Rebecca

Date July 13, 2116 Time 11:32 p.m. Location The Dolos, Miril Nebula

Doctor Rebecca Roets really regretted resurrecting her boss.

Well, technically reviving, but given the extent of his injury, and the amount of time he’d had without a pulse, the distinction was a bit blurry.

As a process, it had been easier than she’d expected. They were lucky to have made it to Doctor Hammond’s office: the hidden space behind the rear wall was basically a second med room, as well as a place to store their classified medical records, samples, experiments, and specimens in stasis. It was cluttered, but well-stocked with medical supplies. Mundane, and...experimental.

Rebecca used to think Hammond was paranoid.

But six days after their subject’s rebellion, Rebecca sat in her corner of their cramped hideout, glanced down at the dried brown blood spattered across her white coat, and glared across the room as the man hungrily bit into one of their dwindling ration packs.

He was caked in even more blood than she was: it streaked and spattered the front and back of his white coat and dress shirt; matted the back of his blond hair into a reddish brown mess. The first day, he’d cleaned his face and throat with some of their drinking water, and she’d scrubbed the scarlet from her hands...but for obvious reasons, they didn’t waste any more water on the rest.

It was ridiculous.

How could someone be so cautious about guarding the passcodes to a secret room in a secret base, but be so utterly unprepared for a real worst-case scenario?

At least they had a portable sterilizer...they didn’t need to add disease to the list of their problems. But how had he not bothered to pack a change of clothes or two in this place?

How could he only include a single crate of emergency rations? Rations that would only last a month for one person under normal conditions, let alone...this?

She let out a small huff of bitter laughter; pushed a stray lock of red hair back into her bun; rearranged some of the bright red shock blankets that comprised her makeshift...well, nest was the best term for it...against the rear wall of the panic room. They didn’t add much cushion, but they were better than nothing.

Unfortunately, nothing was what Hammond had done about planning for a bathroom—or even a freaking waste collector—in a sealed space meant to potentially safeguard living, breathing, eating, pooping Humans for days at a time.

Thank god their rations didn’t actually need to be stored in a crate.

And thank god the repurposed crate was resealable.

The panic room’s isolated environmental filters could only do so much.

Rebecca grimaced at the thought of the foul smells they’d have to endure the next time one of them needed to reopen that crate.

She couldn’t do this much longer.

She needed out.

But she wasn’t the one with the code to the door.

“If we don’t try to leave today, then we’ll need to switch to half rations from hereon out,” Rebecca said quietly out of habit, but still loud enough for the asshole to hear. “That will give us another week at most, and then you have to––”

He rolled his eyes; gave a silent groan.

Rebecca ignored it; pushed on as respectfully as she could still muster. “Doctor, we’re out of options. If help hasn’t come by now, what are the odds it will? I know it’s a risk, but you have to open the door. Please.”

Hammond simply touched his throat; winced; shook his head.

She’d expected that response, but still, Rebecca leaned forward. “It’s been six days. Why would she still be out there?”

Another shake of his head.

Rebecca slumped; rubbed eyes that were strained from the bright panic room lights she had no ability to turn off. “Look, you and I have both read her file. The subject is a technical specialist. She can fly almost any type of ship imaginable, and knows how to make a personal skipper from scrap. If she knew about this room, she would have forced her way in by now. And if she doesn’t know about it, then why would she possibly still be around?”

He glared at her again, but she could see the fear rounding the edges of his green eyes.

She understood why he was so scared. Who wouldn’t be, after having their throat sliced open by someone who was supposed to be sedated and secured? And she wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing the horrors in Hammond’s office again.

But fear and shame didn’t change the facts.

“Either we leave soon, or we will die in here.”

At least, one of them would.

There was one empty stasis pod in the left wall of their hideout, and there was nothing in the universe that would compel Rebecca to empty any of the other three so she and Hammond could both seek that particular refuge for a last ditch effort at survival.

Phoenixes were too precious to sacrifice.

Even for her own life.

...She prayed that devotion would hold out far longer than the rations.

But it didn’t have to come to that. She was sure of it.

“You can just open it long enough for me to slip out, and lock it again behind me,” Rebecca bargained. “I’ll take all the risk. I’ll search the whole ship, and send out a distress signal. I can let you know if it’s safe to––”

He threw the ration wrapper at her.

It dropped in the middle of the storeroom floor, too light to actually make it to its target, but close enough to piss Rebecca off.

She didn’t remember standing; wasn’t even fully aware she was on her feet and moving forward until she kicked the wrapper back at him.

“Just open the fucking door, you ungrateful ass,” she seethed. “I’m not starving to death in a reeking hole in the wall because you’re scared of an empty ship.”

Her boss scowled up at her, then fished around in the pile or ration wrappers in his corner of the storeroom; produced a tablet that had initially been meant for inventory. He’d used it a lot the first couple days of their confinement, but then seemed to lose interest in giving Rebecca more than yes or no answers about their situation.

She didn’t know why, and she didn’t really care. He’d never been the best company, even when he could talk. But maybe he wouldn’t have sulked so much if talking things through was still an option?

Wasn’t like she’d actually had the time to save his vocal cords. But she wasn’t sure he was convinced of that.

Regardless, she felt a flicker of hope at the tablet’s reappearance; especially when Hammond actually started typing on it.

Was he giving her the code to the door? Or maybe directions to send out a distress signal remotely? Or maybe––

He flipped the tablet’s screen towards her; her excitement faded as she read.

“Tomorrow.”

That was it.

That was all the tablet said.

Rebecca heard her heartbeat.

...Nope.

Not good enough.

“Today,” Rebecca demanded, her voice rising louder than she had let it in nearly a week. “Now. Let me out of here, or if our rescue finally shows up, I will tell them all about your pet experiments on the subject. I will tell them everything, including exactly how you had enough of that enzyme on hand to save your life. And how a week ago, you decided to see what would happen if you pumped half of your samples back into the freaking subject all at once? What do you think they’ll do when they hear that?”

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He stared at her, bright blue eyes suddenly seeming not to know whether to show more surprise, confusion, or fear.

After a moment, Hammond began typing again; paused; deleted something; took a deep breath; then typed something else, and showed her the screen.

“How did you know?”

Seriously?

Rebecca gave him an incredulous look. “I was the one in charge of monitoring the rate her wounds healed. You think I didn’t notice how dodgy you got when I asked about the changes? And after what I’ve seen that enzyme do to you, there’s no doubt in my mind what happened. You know there won’t be any doubt in theirs either. Not when I give a full, thorough statement about what led to her escaping containment. So just open. The god. Damn. Door.”

His eyes narrowed; his pale face flushed red.

Hammond rose slowly, and Rebecca slipped her hand into her lab coat’s front pocket; gripped the handle of the small knife hidden inside.

If he attacked, she could fight back. She hadn’t spent six days in hell to die covering for that man’s incompetence.

Of course, she couldn’t kill him if she wanted out, but he didn’t need to walk, or even use more than one hand––

The man began typing on his tablet again. Sharp, pointed jabs at the touchscreen.

When he shoved the new message in her face, Rebecca froze.

“Will that include what you did to Rick?”

...Well, fuck.

She hadn’t thought he remembered that.

Maybe it was just a guess? Maybe he didn’t actually know what…what she’d done.

After all, Hammond had been nearly unconscious by the time she and Rick had half-carried, half-dragged him to the office. It had taken him three tries to open the door to the hidden room...and they almost slipped in his blood on their rush to get inside, and settle their dying boss into a position where they could hopefully perform emergency surgery.

...And that was when she and Rick seemed to notice the same nightmarish thing, at the exact same time.

Hammond had left a bright red trail of blood behind them, all the way from the laboratory...and straight to the panic room.

The subject was highly intelligent. That was a fact. But it would not have taken a genius to follow that.

And what would the subject have done if there wasn’t a body to explain the blood?

She hadn’t had a choice.

Hammond, the paranoid asshole, was the only one of them with the code to open the door. And although any of them could technically temporarily slide it shut, he was the only one who could actually lock it from the inside. And the only one who could activate the sensor-masking, life-saving lockdown system...and the only one who could deactivate it to let them out without a rescue party...or an assailant...cutting it open.

Abandoning him wasn’t an option. The subject would easily access their sensors, and search for survivors. They’d needed a locked, sealed, masked door between them and her, or they’d all have been slaughtered.

But there had to be a reason for the blood trail. One the subject would accept.

They needed a body.

She hadn’t had a choice.

Besides, Rick had been about to do the same to her. He was the one who dove for the knife under Doctor Hammond’s desk...he just wasn’t expecting her to knee him in the groin as he brought it out.

Really slowed the man down.

As did the desk lamp to the top of his head.

It went quickly after that. One shaky slash, and suddenly there was an explanation for the blood that she’d prayed a Phoenix with limited education in Human anatomy would accept.

And, given that it had been days since the disaster...the subject clearly had accepted it.

Rebecca was going to live through this. She’d seen to it herself.

And she wasn’t about to let her coward of a boss change that.

“I saved your life,” Rebecca sidestepped the Rick subject completely. “Don’t waste it by forcing us to starve to death.”

An eye roll.

The jackass actually rolled his eyes at her.

Rebecca pondered the brown-crusted knife in her coat.

Did they have enough of the enzyme left for her to make a point?

...No.

She couldn’t risk it.

It barely worked the first time.

After closing the door between her and the dying Rick, Rebecca had turned all of her efforts to saving the one person who could actually stop a pissed off Phoenix from ripping the doctors apart with her bare hands.

Her boss had slipped into unconsciousness by the time Rebecca had come back, and she’d barely been able to find a pulse.

Fortunately for him, she was a very good trauma surgeon.

And in this trove of top-secret experimental research, they had access to a trauma surgeon’s Holy Grail.

So Rebecca had quickly collected the vial containing their cumulative remaining samples of the enzyme they had isolated from their subject, and injected some of that into Hammond’s throat, as close to the open wound as possible.

A lot of it probably flowed out with his blood, but even so, it seemed to speed things along. She’d managed to use a tissue stitcher to seal the deep slash in his throat in a matter of minutes.

Hammond’s heart only stopped for three.

Then, she’d stabbed an IV of plasma from the panic room’s emergency supply into his left arm, injected him with a second dose of the enzyme that wasn’t going to leak out of anywhere, and used chest compressions to force the enzyme to actually flow to the places he needed it to go most.

Another few minutes, and a few cracked ribs later, and her boss had come to, gasping, panicking, and in pain.

But, mercifully, unable to scream.

From the approaching sounds of butchery that had resonated even through the closed, but unsealed door at that point in their nightmare...The panic room definitely wasn’t soundproof. And she had no doubt that a crusading Phoenix would have found a way to force the door if she’d realized where they were hiding.

Rebecca was certain that if she’d taken the time to reattach Hammond’s vocal cords before sealing up the gaping, life-stealing wounds in his throat, they’d both be dead.

Rick, on the other hand, would’ve tried to save Hammond’s voice. He was too finicky about his work; didn’t like leaving anything for later. Rebecca was willing to leave that delicate surgery up to an actual otolaryngologist, and just focus on making sure Hammond was simply Not Dead...But Rick? No, he took pride in taking risks, and thought he always knew exactly the right way to fix everything.

He also had the foresight of a gnat.

Yep, Rick would have patched up Hammond’s vocal cords, good as new, and when Hammond’s scream gave away their then-still-unlocked hiding place, he would have gotten both himself and Hammond killed by a rampaging Phoenix.

Absolutely, he would have. Not a trace of doubt in Rebecca’s mind.

She...she’d made the right move.

One dead, verses three.

Basic math.

She didn’t have to be proud of it to accept it as true.

And here they were again.

...If she could just scare him enough—not even actually hurt him, unless he was really stubborn—but just scare him enough to make him more afraid of staying trapped in this room with her than he was of a hypothetical enemy outside their hideaway...

One terrified or wounded, verses two dead of starvation.

Basic math.

Rebecca pulled out the knife.

Hammond’s reaction was visibly visceral. He pressed back into his corner of the room, eyes wide; held the tablet in front of him like a shield. From the looks of it, he hadn’t realized she still had the knife.

She fought back a wave of shame.

She didn’t have to be proud of this. She just needed to live.

“Open the door,” she said it slowly; deliberately; making every syllable a threat. “I won’t ask again—”

Someone knocked.