Optical nerve infiltration, Dhalere recognised. The Infectors were hijacking the commander’s eyesight first and then would spread down in an attempt to colonise his brain stem. If Andaim became a liability they would first blind him and perhaps put him into a coma, like Kyarl.
Andaim straightened, blinked again, and then strode past her as he shook his dizziness off. Dhalere followed him and felt a blissful serenity flood her senses as the Word calmed her, the nanobots coursing through her own body stimulating the pleasure centres of her brain. She followed Andaim into the sick bay and saw both Kyarl and the Veng’en prisoner still strapped to their respective beds. A pair of doctors were sitting in seats nearby, monitoring their patients.
The Veng’en’s reptilian eyes swivelled to peer at her, his rictus grin of sharpened teeth somehow both threatening and emotionless at the same time.
Andaim paused beside Kyarl’s motionless body and looked at Dhalere.
‘So, what are you going to do?’
Dhalere glanced at the Veng’en, who watched in silence.
‘Can you awaken him?’ she asked the doctors.
One of them, an older man, stood and walked across to the gurney. ‘He’s not responsive to any stimulants. We think that the bots are cutting the supply of drugs off to his brain somehow.’
Dhalere looked at Andaim. The commanders’s brow was furrowed as though he were considering a complex mathematical equation.
‘Andaim?’
The commander didn’t respond. Dhalere stepped to his side. ‘Andaim?’
She touched his arm and he jerked his head around and looked at her as though coming awake from a dream. Dhalere searched his eyes and thought she saw a vague spark of recognition there, a new awareness like the light of a distant star. ‘Are you okay?’
Andaim’s reply came back at her, some of the youthful vigour drained from his tone.
‘I’m fine.’
Dhalere nodded. It was done. The Infectors had taken control of Andaim’s basic motor functions, trapping him inside his own body.
‘You know what we must do,’ Dhalere said. ‘For the future of the crew and of everybody aboard the Atlantia?’
Andaim nodded as he looked down at Kyarl.
‘It is the only way.’
***
Evelyn strode into the Sylph’s sick bay with Bra’hiv, the general carrying two microwave scanners brought across to the Sylph by the civilians, devices normally used to power–up plasma generators aboard shuttles and Raythons. Dhalere stood back as the general accessed a communications panel in the wall and downloaded from the Atlantia the frequency data from Meyanna Sansin’s laboratory.
‘This is unacceptable,’ Dhalere protested as the doctors in the sick bay made way for them.
‘So is dying,’ Bra’hiv replied to her, ‘and that’s what we’re all facing if this is not resolved and fast.’
Evelyn saw the Marine, Kyarl, strapped to a bed with his body wired to monitors and his eyes closed. Beside him lay the Veng’en, awake but likewise strapped tightly down.
‘This could kill him,’ one of the doctors pointed out. ‘If the infection is too deep it will fry his cortex and brain stem.’
‘Better that than have the entire crew infected,’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘Stand back.’
The doctors obeyed and withdrew to one side of the bay.
The general stood beside the two beds with the scanners. The Veng’en peered at them.
‘What are you doing?’ he growled, his fists clenching by his sides.
‘We’re doing you a favour,’ Bra’hiv snapped, ‘and making sure that you’re not infected.’
‘I’m not,’ the Veng’en snarled back, ‘that’s why I shut the ship’s systems down.’
‘Either way,’ the general replied, ‘better safe than sorry, right?’
Evelyn saw the Veng’en’s leathery skin ripple with a strange hue of purple, a sign of distress if she recalled correctly. The Veng’en remained silent and watched as Bra’hiv activated the device and swept it slowly up and down the Veng’en’s prostate body. Within a couple of minutes, the general stood back.
‘He’s clear,’ he said. ‘They would have fried by now if they were in his blood.’
The general walked around to Kyarl’s comatose body and lifted the scanner up.
‘Wait,’ Evelyn said. ‘How do you know that he won’t just die?’
Bra’hiv grinned at her, his smile without warmth.
‘Because the Word is alive,’ he replied, ‘and it doesn’t matter how ruthless it can be. When they get a dose of this the little bastards will be all for talking.’
Evelyn looked at Andaim but the commander was strangely quiet, his gaze fixed upon Kyarl’s prostrate body.
Bra’hiv held the scanner over Kyarl’s body and activated it.
For a few moments nothing happened and Evelyn felt a glimmer of hope that perhaps they had been wrong and that Kyarl had experienced some kind of bizarre mental breakdown. Then he shuddered as a gasp of air was sucked into his lungs and his eyes flickered open.
Bra’hiv held the scanner in place and from Kyarl’s throat burst an agonised scream.
‘Stop!’
Bra’hiv did not move, even as Kyarl’s screamed plea rose in pitch into a hellish roar of agony and his body thrashed beneath the restraints pinning it in place. The general waited a moment longer and then he shut off the scanner.
Kyarl’s body slumped back onto the bed, his face sheened with sweat that ran in rivulets down his brow and into his eyes. Evelyn noticed that despite the sweat drenching his eyes he did not blink.
‘Good morning,’ Bra’hiv snarled at Kyarl. ‘Hope we haven’t got you up too early.’
The Marine’s eyes swivelled to peer at the general and then he smiled. His voice when he spoke was a strange warble, a distorted facsimile of Kyarl’s original voice caused by the Infectors manipulating his vocal chords.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ he growled. ‘Death is no barrier to life for the legion.’
Evelyn shuddered as she heard the mention of that name once more. She had first heard it uttered by what was left of Commander Tyraeus Forge, months before aboard the Avenger:
“Our name is Legion, for we are many.”
‘Good,’ Bra’hiv chortled in a conversational tone. ‘So, as you’re about to die anyway, how about we have a little chat about what’s going on here?’
Kyarl’s face screwed up into a hateful sneer that did not match the personality of the young soldier Evelyn had known.
‘Chat away, you pathetic little human.’
Bra’hiv smiled as he lifted the scanner and re–activated it.
Kyarl screamed, his voice a bizarre distortion that contained both his own voice and that of the Word’s. Evelyn winced at the hellish cry of agony, and then she heard the distortion fade away and Kyarl’s own voice break through once more.
‘He’s responding!’ Evelyn snapped. ‘Shut it off!’
Bra’hiv turned off the scanner and as Kyarl slumped once again onto the bed she heard him crying, tears flooding from his eyes.
‘This is barbaric!’ Dhalere shrieked at the general.
‘This is necessary!’ Bra’hiv roared back.
‘Stop it immediately!’
Evelyn leaped forward to the side of the bed and looked down at Kyarl. The Marine was soaked in sweat, but although his expression was dazed and his eyes filled with horror and pain, they also seemed to be searching the room around him as though he was coming awake from a dream.
‘Kyarl, can you hear me?’ she asked.
The Marine snapped his gaze to hers and she saw true recognition there once more. ‘Evelyn?’
General Bra’hiv moved alongside Evelyn and gripped Kyarl’s shoulder.
‘We don’t have long, son,’ he snapped. ‘Who infected you?’
Kyarl’s jaw worked as he tried to speak, but no sound came forth. Evelyn recalled how her own voice had been silenced by the word with a metallic mask that she had been forced to wear for years.
‘It’s hijacking his vocal chords,’ Evelyn said. ‘It’s stopping him from speaking.’
One of the doctors stood up and gestured to Kyarl. ‘They have control of his brain stem, the main route for all impulses from the brain to the body. They can control anything they want to.’
‘And they have something to hide,’ Bra’hiv growled. ‘The scanners are working. I’ll give him another blast.’
The general lifted the scanner and Evelyn saw true fear wrack Kyarl’s features.
‘No, wait!’ Evelyn shouted as she grabbed the general’s arm. ‘It’s Kyarl you’ll be hurting now, not the Word.’
Bra’hiv stared down at the Marine and he realised what had happened.
‘They’re keeping him awake now but still controlling him,’ he said.
‘Emotional blackmail,’ Evelyn confirmed. ‘They know we don’t want to hurt him.’
Bra’hiv looked up at Andaim, who was still staring silently down at Kyarl. ‘What do you think?’ the general asked.
Andaim did not respond, as though his mind was elsewhere.
‘Andaim?’ Evelyn snapped. The commander’s gaze lifted to meet hers. ‘You okay with this?’
Andaim looked down at Kyarl. His reply was vague, distant. ‘It is what must be done.’
‘He’s going to suffer.’
Andaim stared directly at Kyarl. ‘Then he must suffer, so that the rest of us do not.’
Evelyn looked at Bra’hiv, who shrugged and before Evelyn could stop him he fired the scanners again.
Kyarl writhed, his high–pitched keening scream deafening as it soared through the sick bay.
‘You’re killing him!’ Dhalere shouted in horror.
Bra’hiv shut off the scanners and Kyarl slumped, his chest heaving with short, sharp breaths as his eyes rolled up into their sockets.
‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’ Bra’hiv demanded.
Evelyn saw that the general’s stoic features were twisted with a pain all of his own, the old soldier more than aware now of the suffering he was inflicting upon one of his men. He held the scanner tightly, his knuckles white.
Kyarl gasped as he tried to speak, his jaw working again, and this time a whisper of noise breathed from his lips.
‘Da…’
Evelyn rushed to the Marine’s side and gripped his shoulder. ‘Try, Kyarl. Fight it!’
Kyarl murmured weakly, lost in the throes of delirium.
‘He can’t do it,’ Dhalere said. ‘It’s too much for him, the infection too deep.’
‘It’s working,’ Bra’hiv countered. ‘He’s speaking now.’
Evelyn stared down at Kyarl and suddenly a realisation dawned upon her.
‘It is working,’ she said, ‘but not in the way we thought.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dhalere asked.
Evelyn stared at the Marine for a moment longer before she replied.
‘They’re running away,’ she whispered. ‘They’re fleeing the microwaves! Kyarl’s regained his awareness and then his vocal chords. They bots are moving down his body.’
Bra’hiv looked at Kyarl and then began adjusting the microwave scanner’s controls.
‘Maybe if I reduce the power I can chase them down far enough that he can speak without us killing him.’
The general lifted the scanners again and Kyarl thrashed in terror, his hearing clearly still effective despite his pain and fear.
‘Easy,’ Evelyn soothed, taking Kyarl’s upper arm in one hand and resting the other on his chest. Then she looked at Bra’hiv. ‘Do it.’
Bra’hiv activated the scanner and Kyarl groaned in pain as the loathsome waves flooded through his body. The Marine’s sobs echoed back and forth through the sick bay, but although he squirmed beneath his restraints he did not thrash with the same vigour as before.
‘Stop it!’ Dhalere cried. ‘Before it’s too late!’
Bra’hiv deactivated the scanner and lifted it away. Kyarl gasped, sucked in a deep lung full of air as his eyes focused upon Evelyn’s.
‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’ she asked.
The Marine, his gaze clear now, spoke softly.
‘It was…’
The plasma shot that shrieked in front of Evelyn was defeaningly loud in the confined spaces of the sick bay. Evelyn hurled herself backwards and away from Kyarl as the shot ploughed into the Marine’s head in a spray of super–heated plasma.
Kyarl’s head flicked to one side as his brains were blasted in cauterised chunks from his head and his pillow burst into flames, clouds of brown smoke billowing upward as Dhalere screamed. Evelyn hit the deck on her back in time to see Andaim standing amid the smoke with his pistol in his hand, aimed at where Kyarl had been laying.
Dhalere reached out to grab the pistol, and Andaim turned and swung his open hand across her face with a dull crack that sent her spinning away into a nearby wall.
‘Drop your weapon, now!’
The two Marine sentries burst into the sick bay, their plasma rifles aimed at Andaim as he stood immobile over Kyarl’s body, his pistol smouldering wisps of blue smoke.
Bra’hiv lunged forward and ploughed into the commander, wrestling the pistol from his grip as one of the doctors grabbed a fire extinguisher and turned to blast the flaming bed.
‘No!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
The general leaped to his feet, Andaim’s pistol in his grip as he hauled the burning gurney out of the sick bay. ‘Let it burn! It’ll destroy the Infectors!’
The gurney rolled out toward the stairwell, smoke whirling in dense clouds that hit the ceiling and tumbled in dirty brown coils. Evelyn staggered to her feet to see Andaim being manacled by the two Marine sentries, his face utterly devoid of emotion.
‘Andaim?’ she gasped, her ears still ringing from the gunshot.
Dhalere, propping herself up against the wall with one hand to her face and clearly in shock, spoke in a feeble voice. ‘It’s him,’ she said. ‘He must be infected.’
‘It can’t be!’ Evelyn shouted. ‘He was scanned! He can’t be infected!’
It was Bra’hiv who replied, shouting at the doctors.
‘I want him quarantined completely, no access to him by anybody at all, is that clear?!’
The two doctors nodded as Andaim was forced down onto a bed and strapped in place.
‘Get those microwave scanners set up around the commander’s body,’ Bra’hiv said, ‘have them emit low–frequency waves toward his head and upper chest. Maybe we can slow the infection down a little, buy him some time.’
Evelyn watched in horror as Andaim was enclosed in an oxygen tent, the pressure inside reduced so that air could only flow into the tent and not out of it. Within minutes Andaim was cut off from the outside world as the doctors arranged the microwave scanners around him and activated them.