Supernova (2 page)

Lily had
nursed hurts in the past that she thought broke her heart—when her father and
stepmother divorced when she was a teenager, for one, and when she discovered
the affair between her fiancé and best friend. She found out about their affair
nearly a year into it, when she had been expecting a proposal from Cameron.
Lily and Cameron had built a quiet life for themselves in the basement
apartment in her father’s house, and she had expected that they would take over
the family business when her father retired. Of course, that hadn’t happened.
He had taken one look at Katy shortly after moving in with Lily after
university and started sniffing around her instead.

But
those wounds had healed. Her former stepmother was still alive, now living in
Vancouver, and while she hadn’t spoken much to Cameron and Katy, especially now
that they were married, they were still living, too. Her father’s death felt
like an insurmountable ache that she couldn’t get past. He was the one person
in her life who had never let her down.

She
deliberately took her time walking back to the office, wanting to avoid the
doctors. It was a beautiful day—the mercury hadn’t climbed as high as the
morning news predicted—and Lily wished she could blow off the rest of the
afternoon and sit under an umbrella at Sugar Beach with a trashy paperback in
one hand and a bottle of lemonade in the other.

Back at
the lab, the reception area was empty and quiet save for the whoosh of the air
conditioner. She took her seat behind the desk and wasn’t surprised at the lack
of messages. She opened
Undead Uprising
and picked out her weapons for
another go-round with the zombies. No machetes this time; they ran out too
quickly and were cumbersome besides. Hand grenades only required her to
right-click and hit the space bar.

At five
minutes to two, a tall, well-dressed man let himself into reception. “Hey,” he
said by way of introduction, then added, “Why does this place have to be middle
of nowhere?”

“Good
afternoon,” Lily greeted him professionally. “You must be Mr. Claybourne.”

The man
took off his sunglasses, a pair that probably would have set Lily back a week’s
pay. Watery, red-rimmed hazel eyes sized her up from the other side of the
desk. “I am. Who are you?” he asked.

She
shifted uncomfortably in her ergonomically correct chair. “Lily. May I get you
a bottle of water, Mr. Claybourne?”

“No
thanks,” he said. She felt him sizing her up, and looked away. She knew what he
saw: She looked like she had grown up in the country in her simple blue linen
dress and short-sleeved black cardigan. A mistake during the heat wave, but the
air conditioning here was cranked up to Arctic temperatures.

The door
off reception opened and Pitro and Zadbac stepped out. “
Min
Claybourne,”
Pitro said, bowing slightly. “We have been anticipating your consultation.
Please come in.” He held open the door.

“I don’t
want to get suckered into everything,” Claybourne warned them. “I just want to
be alive to see alien ass in a few hundred years.” He followed the doctors
through the door.

* * *

When
three o’clock rolled around, Andrew Claybourne hadn’t yet emerged from the
rooms off reception, and Lily had been eaten by zombies four times and bombed
them to kingdom come twice.

She was
giving notice at the end of the week. After today, she would be happy to book
tanning appointments or sling beer at a dive. She was sticking to her new life
plan—stay in Toronto and force it into becoming her home while working a job
that paid the bills until she had enough saved up to go to teacher’s
college—but she couldn’t deal with the doctors who cheerfully talked about
death anymore.

Cryonics
had been forced into following federal regulations a bare three years prior, in
2014. Since then, a handful of small private clinics had sprung up across the
country, charging enough money to feed a small country for a decade for a
service that wasn’t guaranteed. Lazarus Cryonics was one of three labs in
southern Ontario, and the newest. After the initial uproar from the segment of
the population that looked down on anything not okayed in their religious book
of choice, the issue of cryonics had faded into the background. It would
probably stay there until an accident occurred.

She
fired a couple of cannonballs at a horde of ravenous zombies and watched with
satisfaction as they exploded into a mass of red and black gore. The screen
blinked NEXT LEVEL.

A scream
made her hand twitch, knocking the mouse off the desk. The computer’s sound was
turned off, so she knew it wasn’t the game.

Another
scream reverberated through reception, louder this time. It sounded like it was
coming from the lab.

The
doctors and Claybourne were in there. Heart pounding, Lily crept to the door
and knocked. “Is everything okay?” she asked, but received no reply.

She
gingerly twisted the knob and found it unlocked. The open doorway revealed a
short, narrow hallway tiled in white that led to another door. This one led to
the offices and the lab itself, which Lily had never seen. None of their
clients had actually died yet as far as she knew, and she doubted she could be
of any help when it happened.

Another
scream rent the air, closer this time. Maybe someone was on their way out to
the big freezer.

The door
to the lab was locked, and from behind it she heard a man wailing in terror.
She tapped on the door. “Dr. Zadbac? Dr. Pitro? Is everything—”

“Thank
God!” a voice yelped. It sounded like Claybourne. The doorknob started to turn
but she heard Zadbac bark out a command in whatever his mother tongue was, and
then a hollow thump of something or someone slamming against the door.

“Mr.
Claybourne? Dr. Zadbac, do you need me to call 911?”

“Yes!”
came a gurgled scream from the other side. There was some more slamming, hard
enough to shake the door in the jamb, and more foreign cursing.

The
doorknob clicked and unlocked. Lily tried to push open the door, but it was
blocked by a body in a suit. She looked at the floor and screamed.

Claybourne’s
hand reached towards her, the skin bloody and ragged. His nose had been broken,
smashed into his face so rivulets of blood pooled on the floor. He looked like
a zombie had attacked him.

No, not
a zombie. Pitro. The doctor was wiping blood off his mouth with the sleeve of
his white lab coat, making a face like he had just tasted something awful.

“Humans,”
he muttered, and made a noise of disgust.

Claybourne
looked up at her, making animal noises in his throat. She saw the huge syringe
sticking out of the back of his neck, and she shrieked.

He let
out a howl at her reaction. Lily tore her eyes away from him to look at the
doctors. Zadbac was holding another gigantic syringe, irritation registering on
his bulbous features. Pitro licked his lips, made another face, and coolly
regarded the trembling Claybourne on the floor.

“Help
me,” he garbled.

“
Minsa
Stewart,” said Zadbac, her name coming out in a low growl. He held out the
syringe, his finger over the depressor.

Lily
stared at the scene before her in horror for what felt like hours. She looked
at the syringe sticking out of Claybourne, saw the one in Zadbac’s gnarled
hand, and felt her stomach lurch.

“What
the hell?” she choked out.

“
Minsa
Stewart, you should not have entered here,” he said quietly. “We have told you
many times never to enter the lab.” He stepped over Claybourne, now moaning and
clutching his face. “Come here,” he said.

Lily
could see herself reflected in his big black eyes. She stole another look at
Pitro, who looked bored by the situation.

She took
a step back into the hallway. “What did you do?” she wailed.

“He
fought back,” said Pitro lazily. “This should not have happened.”

Zadbac
barked an order at him in his language, and Pitro sulkily replied in kind. Lily
saw her chance. She whipped around and tore through the hallway and into
reception. She heard the doctors yelling after her and Claybourne’s pleas for
help. She ran down the stairs and burst through the front door of the
industrial park. The nearly empty industrial park, still waiting for more
tenants. Not another soul was around.

She took
off in the direction of the lunch cart and coffee shop. Someone there could
help. She cursed her medium-heeled sandals as she ran, too terrified to look
over her shoulder.

Her toe
hit a crack in the sidewalk and she went flying to the pavement. She
immediately saw a shadow fall over the sidewalk and tears sprang to her eyes.
She dared herself to look over her shoulder.

Zadbac
loomed over her, holding a thin black rectangle that looked like a cellphone.
She screamed again and looked desperately at the few cars whizzing past them in
the street. Why didn’t they stop?

“Don’t
bother,” Zadbac said, his face twisted in fury. He didn’t seem winded from
running after her. “I have a force field activated. No one can hear or see us,
and you cannot escape.”

What was
he talking about? Lily got up and charged forward. Zadbac didn’t make a move to
stop her. She took a step and something slammed into her chest, knocking the
wind from her.

“I told
you,” Zadbac said smugly.

Lily
looked around her, faint orange stripes coming into focus through the bright
afternoon sunlight. She threw her fist at them and yelled as pain shot up her
arm from the contact. It was like punching a cement wall.

Zadbac
gripped her shoulder. “You cannot escape,” he repeated. He whipped her around
and she stumbled, the strange orange bars breaking her fall. He held out what
looked like the asthma inhaler she had as a kid, and twisted her head to the
side. Lily struggled, but he had an iron grip.

She
would not end up like Claybourne.

Zadbac
held the inhaler over her pulse and she felt something icy cold penetrate her
skin. Almost immediately she felt her body’s temperature drop and her muscles
loosen and become heavy. She slid against the orange stripes to the pavement
and unsuccessfully tried to hold up her head.

As her
eyes closed, the last thing she heard was Zadbac quietly scolding her.

“You
should not have entered the lab.”

Chapter 2

Ensign
Taz Shraft was being punished. That was the only way to describe being assigned
to cleanup duty with an hour to go until he was off shift, sorting through
museum crap that had come unstrapped from their containers in the
Defiant
’s
cargo hold. He would be here until midnight to get all of this done.

Of
course, he did have a little too much to drink during the twenty-eight hour
stayover on Golfell Station a few days ago and made a clumsy pass at a woman
who turned out to be his commanding officer’s sister. Drunkenly hitting on Lieutenant
Steg’s sister could never bode well, especially when the lieutenant in question
loathed Taz. Even though Ena Steg was just as bombed as Taz had been. He still
couldn’t believe a woman who looked like that could be related to the
lieutenant, a former prizefighter back on his home station.

There
was no sense of organization to the crates shoved in the cargo hold, bound for
a new museum on Rubidge Station, nearly a week’s journey from the
Defiant
’s
current point. When he tried to argue that point to Lieutenant Steg, his
superior had growled at him to take it to the captain.

So Taz
had foolishly tracked down Captain Rian Marska to explain his plight.
Acting
Captain Rian Marska, he corrected himself, the former commander recently tasked
with temporarily patrolling Commons space in between deliveries of science
teams and spare parts and...museum artifacts. This was the worst delivery so
far.

Captain
Marska told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to get to the cargo hold
and put the museum pieces back in some kind of order, any order, as long as
they stopped breaking free of their bonds and crashing around in the belly of
the ship. Taz was going to point out that maybe the artificial gravity in the
hold needed to repaired, but thought better of it. Knowing Steg, he might
wheedle Marska to put Taz in the brig for a night or two.

There
were definitely some problems with the environmental programs in the cargo
hold. A few statues and crates had lost their gravitational pull and drifted
towards the ceiling. And it was
hot
in here. Taz unzipped his uniform
jacket and draped it on a huge figure of a Mulaskan wildcat, clipping his comm
badge to his T-shirt.

He made
the few adjustments he could from the utilities panel on the wall, cursing at
his lack of access to the programs. He could fix the whole gravity problem in
the cargo hold if given access to the systems, but Marska would never give him
that chance. He grinned mischievously and deliberately adjusted it so a few
artifacts crashed to the floor.

He couldn’t
find a fix for the heat though, so he sighed and set to work. He remotely
controlled an antigravity jack to stack the largest of the crates. A third of
the hold cleared, he came across a long sealed plastiglas case and shuddered.
Taz hated the corpse displays in museums.