“You do know this will send out an alarm, right?” Moreau’s voice chirped at me through the tiny drone she’d used to guide us here. “There will be records showing a high alert was triggered, and-”
“Yeah, you can go ahead and protect your ‘most precious sample’.” I snapped dryly, moving over to the supplies I’d left here in preparation for my return. “Maybe make them bring me a nice meal.” My stomach growled in pangs of agony, but right now my anger towards Moreau was greater.
I’d activated the alarm for three reasons. One, there was a nigh-dead unconscious meguca here I did not know how to handle, and that I definitely did not want her dying because of me. Two, anyone coming over would be some cargo-AV pilot, with no backup or munitions, and almost assuredly not in a position to tackle a D-class and come out alive. Third was that I didn’t trust the resource-tower’s defenses, the interior was chock-full of machines that should’ve been given maintenance a decade ago, I shuddered at the thought of how well kept the weapon systems were.
If just one E or D class tracked us down, this could go ugly fast.
“You’re not making this easier on me, you know, I’m supposed to be laying low.” The tiny drone complained.
I ignored her, pulling out some of the high-calorie nutri-bars and shoving them into my mouth, wrapping and everything. The taste was ignorable, but it gave me enough peace of mind to pay some proper attention to the unconscious meguca.
This close, Shadow’s age was more apparent, looking barely a few years older than me, but not by much. With short black hair and pale skin, she was lithe, incredibly so. At a glance, she looked like a doll that had been plucked out of a museum. One that just so happened to be wearing a skin-tight flexible kevlar of some sort. She was full of cuts, bruises, and scratches, even the protective gear looking like it was in severe need of repairs.
And I had no first-aid kit.
“I can’t scan her vitals, I’d wager her gear’s of the smart-material variety. Just cover her with a thermal blanket and her body temperature shouldn’t be an issue.” Moreau interrupted. “You, on the other hand, might do better with some clothes.”
“The first change I brought is probably buried under a mile of mud out there.” I growled, ignoring my nakedness as I marched on over to the stash and shuffled through it. Another four nutri-bars were consumed before I pulled out my spare clothes and a towel to dry myself with. The mud was a problem, but that was the least of my concerns.
Tossing an emergency thermal blanket on Shadow, I just could not push my hunger aside any longer. My stomach was clawing desperately at my insides, thirsty and hungry beyond measure. I ripped open the first of many litter-sized packages of shroom-juice and began to fill myself, one long gulp at a time.
Even with a single-minded desire to eat a planet’s worth of food, I kept enough mind to glare at the drone. “Talk,” I said between mouthfuls, effectively consuming my body weight in barely-flavored shroom-juice concentrate. “What did you do?” I chewed. “What’s going on?” Water helped down the food faster. “I saw the picture.” The anger was bubbling right under the surface, a growl stuck in my throat even as I chugged more food. “You turned a man into a monster!”
“You’re asking the wrong question.” Moreau replied flatly. “Take a minute to think it through.”
Still glaring at the drone, I took the opportunity to mull over the information. One question bubbled to the surface, one pertaining to the cause of this whole mess. “Who is the man in the picture?”
“The man was Barton Gollorca. You might know him better as the head of the board of directors of Neodrive.”
I choked, too hungry to cough out the obstruction, instead washing it down with more water.
Neodrive was an international mega-corporation, the sort that was so massive it really didn’t have any singular product or line. They made anything from electronics to weapons and food, but were better known for being specialists in AV-fuel production. They were the sort of mega-corporation that had middle-managers with more acquisitive power than the whole of a frontier city. The head of the board of directors might as well be considered a demigod, at least when taking into account the unfathomable wealth and power they could wield.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I declared, suckling on my next shroom-juice victim like some sort of starved vegan vampire. “Why would you target someone that far high…” I frowned. “You’re trying to imply you didn’t intend to turn him into a monster, that it wasn’t your intention.” I growled between mouthfuls. “You had something else in mind.” I accused, taking a long deep breath for the first time in what felt like minutes. “Maybe you tricked him, thought you’d get away with it. If he’d finished turning and you killed him, there’d be no body. You could even claim self-defense.”
“That…” The voice hesitated, laughing. “...is a surprisingly plausible theory. Wrong, but not that far a stretch. Still, well assumed, that’s worthy of a reward, no doubt.”
“ENOUGH!” I roared, anger frothing through my veins as the shroom-juice packed exploded in my hands. “You turned a human into a monster! A monster! You manipulated me, you used me as bait for the people that should’ve had YOUR head on a pike!” I winced, my insides burning with pain, but I held the glare. “Either you tell me what’s going on, or I swear-”
“You swear that you will what?” Moreau cut me off, voice hot, heavy with annoyance, almost derisive. “That you’ll hunt me down? Kill me? Join the queue!”
I opened my mouth and snapped it shut, taking a moment to put my thoughts in order, eyes falling on the obsidian blade. “I’ll stop using my powers, the full breadth of them.” I declared.
The speaker on the drone erupted with laughter. “And why would I care?”
Straightening myself out, I stared blankly at the camera. “You wouldn’t get data, or samples. Highly valuable samples.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Some fizzy fur and sharp quills?” She was still laughing. “I can get that out of some gene-cloning for some extinct animal or another.”
“This too?” I raised the obsidian knife-sized blade.
“That’s one pretty piece of glass.” She answered dismissively.
“Not quite.” I declared. “Shadow cut this off from my armor during the fight.” I explained. “And if I go looking, I’m sure I’ll find more of them where I fought Shadow. It’s not evaporating, it’s not turning into foam like a monster. I bet all of it put together would be more material than any D-class monster would ever drop, and…” With a grunt, I slammed the thing into the wall edge first, watching with satisfaction as it embedded itself in place with an ear-splitting screech. “...it either retains some or all of the properties of when it was still attached to me.”
“Oh… oh my.” There was a delectable purr in coming out of the speakers that ran down my spine in jolts of apprehension. The drone had raced forward, closer to the dagger, looking at it from every possible angle. “My, my, my, that is… that is so incredibly frustrating. Do you even realize how annoying this is? You, a brat, beat me to the punch. Oh, how I’d love to make…” The words trailed off, laughter mixed in as it turned to look at me. “You got me. You got me good. Fine. You want answers? I’ll give them… BUT! BUT! But you need to know first that this is dangerous information.”
The sudden enthusiasm caught me off guard, I blanched, staring at the drone as Moreau rambled. There was a raspiness to her laughter, almost like a cough, yet alongside it, I could sense a sudden serious undertone that wasn’t there.
As if the facade she’d put up was no longer there.
I hesitated. “Elaborate.”
“As things are right now? You get to walk away, forget about me other than some persistent reminder to mail a sample every now and then. You’ve stirred shit, and you’re… oh so unimaginably valuable… but that’s all you’ll have to contend with.” She declared. “Maybe you’ll get tangled up with the meguca politics, or the gangs, maybe both. Who cares? I’ve heard you’ve got the attention of more than one elder on you, and after surviving Shadow, I’m sure they’ll have you in their sights, wonder boy.” The laughter had a delirious edge to it, followed by a coughing fit. “But if you want to know the information that got me into this mess…”
There was a threat lingering in the air, I quietly drank some more shroom-juice, mulling over her tirade. I couldn’t imagine what was going through the doctor’s head, but from the tone alone, it felt like some of her screws had come loose during her time in hiding. I hated that she had a point, even without her answering my question, it was impossible to miss that she was part of some very big mess.
The sort of mess that would have someone sending Shadow to clean it up.
I looked over at the unconscious meguca.
I really hoped I’d never have to fight her again, tonight had been too much of a fluke.
“I guess I do owe you one explanation, though.” Moreau interrupted my internal musings. “The monster parts of Barton’s body evaporated shortly after his death. He was turning into a true monster.”
“I already…!” My voice died out, brows furrowed. “What happened to me is not what happened to him.”
“That is what I’ve hypothesized as well.” She chimed.
That left another question burning within me. “Did you intend to give me these powers?”
“What?” Moreau barked a laugh “I wish! I hadn’t even known something would happen, otherwise I would’ve shoved you somewhere with more cameras and sensors.” She lamented. “I’ve yet to even narrow down whether anything in the laboratory was truly responsible or if it was merely just one giant coincidence!”
Her answer sent a wave through me. A part of me wanted to call her out and claim she was lying, but another was relieved. Like taking a bite of something delicious and having the food vanish before getting a full taste. I just stared, trying to cobble together the full implications of what this meant, was I really-
The drone let out an annoyed sound. “Seems someone caught the signal and is trying to poke in. We’re out of time.”
I jostled. “Wait, you haven’t answered-!”
“The rats are the answer.”
The drone proceeded to explode in a rain of plastic smoke and pieces.
I stared at the debris.
“MOTHERFU-”
“We are trauma-team, from Blue Crossing Conglomerate.” The man spoke through a tinted helmet, wearing a red and white uniform more fitting to a space-station. His belt had more tools than I’d ever seen in one place outside of a specialty store.
More importantly, behind him there were ten others that wore the exact same uniform, but that were armed to the teeth. Their weapons had to be some sort of in-house made smart-SMG, because I couldn’t recognize any brand.
“We were told there’s a meguca in critical condition who activated the emergency call.” The man’s voice was tight, nervous, but had a severe undertone of cordiality. “And… that there is no one else here.”
Though I couldn’t see his face, I could sense the unspoken subtext. All records of this exchange would be purged.
How Moreau had pulled it off, I didn’t want to know.
It had taken all of forty minutes for them to show up after my conversation with the doctor, not even entering through the hangar but through the same service-entryway I had used. The fact that they’d gotten the tower’s lock mechanisms to unlock meant they were either the real thing or great hackers.
I was still on the fence on whether or not to let them through.
The sound of Shadow groaning in her unconscious state settled it. “She’s this way.”
I led them inside, watching with severe attentiveness as the team practically bolted to tend to Shadow. As soon as they spotted her, they switched over to internal comms, their voices muffled through the helmet. I caught glimpses of the conversation, all of it in medical jargon I wouldn’t pretend to understand. What I did understand, however, was that them treating her cuts and scratches here, rather than on the way back, meant her condition wasn’t immediately critical.
“This way, sir.” Now it was the lead medic’s turn to guide as we stepped out.
The trauma-team AV was illuminated by a soft red light so as to make itself hard to spot from a distance. The slick vehicle sported the same coloration as their uniform, sporting more weapon systems than I thought possible for a craft that size to be able to carry. My mouth instantly watered at the sight of the four turret-mounted weapon systems (two auto-cannons and two gatlings), slightly disappointed they were currently deactivated.
“We would not register an extra passenger.” They offered, turning to glance my way as they carried Shadow into the vehicle.
My first instinct was to accept, this would be the quickest way back to the city.
On the other hand, I’d be walking into what effectively looked like a flying medical facility, with every possible scanner and instrument that could be made portable readily available. A tight-enclosed and pressurized lump of flying metal that also carried the assassin that had tried to murderize me just a few hours prior.
“No, thanks.” I declared, intent on heading back inside and waiting for the haulers. I’d probably rest a lot easier, now that Shadow wasn’t anywhere near.
The man nodded. “In that case, we were told to drop this off.”
One of the men pulled out a small cardboard box.
Inside there was a singular apple, and a note.
“Enjoy the treat. - Dc M.”
The apple had a star sticker on it.
It was going to be a long ride back.
I just hoped I’d stay conscious long enough to reach my bed.