I dug through the Locust carapace with slow methodical fingers. Under the magnifying glass the gore looked like a field—if that field was red, mushy, and bloody like my friend. We'd spent almost three hours together; that officially made us buds. Or maybe I felt so connected with him—or her, shit, I didn't know—because I'd spent so much time poking the bleeding body and still hadn't turned up answers.
When Prescott made the offer, I never agreed to examine a fresh carcass but the temperature in the room was cold enough to keep the body from reeking. One sniff, I said, and I'm out. I'd had too much Locust stink on the front lines. Retiring to Azura should have ensured my place in luxury but Prescott had other plans for me. He stomped all over the head scientist's toes to make sure I got my hands dirty with this project.
"He's been on the front," Prescott told the award-winning scientists—his best and brightest. "He knows what to look for."
That bullshit didn't hold up with anyone and we all knew it. Honestly I had no idea what I was doing or looking for. Very rarely were Locust bodies still in tact to study. But if it meant I could ruin the day of Mr. "I was awarded the Octus Medal for my work in bioengineering and thanatology" then I was pretty much down for anything.
I cut further into the Locust's chest, slicing soft membrane and hard tendons. The silence was peppered with annoyed sighs from my so-called colleagues. More blood welled.
"Sorry, bud, you've got too much blood," I told the corpse. "Imagine if you sold it all. You'd be one rich little grub."
Another sigh from the peanut gallery.
"Don't mind them, my ugly friend. You may have exploded a horrible lambent death but you're still prettier than them."
Someone coughed. I didn't bother turning around. Dissection wasn't my thing; it required more attention than soldering or coding. Distantly, strangely, I remembered cutting open a cow heart and a sheep brain; I remembered the queasiness that churned my stomach. It felt like a different life when all that happened—school, normalcy. I made another incision. More blood; this time it was a small spray that hit my goggles. I paused and pushed aside the magnifying glass; it bounced gently from the rig on the ceiling.
"I'm not a biologist or anything, but dead bodies don't squirt blood, right?" I asked.
Dr. Lawrence—Mr. "I was awarded the Octus Medal"—came to stand on the opposite side of the table. "There shouldn't be a pulse to push blood, but this is a Locust. We still don't know much about their bodies." He grimaced, touching a gloved hand to his mask—a stroke to the beard concealed underneath. He leaned over the pool of blood in what remained of the drone. "I wouldn't think . . . well, is the second heart still beating?"
"The second heart is missing," I replied.
About the only thing we learned was that Locust had two hearts; one on either side of the chest, and each with its own vascular system. It explained why the bastards were so tough. We still didn't know important things like the difference between male and female or how they bred or grew. Lawrence's crew had already dissected several Berserkers, the biggest females, but never found evidence of eggs or ovaries.
"Try cutting another vein," Lawrence said.
I slit another one—nothing happened. I tried above and below the original area—nothing still.
Lawrence sighed. "Thought we had something for a minute. Well, Corporal Baird, do you admit defeat? I told you before that we have attempted to understand lambency yet there's nothing to know. It's an infection, nothing more."
Infection? I snorted. "I would believe radiation poisoning before I believed infection. These things live in the Hollows with imulsion, literally right next to it, maybe eating it. Trust me, I've been there." You never forget the sight of a mutated Brumak.
He shrugged. "Experience aside, this is a pointless operation. We'll never understand everything."
"Obviously you're not a man of science, Dr. Lawrence. Who admits shit like that?"
I pulled the magnifying glass close again and followed the vascular system. It lead to a dead end where the second heart belonged but I guessed they took it for a different study. In the gaping hole, however, there was a puddle of liquid shimmering up at me. Shit. Was the second heart lambent? Was that why they took it?
This was the first sign of imulsion I'd found inside the body; outside, it's skin had taken on a yellow tinge. It wasn't a lambent body, just one unlucky enough to die by the explosion. If it was an infection, there shouldn't be imulsion inside this soon.
I grabbed the suction tube hanging from the rig on the ceiling. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Maybe it was nothing at all. But as I brought the tube down, the puddle moved.
The tube slid from my fingers. "Holy shit!"
Lawrence leaned over the body and quickly stumbled back with a yelp. The puddle came out of the body, sliding along the floor towards the door. His two assistants were horrified as the puddle, or slime, or whatever the hell it wanted to be, advanced towards them. They screamed. One of them threw his clipboard to the floor as the slime dashed between his legs.
"Catch it!" Lawrence yelled over the chaos. The assistants froze. The thing tried to wiggle under the door. No one seemed to know how to catch it.
Morons.
I reacted.
I grabbed a bed pan from the side table and threw it, and myself, on top of the thing as if it were a grenade. The pan tried to slip from my shaky grip as the thing scurried around, it's escape route officially cut off. One assistant—they never introduced themselves, and I didn't bother asking—brought over a too-small vial. It would never hold the slime-creature-thing.
"Can we all agree it's not a damned infection?" I asked. The pan still jerked around. Even under my full weight, the thing was determined.
"Then what is it?" Lawrence's voice was as weak as my legs felt.
"Who knows, who cares. We have to find a way to subdue it first."
The pan shifted and finally stopped moving. Was that good or bad—did I really want to know? But I had to check, damn it. What if it blew up in my face? If this was the true form of lambency, could it control me too?
Shit, shit, shit.
"Alright, bastard, I like my brain how it is," I told the pan. "If you try something funny, we're not going to be friends anymore."
The assistant with the vial stood ready. With a deep breath, I pulled away and stood up, afraid it would jump onto my face.
It wasn't there.
The slime-creature-thing had disappeared and all that remained was a burnt hole in the floor. It had corroded the tile straight down to the dirt. Gone. Back towards the core where the rest of the imulsion was.
Lawrence stood beside me, his mask down, and wiped his forehead with a cloth. "What was that?"
"Imulsion." I swallowed the lump in my throat and checked my arms—the surgical gown covered my arms and there were no obvious signs of damage or contamination, but I wanted a shower or three just to make sure. "That was imulsion. The crap that fuels our world. It's not just an energy source."
"It's alive," he breathed. His voice held the hope of another damn award. "Corporal, do you know what this means?"
"We're deeper in the shit than we originally thought?" I rolled my eyes. "This really isn't the time to consider sending away to some molecular biology magazine. We need to get rid of this body right now. There could be more imulsion in there and I'm really not in the mood to find out when it explodes."