Parasite Lost

by Kyle Aho

  “Sorry Alistair, buzzing you in now,” the woman said. Seconds later the final door buzzed open and allowed Alistair to enter his sanctuary.

  The main chapel area had been turned into a makeshift playground. Most of the pews were gone but some had been pulled to the outside edges to allow children to sit and read or draw if they didn’t want to play. A series of tunnels and platforms made out of various salvage created a multi-level fortress for games and exercise. For safety he sprayed the fort with a latex based polymer to avoid any unwanted cuts that might result in tetanus or other infections. Tires were stacked and placed in various areas to simulate towers and tunnels. Ropes hung from several rafters that led to a hive of crash webbing and fishing nets suspended from the ceiling to facilitate another area of play. Many children had toy guns and were shooting small rubber pellets at each other while playing war games.

  Alistair knew that on the whole it wasn’t the safest environment for a child but it was the best he could provide with what little resources he scrounged together. He also felt that it served as a sort of training ground for where most of these children would end up and in that way he considered it worth the bumps, bruises and occasional swollen eye. The children were usually pretty good at including anyone who wanted to be involved in the battles and ignoring anyone who didn’t. Even the girls would join in, often working together to overthrow all the lone wolves the boys thought themselves to be. Alistair was proud of the environment he made for them but he always wanted to provide more.

  Morria parted the children to make way for Alistair, who was still carrying Gayle. Most of the children, especially the older ones, had seen newcomers in rough shape before and they simply got out of the way but a few gawked and nervously chewed their fingers as Morria, Alistair, and Gayle went into the makeshift infirmary.

  It used to be a bathroom but now only one toilet remained and only the cold water worked in the sinks. Alistair had made a table out of cinder blocks and stall walls from when his infirmary was still a bathroom and stored supplies on some bookshelves and in an old fridge. Alistair laid Gayle down on the cinderblock table and went to the fridge for some painkilling gel. Morria took a towel from a bookshelf and soaked it in cold water. She dabbed off the blue goo covering Gayle to prevent further burns as she looked down on the poor child. Gayle squinted through swollen eyes and tried to make sense of her situation. She let out a hoarse whisper that neither Alistair nor Morria could understand.

  Morria put a cold finger on Gayle’s lips to prevent her from speaking further. “Get some rest,” she whispered as she brushed a clump of hair out of Gayle’s face and further dabbed the blue goo off her body while Alistair injected a sedative mixed with painkillers into her arm.

  “She’ll wake up in about twelve hours, make sure she gets somethin’ t’eat,” Alistair said, glancing up at Morria, “Mac delivered th’food today, yeah?”

  Morria pursed her lips. Her hesitation told him what he needed to know. Alistair gritted his teeth and walked over to a sink. A swirl of red blood washed from his hands down the drain. He thought about the other kids on the monitors he saw back in the warehouse and hoped they were simply remote feeds from somewhere else because he didn’t want to believe he had been unable to rescue them from the fires he created.

  “How much d’we have then?” he asked.

  “Maybe two or three days if we skip lunch. We also have to get more rat poison and some propane tanks if we plan on cooking anything. Oh, and the generator is…”

  “Enough. I’m workin’ on it,” Alistair said. He dried his hands on his pants and left Morria to tend to Gayle. He knew they were in trouble. Recent gang activity had stopped his supply chain several times now and he couldn’t risk any of the children’s lives to go out and get supplies alone. He was too busy trying to make legitimate money in order to feed the ever growing and already overpopulated orphanage he maintained to run errands by himself all the time.

  Alistair knew that the only way out of the slums and give these kids a better life would be to land a large sum of money in a short amount of time. Alistair also knew that the only way to do that was either illegally or by claiming a large bounty. His bounty license had expired long ago but he could still take a CivOps contract if he had to. It took about fifteen minutes to boot up his machine and connect to the CivOps network to check the roster for anything lucrative. One in particular caught his eye. The only information it had was the reward, a very large reward, and the rest was classified until acceptance of the mission.

  That meant the job was going to be dangerous and would require a special set of skills from a special team of people, the kind of thing that normally one would hire a legitimate mercenary company. Since this was a CivOps contract that meant the job was either questionably legal or part of inter-corporation sabotage. Either way, it was something Alistair knew he needed to do in order to get his life back on track and put the lives of his orphans in a direction other than the streets where he found them. Alistair applied to the contract and hoped they would accept him.

  Chapter VII

  Bren, Alistair, and Apate watched the video of Dr. Julian Porter on a computer terminal in the mostly destroyed lab they first found him in. Julian wasn’t wearing a mask and his hair was much shorter. He talked with an air of excitement that betrayed his inexperience with reporting official scientific logs.

  “The powers that be have finally allowed me to study something that hasn’t already been published to death. This new parasite, a member of the cordyceps family of fungi but not native to Terrunda, which we are currently calling, unoriginally I might add, Unidentified Parasite 1264A, has been difficult to study for a myriad of reasons.

  “First and most obvious is the increased aggression the host demonstrates in the later stages of infection. Once infected with 1264A, incubation times vary greatly but most host specimens have between a week and a month until their central nervous system shuts down, leaving them in a vegetative, coma-like state. At this point the host will either die or wake with all semblance of their former selves torn away, becoming increasingly violent and unpredictable.

  “It should be noted that the initial outbreak that started this whole project was with a group of miners, about ninety percent of which died in the initial infection phase. Security personnel transferred the few men and women that managed to survive to this facility for observation. Since then we have been testing on them and recently received clearance to infect various animals in an attempt to learn more about 1264A.

  “Unfortunately, running tests on such fervently hostile creatures has been cumbersome at best. It is also interesting to note that 1264A seems to only have an effect on males of a species. This suggests a possible relationship to the ‘Y’ chromosome but that is just my own conjecture at this point.

  “The second, and perhaps most interesting, reason it is difficult to research 1264A is because,” Julian’s attention was pulled from the camera as a came from behind him, followed by terrified screams. A look of familiar concern crossed his face as Julian turned back to the camera, “it appears another specimen has escaped, I’ll continue this log at a later time.”

  Armed security personnel raced behind Julian as he waved his hand and turned off the recording. Alistair looked around at the rest of the crew as if apologizing for the sudden interruption. They clicked on the next log, a close up of Julian’s hand as he adjusted the camera again, and then composed himself briefly.

  “Well it appears that Dr. Morgahn was attacked by an infected canine specimen. He is being detained until we know for sure he isn’t a threat. If he is I’ll be forced to convene with the board and discuss our…” Julian paused, looking for an appropriate word, “…options. But until that happens I’m going to try and remain objective.”

  Apate let out a bored sigh. “Is this really helping? Shouldn’t we move on?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really see how this is helping either,” Bren admitted as he sat back in a nearby office chair with h
is feet on the desk busy thumbing through a magazine he had found.

  “Don’t y’think it’s wise t’know what we’re up against?” Alistair asked.

  “Well now we know. Some kind of parasite or fungus or some crap, right?” Bren said.

  “Should we try to find some kind of protective gear or something?” Alistair asked, already looking through some nearby lockers.

  “JP there told me we were probably already infected,” Dante said.

  “Maybe we are, we won’t know if we don’t finish listening t’this,” Alistair rebutted.

  With a crackle and buzz, the lights flickered out and left the crew in pitch-black darkness. A few seconds later they flickered back on. The computer that they were all looking at didn’t boot back up with the lights. Alistair identified the power switch and tried to get the machine operational again, only to be stymied by a security screen demanding a password.

  Alistair cursed his luck and kicked the console.

  “Did you guys notice that the hallway lights stayed on?” Bren asked.

  “What about it?” Dante asked.

  “I dunno, it just seemed like… like the power outage was confined to this room.”

  “Come on boys, let’s move. We have to find the main server room so we can download the facility backups and get the hell out of here,” Apate before turning from the console and heading back out to the hall with the captive and furious mutated animals. Bren and Dante soon followed but Alistair made an effort to try and eject the drive containing Julian Porter’s logs.

  “I think it’s a lost cause,” Bren said, trying to entice Alistair to come along. With a reluctant sigh Alistair gave up and followed the rest of them into the hallway.

  The four of them walked in silence as they stepped over mangled bodies and examined locked laboratories filled with strange animals raging mindlessly in their confines. A few drones wheeled past them to clean up bodies periodically. It was unsettling to watch the drones dragging the former occupants of this facility around like garbage but the deeper into the facility they got, the fewer corpses they came across. Once immaculately clean hallways were now stained with bright blood and littered with gore. Dante noticed that all the bodies they’d found thus far were male, confirming Julian’s statement in the video log.

  “Is anyone else wondering if we are infected?” Bren asked.

  “It’s crossed me mind,” Alistair admitted.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it anyways, let’s just keep moving,” Apate said, though it didn’t help anyone feel better.

  “Easy for you to say,” Bren said.

  “Maybe there’s a cure?” Dante said.

  “If there was, wouldn’t these guys have used it?” Apate said, kicking some bones for emphasis.

  They heard the unmistakable hum of grav-plates propelling a small drone up ahead. All four readied their weapons and pointed them at the end of the hall toward where the noise came. Gradually the humming grew louder and the whir of servos coupled with the gentle beeping of a scanning device became clear as the drone rounded the corner and lazily floated to a halt at the end of the hallway.

  It looked almost like a crustacean of some sort. It had a vaguely disk shaped shell with a gaggle of sensory equipment sticking out the top like spiky hair. A camera in the middle peered at them curiously while two little mechanical claws turned and clacked together in anticipation. A small surgical saw mounted under the nose of the drone next to some other scanning equipment that dilated open and closed to assess the four newly acquired targets. A bright red scanning laser shot out and swiped across the room, ingesting information about the four of them and processing it rapidly in an attempt to determine friend from foe. All four held their breath and hoped that the drone’s current pacifism was going persisted.

  The little thing hovered for a moment, bobbing slightly as it took in the information it needed before sluggishly turning back and continuing on its original path. There was an audible sigh of relief as the drone flew away. Weapons lowered and their heart rates stabilized. Continuing on, the team rounded the corner the drone had come from and spotted a woman holding what looked like sensitive measuring equipment and medical supplies at the end of the hall, a mess of cables implying she had recently confiscated them.

  A look of terror spread across the woman’s face. With a horrified shriek she dropped her salvaged equipment and sprinted away.

  “Wait!” Alistair yelled as he ran after her.

  Apate, Dante, and Bren all followed, racing after Alistair as he tried to catch up with the scared woman.

  “She’s back! Somebody help me!” the woman shouted as she ran.

  Their boots thumped against the ground and their gear clanked during the pursuit. The woman disappeared from view as she rounded a corner but Alistair barreled after her as fast as his legs could propel him. Alistair reached the intersection the woman had cornered and was promptly thrown off his feet by a colliding drone. Apate, Dante, and Bren watched as the drone they had spotted earlier flew from the opposite side of the intersection and smashed into Alistair, hitting him with such force that he flew through the air a short ways before landing on the ground. His inferno pistols slid from his grip and scraped along the floor and out of reach.

  Dante charged, revving his chainsaw bayonet with the intent of mauling the attacking drone but forced himself to stop mid hack upon the realization that a glancing blow would horribly maim Alistair. Shouting in confusion and fear, Alistair did his best to beat back the attacking drone while only narrowly avoiding the whirling saw blade that projected from its underside.

  Apate sighted up the attacking drone with her carbine and fired a quick burst into its light armor plating. Sparks flew and smoke billowed as vital operating systems tore apart and forced the little drone to collide against the wall and tumble to the ground only to be stomped flat by Dante’s massive boot.

  Dante rushed up to Alistair and knelt down. “You all right?” he asked as he checked Alistair over for any lacerations.

  Alistair gave an exasperated nod but clutched his hand in pain. He jerked his chin back over his shoulder and spoke through clenched teeth. “Chase her!” A quick glance showed Dante that one of Alistair’s fingers was bent at what looked like an excruciating angle but he knew the woman was getting away.

  Apate was already bounding down the hall at full speed after the fleeing woman and Bren panted like a dog behind them. Dante started to run but gave up halfway down the hall as both Bren and Apate peeled ahead of him. Once he got going he was near impossible to stop but without a moment to gather steam he knew he was going to be outpaced. He stomped back over to Alistair and knelt down. “Lemme have a look at that hand,” he said.

  Trembling, Alistair held up his hand and tried not to panic as he saw that his finger bent at a hard seventy degree angle the opposite way the joint was meant to bend. It throbbed and he didn’t enjoy the warm trickle of blood dripping down his forearm, nor did he like the glossy bone fragment sticking out from his skin.

  Dante let out a long whistle, “Little bastard messed you up, huh?” he asked as he pulled a nano-splint from one of his pockets and held it up to Alistair’s face. “You see one of these before?” he asked.

  Alistair shook his head.

  “This little guy is going to act as your joint for a while, till your finger heals. It hurts like a bitch when it goes in but self-medicates so you’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  Dante pulled a combat knife from his vest, sheath and all. He pulled the knife out of the sheath and Alistair’s eyes widened.

  “Do y’really tink that’s necessary lad?” he asked as he pulled his injured finger close to his chest.

  “Yes, I do,” Dante replied. He put the knife down on the smooth floor and held the hard leather sheath to Alistair’s lips. Alistair was relieved as he looked up at Dante and opened his mouth to bite down on the leather sheath. Dante wrapped his fingers around Alistair’s broken one. Alistair bit down hard and nodded
once more. Dante popped his finger back into place and quickly activated the nano-splint as Alistair groaned. He watched in horror as the little splint extended four needle-like appendages and impaled his finger with them. He then shrieked as the needles bored into his finger bone and secured into the skin, injecting a painkiller once properly aligned.

  Alistair looked down as the nano-splint made tiny adjustments. He wiggled his finger. The splint acted like a hinge between the broken bones. He looked up and gave Dante an appreciative nod, flexing his hand and spitting out the leather sheath which was now embossed with deep bite marks. Dante patted him on the shoulder, a gesture that practically knocked the wind out of him.

  “Who loves you baby?” he grinned, once more channeling the bravado his holo-film characters possessed.

  Apate sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her around corners and down hallways, bounding over bodies and equipment as necessary. Bren did his best to keep up but was nowhere near as agile, especially with all of his armor. The woman they chased grew tired and they were gaining ground but the woman was shouting into a radio and telling whomever was on the other side to be ready for her.

  Bren and Apate all but leapt down a flight of stairs and saw a window with several people behind the glass watching frantically as the woman they were chasing ran towards them. A door at the end of the hallway opened up and two women encouraged their comrade to enter the room. They activated the security lock and the door shut just seconds before Apate reached it.

  With a wail of frustration, Apate slammed against the door and banged her fists. She was in tears, pounding with all her strength and panting heavily from the chase. “Give me my son you heartless bitch!” she cried.

  Chapter VIII

  It was no secret to anyone in the facility that security officer Apate Nevermore and Dr. Gideon Amontillado were together but they did their best to keep things professional all the same. Public displays of affection were extremely rare, almost to the point where it seemed like they made a conscious effort to ignore or put off one another instead of expressing their admiration. No one was fooled.