Free Starbleached by Chelsea Gaither Page B

brother?” Paige said.
    “Maybe pigs will fly tomorrow,” Adry said.
    “Yeah.” Shawn sighed. “Mich was in a twisted competition
with Bryan. Without his brother here to play the game, there’s nothing to hold
him. He already knows he’ll be thrown out of the service. Maybe even put it
jail.” Shawn tapped a chip on a pad of paper now too valuable to use. There was
no more excess cellulose for manufacturing. Holton itself was gone. “We’ve told
our contacts on the other worlds that if Mich turns up, they need to pass word
on to us. If we can scrape the cred together, we’ll post a reward. And Parker?”
    She looked up, tear streaks glittering on her damp cheeks.
“Yes, sir?”
    “You’re going to resume Landry’s work tomorrow. You were
closest to him. You can finish his work for us.”
    The horror in her gut was low, dull. Kind of like having
your stomach acid burn through your spine. “Sir—”
    “No arguments. As of right now, Dr. Parker, you are Landry’s
replacement. You will do his work, cooperate with his sources, and finish his
projects in due time. Or so help me God I will drop you down the biggest hole
we can find. Understand me?”
    She nodded. Did it matter if she did, or didn’t? Bryan was
gone. With that fact alone, she was falling. And she would never, ever stop.
     
    *****
     
    Now:
    “Michel?” She asked. Swamp water ran around them, carrying
the deadly disease through her clothes.
    The blond man smiled, his eyes widening in delight. He
holstered the gun. “Adrienne? My God, you’re alive? I thought for sure they’d
put paid to you in Holton.”
    She shook her head. “No. We made it out. I got grabbed on
the way to New Houston. What are you doing here?”
    His smile was slow and sly. “I got my sources these days.
Make my way tracking down obscure things a person might need. I heard an
Overseer was making a little free with my brother’s discovery, and I wanted to
know what it had down here. Didn’t expect to see you though.”
    “It grabbed me a few weeks ago. It wanted me to reverse
engineer the enzyme.” She shivered.
    “Probably using you to keep its private heard doctored up,
too. You get a good look at it?”
    “No.”
    Mich looked at her, then at the swamp. “My sources call it a
renegade. So nasty the other suckers won’t go anywhere near it.” He smiled, not
nicely. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you out and safe.” He offered her a hand.
    She hesitated.
    “What? You want to stay here in the muck? Spend the rest of
your life running from the sucker?”
    Rocky and shaky, hope throbbed through her system like a
straight shot of heroin…but something was wrong. For some reason, taking his
hand felt worse, more wrong, than touching the hand of the Overseer.
    “Come on.” Mich smiled. “You want to get out of here,
right?”
    Reluctantly, she took his hand and held on tight.
     
    *****
     
    Then:
    Time was an enemy, Adrienne thought. Every hour between now
and the loss of Holton Station was a shovel of dirt in a grave. She marked it
by vials. Another trial, another attempt, and another near success. After the
second month she knew they were on to human testing…but how could they do that?
How could they dare to give this drug to a human and pair him up with an
Overseer as prey?
    She presented this to Miller, who sighed.
    “You know, having you in my office with this very question
is like talking to Landry all over again. That was his biggest concern. Are
there any side effects if you’re not fed on?”
    “A little extra stress on the system. It speeds up the
metabolism. A couple extra power bars and a nap takes care of it. It only lasts
about six hours.”
    “Okay. In that case, we’re going to give it to Alpha Team
before they go on missions. Two, three doses a customer. How long would it take
you to make enough?”
    Twenty doses. “A day or so.” She closed her eyes and rubbed
the back of her neck.
    Shawn tossed the data pad onto the desk. “How are