Verdant Ink 🏳️‍🌈 (wlw)

10: The Service Corridor

The smell of disinfectant filled Pelin's nose. Her eyelids wouldn't open. Her limbs lay immovable and stiff. Her entire body was a lead lump, limp muscles floundering against tendons.

Fuzzy memories resurfaced. She'd lost 301. She'd become Amine X. She was to end the War, become a General, found new colonies. She'd been brought to Medical and drugged. Her leaden limbs meant that she must have been rising slowly from the depths of anaesthesia.

Agent 295's throaty voice rose and fell from across the room as she muttered into her comms-piece. Pelin opened her eyes the tiniest amount, confirming her suspicions. She was indeed in a bed in Medical, in the same little room stacked with medical equipment and culture bath vats where she had been injected with some vile anaesthesia. Agent 295 slouched against the wall, but her voice was too low for Pelin to eavesdrop on her conversation, save a string of Yes Madames.

Unshed tears trapped Pelin's breaths and almost twisted her lips, when the beep of the door scanner rang in her ears, and another voice was heard in the room. She lay flat and still.

"She's taking her time, considering how much she struggled against being put under," the curious voice chirped, likely the masked medic who had injected Pelin with the anaesthetic that she was struggling to rid herself of. "Slap her out of it."

295 guffawed. "It happened with the other one too. She'd be unconscious for hours. The number of times we'd thought she'd died."

Pelin remembered. 301 had feigned unconsciousness to eavesdrop on this little team whenever they drained her. Perhaps they expected Pelin to be the same. She didn't think that she could lie still for many minutes more, let alone achieve the hours of stillness that 301 had managed.

"Did she die in the end?"

"Nah. Madame's sending her to the Front Line tonight. She's got a final mission to terraform everything she comes across until she's spent, then this one is taking over Amine X supply. Shiva Labs will keep the eggs in their extracorporeal womb labs until we have a secure supply chain."

Pelin's guts spasmed, almost threatening to give her away. But she had to be strong. 295 had said that 301 was still on board the Miranda, to be sent to the Front Line tonight. There was still time.

"Quiet!" hissed the medic. Pelin could imagine her eyes darting across the room to check Pelin's face for movement. She kept deathly still. "She might hear."

"She's out cold. She's in the command line anyway. They were host and vector."

The medic sniffed. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Medical check, then harvest, and drain while you're at it, then stick her in the culture bath."

The beep of the door scanner, then silence. The swish of fabric against sheet-metal, and 295 slouched against the wall again.

Pelin bit her cheek in an effort not to cry. They'd already drugged and drained her. They'd soon open her up and harvest her too.

But there was hope. Perhaps there remained a vanishingly small chance that, if she could get out of Medical, she could find 301. But the General's complex had restricted access. Short of pitching a Karinja axe straight through the iris-scanners, there was no way in. And if she did manage to find 301, where could she send her? The Miranda was soon to dock at Shiva Colonies where warships destined for the Front Line were stationed, ready for the Miranda's elite officers, and 301, to board them. In the other direction were light-millenia of deep space.

295 chattered on into her comms-piece every so often, until she was relieved by another officer with a quick exchange of muted words. 295 explained duties slowly, as if addressing a new recruit. Perhaps the new officer could be easily fooled.