Children of the Plague

Chapter Twenty Five: Who the Hell is Bert?

~Chapter Twenty Five: Who the Hell is Bert?~

Lanni released her aura and ran to Mitch. He had stopped writhing by the time she reached him, and lay still, staring with unseeing, blood-filled eyes. What remained of his body was flat and distorted, with craters almost like a melted or deflated wax figure. Toya reached her side next.

“What the…” Toya began. She was interrupted by Rico, following a pace behind.

“Poor bastard,” Rico said. He hooked an arm around Toya’s waist to catch his balance. He actually leaned forward over Mitch, with his feet anchored in place like he was standing on a high cliff.

“That wasn’t our Mitch. It was someone else.” Toya’s head turned from side to side mechanically, but her eyes were locked on the mess that had once been her friend.

“I know he betrayed us, but… Jesus. That there is some harsh shit. Ouch! Watch my hand, Toya.” Pulling his arm back from her waist, he looked at his hand and swore again. Holding it out as far from his body as he could, he staggered backwards a few steps, like he wanted to get away from it.

“Stand still, Rico. It’s OK. The girl can fix it. She can fix it.”

Small bloody holes and pockmarks covered Rico’s arm from his fingers halfway to his elbow. He wasn’t as bad off as Mitch, but he wouldn’t get much use out of it in that condition.

“You can fix it, can’t you?” Toya asked her.

Lanni’s face betrayed no emotion as she stared at Toya. Alex must have felt this way often. She had no idea if she could heal Rico’s wound. At the moment, she could barely tell if her aura was there. Pulling it in so she could balance his nanites seemed well beyond her weakened capabilities.

A small rectangle of white light appeared on the green box behind Rico. About the size of a paperback novel, it projected a holographic grid with three glowing spheres. Lanni pushed past Rico and touched the spheres in sequence, sliding each to a new position. All three winked out as the last orb moved into place, followed by the grid and the rectangle.

Ignoring the fact that she operated the control panel purely on instinct, she focused on trying to open the lid. Who or what was in there? Could it be Alex? Another of the silver-skinned children? With a burst of nanites against Lanni’s aura, the lid slid open and a human woman sat up.

“Denise!” Rico shouted. He and Toya ran to her and pulled her from the box, squeezing her in a tight group hug. They cried together, and laughed, and said how happy they were to see each other.

The nanites that erupted from the box vanished like shallow water in the desert sun. She hadn’t been able to feel her aura since the explosion, but as the last nanites died against it, she realized that she wasn’t simply numb to it. Except for these, there were no nanites impacting it. At all.

“You guys look kind of sick. Are you okay? What happened to you?” Denise asked.

Denise was right. Lanni hadn’t noticed until now, but neither Rico nor Toya looked well. Their skin color was muted, almost ashen.  She looked closer and saw tiny flakes forming on their flesh. Denise started going grey, too. The remaining nanite particles in their bodies were being drawn out.

“It must be a residual effect from the blast,” Lanni muttered to herself. The others were caught up in the excitement and messy emotions of their reunion and didn’t hear her. She looked at the other boxes, all but a few still sealed. Were there more colonists in them?

She went to the nearest unopened box and held her hand near the control panel. It didn’t activate as she hoped. Instead, she discovered that nearby nanites flowed directly to the panel. It attracted them just like the token she’d found in the bone room had done. She sensed John and Rumiko watching through her eyes, working out the implications.