Aberrant

Chapter 13

Jinx slipped into A-Deck's staff facilities, using a cleaning droid access door. Voices sounded at the other end of the locker room, but the dim maze of storage units rang hollow. Most of her colleagues were in the middle of shifts. She only had to dodge a few people to get to her locker unseen. As she reached it, her wrist com vibrated.

A call request. The fifteenth in the last few minutes.

Baring her teeth, she let the request go to her message service. News of the quarantine had hit the masses. Everyone wanted to 'talk'. She'd had to adjust her com settings to filter out all media contacts and abuse from ship crews.

She'd have liked to have filtered out Dem as well. His foul mood had been fed steroids. People higher up the port's food chain—senior advisors in Legal, pissed off mine-corp VIPs—were demanding an explanation for the top deck being tied up 'unnecessarily'.

Olsen had also cornered Dem.

Dem's last colourfully worded message had been an order for her to report to Medical—or the morgue, where he'd be sending her later. Level five quarantine? Suspicious organic? Fainting while on duty? Was she trying to drive him to homicide?

Another buzz on her com. Text file received.

Snarling, she checked the message. Not from Dem. From Legal. Her warrant request had been put on hold, pending advice from senior heads on Feuria. The blood she'd dropped off for analysis would be staying in cold storage.

For weeks.

"Damn it." She ground teeth then forced out a breath. As much as she wanted to kick Legal for their cowardice, she understood the decision. The local authorities couldn't challenge the Xykeree without military backup. And, in truth, the delay would probably make no difference to whoever had bled on the roaches' deck. The injured human had either escaped during the attack on the Bullhead or was already bio-paste.

Her gut twisted at the thought, but she grimly ignored it. She'd done what she could. Probably more than she should have given the reaction to the quarantine. As for the possible explosion out in the wastes, Lenton was working on getting approval to deploy an air droid to the site. There was nothing to do now but clean up and get back to work.

Except Dem wouldn't let her. Not until she'd been checked out by the med techs.

Fuck.

Resting her forehead against her locker, she took a moment to just breathe. The first real chance she'd had to since regaining consciousness. Nausea hovered in her gut. Dull pain pulsed at her temples, in time with the clank of the air-con overhead.

Across the room, one of her colleagues slammed his locker and yelled at someone to wait up. The sounds seemed distant. As if a veil had fallen between her and the world. She felt off, vaguely deaf—disconnected.

That word kept circling her mind.

She closed her eyes. Continuing to pretend nothing was wrong wasn't an option. But going to Medical would be pointless. Not even the experts treating her father could help. They could rebuild brains, not individuals. To stop the degradation, they'd have to manipulate her genetics and renew pieces of her. That wouldn't have mattered if they'd treated her earlier, when she'd been an infant. They could have changed who she was before she knew who she was. Mess with her mind now...

A person could die and still keep breathing.

The ghost of her father's stare flickered. The memory jolted lose another: her on the Bullhead, fighting a wave of recall about her parents and disturbing images of bodies in med beds—four in a row. Her stomach took a queasy dive. She'd been wigging out even before the scorp had come at her. Had she fainted out of fear or because her brain had started to—?