Aymes was well enough to lead a team of Marines and Dianians out to the center to rescue the children. Many of the mindless gestation clones had died of starvation but most of the children had survived thanks to the care of a red headed women with Ray’s face. She introduced herself to Aymes as Astrid Copeland.
Jonah recovered slowly. He had been shredded by a grenade and parts of his body took weeks to heal. When he woke, his first thoughts were of Ray. Bones quietly told him that she was lost. Assumed to have died in one of the shuttles that hit the nets. At the news Jonah simply rolled to face the dirt wall. He didn’t speak for days.
Slowly Bones, Nettle and Aymes coaxed him back to the world and got him up and moving about the corridors of the Medbay. On the last day of his convalescence, Bones found him standing in an adjacent room, looking down at the catatonic form of Ray lying in a bed. He stared fixedly, his eyes drinking in every detail of her face. Bones struggled to read the expression on his face. Hatred? Disgust? Greif?
“It’s not her,” Bones signed and gently guided Jonah out into the Diana sunlight.
At almost the same time a young man tasked with clearing out useful equipment from the CDSE compound entered one of the surgical suites. He fossicked lazily, not expecting to find much. Most of the good stuff had been pilfered weeks ago.
A bed with a MRI cowl sat against the wall, a layer of dust starting to build on the white surfaces. Nobody had bothered moving it because they had already grabbed a couple of newer ones from the Darklands cloning center.
This time the young man, for lack of anything else to do, wiped the dust of the control screen and cast his eyes over the jumble of letters.
The right half of the screen featured a status panel. The power indicator was still lit, and the machine reported it was ‘Ready’.
Beneath the status box a progress panel reported,
“Full Scan Completed: Subject: Min-654MilGr.
H.E.R.B
The Dianian Chronicles
Book 2 coming soon
Visit
Don’t forget to please
Rate and Review!
Help an Indie Author Today!
Earth-Net Page 31
