No time for that now. Allan reached up and grabbed the captain's neck, squeezing as well, but it didn't seem to matter to the man. On top of that, he couldn't seem to get a good grip. Thinking fast, Allan pulled down, bringing the man's face closer, let go of his neck and grabbed his face. He shoved both gloved thumbs into the captain's eyes. Feeling the eyeballs pop beneath the tip of his thumbs, it felt to Allan like he had sunk his thumbs into a bowl of warm mush. Fighting revulsion, listening to the captain bellow his mindless rage, he got his air back as the hands fell away. Allan shoved the man off of him, grabbed his machete and shoved the tip of the blade directly into the captain's forehead. There was a sharp crack, the body vibrating violently, then death.
He was getting the upper hand.
Duncan let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Allan looked over and quickly realized he was not gaining the upper hand. He tore the blade out and sprinted across the bridge. Duncan had dealt with two of the bastards that had come his way, but the third had somehow gotten the upper hand on him. It had jabbed a combat knife through his body armor and into his side.
How strong were these things?
Allan rushed the man, burying the blade into his neck and pulling the knife out. Duncan screamed again and collapsed.
“Shit!” Allan cried, giving a quick look around the bridge, finding it empty and dropping to his knees. He grabbed his medical kit and opened it up.
“How you doing? Anything punctured, do you think?” Allan asked, tearing open a package of coagulant powder and pouring it into the wound.
Duncan let out a long, hoarse shout. “Uh, how about my fucking stomach!” he snarled through gritted teeth.
Allan managed a short, grim chuckle. “I mean organs, smartass.”
A pause. “No...I don't think so, but I can't tell for sure.”
“Shit, man...look, I need to find out what happened here, okay? Can you wait?” he asked.
Duncan nodded, teeth still pressed together. “Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine. Just...don't leave it too long, huh?” he replied.
“You got it. Here, hold still.”
Allan took off the man's helmet, gave him an injection that was part painkiller and part antibiotic. He replaced his helmet, then, because it nagged at him, he sealed the hole in Duncan's suit. After that, he gently helped him up, brought him over to one of the workstation chairs and carefully set him down. When he was sure the demo expert was comfortable, he turned away from him, crossed the bridge and sat down in the captain's chair.
“Finally,” he whispered, booting it up.
It was time to get some answers. The first thing he wanted to do was to run a BioScan and see what kind of results that produced. A moment passed in relative silence. Allan glanced back at Duncan. He was still sitting on the chair, unmoving. Allan stared at him a moment longer, suddenly wondering if he had just up and died. He was about to stand up and go check when Duncan shifted slightly and muttered to himself.
A soft chime startled him into turning back around. The BioScan was finished. Allan started to study it, but his vision abruptly blurred and then doubled. At the same time his head let out a pulse of raw, red pain that seemed to shoot through his entire body. He groaned, closing his eyes, willing the pain to pass, or at least subside. It did, after several moments. Allan took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He returned his attention to the BioScan results. What he saw didn't help. There were zero human life signs onboard.
Okay, okay...maybe it was broken.
But maybe not.
Probably not.
Allan sighed and closed that window. He tried to boot up the mission log, but was unable to do so. He had to settle for the captain's journal for data. He read the first entry, dated nearly a month ago, hoping something worth reading was in there.
ENTRY ONE FOR PROJECT: NULL
10.01.2347
I have been put in charge of a particularly miserable assignment by the Head Director. I don't know what I did to piss him off, but here I am, babysitting a bunch of eggheads out in the middle of nowhere. What's worse, they're fucking around with that virus. It blew up in their face twenty years ago and it did again two months ago on Dis. This damned Necro Virus is too hot to handle, but whatever the boss says, goes.
Here's hoping I don't wind up a drooling psychopath.
Allan felt his entire body go cold with raw-edged fear. The Necro Virus? Dis...that's where Greg and Kyra had been. For a mindless, cold-gut second, he thought he was going to become a zombie. But...that didn't follow. There were no zombies here, just creepy insane guys. Allan made himself calm down and focused. He kept reading, skipping ahead some.
ENTRY FOURTEEN FOR PROJECT: NULL
10.14.2347
Nothing but bullshit and bitching lately. The eggheads are screwing around in the labs, as far as I can tell. They send me reports that don't make any sense and I ship them off to Central Command. All I could pull out of it was that they're trying to synthesize some new battle drag, something to make the men more violent, more effective in combat. Seems like a lot of bullshit to me. All a soldier needs is proper motivation, not drugs.
That answered some of the questions...though not all of them. Allan read on.
ENTRY TWENTY SIX FOR PROJECT: NULL
10.26.2347
Everything's gone to hell. Those stupid fucking eggheads. Whatever they were making, it got out. I'm holed up in the bridge now with some of the crew and one of the scientists. He's just told me that it's basically hopeless. Not only did they fuck up what they were doing, causing it to not just make the men more violent but actually insane and physically much stronger, not only did it get out...it's fucking airborne! He rattled off a list of symptoms: dry throat, headache, muscle ache, extreme emotions, hallucinations. I've already got some of those and so do the others. We're fucked. They said they have a cure for it, in the main lab, but I don't imagine we'll make it there. We managed to get a distress call out, but then the comms array broke down somehow. This might be my last entry. I can't think of anything smart to say, unfortunately.
There was nothing else. Now real terror had seized Allan. It was airborne. His ruptured suit in the beginning of this, all the times he'd opened his visor, when he'd taken off his helmet...he was definitely infected. He had most of the symptoms. Though not hallucinations...right? How could he tell if he was hallucinating?
“Duncan!” he called, turning around. “Duncan, there's a virus in the air and...” he trailed off, seeing that Duncan was wholly immobile. Fearing the worst, Allan stood up and tried to process this. He was infected with some kind of insanity virus...but there was a cure. He needed to find the main lab. But first he needed to send out a distress call. What was wrong with the comms array? He crossed the bridge and stared into Duncan's visor.
The man was still alive, he realized, just passed out. Great. Allan left him alone and moved over to the communications workstation. Motivated to work more quickly than before, Allan sat down, booted it up and ran a quick diagnostics. The problem was still there. And it was more complicated than he had hoped. But, after a quick examination of the data, he was relieved that he could at least figure out how to fix it. He'd never been very intelligent with making small, technical repairs. The primary array was down, for whatever reason, and the secondary array apparently was stuck inside of its holding bay along the exterior of the ship.
As such, it needed to be manually released...on the exterior of the ship.
“Guess I'm going upstairs for a walk,” Allan muttered to himself as he stood up. The procedure itself was simple: turn a wheel and flip a lever.
Allan turned and stared at Duncan, frowning. Another problem. How to solve this? His gaze drifted across the bridge and finally settled on a door tucked away into the back corner. Crossing the room, he reached the door and opened it, peering inside. It was a small bathroom. He cleared it out, checking the two stalls and finding them empty. Somehow, in all the chaos, no one and nothing had managed to make it in here.
The room was clean, white and empty. Allan went back into the bridge, grabbed Duncan and dragged him gracelessly across the deckplates. He hauled him into the room, then left and shut and locked the door.
With that done, Allan headed for the airlock, which was conveniently placed within the bridge as well. Something was nagging at him and it only got worse as he drew closer to the airlock. When he was within arm's reach, he realized what it was: Allan had no weapons. He'd dropped his machete. Sighing, he wasted another five minutes scavenging the bridge for tools or weapons. All he found was that combat knife that might have murdered Duncan, his machete and the wrench Duncan had been using. Seeing as he no longer trusted his machete, because it kept getting stuck in people, he abandoned it in favor of the wrench.
For good measure, he tucked the knife away in a sheath on his suit. Feeling about as good as he was going to about this, Allan made for the airlock. He was actually inside of it, preparing to cycle through, before the idea that he should probably run a suit check hit him. He did, and discovered a hole in his armor, near his stomach. Talk about a close call. He quickly patched it up, then cycled through the airlock. Activating his magnetic boots, he set off.
Outside was, as it always was, beautiful.
Stars, distant pinpricks of light, millions or even billions of years old, their light only now reaching him. Some of them might even be dead by now, or long dead. He clanged along the surface of the ship, turning his attention to the hull. He wasn't holding onto the wrench, instead deciding that it'd be better in his belt loop. He might lose it. The chances of someone having made it out here were slim to none...though that didn't mean there wasn't anyone out here. Paranoia gripped him and he paused halfway through his sojourn to look around.
No one and nothing out here with him, as far as he could see. Breathing a little easier, Allan hurried on. He spied the stub of technology that was the manual release device for the secondary comms array. He wondered how far away the Atonement was. He knew that it had dropped him off with the speed ship going on another mission to drop off Dr. Matheson...or was that what Greg had said to him? He couldn't remember.
With a sigh of relief, Allan reached the manual release and set to work. He found the gear wheel he had to turn to physically open the panel, grabbed it and began spinning it. Being in zero g helped him and he had it done within a minute. The panel was open, exposing the small, auxiliary array of communications gear. Now he just had to release it. Allan reached for the lever and then screamed as something touched his shoulder.
He spun around...and found himself staring into the insane, green eyes of Duncan Kato. There was nothing remotely human left in that gaze. Nothing but madness. Duncan had turned. How had he gotten out of that bathroom? Known to follow him out onto the hull? It didn't matter now, Duncan grabbed his helmet, intending murder.
In all his terror, Allan grabbed for his wrench, but Duncan batted it out of his hand. He had a quick glimpse of dull red metal flying away into darkness, then his attention was returned firmly to Duncan. Now what? His former team mate began to try and twist his helmet and black terror shot through Allan. He had no intention of dying out here. Practically before he knew what he was doing, Allan made a fist and punched Duncan's faceplate.
It cracked, and, under a second punch, broke. Duncan began to grasp at his exposed face, raw, furious pain etched into his features. Allan ducked away from him, reached back and pulled the lever. The comms gear began to rise from its metal nest within the hull. Taking a few steps back, Allan watched Duncan die. After a few seconds, he realized he didn't have the stomach for it. Giving Duncan a wide berth, he walked around him and made his way back to the airlock. His vision was swimming by the time he cycled back through.
Duncan was gone, dead now, attached to the surface of an isolated plague ship by his magnetic boots. Again, he expected to feel fear, loss, misery...instead he felt hollow and lonely. Worst of all, he felt an encroaching hopelessness. He was alone now. Somehow, he didn't expect Hunter to still be alive. But there were a few more things he had to do. Allan sat back down at the communications workstation and fired it up. He spent several minutes trying to get a distress call out, but could find no way to actually make a live connection with the Atonement...or anyone, for that matter. After several frustrated minutes, he finally found that he could send out a distress beacon. He programmed it only to transmit to the Atonement, something he could do, and then sent the beacon out. When that was finished, Allan sat back in his chair.
He heaved a weary sigh. Exhausted, he was utterly exhausted now. He felt drained and spent, and honestly didn't know if he could make himself get up and walk to the main lab. Was there even enough time? Duncan had turned, full-blown turned, before he had, and they'd both been exposed at about the same time. What did that mean? Was he going to turn any minute? Or did it depend on the person? No answers, only questions.
Allan forced himself to sit up, call up a map of the ship, find the main lab and then plan a route there. At least it wouldn't be that difficult of a route. When he finished memorizing it, Allan stood up, swaying slightly.
Get to the lab, find the cure, wait for-
His radio crackled. “Gray...you still alive?”
Hunter. His pulse quickened.
“Yes...I'm the only one though. Where are you? What happened?”
A pained sigh. “I got jumped, lost my radio, my weapons. I'm hurt, think I broke my arm, I'm laid up in an infirmary somewhere. Not sure.”
Allan spent several minutes getting her up to speed as he hunted through the bridge again for a better weapon. At the end of it, he found nothing, forced to rely on the little combat knife he'd picked up. It would have to do.
“So you want to meet at this main lab?” Hunter asked at the end of all this.
“Yes. Quickly, too.”
“Fine. I'll meet you there.”
Allan felt something like hope.
He might actually get out of this alive.
Chapter 08
–The Slow Burn–
Paranoia was creeping in.
Allan had left the bridge five minutes ago, and already he was feeling worse, obsessed over his symptoms. His throat was dry and his head was pounding. Terror was welling within him, filling him up, making him jump at every sound. All he had was the damned combat knife. What was he going to do if he ran into more than a single enemy? Allan had faith in himself, at least in his combat abilities, but even that was waning. This sick, this scared...the odds were looking worse all the time. He wanted to talk to Hunter over the radio to make himself feel better, but somehow he was keeping his mouth shut. He didn't want to seem weak to her.
So, he stalked on, clutching at a combat knife, making his way through blood-soaked, flickering corridors on a plague ship floating in the middle of nowhere. How far was he from the nearest planet? Space station? From the nearest ship? He and Hunter might be the only living, sane individuals for a billion miles. The thought was terrifying. Allan made himself think about other things. For a moment, he wondered what he could possibly think about to make himself happy. What did other people think about to make themselves happy?
The future, he decided. The belief that tomorrow might not suck as much as today. Was it true? Rarely. In Allan's experience, tomorrow was about the same as today, which was usually only marginally better or worse than yesterday. Rarely were there particularly shitty or awesome. Though lately they had just been shitty. Did he have any reason to believe they'd be any good? Allan wanted to tell himself that after this it'd all change, to promise that tomorrow will be different if he could just only somehow live through today...
But he knew it was lie.
Everyone lied to themselves, everyone made false promises. People never changed, not really. Allan would either die here or make it off this ship, go back to the Atonement and stay miserable and guilt-ridden. Either because that's what he deserved or that's what would happen. At that thought, Allan stopped, coming to a halt in a T-junction of corr
idors. A pair of corpses, one leaned against a wall with its head bashed in, the other lying on the ground with a crushed arm and a broken jaw, were his only company.
Should he even bother escaping?
His previous assessment was that he should live as long as possible to lessen the suffering of others. That was enough. It had to be. How much had he taken away? How many lives snuffed out? How many of them didn't deserve it? At least some of them were probably murderers or rapists...though technically he and everyone he worked with was a murderer. Had Greg ever murdered anyone who didn't deserve it? Or Trent? Enzo probably had. Murder was ambiguous. Rape on the other hand...there was no ambiguity to that.
Rapists should die.
Allan heard a distant scream. He blinked, realizing that he'd entirely gone off on a tangent and that he was standing in the open in an enemy-rich environment. He turned and began walking in the correct direction, but that distant scream was suddenly repeated...then it grew, became two voices, then four, then a whole chorus of them.
And they were getting closer.
Allan turned around and looked back, suddenly frozen with fear, needing to see what was coming for him. The corridor behind him stretched away, going about a dozen meters before terminating in another T-junction. The screams were getting louder, closer. How many were there? One appeared around the corner, running right at him, screaming, yammering and mindless. Then there was another. Then four. Then six.
Then twelve.
Allan's nerve broke. He turned and started pounding down the corridor at a dead sprint. More screaming, the sound of boots and feet slapping the metal, echoing down the corridor to him. Allan came to a corner, slammed into the wall because he was running so fast, shoved himself off of it, turned and kept running. He'd made maybe a quarter of the way down this corridor when they entered the same corridor. They were faster than him, they were catching up on him. If they got him, they'd likely rip him apart.
Quarantine (The Shadow Wars Book 7.5) Page 7
