Very useful.
There was something wrong with Venna’s lip as well. It looked like somebody had punched her.
Obviously, she must have realized she was being less than sympathetic, and she reached out a hand and gingerly stroked his forehead. “Oh, you poor thing. What happened to you?”
He preferred the earlier approach—at least it had been sincere. When he failed to answer, she continued.
“They told me you had some sort of fit. They said I needed to look after you. And then I got here and that woman hit me. And nobody did anything to stop her. And really, Callum, you’d be better off with someone else looking after you. I’m not good at this touchy-feely stuff.” She gestured to him and to the room in general. “And I think I’d better go to my shuttle.” She gave the door a nervous glance. “She might come back.”
He presumed “she” was Tannis. But why had she hit Venna? And why had she bitten him?
Time to get out of this pool of vomit and find out. Taking a deep breath, he placed his palms flat on the floor and pushed. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes, counted to ten, and tried again. This time he managed to lever himself onto all fours. He rested for a minute, his breathing ragged. Heat flushed his skin one moment. Shivers raced through his body the next. He wanted to throw up again, but knew there was nothing left in his stomach.
“You don’t look well.”
“Really? What a surprise,” he said. “Look, why don’t you do something useful and get me a glass of water.”
He waited until she’d disappeared before pushing himself up onto his knees. Something lay on the floor in front of him. He picked it up, studied it, a frown forming on his face. It was a scrap of material and looked like it had been torn from a shirt.
He didn’t recognize the insignia, but it said CM Research, so he presumed it must have something to do with Venna and the work she’d been doing for him. He’d pretty much given her a free hand and a lot of money. And gotten not much for it. She reported regularly but had yet to tell him anything of interest or use.
He needed a shower, but the thought of actually standing up didn’t seem much of a possibility right now. Instead, he dragged himself onto the bed and collapsed facedown, his head buried in the soft pillow.
Someone prodded him between the shoulder blades, and he groaned.
“Callum. Your water.”
He wanted to tell her to go away, but he also wanted to ask her about this company. Was it somehow connected to Tannis and El Cazador? But how? Could they have done work for Venna? A job that had gone wrong? Something had seriously pissed Tannis off.
If he hadn’t been immortal, he would be dead.
He rolled over and pulled himself up so he was half sitting. Venna handed him a glass, and he sipped the water, wincing when it hit his stomach.
“So this fit you had,” Venna said. “You think it’s another change? Something to do with Meridian?”
“No.” He touched a fingertip to his lip, felt the jagged puncture marks.
“So…?” She sounded impatient, and he shrugged.
“Tannis bit me.”
“What?”
“She must produce some sort of venom. She kissed me—”
“What?”
Christ, she was getting repetitive. “She kissed me, then she bit me, and then she injected me with some sort of poison.”
Her brows drew together. “Why? I mean she didn’t seem very friendly, but I just thought she was unstable and jealous.” Her finger touched her swollen lip. “But that seems a little excessive. Is it some sort of assassination plot?” She glanced at the open door. “We need to get off this ship.”
“Not an assassination attempt—she knew it wouldn’t kill me.”
“So why?”
“I think she’s unhappy about something.” That was the understatement of the century. “I just don’t know what.” He held out the piece of material. “What do you know about this?”
Venna took it from him, but then dropped it on the bed with a grimace of disgust. For a minute, she stared at it, her lips pursed. “It’s the badge from the uniform of one of your companies.”
“One of my companies?”
“CM Research. I set it up about thirty years ago, to do some experimentation into Meridian. The research came to nothing, and I closed the company down about fifteen years ago.”
Callum ran a trembling hand through his hair, but he could feel his body fighting the poison and slowly throwing off the effects. He took a sip of the water and considered what she had told him, trying to work out how it could fit in with Tannis.
“What sort of experiments?”
“Genetic mostly, mixing some of our altered DNA with human and other…things, seeing if we could get it to take. But as I said—it came to nothing. Most of the subjects died, a few lived, but they never assimilated the altered DNA.”
“Subjects?”
“The subjects of the experiments.”
“People?”