The Lazarus Particle

by Logan Thomas Snyder

  Xenecia tilted her head, her lips assuming a predatory half-smile as her gaze slowly climbed the span of the corpsman’s uniformed body. She stood, cocking out a leather-clad hip and eyeing him suggestively.

  “I have a better idea,” she ventured. “Why don’t you escort me to your quarters instead?”

  07 • VENOM

  Fenton cast an eye about his new digs. He nodded, not so much with approval as acknowledgement.

  He could only assume the sudden upgrade in his conditions was the result of her doing. Not that he was complaining. It felt good to stretch his legs, for one. Bracing his hands against the wall, he twisted at the waist this way and that. A series of clicks and pops sounded from the small of his back on up and he groaned with an even mix of pleasure and relief.

  The room itself was small and windowless but no less of a step up from the last one for it. A combination toilet-sink unit presided over the far corner. Unlike the last one, this new room boasted such amenities as a table, chairs a person might actually feel somewhat comfortable sitting in, and a rack complete with a thin mattress smelling strongly of rubber and some sort of ammonia-based disinfectant. There was even a mirror—made of polished metal, of course, not glass—riveted to the wall above the toilet-sink. The reflection it presented was murky and slightly warped, but it allowed Fenton his first look at himself since being knocked unconscious in the Greasy Spanner.

  He gave a start when he noticed the fifty-caliber channel parting his reddish-brown hair, only then realizing how close Quint’s bullet had come to separating the crown of his head from the rest of it. All in all, though, he didn’t think he looked that bad. Not really. His nose was definitely broken, his face swollen and bruised around it, but the station’s chief medical officer had assured him the consequences of his scuffle with Xenecia were superficial at worst.

  “You’re lucky,” Dr. Jenner had said to him after the examination. The silver bars shining brightly against his hunter green uniform informed Fenton that in addition to the title of doctor he held the rank of captain. “It looks as if you came away from the confrontation with no long-term damage.”

  Lucky, Fenton thought with an internal scoff. There was that word again. He briefly considered telling Dr. Jenner that if his idea of luck was having his lights punched out by a giant pink lizard woman, he could keep it, but then thought better of it. The man was only following orders, after all, which at the time had included ensuring his health and general well being.

  Besides, Fenton supposed he was pretty lucky, at least in a manner of speaking. If not for the life premium hanging over his head, the huntrex could have easily contented herself with giving him a concussion or fracturing his skull instead of checking the blow that had simply knocked him out. Hell, if not for the life premium, she almost certainly would have shot him dead on sight, and then where would he be?

  It wouldn’t mean much of anything if the trial didn’t go his way, but at least it gave him some semblance of hope to cling to in the short term.

  After the examination, Fenton decided to see how much he could leverage from his meeting with the chief medical officer.

  “So, what’s the chow situation like here?”

  Jenner glanced up as he zipped closed his bag. “Can’t complain. Feeling a big peckish, are you?”

  “Starved.” And it was true. Even before being captured a day or so earlier—Fenton wasn’t so clear on the timeline—he had been nourishing himself on a mostly liquid diet, namely copious amounts of alcohol.

  “So, your appetite is returning,” Jenner said, hoisting his bag. “That’s a good sign. What meal is your body telling you it’s time for?”

  Fenton thought for a moment. “Breakfast, I think.”

  “Close enough. A few hours yet, but I’ll see what I can scare up for you.”

  “Thanks, doc. I owe you one.”

  “Just try not to make the acquaintance of any more rifle stocks and we’ll call it even.”

  With that, Dr. Jenner had excused himself. There was a bit of murmuring among the guards posted outside the door, and then Fenton was alone once more. Mostly he paced the room from end to end, exercising what little freedom it allowed him. After examining himself in the polished metal mirror he laid out on the rack for lack of anything better to do.

  He was just drifting off after several minutes when a commanding voice jerked him awake unceremoniously.

  “Fenton James Wilkes,” the voice said authoritatively, “kneel in the far corner of the room and place your hands behind your head.”

  Fenton yawned and shifted into a sitting position, letting his legs hang over the edge of the rack as he searched the otherwise empty room for the voice’s unseen owner. An intercom, he presumed. “Is this about my food? I was almost about to fall asleep.”

  “Fenton James Wilkes, kneel in the far corner of the room and place your hands behind your head.”

  “Is this really necessary? The doc was just in here a little while ago and he didn’t seem to think—”

  “Fenton James Wilkes—”

  “Right, right, okay. You win.” Fenton shuffled over to the corner and lowered himself onto his knees, then fixed his hands behind his head as ordered. “How’s this?”

  The door slid open in response. One of the station security personnel swept in, his rifle pointed steadfastly down at Fenton. Another followed with a plastic tray bearing the hallmarks of a hearty breakfast: bacon, eggs, and toast. He set the tray on the table along with a packet of plastic utensils, then backed out, followed closely by his partner.

  Fenton carefully lifted himself to his feet. Walking over to the table, he examined the contents of the tray. “What, no OJ?” he said.

  Silence.

  He shrugged and sat down to open the packet of utensils. The cellophane gave way easily enough, yielding a plastic spork and knife as well as a thin napkin. Fenton tried the eggs first. They were scrambled, with a dry, grainy texture he suspected of being the result of powdered or preserved eggs. Not surprising, he thought as he worked his way through vaguely stale-tasting bites. The bacon had a similarly synthetic, almost chemically maple taste. If you crewed one of these stations long enough, he wondered as he munched it down, did the flavor become a de facto part of life, the real thing becoming false and the false thing becoming real?

  At least the toast was real. There was no faking bread, even if all the (fake) butter had softened it up some.

  When he finished, the intercom sounded anew.

  “Fenton James Wilkes, kneel in the far corner and place your hands behind your head.”

  Rolling his eyes, Fenton walked back to the far corner of the room.

  “Sorry I couldn’t leave a tip,” he quipped over his shoulder as the guard detail swept in. One kept a bead on him while the other cleared the table of the tray. “Hey, I was wondering, do you guys notice the bacon tastes kind of funny, or does that just become normal for you after awhile?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the one with the rifle snapped. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “Okay,” Fenton said. “Noted.”

  Having collected the tray and utensils, the second guard left. Fenton started to lift to his feet but the first guard remained, motioning him down with a flick of his rifle. “Not so fast.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re about to have a visitor. Sit tight.”

  Before Fenton could even ask, Roon’s godfather appeared in the doorway. “Not to worry, Sergeant,” he said, “Mr. Wilkes poses no threat. Do you, Mr. Wilkes?”

  Fenton was just about to answer when he felt his pulse begin to quicken. Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. Like the pulse of a bird or a small animal. His heart hammered in his chest, beating out a staccato rhythm he found difficult to keep time with. The lids of his eyes fluttered as he tried to steady his breath, keep his balance. His pulse danced along with the unruly time of his heartbeat. He realized they must have put something in the eggs. It was the only explanation tha
t made sense.

  “Easy, Mr. Wilkes. Stay calm and this phase will pass.”

  The second guard returned, bringing in another chair he set along the far side of the table. Roon’s godfather nodded and the two helped hoist Fenton into the first chair, then disappeared from the room altogether.

  “Can’t… can’t breathe,” Fenton managed to bleat. “Help…”

  “Give it just a moment more, Mr. Wilkes.”

  As if on cue, Fenton’s lungs expanded, allowing him to suck in a deep, life-affirming breath. It filled them near to bursting before he could finally let it out. When he finished, he felt more alive in that moment than ever before.

  “Better?”

  Fenton nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Stepping forward, he leaned over the table until he was practically nose to nose with Fenton. “Tell me, Mr. Wilkes, do you know who I am?”

  Fenton grinned a wide-eyed, almost leering grin. “You’re Roon McNamara’s godfather. She’s my advocate.”

  “Very good,” Carsten said as if praising a schoolboy. “Allow me to introduce myself more formally. My name is Ivor Carsten.”

  “Fenton James Wilkes. But you already know that.”

  “I do, indeed. Even so, I consider it a distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance. You are a fascinating study in character.”

  All at once, the grin fell from Fenton’s face. “I can’t say the feeling is mutual, Mr. Carsten. I get the feeling Roon doesn’t like you very much.”

  “We have something of a complicated history, that much is true,” Carsten allowed. “And you, Mr. Wilkes? Are you fond of my goddaughter?”

  “I don’t suppose I have much of a choice, now do I? She’s my advocate.”

  “True enough. Perhaps we should dispense with the pleasantries and get down to business. Do you know where you are right now, Mr. Wilkes?”

  “Aboard M-H Orbital Station Tau. I’m in a holding cell. I was captured by a huntrex.”

  “Precisely. Very good, Mr. Wilkes. Now, tell me about this ‘Lazarus Particle’ you and your team were working on when you defaulted on your contract with Morgenthau-Hale.”

  At the mention of the project, Fenton smiled brightly. “It would have changed everything.” He took a reverent breath, looking off and shaking his head with nothing less than sheer wonderment. “It would have…”

  “Mr. Wilkes?” he prompted.

  Fenton’s whole body was singing along with the beautiful, musical frenzy of the trip. Pure, unfiltered ecstasy coursed through his veins. He was so keyed up he found it impossible to ignore the slightest opportunity to speak, to thrill in the emphatic, animal urge to howl at the moon. Giggling just a touch maniacally, his eyes alight with possibility, he opened his mouth to answer. Instead, all that came out was a shrill, choked-off squeak.

  “Mr. Wilkes?”

  It started with a facial tic that rapidly devolved into a full-blown seizure. Fenton collapsed out of the chair and fell against the room’s cold, hard floor. His body spasmed violently as the alien stimulant crescendoed through his cerebral cortex. The music had stopped, the ecstasy filtering down to a toneless, unleavened agony.

  Somewhere deep within that mysterious electric bundle of neurons and synapses that is the human brain, Fenton James Wilkes had blown a fuse.

  Carsten blanched at the suddenness of Fenton’s collapse, standing so quickly he nearly collided with Dr. Jenner as he burst into the room. He watched helplessly as Fenton flopped and foamed at the mouth. His eyes rolled up behind the lids, showing only empty slivers of white between. Trickles of spumous saliva overflowed the corners of his lips. His body flailed and jerked as if possessed of some demonic force yearning to break free of its flesh-bound prison.

  “Oh, Christ,” Jenner murmured as he knelt at Fenton’s side. “Hold him down!” he told the medics accompanying him. Extracting a pair of shears from his bag, he cut down the center of Fenton’s shirt. With Fenton’s chest exposed, he produced a hypo and a small vial of clear liquid, marrying the two with a soft hiss. “Keep him steady! This has to go in just right!” He double-checked the dosage, murmured something that sounded like a prayer, then plunged the hypo directly into Fenton’s heart. His body tensed and froze in an elliptic arch, head to toe, then settled flat. Jenner checked his pulse and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “He’s going to make it.”

  Carsten side-eyed the medics as they hoisted Fenton onto a gurney and rolled him out of the room. The implications of that icy glare were clear. “What the hell happened?” he demanded of Jenner once they were alone. “You said the dose—”

  “It never happened,” Jenner said, wiping the lenses of his spectacles against his uniform. “For both our sakes’, Fenton Wilkes suffered a seizure as a result of severe cranial trauma sustained during his capture. Nothing more, nothing less.” Jenner replaced the spectacles on his face. He stared fixedly at Carsten from behind the rounded glass of each lens. “Are we clear?”

  Carsten nodded, a wave of understanding passing through him. It was followed closely by a flood of cunning. “A seizure as a result of significant head trauma. Indeed. Surely that would be cause enough to delay his trial? Perhaps even postpone it indefinitely while he undergoes, ahem, ‘rehabilitation’?”

  Now it was Jenner’s turn to nod understandingly. “In my professional opinion? More than enough.”

  Carsten allowed himself a small, almost ghoulish smile. “Thank you, Dr. Jenner. Your assistance in this matter has proven surprisingly invaluable.”

  08 • BEDSIDE MANNER

  Roon’s footfalls were a reflection of her current mood, caroming angrily off the bulkheads as she double-timed the march from her stateroom to sickbay. Behind her, Ensign Pruitt kept pace, though his steps were considerably quieter.

  “What’s his condition?” she demanded over her shoulder.

  “Stable, the last I heard, ma’am.”

  “Stop calling me ma’am, damnit. What else do you know?”

  “Only what I’ve been told, Advocate McNamara.”

  Roon stopped abruptly before the lift between decks. She’d heard before that the grapevine ran deep on stations like this, that finding out the real truth was only a matter of knowing the right questions to ask.

  Roon was good at knowing the right questions to ask.

  “Forget what you’ve been told. What have you heard?”

  Ensign Pruitt narrowed his eyes discerningly. “Unofficially?”

  “Unofficially.”

  “From what I’ve heard, scuttlebutt and all, they’re saying he’s unfit to stand trial. Because of the seizure. It’s being postponed indefinitely.”

  Roon’s eyes widened to saucers. “You have got to be shitting me,” she said, temporarily forgetting her polished professionalism in the wake of that startling news.

  Ensign Pruitt gave her a blankly sympathetic look by way of return. “Sorry to have to be the one to tell you, ma’am. Looks like you came all this way for nothing.”

  Her mind whorled at the news. “I told you to stop calling me ma’am,” she said as she summoned the lift. The admonition came off flat and distant. Her heart was no longer in the enforcing of it.

  Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl. None of what was happening made sense to her. She had met with Fenton just the day before, and while he didn’t seem to be in the best of ways, he was lucid, engaging—even kind of charming, in so far as he was oblivious to it under the circumstances. She certainly hadn’t taken him for someone who was about to suffer an atomizing seizure. Nor, apparently, had Dr. Jenner; according to Pruitt he had given Fenton a clean bill of health only hours (and several dirty martinis) earlier.

  Strange. Something wasn’t adding up. Roon fiddled with her jacket, buttoning and unbuttoning it absently as she considered the variables already known to her.

  Time righted itself a moment later with the arrival of the lift. She stepped inside it, followed closely by Pruitt.

  As the lift ascended
, she regarded herself in the mirrored finish of the chamber. She had dressed as smartly as she was able under the circumstances. It was a worthy effort, she thought, considering her brain was still besieged beneath the black clouds of a thundering hangover. (Despite its promise of fast-acting relief, the shot of IntoxiCure she downed before exiting her quarters had yet to take full effect.) Then she happened to glance down, noting with equal parts embarrassment and bemusement that no one—in particular a certain civilian liaisons officer—had been so kind as to mention that her slip was showing. Rather obviously, at that. Had she been alone in the lift she would have corrected the wardrobe malfunction and thought nothing more of it. As it was, though, she wasn’t about to go rummaging around in her skirts with Ensign Pruitt standing right next to her. Given a choice between maintaining her modesty and stoically embracing a minor embarrassment, she was almost certain to take the former at every opportunity.

  Feeling the energetic hum of the lift begin to dissipate beneath her, Roon steeled herself for whatever version of Fenton she might find beyond its doors. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed or bed-bound and barely registering the world beyond, she resolved to do anything in her power as an advocate to maintain the best interests of her client. When at last the lift fluttered to an almost imperceptibly soft stop and the doors opened, Ensign Pruitt made to follow her out.

  “Thank you, Ensign Pruitt,” she said, wheeling to a stop just on the other side of the lift’s threshold, “I can take it from here.”

  “Are you sure, ma’am?”

  Again, she considered reminding him not to call her that. Then she realized it was just protocol. Being something of a slave to protocol herself, she could hardly fault him for following it so doggedly. “Quite sure, yes. I’m sure you have far more pressing duties to attend. I’ll find my way back on my own. You know what they say.”

  At that, Pruitt smiled. “If you’ve been on one station, you’ve been on them all. Very well,” he said, receding back into the lift. With a parting nod, the lift doors closed and he was gone.

  Roon couldn’t help congratulating herself. For one, because he hadn’t been decent enough to mention the state of her slip. For another, and much more importantly, because she couldn’t trust anyone aboard the station. After the sudden turn of events, she felt a nagging sense of foreboding that wouldn’t let go. Civilian liaison officer or not, Ensign Pruitt remained a cog in Morgenthau-Hale’s vast military machine; so too was the doctor who greeted her.