Quarantine (The Shadow Wars Book 7.5) (9 page)

“I'll go first,” Hunter said. “Your PTSD is flaring up.”

Allan focused his gaze on her back as she crossed to the ladder in the far corner of the room that led to the vent shaft. “I don't have PTSD.”

“Um, yeah, you do.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Tunnel vision? Trouble breathing? Survivors guilt?” she asked as she climbed up the ladder. Allan came to the base of it and looked up after her.

“How could you possibly know-”

“I had a friend who had it. Now will you come on?”

Allan hesitated further, unsatisfied with the answer. He climbed up after her, pulling himself into the vent shaft. He began crawling after her on his hands and knees, banging along through the vent shaft. She was right...how was she right? How did she
know
? At least the confusion was putting off his symptoms for the moment, or, at least his awareness of them.
Did
he have post traumatic stress disorder? It was possible, probable even.

What was the cure? Lots of therapy. Allan didn't want therapy. He didn't know why, but he wanted to reject the idea immediately. Why? He had no rational reason. He just didn't want to do it. The sound of stressed metal, a metallic groan, shook him out of his thoughts. Up ahead, Hunter had paused. She began to say something when, abruptly, the vent beneath her gave out. She let out a short cry of surprise as she plummeted into the room below.

“Hunter!” Allan cried, shuffling forward.

He looked down through the hole and saw that she'd fallen right into the midst of half a dozen crewman. She was already fighting them.

“I'm coming!” he shouted.

“No!” Hunter snapped. “Keep going! Get the damned keycard!”

“Hunter-”

“
GO
!”

Allan hesitated, but only for a second, he could get the card, then come back and help her. She seemed to be handling herself...Moving very carefully, thinking that it wouldn't matter if the rest of the vent gave up, he cautiously moved over the hole and got to the other side. Not an easy task, but his strength-enhancements in the suit managed to give him the leverage he needed to get to the other side. He kept going, and the vent didn't collapse. The sounds of Hunter battling the psychotic crew disappeared into the distance.

The appropriate vent grate came up. Allan opened it up and peered inside from overhead. Nothing and no one, (alive at least), in the observation deck. He descended the ladder and spent a few minutes hunting through the dead bodies until he came up with the security card he needed. Stowing it in his pocket, he climbed back up the ladder and hurried through the vents. He came to the hole and stopped, realizing he could hear nothing.

Peering down through the opening, he saw that the room Hunter had fallen into was empty. He frowned, looking around the storage bay. There was nothing. Just a single corpse. Allan frowned, lingering, trying to reason this out.

“What the fuck?” he whispered. “Hunter?”

Nothing. Allan lingered a bit longer, then lowered himself through the hole. He landed with a thud and moved to the only door in the room, which was closed. Allan opened it and poked his head out. No one in the corridor.

“Hunter?!” he called.

His voice echoed down the passageway, dismal and lonely. Allan activated his radio. “Hunter? Where are you? Can you hear me?”

Dead silence. Allan began making his way down the corridor, opening all the doors he passed, calling out to her on the radio, his pulse picking up, going faster and faster as fear flooded his system. He kept looking, poking his head into bathrooms, storage bays, a break room, working his way slowly back to the main lab.

But Hunter was gone.

There was no sign of her.

Allan's tension kept ratcheting up, slamming him closer and closer to having some kind of attack. He tried to make himself calm down, force himself to relax, as he came to stand before the main lab. Allan swiped the card, heard a chime and stepped through the doors as soon as they were open. Allan stopped dead in the doorway, but only for a second. The lab was utterly destroyed. It looked like a dozen men with pipes and wrenches and a lot of enthusiasm had been given the task of utterly destroying everything in the room.

Workstations were smashed, cabinets ripped open, supplies and blood spilled across the deckplates, medical cabinets toppled, sparking equipment...and a series of cold storage cabinets across the room had been ripped open, a collection of glass vials shattered in the floor, thousands of bits of glass mingling with a lot of blue liquid.

The cure. It had to be the cure.

It was gone, destroyed, useless.

Allan's pulse kicked up another notch, then another. His vision grew more narrow, darkness boiling around the edges, his limbs going numb, chest hitching.

Allan collapsed, the darkness consuming him.

Chapter 09

–
Perception Is Reality
–

Once more, Allan found himself washing up on the shores of consciousness. They weren't particularly nice shores, nothing like the sandy beaches he'd heard Mezzanine had. These were cold, rocky and painful. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a stained ceiling, cast in flickering light. His head was spinning, vision blurred, his equilibrium shot. His whole body seemed to ache and his throat was dry.

Something shifted nearby.

A low mutter sounded.

Allan closed his eyes, opened them, tried to clear the blurring. His pulse was rapid, his chest hurt. Slowly, he sat up. Something about this was familiar. It took him a moment to put the pieces together as he finished sitting up and began looking around. Then he had it: his first time waking up on the
Stygian
, in that locker room. Allan felt something in his hand. He looked down. The bolt gun. At least this time he had an upgrade arsenal. His company came in the form of a female scientist walking around across the room.

“Hey,” he said, raising the bolt gun. “Can you hear me?”

She spun around at the sound of his voice, and as soon as he had a sight on her face, he squeezed the trigger. The first bolt went wide, his aim thrown off. The woman screamed and began rushing towards him. He fired again, missed. Third time was the charm and the bolt went through her right eye, exploding out of the back of her head in a plume of red gore. She toppled forward and landed at his feet, immobile now.

“Shit,” Allan muttered, slowly getting to his feet.

It felt as if his brain was wrapped in cotton, or he was trying to think through a haze. Several thoughts were trying to come to him at once. Finally, the first one was that he was fucked. He was double-fucked, possibly even triple. The cure wasn't here. Or was it? What if he had just missed it? What if there was one vial left? One would be enough, at least for him. What about Hunter? Was she dead? Where had she gone?

A wave of hot agony surged through him and he felt like vomiting. Thankful, there wasn't enough left in his stomach and he dry-heaved for a second. First things first, he needed to mitigate his symptoms. There was no way he was going to be able to think like this. Allan raised his visor and stumbled over to the nearest sink. He grabbed his empty canteen and turned on the water, but paused as he started to fill it up.

What if it was in the water?

No...it was airborne, he was infected...was he getting stupider? Groaning, Allan filled it up and then drained it, drinking greedily from the canteen until it was gone. He drained two more fillings, then filled it up a fourth time and set it down on the counter. Next, he stumbled over to an intact medical kit attached to the wall. Tearing it off, he made his way back to the canteen, set the kit down and opened it up. Pawing through it, he found a bottle of painkillers, rattled out four of the extra-strength blue pills and knocked them back with some more water. From there, he injected himself with some more painkillers and another antibiotic/anti-viral syringe.

It would have to do, for now.

Feeling slightly better, Allan replaced his visor and began a more thorough search of the room. He wasted ten minutes hunting through every container, every cabinet, every cubbyhole, turning up nothing but a lot of useless medical supplies. By the time he sat down at the only remaining workstation in the room, he was feeling a bit better. His throat wasn't so dry and inflamed and the pain wracking his entire body was approaching something like tolerable.

Allan booted up the workstation and began hunting through lab reports. Several more minutes passed. The sounds of the lab filtered into his perception: the hum of power, the whisper of respiration, the sound of his breathing.

Allan paused. His breathing? It didn't sound sound right. It sounded like...an echo. Or like it was doubled somehow. Like something breathing almost but not quite in sync with him. Allan turned around cautiously.

Hunter was standing right behind him.

He screamed in surprise. Her hands shot out and wrapped around his helmet. Her face was hidden behind an almost opaque visor, only her eyes visible. Wide and white and staring. She began to undo the latches on his helmet.

“Hunter! What are you doing!?
What are you doing
!?” Allan heard himself shriek. He grabbed her hands but her grip was unbreakable. He began struggling violently, trying to get of her off as she worked the latches of the helmet.

Allan blinked and suddenly she was gone. It was
his
hands on the helmet, one of the latches undone. Trembling violently, Allan got his breathing and pulse back under control as he looked around, rapidly scanning the lab, slowly realizing that he'd been hallucinating. He let out a deep, shuddering breath, redid the latch, turned around and went back to work on the workstation. Another few minutes passed, and he finally had it.

“
Yes
!” Allan cried.

One of the scientists had apparently not trusted everyone he was working with, and had hidden some extra vials of the cure in a cold storage bay in the bowels of the ship. Allan made a note in his suit's database of the location and number to unlock the code-lock, since he no longer trusted his memory, and turned away from the workstation. All he had to do was get to a stairwell, go down and find that cold storage bay.

Should be relatively easy.

* * * * *

He'd made it about halfway to the nearest stairwell when the paranoid awareness that someone was following him hit. Allan stopped and turned around, scanning the corridor behind him. Nothing but blood and bodies for company. As if his life wasn't difficult enough without having to put up with this shit. He turned back around just in time to see a doorway up ahead closing. Raising the bolt gun, Allan hurried over to it and opened it up.

“Hunter?”

An empty room. What was the point it? Nothing along the walls, no shelves, no crates, no equipment of any kind. Sighing, Allan shut the door and turned back to the corridor. Someone was up ahead, standing at the end of it in poor lighting.

“Hunter?” he asked, his pulse beginning to rise again. Swallowing, he raised the bolt gun. “Hunter, if that's you, fucking say something.”

The person standing there remained perfectly still. There was just enough light to tell that it was a person. This didn't make any sense. If it was an insane crewman, they'd be rushing him. Allan took a few more steps, bolt gun trained on them.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Nothing. Whoever it was remained perfectly still. Allan's finger began to tighten around the trigger, but at the last second he paused. What if it was a survivor? He took a few more cautious steps. The next time he blinked, the thing popped out of existence.

“What the fuck?” he whispered, turning around and checking behind him.

Nothing there. He turned back around and-

“
Allan
.”

Hunter was
right
in front of him. He screamed and stumbled back several steps.

“What-where-” He couldn't form coherent thoughts, let alone sentences. He fell back onto his ass and began scooting backwards rapidly as Hunter walked towards.

“Why do you even
bother
going on?” she asked, her voice taking a hard edge, his words slightly distorted. Again, only her eyes were visible through her visor. “Why does it even matter anymore, Allan?
Why
?” she snapped.

In a sudden resolute gesture, Allan raised the bolt gun and fired. The bolt sailed clear through her and she disappeared.

“God...
fuck
...” Allan groaned, getting to his feet. He was hallucinating now. Probably the last stages of the virus before he went total bugfuck crazy. Of course, he couldn't keep shooting at her...what if happened if she
really
showed up and he put a fucking round through her skull because he couldn't keep his head together?

Allan began rapidly making his way down the corridor. He came to the end of it, found the stairwell and began heading down it. What if
this
was a hallucination? How did he knew he hadn't dreamed up that cure? How did he know he wasn't just standing there in the main lab or some room, drooling and moaning, the last thoughts of a demented mind, his dying sanity and consciousness pretending there was a happy ending.

No.

He had to assume that what he saw was what he got...as long as it made sense. Of course, it was hard to tell what made sense when your brain was working against you. Allan reached the bottom floor and opened the door. Nothing out there but an empty corridor. He stepped out.

“
Give up
,” Hunter whispered. He heard her voice inside of his helmet, not through a radio but actually
inside
of his helmet.

“Fuck off!” he screamed, making it to the end of the corridor and turning. Just in time to see someone stepping into one of the rooms.

He ignored it.

“You killed all those people,” Hunter whispered from nowhere. “Just to save your own sorry ass and now you spend your time rationalizing it.”

“I did what I had to do!” he snapped, gritting his teeth, anger beginning to well up within him. “It was kill the planet or kill the galaxy!”

“You don't know that,” Hunter murmured, somewhere behind him now. He kept going. “What if they had it wrong? What if you had it wrong?”

“
We didn't
!” Allan screamed. “We did what we had to do!”

“Keep saying it, it makes it more true,” Hunter replied. Now she was overhead. Allan glanced up, caught a hint of eyes behind a ventilation grate.

He reached the end of the corridor and turned. Almost there. He kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other. The door he needed was ten meters away. Then five. Then three. He was there. Allan hit the access button. The door slid open and Hunter stood there, staring at him with eyes and nothing more behind her visor.

“You haven't answered my question yet,” she said. “Why do you bother to go on?”

Allan raised his bolt gun. “Get out of my way.”

“Make me.”

Allan began to squeeze the trigger, but at the last second realized he might hit something important inside. Instead, he shoved past Hunter. As soon as he laid hands on her, she disappeared. He stepped into the cold storage bay and began hunting along the various cabinets built into the walls. Which one had it been?

“Come on, you're screwed, give it up. And give me an answer,” Hunter said.

Allan ignored her, accessing his database. He got the number of the cabinet and began sorting through them. It was like standing in a bank vault, the walls covered in small doors. It was getting even more difficult to concentrate.

“Is it because you know nothing else? Go on just to go on? That's kind of circular logic, Allan. You continued your existence in order to continue your existence. Not much point in that, is there?” Hunter asked from somewhere behind him.

“I do it...to repay the debt,” Allan replied finally. “Atonement. I save enough people and...”

“And
what
exactly? You think saving enough lives will eventually make it okay that you killed all those women and children? All those families and parents? Eventually, if you do enough good, it'll make up for all the bad you did?”

“I don't know!” Allan screamed. Abruptly, he gave up his search, turned and faced her. She stood in the middle of the room. “Maybe I want to be happy for once in my fucking life! Maybe I'd like not to be so miserable all the goddamned time! What was I supposed to do!?
What was I supposed to do!? Just let him get away
?!
Let the army of insane fucking gods come to life
?! And then where would we be?! We'd all be dead or worse!”

“You think you deserve to happy?” Hunter asked.

Allan began to respond, but suddenly realized what was happening. He was arguing with
no one
, or rather, with the infection. It was stalling him. He looked over Hunter's shoulder and saw the storage unit he needed. He moved around her and came to the cabinet. All the doors had little keypads on them. He opened up his database, called up the combination and punched it in. The door chimed gently, the keypad turned green and it opened up.

“Oh thank God,” he whispered, spying a small blue vial.

“You should just let yourself die,” Hunter whispered.

Allan opened up his visor and screwed off the top.

“Stop,” Hunter said, and grabbed his wrist.

“Go to hell,” Allan replied, transferring the vial to the other hand and drinking the glowing blue liquid before anything else could happen. It tasted awful and burned going down. Hunter somehow became less substantial, almost see-through. Allan laughed. Either it was working and the cure was rapid-onset, or he was dreaming all this and about to go insane. Either way the situation was coming to a head. He tossed the vial down on the ground, shattering it, and closed his visor. Hunter reached for him again, her eyes narrow and angry.