Parasite, p.25
Parasite, page 25
“Sort of okay?” Skye’s voice sounded faint and reedy, and her words were mingled with a hacking, hysterical laugh from Ellen. “Two Cymics were waiting at the top of the stairs, but we killed them.”
“Good girl,” Mitzi said. “How’s Adam?”
“Non-responsive. I think he passed out. The others are carrying him.”
Mitzi swore under her breath and quickened her pace, leaping up the steps three at a time, occasionally sparing a glance behind herself to make sure Franc was still with her and nothing was creeping up behind them.
They reached the top of the stairs, where it opened into the passageway. To her right was the stairwell that would take them to the surface, but Mitzi ignored it and went left, where she could see the flickering flame coming from Skye’s flamethrower. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever; passageways periodically branched off each side, and doors, some open, studded the walls, all offering access to dark rooms. Mitzi ignored the closed doors—better not to tempt fate—but stopped beside each open doorway, poking her nozzle inside to check the contents.
“Look for an empty room,” Mitzi said as she came abreast of Skye. “Somewhere we can barricade ourselves inside while we check on Adam.” She looked into the open doorway they were passing and grimaced. Three corpses lay in the corner, each holding a gun. Trickles of dried blood accompanied small holes in their temples. They preferred to be dead than a Cymic. Can’t say I blame them.
“Here’s a rec room,” Skye said, holding a door open.
Mitzi paused in the entrance, searching for motion, then cautiously stepped inside.
Station recreation rooms often doubled as secure areas in case of emergency. That meant their doors could be locked with reinforced bolts, and there were emergency systems in place for in case the power went down. Mitzi stalked through the room, checking behind the couches and the TV that had been smashed to the floor, then made sure the door was still intact before beckoning her team in with a grin. “This is perfect. Get in here, you lot. Mir, Eoin, Skye—put Adam down on that lounge. Careful of his head. Skye, lock the door.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Mitzi pulled a half dozen glow sticks out of her pouch, snapped them to activate their spark, and tossed them around to light the room in subdued blues and greens. Then she knelt beside Adam, who was no longer moving.
“Nic, you still with us?”
“Always and forever, doll.”
“Tell me how to unlock a suit.”
“I can do that from my end. Which one?”
“Adam’s.”
Nic was silent for a moment as Mitzi listened to him type. Then Adam’s suit clicked, and the plates relaxed their grip. “That’s unlocked. You can pull it open now.”
Mitzi tried, but her gloves were too thick to get under the plates. Grumbling, she stood up and pressed the switch inside her glove to deactivate her own suit. It whirred as it unlocked and split open, and Mitzi stepped out with a sigh of relief. Being without her suit felt strange, as though gravity were heavier than it was supposed to be, and every movement took more energy than it should have. The cool air felt good against her sweaty skin, though.
She returned to Adam and prised his suit open, starting with his helmet. “Help me lift him out if this,” she said to the team standing around her, and she waited while they deactivated and stepped out of their own suits.
Between the six of them, they were able to carefully lift the man’s body while Franc pulled the damaged suit out from under him then laid him back on the lounge. Mitzi went to his head first. A sinking feeling grew in her chest when she saw the trickle of blood that ran from the back of his skull and down his neck. She checked for a pulse and smiled when she found it. Weak, but that’s better than not having one at all.
“There should be some bottled water in the fridge or one of the storage cupboards,” she said. “And a first-aid kit. Someone get me those and some cloths.”
Skye, Franc, and Ellen, apparently relieved to have something to do, spread out at once and started pulling open cupboard doors. Mir retreated to a dark corner, where she huddled in one of the chairs, and Eoin, after staring at Adam’s still face for a moment, sat in the chair opposite and pulled the book out of a pocket.
“Seriously?” Mitzi asked, incredulous, as he opened it to a dog-eared page. She shook her head. “You know what? I’m not even mad. Stick to your principles.”
Franc appeared at Mitzi’s side with a bottle of water and a small bundle of washcloths. Mitzi cracked the bottle’s lid off, wet one of the cloths, and began dabbing at the back of Adam’s head. A moment later, Skye returned with the first-aid kit.
“Cut his shirt off,” Mitzi said, feeling her stomach flip over at how quickly the washcloth turned pink. “See if he has any broken ribs.”
The room was silent as Skye pulled a pair of scissors out of the kit and started cutting. Mitzi threw aside the first washcloth and wet a second one, which she used to blot at Adam’s face. He stirred, murmuring deep in his throat.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” Skye said. “There might be fractures, though. He’s bruised pretty badly.”
Mitzi glanced at Adam’s chest and nodded. Dark discolouration was growing across the skin, but there were no indents or plumes of red that could indicate broken ribs. “Could be worse. I’m going to say we’re not leaving this room for a bit. See if you can find more water and some food, and rest up as much as you can.”
Skye stayed beside Mitzi, but Franc and Ellen moved off to fetch supplies from the cupboards. Someone said something that was too faint for Mitzi to hear, and she craned her neck to see Mir in the corner of the room, curled up so that her knees were resting under her chin as her dark eyes glared at the back of Adam’s chair.
“What was that?”
“Why?” Mir repeated, a little more loudly. “Why are we wasting time with him?”
Mitzi, thinking she must have misheard the girl, stared at her.
Seemingly uncomfortable with the silence, Mir spoke again. “It’s going to be nearly impossible to get him off the planet, even if we don’t go to the reactor room. And you said it yourself, every hour counts in this war. We should leave him. Complete the mission as soon as possible.”
“Leave him?” Mitzi echoed, dropping the cloth and standing up.
Mir shrugged. “He’s an acceptable loss.”
Mitzi stalked towards the girl, who shrank back in her chair, even as she glared her defiance. “When I was sworn in as a commander, my vows included a pledge to protect my team above my own life. I’ve never reneged on that promise, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Really?” Mir asked, a cruel bite in her tone. “I was under the impression that Captain Jones would disagree.”
Mitzi felt as if she’d been punched. Her vision blacked out, and for a moment, she was back in that office, gun in her shaking hand as she faced Jones. He quirked her a lopsided smile. “What’re you doing, Mitz?”
Then he turned towards her, raising his hand towards her face. Mitzi felt the trigger, resistant under the pressure of her finger, then heard the crack as the gun kicked back in her hand. She smelled the smoke and the blood…
Her vision cleared, and she was once again staring at Mir. The girl’s lips spread into a nasty smile as she appreciated the effect of her words. Mitzi slapped her.
She regretted it almost as soon as the echoes died out. Mir raised a hand to her red cheek, looking livid, and Mitzi fought to get her anger under control.
“I promised you lot I’d do everything in my power to get you off this planet alive,” she said, her voice low and shaky. “Even idiots like Adam. Even spoilt, sheltered brats like you. And I swear, I would rather hug a Cymic than abandon a single one of you here to die. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.”
They stared at each other, Mitzi furious, Mir defiant. Then the younger girl squeezed her eyes closed, and her shoulders started to shake.
“Oh, jeeze,” Mitzi said, feeling her anger ebb out of her. “Okay, hey, stop that. Don’t cry. C’mon.”
Mir pulled her legs up and buried her face in them as she dug her fingers into her hair. “Leave me alone.”
Mitzi stared at her, feeling helpless, unsure whether she should hug the girl or kick her in the shins. Then Skye appeared at her side, her pretty blue eyes flicking between her commander and her peer.
“Mir?” she said quietly. “Who did you lose?”
After a silent moment, Mir raised her head. Her face was blotchy, but her eyes were still hard and angry. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Was it a friend? A boyfriend? Your parents?”
At the last word, the colour drained from Mir’s face, and Mitzi finally understood. She sighed and dropped to the ground beside Mir, sitting cross-legged. “So that’s your reason for coming on the mission, huh? You wanted revenge?”
The fight seemed to leave Mir, and she slumped forward, looking unexpectedly vulnerable as she let her long hair fall down like screens in front of her face. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“No,” Mitzi said, remembering the pressure of the creatures as they’d tried to pull her suit apart. “Me, neither. What happened to your parents?”
For a minute, Mitzi thought the girl wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “They were on one of the exo-stations. It was one of the earlier ones to go quiet, before anyone knew what the problem was. Their messages just stopped coming one day, and no one could tell me why or what had happened—only that a rescue ship had been sent. When the whole Cymic thing was announced… I kept hoping maybe they’d be one of the lucky ones. That they’d escaped in time.”
She wasn’t crying, but her voice was raw. Mitzi respectfully kept quiet while Skye leaned on the edge of the seat.
“I have dreams about them sometimes, that they’ve come back. They hug me a-and tell me they missed me—but of course, it’s not them. It’s the monsters. And that’s the worst thing of all.” Her voice was a whisper, so full of pain, longing, and revulsion that Mitzi’s heart ached for her. “They’re probably still out there, looking and talking and acting exactly like my mum and dad, except they’re not.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry.” Mitzi didn’t know what else to say.
Mir glanced at her and shrugged. “Lots of people are going through the same thing. I got invited to a support group. I couldn’t imagine anything more horrible.”
Skye chuckled. “Oh, yeah, I got an invite to a group, too.” At Mitzi’s questioning look, she wet her lips and shrugged. “Two of my best friends. They were on Station 333—you know, the one that exploded. I don’t know if they actually got turned before… well. They’re dead, either way.” She waved a hand about the room. “I’ll bet everyone here has lost someone. Maybe not a close family member or dear friend, but at least someone they know. What are the estimates, one in three humans are gone?”
Mitzi raised her eyebrows. “You’ve been keeping your ear to the ground, I see.”
“Yeah. A couple of my friends got accepted to be defence technicians, even though I wasn’t. They’ve been keeping me as up to date as they can.”
Mitzi thought of her own friends, their weekly meals together, and how they’d passed on as much information as they could. She might never see them again, she realised; there was a very real chance that she might not make it off the station…
She swallowed and squeezed her eyes closed. “Want to know why I was discharged?”
Skye was silent, but Mir said, “Yeah?”
“I killed my commanding officer, Captain Jones.” She exhaled and forced her voice to stay steady. “I’d suspected he was stealing intelligence for a civilian rebellion started by his cousin, but I couldn’t get anyone to believe me. He was really well liked. Charismatic, funny, friendly to everyone he met. Hell, even I liked him. When I figured out what he was doing, I was devastated. I cornered him in his office one night after the building had closed and confronted him about it. I’d brought a gun. Turns out, so had he.”
She squeezed her lids shut. Again, there was the lopsided grin, the voice saying, “What’re you doing, Mitz?” and the flash of silver as he raised his hand towards her.
“I shot first.” It was hard to speak, and she had to pause to wet her lips. “He would have killed me if I hadn’t. I went to court on murder charges.”
“You didn’t get a conviction, though,” Skye said.
“No. My lawyer told me to claim it was an accident. He said there wasn’t enough evidence that Captain Jones was colluding with the rebellion, and if I tried to claim I’d killed him in self-defence, I’d receive the death penalty. So I pleaded guilty to manslaughter. I didn’t know what else to do. The court accepted it, and I received a dishonourable discharge from my job.”
Mitzi opened her eyes and focussed on the ceiling tiles. “I was right, though. Six months after my case finished, it was proven that Captain Jones had been leaking classified documents to the rebellion for years. Because I’d pleaded guilty, though, I couldn’t appeal my case. So the manslaughter charge stayed, and with it died any chance of getting my job back.”
“That sucks,” Skye said, echoing Mitzi’s own words back at her.
Mitzi chuckled. “Sure does.”
Mir didn’t say anything, but she pulled something out of her pocket. Mitzi glanced at it and raised her eyebrows when she saw it was the hairband she’d given the girl on the ship. Mir pulled her hair up and tied it back tightly, still refusing to meet Mitzi’s eyes.
Across the room, Franc cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Captain?”
“Yeah?” Mitzi bounced to her feet, shaking off the stupor the conversation had cast over her. “Is it Adam?”
“No, no, it’s the suit—I think Nic is trying to talk to us.”
Mitzi jogged to her suit, which stood open, waiting for her to step back into it. “Nic?” she called into the helmet and heard his voice come back faint and tinny.
“Just thought you should know. I’ve been scanning the planet for heat signals, and I’ve just now gotten a response.”
“There’s someone alive here?”
“Uh, no, I wouldn’t say that exactly. The heat signals appeared out of nowhere. You know what that means, right?”
“Yeah.” Mitzi turned back to the room, surveying her team. Skye was still sitting with Mir. Ellen had joined Eoin on the lounge chair opposite Adam’s unconscious form, and Franc stood off to one side, a half-drunk bottle of water in one hand. “The Cymics are changing into their human forms.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Mitzi squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled. “How many?”
“I wish I could give you an accurate number, but the place is lighting up like a Christmas tree. There must be hundreds… possibly thousands of them.”
Right as Nic finished speaking, a series of deep, metallic clangs came from the door to their right. Three distinct knocks followed.
The atmosphere inside the room was so thick, Mitzi could have cut it with a knife. The team held their breath, watching the door and waiting. There was silence for half a minute, then a voice called, “Hello?”
It was a woman, and she sounded young and unsure of herself. Mitzi shook her head at her companions, indicating that they should remain quiet.
“Hello, is someone in there? My name’s Sun. I need rescue, and my friend is hurt. Please, let me in.”
Mitzi had been warned about how convincingly the Cymics could imitate their hosts, but it was still painfully challenging to imagine the pleading voice as anything except human.
“Please, please, open the door! I think I can hear them coming!” Raw panic filled the voice. “You have to help me—I don’t want them to catch me.” She sobbed, fearful and breathless. “I don’t want to… to become… please, they’re coming up the stairwell. Help me!”
Mir’s eyes were wide. “What if?” she mouthed, and even Mitzi found herself filled with doubt.
“Nic?” she hissed, low enough that whatever was on the other side of the door wouldn’t hear her. “Are you certain? There’s no way a human could have gotten to us?”
Nic’s voice was fond and a little sad. “Doll, no chance in hell. They’re gathered so thickly outside that door that I can’t count the individual dots. Don’t be fooled.”
The voice rose into a terrified scream. Mitzi had heard that noise before, several times during her active duty. It was the sound a person made right after realising death was inevitable. She crossed her hands over her chest and hunched her shoulders against it, fighting against the part of her that wanted to wrench open the doors and save the person on the other side.
The scream broke off, and silence filled its place. Mitzi finally let herself breathe again, and she was surprised to find sweat covered her torso.
“What was that?” a voice mumbled, and Mitzi almost smiled. She hurried to the lounge where Adam was blinking, disoriented, at the strange shadows the glow sticks were throwing about the room. “Ugh… my head hurts.”
“Yeah, it’ll do that for a bit,” Mitzi murmured, picking up the cloth and dabbing it over his face. “Try to be quiet. We’ve got Cymics outside the door.”
Mitzi took a quick assessment of her team. Mir was leaning back in her chair, eyes on the ceiling. Skye was still watching the door, her face white. Franc had sat down and held his head in trembling hands. Ellen had sought comfort by leaning against her new friend, Eoin, and Eoin… was still reading his book.
“Mitz?” Nic’s voice was faint, and Mitzi got up to stand next to the suit again. “Still there?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
“I don’t want to alarm you, but you might want to get a move on. The station’s heating up. More and more lights are coming on. I guess they’re sending messengers to alert their buddies. You might want to make your move before they find a way into your room.”
