Chapter 23 Dana
I stared Dr. Noble down. So this was the asshole they’d originally planned on sending Gnnar and me to. At first, I hadn’t realized who she was because I was expecting a man, but Dr. Noble was a woman. A very perfect-looking woman, who had clearly used everything in her arsenal to stay looking not a day over twenty-one, despite the fact that I was sure she’d been working at Exotech for at least two decades.
Omnia Pictures had referred to Dr. Noble as a he in past videos and publications, yet no one had ever corrected us, not even Exotech themselves.
Hell, not even Igor had known! He’d referred to the doctor as a man as well, and Igor was the product of many of her chemical compounds. Though, in his defense, they’d kept him in the dark about many things and it wasn’t until he’d been given to Dr. Kingsley that he started remembering little things here and there.
“So you’re the journalist that got away.” Dr. Noble looked down at me over her picture-perfect nose from across the table. “It’s too bad we never recovered that Kadrixan of yours.”
“Gnnar isn’t mine,” I lied.
“A trifling detail. I see he didn’t go berserk like I’d expected him to. They must metabolize the chemical a little more differently than I thought.”
Sick of listening to her, I got straight to the point. “What does Nova Vita want from this? The ore? They can’t even extract it. If they could, they’d have started mining it before the Kadrixans arrived.”
“You think Nova Vita is behind this?” She cackled. “They could only wish to accomplish what I could. They can’t even transport one Kadrixan warrior to my lab. No. This is personal.
“Those rebels and monsters ruined my life’s work. I had it all. Exotech and Nova Vita were willing to give me anything and everything I needed at the snap of a finger. I had unlimited funding, unlimited equipment, unlimited test subjects. I could’ve achieved such great things. Dr. Kingsley and Kim and I could’ve lifted humanity from the coils of mortality. We were so close.
“So no. This has nothing to do with the ore. Nothing to do with Nova Vita. This is about our work. We’ve been cut off. Forced to work in hidden labs. We have limited resources. They couldn’t even get one measly Kadrixan warrior out to me so I could finish researching what made them heal so quickly.”
So that was what she’d wanted Gnnar for.
“They told us we needed to procure our own test subjects. Can you believe that?” Dr. Noble asked, her voice going shrill. “So we did. It’s so nice of you to round up everyone for us in one transport. I didn’t expect to find you too. This is a sign. You shall document Dr. Kim’s and my work from now on. The world… no, the universe will know of our achievements.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “No. I’ll do no such thing.”
“You will be paid well. Better than you could ever get at Omnia Pictures. Don’t you want to be the first to announce to the galaxy all the new advances Dr. Kim and I will make in the coming years? We are going to change the course of humanity, and you can be there with us. You can help the commoners understand why we do what we do.”
“You just told me you’re going to use all those people as test subjects.”
Dr. Noble sighed. “I thought of all people you’d understand. Progress must be made. Science waits for no man. Sacrificing several lives can serve the greater good.”
“But some of them are children! What about choice? You can’t just take that away from them.”
She scoffed. “Choice and freedom are such selfish principles. They stifle progress. You have to think bigger. Think of humanity as one. What’s a few children now when the children of the future need not worry about sickness or death? We can make the cure for anything. Wouldn’t a treatment to make people heal as fast as the Kadrixans be great for society?”
“So you develop the cure, then what? Exotech would tag an addictive drug to it, then sell it as a monthly subscription. It won’t benefit anyone.”
She waved my concern away. “How they want to sell it is none of my business. My job is in the labs.” She gestured to the super soldier next to her. “Look at him! He is the perfect soldier. Obedient, strong, emotionless. Functions weeks without food and days without water. He can survive underwater long after everyone else is dead. They sent him into the void of space, and after a set of new skin to replace what was damaged by the cold, he was as good as new. We did that. We made him.”
If this super soldier was anything like Igor, then he was not emotionless. They might’ve dampened his emotions, yes, but they weren’t lost. He was still human underneath.
“Given more time, we can make the perfect anything . Name it, and we can do it. The perfect worker. The perfect athlete. The perfect human. We could be gods!”
Okay, so Dr. Noble was batshit crazy. Got it. I had to tread carefully or I’d end up dead or worse.
A ruckus outside of the shuttle had Dr Noble cursing. “What now? Can’t anyone do anything right? Come,” she ordered the super soldier. “And bring her along.”
The super soldier gripped my upper arm. His hands were cold and unyielding, like a metal vise. He really did seem completely emotionless, almost robotic. Had Igor been like this? It was hard to imagine it.
When the attack started, Igor had immediately gone into action. Together with Fido and Kong, he held off the super soldiers they’d sent in. But he wasn’t able to stop the gas. He’d been the one to call out the alarm, telling everyone not to breathe it in.
With everyone on board, Penelope and I scrambled to get the transport door closed just in time. We were halfway to the stronghold when the transport took an unexpected turn. We tried to stop the transport, but it was unresponsive. We couldn’t even open the doors to get out.
When the transport finally stopped, we were greeted by several super soldiers and a band of mercenaries in fatigues. They had several shuttles and transports.
Outside, the situation was tense. The mercenaries had their weapons pointed skyward, their necks craned as they stared up into the clouds. The super soldiers were also looking at the nothingness above them, standing stock still like statues.
One of Macey’s boys, Clay or Canyon, I still didn’t know who was who, used the distraction to tackle a mercenary who was several times his size. The mercenary threw the kid off and was about to hit him with the butt of his weapon when there was a sudden flash of red in front of him. The merc was lifted up by invisible arms and thrown against a tree.
The other mercs fired, but all they managed to do was hit their own guys. Then, it was eerily silent again.
“Fucking demons!” one of the mercs spat. “Stop being cowards and show yourself.”
The Kadrixans! It must be their cloaking technology.
As the paid soldiers faced off against the invisible Kadrixans, the super soldier holding me started to move, dragging me back toward the shuttle. All the super soldiers were doing the same, like they were following unheard orders.
“Let me go!” I screamed when I realized they were going to take me with them.
But it was already too late. As the fight broke out, I was dragged into the shuttle. I struggled against the super soldier, but it was no use.
“Put up the cloak and get us out of here,” Dr. Noble ordered as the door slid shut behind us.
No! Rescue was so close. I bet Gnnar was out there!
But instead of leaving right away, Dr. Noble ordered the pilot to stop just within shooting distance of the melee. “All our shuttles are out of the radius. Hit them with the pulse. Take away their cloaks. Let’s give those mercs a chance to tear up some demons.”
There was a moment of complete silence, and my hair stood on end like the moment before lightning struck. But there was no lightning. Then it was over.
“Ha! Yes! Shoot them down,” she cackled.
Worry for Gnnar had my heart pounding in my chest.
She grabbed a device and spoke into it. “Bring me back one of those aliens alive, and I’ll double your pay.” She slammed the device down, looking too smug and satisfied with herself. “Now, get us back to the lab.”
A loud thud on the roof suddenly rattled the shuttle.
“Shit! There’s something on the ship.”
“Well, get it off.”
The pilot veered, and we all slid toward one side of the shuttle.
“Get out there, soldier,” Dr. Noble ordered. “Get out there and get the fucking monster off my shuttle.”
The super soldier moved, taking me with him.
“No! Don’t take her along, you idiot!” Dr. Noble tore me out of the soldier’s hands, then shoved him at the door. “You,” she said to the pilot, “keep flying.”
The super soldier opened the door and crawled out, leaving me shocked that Dr. Noble had sent him to fight a Kadrixan on a moving shuttle. The super soldier might be inhumanly strong and durable, but he couldn’t fly. But I didn’t stay stunned for long. With the soldier gone, I lunged for the doctor, then immediately regretted it.
She was a lot stronger than she appeared. She didn’t even feel like flesh and bone. It was like attacking a train. She flung me off and threw me across the shuttle like I weighed nothing at all. The world spun as I hit my head against the wall.
“You idiot! I offered you a deal! A generous deal. You could be invincible like me. You could live forever, and all you had to do was make Dr. Kim and I look good and help share our vision with the world.” She grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me so hard it felt like I’d smashed my head again. “You stupid, stupid bitch.”
Determined to go out fighting, I grabbed the first heavy object I could and bashed her over the head with it. Whatever it was broke, thick smoke rising from it. I released the broken shards as Dr. Noble kept shaking me like she was making scrambled eggs with my brain.
The smoke was filling my lungs now, suffocating me. It tasted acrid, vile. This was it. I was going to die here.
Suddenly, the shuttle lurched, and she was being ripped away from me. I blinked through the dots flying in my vision. Fuck! My head hurt.
But I had to keep fighting. I reached out, blinded by the smoke, searching for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon. I was so angry, and I needed to take it out on something, anything. I found something cold and metallic under one of the seats, and I held onto it like it was my lifeline.
Where the hell was that bitch? Fury blurred my vision, making it hard to see or think. The smoke! It was another form of the berserker chemical! The last thing I saw before red-hot rage took over was Dr. Noble aiming a blaster at Gnnar as he climbed into the shuttle.
I lunged for her with a yell, the metal bar raised over my head.
Time seemed to skip forward, and I was staring at a bloody metal bar. Gnnar had already disabled the pilot and was carefully easing the bar-cum-murder-weapon out of my hands. Moments later, he was jumping out of the shuttle with me in his arms.
I watched transfixed as the shuttle crashed into the side of the mountain and was engulfed in flames.