“Coffee?”
Doctor Clarke looked up from his console, blinked tiredly at the other man. Doctor Pomo was tall, skin paler than his starched lab coat, eyes darker than the coffee in the pair of steaming mugs he carried. Beyond him, the sterile floors of Charlie Lab waited dim, empty.
“Yeah.” Clarke said absently. “Thanks, Tom.”
“What’s up?” Pomo gestured at the console, handed off a cup. Clarke had practically every diagnostic algorithm in the system up and running, a barrage of scouring software that hunted through data for problems, leaks in the system, sought information and distilled it into biometric readouts, data that could be consumed in charts and graphs.
“Charlie’s awake again.” Clarke sighed, set the cup down, rubbed at his eyes.
“Again?” Pomo shook his head, took a sip. “Any idea what’s bugging him?”
“No clue.” Clarke made a vague gesture. “I’ve tried upping the dosage of the sedation compound, but he keeps shrugging it off like it’s nothing.”
“Have you tried the beta compound Doctor Ngiko has been working on?”
“Not yet.” Clarke breathed a sigh through his fingers, glanced absently back at Pomo. “The dosage charts are still all screwy. Radavich will have my ass if anything happens to Charlie, so I’m saving beta for last resort.”
“Well, he’s not actually awake awake yet is he?” Pomo arched a worried eyebrow. “Can you tell if he’s lucid or not?”
“The readings are all over the place.” Clarke breathed a tired sigh, put his face in his hands again. “He’s getting better and better at fooling our equipment.”
Pomo leaned in, tapped a few keys on the console as Clarke paused, watched him pull up charts that kept track of the dosages of administered chemicals. Pomo’s eyebrows rose suddenly.
“Stan, if you’re worried about killing him with too high of a dosage...” Pomo trailed off, shaking his head as he let his words hang in the air.
Clarke made a quick gesture. “I know the numbers for the alpha sedation compound are high, but he’s not like us– his body is keeping up with it, Tom.” He shook his head. “He’s filtering the shit like you wouldn’t believe.”
Pomo opened his mouth to say something, but the edge was lost in the shriek and crunch of something smashing itself against the abused metal of the containment door at the far end of the room. Both researchers whirled, caught the tail end of the hammering, saw the way the only barrier between them and their subject shook with each successive impact.
Pomo licked his lips, mouth coming open in fear. “Jesus!”
“That’s not good.”
“You’re telling me.” Pomo ran an arm quick across his forehead, swiped at the sweat there. “He’s never done that before. Not that I’ve ever seen.”
Clarke swallowed, nodded. “There’s no record of him ever being this lucid before.” He looked up, met Pomo’s eyes. “Should we. . .”
“Stan, check the seals on that door.” Pomo said suddenly, turning back to the display. “Bastard is definitely aggravated about something.”
“Door seals are holding.” Clarke winced.
“Did you check for electromag activity?” Pomo hunted through the diagnostic displays, opened a feed to the complex’s external system reports. “Maybe the star in this system is. . . ”
“That was the first thing I checked.” Clarke turned in his chair, glanced over, eyes lingering worriedly on the door before they slipped up to meet Pomo’s again. “There’s no unusual coronal activity, no difference in ambient field density or the electromag spectrum.” He shook his head, pushed a hand nervously through his hair. “Whatever it is that’s got him all worked up, we can’t detect it.”
“There’s got to be. . .” Pomo blinked, tabbed through another handful of displays, hesitated, glanced back at Clarke. “Wait. . . today isn’t the day that Radavich starts his trials with the Horus project is it?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Clarke looked up “Why?”
Pomo pulled in a breath, held it. “You don’t think...?”
Clarke’s eyes searched the other man’s face, hesitant, afraid– then, paling suddenly, he breathed. “Oh. . . Oh no.” He turned back to the display, stared wide eyed at the readouts. “Jesus, Tom.”
Pomo stared blankly at the screen. “Is there any way you can check it?”
“Y– yeah.” Clarke fumbled with the display, pulled up another diagnostic readout. “Every time they switched that damn thing on before, we. . .” He hesitated, eyes searching through the data. “We caught a spike in Charlie’s neurosilicate levels, but nothing like this.”
“It’s part of someone’s body now, Stan.” Pomo swallowed, eyes flicking from the data to Clarke’s eyes “If he can feel it when they power it to idle and the system itself is just a bundle of nanites, then...”
“Then we have a serious problem.” Clarke hesitated, fingers moving idly, terrified. “We have to contact the Doctor.” He reached for the intercom. “We have to–”
“Listen!” Pomo hissed. Clarke hesitated, glanced back at the other man, fear mingling with curiosity in his eyes.
Clarke swallowed. “What?”
Pomo stood, hands shaking. Clarke’s eyes tracked his movement, lips parting as the other man whispered. “Jesus. Do you hear that?”
“Hear?” The hair stood up suddenly on the back of Clarke’s neck, fingers trembling. The sound itself was a dull scratching, a whispering throb of steel on steel. Seemingly as one, the two researchers turned toward the containment door, Pomo’s mouth falling open, Clarke hesitating for an instant before he breathed a broken, quiet: “Oh, oh holy shit.”
It all happened so fast, there was hardly time to breathe. Tentacles of living steel wedged themselves between the airtight creases in the door, internal mechanisms coalescing into hungry, vicious spikes that ate at the pavecrete threshold, struggled to unseat the door. Pomo’s hands tightened reflexively. He swallowed, turned back to the console, eyes alive with panic, terror. “Stan! Hit him with the beta compound!”
“What?” Clarke was on his feet now, eyes riveted to the containment door, unable to rip themselves loose. He hesitated, blinked. “N-no, we have to get out of here! We have. . . we have to...”
“Just. . .” Pomo turned, arms tense. In one fluid movement, he shoved Clarke aside, stabbed at the console. The other researcher stared on in horror, watching as Pomo opened the feeds on the beta compound, jammed the dosage to max. Beyond the containment door, the thing snarled, slammed itself against rapidly weakening steel. “Take it, damn you! Jesus Christ!”
“Tom!” Clarke grabbed him, tried to rip him away from the console. “Dammit, we have to go! We have to–”
“There’s no effect. . .” Pomo blurted, unable to tear his eyes from the data scrolling across the screen. “There’s no. . .” He shook his head in disbelief. “The beta compound isn’t having any effect. . .” He turned, watched as the containment door flexed impossibly. “Oh. . . oh my god.”
“This is containment control!” Clarke stabbed the intercom, words drowned out by the screeching howl that ripped through the air as the containment door gave way, reduced to shreds of quasi liquid metal that boiled and flexed across the distances like chunks of a living being, hungry and vicious, unstoppable and insatiable. Clarke swallowed, terrified. “It’s out! We’ve had a breach! Charlie is out!”