“I can’t do it from here, you know.”

This time it was Ramsay’s turn to answer without words. Or rather, question without them. He glanced at his palm, then back up at me. His face was blank. His jaw hung forward, but slack on its hinge. Only the stretch of the sides of his eyes, that subtle narrowing of the lids, and deepening of the crows’ feet that I could have never detected behind the visplate he had just removed, showed his lack of understanding.

“It’s an incubation room, for one,” I held up a finger as I explained. “It’s not designed to let things out. Not until someone on the outside is good and ready, anyways. That hum you’re hearing, for another…” a second finger joined the first, trembling in sterine flecked with crumbling bits of blood, “…that’s the bunker’s decon systems. They may seem like a joke right now, the way they failed against the Haggarty,” I glanced at Ramsay’s holo for emphasis, then at my own, all the while listening to the sibilant hissssssss of the systems in question, “but I can assure you they are state on the art. We’ll want to shut them off before we disperse the sample. No sense taking chances on this being the moment they actually decide to neutralize something. And lastly,” I held up a third, extending it with some effort against the fist my hand was trying to make. It felt good to speak like this again…to be in control, and have a purpose, an actual reason for saying the things I said, instead of just guessing, checking, and hail-mary-ing, hoping at least part of what we tried would stick. It felt good to know what was going to happen for a change, and to be able to shape events to my design. And it felt really good to be saying what I wanted to say, all of what I wanted to say, and not have to worry about that…thing telling the world all about the stuff I didn’t. Better than good. It felt amazing.

“…and, lastly, we, ah…we can’t feed the baubles from here.” And just like that, it was gone, and I was the same dumb kid I’d been since the moment we’d stepped off that ladder, trying to hide what couldn’t be hidden, and playing at games where I wasn’t sure rules even existed, let alone what they might have been.

The bunker was, naturally, a closed ecosystem, recycling and recirculating as many of its materials as possible as it supported its inhabitants. As such, it required artificial maintenance of its atmosphere. Earlier bunkers, either built or adapted for projects of similar classification, addressed this issue via their HVAC systems, by including a mixing station that monitored the levels of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, and made adjustments as appropriate. But that was deemed a security risk when this bunker was designed, so we sought to de-centralized the function. The baubles were our solution. They were installed at multiple points throughout the facility, at strategic locations based on expected traffic and resultant consumption. Each was supplied with liquid oxygen, which it dispersed whenever it sensed suboptimal levels, and each could scrub carbon dioxide and nitrogen, and a smattering of other compounds, out of the atmosphere any time it sensed a surplus. The glassy hue of their housing was what lent them their name. That, and the fluid, almost metamorphic way colors swirled inside of them whenever they were activated. There was at least one in every chamber. At the start of the project Rauch had made a show of farting on them whenever he could, and seeing how long it took them to scrub the ‘impurities.’

Tick…tick…tick…

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“There’s no telling how long the fix will be effective,” I explained, trying to get the words out before my fairy beat me to it. “Before the Haggarty, ah…adapts, and develops immunity even to this.” I/my holo thought of the girl, and how she’d

(pop pop pop! The discs of her spine snapped one by one as her muscles spasmed out of control)

cytomorphed herself, and how Ram and I had mused that that was only thing that stopped the bots. But lately I was not so sure. Lately, I couldn’t help but think they only kicked off then because of the massive overdose she took. If she’d used a little less, given them just half a chance to adjust to this new, hostile tilt to the field, I’d have taken any odds they’d have found a way to thrive. “The baubles will give us the greatest coverage in the shortest period of time.”

Ramsay nodded, and stood, joints crackling as they straightened. He breathed deeply of the bunker’s air, as if satiating himself after so long in the biosuit. Enjoying the smell of it as it passed through his nostrils, and the feel of it as it filled his lungs.

Some choice, my fairy chuckled, as we stepped out into the hall. It still spoke in voice of Britt, but now it sounded hollow, and tinny, as if our moving had impaired its connection. For your last lungful. Recirculated, re-filtered air from the biosuit, or the manufactured air of the bunker, infected with all kinds of bugs.

Whoosh!

We stepped into the lab.

It felt different, somehow, seeing it from this angle. The landscape had not changed, I knew, and the objects were all where they were before, but the lighting felt a little different, the shadows off by just a hair. Like a town at noon and dusk. The lifeless slump of Rauch’s body, in particular, gave off a different vibe. Previously it had been formless and pathetic, a cocksure gunslinger dragged to the lowest of lows. Now it gave a stoic, almost regal impression…a keeper of secrets, even in death. The rancid stench of urine and feces once again filled my suit as I approached, a reminder of the guttural nature of this thing we had once called a man, to which I’d grown noseblind during our previous trip through the lab.

Yeah. Some choice.

But I was stalling.

I sighed, and stuck a finger in the strangle track in Rauch’s neck, feeling around in the swollen flesh for the cable that was buried there. Once I found it I traced it around until I found the place where the dangling end spilled out. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and, slowly, carefully, peeled it back. The skin broke even so. The cable was so thin, and had embedded itself so deeply as the flesh had bulged and lapped it over, and hardened in the day-plus since, that it would have taken a surgeon’s touch to remove it without further damage. Clumps of it clung to the cable as I eased it free, like the bits of food loosened by someone flossing for the first time in weeks. Dark, oxygen-starved blood trickled mercurially through the gaps. I could see the color drain from Rauch’s face, and the swelling start to fade. The flesh around his eye sockets deflated first. It left his eyes, still bulging, alone in saucers of skin and bone.

In the end I lost my patience, and, sensing that the wire would hold, I yanked the last third of it free. His head jerked with a sickening squelch, and the gaps joined to form a canyon. Rancid blood gushed down his chest, filling the pocket of his shirt, coating his uniform in sheets. His head turned, and his tongue flopped to the other side of his mouth, where it settled, dangling as uselessly as ever.

Ramsay and I inspected our prize. He ran to fetch a rag, but I didn’t wait. I ran it through the fist of my suit, forming a tunnel of sterine to squeegee off the scraps and clumps. It had frayed during the struggle. Tungsten and silica sprayed like a sprouting thistle from their casing of ionized insulate.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Britt’s voice needled. “You needed that to hack the life support systems, didn’t you? You won’t be able to disperse anything – using the baubles or otherwise – until you get that fixed.”