it onboard the shuttle and unleash it in some populous city or spaceport?”
“The Universe would be better off without us,” he reiterates firmly.
“The Universe isn’t alive,” Myrha points out.
“Even if,” Lynne states forcefully, “in the unlikely scenario this chemical somehow managed to destroy all life forms within the known galaxy, life more than likely exists in the other billions of galaxies in our Universe. The spread of this chemical within the Milky Way would be…fruitless.”
“Then maybe,” Spinner sounds less shaky, and has a determined glint in his eye, “maybe I’m saving life from itself.”
Myrha snorts, “Yeah, okay, that makes no sense. If we’re all dead, there’s no one going to be saved, or better off or whatever.”
He sneers at Myrha and, yeah, that’s definitely the sneer of some poor, insane, Dellylee-wannabe who hasn’t experienced enough of life to see the good parts of it. Or maybe had just seen too much of the bad.
Myrha stalks around him, and he swivels his head to watch her. Lynne watches her without comment, her beautiful face impassive and her weapon at the ready.
“You were involved, weren’t you?” she asks, “Somehow, with the facility or the committee, you were involved. That’s how you know so much.”
He hunches his shoulders as she stops behind him, looming over him so her shadow, created by the dim moonlight, falls across him.
“Tell us,” Lynne says.
“You really have nothing else to lose,” Myrha says, a nasty twist to her lips.
“Years ago I…I had been an Officer on Earth. Specialized in drug control and gang activity. I had heard rumors of the Lieval case from others. So I decided to...do some hacking.”
He nervously runs a finger over his utiphone. So that’s what he had been so interested in during their flight: stolen files.
Myrha taps her foot in an agitated rhythm, “So you’ve been planning this for a long time.”
He nods.
“Then why tell us all of this now?”
With trembling with fingers, he slowly peels back his coat. A chunk of flesh is missing from his thick gut; thankfully, it’s dark enough that Myrha doesn’t see too much of the details. She can’t help but laugh though. Lynne shoots her a sharp, puzzled look.
“This is just too much!” she has to double over because her laughter is making her hyperventilate.
She staggers against the wall, using it to hold her upright, because she’s becoming a bit weak in the knees. It’s all just too grand.
“Are you happy now, Spinner?” she taunts him.
Lynne and Spinner are eerily silent, just watching her fall apart. But she feels like, finally, it’s all coming together. It’s just too perfect.
Spinner is a huddling mass on the floor, and it’s good to see him so low, so defeated, crushed by the very thing he tried so hard to create. It’s poetic justice.
“You didn’t really think you’d escape the destruction, did you Spinner?” She continues to mock him, “You’re a life form, unworthy to exist as the rest of us, just another agent of destruction in an otherwise peaceful Universe.”
“Myrha,” Lynne sighs, as if she’s disappointed.
“You should be glad, ecstatic, that you got infected too,” Myrha grins at the man frozen on the floor.
He doesn’t rise to the bait. He just looks very tired, and sort of ill, exactly like he’s been infected with some sort of sickness. She shrugs, not needing him to react; it’s enough that he was bitten.
“Was it Fossam who got you?” she asks, “Or was it Karry?”
“Karry,” he whispers softly, “Fossam was my test subject. Karry was his first victim.”
“And then Karry got you as you tried to study them?”
“As I tried to stop them from getting to the hotel.”
He turns plaintive eyes on her and she can’t hold that gaze, just scoffs in disgust. He was a man who had planned for annihilation, but then couldn’t handle seeing it. She doesn’t know whether to applaud his change of heart, or to despise him for it.
Lynne, apparently, has other things on her mind.
“How are you able to hold off the hallucination?” she asks.
“It’s probably because he’s built up some measure of resistance working with the chemicals,” Myrha hypothesizes.
“Or maybe,” Lynne almost cuts her off, “it’s sheer strength of will.”
Myrha laughs, because that’s the dumbest hypothesis she’s ever heard. Spinner just looks lost.
“You said you were looking for survivors,” Lynne says, her voice notably gentle.
Spinner nods rapidly, voice ragged, “Yes, I had to. I had to tell someone.”
“Why?”
“Someone had to know.”
And then he just collapses and his uneven, gasping breaths echo throughout the cave. Myrha blinks and stares at his twitching form.
“You had to tell someone even though there’s nothing anyone can do?”
Spinner doesn’t answer her, just gags as he struggles for air.
Lynne eyes him contemplatively, “Perhaps his need for repentance is what held off the effects of the chemical.”
“Whatever. We need to get out of here before the hallucination sets in.”
Lynne steps forward, but then abruptly aborts the motion. She frowns.
“I am not sure where we should go,” she says.
“How about the other side of the island? As long as we outrun those things, we’ll be good.”
Lynne nods. They gather up their weapons and Myrha’s travel kit, and Myrha slips Bartin’s necklace around her neck. The movement catches Lynne’s eye.
“What is that?” Lynne asks.
“Found it on Bartin.”
Lynne steps forward and with a single finger, lifts the necklace up to inspect it. She immediately meets Myrha’s eyes, mouth open a little as if she can’t find the words to say.
“What?” Myrha asks.
“I can use this,” she says.
Myrha quickly takes it off and all but pushes the necklace into Lynne’s hands. Lynne turns the piece of metal over in her fingers; it’s a small triangle and pretty unremarkable, but Lynne hurriedly yanks it off the chain and reaches behind her neck.
“Every android has a homing device; my current one matches the homing signal of our starshuttle.”
“And you’re saying this is a homing device?”
“Yes. I can replace it with my current one.”
Lynne’s eyes stop moving and her face sort of freezes as she opens something in the back of her neck. Her fingers still move though and then there is a sudden flash of blue light. Lynne stands very still. Myrha lets her adjust, not entirely sure what is going on; she supposes it can only be good.
“There,” Lynne finally says.
She slips her other homing device into her pocket.
“And?” Myrha asks, breathless.
“It’s sort of a…map in my head,” Lynne tries to describe, “it’s like one of your senses, it’s something that becomes an unconscious part of me.”
“Yeah, but, where does it lead?”
“Into the jungle. Not the hotel.”
“And what does it lead to?” Myrha asks, a bit impatient.
“I can’t tell.”
Myrha sticks her tongue in her cheek, “Uh-huh.”
“It just shows me how to get to the destination, but doesn’t tell me what the destination is.”
“So it could be anything? A building, the research facility, maybe a secret hideaway or another refueling station?”
“Yes,” Lynne explains patiently, “it could be anything.”
Myrha takes a quick look at Spinner on the floor and it doesn’t take her long to make a decision.
“Well, let’s get going then.”
It’s a bit like walking into the unknown, but with Lynne as leader she’s not really nervous. She only becomes nervous when Lynne starts to respond sluggishly. She sometimes
halts mid-stride, or hits an upturned root she should’ve dodged. Myrha begins to quietly freak out when she stops, blinks extremely slowly, and doesn’t respond when Myrha calls her name.
Lynne eventually shakes her head and then says, “It’s this way.”
Myrha follows, constantly looking behind her back. Every shadow turns into a hungry monster, every twig snap makes her flinch violently. She hates it when Lynne stops, hates it when their progress is halted; when Lynne pauses for the fifth time, Myrha is about to rip out her hair.
When Lynne trips and Myrha has to catch her, Myrha gives the android a pointed look.
“Something’s wrong,” Myrha says.
“Yes,” Lynne nods.
Myrha tries to help her to her feet, but they end up sinking to the ground. Lynne’s legs just sort of…flop.
“I am running out of power,” Lynne says a bit faintly.
“That’s…bad.”
Myrha cannot express how bad that is. She might’ve made some sort of panicked whine, but can’t be sure because Lynne’s face becomes very serious and she interrupts her oncoming panic session.
“Give me your utiphone,” she commands.
Myrha pops it off her wrist and hands it over. It still has charge. She hasn’t used it all that much on this trip.
Lynne brings up the artist pad and with a finger, begins to draw out some squiggles.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Myrha squints at it.
“A map.”
“A…map.”
“It is difficult for me to translate the homing device’s route into something that can be visualized. It is rather like a human’s instinct. However, as I will soon no longer be able to function, this is the only way you could possibly find the homing signal’s origins.”
Myrha looks doubtfully at the mess of lines, lumps of trees, and route outlines in arrows.
“I’ve included some landmarks, things I know exist from my