“You want to be scribe today?” I asked Eve, making a quick play for lab partner before anyone else could speak.
Daries smiled at me, blowing a bubble with his gum as he collected his things. Simon glanced at me and then down at his desk.
“You’re scribe,” said Eve, pushing both our biopads against my chest.
“Don’t you trust my observational skills?”
“About as much as I trust any of the other apes around here.”
She was joking, but there was just enough cut in her voice to think she wasn’t completely—that I was pushing things too much. For a second I thought about backing off and giving in to the silence forming in the last few seconds, but doubled down instead. “At least grant me chimp?”
She started walking toward the microscopes and looked over her shoulder. “I’ll give you rhesus monkey.”
“Are those the kind that throw shit at each other?”
“They all throw shit.”
I tried to smile, muttering under my breath, “At least it beats baboon.”
It almost looked like she smiled, too, before frowning slightly as she took her stool at the workstation. “For now. This place triggers evolutionary regression in even the highest branches.”
I was analyzing what percentage of that was banter when I realized we were sitting above the cabinet I’d hidden under the first night after escaping from C2. The fear, persistent and amorphous, returned as suddenly the corners of the table felt sharp and my mouth turned dry—the light fixtures overhead buzzing and alive. I tried to think of something else, but it followed, face-guarding.
“Have you ever seen Verex venom close up?” she asked, squirting a drop of solution onto the slide. The quick, confident movements made it seem like she’d done this a thousand times before.
“Not this close,” I said, trying to refocus.
“Every time I do it amazes me that we’re actually beating them.”
“More like containing.”
The Verex’s appearance had been a mystery. Their home planet was found to be completely inhospitable to human life when initially surveyed. But when the mining team arrived nine months later, the conditions had changed drastically: A thirty-degree rise in temperature. Thirty percent more nitrogen. Eight percent more argon. Subterranean aquifers. Melting ice caps. At first this was chalked up to instrumentation errors made by the surveying scout ship, but after the mining operation was overrun and an entire marine battalion lost investigating it, a huge scandal erupted when it was discovered that the ship’s captain and chief science officer’s net worth had skyrocketed. The suspicion being that Exos Mining had bribed them to report the false readings, so that the planet would fall under the aegis of the Economic Corps instead of the Colonization Corps and Exos would get to exercise their pre-purchased concession options.
As the Verex hopped planets and increasingly drew the Fleet into a full-scale confrontation, both the scout ship’s crew and Exos were excoriated, the latter being sued into oblivion and the former being charged with the highest counts of fraud. However, most found it odd that just before the report surfaced the ship’s senior staff had been heroes on their way home after making a stunning archaeological find one system over, while Exos had enjoyed the rare distinction among extraction companies of having both solid environmental and corruption records. It didn’t seem to line up, and there were all kinds of conspiracy theories trying to explain it.
“Still,” she said. “It can hibernate for up to forty-five days, and actively infect you for an entire week before it’s symptomatic. Or, if it thinks you’re valuable enough, it’ll just kill you in minutes with a mad dash for your vitals.”
As she said the words, I could tell that the virus-loaded venom she was handling affected her differently than the tourist-like way most people behaved when confronted with something abstract; like she could actually connect its effectualness to people’s suffering. Feeling the things that people usually just thought about.
“Here,” she said, stepping back from the microscope. “Check out the competition.”
I slid over and leaned into the ocular lens. “They’re moving so fast . . . it’s like the cells are drilling or something. Practicing formation.”
“And that’s their resting state.” The coolness with which she spoke made me realize that what I’d perceived as guardedness was probably just her way of harnessing her own intensity. And the distance she kept wasn’t a reproach but a wall, making sure nothing too light or inconsequential got inside to temper it.
Though her demeanor was jagged, her skin—a few shades lighter than olive, a few shades darker than fair—was smooth and fluid. Her arms were slim, but well defined. Her eyes were brown and large—doe-like but fierce—and curtained by long jetting eyelashes and eyelids that had inexplicably evaded the specter of sleep deprivation that haunted everyone else. All of these were traits that I’d recognized, one or two each in different people before, but seemed to take on a different character entirely when they were all woven together in the same one, summing into something foreign and rare.
“They do all the things living eukaryotes are supposed to do—house DNA, repair themselves, sense feedback—but that’s mostly happening in the background. What makes them special are their kerocold cells that, by moving in fast succession, actually generate enough heat energy to power the other ones. Of course, there’s thermodynamic loss in that conversion, but it’s all additive. It’s like they’re built for this. Like everything about them benefits from this toxic, self-propelled aggression. It . . . it’s just breathtaking that something like this is out there. That it exists.”
My eyes drifted from Eve’s face over to a schematic of a Verex Shifter on a nearby lightboard. It had a slender, geometric body and tall, curving, muscled limbs, but it was hard to even call them those things because in reality––in the tie-ins and film from the Rim––they were like living shadows that seemed to disappear behind any present terrain, compressing and expanding into whatever the moment needed them to be. Their skin was black and rubbery, resistant to everything but the most explosive, highest-grade ammunition that the Fleet had started manufacturing. Their claws were long, spindly, delicate-looking things, yet somehow strong enough to dig through rock, crust, and even some types of mantle.
The only thing vaguely recognizable about them was their eyes: small and yellow and slightly sunken, mammalian-looking.
“It almost reminds you of here,” I said softly.
“Nah, this is where they can dream up a cure,” she said. “Or at least another antidote, when the Verex modulate again.”
“Is that your guess as to what all these scientists are doing?”
She nodded. “It’s the best-equipped facility near the Rim.”
“And you’re here because they’re here. To use the labs to come up with some cure to your brother’s disease.”
“Sounds desperate, doesn’t it?” she asked, her voice unrelenting. Fervent. “Well, it is. But no one’s research had made headway—Athena Carta hampered it—so much that most companies shuttered their Kamalgia drug programs and gave up.” She shook her head, slowly at first and then picking up speed. “But I couldn’t do that. My brother isn’t the kind of person you sit and watch die.”
“Aren’t you worried about your Mylan Chip?”
“They don’t seem to be.” We both looked over at Mr. Katz, wearing his white lab coat and scrawling diagrams on the lightboard.
“Either way it doesn’t matter. If you met Nolan, this whole coming-here-to-look-for-a-cure thing wouldn’t seem the least bit wild. It’d be wild not to.” Eve paused, seeming to stare at an apparition of him across the room. “Everything he did—does—has this weight to it. This shine. And when the test came back positive, such a large hole opened up inside me that I couldn’t just carry on with it. You know, with the usual be there kind of stuff you do for terminal people. It was too big. Too much of me was down it, and whenever I did something that didn’t a
cknowledge it, well . . . I shut down. I couldn’t pretend that he . . .” She trailed off again.
“And the idea was that if you were able to synthesize something, one of the scientists here would publish the results over Telnet and it’d get back to your brother?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s probably the best reason anyone has for being here,” I said, awed that she was trying to rescue her family, and horrified that I’d never get another chance to rescue mine. Worse, that I’d killed them by being impatient and reckless—the exact opposite of her multi-year, stunningly scripted endeavor. I wanted so badly to have another shot at making things right like she was trying to do, even if the odds were one in a thousand. One in a million.
“What’s yours?” asked Eve as we switched places and she took her position back at the microscope.
“Not nearly as good.”
“Try me,” she said.
“Some other time.” I was still floating in my nearness to her, but the prospect of explaining myself deflated me even more. She’d come because she was brave, I because I was a coward. Of course she was distant; any time spent not working was betraying her brother.
I realized then that it wasn’t just the standard, run-of-the mill hormonal overflow I’d felt before with other girls, or the warming, gnawing attraction, which was new. She was both safety and a reason to stay strong. Somewhere I could go where none of the other horrible things could follow. And while it didn’t make sense logically, when I focused on her breathing, pretty soon mine grew even again, and everything that had turned loud and sharp a few minutes ago started to normalize.
“You wouldn’t need a lab assistant, would you?”
“A lab assistant?” asked Eve.
“Yeah, someone to prep slides and cultures and kill rats and all that science stuff.”
I might not have been able to help my family, but I could do the next best thing.
“And just where exactly would I get someone willing to trade hours in the Box and training rooms to do something as points-irrelevant as that? They purposefully make time scarce. Squeeze it until it’s too thin to hold before you’re on to the next thing, being taught the next trick. Almost like . . .”
“Almost like a dog.”
“It’s not often you find someone willing to ignore the rewards they dangle out.”
I winked at her. “Or an ape, for that matter.”
Chapter 27
I didn’t think there’d be enough ammo in the cartridge to take down the Verex Shifter before it closed. It was still gnashing and snarling when it left the ground three meters away, but someone else must’ve shot it in-flight, too, since its claws were facing down when it landed. Its head smashing into mine but with closed jaws, rolling off me as we crunched into the metal deck floor. My shoulder exploded with white hot pain, but it was still attached. I was still breathing, even though most of the wind had been knocked out of me.
My marine wrestled his Pegasus rifle out from under the Verex, ejecting one magazine and popping in another—firing just in time to keep a second Shifter from overtaking Private Lowry. Although he was already so badly mauled that he collapsed on his own a few seconds later, holding on to Ensign Lane momentarily, then tumbling into one of the puddles left over after the emergency sprinklers had cycled five minutes ago.
I’d been tied in about that long, enough to learn some of my squad mates’ names. That their ship somehow had Verex on it—which had either stowed away on a dropship or spawned somewhere that hadn’t been locked down and sterilized. And now at least half the decks were overrun or compromised.
Our squad had just tried to retake main engineering, but there’d been a hydrazine leak that had forced everyone onto the dorsal section five decks above—which unfortunately was one of the least secure areas on the ship.
I kept trying to tell myself that I wasn’t there. That I was hundreds of light years away on Corinth Station. But my body wouldn’t believe me. Refusing to just be a passenger even though there was nothing to control. Refusing to be numb, even though I’d died dozens of times since I’d arrived. Every time feeling like my first. As visceral as the shuttle crash, submerged in an ionized vat of cortisol and adrenaline.
It seemed liked the gunfire was tapering off when my marine—Pvt. Austin Harris—paused to reload again, but just as quickly a handful of others were shooting in his direction, metal drumming, shells chewing through the wall just behind him. I half spun, half dove out of the way—as another Verex flew past, raking my side, before skittering through a sheet of water and sliding to a stop in the fork a few meters down.
“We gotta get the fuck out of here!”
“The rally point’s just ahead. Another two tube-links, then hang a right.”
“How’s that leg of yours doing?” Pvt. Harris called out to one of the remaining marines, Pvt. Harmsworth, who I’d gathered was one of his best friends.
“It’s . . . been better.”
Harris looked over and saw that—in addition to being clawed up—Harmsworth had been bitten, too. A ghastly cluster of perforations rising from his knee to his hip. Depending on what strain of Verex venom it was, half of his body could be colonized—and his immune system suppressed—within the next twenty minutes.
“They should have antidote since Charlie company swung by the Med bay on the way over. But let’s roll; I’m picking up all kinds of movement coming in,” he said, glancing down at his Udev where red dots were appearing one after another on a dark, zoomed-in representation of their deck.
The corridor was long. I almost couldn’t see the end of it. Parts of it were fully lit, but others, where the casings had been cracked, were dim and flickering—casting palls on the thin films of remaining sprinkler water. A flash fire had ripped through a lot of the lower decks after the leak—and had triggered a ship-wide emergency response.
“I thought it was still up a deck.”
“No, no—we’re almost there.”
“I’ll warn them then—positioning’s been in and out . . . and looks like it’s down for good now.” Pvt. Harmsworth pocketed his Udev and switched on his comm. “This is Tango 29 approaching Rally Point Beta from Bulkhead 393A. Just had contact with Shifters and a few Bandrifts, but not seeing anything just ahead.”
The radio crackled. “Copy that Tango 29. We’ve been hot, but clear at the moment as well. We’ll be watching out for you.”
My marine started to jog, but pain immediately made him pull up. Blood was flowering in different spots on his green and silver Fleet uniform and I realized that claws—or something sharp—must’ve gone all the way through the Devlon after all. It had just been happening so fast and he’d had too many stims and too much adrenaline to feel it. Yet it couldn’t have been that deep either: I was still breathing. I was still walking. Able to catch up a few moments later and bring up the rear.
Around the next turn, the tube widened slightly around makeshift barriers and dead Verex and marines. For a second, I didn’t think anyone was left alive and that we’d been talking to some other marines on some other part of the ship, but then two men in ensign’s uniforms and a Sergeant arose from behind an overturned utility cart.
“How many more are coming?”
“That’s it. We ran all the way from engineering after the breach . . . there’s Verex everywhere.”
“Uh, well, there’s only about . . . twelve of us here. I don’t know if that’ll be enough to punch through to the escape pods.” The main’s face was pallid. Ghastly. An electrical burn flaring a charred onyx red across his neck and lower chin.
“Does anyone have any antidote?”
“Charlie Company does, but they’ve been out of contact for the last few minutes,” said one of the ensigns.
“Which way were they coming from?”
“Same way you were.”
“Then they’re not coming,” said Ensign Lane decidedly.
Pvt. Harmsworth raised his hands to his head as a voice rang out over the
ship-wide comm system. “All personnel please make your way to the escape pods or shuttle bays. Captain Jeffries has given the order to abandon ship. Self-destruct sequence will commence in T-minus seven minutes.”
“Fuck. Fuck!”
“Why are they initiating so fast?”
“‘Cause they’re worried the Verex’ll chew through the power supply and cut it short. They’re getting fucking smart. They know what we’re doing.”
“We gotta get going. How are you guys on ammo?” the marine—a sergeant—asked Pvt. Harmsworth.
“Could use a few clips, but we’ll have to catch up,” said my marine. “This guy’s bitten, so we’re going to hit this med locker I’m seeing on Deck 64.”
“You won’t make it.”
“Well, he’s not going to make it in an escape pod.”
Gunfire sounded nearby.
“Let’s just go with them,” cried Pvt. Harmsworth. “We don’t have fucking time.”
“Yeah, we do,” said Pvt. Harris, staring down at his U-dev. “There’s a lift a link away from the locker. Should put us right back near the pod bay. Come on.”
My marine pulled Pvt. Harmsworth around and started limping back down the corridor, stopping a half link later in front of a deck ladder. Then he was lowering himself. The pain seeming to escape into the background as the voice came back over the comm. “All personnel, please make your way to the escape pods or shuttle bays. Captain Jeffries has given the order to abandon ship. Self-destruct sequence will commence in T-minus six minutes. “
He did a quick gun sweep on the Deck 63 landing, and then proceeded toward the next level.
“Do you smell that? How far has the leak gotten?”
“I’m showing it’s still in the stern section: Decks 49-60. There’s emergency force fields in place.”
“You can’t trust that. Sensors are going off line.”
“If it was here, we’d be dead. There’re still all kinds of gasses being vented. I’m sure none of it’s—”
Lakes of Mars Page 17
