His feet went out from under him in slow motion as two bullets volleyed past his face. The bullets were picking up speed, yet were perversely slow enough for him to ponder their murderous, conical points. They’d missed him by mere centimetres.
He toppled backward at a leisurely pace, like he was falling down on the moon.
He tumbled through endless black nothing with only one bright thing ahead: a blinding cut-out circle of reality. It framed a young woman’s distracted face, which was upside-down to him.
She frowned in concentration, eyes down. She clearly didn’t see the bullets coming for her. When she looked up it happened with fluidic slowness, like she was underwater.
As the portal widened, he shot through it into a room. Just prior to impact with the floor, he saw the hem of a lab coat and feet in buckled, blunt-toed boots. The boots did a sharp pivot. Stone cracked as bullets smacked the far wall.
His skull collided with slate tiles.
He lay there groaning, listening to the scuff of rubber soles.
An alarmingly pungent smell hit his nose. It hijacked his nerves with waves of distress, like an infant wailing. He discovered the odour came came from the creature, which lay, flipped on its back, myriad legs twitching.
He dragged himself over to where it was writhing, but then recoiled from its arthropod shape. He was shocked at how large it had grown. It looked more fearsome than its previous form, which had been more like a mushroom.
“It won’t hurt you,” said a voice belonging to the boots. “It’s imprinted on you, like a baby.”
He knew her as soon as he stood and faced her. Last time she’d worn a rain slicker. Now it was a lab coat. Her face was still like his own, with feminized features. She had a tremulous, shocked demeanour suggesting she kept awake with stimulants.
“Are you going to help it?” she asked, intrusively curious.
“Yes,” he groaned. “Here…”
To stop the pheremonal war on his senses, he pushed through his aversions and took hold of the creature. Its skin felt warm, leathery and appealingly dry. The creature seemed eager to cooperate with his efforts to turn it over. Once upright, it slunk under a work table and settled down there.
The table was cluttered with a confusion of humming machines and cryptic gadgets. Scattered around were cold cups of coffee, half-eaten biscuits and playing cards raggedly placed in solitaire games.
The young woman occupied a terminal at the table and started typing.
He noticed where the bullets were lodged in dungeon-like stone bricks. They made perfectly round bore-holes, ringed with shallow, dusted craters. They bullets had hit close to a heavy, gothic-looking wooden door.
“I don’t know how you managed to dodge those,” he ventured. “I didn’t think you were looking.”
She rounded on him.
“Answer me,” she demanded. “Who are you?”
“What?”
“Your name,” she pressed. “Just tell me that.”
“My name? Sure.”
He said nothing.
“Well?”
He said more of nothing.
“Like I thought,” she said. “Identity drift. Not uncommon.”
“Drift?” he echoed, dumbly.
“Amnesia—aphasia,” she said. “Call it what you want. We think it’s a stress response.”
“‘We…?’”he said, grasping at the word. “What ‘we’ are you talking about?”
“Some subjects remember later, so you might. It’s possible, at least. Until then,” she looked him over briskly. “Zone Boy One: that’s you.”
“That’s stupid!” he objected.
“So tell me what to call you,” she she shot back.
He glared at her guardedly, still silent.
“Good,” she said. “You’re called that.”
“So what do I call you?” he said in a challenging voice that just came off as peevish.
She picked up a playing card and studied it, in fierce avoidance of eye contact.
But then, why similar behavior pattern is click this pharmacy shop now viagra sans prescription not seen widely among women is unexplainable by this theory.
“Girl Zero. That’ll be me.”
“These sound like spy names. Are we spies?”
“No!” she barked. “Damn, this was simpler when it was just me talking.”
“You keep dodging my questions.”
“You keep asking stupid questions,” she snapped. “Ask better ones. Or ask the nano-computer. That’s what it’s for.”
“The thing that talks in my head? It’s useless.”
She aimed some type of portable scanner at him.
“It has an older nano-processor,” she conceded. “Whoever installed it was down to dregs.”
“Do you know who installed it?” he asked with excitement.
“Someone—someone. It doesn’t matter. Oh well, it takes a few seconds to replace. We’ll do it after…”
“No, do it now,” he insisted. “I hate that thing.”
Her attention had moved on to the creature. She kneeled beside it.
“How does it change—into things?” he wondered aloud.
“It polymerizes novel nucleotides and aminos, we think.”
“It—what?”
“Its cells make different cells,” she said, exasperated. “So it can metabolize alien nutrients, breathe other atmospheres. An engineered adaptation, we think. It’s too perfect to just randomly…”
Footfalls outside the door cut her short.
“Oh shit,” she gasped.
A hand tried the door, which was bolted. Someone’s voice, muffled by wood, protested.
She gripped one of the creature’s legs. With fearsome clippers, she cracked another leg off, with a sickening wet snap.
The creature fled the moment she released it. The musk of its fear filled the room.
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, sounding honestly appalled.
The creature cowered, antennae twitching, in a dirty corner piled with things like circuit boards. Its gaze darted between two humans. This was the first time in its life it had eyes.
A fist pounded insistently on the door.
He felt a small, familiar disturbance behind him. Another portal was opening.
Metal rasped on metal as someone tried a key.
The creature bolted toward him with sudden speed—and then past him, right through the portal.
The girl advanced on him, eyes frantic.
“Go!” she urged, pushing him roughly into the portal’s opening.
The door moaned heavily open.
“I’m sorry!” she repeated.
He watched her face—as time slowed—pass through stages of dismay.
A man’s face showed beside hers, wearing heavy unwieldy-looking goggles. As this person lifted his goggles away, Zone Boy One witness a severe-looking male face that maddeningly matched his own. His grin got wider as if something utterly awful delighted him.
This strange picture froze as the portal shrank to nothing.
He careened through the void.
(Next: Doctor Cybrot)
(Previous: Bullets Between Worlds)
