Her death was not a gentle one. Banks and Bergman moved to stop her, of course, but they were never fast enough. The innocent-looking liquid disappeared mil by mil through the microscopic opening of the needle until the plunger flushed against its stop. By the time they reached her, her leg had already started to spasm. They tore the syringe out of her hand, bending its tip halfway back in the process, such was the stiffness the drug had already induced in the muscle. Like rebar drying in cement.

She overshot the vein, I thought, as I watched her thigh convulse and twitch. Poor girl. With that much coursing through her system it would reach her heart soon enough.

Her knee straightened violently, raising her foot up off the mattress despite the weight of the comforter draped across it. Her coat parted over her leg, revealing a joint strained to the point of collapse by the pressure of muscles tensed around it. Veins, raised almost out of her skin, pulsed grotesquely as they carried the drug to the rest of her body, and, with it, carried her demise. A ligament snapped. I could actually see her hamstring roll up underneath her drawn skin, curling like a party favor as it sought her upper thigh. She, of course, felt none of it. The painkilling power of the cytomorph would have left her beyond numb, her mind in a euphoric, almost catatonic state of oxygen-deprived bliss. Her pelvis thrust high in the air, her hip bones poking against her skin and smock, threatening to shred them through. Her spine wrenched as it spread to her abdomen. Vertebrae popped like bubble wrap as they strained beyond their breaking points. Banks made a move to hold her down, but it was halfhearted, only going through the motions. We’d all seen cytomorph before. There was nothing we could do.

Veins raised on her neck and hands. Her arms twisted against themselves, muscles straining to collapse the bone. Her eyes turned a searing red as capillaries in the burst. The skin on their sockets shriveled and shrank, leaving them wide, round, and exposed. Sores bloomed like burns on her nose, then down on her cheekbones and neck. One of her shoulders popped from its socket, a fitting corollary between her and Rauch’s final moments. Her holo, showing peaceful images of death and of she and Miller side-by-side, de-pixelated bit by bit as the bots inside of her heated and died. Her heart was stopped by this point. Only the squeeze of the rest of her muscles kept her blood flowing through her veins.

She remained like that for several seconds, body twisted, eyes twitching, teeth gnashing against themselves beneath lips drawn back in a snarl, grinding, chipping, drawing blood from her lips and gums, and then, finally, she collapsed. Her limbs relaxed, settling at unnatural angles after the damage her muscles had done. Her torso slumped back into the corner formed by the wall and her bed, her deconstructed spine fitting much more closely than it should have. Her head toppled to the side, towards me, and stared at me with open eyes. As drawn as the skin on her face was, I suspected they would never close.

Banks and Bergman moved to transport the body.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Leave her,” I whispered.

They looked at me, confused. “But, she died in our charge,” Banks questioned. “The protocol…”

“Hang the protocol, I said leave her. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. She doesn’t deserve…that.” Oh God, why couldn’t I remember her name? “Besides, where are you going to dispose of her, down here?”

Banks shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “We’d figure it out. There’s always a way. We still have the chirp, if it came to that…”

God, what a sickening thought that was. “No,” I shook my head. “Leave her.”

They seemed to accept that.

I moved over to her holo, now an empty, slate-grey field lit by only a few stray pixels, which even as I watched began to wink out one by one. I swiped at it several times without effect. Only…the corner that I swiped at most might have been a little fainter when I finished, just a teensy bit more translucent. I took a step back and beheld the thing. Yes, definitely fainter there, and getting fainter by the minute.

“Curious,” I said to myself as Ramsay and the others gathered around.

“What is?” Ramsay asked.

I gestured towards the disappearing screen. “None of the others did that,” I said, remembering the holos, pulsing and pale, that guarded the bodies of Charles, Rauch, and Britt in the lab.

“None of the others used cytomorph,” Ramsay argued.

I shrugged. I had to admit, he had a point.

“Boss?” Ramsay asked, just as the silence was getting to be uncomfortable.

“Yeah?”

“The job?”

I stared through the last vestiges of the girl’s holo, at the rolled steel of the wall behind it. Just a wall now. Nothing more. “Of course.”

One by one we filed out of her chambers. As usual, Ramsay led the way.

“Check the others,” I said to Banks and Bergman, gesturing further down the hall, where the other chambers lay. “Miller’s still unaccounted for. I want that fixed.” Based on the way the girl had acted, and on the last couple of images her holo had showed before she died, I had small hope of finding him alive, but we had to check the box. “Ramsay and I will head back to the lab and try to figure out our next move. Let’s make sure we stay in pairs. Just in case.” They went their direction and we went ours. I didn’t have to say in case what.

“Boss?” Ramsay asked again, as soon as they were out of earshot. “Did you believe that stuff she said? About the suits being useless?” We reached the door to the lab. He swiped the access reader. It pinged green, and the door slid open.

“Don’t know,” I said as I followed him through. “She sounded pretty sure, but she might have been mistaken. She was pretty far gone.” It was a lie, but I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t totally comfortable talking about her, so soon after what had happened. Part of me couldn’t help feeling like I’d let her down. “Why? You nervous?”

“Nah,” he said, a little too nonchalantly. “I just don’t want to be wearing all this heavy shit if it isn’t doing any good.”

“Heavy?” I chided. The bio-suits were anything but. Each one weight two kilos, max, and they were custom fit for maximum mobility. A hell of a lot lighter than the three-piece suit I usually wore. “You going soft on me, old man?”

Ramsay didn’t respond. I clamped a hand on his shoulder, stopping us both. Next to Rauch’s corpse, as it happened. “It’s sterine, Ram,” I reassured him. “We’ll be alriiii…”

My blood chilled as I glimpsed what had popped up Rauch’s holo, which had re-awakened as we walked by, close enough, apparently, for it to interpret as a swipe, and now was pulsing above his shoulder like it had been when he’d died. The words withered on my lips.

I could read it now.