Senton
Scrambling on his hands and knees, Senton lunged for Karl. The lura's tail tensed beneath his grip as Senton's heart thumped with excitement. He'd spent the last ten minutes trying to get the damn thing back, but it kept scooting away at the very last moment. Now, however, he had a good grip on its tail and there wasn't anything it could do-- Yelping, he pulled his hand back, his palm sizzling with pain. Karl ran away. Senton looked at his injured hand, grimacing as he saw blisters forming on the surface--right where his aedee's flesh-display showed up against his dark skin. They stung enough to make him grimace and grit his teeth. It was too painful to even open his fingers, to say nothing of interacting with his aedee. Karl's tail, wriggling as it tried to get a section of metal grating free, waved at Senton, a mocking flag, adding insult to his hand's injury. A flame of passion and fury washed through him, forcing him to forget the blisters for a brief moment. The damn thing needed to die. Just, die. Barbs, coming out of the miniature mouths on the outside of Karl's skin, slowly retracted as the lura continued its investigation. Senton stood up. The Life Support wing mostly consisted of maintenance paraphernalia, with pumps, fans, catwalks, walkways, and more viz-panels than were likely necessary. Like all of the Compound, it was evacuated, the machines running well without human supervision--for now. Karl scampered from the unmoving metal grate, its body tipping back and forth as it would poke at one potential exit after another. Having used its (until now, unknown) self-defense system on its stalker, Karl apparently thought that Senton wasn't about to come at him again. It ignored the human, sniffing the air and chirping mildly to itself. The smell of sewage began to fill the air. The smell was what pushed Senton out of his killing rage. The smell. That had been in the lab, and he'd noticed it getting stronger the closer he got to the lura. At first, he'd passed it off as simply the natural odor of the Dentolura. But now that he thought about it more, it was clear that Karl's pheromones were responsible for the stench. The baby was still calling for its parents. The idea that massive Dentolura succhi would be following him to the Life Support section made him queasy. He needed to pick up Karl--or kill it, either, at this point, would be fine--and get out of the area. Additionally, he needed to record his observations, as not only did he understand that there was something toxic--though, he desperately hoped, not lethal--that the Dentolura could excrete through hidden spines. His hand burned and prickled with every movement. Senton took a deep breath. He needed to prioritize, plan, prepare. He couldn't do that if he was too focused on the pain of the moment. Dropping into his cold, calculating mind, Senton considered things as rationally as he could. Through some miracle of luck, he'd managed to keep the collapsible containment unit. It could be opened with a quick message from his aedee, which would be difficult to do left-handed, but he'd be able to manage. Once that was open, he could lure the lura into his trap and get Karl back to his lab. There, he could finalize the download of all the information that he'd collected, meet up with Korryn, and add the baby to whatever collection she'd managed to gain. Assuming, of course, that she hadn't met with another succhi or something even worse. Swallowing against that possibility, Senton thought of sending a message to Korryn, but then decided against it. If they were caught, anything written between the two could be looked into and used as evidence. He wasn't keen on incriminating himself. No, it would be better to meet with her, as planned, in the Hangar. He had to get Karl first, though. That ended up being far easier than he had anticipated. His hand aching all the way up to his right shoulder, he knew he couldn't do anything to Karl with his body. He could hardly move faster than a shuffle, so chasing the stupid thing wasn't an option, either. So he decided to give Karl exactly what the lura wanted: An escape. Snagging a multi-purpose tool from a workstation, Senton set up his cage around the corner from the grate Karl had been investigating earlier. With some difficulty (and more than one loud profanity), Senton had the grate wide open. He set the opened containment unit in the shadowy maw of the ventilation shaft, then painfully set it to trigger at a snap from his fingers. Then he moved away. Karl approached a couple minutes later, the vast amount of air circulating up the metallic throat pulling it in like stupidity to the humanities. Senton smirked as Karl, cautious but curious, paused to sniff. It stood for a long moment, but, in the end, Karl took a step inside. Then another. Senton snapped his fingers. The trap sprang. Karl gurgled in surprise. Senton whooped, but then regretted it when he jarred his shoulder. Hissing, he stepped forward. "You're not going anywhere," he said, reaching into the shaft and pulling out the containment unit. It trembled, and Karl made more than one sickly noise from within it, but if Senton had to guess, he'd say that the fight had been knocked out of it. Karl was defeated, and Senton couldn't keep from smiling thinking about it. "I got you now." "Funny," said a voice behind him. Senton turned in surprise, then gasped as the movement reminded him that he was, by no means, capable of moving so quickly. "I was going to say the same thing." "Chief," he said, his voice sounding thin and guilty to his own ears. He swallowed and licked his lips. "I didn't expect…to see you here." "Because you threw me toward the open mouth of a huge, human-eating creature?" asked Ann, stepping out of the shadows cast by an overhang of pipes. The stench of the caught lura mingled with the smell of wet and grease that the Life Support wing always had. The odors combined and made Senton's already-uneasy stomach clench. He licked his lips and cast a glance at the closest exit. Ann was between him and it. "That was a mistake," he said, shifting slowly, trying to force Ann to move so that he could make a break for it. "I'm sorry about that." "You know," said Ann, not falling for the attempt. She knew that he had no weapon, nothing to fight him with. She had him. But that didn't mean that Senton would remain caught. "You know, finding you wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. I had to go through a number of different back-alleys to get here. Open up a lot of doors. Do a lot of thinking as I went." "Oh?" He didn't know where she was going with her conversation, and that worried him. "Yes. I realized," said Ann, her back straight, her expression blank, "that you're hiding something." "Oh?" He hated that he sounded…caught, as if he'd confessed simply by saying that one word. Grimacing as the pain in his arm faded into a cold numbness, he adjusted his grip on Karl's cage. The creature gurgled, then fell silent. "Yes. I think you know more about the Dentolura than you've let on. Your notes--research, observations, visuals--I want them all." She extended her hand, palm up, in the familiar sign of a person waiting to receive an aedee-to-aedee transfer. Taking a step toward him, her other hand tight on the unholstered weapon, she stared at him with an air of unmistakable authority. Senton stepped back, uncomfortable with her approach. "Y-you're crazy. I don't have anything that you could use. I mean, I have notes, of course. But it's all in my own code, my own cypher…" "How long do you want to be in the brig, Doctor Trapp?" The idea of incarceration stoked a fire of indignation in his mind. "You think you'll lock me up? That you'll charge me like a petty criminal? Send me with Draymond Rall out into the depths of space on that pathetic tub filled with crooks and murderers?" He let loose a laugh that, even to his ears, sounded forced and shrill. "No, I don't think so." "There are two ways this ends, Doctor," said Ann, walking closer. "You die or you go to prison. Which do you prefer?" "Wait," he said, licking his lips and looking around for an escape. Maybe if his arm wasn't useless, he'd be able to figure something out--punch her, maybe, though he'd never done a lot of physical exercises throughout his life, so he didn't know how he could do that without hurting himself--but as it stood, he had Karl and his brain. His brain. He could think his way out of this if he just had time to think. "You have three seconds," said Ann, leveling her gun at him. "Wait," he said, closing his eyes and seeking the calm of contemplation, the cold world of rationality and reason that had helped him so often in the past. "One." The path to freedom was clogged, yes, but clogs needed only a push to break through, an incentive to move along. "Two." If he could get to a position where he could move something along--but what?--then he'd be able to… Ann shot him in the leg. Senton screamed and dropped the cage which, in the one stroke of good luck that night, didn't break open. Karl gurgled his displeasure, but it was half-hearted. The creature was not in good condition, Senton realized in a detached part of his mind. The majority of his mind was echoing his voice, screaming that he'd been shot. "You…you shot me!" "Yes," said Ann. "I thought you were going to count to three!" "Three," she said. Gasping, he looked at his leg, expecting a fountain of his blood to be ejecting from the hole. His jaw dropped, and for a moment, the surprise overpowered the pain. The leg was intact--not even his pantleg was torn. He looked up at Ann, who looked like she was waiting for this moment. "What, did you think I was going to maim you?" She snorted. "There are plenty of settings on a Security crewmember's weapon, Doctor, including non-lethal ones." "It's a trick?" he said. He put pressure on it, but his leg screamed in protest--a cry which he, unwillingly, repeated. He collapsed to the ground. "After a manner of speaking. It's more of a command override I put into your aedee by virtue of shooting you with the program." She wiggled the weapon, then slid it into its holster. "You miserable little b--" Ann grabbed Senton by the lapel of his coveralls, the action causing a spasm of pain to ripple down his right arm and his left leg and cutting him off from whatever he was about to say. In a voice of cold calm, she said, "Let's go." "You…you can't," he said, his teeth clattering with the agony that lanced his body. "I can't move." "No worries. I'll carry you," said Ann, then matched action to her words. Senton found himself ignominiously draped over the Chief of Security's back as she holstered and secured her weapon and then scooped to pick up the dropped cage. For the briefest of moments, Senton was confused. He knew that Chief Timpson exercised enough to be good at her job, but she wasn't even winded with hefting him, and he weighed eighty kilos. Then he understood: She wore a skin-sheath, likely one similar to what her sister, Charalee, wore. Most people used skin-sheaths as a type of dermal armor, used to prevent small-arms fire or other projectiles. But some models had muscle enhancements. He knew she hadn't been wearing the sheath before, but now that he had the chance to consider it, she did seem a little bulkier. The skin-sheath wasn't ever too thick, but it gave a particular contour to the body. He was distracted; that was why he hadn't noticed. As he bounced, too in pain to mount a defense, he said, "So you think you've won?" Ann chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "I have miles to go before I sleep." "Miles?" She shook her head, which Senton felt brushing against his side. It was difficult to breath with his guts on her shoulder, but he couldn't get himself in a more comfortable position. "Don't worry about that." She shifted him, which made it a bit easier to breath, though it jolted both of his injured limbs. "While we go, why don't you tell me all that I want to know about the Dentolura that are currently causing havoc in my Compound?" Despite his pretended conviction, he found that he was unable to keep his secrets safe while his body was in such pain. He thought that he could probably sue Ann for torture, but that would have to come later. For now, he answered her questions immediately, as any delay would cause "accidental" bumps. When they arrived in the brig--a secured section of the Security wing--Ann dropped him in a heap on the floor of one of the cells. "You should be comfortable here," she said. "And don't worry about trying to contact anyone. These cells are designed to dampen any aedee activity." Sighing, she held up the cage, looking into where Karl lay, looking sick. "I'm going to keep this fellow here until I can get it to its parents. Hope you don't mind." Setting Karl's cage in the cell across from Senton, Ann straightened. She held up her hand. "Thanks for the information, by the way. I appreciate your cooperation in this difficult time." "Yeah, don't mention it," said Senton. "You're sure that's everything?" He shrugged. "I guess." He paused. "If I think of anything, how can I contact you?" Ann hesitated. "Why?" He shrugged again, then winced as he straightened on the ground. "I'm in a lot of pain. I might have forgotten something." She regarded him for a long time, but he studiously considered his swollen hand, avoiding her gaze. "Fine," she said at last. "I'll set it up that your aedee can only talk to mine." Senton took care not to show a secret pleasure flash across his face. "That works," he said softly. He considered his leg. It was whole, of course, but it still ached like it'd been shot to pieces. "How long will this program run through my leg?" "I don't remember," said Ann. "Somewhere between an hour and a week." Giving him a jaunty salute, she said, "Call if you think of something." Then she walked out the door. "Oh, I will," he said, the smile he'd suppressed smearing across his face, filled with malice and rage and indignation. "You can count on that." |
What is this?This is a NaNoWriMo project that publishes, day by day, the chapters I'm writing for 2017. If you're confused, go to Chapter 1 Ann and start there. ArchivesCategories
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