Chapter Thirty-Two - Horses to Water

“Space is looking less like the final frontier and more like our last hope.”

--JimJam Science Show, 2041

***

I patted Sprout on the knee. “Stay here, alright?” I asked. “I’m going to pop on in there, seal things up in a bit, and then we’ll head on out. Or...” I licked my lips.

Sometimes, when dealing with the kittens, they’d end up being afraid of something, or unable to do a chore, and while I ribbed them about it, I usually just did the task for them while telling them to do something easier to make up for it.

Stuff like doing the dishes if they didn’t want to take out the trash.

I didn’t think this was quite the same, but it was all I knew so it was all I had to draw a comparison to right then.

“You know what, no,” I said. I checked Sprout up and down, and he seemed fine, physically, at least. “You’re coming with me?” I asked... said. It started as a statement and ended as a question, really. I didn’t want to force the guy, but I wanted him to come.

He looked up. “Coming?”

“Good!” I said, taking the question as an answer. “You can show me what your plants have been doing. I haven’t had a chance to see them up close. And if anything tries to eat you this time they’ll have to get through me first.”

I start heading off, a grin growing as I heard Sprout scramble to keep up. We were met halfway to the office building by a militia guy with the pips of a second lieutenant next to the badges on his uniform. “Ma’am,” he said with a quick, sharp salute. “Second Lieutenant Hawke, ma’am, you mentioned needing me?”

“Ah, right,” I said. The Hawke was a vaguely native-American looking guy, tall and broad shouldered and looking very serious. “The two of us are going to head in there to poke around. Can you make sure that nothing comes out of the building until we’re done? Ah, aside from us, of course.”

“We can do that,” he said with another salute. “Good luck in there.”

“Thanks,” I said before walking past him. Once out of immediate ear-shot I glanced back at Sprout. “Got a gun?” I asked.

“Uh,” was his reply.

I tossed him my Laser Pointer. “You’ll need to buy ammo yourself,” I said. “Myalis, can I get another?”

With the same Depleted Iridium rounds?

“Maybe switch it up to something like buckshot? We’ll be in closer quarters.” A gun appeared in the air before me and I caught it before it could start to fall. Then we were at the single door into the complex. “I’ll be going ahead. Watch my back,” I said to Sprout.

He nodded. “I’ll do my best,” he said. Obviously, he was still nervous. I was pretty sure that dragging him back in here was probably not the best move for his mental health but... he needed to learn.

Fuck, I didn’t like being put in this kind of position, but I needed dependable samurai I could work with if I was going to keep this shithole city mostly intact, and that meant pushing Sprout a little.

I’d try to soften the blow, maybe? ... Was I going to have to attend, like, a seminar on convincing people to jump into trouble for a greater cause? Did that even exist?

I stepped into the office building, invisibility off so that any antithesis we ran into would jump me first. I swept my gaze around, Laser Pointer following as I looked for trouble. The entrance lobby was a tight corridor, with a couple of benches on the sides and a security booth at the end that I imagined doubled as a shitty sort of reception.

A turret was mounted on the ceiling, but it looked inactive. Was it just for show?

I focused back on the ground where a few model threes were laying there, dead and covered in little bulletholes. I wasn’t any sort of forensic expert, but I guessed that they’d been shot up by the militia folk.

“So, where did you find the entrance?” I asked Sprout.

“The one the antithesis were using? Two levels down,” he said.

“This place has multiple basements?” I asked.

“It’s a cubicle farm,” he replied. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I just nodded along anyway.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Past the multiple metal detectors and EMP scramblers by the entrance, we came into the main space of the office building. A large room with a few enclosed offices along the edges and a sea of cubicles in the middle. Each had walls that stopped at about my waist, probably so that managers could better see their employees at work. There were a few more antithesis bodies here, but some of them looked like they had been dragged across the floor, leaving bloody trails behind.

“They’re trying to recoup their bodies,” I guessed. A model three body probably had just about enough biomass to create another, fresh model three. Give or take a bit of waste. “Which means that they’re not far.”

I could almost hear Sprout swallow behind me as he raised his gun. We both came to a stop and searched the room from where we were. The cubicles would make for great places for the aliens to hide, even if there was barely enough room in each for three people to stand side-by-side.

“Is this where you were ambushed?” I asked.

“No. The stairwell, over there.” He pointed to the far end of the room, towards a door that was jammed open by a fallen printer.

“Alright,” I said. “Now, I’m no expert, but I bet when we move towards that door we’re going to get hit from behind, so let’s make that more complicated for them, huh? Myalis, I need a couple of resonators.”

Here you go!

I caught a pair of grenades out of the air with my free hand, almost fumbling the second. Then I flicked them both on and underhanded them across the room. Soon their high-pitched keening noise filled the entire space.

“What are those?” he asked.

“They melt antithesis,” I said. “Resonant frequency shit.”

“Huh,” he said. “Will that affect my plants?”

I blinked. I hadn’t considered that. Then again, I hadn’t seen much of his plants yet.

They shouldn’t. Not all of them, at least.

“Myalis says no,” I said simply.

“Oh, good, I was worried that we might--” Sprout and I both flinched and turned towards the cubicles where... where a person was stumbling out from behind cover.

I lowered my gun. That was a human, not an alien. A man in a rumpled business suit who looked like shit warmed over. He tripped over himself as he walked our way, then his face rose and I felt a surge of adrenaline hit me. He was missing half his face.

Catherine, that person is dead.

“Ah, fuck,” I said.

“Sir, are you... you need medical attention,” Sprout said as he started forwards.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him behind me, something that I wouldn’t have been able to do without my armour. Then I raised my gun and fired once.

The office worker fell backwards like a ragdoll, arms and legs splayed out even as a chunk of his chest flew on past him.

“What the fuck!” Sprout shouted.

“Shut up a minute,” I said.

I stepped up to the corpse, then paused as it started to twitch. I looked around again, then knelt next to it. It grossed me out, but I yanked the head aside, then noticed something in the pit where his jaw was hanging loose, white muscles and cartilage exposed. It was a black, squiggly thing that I pinched and pulled out of the corpse.

The worm-like appendage snapped, but the end I had continued to wiggle.

“What the fuck?!” Sprout asked again, with more feeling this time.

“Model seven,” I said. “We’ve got zombies.”

“What do we do?” he asked.

“Shoot them,” I said. There wasn’t much to do otherwise. The people that were zombied up were dead already. Especially this guy. He didn’t look fresh. “Now... where the fuck are they getting bodies from? Hey, Myalis, wouldn’t model sevens be more... uh, susceptible to our nanomachine attack?”

They are smaller, yes. And therefore easier to eliminate. But when a hive starts producing model sevens it usually does so in large quantities.

I scowled. “Fine,” I said. “Myalis, can you send Hawke outside a head’s up about this. Hell, tell Intel-chan too. We don’t want to panic people, but we need folk knowing about it. Sprout, come on, show me where that hole is. Time’s running short.”

***