing but dripping glass in front of his face. He reached up with the same hand he had punched with and touched the glass. With a hiss, the seal popped and the lid of the capsule slowly rose.
He sat up, coughing up more thick liquid. Aches penetrated his muscles, and he slowly grabbed the edges of the capsule. The pale blue liquid was gone, replaced by clear water that drained beneath him. His head swam with dizziness. Must be the spin cycle after the rinse, he thought.
He looked around the room, once again tinged in red lighting as it was when he arrived. How long ago? He sent a command to his neuretics to check the time, but received no response. He pulled up his neuretics’ Mindseye visual overlay and was greeted by a static-filled image with two white words: SYSTEM REBOOT.
Software upgrade, he remembered. He dismissed the Mindseye feed and rotated his body to swing his legs over the side of the capsule. Pain shot through his system as muscles pressed against bone and tendon. It felt to him like a terrible case of the flu. Or getting my ass kicked, he thought. The nanites must have done a thorough job in moving throughout his body, as the aches came from every possible source, right down to his toes. He looked down at his pruned, dripping feet and flexed his toes, being rewarded with ten distinct cracks.
He looked around the lab; even the slight motion of turning his head sent pain shooting from his shoulder blades through the base of his skull, and the dizziness came again. Disorientation indeed.
The lab was empty. No sign of Knowles. His folded clothes were where he’d left them on the table, along with a bottle of water. With a heave, he lifted himself out of the capsule. His wet feet slapped on the hard floor, and he grabbed onto the edge of the capsule to support himself. With a deep breath, he flexed his shoulders backwards and twisted side to side. The cracks and pops sounded like firecrackers. His body felt swollen, like he had had too much to eat and drink. He let go of the capsule and looked at his forearms. Whether a trick of the lighting or his dizziness, he swore they looked bigger, and were crisscrossed with bulging veins. He clenched one fist and felt the muscles pull down the length of his arm. Yes, definitely different.
The room was quiet save for the last few burbles of the water draining in the capsule. The wall screens were off as before, and Knowles’s nanoscope was powered down. All of the specimen containers were gone. The room was, for all intents and purposes, empty. Not exactly how he pictured his emergence from the procedure. Zero point, sure.
He looked down and saw the briefs were still dripping water down his legs, and felt a sudden chill as the cool lab air hit his skin. He took tentative steps to the table, and an image of a stumbling newborn giraffe flashed across his mind. In spite of his aching body, he smiled.
“Hey doc,” he called as he grabbed his shirt. His congested voice sounded like he was just getting over a chest cold. “I’m out.”
As he pulled the shirt over his head, his neuretics signaled a successful reboot and came back online. He queried them for elapsed time, and page after page of data returned, too fast for him to keep up. He sent a stop command, realizing he had a whole new system to learn. He remembered his upgrade from Level Three to Four mil rets and the days it took going through all the new capabilities. He knew he’d be in for a steep learning curve.
The data showed twenty-one hours, thirteen minutes since he entered the capsule. He pulled off the wet briefs and got dressed, then socks. His boots were under the table. He started to reach for them when he saw something out of place in the corner of his vision. He stood back up and looked over the table, but didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He turned his head slightly, hoping his peripheral vision would pick it out again. There.
He picked up the water bottle. Behind it was a round red mark, in stark contrast to the spotless white lab table. He peered closer. Blood?
The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, and his neuretics threat assessment algorithms kicked in automatically. Passive scans searched the room without orders from him, all returning negative. The room was empty.
He set the water bottle back down, a few inches further from the blood drop than it was before, and again something caught his peripheral vision. On the floor, to his right, another drop. A few feet past that, another. And another. Leading to a large storage locker mounted to the bulkhead next to a computer workstation.
He glanced back under the table. His gear bag, with all of his extra clothing, personal belongings, and perhaps most importantly his weapons, was missing.
Now the hair on his arms stood up. Something was definitely wrong. His passive scans showed nothing amiss, but the blood and missing gear told him differently.
He walked slowly over to the locker in sock feet, trying to get used to the disorientation and different musculature. His head moved as if on a swivel, and he felt all of his old combat techniques come back to him. He reached the locker and sent a low-level active scan into it, but the heavy steel construction blocked most of it. A small corner of his mind noted the vastly increased power and detail of the Level Seven active-scanning package, even on the exterior of the locker, but his attention was focused in front of him.
The locker was approximately nine feet tall, six feet wide, and two feet deep, with two wide doors on the front, each with a small handle. It had a slot for a scan pad, but the slot was empty. By design or otherwise, he wasn’t sure. Either way, the door wasn’t locked, and the blood trail stopped right in front of it.
With one last passive scan of his surroundings, he reached out and turned a handle, stepping quickly off to one side.
The door slowly swung open with a metallic squeak, and he sent the same low-level active scan inside. Empty. Shelves, bottles, cases, nothing more.
He peered around the edge of the door. At the bottom of the locker, under the lowest shelf, was a crumpled pile of light blue fabric. The same shade of blue Knowles was wearing when he met her the day before. And it was stained with blood.
His neuretics howled a protest in his mind as they detected a threat just outside the main door.
Gabriel: Zero Point Page 6
