Toxic (36 page)

“To go where?” Bruce asked. “Have you seen this pig sty?”

“We don’t have time to discuss things,” she reminded him. “Follow me.”

She stepped over a group of tangled chairs and armchairs and arrived at a door that she had to force open with difficulty. It led to an area reserved for receiving emergencies. The premises looked as if a bomb had hit them. Piping and cables were hanging from the torn ceiling. A trickle of water ran along the damaged wall.

“Good God, what happened here?” Bruce asked.

“A shootout, maybe,” Alva whispered.

“You saw, there aren’t any bodies. Where are they?”

Masters remark was a bull’s eye but Elaine reminded them of the situation. The life of one of their group members was in danger: they had to avoid wasting time and act quickly. She hoped that the intensive care ward would be in better condition. The doubt took over her as she searched along the floor scattered with pieces of smashed tiles. She pushed open another door and fell upon the same desolate panorama. The more they continued, the more the anxiety gnawed at their stomachs. Alva helped clear the way to allow the stretcher to pass. Bruce was losing patience.

“Where are we going, for Christ’s sake?”

“No choice. I can’t operate on Hector here,” the nurse said with annoyance.

At the end of a hallway bordered by large windows, the situation got better along with their morale. The pediatric wing was at the far end of the addition. Less exposed, it had been saved from the looting and fighting. The area had a corridor that led to an exterior hall, a waiting room and behind the double doors, a service area with individual rooms. Hector was placed in one of them. Elaine judged the premises to be in an adequate state given the circumstances. The two women inspected the other rooms, opening all of the doors in the main hallway to take advantage of a maximum amount of light in the absence of electricity. Alva found some self-powered LED flashlights. All they needed to do was turn a handle for them to light up. At the end of the building, a staircase covered in furniture blocked access to the higher floors. Elaine engaged the singer, who contented herself with pushing a kitchen trolley with wheels that she went along filling with bedding, sheets, comforters and clothing.

During this time, Masters got to barricading the waiting room. The biologist helped him move the couches and benches to block the way and cover windows. They transformed the building into a small armored compound. There were L-Ds less than a kilometer away. They could come at any time. Also, they didn’t know how long they would be trapped in here.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” Bruce asked, wondering about the Colombian.

Masters interrupted him. “You have an intuition and common sense. You should understand it. Every member of the group is now important. Keeping our numbers is a condition of survival. So, yes, he’s going to have to make it because we need him.”

“I... You’re right.”

“In fact, how did you get the idea of moving the semi-sub and immersing it? The maneuver wasn’t clear.”

Bruce scratched his neck. “Well, Xavier declared that he had seen Hector when he arrived. I guessed that they were watching us and then I saw guys on the roof of the yacht club. I told myself that it would be better to go underwater. Before the invasion, I would rent a boat for fishing parties once or twice a month. As for the dive mode, I watched Hector when we were on the navy transport. I followed your escape thanks to the tiny periscope.”

“That was quite risky but well played out,” the colonel congratulated him.

“He wanted Elaine for... well, you know. He wouldn’t have let her escape.”

“Of course, you did the right thing.”

T
he cold floor woke Mirha up at dawn.

She shivered and pulled her legs to her chest to conserve heat and stop it from escaping. Fetal position, which was supposedly meant to give her natural comfort, caused her shooting pains at the base of her back and after a few minutes, they became less and less bearable. She ended up sitting against the wall to relieve the pain in her body. She looked around at the large open space. She was no longer in the dome, which she considered good news. On the other hand, she had been left to herself.

Immediately, she tried to gather her memories and the confused snippets of the past days and hours that had passed as if a dream. Yesterday’s meal was one of the few moments that came to her mind and in any case, the only one she could recount in detail. She remembered sitting in front of a man who came from a tribe from a neighboring village. There were dozens around the lake, each with its own rules and laws. He had a typical warrior tattoo, which allowed her to place him in the hierarchy. He had smiled at her before starting his lunch or breakfast. It was hard to tell considering that they no longer had a notion of time. The smell of chicken and the perfume of rice had provoked their appetite, she remembered, closing her eyes. The man had taken the first bite and had confirmed that they weren’t at risk and that the gods wouldn’t bother giving them good things to eat if they were just going to kill them afterwards. Mirha remembered thinking that they fattened up farm animals for exactly that purpose.

The flying machines, which didn’t look human at all, had attacked the village. She touched her neck instinctively. The needles had disappeared and didn’t seem to have left any marks or scars. Next, she had woken up in the middle of that grey and white dome, surrounded by the crowd. The colors, the borders and the dimensions seemed to not exist; they were confusing, mixed in a type of washed-out and unfathomable mist. She remembered the people. There were so many of them. The immaculate prison had held hundreds of people and maybe thousands. It was the opposite in every way to this small room with its clear corners and bright light.

The crude brightness attracted her gaze.

The young woman got up despite her pain and walked slowly towards the window. The city, bathed in morning sun, stretched out like tentacles as far as the eye could see. The city... She put her hand to the window. The big city, the one she saw on the television in the previous world. She had always dreamed of visiting it, wandering along its streets while licking an ice-cream cone or crossing the threshold of a boutique to try on clothes and leaving with one of those colorful bags that the salespeople gave to customers. Leaving, she thought. She had to get out of this place.

Mirha turned around to look for a way out. The table, the plastic water jugs, the box of food, the covers... The evidence was accumulating but she refused to believe it. The apartment didn’t have stairs or elevator access, no ways out, no way to escape. Even prisons had doors. Here, she didn’t see anything that resembled one.

“
Ni mtu hapa
?”

She repeated her question several times, without getting any response.

“
Mimi najua kuna mtu hapa
,” she said to the ceiling.

Of course there was someone, Jave thought, watching the subject on the screen. His attention was on the edge of the information landscape, which was divided into two equally sized sections. Each one displayed one side of humanity. On one side, the animal that slept in each representative of the species and on the other, the intelligence that had given birth to the local civilization.

On his right, the repugnant creature didn’t stop twitching and moving around the floor in every direction, banging against its enclosure. It attacked the walls and the windows searching for a way to regain its freedom. On the left, the healthy woman, on the other hand, observed, and went around according to a logical sense of observation. She wasn’t trying to escape. At least, not right away. He saw her stop in front of the box of food. She bent down to grab a can from the selection.

Jave had emptied the shelf of a food bank where humans stored and bought their food. He should have consulted the tera-servers, but he hadn’t had time.

“
Chakula kwa ajili ya mbwa
?” the woman spoke, looking at the label.

The emissary received the translation and his rootlets retracted when he realized his error.
What’s a dog?
he wondered. Visibly, these canned meals weren’t the right ones for his guest.

“Mimi si kula chakula.
”

Why was she speaking to the ceiling? He had hidden the botcams on the walls. He took note to go back to the store to bring her other tins. A message bubble appeared at the top of the projection. He opened it.

Naakrit was coming back to the base, on board his T-J, which had been transformed into a flying command post. The Lynian left the tower right away.

The Primark disembarked with the first wave on the steaming tarmac accompanied by two troopers and around a thousand captured humans and animals. The reptilian threw bodies onto floating pallets. If he could trust the information on the fauna he had gotten from the tera-servers, Jave counted two lions, a leopard, three impalas, two zebras... Naakrit came up to him, forcing him to interrupt his mental inventory.

“Samples,” the mercenary declared. “If the Säzkari confirms that they aren’t sick or affected by the virus, I could develop a new market for these animals. I could make a modest profit, and that’s better than nothing.”

“For sure.”

Within the Commercial Collective, every product had its place and its customers, according to a motto dear to the merchant princes. The transporters delivered the day’s catch. The line of chrome trays stretched out for more than a kilometer feeding the white stomachs that seemed to be full already.

“An excellent hunt,” the reptilian resumed. “And you? How are things with you? Are you feeling better?”

To dodge duty and carry out his little scheme, the emissary had used a passing sickness as an excuse.

“The entire region is a source of oxygen, a waste produced by my body which I must... eliminate.”

“And your carbon dioxide reserves? You’re not out of stock, I would think?”

“I made a mistake when regulating it.”

The Primark’s tongue clicked in the fresh evening air.

“We’re going to launch nighttime raids,” he informed him.

The mercenaries were planning on increasing the pace of operations.

“You risk surpassing the manufacturing capacity of the domes,” Jave said, surprised.

“I’m planning to send the excess captured products to the Dubai HQ. I need to have my facilities working to their limit to fill up the mega-transporter as fast as possible.”

Take advantage of good luck before it slides between your claws
, the Lynian remembered. Naakrit was following this precept to the letter. He was aiming for a total of one million packaged units, ready for consumption, one hundred thousand of which would go to the Kuatians. He would deliver to the Combinate right afterwards, which would appease their worries. The mercenary was offering himself a moment of respite by relieving the pressure exerted by his business partners a bit. He was going out of his way to respect his obligations, and even to prepare new markets. The Collective praised this type of conquering spirit.

Jave observed the takeoff of an air-to-space loading ship packed with half a thousand cryo-coffins. The automatic ship, in the shape of a flattened triangle with rounded wings, appeared on the main runway. The repulsors went into action and silently, it lifted off into the blood red sky. It turned around above the city and then accelerated until disappearing into the cloud layer. In less than an octain of minutes, it would come back to take the next load. A half-dozen of these large carrier ships were doing rotations.

The Primark invited him to the operations center. He wanted to talk about yield and optimization with his Squil specialist. The latter had suggestions to submit. The mercenaries’ business was getting more lucrative.

Before joining him, Jave consulted his flexible screen. The infected creature was still at its vain attempts to escape. He didn’t note any difference in its behavior. The botcams didn’t signal any important changes.

Next, he went to the information flow on the woman, who had spread the covers on the floor to sleep. At least he hadn’t been mistaken about that. She was sleeping, according to the scanners. Clearly, she hadn’t touched the food. He had expected that. But surprisingly, she hadn’t touched the water either. That was the most frustrating part. She needed to drink. His plan depended on it.

Have patience, she’ll end up thirsty. Humans are made up of seven octiams of water. They can’t allow themselves to lose too much
, he reassured himself.