Mind Games Ch. 02

"That's it!" Lucas said. "Now, we just get to the exterior hull and attach it to the busted up engine and we should have enough time to catch our breath."

I nodded slowly, then lowered the cube. "And we're going along the exterior because vacuum is better than going up against more Tesc?"

"That...lass with the..."

"A Broodmother," I said.

"Ah, good name," he said. "Well, there's at least thirty of em in the Habitation deck. I've found some working cameras. They have em in..." he gulped. "Well, ah. That's. Something you don't see every day."

I nodded. "So, we've got possibly hundreds of Brood and Broodlings?"

"Something like," Lucas said, sounding faint.

"And other Tesc too," I said, rubbing my helmeted forehead with one hand, shifting the helmet backwards ever so slightly against my collar. I bit my lip. Then I shook my head. "Come on, I gotta get to the airlock before Maria Festios tries to make me one of them."

"Why call her by her name?" Lucas asked as I shoved the crate out of the way of the door. I tensed at the door, cocking my head forward, listening. I didn't hear anyone scrabbling at it. But I still hefted my shotgun, keeping it at the ready.

"I need to remember she's human," I murmured. "So I stay human too."

Lucas coughed. He didn't sound convinced.

The door opened on an empty corridor.

I left the storage room and started for the outer edge of the Engineering section.

###

"Bugger." Lucas and I spoke at the same time. Some of his verbal mannerisms were rubbing off on me - though I wasn't about to start calling myself lassie. It felt too much like being a dog. I lifted one booted foot and kicked at the airlock door. It still refused to budge. The airlock was the heaviest looking door I had seen on the station thus far, and had its own power systems rather than being connected to the systems power supplies. The only problem was that the pair of tube-shaped power units to either side of the door were dead.

"Can't we hook it into the station systems?"

"Problem with that is the Tesc have control over some of the computers," Lucas said. "I'm staying out of anything vital, and hoping they don't try and fry my brain with some magic computer virus or some shite like that. But we hook an airlock in, the station vents – Tesc don't need to breathe, lassie. And ya think that our destabilization problem is bad, just wait until we spray half the station's atmosphere out of a bloody airlock."

I nodded. "So, how do we...do we fix it?"

"I don't know if there are any voltaic cells in the storage rooms - we were running short before all Hell broke loose," Lucas said, sounding like he was chewing on his lower lip. Then, quietly, he said. "There's a rumor I heard..."

"Yeah?" I asked, breathing slowly, trying to calm myself. I checked behind myself. No sign of Maria. Or Brood. I looked back at the airlock.

"I heard that one of the researchers, Dr. Tilly, he was able to recharge voltaic cells just by touching the blighters," Lucas said. "It may be worth a shot. Maybe he has a charging unit that no one told us about."

I clenched my jaw. "How much more do I need to fucking fetch on this fucking station?"

Lucas chuckled, sounding wryly amused. "Oh, I don't know. Enough to keep us alive, lassie."

I nodded. "How much time do we have left?"

"Twenty minutes."

I turned and started running again.

Dr. Tilly was located in WepTec lab 01, and so I only had to run about thirty seconds before reaching it from the airlock. The door was shut. By this point, I had it up to fucking here with fucking around - and we only had fifteen or so minutes left before the station's drift was un-fucking fixable. And so, I pulled my wrench, smashed open the keycard scanner, then touched the right cables together. I didn't even worry about how I knew to do that. I just did it and I walked into WepTech lab 01.

The scene inside was stark.

Dr. Tilly - his name printed on the ID tag hanging from his collar - hung from the ceiling. A noose made of computer cables and wires bound together by tape and knots hung around his bulging throat. HIs eyes were closed and he swayed slowly from side to side, his feet brushing against the chair that had skidded to the left. It was clear that he had stood on the office chair, then pushed off. I tore my eyes from him and spotted a small PDA sitting on the desktop that dominated the room. The walls were sparsely covered – in fact, I noticed that huge machines had been torn out of this place at some point, leaving behind scraped metal floors and torn out screws and other examples that people had stripped the place.

I picked up the PDA and tapped it on. There were a few files - but since time was short, I tapped the first one, hoping to find something. Anything that might help me figure out what to do next.

To my shock, the upper edge of the PDA shone to life and shimmering rays of almost solid light flashed out. They skimmed through the air and sculpted shapes that grew more and more defined, becoming the three dimensional images of Dr. Tilly and two other scientists. They were adjusting and manipulating the now absent machines, leaving me with only vague ideas of what they had once been. There were plenty of dials, but also lots of those sweeping gestures people made while using touch pads.

Dr. Tilly laughed, his hologram stepping through his own corpse with a sickening whirr and dazzling spray of pixels. He reformed as he said: "Ma'am, subject 0098 has given us just what we needed. Do you think the focusing aperture is ready?"

One of the other holograms turned to face him. The face was unfamiliar, but the woman seemed preppy, pretty and eager. She adjusted her glasses one handed as she nodded.

"It should be, Dr. Tilly."

"All right. I think it's fair that I take the first dosage of mass produced Ambrosia," Dr. Tilly said, flashing a grin.

"Are you sure? Corporate-" The other woman – a more severe, dark skinned one – asked.

Dr. Tilly waved one hand. "They've been getting naturally collected Ambrosia for forty years. I doubt they will begrudge a model employee testing their product." He chuckled, then picked up something the holographic recording suddenly picked up. Now that he held it, the syringe appeared in his hand. He touched it to his neck, then pushed it home as the other scientists watched - both of them looked utterly appalled at the sudden motion. Even the preppy one, who cried out.

"Sir! We should have set up safeties, we-"

Dr. Tilly gasped. He staggered backwards, his eyes closing. His mouth opened and he seemed to grow...younger. I hadn't noticed the differences until they faded away - the wrinkles around his eyes, invisible in death, faded in the holographic recording as well. His hair grew outwards and his palms spread as he clutched on a table that had been moved between the recording and now. He seemed to lean on nothing as a nimbus of crackling lightning surrounded him. He laughed, then opened his eyes - and even in the hologram, it was clear they burned with lightning.

"It's glorious," he whispered.

The recording ended. I saw the title was: Testing Ambrosia-Lightning.

I frowned. "Did you see that, Lucas?"

"I did. The bloody bastards were right," he said. "They were making mass produced Ambrosia. That shite's an urban legend, Lassie. A kind of youth serum combined with fucking superpowers. I never bought the powers, but some of the uber rich, they never got old, ya know?"

I was already starting to search the desk. I found that there was a silvery box containing a series of racks for syringes. All were gone save for one. It had a pale blue color and a small lightning bolt on it. I picked it up, and hesitated.

"Do we know if this will work?" I asked.

"We have eight minutes, lassie," Lucas said. "And bloody security drones are on their way."

I nodded.

I slammed the syringe into my neck.

Pleasure. The most intense pleasure I had ever felt, even better than that squirting orgasm I had felt ripping through my body when I had fingered myself. It started not in my cunt or at the tips of my breasts, but rather surged throughout my whole body like a kettle drum being being beaten. I fell to my knees and screamed in pleasure as my palms slapped against the ground. I arched my back and bucked my hips, gasping and ducking my head against the ground. "Fuck! Fuck!" I hissed as I felt the need to have someone come and rut me. Take me. Do anything they wanted, just fill me.

Then...

Light poured from my mouth. It didn't go in a straight line - but rather leaped out and then splashed along the ground like a liquid. My eyes widened and I realized that it was actually a crackling stream of lightning.

"Stop intruder!"

The sound of the drone behind me sent me spinning around. I slammed my palm outwards and a lightning bolt smashed into the drone - causing the pleasure to fade and the energy to stop pouring from my mouth. The drone shuddered, sparked, and then fell onto its strange, wheeled side. I panted raggedly.

"Five minutes, lass!"

I forced myself to my feet. I started running - but a dizzy spell hit me in the middle of the corridor. I sagged against the wall, then pushed myself away from it. I forced myself to run, my feet pounding along the ground.

"Keep going lassie..." Lucas whispered. "You are running amazing for someone who just had their bloody genetic code re-written."

I got to the airlock door. I put my palms to the emptied voltaic power cells. I closed my eyes and let energy surge through me again. This time, I felt like I came dangerously close to passing out, my eyes whiting out as my knees went to rubber. I sagged against the door as the airlock started to cycle with a low groaning noise. So, using energy used...energy. No shit.

"Pretty pretty pretty..."

That hissing voice. I looked back.

Maria was standing at the end of the corridor. She was flanked by two of the Brood. They both hissed, nuzzling against her like eager lovers. One caressed her biomechanical thigh with its spined, dripping tail. Maria grinned.

"Fetch," she whispered.

The Brood started towards me. The airlock door slammed down, leaving my back pressed against nothing but air. I scrambled backwards and then slapped down on the airlock controls. The doors whirred shut with a loud clunk. They sealed and clicked as the Brood scrabbled at it. I forced myself to my noodly knees as the airlock door cycled. The Brood drew away from the window and Maria's horned, unearthly beautiful face filled the window. She blew me a kiss and I barely resisted the urge to return it as the airlock doors behind me opened and I pushed myself out into the infinite blackness of space.

"Four minutes," Lucas said, his voice crackling in my ear. I tried to turn around - and felt the backpack hiss and click against me. I swung around and saw out of the corner of my eye a tiny jet of gas spraying from my shoulder. So, it wasn't just air, but also movement. Linked to the nanites, it read my desire for movement in the tension of my muscles and the motion of my legs. I saw the huge sweep of the Earth below me. It seemed so far. So beautiful. My brow furrowed as I saw the huge hurricane that was slowly heading towards the east coast of one of the continents. I could see the blood red lightning crackling through it.

Then I shook my head, forcing myself to task. I looked up at the station - and from the outside, I saw that Virgil Station was built like a wedding cake. The bottom - Cryonics - was the smallest ring. Each ring above it was larger by almost a half, meaning that the habitation ring was by far the most massive. That hung above me like a continental shelf. My helmet blipped and a glowing icon appeared on the upper edge of the habitation ring.

"That's where you need to be lassie. Remember, the time you spend accelerating, that's how long you need to decelerate too!" Lucas said.

I nodded, gulping to wet my dry throat. I focused, then tried to make a jumping motion. The suit registered the motion and the backpack I wore hissed loudly. I started to shoot upwards. A small distance tracker appeared next to the icon, counting down in a numeral I didn't recognize. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breath, the thudding of my own heart. At the halfway point, I swung my legs around and made the same jumping motion I had before.

I started to slow.

"Two minutes," Lucas said.

I slowed.

I stopped.

The damage to the engine was hard to see at first - until a shifting of the station's position brought a bright pane of sunlight around to shine on the darkness. Then I saw the jagged hole, the blackened metal. Fortunately, most of the energy had been directed outwards, so the station's internals hadn't been too damaged. I reached into my pack, pulling out the foot wide cube that was apparently going to fix this.

"How the fuck do I fix this engine in a minute thirty?"

"Throw the cube at it," Lucas said, confidently.

"You're kidding," I whispered. But my arms were already making the motion. The cube tumbled forward, turning around and around. Then, about a foot away from the damage site, it ballooned outwards. Gray goop flew into the hole and the blackened material and swarmed forward. I felt a sudden flare of heat, the gray material turning a bright, cherry red. I lifted up my palm, concealing the image and slewing myself to the side. When I lowered my hand, the metal was cooling and a perfectly functioning station keeping jet was thrusting from the side of the station. My eyes were wide.

"Holy fuck," I said.

The engine flared to life. The station started to shift slightly. It was a slow, subtle motion. But it was there.

"Good work lassie!" Lucas laughed - and I could hear him clapping. "We'll make a tech out of you yet!"

I laughed, raggedly. I knew that this was merely the first step. A way to save the Earth, to buy us some time. But even without Virgil Station raining down on it like an asteroid impact, I knew that the Tesc were an immensely dangerous threat to everyone there. To me. To my family. To the woman in my imagination.

I slowly smiled. "But don't call me lassie anymore, Lucas," I said.

"Oh?" he asked.

I chuckled. "Call me Beatrice."

TO BE CONTINUED