“Enough!”Normandy snarled.Spittle sprang from his lips.“Leave me to clean up thismess.”
Sparkman leaned forward almost imperceptibly before she dropped her hand from the cuff scanner, and her shoulders again slumped as she took a stepback.
“I was close, Sparkman.This close.”Normandy held up two fingers, separated only enough for a breath to pass through.“Perhaps if the patient is younger next time.”He rubbed the earpieces of his glasses.“Ninety-Twowas four when we started and lasted longer than any before her.Yes,” he mused.“Age...”With the corner of his coat he rubbed small circles across his lenses.“We shall search for another suitable child.A male this time, perhaps.”
Sparkman pursed her lips and nodded sharply.“You’re theboss.”
Normandy slid his glasses up his nose, glanced at Ninety-
Two’s ghostly pale frame, and smiled.
XVI
Aiden might end up being happy in the lab.Well, nothappynecessarily, but content.No.No, not content either.Maybefinewas the right word.He blew out a puff of air and weighed the innocuous adjective.Yes, he could end up being veryfinewith a career in one of the manyEnd-of-Life Unit labs, or anywhere else in the ELU that kept him out of Cold Storage or the incineration unit.Tavi hadn’t taken him there yet, but they’d walked by and Aiden could imagine what fresh hell waited behind the shiny steel doors.
The lab, or at least the section of it in which he and Tavi currently worked, was free of dead people, or anything else he might need his orange garbage bag of a biocontainment suit to protect him from.Tavi still hadn’t allowed him to take it off.Aiden was sure it was some sort of punishment for him acting like, well, himself.
Even though the lab was better than where he’d been before, there was no escaping the brilliant white light, so searing that it could disinfect every surface of the ELU without the help of the Violet Shield.Also, the glass walls made it a bitterrariumesque.On the bright side (pun intended), Aiden didn’t have to do much as far as work was concerned.But greater than that was the fact that he could see straight into theno-nonsensescience section of the laboratory, and, if he positioned himself just right, he could catch images displayed on thefloor-to-ceiling holoscreen.People way smarter than he was took turns pointing at the images, looking in their fancy microscopes, and shuffling about in their orange biosuits like shriveled squash.It was wishful thinking, but maybe Tavi would decide that he didn’t need to learn anything about any of the other sections of the ELU and could stay here indefinitely.
He adjusted the tight ring of rubber around his gloved wrist, snapping it for added effect before scooping up another tray of petri dishes and spilling them onto thewaist-highmetaltable.
Aiden grabbed a few dishes and began stacking them on the table the way Tavi had instructed.His foot cramped from hours of standing in the same position.Maybe he could come up with another excuse to take a break.As long as he was throwing out possibilities, maybe he’d even see thatwet-hairednurse out in the hall again.
Aiden leaned his hips against thetable.
Nowthatwas wishful thinking.
“Oh, Gods,” Tavi said, “not likethat.Likethis.” Propped up on a metal stool, she stacked her set of Petri dishes from biggest to smallest and pushed them to the edge of the spotless steel table.A bot motored up, scooped up the dishes, and puttered through the doorway’s Violet Shield.“They won’t come get them if the sensor doesn’t relay that they’re stacked correctly,” shesaid.
Aiden understood that.He also understood how to stack round items from largest to smallest.But currently, he was having a hard time focusing on anything except theLong-TermCare Unit nurse who’d been searching for themedi-pumplab, her round lips, and the way she pinned her gaze to the floor as if afraid that if she ignored its existence for too long, she would take flight and lose it forever.
And they’d had something in common.Showers.A strange thing to have in common, sure, but a commonality nonetheless.And there were shadows there, secrets.Aiden had gotten good at spotting secrets, and hers flickered in the depths of her black eyes.Intrigue swirled around him, clawing ribbons of curiosity down hisback.
But had he really asked her if she took water baths?Shit.That was creepy.He was lucky she hadn’t run away shouting for security.Maybe the weirdness of the ELU was already starting to rub off onhim.
“And you don’t need to worry about what’s going to go in these dishes,” Tavi continued, although Aiden had no recollection of how the conversation had started.“Your only job is to get them stacked so the bots can deliver them to departments around theELU.”
Aiden busied himself with more dishes.“Will I ever needto?”
Tavi blinked up at him, her lips stretched into a frown.“Need towhat?”
He slid a completed stack to the pickup area on his side of the table.“Worry about what’s going to go in these dishes.”
She shook her head.Herpink-tippedhair helmet practically glowed neon under the lights.“I don’t even know half the time.”
“Then what’s the point?”The quitter inside of him prodded, wanting to be set free.“And why isn’t a bot doingthis?”
“A bot normally does do this, but I’mtryingto be a good instructor and have youdoinstead ofsee.It’s better for learning and other brain development things.”Tavi hiked her pointed shoulders.“At least that’s what the handbook says.”She balled her hands on her hips and glanced at the petri dishes Aiden had just begun stacking.“I don’t know why I’m trying so hard.You clearly don’t care.”She cocked her head.“Or maybe you’re just way dumber than I thought.”
Aiden opened his mouth to object, but thought better of it.He didn’twantTavi to think of him as the guy who couldn’t stack a bunch of glass dishes by descending size, but, at this point, there was no use in trying to change her opinion.It had been set the second he’d walked in late to theEnd-of-LifeUnit.
“This seemed like it was the easiest thing to start with, especially with how you reacted to Cold Storage, but—” Tavi gestured toward the tubs of sanitized petri dishes waiting to be sorted.“Something tells me it’s going to take you all frickin’ day to get through the rest of those.”
“Cold Storage is filled with dead bodies.And they all have those feet.”With a shiver, Aiden held up his hands, miming two stiff, lifeless feet.“Anyone who walks in there and isn’t, at the very least, grossed out, has some serious problems.”
Tavi slid off her stool and glared up at him.“On my first shift, I worked in Cold Storage.The entire day.I didn’t puke or run away crying or stare off like some stroke victim.My file says thatIwas aperfecttrainee.”
Aiden propped his elbow against the table.“Did you put in my file thatIdid those things?”
