If we just had a bone knitter and a dermal regenerator, we could have this fixed up in a few minutes, Jane thought. And if I had a fairy godmother, I'd be the prettiest princess at the ball.
With the wound cleaned as best as she could manage with just the emergency first aid supplies she and Daria carried, Jane wrapped the fingers together with some basic bioplastic tape, set Daria's hand down gently, and then went to sit next to Burnout.
Neither of them said anything nor even looked at each other. Jane had only sat next to the other woman for mutual defense, though she'd nearly been ready to drop the blonde off with the next set of creatures they ran across after Burnout had demanded they either leave Daria behind, shoot her in the head, or both. Burnout was convinced that Daria would soon enough turn into one of the creatures too thanks to the bite.
Jane had angrily argued that they had no idea how the whatever-it-was spread, or even if it was contagious at all. There was even the possibility, Jane had yelled, that the stuff was in the air that they had been breathing since they'd gotten in, and they might all three be turning into monsters within the hour anyway, no matter what.
Just before things had downgraded to actual physical violence, Burnout had dropped it and then helped Jane drag Daria to a nearby room and set her up on a cleared office desk. Jane could still tell that the other woman wanted to put a bolt between Daria's eyes, but as long as she didn't say anything, Jane wasn't going to say anything. They would just wait until Daria woke up and find out what-
"Gah dammit!"
Daria's bandaged hand shot up, and she seemed to be staring blearily at it when Jane and Burnout jumped up and dashed to her side.
"What the hell happened?" Daria asked as she tried to sit up.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Jane asked. She picked out a small water pouch and held the straw up to her partner's lips.
Daria drank greedily for just a few seconds, coughed, then said, "Remember? The last thing I remember is getting my hand bitten off by that ghoulish bitch!" She put her unwounded hand against her head, then spoke in a softer tone. "It's not something you forget anytime soon."
Jane licked her lips. "Okay, after that, Burnout shot the one that bit you," she said. "I took out the two at the door, then handled the one you swiped with your claw. The one you grazed kinda flopped around for a bit and then stopped moving. I slapped a tranq on you when you didn't respond, then we brought you in here and cleaned you up."
"Dammit," Daria said with a sigh. "I am really getting sick of getting knocked out on these little adventures."
"At least you haven't turned into one of those things," Burnout said, crossing her arms. "Yet."
"Dammit, Burn-"
Daria put her hand on Jane's shoulder and shook her head. "She's right. If these things are supposed to be acting like movie ghouls, then I may end up turning because of this." She swallowed hard, then continued, "As unappealing as that may be. Transferring the nanos through fluids - like through saliva into the bloodstream - seems like a pretty likely method of infection."
"I'm glad we can discuss this in such clinical terms," Jane said sarcastically, "but doesn't that mean you're dead?"
Fixing Jane's eyes with her own, Daria pushed herself off the desk. "Not yet, it doesn't," she said. "And if we can find someone quickly enough, we might be able to get this crap flushed out of my system before it takes hold."
"Okay, fine, but first, what about your undersleeve special?" Jane asked. "If we come up against any more zombie-ghoul-things, we're gonna need all our gear to be reliable, right?"
Daria sighed, shook her head, and pulled her right sleeve down to look at the sheathe strapped to her forearm. "The damn thing has been sticking ever since I pushed it through the faceplate of that Vexxer," she said. "I've been meaning to readjust it, but it'll have to wait. I'll just have to remember to cut from the left only."
She tried to curl the fingers on her right hand, but only moved them about a centimeter before grimacing in pain and giving up. "Guess I'll be shooting from the left, too," she added grimly.
"So what now?" Burnout asked.
Daria rolled her sleeve back down, put her Stetson on, and awkwardly pulled her pistol out with her left hand. "Now we go back to the agents' office and see if we can find some clue as to where they ran off to."
"Nothing but blood," Burnout said as they stepped back out into the hallway.
"Maybe, maybe not," said Daria. "We won't know unless we look, and it's better than wandering around aimlessly. Don't worry . . . tracking people down is our business. We'll find them."
The bodies were where the women had left them, tumbled all over each other in front of the office door. Daria kicked at one with her foot, but it took the minor attack with the usual indifference of any normal corpse. After looking down at the pile of flesh for a few moments, she turned to the door.
"Stay here," she said. "If I'm already infected, it doesn't matter if the blood has nanos in it or not."
"Suits me," Jane said, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the other room. "There's something I've been wanting to check out here anyway."
The air inside of the office was oppressive, weighing down on Daria as she stepped around the desks carefully. The stench was almost overwhelming, even after she lifted her shirt over her mouth and nose and anchored it with her glasses. The floor was carpeted, but it had apparently absorbed all of the red liquid it could, leaving a quarter inch layer of gore squelching around her boots.
The only visible light came from Jane and Burnout's torches outside the door, which was enough to allow Daria to look around with her nightvision instead of her own gunlight. If there was anything still animate in the room, she didn't want to startle it before she could prepare herself for its reaction.
But nothing jumped unexpectedly from any of the corners, and the areas underneath the desks were empty. Even the machines in the room were silent. The only thing that she found besides more blood was a pile of body parts in the back, squeezed between two filing cabinets.
They were the remains of humans, she was sure, though they only barely resembled their original shapes. Flesh and meat had been torn forcibly from bone by tooth and claw in random patches and - if her surroundings were any indication - with violent abandon. Who they might have belonged to was impossible to determine. Whatever clothing the people had been wearing was either gone or buried under the pile, as were their heads. Daria thought she saw just a hint of hair poking out from underneath what might have been an arm, but her gag reflex was already working itself into a high fever and there wasn't enough money in the world that would make her want to reach out and touch that cesspool.
She wobbled her way out of office, pushed past the other two women, and dry heaved as she leaned against a wall. Her vision swam as her thoughts tumbled around each other like drunken gymnasts.
"You okay?" Burnout asked.
"Of course she's not okay. Just give her a minute," Jane said, unconcerned, as she continued with her work over the corpses.
"But-"
"She was just in a room full of human puree, chica," Jane said more sternly. "Leave her alone and help me here."
After a few minutes, Daria's retching stopped. She spit a few times, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, then walked back over and said, "I didn't see anything that would help us," she said, "but I think we can definitely call these things 'ghouls' now. They only bit me a little, but those poor bastards . . . it must've been like a feeding frenzy.
"So what are we doing over here?" she asked, leaning over the two bodies Jane was inspecting.
"Well, I got to thinking about the bite mark on the ghoul who pushed me up against the wall," Jane told her, "and I wanted to see if these guys had anything similar."
"And they don't," Daria said with a frown. Looking over the woman and man's stripped corpses, the only wounds she could see were the laser holes they had burned through the ghouls in the earlier fight.
"Bingo," Jane said, grunting as she turned the woman over to show her flawless back. "I don't even see a puncture wound for a needle or anything. Maybe they changed because of something they ate? Or something in the air?"
"Maybe," Daria returned, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "But that doesn't mean their bite isn't still-"
She was cut off by the whining sizzle of rapid laser fire.
The trio snapped their heads up in the direction of the sound. "Survivors?" Daria breathed.
"Dunno," Jane replied quietly, hefting her pistols. "Let's find out."
The shots continued as they creeped their way down the hall to the nearest intersection. Jane and Daria snapped off their lights and instructed Burnout to keep hers on, but trained at the floor. She followed a short way behind them so their bodies would block most of the light as they turned their nightvision on and peered around the corners into the intersecting hallway.
Jane motioned them over to the left side and pointed down the litter-strewn corridor. Laser blasts, glaringly bright in the green and black of their low-light, erupted from another intersection a short way down. Two ghouls were laying perforated on the floor while another shook briefly before falling to join them.
The shooting ceased, then a figure slowly emerged from around the corner and started checking the corpses over. There was a momentary movement from the floor, then another burst of laser bolts tore one of the ghoul's head to pieces and put it down for good. Satisfied with its work, the figure stood up and moved away from the bodies, heading straight for where the women were standing.
At first, Daria thought it might just be a trick of the nightvision, but as the thing approached, she could clearly see that it was a robotic drone of some type, but not like any she had ever seen before. Even the heavily modified Vexxers the Landons had been building had been normal in comparison.
It had the appearance of a humanoid insect, a rail thin construct comprised almost entirely of angles, points, and sharp edges. Its extremities appeared to have been removed from other 'bots and hastily welded onto the body, with small mounds of scarred metal on the limbs serving as testament to exactly that being the case. Its triangular head moved rapidly back and forth, scanning the hallway as it moved almost silently on small caterpillar tracks that served as its feet. The hands seemed to have a few too many joints and a few too few fingers, and strapped across both forearms were miniature Gatling lasers. One of the multi-barreled guns spun softly in preparation of use while the other sat in standby mode, cooling down from the earlier battle.
Jane flicked her light back on and stepped out into the open. Daria suppressed a yelp of pain as the light flared momentarily in her nightvision and blindly tried to pull her partner back to cover. Jane shrugged her off, put her hands up, and yelled, "Survivors!"
Daria's sight returned just as the machine stopped a few meters away and raised its arm to aim its spinning laser array at Jane. She prepared to make another grab for the other woman's longcoat when she noticed that the drone was hesitating.
"We're survivors!" Jane repeated. "We're not monsters! There's two others here with me! Guys, get your asses out here already or it's gonna think I'm lying," she hissed at them.
"What's happening?" Burnout asked as she and Daria slowly moved out into the corridor.
"I think it's automated," Jane replied. "I figured the dog brain was probably set to hunt down ghouls and rescue anybody still living. Right now it's trying to decide whether or not we're really-"
The drone lowered its weapon, scooted forward like it was moving on inline skates, and stopped right in front of them. The head briefly looked them over, then split in two on a vertical seam. A gelscreen unrolled between the two halves and lit up, showing a widely beaming face covered with various piercings.
"'Allo, luvs!" the face greeted them. "It's about time you two came slogging along!"
"Axl, you old so-and-so!" Jane laughed as she put her arms down. "Good to see somebody made it. What the hell is going on here?"
"Oh, long story, Janey," the hacker said, suddenly serious. "But I'm getting told that I need to bring you lot down to command central, so I guess I've got time to tell it, 'ey?"
Axl turned the drone around and motioned for the three women to follow him. Burnout gave the machine an distrusting look, but fell into step with the bounty hunters before they could leave her behind.
"I don't know much about the beasties themselves, mind," Axl was saying as they moved through the building. "That'll have to wait until you're up 'ere with everybody else. But the stuff that's been trippin' about the computer systems? Bloody brilliant! If, you know, somewhat inconvenient.
"Earlier today, you see, somebody started mucking about in the surveillance nodes, erasing the proper bits and puttin' in false ones. Then, once the beasties started going around bitin' blokes and birds leff an' right, well, the 'ole thing just went tits up! Lights, communications, everyfink. The entire building went on shut-down-"
"The whole structure," Daria interjected. "We saw people standing around outside the other federal buildings before we came in."
Axl fell silent for a few moment, then said, "Bloody 'ell, that puts a new spin on fings. The agents supposed it was just a concentrated attack on them, and if they could get through to the FBI or CIA stations on either side of us, we could get some 'elp. Anyhow, it makes sense with as much muscle as is getting put into controlling the computers. Whoever it is, they can turn any system on an' off at will, seems like, and every move they make is calculated to make fings 'arder on us than they've gotta be. Its taken me and three ovver fellahs just to keep our little bunker safe and running this whole time."
"At least there are other people still hanging in there," Jane said. "Nice new bod, by the way. I didn't figure the agents would be letting you touch any of their toys."
"Technically, I'm not supposed to be. Criminal an' all. But desperate measures and whatnot, luv." The 'bot gave a little shrug. "Besides, I 'elped them design the little bugger, so I figure that gives me the right to a test drive or two."
"You only got the one?"
"Nah, there's five in all . . . well, four now. I've got them set on auto, patrolling the building an' hunting down beasties while I've been working on getting the computers back. This one 'eard some shooting, so it started 'eading down this way. When it saw it was you birds, it raised a ruckus and 'ere I am!"
Jane chuckled. "Well thank goodness for that," she said. "We had no idea where we were going before you showed up."
"How many ghouls are there in the building?" Daria asked.
"Don't rightly know, luv," Axl told her. "About as many as there were people in the building, I reckon. We've found a coupla survivors 'ere and there, though, and there's a few sections we haven't had any communication wif at all yet. So we're being all 'opeful for the time being."
Daria frowned as she looked around. "If there are so many, where are they now? We got attacked three times in pretty quick succession, and you gunned down another group near where we were, but we've been talking all this time and not making any effort to move slowly or quietly. Shouldn't we be crawling with the bastards?"
"Three times?" he asked, sounding confused. "'Ow many in all?"
Burnout spoke up for the first time in conversation. "One in the lobby, one in an ambush on this floor, and then five in one of the offices."
"Oh, sorry, luv, I don't fink we've been introduced! Name's Axl. I'd shake 'ands, but these fingers ain't rightly built for it."
"Burnout," the blonde said in reply.
"Anyhow, to answer your question, Daria . . . nah. We should be fine until we get to base camp. Most all the beasties ran off to hide after they infected most everybody else. They tried a seige on us for a bit, but we knocked 'em back. Since then, they've stuck mostly to sneak attacks, mostly leaving us alone as long as we leave them alone."
"I don't trust that," said Daria.
"Ain't one of us does, luv," Axl assured her. "Ready for a climb?"
They stopped just outside a door leading to one of the emergency stairwells. Axl opened it and rolled in first, guns at the ready. When he determined it was clear, the other three followed him in. A few soft clicks echoed as the tracked wheels attached to the 'bot's legs locked so they wouldn't spin. The suspension in between them continued to flex, however, as Axl started walking up the stairs, moving almost but not quite like a human foot.
They proceeded mostly in silence, the only sound being that of Burnout and Daria's breathing after they'd climbed nearly ten flights.
"Are they both machines?" Burnout asked as they started on their eleventh set of stairs.
"Sometimes I wonder," Daria groused.
Jane caught their whispered conversation and laughed. "Hey, amiga, I keep inviting you to the gym," she said, "and you keep counter-inviting me to the Pizza Palace instead."
Daria grumbled, "I didn't used to get this winded."
"You used to walk with me to school every day," Jane countered brightly.
"No worries," Axl called down to them, "we're almost there. Just a coupla floors to go!"
The new level looked more or less like the one they'd left. There were minor signs of battle here and there in the form of broken glass, torn floors, walls smeared in blood and riddled with laser holes, and various other bits of debris and destruction. It got worse as they moved along, and soon they began coming across the corpses of those who had obviously become ghouls at some point.
Daria stopped to look around at the former humans. "There's bodies here," she said. "Except for the chewed pile in the office, we haven't seen any bodies around that we didn't make ourselves."
"The beasties are surprisingly tidy," said Axl. "They drag off the ones we kill elsewhere, but they can't get close enough 'ere."
"Why's tha-" Jane said, then stopped in surprise. "Oh."
The barrels of two automated weapons platforms moved to aim directly at the women, whining harshly as they powered up. Axl's 'bot jerked for a second, then the whining slowed to a stop as the platforms hunkered back down on their spidery legs.
"Sorry about that," the hacker said, once again in control of the 'bot. "The ARMs are a little twitchy sometimes. Hadda put them to sleep until we get past. Come on, then!"
The entryway opened automatically when Axl approached it, letting the four of them in. The three humans turned their flashlights off, pleasantly surprised to find that Axl and his three computer compatriots had managed to bring what appeared to be full power to their little corner of the building, which included all of the overhead lights.
The room was a large and mostly white forensics lab that looked like it had been picked up, turned over, shaken around, and then set back down again. Various tools, weapons, and other pieces of equipment were scattered across every available surface, including a fair bit of the floor, as if the area had become infested with human packrats.
Daria made a quick count of about twenty people in the immediate area, many of them lower functionaries that neither she nor Jane recognized. Several of them were milling about on various tasks, while the rest were huddled in any convenient chair or corner they could find, their faces drawn and pale. An undercurrent of weariness brought on by barely suppressed panic seemed to permeate the room. Only a few people took any notice of the new arrivals, and when they did their attention quickly turned back to their tasks or their own misery.
The far half of the room, which Axl was leading the group toward, had once been a cleanroom sealed off by heavy panels of safety glass, but the airlock had been smashed open at some point, ruining the filtered atmosphere. Through the thick windows, Daria could see a small knot of black-suited agents huddled in conversation. A strangely lanky yet pudgy figure stood a short ways off from them, looking bored until he noticed the bounty hunters.
"Daria! Jane!" Artie shouted as he ran awkwardly through the busted airlock. He would have surely bowled both women over in a massive hug if Jane hadn't reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders first.
"Hey, Artster, you made it!" the dark-haired woman greeted him. "And your new hat finally came in, I see."
"Yah, it's great!" Artie gushed as he straightened the StarVerse cap containing a series of DENA developed and approved telepathy dampening materials that he had been promised shortly after joining them. "And it's great that you're here!" he continued. "I told them you were coming. I told them you were here. They wouldn't listen, no, they never listen to Artie, but here you are!"
"Yes, here we are," Daria echoed unenthusiastically. "Not that it isn't great to see you again, Artie, but we really need to talk to the agents."
Artie bobbled his head up and down, causing the loose sections of his flaming red hair to fly crazily about. "Oh, yes, definitely, definitely," he said, then suddenly became concerned. "Just . . . be careful. It's going to be tricky."
"Tricky? Tricky how?"
"I don't know," he admitted, shuffling his feet. "It just is. But come on!"
Artie led the bounty hunters into the cleanroom with Axl and Burnout in tow. The group of agents, six in number, looked up as they entered. The male and female agents that Daria and Jane had dealt with primarily stepped to the forefront and nodded their heads slightly in greeting.
"Miss Morgendorffer, Miss Lane," the male agent began before looking down at Daria's hand and cutting the rest of his sentence short.
"She's been bitten!" the female agent barked as she and the other agents pulled their weapons and aimed them at Daria.
Jane immediately pulled her own pistols out in response, pointing one each at the male and female agents. Daria cursed as her injured hand didn't allow her to react in time to arm herself, and Burnout held her pistol pointed up, looking as if she wasn't entirely certain which side she wanted to be on.
"Wonderful," Daria said sourly.
"Miss Lane, please lower your weapons and step away from Miss Morgendorffer," the male agent said levelly. "You don't fully understand what's going on here."
"No, I do fully understand what's going on here," Jane shot back. "I understand that for all you know, she just burned her hand with some coffee before we ever even got here, Agent Jumptoconclusions!"
"Did she burn her hand with some coffee?" the female agent asked.
Jane fell silent as the muscles in her jaw started twitching. Daria sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, "No. I got bitten by one of the ghouls."
"Then you could turn any second now. Miss Lane-"
"Hey!" Jane shouted, shaking one of her pistols for emphasis. "Nobody is shooting anybody until and only if they actually turn! Got it?"
"'Ere now, 'old up!" Axl suddenly interjected. "There's gotter be some kind of mistake 'ere! I've been wiv Daria all the way up from the fifth floor, and she's been just fine!"
"It's true! It's true!" Artie whined pleadingly.
The female agent shook her head. "That's impossible."
Axl's digitized voice rose in anger. "What does that mean, 'impossible'?" he yelled as the rotating lasers on the 'bot's arms started to spin. "You lot deal with the bloody impossible every blinkin' day! Now, I guarantee you that if she did get bit by one of those things, it must have been at least half an hour ago, if not longer!"
"How long does it take to change?" Daria asked.
The male agent hesitated before answering, "The longest we've observed for the initial effects to become apparent is five minutes. This is . . . unusual."
With exaggerated slowness, he holstered his pistol, then motioned for everyone else to do the same. Jane waited until all of the agents had put theirs away before following suit, and even then her hands twitched as she steeled herself to draw them again.
"Go find the doctor and bring him here," the female agent ordered one of the other suits. When she saw the looks the bounty hunters were giving her, she quickly said, "I apologize, that was a poor turn of phrase. He is a doctor, not the doctor, of course. He's one of our top forensic specialists."
"Who is this?" the male agent suddenly asked, pointing at Burnout.
"She's Jennifer 'Burnout' Burns, the perp we told you we were hauling in when you called us earlier about the emergency," Jane said, "but by the looks on your faces, I'm going to guess that you didn't call us earlier and you have no idea what I'm talking about." She swore under her breath.
"Duped again," Daria concluded. "We've really got to stop listening to everything we hear on the comm. Maybe we should start using smoke signals to communicate instead."
"Phoney comm call aside," the female agent said, "Axl told us about the rest of the structure being locked down as well. Surely you knew it was trap then, yes?"
"Well, duh," Jane said. "We're not entirely incompetent."
The male agent scowled. "Yet you allowed yourselves and this relatively innocent and unrelated woman-"
"Thank you," Burnout said, earning her a nasty glance from Jane.
"-to be taken in by it. You realize, of course, that this is exactly what the doctor expected you to do?"
"Yes," said Daria.
"And yet you entered this facility anyway?"
"Yup!" said Jane. "What were we supposed to do, let you guys get eaten? Well . . . that might not be so bad, actually, but we still had to come save Axl and the Artmeister!"
"Might I remind you," the female agent said, "that one of those two put you in the path of a mercenary bent on your capture and the other actively tried to capture you himself?"
Artie nervously glanced from side to side and tried to shrink down into his shirt, but Axl pushed his way between Daria and Burnout to point one of the 'bot's long fingers in the agent's face. He stretched the machine up to its full height, nearly half a meter over the agents' heads.
"Now see 'ere!" he growled. "I've been cooperating good and proper wiv you lot, an' if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have nicked Mr. and Mrs. Landon anywhere as readi-"
"Oh, hello!" a bright, nasal voice called out from the airlock. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting something? I can certainly come back later if-"
"Not at all," the male agent said, motioning the newcomer over. "Miss Morgendorffer, Miss Lane, Miss Burns, allow me to introduce Dr. Theodore DeWitt-Clinton."
"Greetings and salutations!" the thin man said as he moved in to shake hands with the three women. He smiled earnestly at each of them in turn. "I believe that, due to the informal nature of the situation, it would be acceptable if you just called me 'Ted'."
"So . . . what do you do here, Ted?" Daria asked when he had finished.
"Oh, a little bit of everything covered by the forensic sciences," he said with a shrug, "but my specialties are biology and nanotechnology." He reached into a pocket on his lab coat and pulled out a packaged pair of sterilized gloves, tore the plastic seal, and put them on. "Speaking of which, I heard that one of you has gotten a nasty little bite from our ambulatory deceased!"
Daria held up her bandaged hand. "Yo."
"Did you just say 'yo'?" Jane asked quietly.
"Shut up," Daria shot back as Ted started unwrapping her fingers.
"Oh, my. My my my my . . . " Ted said, shaking his head ruefully as he gently probed the wound with a gloved finger, causing Daria to wince slightly in pain. Though the edges of the loose flaps of skin had mostly congealed with thick, sticky blood, some of the red liquid still pooled out across the bit of visible white bone and dripped to the floor.
After a few moments of silence, one of the agents huffed impatiently. "Is she infected or not?"
"Hmm?" Ted looked up and blinked rapidly. "Oh! I have absolutely no idea. It's a very good question, though, thank you!" he said without a single trace of irony, then turned back to his patient. "Now, Miss . . . ?"
"Morgendorffer," Daria said automatically, then shook her head. "Daria."
"Well then, Miss Daria, how long has it been since you received this bite?"
"Forty-five minutes," Jane answered for her. "Give or take five. She was sedated for part of it."
"Hmm," Ted hummed again, more thoughtfully this time. "That might have slowed the spread of the nanomachines in the bloodstream slightly, but we should still be seeing secondary effects around the wound itself at the very least at this point. Mild pallor, engorged veins, minor necrosis, that sort of thing. But this appears to a typical, if somewhat extreme, instance of human bite.
"I tell you what," he said, letting go of Daria's hand and snapping his gloves off. "Let's go over to my workstation, get a blood sample, and then start working on cleaning up this nasty mess, shall we? I'm afraid we're not fully equipped for personalized dermal regeneration, but we can get the process started with some soap, water, and a few general-use patches."
"Okay," Daria said quietly, holding her damaged hand gingerly as she looked everywhere but directly at Ted. "Sounds good."
After they left for the far end of the cleanroom, Jane turned to the agents, hands on her hips, and asked, "Okay, now what?"
"Hungry," said Burnout.
"We have a fully stocked drink machine," the female agent told them, "but I'm afraid all we have to eat are snack food and a few bag lunches we were able to salvage from the nearby breakroom."
"Hell, now that you mention it, I'm starving myself," Jane said, rubbing her belly. "I'll take whatever you've got. I'm not picky."
"I got it!" Artie yelled happily as he ran out ahead of them through the airlock. "I got it!"
Burnout looked oddly over at Jane, who just shrugged.
"He likes fixing food for people," she told the blonde woman. "What can I say?"
Daria flexed her fingers a bit, but sucked air through her teeth and quickly straightened them again. Cleaning the wound at the cleansing station hadn't hurt very much, but despite that and even with a fresh painkiller patch, she still couldn't manage a fist. She decided to concentrate instead on Dr. DeWitt-Clinton as he prepared himself and his instruments for a more thorough examination of the potentially infected area.
Ted was thin without being wiry, looking as if skinny was simply his natural state of being. His medium blonde hair was carefully combed back, and his dark eyes were framed by small lenses. Under his white lab coat, he wore a light blue button-down shirt and navy blue slacks, the perfect picture of formal casual.
Noticing that her mind was starting to drift but that she was still staring at the man, Daria collected herself and looked a few workstations down the line as he started the arduous task of patching her up properly. Seated not too far away was Axl, the flesh and bone Axl, plugged into the computer sitting in front of him.
When she and Jane had first come across the real Alex Morrison and not just the holographic projection that had represented his consciousness, Daria had felt both nauseous and outraged at what the doctor had done to the poor man. His skull was twice as large as it had originally been, and the sides bristled with several network jacks. His neck was reinforced with bars permanently screwed into his new skull and his collarbone, keeping it from breaking under the increased weight, but also keeping him from being able to turn his head from side to side.
He was wheelchair bound, since the enhancements made to his brain to enable him to take mental control of multiple drones at once had also rerouted several of his motor systems. He had lost the use of his legs in order to better manipulate the limbs of the machines he jumped into.
Daria had learned later from the DENA agents that his upper body had also started to atrophy from disuse since he spent so much time in the virtual world. They had set him on a regimen to improve that particular situation, but from what Daria could see, he either wasn't keeping up with it or it simply wasn't helping. Underneath his massive cranium, it looked like he was starting to waste away completely.
But despite her sympathetic feelings, Daria also realized that Axl's situation was one that he had brought upon himself. A desire to be the absolute best in his field had driven him to make a deal with the doctor, though to his credit, he was currently using his abilities to fight back against that devil.
Daria turned her attention back to more immediate matters to find that Ted was already halfway through sewing her skin back together. A patch filled with what she assumed to be local anesthetic sat on the inside of her arm right next to her wrist, keeping her from feeling anything from the elbow down.
"So," Ted said softly, not looking up from his work, "how much exactly do you know about medical nanotechnology?"
She tried to shrug without moving her hand. "Not much more than what you learn in high school or while getting treated, I guess," she said. "They put nanobots in your system, and they catalyze various chemical reactions to speed up and guide the healing process."
"Essentially correct," he told her, nodding. "What most people usually don't learn is exactly how it goes about doing that. For the most part, nanomachines on their own are pretty unsophisticated . . . relatively speaking. A few molecule chains put together in specific sequences, programmed in much the same way your own body cells or a virus are programmed, depending on the exact type.
"Singular nanomachines are just fine and dandy for most jobs," he continued. "Bolstering the immune system, for example. Each individual nano can act and react just like one of your natural anti-bodies, though of course with the right programming, they can be set to attack only specific types of bacteria or viruses instead of working as a broad-based agent. The non-tailored machines that we'll be putting on your hand once I'm finished with this are similarly basic in structure, working merely to help along the clotting process and regrowth of skin cells.
"Tailored dermal regeneration nanomachines, however, are a completely different kettle of fish. They're the kind that actually work with your DNA to put everything right back where your body's own blueprints say its supposed to be, disallowing the possibility of scars or other irregularities. As such, they need to be much more sophisticated than their cousin nanos. How do you think this is accomplished?"
Daria shook her head helplessly. In the back of her mind, she felt she could come up with a few reasonable guesses, but for some reason she felt she wanted to actually hear him explain it. He took a moment to finish the last little bit of necessary sewing and started carefully applying bioplastic bandages before answering his own question.
"Instead of several nanomachines that are all built toward the same general purpose," he said, "they instead use several different nanomachines that are but smaller parts of a much larger machine. Instead of being the ends, they are instead a means. Once they are placed within the host body, they are attracted to each other, combining in the specific order set into their programming in order to set up a new construct that follows a newly assembled meta-program.
"Some of these nanomachine chains can be quite large, in a manner of speaking, and perform a wider quantity and more sophisticated quality of jobs than the individual variety. Aaaaaand, done! What do you think?"
Daria looked down at her hand and found that she was genuinely impressed. The bandages had been applied cleanly and professionally in a very short time.
"Thanks," she said, lifting the anesthetic patch off and tossing it in the small recycler under the workstation. "And . . . thanks for the lesson and all, but . . . why? I mean, we'd figured that the ghouls were being created by nanos, but how does all that relate exactly?"
Ted held a finger up and turned to the workstation's computer. "I have a hypothesis," he said as he started pulling up and swiftly closing down various tasks on the screen. "If that hypothesis is borne out, then it may all be very relevant to your situation. And voila!"
The screen filled with an image that Daria recognized as being magnified, but she couldn't place what it was of.
"This, Miss Daria Morgendorffer," Ted explained, "is the blood sample I took from you earlier." He pointed at a string of information that was scrolling along one side of the image. "You see this? This is an account of all the nanomachine activity that is currently happening in your bloodstream and, through some inference, the rest of your body. Though that last is only speculative, you understand."
"I understand that," Daria said. "What I don't understand is exactly what activity it's saying is happening."
"Nanomachines," he said, "are virtually ubiquitous in modern society. Your average human being has anywhere up to thousands of nanos floating around in their body at any given time, most of them dormant. Most are leftover remnants from medical treatment, but some few are from other, more random outside sources. Construction nanos - perfectly harmless and inactive, I assure you - may get in through the pores or other openings whenever you come in contact with nano-built clothing, walls, furniture, or what-have-you. Sometimes nanos can be traded from person to person through bodily fluid transfer. It's why blood transfusions are even more tightly screened and filtered than they were before the mid-21st century, but it can also happen in minor amounts through activities such as kissing or sexual congress."
Ted looked over at her and rubbed his chin. "As I understand it, this isn't the first time you've dealt with the creations of the individual known as 'the doctor'. There were the suits that used nanofibers to burrow into and manipulate the wearers, the man with fast healing, and the young man who could change his form, correct?"
Daria nodded slowly and began to pale as it began to dawn on her where he was going with his line of thought. "But I didn't trade blood or spit with any of them," she said stiffly, "and I sure as hell didn't have sexual congress."
"Perhaps not, but it seems a safe assumption that you still came into physical contact with them in some way. The glove you're still wearing, I noticed, is fingerless. If you punched them or grabbed them at any point and your flesh touched theirs, there is a slight chance that some of their nanomachines transferred from them to you, if not through their blood then possibly from their sweat."
"The pieces of Sherman that I cut off during our fight turned into this sort of grey goop," she fumed. "And some of it . . . may have touched bare skin at some point."
"Well, however it happened," Ted said as he pointed at the screen again, "this confirms my suspicions and says that you most definitely have bits of the doctor's nanomachines floating around in your body."
"That . . . is almost unbearably disgusting," said Daria. She felt the pit of her stomach drop down into her feet at the news. "Is it . . . I mean, am I going to be alright?"
"Oh, definitely!" Ted reassured her. "They're all dormant, showing no active movement and not reacting with your own body chemistry in any way that the machines can determine. These nanos were tailored for specific individuals, and they don't seem to be keen on working for anybody else. They are, in fact, what saved your life!"
She brightened and snapped her fingers. "It's acting like a vaccine," she said in sudden understanding. "The ghoul nanos are detecting the presence of the other nanos, so they stay inactive, thinking that I'm already infected!"
"The truth is a bit more complicated, but that's essentially correct, yes! I told you before that the more sophisticated nanomachines will string together in order to create a more sophisticated program. Well, the doctor's nanos are capable of creating chains of incredible complexity, far and away more sophisticated than anything even the top corporations of the world are capable of creating, as far as I'm aware. And though the coding is also much tighter, it still creates relatively massive chains within the body, big enough I'd dare say to be seen by the naked eye in some cases. Because of the similarity in both coding and function of the ghoul nanos, as you call them, and the fast healing nanos, they are identifying as being one and the same. As a space-saving measure, the newly introduced nanomachines simply go dormant and wait to be flushed out of the system naturally."
"So I'm not going to turn into one of those things?" Daria asked.
Ted scrunched his face up and wobbled from side to side for a moment. "Welllll," he said hesitantly, "for now, anyway. We'll need to do a full flush of your system at some point, but until then you're still a carrier. If enough of the older nanomachines break down fully or are otherwise removed from your system, then the ghoul nanos will activate and start the conversion."
"How long do I have?"
"It's hard to say since I still haven't completed my study of the doctor's newest creation," Ted told her, "but from these readings, I'd say you'll be okay for at least a day or two, as long as you don't get infected any further and nothing horrible happens to your immune system."
Massive coils of tension that Daria hadn't been fully aware she'd been carrying suddenly popped and fell away. She slumped down in her chair and bowed her head to keep Ted from seeing the moisture that had started collecting on her bottom eyelids. She slid her good hand across her eyes as surreptitiously as she could, then looked back up at him with a grateful expression.
"A day or two should be more than we need to get out of here," she said, her voice as solid as a rock. "Thanks."
"You are quite welcome," he said, bowing slightly in his seat. He began to gather up his first aid supplies, then hesitated and turned back to Daria. He stared directly into her eyes and gave her a soft smile. "You know, it is okay to be a little scared. You don't have to hide it."
She was about to reply with a flippant remark when the sincerity apparent on his face caused the retort to catch in her throat. She quickly reeled herself back in and glanced to the side. "Uh, sure," she mumbled. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again."
With an awkward abruptness, she jumped up from her chair and stalked out, pulling the brim of her hat down low as she passed Axl's inert body and thankful that the hacker couldn't see the sudden blush spreading across her cheeks.
"Hey, Daria," Jane said as she tossed a foodpack at her partner. "Saved you some."
Daria caught the pack expertly as she approached the makeshift table and sat down. Without looking up at the other woman, she busied herself with activating the pack's self-heat mechanism. Small slits appeared in the cover, letting out tiny tufts of steam as the food within each individual section was re-heated to its optimum temperature. Working carefully with her injured hand, Daria opened the pack fully, separated the plastic cutlery from the tray, and began to eat.
Jane watched the entire process with silent bemusement. After her partner had gotten a few bites in, she leaned across the desk and said, "So . . . what on your mind?"
Daria swallowed and began to mix up the mashed potatoes with her fork. "Nothing," she said, then cleared her throat. "What do you think of DeWitt-Clinton?"
"What, that forensics guy?" Jane asked, trading her amusement for confusion. "I dunno. He was kind of weird. A little too eager. Like he stepped right out of the 21st century. Why, you sweet on him or something?"
Silence fell over the table. The only sounds were those of nearby DENA employees enjoying their own lunches while Daria chewed slowly and avoided eye contact. Jane stared at her for a few moments before sitting back in surprise.
"Holy shit, you are sweet on him!" she said, a little louder than she'd intended. After the few glances from other tables had subsided, she leaned back in and hissed, "Might I remind you that you're already seeing someone? Just in case you don't remember his name, either, it's 'my rotten, stinking brother'! What the hell, Morgendorffer?"
Daria dropped her fork and glared back at Jane. "Trent and I have an understanding," she said. "We're trying to take things slow, not make the same mistakes we did last time, and part of that is that we can see other people if we want."
"And he's okay with this?" Jane asked incredulously before shaking her head. "Of course he's okay with this, the dipstick. So . . . has he . . . ?"
"He went on a date with Monique last weekend."
"That-! Urgh!" Jane's fingers curled into claws as she mimed choking someone. "And you're okay with this?"
Daria looked her straight in the eye. "Yes," she said evenly.
Jane tapped her fingers rhythmically and fumed for a few seconds. "Fine," she groused. "But if you two don't work out and he ends up with that skanky bitch again because of it, I'm taking my frustrations out of you personally!"
"Fair enough," Daria said with a nod.
"Okay, so, why Dr. Demento?"
Daria shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure. I guess because he's obviously intelligent, but not arrogant about it. I wouldn't say he's 'eager', just . . . motivated. He's not vid-star handsome, but he's not exactly ugly, either. And it seems like he's comfortable being who he is."
Jane rolled her head to one side, stuck out her tongue, and made retching noises until Daria swatted at her to make her stop.
"You know, if you started scratching yourself and grew a little more back hair, you'd have your 'typical male' impersonation down pat," Daria told her derisively. "Now, if we're done with snooping into my love life, potential or otherwise . . . where did Burnout run off to?"
"She and Axl grabbed a couple of the tech boys and found a cozy corner to conspire in," Jane said. "She was talking about some idea she had, but I was too busy ignoring her at the time. And . . . oh! One second." She turned in her seat and started snapping her fingers. "Hey! Agent . . . uh . . . "
Seven people in dark suits turned to look quizzically at her. She huffed and pointed at the male and female agents they usually dealt with. "You two! Get over here! She's back!"
The two agents excused themselves from the small group that they had been talking to and made their way over to the table, where Jane stopped them before they could speak.
"No no no," the bounty hunter said. "Before anything else, I wanna hear some names."
The agents frowned. "No names," the male agent said.
"It's better that-"
"Bzzt!" Jane cut them off. "Wrong answer! Look, I enjoy the whole cloak and dagger bit as much as anybody. But trying to refer to you two in any specific way without names is getting more than a little annoying, especially when we're surrounded by your extended three-piece family, okay? Before you give Daria the third degree, you're going to cough up some damn names, whether they're real or not. Got it?"
The agents looked at each other, then back at Jane.
"Agent Bealer," the woman said.
"Agent Moore," the man followed.
Jane stared at them for a moment and shook her head. "Okay, whatever. Have at her."
"Can I at least finish eating first?" Daria asked, shoveling another bite of unidentifiable goop into her mouth.
"Actually, we had asked Miss Lane to notify us the second you came back," Bealer told her.
"Something about how they didn't want to waste food one someone who was gonna start munching brains within the hour anyway," Jane said with an expansive shrug and rolling eyes.
"Dr. DeWitt-Clinton gave me a clean bill of health," Daria said, waving the agents away grumpily. "As long as I don't get bitten again and we can either get control or get out of this place within a couple of days, the junk already in my system will sit right where it is until we can get it flushed out. Now may I eat?"
"In a moment," Moore assured her. "We think we may have located another batch of survivors down in the detention center and were planning an expedition to ascertain their situation. Now that the two of you have arrived, we would like to put you in charge of that expedition."
"Because we're the most qualified?" Jane asked skeptically.
"Or because we're the most expendable?" Daria added.
Bealer raised an eyebrow fractionally. "The two do not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive," she said. "But consider, if any of the survivors are prisoners, it would work somewhat in your favor. It is our understanding that your reputation has spread down there, especially after the capture of the Landons. It would seem likely that any free prisoners would be more likely to follow your lead willingly out of fear than to follow a group of agents."
"No, see, you're going about it all wrong," Jane scoffed. "If you're trying to bribe us into going, then forget the flattery. Just skip to the part about the cold, hard cash."
"You will be considered to have been on active duty for DENA from the second you entered the building," Moore stated in an official manner. "And considering the specific circumstances, any time spent outside the safety of this hub garners you hazard pay as per your contracts."
"I'm in!"
"So am I," Daria conceded, "as long as you two go away and let me finish eating."
The agents nodded curtly, then left them to their devices. As Jane started adding up all the extra pay they were going to be racking in and deciding how she was going to be spending it, Daria quickly polished off her meal, tossed the tray and utensils in the nearest recycler, and stood up. Jane stood as well and led her to the work area that Burnout had taken over.
Axl had apparently sent the patrol drone back out into the building, inhabiting instead a basic, off-the-shelf techbot to help the blonde. His face glowed softly on the 'bot's small screen. Two DENA employees stood nearby, watching her work with mixed expressions and generally looking as if they had been shooed off but were unwilling to leave.
Burnout herself was hunched over the workstation, which she had cleared of its computer, the screen and flexboard sitting haphazardly a few stations down. Several small globules were sitting on the desktop, shimmering slightly in the light provided by Axl's bot. Neither Daria nor Jane could figure out where the blobs had come from until Burnout reached into a small pile of digipads next to her and handed it to Axl. The hacker used the 'bot's manipulators to crack the pad's shell, then extracted the gelscreen and handed it back to Burnout. The woman then made a precise slit in the middle of the screen with a multitool and squeezed the gel out into a bowl.
With gloved hands, she reached into the bowl and scooped up enough goop to cover two of her fingers. She then picked up a small electronic device from the other side of the desk and carefully pressed it into the gel until there was a reaction. The gel seemed to come alive, forming around the device and encapsulating it in a glitter-encrusted sphere. Burnout set the new globule down with the rest and started to repeat the process.
Jane cleared her throat, causing Burnout to look up at her through heavy duty goggles. "What?" Burnout asked simply.
"We're about to engage in a suicide mission to free some people who may or may not want to kill us themselves or just feed us to the zombie-ghoul-things," Jane told her. "Wanna come?"
Burnout's brow creased behind the goggles. "With you?" she asked.
"Yes, I know, we're not each other's favorite person," Jane said, exasperated. "But I kinda figured since you did such a good job helping us get this far, we might be able to use your help on this, too."
Burnout turned to look at Daria, who simply shrugged. "If it helps any, it was actually her idea to come ask you," she said. "I didn't even know she was gonna do it. I thought we were here to grab Axl."
"Yah, sure, I'll catch you up-"
Daria nodded her head at Axl, but then signaled for him to be quiet. Burnout looked back at Jane.
"No," she finally said after a moment, then turned back to the desk. "I have work to do here."
Jane threw her hands up in the air and shook her head as she and Daria turned to leave. They stopped abruptly when Burnout continued speaking.
"But if you can wait half an hour, I will be finished," she said. "In the meantime, will you please take these morons with you? They are beginning to distract me, and I am about to start a very delicate part of the procedure."
One of the techs bristled and looked like he was about to start shouting, but the other patted him lightly on the arm and steered him away, giving the rest of them a long-suffering look as they left. The bounty hunters marked a half hour to meet back up with Burnout and Axl, then moved on themselves to see if there was any extra equipment they could squeeze out of the agents.
"So, am I going to have to tell Tom that he's got some competition?" Daria asked Jane with a barely perceptible smile.
"Okay, make your jokes," Jane returned unhappily. "But you realize, of course, all you're doing is teaching me to never try to make an effort to be nice, right?"
"It's about time you learned," Daria said sagely.