'You said the Variant Effect was coming back.' The doctor peered over the curtain. 'How bad is it?'
'What?' Borland's mind raced. What else did you tell him? The pressure and heat were building in his abdomen. He tried to cover. 'I meant before, like it was coming before. It was bad back then, is all,' Borland grumbled and laughed, looking up at the doctor. 'No worries.'
He froze.
There was something up there behind the doctor, a shape, no a shadow.
A man? Someone watching.
Borland laughed as a wave of euphoria flooded him.
The centipede?
'Who's that?' he said, squinting into the overhead lights.
'Pardon me?' the doctor asked, flinching, following Borland's gaze up over his shoulder. He looked back to Borland like nothing was there.
But Borland could see a shape. Something dark and broad moved into the space over the doctor's shoulder.
'Right there,' Borland said, gesturing with his chin and laughing. 'Some ugly bastard.'
Borland's vision cleared and the shape resolved into something big. It had a green, segmented body. And there were eyes-beady and shiny like its glistening shell-watching from under long fuzzy antennae while its serrated jaws dripped.
Borland laughed as it wrapped its barbed legs around the doctor's shoulders like it was an old friend.
'A centipede,' Borland said, unable to feel any terror. He laughed. 'Like the one in my room. But way bigger.'
The doctor looked over at the nurse and nodded.
'Don't worry, Captain Borland,' he reassured. 'Hallucinations are common with the mixture of drugs in your system.'
'A big green one,' Borland continued. 'Can't step on him though…'
The doctor looked at the nurse and chuckled, and Borland laughed.
Then something caught the nurse's eye because she looked past the doctor and her hands came up. The doctor just started to turn when a solid crunching sound knocked him forward onto Borland. He rolled off and out of sight. The nurse barely got a scream out before there was another crunch. Her body shook and she fell against Borland, her cheek striking his before she hit the floor.
Borland laughed.
The strange woman who couldn't eat chicken was leaning over him.
'Hey!' he shouted gleefully. ' You're all better.'
'Hurry,' she said, yanking the IV out of his hand and pulling the sheets off him. The woman heaved Borland into a sitting position, and then removed a pair of clamps from flaps of skin around the wound in his belly.
He only felt a minor tug.
Borland kept smiling as she tied his pants and closed his top. The thin material was immediately saturated by a wave of blood. 'We've got to get you out of here. NOW!'
She helped him off the table. He started laughing, one arm over her shoulder as strange sensations pulsed in his chest and stomach. He steadied himself against her.
She snatched a scalpel from a tray by the table, and led Borland out of the room.
'We can't let them do this!' Determination hardened her features. She looked like a cop.
Borland laughed and staggered along with her. He felt wet and cold on his legs, but that was all he could feel.
The morphine still warmed his soul.
CHAPTER 10
'This way!' the strange woman cried, pulling Borland by the arm. He was dizzy. His vision blurred as his arms and legs wobbled, felt like they might collapse. But there was miraculous, drug-induced energy flowing through him as he sprang along after her, blithely medicated, giggling about the coppery cold air that tickled his torso and thighs.
His mind reeled with vertigo, spun slowly forward like he would fall out of his head.
They pushed past another set of doors and ran to the elevator as its doors slid open on a nurse inside. She looked at Borland's bloody clothing, shrieked and fell back, sliding against the far wall of the elevator as Borland's 'rescuer' slashed and stabbed the air with her scalpel.
The terrified nurse hit a crowd of buttons on the far panel and the doors in that side of the compartment slid apart. She rolled ungracefully backwards into a white-lit hall full of shelves and supplies.
'Out!' the strange woman barked, launching a kick at the air behind the fleeing nurse who stumbled to her feet and fell into a shelf full of equipment. There was a crash of shattering glass.
'That'll teach her!' Borland shouted.
Then the strange woman grabbed Borland's arm and pulled him into the elevator. He lost his balance and slammed into the corner. His face rang off a thick stainless steel railing, smashed against fake veneer.
He struggled on his knees laughing as his rescuer punched the 'close door' button beside her, and both sides of the elevator slid shut.
Borland pressed against the tingling wet bulge under his smock as the woman slapped another button. The floor lurched and the elevator started to climb.
Borland was chortling wetly. He pushed off the wall with one hand while the other cradled his bloody gut. A deep throb cut through him but faded in a fog of painkiller.
'Hey! You're pretty good,' he said and then chuckled. The morphine and Ativan were still coursing through his system, annihilating his pain and anxiety before it could reach his brain. 'Is it the centipede?'
'What do you know about centipede?' she asked, eyes round with disbelief.
But Borland's attention had shifted down to the blood that soaked the front of his smock. He opened one of the ties to investigate the damage beneath and his hands found the numb edges of a gaping five-inch incision.
'Oh,' he said, and chuckled. 'That's really, really bad, lady!' He looked at the woman as she stared at the lighted numbers over the door. 'There must be some real trouble.'
'You don't know how lucky you are.' She gave a serious half-smile and reached out, patting the back of his bloody hand where it covered his open wound.
'I got to you in time,' she said and then shifted the scalpel to her left hand as she reached behind her and pulled a gun from where it was wedged in the waistband of her pants. Borland recognized the. 9mm; it was made of ceramic. A serious piece of hardware-professionals used it: detectives, military police, even Variant Squad Lieutenants.
Take your pick lady, who are you?
The woman winced as she cocked the weapon, remembering that she had fresh injuries too, but was running without Borland's morphine.
He laughed thinking about it. Of course, he didn't have her sutures. He giggled.
We're screwed!
'What's the plan?' Borland asked, probing the bloody edges of his surgical opening with his fingers. Then his attention fell back to her gun.
And he asked: 'Who do you work for?'
'Lots of people, and nobody,' she growled and glanced fearfully left and right as the elevator shuddered.
'Oh, like black ops?' Borland said, comically calm. Blood was seeping down his chest, and he was starting to feel nauseous. 'The army? The Feds?' Then he snapped his fingers. ' You're with the police?'
She nodded solemnly. 'I used to be…'
The elevator stopped and the woman leveled her gaze.
