Angela Verdenius (2 page)

“The door is not locked into your body pattern,” Dr Surnace said soothingly.  “Now if you’ll just sit down and-”

“No more farting around.  I want out now.  Open the damned door.”

“Now just calm down.” Dr Surnace moved forward with her pale hands outstretched.  “Everything will be explained.”

“I don’t want any explanations, thanks very much.  Now open the damned door!”  Molly glared at them all.  “Things will get nasty if someone doesn’t open it now.”

The other woman was starting to look distressed.  The two uniformed men were watching her closely.  Dr Surnace looked concerned.  Captain Amirov looked…expressionless.  Where the hell had Wally gotten these people?

“There’s no need to get upset,” Dr Surnace said. “I-”

“Upset?  You think I’m upset?”  Molly narrowed her eyes.  “I’m bloody furious!  First Wally concocts this stupid idea which I go along with – out of need for money, let me stress – and now you lot start playing silly buggers!  Open these damned…doors…
now
!”

On the far wall a machine started blipping, the sound rising.

The other woman looked at the screen.  “The subject is becoming agitated.”

“I’m not a damned subject!” Molly roared.  “I’m going to start hurting people if someone doesn’t-”

“Control yourself.” Captain Amirov’s orders held cold disdain.

“Starting with you!”  Incensed, Molly stabbed a finger in his direction.  “I’ll-” That was as far as she got before the two men bore down upon her with a speed that had her head reeling.  Their grips on her upper arms were unforgiving.  “Let me go, you imbeciles!”

“Amirov!” Dr Surnace gasped.

“Instant recall,” Captain Amirov stated impassively.  “Now.”

Molly didn’t like the sound of that.  She liked it even less when the screen in the corner slid back to reveal a chair with what appeared to be wrist manacles on the armrests, and ankle manacles on the front legs.  “What the hell is that?  And who is it for?  It better not be for me.”

The other woman fluttered nervously, her searching gaze going to Dr Surnace, who nodded her head resignedly.  “Start the process, Cali, as directed by Captain Amirov.”

Molly doubted that whatever was planned for her was going to be pleasant.  Wrist and ankle manacles didn’t equate to pleasantness in her mind.  “Oh shit!”  She started to struggle as she was dragged towards the chair. 

Captain Amirov took several giant strides and stood beside the chair.  “Stop struggling.”

“Not on your life!”  Molly kicked sideways and had the great satisfaction of hearing a pained grunt from the man on her left.  But he didn’t let her go.  She dug her heels in, only to be lifted right off her feet and borne to the formidable chair without anymore gentleness.  The bloody captain just watched as she was dumped in the chair.  Panicking, Molly flung her arms around, but the men managed to avoid being struck and simply tried to capture her wayward hands.

The blipping from the machine on the far wall was going ape-shit.  Cali was chewing her lip, Dr Surnace was picking up some weird flat disc contraption, and -

Captain Amirov was in her face, his steely gaze boring right through her as he grabbed her hands, pinning them down onto the armrests.  “You are too excitable.”

“Too excitable?” Molly yelled.  “I’ll give you excitable!”

Give the man credit, he was fast.  Her upthrust leg collided with his as he twisted quickly to the side.  The manacles snapped shut over her wrists and her ankles were forced into place.

Captain Amirov continued to lean over her, his hands resting on her arms as he gazed down at her, little sparks of anger shooting through the deceptively calm eyes.  “I’m starting to think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Oh yeah?” She snarled.  “You have no idea!”  Good God, was that actually a startled blink he gave?   Leaning forward until they were nose to nose, Molly said viciously, “You better mind your nuts, Amirov, because when I get free I’m going to rip them off and feed them to you!” She added nastily, “One nut at a time.  Just to stretch out the pleasure for me.”

He continued to look at her without expression for several seconds before he leaned forward so that his mouth was at her ear.  His words were low, for her hearing only.  “There will come a time when it’s just the two of us.  When the circumstances are just right.  Then we’ll see who eats who.”  His breath was hot against her skin. 

Well, that just stunned the hell out of her.  Molly was still staring with her mouth agape when he pulled back and smiled slightly at her with those still oh-so-cool eyes.  His face becoming expressionless once more, he straightened and stepped back. 

Dr Surnace appeared beside Molly holding a small, flat disc on one hand.  “Now this won’t hurt much.  It’s a recall disc.”

“A what?”  Still a little befuddled, Molly switched her attention from the captain to the doctor.

“A recall disc.  I attach it to your temple, like so…”  Dr Surnace placed it close to Molly’s temple and it snapped forward eagerly, attaching itself to her skin.

Okay, that was weird.  Swallowing nervously, Molly looked at Cali and back at the doctor.  “What does it do?”

“It’ll make you recall the events of what happened.”

“I know what that moron Wally did.” Molly scowled.  “If I never remembered that idiot again, it would be a good day.”

“It’ll also implant knowledge in your brain of everything that has happened since.”

“Implant?”  That didn’t sound good.

Dr Surnace was patient.  Almost irritatingly so.  “A lot has happened since you were in the LSP-”

“LSP?”

“Life Support Pod.  Now just relax and everything will be revealed to you.”

“If this is just a recall thingy, why am I restrained?” 

“It can get a little uncomfortable to absorb so many different things so quickly.”  Dr Surnace stepped back.

“I knew it!  I
knew
it!  This is a bloody torture device!”  Molly tried to tug her wrists and ankles free.  “This is illegal!  Let me go!”

“Do it.” Captain Amirov cut through her tirade.

There was a snap of power and Molly stiffened as she felt the disc at her temple shiver.  Something sharp pricked her skin and she realized with horror that the disc was coming alive.  The prick intensified and she felt something start to burrow through her skin.

“Oh
fu
-!” And then everything fell into a kaleidoscope of visions and knowledge as images and words poured into her brain, blinding her to everything but the inner accumulation of happenings and discoveries, early years and wars, progress, space, and a million other things that poured into her mind, filling her brain until she felt like it was going to explode. 

She could swear it felt like her brain was actually swelling, struggling to understand things that were way beyond her comprehension.  Pain prickled as she was forced to understand, forced to acknowledge, forced to see that which she was never supposed to know.

In the distance she heard the machine blipping crazily, heard protests and a harsher tone, and then she heard them no more as she was whisked mentally away to where she was both spectator and absorber of knowledge.

Wally talking to her, convincing her to submit herself to his experiment.  The badly needed cash to pay off her bills.  The tank of water, the breathing apparatus which was just like that which divers used.  Something happened, Wally and his friends excited as she floated unconscious in the water.  They checked the time and left.

She knew time was passing.  Hours, days, something happening.  The oxygen wouldn’t last, and she didn’t wake up.  Whatever Wally had going through her system via a small infusion pump was keeping her unconscious.

Walls trembling, cracks appearing.  Coldness pervading the room as the lights dimmed, the water growing colder and colder, oxygen pipes hardening and cracking.  The water in the tank froze over in a sudden snap as freezing air burst through a shattering wall.

Everything black, but time passing.  Passing.  Hours, days, months and years.  A century.  A millennium.  Molly as the spectator watching as wars came and went, technology changed, waned, grew.  Civilisations grew, populations exploded.  The first families in space, the space stations that received them.  People living their lives off planet, new planets discovered.  Planet travel evolving, moving forward.  Fashions changing with the centuries.  Bodies undergoing what were considered acceptable changes.  Cars to spaceships, cumbersome to streamlined.  Weird homes to simple and back again.  Fads came and went.  Military grew and evolved, wars raged, peace came, alien life-forms made contact.  More evolvement of technology as aliens were absorbed into the human race.  Humans and aliens living side-by-side.  Space travel going further than ever imagined.

And herself lying in the tank of frozen water.  Suspended in time.  Her friends and family growing old, dying, turning to ash and dust.  Time leaving her behind as it moved forward.  

Molly didn’t die.  She was frozen in time. 

The Professor reading the legends from old transcripts about an experiment and an undiscovered body.  The search that spanned four galaxies until the Old Earth was found, devoid of all life, a dustbowl.  The search for the chamber.  The excitement when finally she was found.  The purple, thick, sticky fluid that was pumped into the tank to replace the fluid and breathing apparatus.  The removal of her tank to the Universal Technology Anthropologic College Exploratory spaceship.   The ultimate anthropological academic find of the century.  The body of a human  woman from the year 2009.  A five thousand year old body that was still alive, suspended in time. 

The Narc Military Leaders discussing the find, something on a computer screen.  Captain Amirov and a band of elite soldiers.  Her tank being taken from the Professor’s ship.  The tank being delivered to Dr Surnace.

Molly’s resurrection.

Molly in a time when she shouldn’t have even been a speck of ash carried on the wind.

Molly in a time she didn’t belong.

And something else…something else that shouldn’t be alive…

“Oh shit!” Molly screeched.  “There’s an alien inside me!”

Chapter 2

Metlar’s Lair

Meteor 5-00-2

“The Narc Military, you say?”  Metlar’s floating eyeballs in his blotched, bloated face wasn’t an attractive look.

Then again, Cujo wasn’t courting him, so what he looked like didn’t bother him.  Sitting cross-legged on the cushioned rock, Cujo had a drag of the Histav smoke from the central smoking line and nodded.  “Something must be in the wind.  Have you heard of any kind of treasure?”

“Always the treasure hunter.”  Metlar shook his head, his jowls rolling.  “Whatever it is, it must be incredibly valuable.”  Leaning forward, he crooked his multi-jointed, flat-padded finger.  “I hear it’s the find of the millennium.”

“No shit?”  Cujo drawled.  “That’d hardly be news, now, would it?  Not if the Narc Military was involved.”

Metlar gave his version of a shrug.  His floating eyeballs rolled upwards – not in tandem – then resumed meandering around his eye sockets.  “Just what I heard.”

“Did you hear what it is?”

“From the excited gabble coming through my hearing systems…” Metlar waggled the three antennas on his head.  “…no.”

“Great.”  Taking a huge lungful of the Histav smoke, Cujo thoughtfully puffed out squares and watched them disappear.  “Guess there’s only one thing for it, then.”

Squiggy raised his head from the huge mug of masquin juice that he’d been happily slurping down.  “Aw, no.”

“Aw, yeah.”  Cujo stood up.  “Get your skinny arse up, Squiggy.”

“Going hunting?” Metlar’s floating eyeballs slipped sideways, the pupils almost vanishing from sight.

“Going hunting,” Cujo affirmed with great satisfaction.

~*~

Repulsaen Sector

Deep Space

“Hsssttt…”  The words hissed through the gloom.  “She comes…”

“Your words were true, then?”

“I saw.  I see.  She comes.”  A gasp.  “Hsssttt…Doom.  Doom to us all…hsssttt…”

“Ready the others.”  He stood, tall and imposing.  “We fly.”

~*~

Narc Military Research Space Station

Narc Section Five

Deep Space

Captain Alsandair Amirov leaned back in the chair, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, his elbows resting on the armrests, his hands clasped in fists upon which his chin rested.

Molly was a fine looking five thousand year old female.  He’d never seen a humanoid female with so many curves in his whole life.  And short.  She was at least a foot shorter than most of the humanoid females because she was a pure Earthling.  A pure human.  In a universe when most humans had bred with aliens at some time or other, a pure bred human was a find.  A living, breathing human was valuable.

Females of a humanoid background had bred taller and thinner, while the men were muscular and taller.  Some of it was aided by medical selection in the past, but it was mostly due to the evolution of what was regarded as the traits desirable in the species.  Mixing genes with other species had added their own peculiarities.

Molly was an enigma in the Narc world.  Made mostly of humanoid backgrounds, the Narcs prided themselves on having the genes – or what was left of them.  But Molly…Molly was all human, pure earthling, pure genes.

It was a shame she had such a loud mouth and was so opinionated.  That undesirable gene had been bred out of the humanoid species a long time ago.  Males and females were to be calm, to think before acting, to weigh all possible outcomes against the desired result.

It was a shame she had a weird idea about some alien inside her.  It had taken a lot of reassurances on everyone’s part to convince her.