A/N: Welcome back, dear readers and lurkers! I'm so sorry for the delay in posting, but I have my act together now. I've revised a lot and I'm well pleased with the result. So, please enjoy.
Chapter Thirty-five: Heavy Metal
The broad, metallic corridor ran for a length, frequently dividing into intersections and continuing out of sight in either direction. Every once in a while, a dire message dashed out in blood would warn him. A nasty shock nauseated him when he realized he saw the symbols as letters in English…and he couldn't remember when he'd obtained the ability to translate the cuneiform without trying. He told himself he had to avoid worrying about it, but the storeroom for his worry was filling up rapidly.
It was impossible to say how far he went without seeing Necromorphs. But he didn't drop his guard. Any moment, the horde would come crashing through ducts or lurch around the corners. His path had led him from a main corridor into a series of smaller, tighter side halls, which matched the condensed design of ships. Calhoune had warned them that routes would divert from main concourses because of damaged doors and locked areas. However, the farther from those broader routes he went, the less space he had for avoiding attack. He'd fought in close quarters on the Ishimura, and it hadn't been an experience he relished.
So he should've known.
Isaac turned a corner to another hall. Two people could walk side by side comfortably, and the ceiling was a meter or two overhead. He wasn't a hydro engineer, so the TK cranks, valves, and pipes that stretched up and down the sides of the hall were unknown to him. This area was remarkably darker than previous ones and damp, for an aqueduct that had supposedly been bone dry for decades. Several monitors and meters half-heartedly blinked and bleeped at him, lacking the electricity to give full readings. Further along, the hall widened into a control room with floor to ceiling work stations and screens.
When alarms blared in decibels enough to scare the piss out of him, he set aside the plasma explosive so he wouldn't trip over it. The station announced the presence of a bio-hazard in the vicinity. A grate crashed unseen; Isaac glanced over his shoulder, paranoid about his six, but an angry roar secured his attention forward.
With the darkness and orange, epileptic flash from the emergency lights, Isaac barely registered the blue blur as a Necromorph charged from around a station. Reflexively, he shot at it, the plasma cracking through flesh and bone, and in his haste, he'd missed the thigh. And then it was fucking on him. He stumbled back, but the wall caught him, stopped cold his retreat. A scythe descended; Isaac batted it aside with his forearm, and it crunched into the panel over his head. With his free hand, he had a death-grip on the other blade. Up close, the rotted and infected flesh wafted a ripe, sweet odor into his helmet. Closer and closer the dead mass pressed to him. Its roars deafened him, the drip of blood and drool splattered his visor, as he wrestled with the twitcher for control.
"I don't have fucking time for this!"
He wedged his foot between their bodies and kicked with every ounce of his might; the twitcher staggered back, far enough that Isaac used the cutter with righteous precision. It fell to pieces and remained unmoving even as he stomped the head, crushing it under his foot like a grape.
Another one howled toward him. His heart in his throat, Isaac TK'd a blade from the 'dead' one, cracking his elbow into the wall, and blasted the improvised missile into the oncoming twitcher's midsection. Blood and gore spurted out of it. The twitcher careened back and hung like a loose sack on the blade that pinned it to the wall, dark liquid dribbling from its speared guts. The lockdown cancelled. In the abrupt quiet, Isaac caught his breath and cleared his head.
Sighing, he lifted up the explosive. He detested fighting in close quarters.
Isaac moved through the control room. On the other side of the short area was another unlocked door. On tiptoes, he crept forward, guiding Little Pig with TK. The door ahead of him had the symbol of the aqueduct and the crest of the hydro engineers, so he knew he was getting closer. Once he opened it, he slipped through into another control room. A forlorn drip echoed out from the far end, and he noticed that there were puddles that hadn't evaporated.
His waypoint took him around an upright metallic jumble filled with wires and plasma circuits, and into an inactive lift. More meters, monitors, and blank, cracked holoscreens lined the room. These seats were not empty; instead, gnawed corpses spilled out, slouching over the panels or stretched in gruesome violence on the floor. Testing them with his TK revealed no hiding Necromorphs. Dark congealed blood had sprayed everywhere. He grimaced when he found another audio log in a curled hand.
To cut the oppressive silence, he let it play while he fiddled with the terminal inlaid into the lift. "Hail the glorious Marker, which will bring to us salvation and Convergence. May it forever be sacred and holy, amen. My brothers and sisters, we have come to the last steps of our journey. Our battle has been a bloody one and may those who've fallen find peace in the rebirth that will spread over this station and into the universe."
Aster's zeal sickened Isaac, who had to pause before he shocked himself with the wires. "The Marker has called us with its awing power, the power that will uplift us into Convergence and evolution. Once we've crossed the threshold, experienced Ascension, there will be no stopping the glorious power that the Marker will bestow upon us. All praise the Marker! May we be rewarded at the end of our righteous journey!"
Several other voices rose in praise of the Marker before Aster signed off. Isaac finished hacking the lift and called it. Whatever Aster and his followers had done, it was in the aqueduct below. Nerves fluttered around in Isaac's stomach when the lift opened for him. What would he find besides the tentacle?
"Let's go, Little Pig," he said to the explosive. "I hope you do the trick."
Isaac had never been a skittish man, but he'd seen the awesome size of the colossal, had felt the influence of the Marker in the darkness cast onto the station. His nerves were so shot that when the lights flickered, he jumped and aimed his plasma cutter at every corner to make sure nothing showed up unexpectedly. Nothing did. Then the entire lift whined to a shuttering halt. The computerized recording announced that the track had an obstruction and that repair technicians had been notified. Dutifully, the lift opened at the next available level. Shit. An ill-timed detour he didn't need.
Before leaving the lift, Isaac activated his audio. "Hey guys, I've got a problem here. It might take me a few more minutes to get Little Pig in place. Do you copy?"
Static punctuated Trey's reply. "…copy. We're…aque…stand…" The rest of his message was unintelligible, masked by the static. "…resis…out."
With that, the link cut out. Grimly, Isaac stepped from the lift into the new area. Christ. This was going to be hell. There was never a place that he hated as quickly or more thoroughly than here. What lay out in front of him was a narrow hall, an access corridor if his guess was good. Pipes lined the walls and ceiling, water dripped out of joints that had rattled loose, and the drip-drip-drip sound echoed in the hall with nerve-wracking steadiness. Also, the emergency lighting was weak and sporadic at best.
Anxiety prickled up his spine. He kept the plasma cutter raised to shed light into the dark tunnel, footsteps crunching over the loose silt that had accumulated on the path. Minutes crawled past as he strode further into the confined tunnel. Puddles that had been shallow deepened to a couple inches and soon rose to his ankles. Darkness encompassed him more times than not. Further and further he pushed. He needed something to happen. Anything to break this unbearable monotony.
"Iiiiis-aaac…" A faint, sing-song voice whispered his name; it chilled him to the bone. He faltered, slowed, when his arm muscles ached with a painful burn. How long had he followed this tunnel? For ages. An eternity. "Isaaaaac. Can you hear me?"
The throb increased to a pounding in his forehead, so it felt like a heavy mallet hammered away at his skull, and unseen eyes were on him, he was sure. Waiting. Waiting. The voice and the eyes were paired. Where the fuck was it coming from? He flicked the flashlight to the sides, checking and rechecking the corridor, but there was nothing except a yawning black with pipes and water droplets pattering to the ground.
Sweat rolled into his eyes. Little Pig had sudden weight and had become burdensome, but if he set it aside, he would not pick it up again. A physical yoke had settled across his shoulders until his knees and leg muscles screamed in agony. Dammit all, he was going to collapse under the pressure of it, and he staggered drunkenly into the pipes, the metal parts on his shoulder scraping against them.
"Give in, Isaac," cooed the familiar, silken whisper. "Lay aside your weapon. Rest for a while."
The Marker's signal was a sharp, lancing pain that lashed white streaks across his vision. Wincing from it, Isaac set his jaw. "It's in your head, Clarke," he said. "It's in your fucking head. Ignore it."
"That won't do you any good," said the Marker. It manipulated its signal so that an orange haze cloaked his surroundings, swarmed his hearing with a high frequency screeching. Whatever it did hurt him, made his brain curdle inside his head. He clamped his hands to his head, to his ears to unhear the wretched whispers. "You're a part of it, don't you see? You've been brought into the fold."
Angrily, he stood his ground. "You can't control me."
"Just as you can't destroy me. I'm always inside you, Isaac. I'm always going to be -"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" He screamed it until it drowned out the voice, the water drips, the oppressive silence in the tunnel, echoed into unseen cracks and crevices. The Marker had touched a cold finger on the very pulse of his fear, and he did not want to face that until he absolutely had to. For good measure, he swore, adding, "I won't fucking listen to you."
His heart thud in his ears, beat erratically in his throat. He realized he'd dropped Little Pig, so he picked that back up. Then he started moving again. Forced himself to move again. Stiffly, at first, so he commanded his feet and legs to obey, and counted his steps. Left. Right. Left. Right. Keep going. Keep moving. Right. Left. Right. Pick up speed, Clarke. Move your ass. Inside his head, the signal breathed, alive, and as much as he could, he edged around it. He shaped an image of Ellie in his mind, which occupied him as he cradled her head with his hands, touched the texture of her skin, tracked the slow smile across her lips. Keeping her picture behind his eyes calmed him and helped pass the time.
Loud, clamorous roars exploded at once around him- -he couldn't tell if it was coming from ahead or behind him- -and he released the hold on the t-kart, but then he changed his mind and picked it up again. The Marker would want him to stand and fight; movement was his best offense. Speed bred freedom from the Marker's potent effects, the action a release from the monotony. With shoving forward Little Pig, he could not break into a flat-out sprint.
He swung around a curve in the corridor. From the ceiling, three lurkers stared at him with open, undead hostility in their hot yellow eyes, their barbed tentacles squirming at face-level. "WHOA, SHIT!"
Little Pig clanked to the ground. With an agility of a man half his age, he dodged back around the curve, or rather, launched himself bodily and took the majority of his weight on his shoulder. He landed back flat to the pipes and sprawled on the pathway. Multiple missiles panged into metal, puncturing it so that water spewed out in white spray that soaked his visor. He backed up on his heads as several more missiles shot divots into the walls and ground. In the second that he hadn't returned fire, one had landed at his feet, a mouthful of fangs and a face blackened with disease, and it roared/hissed at him.
Too quick, the lurker lunged, the deadly barbs angled downward. Without anywhere to go, he tucked in his elbows and rolled for his escape. A thud, coupled with an infuriated scream, as he scrambled to get to his feet, but a small body pummeled him between his shoulder blades, knocking the breath from his lungs. Desperate for room, he threw himself into a somersault, which bucked off a second lurker. The monstrosity flew to the side- -slammed into the wall with a meaty thwack. Blindly, Isaac reached for his cutter and squeezed the trigger without aiming. Discharging with satisfying cracks, the plasma branded the lurker with lacerations that smoked and spurt miniature blood-fountains.
Above him, the third lurker had waited, the trap set, and fired a trio of missiles at him. Two missed. One nailed him in the midsection. Over the flare of pain, Isaac had the presence of mind to douse the general area with stasis. The three lurkers had grouped close enough together that one shot got all of them. Probably the single benefit garnered from the enclosed quarters. His stasis had enough duration that he managed to stomp the fucking things into the consistency of jelly, saving plasma. Breathless, he touched where the barb had dinged his sec-suit; the patch-job wouldn't hold up forever. Before much longer, he'd need a suit repair.
Distant in the labyrinth, Necromorphic thunder reminded him that he remained in a precarious position. Shit…he had to keep moving. He returned to Little Pig, lifted it, and started his trek anew until he came to an unobtrusive door marked "EQUIPMENT RESEARCH AND DESIGN". What sort of equipment would EarthGov be researching and designing here, in the middle of nowhere? Curiosity piqued, Isaac went up to the door, which had a locking mechanism that required him to have the appropriate clearance.
He hesitated. With the noisy flood crashing around him, his trusty plasma cutter would be ineffective against their sheer numbers, both here and when he would plant Little Pig. Three options were available: search around for an appropriate RIG; bypass the system; or move on. So far, the tunnels and halls had been largely unoccupied and he doubted he would easily find the correct RIG. For another second, he stood undecided, and then the temptation was too great. Ellie would murder him, but he rested Little Pig beside the door and inspected the pipeworks layered over thin, bolted panels.
It seemed that if he wanted to pry open the appropriate panel, he'd have to shut off the water valve. A system of multi-colored and varying-sized pipes spread out into an intricate web further along the tunnel where it broadened in width and height. After some guesswork, he figured out the correct shut-off lever to crank to gain access to the panels, and after prying away two or three, he found the correct wires to the lock and scanner. As his fingers peeled and twisted, he tried not to think how close the roars had gotten in the last few moments he'd remained in this area. They were practically breathing down his neck.
"C'mon, you piece of shit," he muttered when the two wires he'd spliced together had no effect. "What's the hold up?"
He forced back the rising worry, the press for time, and reexamined the wires in his fingers. Ah. That was his mistake. Quickly, he pulled a couple other wires, and used a sure motion to connect everything together. This time, the door unlocked and opened for him so he could slip into the room beyond. For the first time since stepping foot in this hellhole, relief washed over him.
The chamber was wide open and lit starkly with overhead fluorescent lights. Several work tables and benches broke up the space, meticulously cleared of any extraneous parts and pieces except for a text log's orange glow. Lining the perimeter of the chamber were clear display cases, which when approached, appeared to hold militarized mining tools. Several other doors led to what seemed to be further laboratory facilities and some offices.
The text log was an invoice detailing an exchange between a Dr. Jaison Turner and Millicient Daniels. Daniels had evidently put pressure on Turner to complete the tests and streamlining of something called "Queen Bee". Someone called the Overseer had made a personal call on Daniels, and based on Daniels' tone, it had not been a pleasant conversation. Turner replied that the team was working as fast as possible, but that Queen Bee needed stabilization and couldn't be rushed. Interesting.
Isaac ran a hand over the cases, pausing occasionally to squint at the descriptive holographic tags for each. Almost immediately, he noticed one of the cases was empty- -no surprise it was the one marked Queen Bee- -but the description was still active. Something to do with 'ultrasonic handheld emitter', and he assumed it was a suit modification or attachment of some sort like kinesis or stasis. One that looked promising was called the Disintegrator, officially called the 2.5V TFMS Shotgun. The description elaborated on what TFMS stood for: triflic acid, which was a thousand times more damaging and corrosive than sulfuric acid and it seemed that this sort of acid was even more concentrated than that.
"Happy birthday to me," he said with a side smile. "I've wanted a new toy."
The lockpad was active and needed RIG clearance, so he thought he could do a rapid search through the offices. Might as well while he was there; perhaps he'd get lucky. If and when the Necromorphs penetrated the lab area, he'd leave. He accessed the door marked for the offices and after a short hall, came to a circular central area which was waiting room for the five offices. Offices two through three yielded nothing of value, but office four opened to a strict and neat room with a work area, microscopes, and a locker. Two chairs flanked the desk; for visitors he supposed.
"S-stop right there!" A high, strained feminine voice spoke with nervous authority behind him. "P-put up your hands! I'm warning you…no funny business!"
No funny business? Was she shitting him? "Okay, okay." He didn't know what she had trained on him, but he could give it a good guess. In surrender, he spread out his arms but did not toss aside the cutter. "I'm turning around."
"Severe" leaped to color her description. She was average height, maybe late twenties with blue eyes strangely colored behind the practical eyeglasses; she wore a practical blue and white uniform. Her regular brown hair was in a ponytail at the crown of her head. Her features were unremarkable. From head to toe she trembled, and since her face was drained of color, he had a hunch it was fear. He saw that she had her hand outstretched in front of her, propped by her opposite forearm. Some type of device had opened on either side of the forearm aimed at him. In the quiet, he heard a gentle, mechanical hum.
"Drop what's in your hand," she told him, stuttering on her words. "Do it or I'll kill you! I'll do it!"
Isaac doubted she had the guts to murder him; her whole aura quivered like spineless gelatin. "What do you want me dead for?" he asked her to call her bluff. He let his arms relax to his sides and brushed his forefinger along the trigger's curve. His quick-draw skills had improved considerably since fighting Necromorphs. "You'll end up having to kill me a second time."
Her eyes popped open as if she hadn't expected that. "I said drop your weapon!"
"Lady, either kill me or put down your weapon. I don't have time for this," he replied.
Then, in dismissal, he stepped over to the fifth office door. Ellie's voice in his head told him he was reckless, but he'd been honest. He really didn't have time to putz around. The Necromorphs were out there hunting for him and he had a job to do besides. All he wanted was a weapon that could keep him alive in the meanwhile.
"DON'T GO IN THERE!" the woman yelled at him, but it was too late, he'd already tapped the button to the door.
Before the door even fully opened, a tall, shrieking black mass hurtled into him. Breath exploded from his lungs, but his body unconsciously reacted. He absorbed the hit and used the momentum to roll away. The Necromorph launched at him- -he could discern the razor scythes arched forward on tangled, elongated sinews- -and he was too close to miss with stasis. But the Necromorph (a spitter, he saw) sidestepped, dainty as a warped and diseased ballerina, so the slowing energy went wide. In a blink of an eye, it lurched at him again, and after the moment of blind panic, he squeezed the cutter's trigger without sighting first, and worse, in his off-hand. Once, twice, three times the plasma hissed on the cracked, running tissue. His aim was off, but the shots staggered back the spitter enough to give him room to hustle upwards.
The spitter shrieked, enraged, and with a sickly crackle and burst of gore, three long, whip-like tentacles spurted from its back. One of them lashed out, quick as a cobra strike, and reamed him across the chest so that he slammed into a holodisplay. The plastic crunched, shattered.
Already the tentacle had curled and tightened a hold around his neck, choking him with unbreakable firmness. The pressure was at the right angle and activated the bumper to put down his visor.
"Goddamn!" Wildly, Isaac brought up the cutter to shoot the tentacle at point blank range. The spitter anticipated him, catching his wrist with the second tentacle in a grip that reminded him he'd broken his arm. He wrestled it with his free hand, but the third tentacle pried his arm out. Hot embers glowed in its eyes over slavering mandibles that chomped at air. Rancid air clouded his head. Over the spitter's shoulder, the woman stood frozen in horror. "A little help here!"
Calling out had been a mistake. His lungs burned for oxygen as black narrowed his vision. He didn't even feel the tightness at his throat anymore. The spitter's human arms clasped at him, pinned him against the wall, his feet off the ground and kicking uselessly against the rotted monster. Fury seized him as he toed a huge, gaping hole into nothing, fury that he couldn't fight its pull and was too weak to fight it. Fury that he'd let down Ellie…
He was so sorry about everything.
Faint buzzing or a monotonous hum reached him, but he'd already been sucked into swirling darkness. Even here, he could not escape the Marker.
Pain seared straight through his brain, blinding him with white light as it exploded in his head. He was face to face with the Grey Marker. It was big, not quite as big as the Gold Marker, but big enough that it was an intimidating height, its twin horns piercing the sky. In the darkness, the cuneiform tattooed on the Marker's skin pulsed with glowing silver. A ghostly image stood in front of him; with the Red and Gold Markers, it had been Nicole, with this new one, it was his mother. She was unchanged since the last time he'd seen her, and she was as she had been when she'd been alive.
"Isaac," she sang in a whisper, "Isaac, there you are. I've been looking for you."
Her face contorted, blanched with terrible light as she screamed at him, her mouth open and her eyes empty of life. He felt the dead things crawling inside his head, under his skin, writhing to get out. He heard a child's laughter. Shrieks of terror resounded around him- -thousands of different voices- -paired with the sound of a thousand limbs scrabbling towards him. Something so evil, so malignant, thrummed through the air that it suffocated him, drowned him. He was utterly alone. Millions of tiny pricks jabbed into the soft tissue of his brain and he could sense no end to this hell, no relief.
The Marker's profane voice was all around, a child's whisper that echoed to his raw nerves. "You won't escape this time, Isaac."
And as suddenly as it gripped him, it released. Darkness surrounded him with the sensation of floating. It was so close to his mouth and nose, he felt as though an icy hand covered his face. Suffocating him. The quiet rang in his ears. He was very cold, freezing, and he shivered uncontrollably, as his body had no warmth left. A powerful headache clenched a fist underneath his forehead and at the base of his skull. He had no sense of time or direction.
"Isaac." Nicole's voice came to him. When she knelt over him, he realized he'd been prostrate, though he could not feel solid ground beneath him. "It's time to get up."
He resisted, but Nicole's warm hand stroked his cheek and he opened his eyes. Her smile was soft, forgiving, and emotion churned in his chest. He felt so heavy, he was weak with it. Useless.
Nicole's fingers traced his brow. "You have to believe you can."
"I don't have anything left."
"It's too early to give everything up. We believe in you," she said, sweeping her hand in a gesture that encompassed all the men, women, and children that had been hidden away in the darkness. "The dead and the living believe in you. You must believe in yourself."
"I'm only a man. An old man," he amended. "And how many more are there? How many more Markers have to be destroyed?"
She shook her head. "Isaac, the Markers have held onto a secret, a secret that will be revealed to you very soon. Once the Grey Marker is destroyed, you'll have time."
"Time for what? What secret?"
"Trust me." Her fingers pressed his lips. "Destroy the Grey Marker. You can do this. You must."
Her image distorted before completely fading away. He awoke then, disorientated, crushed under a carcass and wheezing. Something constricted his throat. He struggled, but could not move. Tentacles had tangled in loops and knots around his limbs, and a plain woman with a brunette ponytail tore away the tentacle from his neck. He'd forgotten entirely who she was and what she was doing.
"I can't believe you're still alive," she said, jerking free the limp flesh. "That scared me shitless!"
Isaac said nothing, his breath catching, but accepted her help as she shoved off the Necromorph to hoist him up. Blood had splattered a coat on his suit; her uniform had large blood spots as well. Vaguely, he recollected that she'd been an enemy, maybe, but he definitely didn't trust her. His memories fluttered and flew through his fingers. He couldn't get a grasp on anything real after the Marker had shredded into his mind except the cutting numbness inside him. A hammer's blow thudded dully on the inside of his skull. From a distance, he accepted his plasma cutter from her when she handed it to him.
She noticed his long silence. "Hey? Are you okay?"
He nodded. But really, he wasn't.
"You look a little shaky," she said, anyway. She tugged his arm. "You better sit down for a moment."
In his dazed state, he let her guide him to a bench near a destroyed holopanel that hung by wires from the wall. He kept his plasma cutter in his hand, and she didn't seem inclined to tell him to set it aside. He remembered her initial hostility. What had changed? As he sat, he thought that if anyone needed a seat, it was her. She was as jittery as before, her complexion wan in the lights. Some time passed in silence as Isaac gathered his wits enough to form coherent words.
"Who are you?"
"I-I'm Ivy. Ivy Bowden. I work…worked as a lab assistant to Dr. Turner." She swallowed and nodded her head to the gory mess of a Necromorph that lay in an oozing black puddle. Chunks had blown off across the waiting area, smearing along the otherwise pristine floor. "That's…that was Dr. Turner. We wanted to safeguard the weapons when the Unitologists launched their attack. All the R-Sec was deployed to other parts of the station, but we remained."
Her shaky fingers brushed a lock of hair back and in the same movement, she tapped her glasses to the bridge of her nose. "Then Dr. Turner…started seeing things. Talking. Acting…strange. She went into her office and told me to stay out. I stayed in my office trying to radio for help, and when I came back, I heard…noises on the other side. I was too afraid to open the door."
"Why did you…? You were set to kill me."
Her face crumpled; she shrugged. "I don't know. Logically I know who you are and what you've done. I have a duty to arrest you, to protect the research. But…you…called out to me. It wasn't out loud. It was…almost like you…I don't know. I felt pain. Grief. Sadness." She peeked at him from the corner of her eye. "And then I understood. I just…I understood your purpose."
"I'm destroying that Marker," he told her so they were clear. "I don't care about research."
"I think"- -she rested her head back and in that moment, her trembling eased- -"I think that I'm meant to help you."
"You can start by letting me use Turner's RIG to open one of those display cases." He'd see in short order if she was serious about helping him. "I need a better weapon."
Ivy stood. "I have clearance. In exchange, I want to know your plan."
"The plan is to destroy the Marker," he replied curtly as he continued to mistrust her. "That's all there is."
She issued an admonishing look over her glasses, but said nothing in return as she led him through the office hall to the main laboratory area. He went to and patted the display case that had the shotgun on steroids, which she opened without another word. Reverently, he lifted it from its tines and ogled the shiny, unmarred stock and barrel. The design of the shotgun was rectangular and squat, without any extra length. It had a built-in flashlight on the top of it and a pump under it.
"Here's the stockpile of ammo." Ivy had stepped to another locked cabinet that opened when she stood in front of it. Dozens of drawers lined the cabinet and she indicated the correct one. The ammo was in clips- -not the circular design for incendiary rounds- -but rectangular cartridges. He went across to her and cleaned out the cabinet of ammo, shoving the clips wherever they could fit into the pockets of his suit.
When he brought the stock to his shoulder, she said, "Please be careful with that. It's a new design."
It had weight, but wasn't heavy enough to slow him. After a moment, he figured out how to load the cartridge at the butt of the gun and release the safety. "I'll be gentle as a lamb. Is it pump-action?"
"You can toggle a switch, but it's designed to be automatic. You'll have to pump it once to load the chamber."
"Beautiful." He looked up to see that she had used TK on the cabinet to tug it aside. "What're you doing?"
She didn't stop until she'd revealed a suit kiosk behind the cabinet. "It's not a guarantee that you'll avoid the acid. And trust me. You'll want to avoid the acid. We designed a special suit that can withstand any backsplash that may occur." Only then did she give him a good appraisal from head to toe. "Your suit looks very damaged. It might be a wise idea to upgrade. Besides, the suit will have a holster for the shotgun."
When he stood, gazing at her without saying anything, she tilted her head and squinted her eyes, confused. "What's the look for?"
"I'm not leaving you out here unattended."
Her confusion deepened. "I don't understand."
"I don't trust you. As tempting as that new suit is, you're not getting me into that suit kiosk." He straightened. "I can't risk giving you the opportunity to stab me in the back."
"I…I saved your life."
"After threatening it in the first place."
They stood for a moment, silently assessing each other at the impasse. Then Ivy huffed and reached into a pouch that hung on the belt of her uniform. "Fine. Tie me up if you want." She tossed over some plastic ties, which scattered on the tabletop between them.
He had reached over to take one when the laboratory shut down into automatic bio-containment complete with wailing siren and red lights.
A/N: Thanks to everyone for being patient and not peppering me with snarky messages. I appreciate the time you gave me to sort out my life and I hope that the rest of this story is enjoyable. Next chapter will be posted June 1st. Let's finish this bitch, shall we?
Lite edits 12/20/15.