“Well, he’s not dead.” It sounded as if the woman was annoyed by his heartbeat. “I see no obvious signs of infection or illness. Tell me again why he is here?”
“Lady outside says the kid has asthma,” Weaver said. “Guess they took his inhaler away at processing.”
Lucas could feel the man’s presence as he rejoined the doctor next to the exam table. It made his skin crawl having people he didn’t know, much less trust, hovering over him like that. He remained motionless.
“Brilliant,” the woman said. Lucas could practically hear the roll of her eyes. “Three hours.”
“Ma’am?” Weaver sounded confused.
“I ask for three goddamn hours to complete the bridge procedure. You broke my quarantine in less than forty minutes?” Doctor Zucker was distinctly bitter. “And for what, because some kid’s allergies are flaring up? Unbelievable.”
“I understand your frustrations, ma’am,” Weaver said, “but Vladinov’s orders were to collect all Adaptives for transfer. Since we don’t yet know the child’s status, it seemed prudent that we keep him alive until tomorrow’s screening.”
“Yes, yes, I am more than well aware of Vladinov’s orders,” she said dismissively. “Make yourself useful and lift his head, would you?”
Large hands bracketed either side of the boy’s face. The woman’s cold fingers slid an oxygen mask around his head. The rounded lip pressed snugly against his cheeks and chin. Lucas had been down this road what seemed like a million times in his nine and a half years on the planet. The process, itself, was not scary, but something suddenly didn’t feel right. A monitor beeped to his left, and a moment later that familiar cold, sterile stream of air rushed into the mask.
His system immediately rebelled against the sharp coolness flooding his lungs. Lucas’s eyes shot open at the intrusion. Pain propelled him upright, his chest burning as vicious spasms rocked his body. His eyes flooded with tears while he raked frantically at the mask on his face. What had once brought him such relief now made him feel as though he was drowning.
“What the hell?” The woman shrieked, dodging the boys flailing hands. “Hold him down, you imbecile!”
“Please…don’t,” Lucas gasped, scraping the mask away and throwing it to the floor.
Weaver moved in quickly. With only the slightest amount of effort, the soldier had him immobilized. As much as he had learned in three whole months of Taekwondo, there was little Lucas could do to defend himself. His wavering strength was no match against Weaver’s. One of his hands held both of Lucas’s up over his head, the other pinned his chest down.
“What is wrong with you, kid?” Dr. Zucker glared at Lucas. “It’s just oxygen, for Christ’s sake.”
“No mask,” Lucas gasped, straining against the hand on his chest. “Need…inhaler.”
“What you need is oxygen.” The woman shook her head. She bent to pick up the mask but made no attempt to sterilize it. “You have asthma. This shouldn’t be new information.”
“Please, stop…I need…my inhaler.” Lucas wheezed, raising his chin. His eyes darted back and forth between the doctor and the soldier at his side. “Environ…mental hyper…oxia!”
“What?” The woman paused holding the mask just inches from Lucas’s face.
“It’s really rare,” Lucas said, dropping his head back to the table. The pressure from the man’s hand eased a fraction. “I have…asthmatic environmental hyperoxia. But you are a doctor, so you already know what that is, right?”
“Of course,” the woman’s eyes flicked to the floor for a millisecond.
“Then, you know,” Lucas sighed. “If you give me oxygen…it could kill me.”
“Is he serious?” Weaver released his hold on Lucas’s chest and lowered the boy’s hands across it. He was still holding Lucas down, but only just. He pointed at the mask in her hand. “That would have killed him?”
“Had I known the full extent of his condition when you brought him in, I would never have masked him to begin with.” The woman scowled at the guard over her mask. “This is exactly the kind of ignorant negligence and—.”
“So, he just needs his inhaler, then?” Weaver cut her off, releasing Lucas’s hands altogether. “With all due respect, ma’am, if that’s all it will take to get this kid back to bunk, then I will just take the tunnel over to processing storage and get it.”
“The hell you will,” the woman sneered. “I am not about to allow unauthorized, non-medical personnel to go rifling through our medication stores. Last thing we need is a bunch of idiots with semi-automatic weapons roaming the halls, hyped up on God knows what.”
“If you tell me where it is, I can go—” Lucas attempted, knowing that his offer would be rejected.
“No, I will go,” the woman sighed, smoothing down her blue scrubs. She jabbed her finger into Weaver’s chest and stormed toward the door. “No one enters or leaves this room but me, you got it?”
“Ma’am,” Weaver nodded curtly, the corners of his mouth turned down in a scowl.
“And you,” she turned in the doorway and pointed sharply at Lucas. “Don’t move a muscle or I will mark your file myself and send you straight to extraction.”
“I won’t, I swear.” Lucas shook his head. Whatever “extraction” was, it sounded like the end of the line, and Lucas wasn’t ready to get off this ride yet.
He stared at the door, motionless, for some time after the inexplicably angry woman left him. He watched as Weaver’s shadow moved back and forth outside the door. Eventually, he gathered his courage and slid down from the examination table. He moved as quietly as he could manage and crept slowly toward the curtain that divided the room.
He gathered the edge of the fabric in his hand and took a deep breath, steeling himself for whoever, or whatever lay beyond. He had only moved the curtain a couple of inches when his elbow bumped into a tray of instruments. A scalpel tinkered onto the hard floor. Lucas froze, the air locked tight in his chest as the metal tumbled and clanked across the tile.
The slender blade finally came to a stop against the toe of his flimsy, government-issue slipper. He held his breath for what seemed like hours, afraid to make even the slightest bit of noise.
“I think you’re safe, kid,” came a gruff voice from behind the curtain. “If they’d heard that, that prick with the gun would have already come running.”
Lucas released the breath he’d been holding in a rush. Out of habit, he pressed his hand to his chest expecting his heart to be scrambling wildly beneath it. The beat was steady and strong. He knelt and scooped the surgical blade up from the floor. He squared his shoulders and slid behind the fabric barrier between his bed and that of the specimen.
“What…who are you?” Lucas whispered as cautiously made his way toward the slumped figure.
“No one special,” he croaked. A weary sigh followed.
Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn’t. Whoever he was, the doctor lady seemed convinced he was dangerous. He was lying on his side across the gurney with his hands bound behind him. The zip-ties had been cinched tightly enough that the man’s wrists were bleeding…only, the spatter that marred the paper sheet beneath him was more black than red, and the gashes across his skin looked to be days old.
What was left of his t-shirt hung in shreds from his waist, dangling over the edge of the narrow table. The rest of his clothing was tattered, torn, and covered in a multitude of unidentifiable stains. One of the man’s shoes was missing. His bare foot sat at an odd angle against the surface of the gurney, bleeding heavily and very clearly broken. His scalp was nearly bald, save for a few patchy clumps. Those were held in place by little more than dried blood. The skin across his left shoulder looked charred and scaly like a chunk of spent firewood. The other had a gaping wound on it that reeked with the stench of decay.
“My name is Luke,” the boy said, his voice low as he rounded the end of the bed.
“Nice to meet you, Luke. I’d shake your hand, but—.” He wiggled his
long fingers behind his back, his shoulders shaking with derisive laughter.
Despite the endless list of reasons why Lucas should run in the other direction, the boy pressed on. As terrifying as his appearance might be, Lucas didn’t feel threatened by the young man that lay before him. In fact, the worry that had begun taking root in the boy’s gut was for this man, not because of him. There was something about him Lucas trusted.
Not that he intended to let his guard down just yet. Lucas’ father had taught him better than that. Unlike the rest of the mindless refugees, his sense of self-preservation had remained intact. He gripped the scalpel tightly behind his back and approached the head of the bed, lingering at a presumably safe distance.
The leathery flesh on the guy’s shoulders and upper back covered a good portion of his torso, as well. It draped around his neck like medieval body armor. The tarnished skin cascaded past his collarbone and across the left side of his chest. It curved up the side of his neck and across his jaw line.
The left side of his face was completely overtaken. From cheekbone to brow, the black scales trailed along the sharp curves of his face like a macabre Mardi gras mask.
The patient’s body was coated in layers of dirt and grime, with the exception of a few spots, where small, metal knobs jutted from his skin. He had one near his temple and another at the base of his skull. As Lucas neared the young man, he noticed two more embedded on either side of his chest, beneath his collarbones. Judging by the amount of blood oozing from the wounds, the strange probes were newly implanted.
As young as he was, Lucas had spent more time in hospitals and doctor’s offices than any ten people combined. Over the years, he’d seen things that would give most kids night terrors. He even knew an Indian girl named Bindi whose entire face was covered in hair. They were roommates for a week at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital when Lucas was in first grade. There was a fancy scientific name for her disease, but Bindi just called it Werewolf Syndrome.
In his many hospitalizations, Lucas had met amputees, burn victims, cancer patients, and people with conditions he’d never even heard of. He had never seen an injury or illness like this. He wanted nothing more than to take the young man’s pain away. Before he realized what he was doing, Lucas’s hand lay gently on the young man’s shoulder. He flinched at the contact as if it were a foreign sensation. His head jerked up from the examination table, his swollen lids snapping open.
“Hey mister, are you o—?” The words died in Lucas’s mouth the moment he saw the young man’s eyes.
One was completely black, swirling like a pool of wet ink. The other was ringed in luminescent silver.
“Am I okay?” The young man snorted and shook his head. “Probably not. You know how that is, though, right kid?”
“Me?” Lucas shook himself and pulled his hand away, doing his best to look unfazed by the guy’s oddly piercing stare. “No, I’m okay. I haven’t needed the meds or my inhaler in days. I was only faking so I could get in here and look around.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t talking about your allergies, kid.” His head slumped back against the table, exhaustion evident in the cadence of his voice. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Nice shiner, by the way.”
“What, this? It’s no big deal.” Lucas touched the bruise below his eye and dropped onto a nearby stool. “I tripped and fell down.”
“Right,” the young man said. “Me, too.”
“What about you, mister?” Lucas asked. “What happened to you?”
“Same thing that always happens,” the person said. “I lost.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Lucas tilted his head and smiled at him.
“Take a good look at me, kid,” he laughed and blood shot from his mouth onto the metal table. “If this is what winning looks like, I’d hate to see the guy who lost.”
“I know it seems bad right now,” Lucas shook his head. “It’s just…well, you can’t really lose because the game isn’t over yet. You just have to keep playing until you figure out how to beat it.”
“Or I could just let player two take over.” His eyes closed and his head rolled to the side.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Lucas narrowed his eyes.
“It means that when they figure out you are sick, we’ll be in the same boat,” the stranger said. “This isn’t a game, kid. How about you run along, now. If they catch you fraternizing with their science experiment, you and I will have matching bracelets. Last thing you want to do is give them a reason to take a closer look at you.”
“How about you stop calling me kid,” Lucas demanded as he rose to his feet. He no longer felt the need to conceal his weapon. “And I already told you, I’m not sick. I feel better than I ever have, actually.”
“Exactly.” He narrowed his mismatched eyes. “Think about that for a minute.”
“I don’t—” Lucas opened his mouth to argue.
“Shhh.” The stranger cut him off and cocked his head to the side. “She’s coming. You need to go, kid.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you promise me something,” Lucas crossed his arms.
“What?” The young man hissed his eyes wide.
“Promise me you won’t give up,” Lucas said, crouching down on the ground in front of the bed.
“Are you kidding? You don’t even know me.” He narrowed his eyes at Lucas. “Seriously, kid. You need to go.”
“Not until you say it,” Lucas said, staring at the door while he dug around in his sock.
He could hear her, now, too. Dr. Zucker’s voice preceded her as she stomped down the hallway toward the clinic. Lucas hadn’t thought it was possible, but she sounded even angrier than she had when she left. Seconds later, she was at the door, fumbling with her keys as she barked orders at Weaver.
“Well?” Lucas tapped his foot impatiently, refusing to budge. He was scared of being caught, but somehow the thought of this young man giving in to despair was far more terrifying.
“Fine, I promise. I won’t quit,” the young man hissed, his eyes flashing like a cornered animal. “Now, go!”
“You have to finish the game,” Lucas whispered. He stuck the tiny map into the young man’s pocket and slid the scalpel into his bloody palm. “We can’t let them win.”
Chapter 33
Into the Chipper
Tessa was right. There was no way for us to safely destroy the beasts while they were still inside the plane. Fighting them in close combat was tantamount to suicide. Actually, it was probably more like throwing yourself into a wood-chipper dangling off the edge of a cliff. We needed to get them out of there and fight them on solid ground where we could maneuver and hopefully defend ourselves. But how?
The passenger door was not going to be an option. It was crushed beyond recognition by the severed tail end from a 747. The windows would be far too small and, according to Tessa, next to impossible to break. Despite the insane amount of damage done, there were no obvious breeches in the hull of the craft. If there had been, they would likely have extricated themselves already.
The creatures howled and thrashed about inside the plane as we searched for a way to free them. Their teeth and claws scraped furiously against the opposite side of the tinted glass, desperate to sink into our flesh. The scuffle in the cabin rocked the teetering wreckage from side to side. Metal ground against metal and the plane shifted, sending a piece of metal flying through the air.
“J-Jesus,” Devon sputtered, narrowly dodging the shrapnel headed toward him.
“There’s jet fuel everywhere,” Zander said. “If that thing falls, it could throw a spark and light this place up like the Fourth of July. We need to get them out of there before they capsize it and kill all of us.”
“Looks like we’ll have to have to pry open the cargo door.” Tessa shielded her eyes, pointing up at the rear of the precariously angled plane.
“You mean the cargo door that is currently fifteen feet in the air?” I grunted as a familiar spark r
olled through my chest. “I can do a lot of things, Tessa, but flying is not one of them.”
“What about you, boyfriend?” Tessa asked Zander. “You think you claw your way up there and bust open the gates of Hell for us?”
“I’m sure I could manage,” Zander said leaning his weapon against a pile of obliterated luggage, “but it’s going to be a little—.”
“N-no Z. You’re t-too heavy,” Devon said stepping in front of Zander. “It has to b-be m-m-me.”
“Dev, I don’t know.” Tessa suddenly looked worried.
“I s-said I g-got it,” Devon said, his jaw set. “J-j-just be ready.”
He slid his crowbar into the back of his belt and took a deep breath. His fists were clenched at his side as he slowly approached the crushed nose of the plane. The twisted debris creaked and groaned as Devon climbed. He maneuvered up into the gaping end of the passenger plane’s tail and disappeared inside of it.
He popped his head out of the hole near the rudder a few minutes later, his face drenched with sweat. He waved down at us, and then carefully climbed out onto the horizontal struts jutting out from the side. Devon inched his way to the edge on his hands and knees. Tessa paced back and forth, wringing her hands as he scaled the plane.
“Can you climb over?” Tessa yelled up at him, shielding her eyes.
“T-too f-far,” he yelled down, clutching onto the elevator for dear life. “I g-gotta j-jump.”
Devon slowly climbed to his feet, his arms stretched wide, balancing in a crouch like a surfer shooting the curl. He sidestepped closer to the edge and steadied himself to leap across. The gap between the end of the metal flap and the wing of the smaller plane had to be nearly six feet. It was the only place wide enough for him to land on safely. Especially at that angle.
“Please make it. Please make it.” Tessa muttered, reaching for her ax.
Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two Page 28
