Chapter 8
[Tight Chains – No Way Out]
The dream was fuzzy. Disjointed. The three of them were at the campsite, sitting at a comfortable picnic table and eating delicious breakfast foods.
Professor sat in the tree, watching them, obvious for his white lab coat.
He also sat in another tree. And another.
The girls were crowded in the tent. Although it had no windows, she could see outside. Without sail, oar, or motor, the tent drifted gently down the river. Amber reached her hand out and dipped it into the water. Cool, crisp, and welcoming.
Something was odd. The water flowed the wrong way.
No, they drifted the wrong way. Floating upstream.
As she noticed this, an odd sensation drew her attention back to the hand dipped in the river. The water had turned to blood.
Amber woke up and immediately shook Blossom's shoulder. After some moaning and muttered complaints, Amber straddled Blossom, who slept on her side. She lowered her mouth to her ear and breathed out words that were barely more than silence.
"Professor's watching us. We have to pack up and leave right now."
After a beat, Blossom sat up and stared at Amber. She leaned over, cupping her hands over Amber's ear and asked, "Are you sure?"
Amber replied in turn, "We go upstream. I'll wake Bubbles."
They dressed and packed as quickly as the confined space allowed, saying nothing more for now. Blossom pointed at the bedroll below them and the tent above. Amber nodded.
Before exiting, Blossom tied the bedroll onto Bubbles's back. Bubbles stood aside and waited for them to break down the tent, both to avoid disturbing the load and to avoid using her sore hand.
They had no idea what time it was, but the moon was bright through the clouds. It was still night an hour later, when they finally dared to talk as they marched.
Blossom asked, "Anything else we should know?"
"Nothing. It was weird. Not strong like the dreams when I had my full powers, but it was definitely not a normal dream. These ones feel different." She explained what she could remember of her dream after her sudden awakening chased most of it away.
"I don't like the blood in the water thing," Blossom said. "Are you sure we're not walking from the frying pan into the fire?"
"We were still fine in the dream. I don't know what the blood means."
Bubbles asked, "But it's definitely Professor?"
"I think so. Maybe a clone, like us. Maybe the one you shot wasn't even the original."
"But then who 'woke him up?'"
Blossom replied, "Maybe an automated system. Which might mean that there's no fighting him unless we can destroy the lab. If he has systems set up somewhere we don't know about, maybe not even then."
Bubbles asked again, "But you're sure it's him?"
Amber said, "Not totally but I'm pretty sure." She paused. "If we destroy the lab, does that mean he won't come after us anymore because he can't make new ones of us?"
Blossom said, "Doubtful. He can rebuild equipment, and provided he can capture us he might use us as new baselines. Instead of making copies of the originals, he'd be making copies of...copies."
Silence again. Another hour later they stopped for short break. Two hours after that, the sky was brightening in anticipation of sunrise.
"I wasn't gonna say anything, but do you girls smell that?" Amber asked. "Is it something in the river?"
Blossom said, "I noticed it, too. Only once in a while, though."
"Yeah," Bubbles said, sniffing the air. She leaned against a tree, supporting some of the weight on her back. Blossom gladly set her suitcase down. Amber turned her head this way and that, searching for the direction of the odor.
Blossom was almost ready to abandon the search, grateful for the break but wanting to keep moving. Then she starting moving towards Bubbles, who stood in awkward embarrassment as Blossom searched the air around her.
Bubbles stammered, "Well, we haven't showered in a while, and our clothes are..."
Blossom gently lifted Bubbles's arm, careful to not jostle the injured hand in the glove. She sniffed the base of the glove and quickly turned her head away. A moment later, she looked at Bubbles seriously, speaking with an even tone she hoped would inspire calm and coolness. It didn't.
"Bubbles, we should take a look at your hand. When's the last time you cleaned it?"
They'd been together almost without pause for the last several days. Blossom already knew the answer.
"Back at the farmhouse," Bubbles said nervously. "In the sink, and then some stuff from the first-aid kit."
"Why don't you sit down for a minute. Amber, could you get the first aid kit and water out?"
They'd burned a small fire last night, just after sunset. The water in the wine bottle had been boiled, although they had been sipping from it when they took breaks this morning.
"I stopped moving it after the first day," Bubbles explained. Blossom was known for always having the right answer if she had all the information. So if she just told her everything she could, it was going to be all right, right? "I wasn't very careful before and I did hurt it a little bit grabbing stuff and things. I did try to flex it a little bit once in a while, and I thought it was just getting stiff—" Bubbles flinched and gasped through her teeth. Blossom was rolling the glove off, turning it inside-out, and had bumped her fingers. The hand was still covered.
"I thought it was just getting sore and stiff because I wasn't using it and it was better to leave it alone. Keep it covered since we went through the trouble of...cleaning...it..." Her voice raised in pitch as she struggled to brace herself and talk at the same time. Blossom peeled the glove away from her palm. In the silence after Bubbles stopped talking, the sound was wet and slightly sticky.
There was no denying they'd found the source of the odd smell. However, the wound was still covered by a small gauze pad on her palm, held in place by a layer of duct tape around her hand. Even so, Blossom was certain the wound was infected.
Even with their powers, the girls could become ill. They were hardier than most, but it was one thing for their bodies to shrug off blades, beams, and boulders. The ecosystem of the body was a bit more complicated, with a blend of sometimes-beneficial and sometimes-harmful foreign bodies. Taking a punch was easy, but illness was more akin to countering a thief or con artist. If the infection spread too far, too fast, they'd doubtless need to get Bubbles to a hospital even after her powers returned.
A whine, both quiet and shrill, escaped from Bubbles as Blossom unwrapped the duct tape and gauze bandage.
Bubbles couldn't have looked if she wanted to. She'd kept her eyes closed the whole time, trying not to scream, afraid someone might hear. When Blossom finished, Bubbles just started panting like she'd just competed in all the events of a track meet, without breaks.
Blossom held Bubbles's wrist firmly, but not painfully, moving her arm around to get a good look in the early morning light. The palm was slick with a mixture of blood and pus. Disturbingly, her ring finger appeared red and slightly swollen whereas her other fingers looked pale.
Light-headed from pain and hyperventilation, Bubbles started breathing more steadily, but heavily. She moaned and groaned as Blossom traced a finger along the edges of the palm, at least an inch from the wound.
"How bad is it?" Bubbles asked. "Should I even look at it?"
"It's up to you, but I think you might want to wait until we've washed it a bit."
Bubbles moaned in anticipation of the future pain, but said nothing. She was largely silent as Blossom carefully dabbed and wiped with fresh gauze from the first-aid kit, wet with water and occasionally some peroxide. Only an occasional, sharp inhalation reminded them that she was feeling anything.
That changed when Blossom poured a stream of peroxide along the wound to flush it out. Bubbles hunched forward and made a sound that was something in between growling and struggling with constipation.
"I think we're ready to bandage it up," Blossom said after a bit more cleaning.
"Mmmm," Bubbles replied. "Mmmjust... Just a sec."
They paused while she steadied herself and waited for the pain to diminish slightly.
When she sat up again, her face was wet with tears below and sweat above. As she looked at her hand, she frowned and wept again. She tried to bend her ring finger just slightly, and wheezed gently through her teeth before deciding not to push it. Her other fingers moved a bit more easily.
Bubbles spoke, mostly to herself. "Okay. Okay, that...could be worse. Okay. Ready to bandage it up?"
Blossom nodded. "Ready?"
Bubbles leaned back, closed her eyes, and nodded. By the time all was said and done, they had a quarter-a-bottle of peroxide and a third of the gauze remaining. What little water was left in the wine bottle, Blossom insisted Bubbles drink now. The river was close—they'd fill it up again with non-boiled water for the day's hike.
"I'm ready for the glove, if you wanna help put it on. Should we...put it on inside out? Clean it or something?"
Blossom shook her head. "I think we should forget the glove. The warm, moist space may be helping the bad stuff more than helping you, I think. You're already used to not using it, so maybe just be careful not to touch anything."
Bubbles nodded.
"Just a few more days," Blossom promised. "Amber's dreaming stuff again, so maybe she'll push us right where we need to go in the meanwhile."
Bubbles nodded again and held out her good hand. Blossom and Amber helped her to her feet. They continued on, hating the silence but finding no pleasant way to fill it.
Professor spilled his morning coffee as he scrambled away from the computer. The girls had left hours before he woke up.
In his sloppy haste to put on the suit, he would have sworn it took longer than donning it normally. In either case, he was soon soaring in the air once more, jetting towards the woods. He swooped low, hovering over the old campsite as the drones returned to their place in the suit's back.
He flew onward with some caution. The ground, still slightly damp in places, offered occasional tracks to follow. Meanwhile, a panel in his helmet display played back everything he'd missed from the previous night, searching for clues.
Shortly before forest thinned and the river met the small lake it drained from, Professor found something odd on the ground. He landed and examined it with care, fearing treachery.
It was a cleaning glove, stuffed with a wad of old bandage and duct tape. Analysis of the blood confirmed it belonged to Bubbles.
Professor sprayed it with a brief burst from the flamethrower, turning it to melted char and ash. Another burst from the same nozzle sprayed a white fog that doused the fire he'd started. The tube retreated into the arm cuff as Professor looked forward. They couldn't be far from here. Their tracks showed a fairly normal gait, not superspeed running.
Yet, they were not on the long range scanners. Had he made an error in his modifications? Set the filter a little too aggressively?
Professor allowed more and more raw data to come in. There was at least one large life form in the area, possibly human.
With whoosh and flame, Professor took flight, heading for the lake upstream.
