Blue Sky Tomorrows
Page 14
He couldn’t, terrified by the machine noise, and the crowd of over-enthusiastic adults all wanting to tease and torment him for the sake of their own amusement.
“How you doin’, sport?” a large man laughed. “You as tough-skinned as your Daddy?”
“How old are you, sweetie?” someone else asked. “Gosh, he’s small for a Cerkan, isn’t he?”
“Half-breed,” someone chided.
“Watch your mouth,” his father said, pointing to another oversized worker in the crowd.
Leave me alone.
Other folks chimed in:
“You’re not going to keep him in school, are you?”
“Yeah, sign him up next year!”
But as the adults continued their badgering, the machine noise increased, drowning out their words.
Cam covered his ears. He didn’t remember it playing out like this. No, his father should hoist him on his shoulders and lead him down another aisle, to let him marvel at the steaming vats of molten steel.
This isn’t right, he thought, turning to his father and tugging on his jacket sleeve.
But his father didn’t move. No one did.
What’s happening?
The adults froze in place, caught in the middle of sentences or gestures, others in awkward poses.
Overhead lights flickered, dimmed.
Still covering his ears, Cam curled into a tight ball on the dirty factory floor.
Make it stop, make it—
“Camzen.”
Cam looked up. His father, hands clasped behind his back and standing perfectly erect, stared back. None of the other adults moved. All the machine noise ceased. “Follow me.”
Confused, but not knowing what else to do, Cam brushed himself off and followed his father, down the long aisles where both machine and person stood fixed in time.
But the environment didn’t. The work overalls and hard-hats worn by the men and women turned into scrubs and surgical masks. Stamping machines transformed into scanners projecting images of wires and rods, and other metallic pieces screwed into bone.
As he trailed his father, he spotted a small-bodied person with frizzy blonde hair lying prone on a table, under surgical lamps. Her back, opened at the spine and retracted back with bloodied instruments, drew the interest of a half-circle of masked men. Iggie? No—!
Somewhere, beyond whatever boundaries he imagined, the steady tone of heart monitor flatlined.
When he stopped to investigate, a firm hand slapped down on his shoulder. “Keep up.”
“Wait,” Cam said, trying to understand the changing world as his father wrenched him forward. The machine noise picked up again, this time higher-pitched, unlike anything he’d ever heard from one of his father’s factory machines. “Please, stop—”
His father led him down another aisle, then to the left, where the last hint of the factory disappeared, and white walls covered in orange biohazard signs gave warning of something terrible and hideous behind secured doors.
A voice, filled with terror, echoed down the hall. “Cam, run!”
Tomia? He looked all around. Where are you?
“Stay focused,” his father said, coming up to a set of double doors. The sight of ISOLATION: EAST WING, painted across the frame, made Cam’s knees lock and his stomach drop away.
“Father—” he said, trying to be heard above the sound of tortured metal.
Something bad is in there.
Something that grated and shrieked, like a mechanical scream.
His father waved his hand in front of the scanner affixed to the right of the double-doors and walked inside the darkened hallway. With a slight turn of his face, revealing the thick mustache that now adorned his upper lip, he whispered. “It’s time, cadet.”
At the far end of the east wing hallway, Cam made out the outline of some enormous object; something hunkered down with gray skin that gleamed in the emergency lights. A thing that bellowed like a blast furnace and screeched like a rusted gear as it unfurled, multiple legs stretching out, reaching—
Like a spider—
With a glowing red eye.
Cam screamed, trying to turn and run as the darkened hallway—and the machine monster—telescoped toward him.
“Camzen…” it wheezed, rearing back on its back legs. Colin’s grey face prolapsed out of the reddened gash in its underbelly, his tongue rolling out of his mouth. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Ferros, wake up—wake up!”
Strong hands shook him by the shoulders, shaking the nightmare’s hold. The glowing red eye and Colin’s dead face retracted in the flurry of small lights flashed into his eyes.
“Give him another amp of buridol,” someone said.
As he became more aware of himself, of the tingling feel of his patient gown and bedsheets against his over-sensitized skin, the monitors alarming, and the five masked people crowding over him, he screamed.
“Stop, no!” He went for the medication line feeding into his arm, trying to yank it out, but the masked people pinned him back down on the bed. “Let me go—get me out of here!”
“Calm down, cadet.”
Cam recognized the man’s baritone voice, but, still frazzled, couldn’t make the connection.
“You’re safe. Calm down,” he repeated, typing in in something to the medication pump.
Coolness followed into his forearm, branching up and out across his body. The trembling adrenaline reaction waned, then dissipated. Cam took a deep breath, then another.
“Good,” the man said, waving off all but one of the other masked assistants. “Keep breathing. You’re fine.”
“W-what happened?” he asked, bewildered by the fear still lingering in his belly.
“We’re tapering you off medications. It can give you very vivid dreams.”
No, nightmares, Colin thought, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. He looked again at the deep-voiced man. Doctor…
He couldn’t remember the rest of his name until he snuck a glance at his name badge. Verdebear.
The doctor he’d heard in his dreams, discussing his fate with—
Rogman.
Butterflies fluttered inside his ribcage, drawing up his shoulders and tightening his breath. That was real?
His words came out halted, unsure, anxiety drawing them halfway in before he could rush them out. “G-get me o-out of h-here.”
“Soon, cadet. Very soon.”
“B-but how much longer? And why does my skin still feel—”
He didn’t want to say hurt, not when it could intimate some weakness. “…d-different.”
“Let’s maintain this dose, augment with selective wave suppressants,” the doctor said to the assistant, using more medical terminology he didn’t understand. “Also, let’s start him on clears, then advance as tolerated. We’ll test his stimulus response tomorrow.”
Test my what?
“Rogman will want a full report,” the doctor continued. “Patch him to the monitors; make sure he has full observation access.”
No—I don’t want him watching me!
The doctor and his assistant adjusted a few more things on the monitors and medication pump, then walked out, ignoring any of his other questions, even as he sat back up and shouted after them. “How much longer? Wait—stop—I—”
(Don’t leave me here.)
Not with the monster lurking in the shadows, and whatever secrets Reppen feared in the East Wing. And especially not with Rogman watching, waiting—
Planning. Cam braced his head in his hands. I have to do something.
But what?
Stop the medication—
No. Not if Rogman was watching. And not if he wanted to recover.
Figure it out, he told himself, slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead. Come on. There’s got to be some way…
As his mind shot out one stupid idea after another, his own feelings drew back to the last game he played with his sister, where he ran away:
“But you are smart,” Kara said. “You identified the real threat—me, not the game pieces. And you figured out your opponent’s weakness.”
“Pesky little brothers?”
“You got that right.”
“Identify the real threat… figure out my opponent’s weakness…” He repeated the phrase over and over to himself until he relaxed enough to lay back down and draw the sheets back up to his chest.
As he stared at the ceiling, his thoughts floating away on the cloud of medication, terror wound its way down inside his chest, chilling his heart. Eyes drifting shut, he whispered, “help me, Jahx.”
Chapter 15
A pinch on his left thumb’s nailbed shot Cam awake.
“Ow,” Cam said, pulling his hand away from the grips of a beak-faced nurse. Burn grafts, not fully integrated, covered most of her face and what he could see of her neck and arms. He couldn’t tell her mixed humanoid species, only that she only seemed to anger at his returned eye contact.
With a scowl, she pointed to the bowl and cup she left on his tray table and said, “time to eat.”
She left without saying anything else, leaving him more confused than anything.
Still groggy but feeling more awake than he normally did after emerging from the medicated sleep, he scooted over to the edge of the bed.
Are you watching me? Cam thought, panning around the room, looking for hidden cameras or recording devices. He’d already committed defiance and no one stopped him. But what Verdebear said about patching Rogman through the monitors for some kind of observation—
I can’t risk it.
Pretending to stretch, he glanced at the medication pump and the settings.
The dose of cryoxotin is down to 1.5 mgs, he read. And it’s not on a continuous cycle.
He noted the breaks in delivery, and how the medical staff tapered the dosing. Maybe I’ll be able to stay awake on my own.
At least for an hour or so, according to the pump.
Sitting up, he pulled the tray table over the siderail and inspected his meal. From the salty odors wafting up from the soup bowl, he guessed they’d concocted him some kind of imitation meat broth. The clear color made him frown.
Meat broth doesn’t look like that, he thought, reaching far back to the days when his mother took time to cook their meals. He recalled her brining pink and gold game birds while Kara stirred the gravy on the stove.
He checked the contents of the cup, finding a yellow-tinged liquid with a sweet odor. What the hell is that?
He took a tentative sip, his dry lips and tongue singing at the first taste.
Juice. Or something close enough to juice that he didn’t care. It tasted wet, cold, and deliciously sweet. So good—
Hunger and thirst, however chemically managed before, steam-rolled to the forefront of his mind, and before he could even think to pace himself, he chugged the entire thing, spilling some of it down his patient gown. He slurped down the warm broth just as quickly, letting out a belch as he set it back down.
Even after years of privation and delighting in even the smallest of edible treasures, he’d never tasted anything so good, so needed.
“Satisfied?”
Cam whipped his head toward the speaker standing in the door frame. The same beak-faced nurse that brought him his food guided a hoverchair to his bedside. After disengaging him from the infusion pump and capping his medication line, she snapped her fingers at him. “Get on.”
“I can walk—”
“That’s an order, cadet,” she squawked.
Avoiding her heated gaze, Cam scooted over to the edge of the bed and used the siderail to hoist himself up. Pins and needles pricked his feet, but he stifled any kind of reaction, sensing that this nurse—Kull, he read, catching a glance of her name badge—would prey upon, if not delight, in his pain.
Without another word, the nurse drove him down the hallway, winding down long corridors with large windows observing other patient bays and surgical suites. The sharp odor of disinfectants and cleansing agents stirred feelings of unease, but the muffled cries and monitor alarms made grip the ends of the armrest.
Who’s that? Why are they here? he wondered as they passed by pediatric patients restrained to their beds by blue-tinted forcefields or stuffed with tubes and lines, their eyes taped shut.
Isn’t that…? Every kid looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place them, as if he’d passed them in the hallway, or took a lift with them to a part of the Academy, but never actually interacted with them. What happened to them?
The nurse rolled him up to a set of double-doors and held up her ID badge to the adjacent scanner. Cam shrunk into his chair at the sight of the orange biohazard signs.
Not the East Wing—no—
He looked for anything—a wall map, a number, any kind of designation as to where she was taking him. Finally, as she took them around a corner, he caught sight of Neuroscience Dept written across the nurse’s station.
Phew, God…
Cam knew better than to ask nurse Kull why she wheeled him into a private room with an exam table, strange equipment, and high-definition monitors, but made sure to take in as much as he could as she directed him to transfer to the table.
Without explanation, or any further instruction, she left, leaving him sitting on the edge of the exam table, under the glare of four surgical lamps.
“Cadet Ferros.” A tall, lean man in a red surgical gown entered the room, trailed by two assistants. Hidden behind a surgical mask, Cam could only make out his flinty eyes, and a few strands of dark hair poking out from underneath his surgical cap. “Lie down.”
Squinting, Cam made out something else. Burns—
Scars similar to nurse Kull’s marred his forehead and part of his cheekbone. Were they in the same accident?
Cam couldn’t put any more thought to it as the assistants surrounded him on both sides and helped him down when he didn’t move fast enough. Their firm grasp on his upper arms made him grimace, but he took a calming breath as they freed him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Your doctor,” the masked-man replied, unaffected by his disquiet. With black-gloved hands, he motioned for something outside of Cam’s field of vision.
“What are you doing?” Cam said, trying to sit up, but the assistants brought him back down.
“Testing your nerve-response.”
“Why?” Cam asked as they set the paddled arm of a scanner above his body.
The pause, the chill hanging in the air, made him even more nervous than before.
“You are unique, cadet,” the doctor said, initiating a force field over her body.
“Let me go!” Cam shouted. Struggling did nothing. Only his hands, feet and head could move under the force field, enraging his already sensitive skin.
“Quiet now,” the masked-man said, reaching behind him and grabbing something off a silver tray. Cam strained his neck to see the hypoinjector pressed into his shoulder. Seconds later, all the fight left his muscles, and his vision sunk down and away, as if he had been pulled down into a dark well.
Distant voices discussed his condition as twitches and twinges ran up and down his legs and arms. Above him, far and away, he saw the four surgical lamps, and heads bob in and out, obstructing their light.
“Remarkable,” one of them said, “he has almost complete neurogenesis.”
Someone emitted a low whistle. “Have you seen his training gear? Totally fried. The kid should be a vegetable.”
“Something in his mixed bloodline?”
Electricity zapped his stomach, made all his muscles seize. Cam wanted to scream, but he had no breath, not until his muscles unclenched. Even then, whatever they’d injected him with disconnected his voice and his voluntary response.
“I wanted his blood and tissue samples sent to my lab. If we can repl
icate this phenomenon, we can begin the final phase.”
“Yes, Dr. Naum.”
Naum.
He needed to hold on to that name, to remember it for later.
“Inform Rogman that I want this subject reassigned to me.”
“Sir, he’s part of the beta trials.”
“He’s too valuable to be their fodder.”
Fodder? What does that mean? He didn’t know the word but sensed its implication: disposable. Some kind of test subject. And for who?
And final phase of what?
He thought of Iggie, of Reppen’s warning. I have to get out of here.
Someone snapped gloves off their hand. “Notify me when you’re through.”
“Yes, doctor.”
The heads disappeared. Lights shined down, into his eyes, making them burn. With what little control he had, he closed them, waiting, listening, for any clue as to what they would do next.
Something whirred and whined. A drill?
Fingers palpated his sternum, as if someone tried to locate the perfect spot for—
(no no NO—)
He wanted to cry out, to scream for his sister, for Jahx—for anyone to come to his rescue—but the undeniable reality, his awful truth, gouged his hope.
Do something, he thought, his hands clenching and unclenching in a disordered response. Anything—
He opened his eyes, catching the light glinting off the spiral drill bit as it angled toward his chest.
“Wait, is he still awake?”
“Gods, this kid’s tough.”
The fear in their voices, the way they couldn’t bear witness to his pain.
That’s right, you assinos, he thought, doing everything he could to shake his hands and feet, to let them see his anger, his fight. You can’t beat me like this.
A shuffling of feet, items clinking on the silver tray table in some kind of scramble. The whooshing sound of a hypoinjector refill preceded another exclamation from one of the assistants: “Rogman and Naum are really going to fight over this one.”
“Well, and—”
Something terribly cold plunged into his right shoulder and spread throughout his body like a wave crashing over a shore.
“—don’t say it. That thing shouldn’t have a name.”