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“What’s the situation with Dr. Charish?” Brian asked.
I turned to him. “We have her locked down and—” Long slivers of plastic were embedded in his left cheek and eye, injuries he’d clearly ignored while taking care of Dr. Nikas. “Dude, you’ve got something on your face.” I licked my thumb as if ready to wipe off a bit of dirt.
He let out a strangled laugh. “Just need a little spit and toilet paper, and it’ll come right off.”
“Seriously, you need to do something about that,” I said. “It’s kinda freaking me out.”
The building trembled again with a smaller whump. Kyle and I exchanged a charged look.
“Sorsha,” I breathed. The computers in the microscope room.
“Go. I got this,” Brian said in an unnerving echo of Sorsha.
I lurched up and sprinted back the way I came.
Smoke and fog seeped around the histology door and poured from the microscope room. At histology, I skidded to a stop and yanked the door open.
“You okay, Billy?” I shouted through the fog, barely able to see him stagger to his feet.
“10-4,” he croaked.
I spun toward the microscope room even as Kristi Fucking Charish stepped out like a demon emerging from the bowels of hell, smoke curling around her, and heralded by unearthly gator growls and wet snorts. She held her briefcase in her left hand, and her right gripped a tranq gun. Zombie tranqs. Shit. This would be a really bad time to get dropped by one of the damn things.
“Perfect timing,” she breathed and lifted the gun in my direction, finger tightening on the trigger. I scrambled to evade, but even my zombie combat-mod-enhanced reflexes weren’t going to be fast enough to counter my forward momentum.
Kyle slammed into me, knocking me aside. I crashed into the wall then fumbled to grab him as he staggered, a tranq dart sticking out of his shoulder.
Except instead of going limp as if he’d been tranqed, he began convulsing.
I yanked the dart out, threw it aside, and hugged him close. “What the hell did you do to him, Kristi?” I yelled.
She dropped the empty tranq gun. “Well, I was hoping for you to be my test subject, but he’ll have to do.”
“To test what?” Kyle was jerking harder now. I lowered him to the floor then tried to pull his gun from his holster, with no success. Fuck. It was a retention holster, and I didn’t know the right sequence of moves to get the gun free. “What’s happening to him?”
“Behold the other part of my project,” she said with a nasty smile.
“What, your stupid immortality shit?”
Kristi shrugged. “That one’s not quite ready, but I’ll crack it soon enough. This”—she lifted her chin toward Kyle—“is so I don’t have to deal with you lot for the rest of eternity. My anti-zombie serum. Or, more precisely, a real zombie serum.” She let out an ugly little chuckle, while I struggled to keep Kyle from hurting himself. “You fed a version to poor patient nine at the gym.”
“You said that patient wasn’t supposed to die,” I said, voice shaking with rage.
“He wasn’t. But I learned oh-so-much from him. Tweaked the formula.” She checked her watch. “In a few minutes, the parts of Kyle Griffin’s brain that make him a thinking, feeling person will be permanently disabled—devolving him into a true, traditional zombie. Mindless, obedient, and just intelligent enough to be trained for menial work. Won’t that be nice?” She looked behind me as Billy stumbled out of the histology room. “Have fun with the new Kyle!” she sang and hurried off in her stupid wedges toward the roof stairs—probably to wait for a helicopter extraction.
Billy staggered up to me. “I’ll get her.”
“No! Check on Sorsha.” I prayed that Kristi hadn’t killed her. “I don’t hear a chopper yet. Kristi can’t go anywhere.”
Billy glanced in the direction of the stairs then jogged unsteadily to the microscope room. “She’s alive but needs a medic!” he hollered a few seconds later. “Calling now.”
Kyle’s convulsions calmed to tremors. One hand gripped my arm like a claw.
“Ang-gel,” he stuttered.
“Dr. Nikas can fix this, Kyle,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “It’s going to be okay. He can stop this before . . . before it causes permanent damage.” Kristi had probably laced her serum with something that anesthetized the parasite so the toxin could do its nasty work. It was what I’d do if I was an evil psychopath neurobiologist. He needed a parasite stimulant. Now.
“Another combat mod,” I said. “That may slow the effects of the serum down and buy you time.” I reached for his mod port, but he pushed my hand away.
