Free The Lazarus Particle by Logan Thomas Snyder

time.
    Which was all well and good, except that it left her with several intervening hours—or days, or weeks, or who knows how long…—to fill.  
    Having had some experience as a prisoner before, Xenecia knew better than most how to pass the time. Hone the body, sharpen the mind. For that she needed little more than to do a bit of redecorating. A cursory examination of the ceiling revealed the section she needed to expose. Panel by panel, she laid bare that section of ceiling, exposing sheaves of red-green-black-yellow wiring as well as the arterial network of pipes and conduits that nurtured Tau’s crew and civilian complement with an uninterrupted flow of recycled oxygen and water. She squatted determinedly, executing a standing backflip and coming to rest by the backs of her knees from the thickest of pipes. Without pause she set to task, crossing her arms over her chest and performing a series of rapid-fire, bat-like body lifts that should have been well beyond the limitations of the human body.
    But then she wasn’t exactly human, was she?
    Pulse screaming in her ears, muscles burning hot like white phosphorous, skin shining bright with sweat and renewed purpose, she didn’t so much as flinch when the door chimed to notify her of a visitor waiting outside. “Enter,” she called, all the while persisting with inhuman determination.
    The woman that shuffled through the doorway just stopped and stared, transfixed. She was a mousy thing. Mousy hair, mousy face, mousy body. Not wearing any sort of military ID, as far as Xenecia could discern in the course of her nearly cyclonic calisthenics.
    “Well?” she barked breathlessly in between lifts. “What do you want?”
    At that, the woman seemed to snap out of it.
    “Are—are you Xenecia of Shih’ra?” she asked meekly. As if there could be any doubt after the display she was witnessing.
    “I am.”
    “I, uh… I’m here….”  
    “Let me guess,” Xenecia interjected. Unlocking her knees from around the exposed pipe, she dropped before the mousy woman with an effortless, almost terrifying grace. “You have come to tell me I am even more fucked than I could have previously imagined. Fenton Wilkes is dead. Perhaps he never existed in the first place. Am I getting, as your people say, ‘warmer?’” With each sentence she took a step closer, until she was near to towering over the poor woman. “Or maybe this is the part where your people storm in and shoot me dead before flushing my body out the nearest airlock.” She cocked her head, hairless brows notching above the polarized lenses fixed over her eyes as she appraised the spokesperson before her.
    “I’m not one of them,” she said quietly.
    “Oh? Then what are you doing aboard their station?”
    “I, ah, well, that is to say, I guess, that I am one of them. Sort of. I was never part of the group that sent you looking for Fenton, though.”
    Xenecia snorted. “Do you always speak in such clumsy riddles?”
    “Let me start over.”
    “Very well. You have my full attention.”
    “Thank you.” The woman breathed a small sigh of relief before continuing. “My name is Roon McNamara. Yes, I work for Morgenthau-Hale, but no, not the corporate or military branches. I’m an advocate. My department is strictly nonprofit in nature. I guarantee, I’m as unwelcome here as you are. Maybe more so. The uniformed personnel, at least the higher-ups, seem to deeply resent civilian involvement in, well, anything. And now I’ve been informed I’m not even needed here. That’s why I’ve come to you. Something doesn’t feel right to me. I think Fenton is in danger. Well, more danger.”
    “Go on.”
    “They said he had a seizure.” Roon shook her head. “I don’t buy it. He was perfectly lucid when I talked to him, then this morning he’s laid up in sickbay, slurring and garbling his speech like a zombie. That, and he has this huge bruise on his chest like someone injected him with something. It