Dr. Khan’s eyes are rolling back into her head, showing pure white for seconds at a time. Her movements are violent and uncoordinated. Several times on the short journey from the crew quarters to the lab she almost falls.
As Greaves tries to mix the serum, she is scrabbling at his arm, clutching blindly at his head. She has made no attempt to bite him, but there is an urgency to her movements, almost a desperation. The sense of need is waking up inside her, moving her. It can only be a matter of minutes, Greaves thinks, maybe seconds, before the Cordyceps in her blood and brain is able to make her do what it wants.
Babbling apologies in an endless stream, he attempts to strap Dr. Khan to the workbench. When the bench was installed, the vivisection of hungries without anaesthetic was unflinchingly taken into account and catered for. It’s easy to loop and tighten the first strap, around Rina’s left wrist. After that she fights harder, kicking and clawing at him. Her jaws are starting to work, opening and closing with a grating click of cartilage. In the end he has to leave her with just the one arm restrained.
“It will be okay,” he promises her. “I’ll just … I’ll make up the dose. Don’t worry. Don’t worry.”
Tears blind him as he works. This is the last batch of serum. This is goodbye. Each dose has worked for a shorter period than the one before it, and this one is the dregs of the batch, smaller than the preceding doses and of course not so fresh. It might not work at all, he might have left it too late, and if it does work it will be for a few scant hours. After that Rina will go away, for ever, and all that will be left will be an animal that wears her face. What will he do without her? What will he do with what remains of her?
And what will happen to her baby?
When he approaches Rina with the needle she snaps and snarls at him. Drool flecks her lips, which have receded a long way from her bared teeth. There is no recognition in her wide eyes.
Greaves grabs her free arm and rolls up her sleeve, using his shoulder and the weight of his body to force her head back against the bench. He can feel Rina’s jaws opening and closing against his upper arm, but there are several thicknesses of fabric there and he doesn’t think she will have time to chew her way through.
She is struggling furiously. He stabs the needle into her arm but misses the cubital vein by a fraction of an inch. The second time he’s not even close. The third time, with Rina’s teeth grinding against his shoulder, he gets a bullseye and sinks the plunger in.
Cloth tears as he pulls himself free from her. A tiny shred of fabric stays between her clenched teeth, like the seat of the burglar’s trousers in the dog’s jaws in an ancient comic book he saw once at the orphanage. She spits it out and strains to get to him, to try for another bite. He is forced to retreat around the bench, out of her reach.
He waits to see if she will recognise him. He’s crying again, wrenching sobs that shake and hurt him as they’re expelled. Every few seconds, he says her name aloud in the hope that she will answer.
She doesn’t, but her breathing calms and gradually she closes her mouth. She sinks down onto her knees, her legs bending under her, and sags a little although her bound wrist keeps her more or less upright. The blank look goes out of her eyes. Now she just looks exhausted and confused, her brows furrowed with thought as she stares around the lab. She blinks slowly, screwing her eyes closed for several seconds before opening them again and taking a second look—as though she hopes a second throw of the dice might have a better outcome.
“Rina?” Stephen says again.
Again, she doesn’t speak. But when he holds out his hand to her she touches his palm with the tip of one finger. He gives a tearful laugh, returning the one-finger hug. Rina turns her head, her eyelids flickering a little as she stares at the strap around her wrist. She tugs against it to see if it will give. Fumbles at it with the fingers of her free hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Stephen says thickly. “I had to. I’m sorry.” He steps forward quickly to untie her.
But he doesn’t get there. Dr. Fournier steps out of the dark of the engine room, whose door has been open all this time, and blocks his way. It’s so sudden that Stephen jumps backwards and slams his elbow painfully on the corner of the freezer cabinet. He yelps and folds his arms around the pain.
“Don’t touch her,” Dr. Fournier snaps. And then, “What did you do, Greaves? Tell me what you did. My God, she’s infected. She’s infected, and you found a way to control it. You found a cure.”
“No!” Stephen says. It’s completely involuntary. Presented with the false statement, he has no choice but to correct it.
“I know what I saw. Tell me. Tell me how you did this.”
“I can’t,” Stephen yelps. “Please!”
In the intensity of his feeling, Dr. Fournier grabs Stephen’s shoulders and pushes him back against the freezer cabinet. “Tell me!” he roars.
The shock of physical contact freezes Stephen on the spot. He doesn’t even struggle. Words well up behind his teeth, start to spill out. “C … cerebrospinal fluid of the captured hungry. You take a b … base mass of between twenty and fifty cc and fix with—”
There is a sound like the dull ringing of a gong. Dr. Fournier grunts, stiffens and falls headlong, unconscious before he hits the deck plates.
Rina lets the steel clamp stand slide from between her fingers. It hits the doctor again when it falls, leaving a triangular gash on his cheek.
Rina’s eyes roll, wide and wild. She blinks and shakes her head, makes a brrrrrrrr sound. “That’s better,” she growls through clenched teeth. “Hear myself think.”
57
“This is Carlisle to Brigadier Fry,” the colonel says. “Carlisle to Fry, or to the Beacon Muster, over.” He has turned the radio’s gain up as far as it will go, and most of the remaining members of Rosie’s military escort are crowded into the cockpit with him, Only Foss is missing, manning the turret again to warn him if the other vehicles out on the tarmac make a move.
The response is a long time in coming, and the brigadier sounds very relaxed when she finally answers the colonel’s hail. “Isaac. Welcome to base Hotel Echo. Did you have any trouble finding us?”
Carlisle isn’t tempted by the invitation to small talk. “Brigadier,” he says, “we identify hostiles in the immediate area. I request leave to pursue our original course and rendezvous at Beacon. This place isn’t safe.”
“Request denied,” Fry says, in the same calm tone. “Those aren’t hostiles, they’re allies. Now, bearing in mind my explicit instructions to you yesterday, please open your doors and assemble on the tarmac. My troops will take Rosie from here, along with the specimen you mentioned—assuming it actually exists—and you’ll be transferred to Beacon.”
And here they are, at the point where polite pretence has to break down.