Jak tried to raise his arms to defend himself, despite the weakness that ran through his body. His muscles were slow and sluggish to respond, but even so it took him no time at all to detect the restraints that tied him down to the hard bed or table on which he lay.
“That won’t do you any good,” the voice rasped. “You’re not going to get away from us this time. Just like that bitch whore, you’re going to be our test sample. We’ll see just how good this shit is, and how quick it travels. She was supposed to be our carrier, until you turned up and chilled her. Now you can be the carrier and we’ll monitor you.”
“Why?” Jak managed to croak through the blur of his head and his parched throat.
“Because we can use this to retain out rightful position in the world. The world as it is now, anyway.”
There were other questions Jak wanted to ask, but he couldn’t marshal his thoughts, and his throat was too dry and cracked to force out any words at all.
He felt the pressure of the bearded man’s hand on his arm, and the pricking pain of a needle, the pressure of liquid forced into the vein.
And then it began to fade…
Chapter One
Jak woke to find a similar pressure in his arm. Still halfway between conscious and unconscious, he yelled in pain and horror as he felt the needle spike him. Eyes wide open but seeing nothing, he sprang upright, hitting out around him. He felt his wildly flailing arm catch something—someone—and he dimly heard a shout of surprise and pain mixed with the crash of a human body hitting a hard floor.
“Fireblast! He’s freaking out. Hold him down!” Ryan Cawdor yelled, springing forward and grabbing Jak, pushing him down onto the bed in the redoubt sick bay.
“Got him,” J. B. Dix gritted, approaching from the other side of the bed and joining the one-eyed man in pinning Jak to the hard surface. The albino continued to yell, but it was broken by a coughing fit as he began to choke on a stream of bile that rose unbidden into his throat and mouth.
Dr. Mildred Wyeth struggled to her feet, aided by Doc Tanner. She had fallen awkwardly and twisted her ankle, and the sudden pain as she put weight on it made her gasp.
“If you will allow me to teach you, as it were, the art of egg sucking, then I would suggest you let me spray that ankle and apply something cold to it before it begins to swell.”
“Doc, you old buzzard, if you stop it hurting like hell on a hot day, then you can teach me anything you like,” Mildred replied, seating herself gratefully on a chair. Doc smiled, his perfect white teeth giving his gaunt face a momentary resemblance to a grinning skull, before hurrying to a cupboard in order to obtain a painkilling spray.
Meanwhile, Jak had subsided from his fit of violence, the need to vomit out the bile taking precedence in his still clouded mind. J.B. and Ryan rolled him onto his side and stepped back, allowing him to release the toxin from his body.
“What the hell was all that about?” Ryan asked of no one in particular.
“I don’t know,” Mildred replied, “but I sure as hell wish he’d found a quieter way of coming to. Ah, that’s better,” she added as Doc sprayed her ankle, almost instantly deadening the pain.
WHEN JAK AWOKE, seemingly for the third time, the sick bay was in semidarkness, only one small lamp lighting the room.
“I see you’ve awakened a little more quietly this time,” Mildred said, getting to her feet and walking to the bed. “Which is something I’m glad for, if nothing else.”
Jak blinked, his albino eyes already accustomed to the gloom.
“Skip it,” Mildred dismissed in answer to his unspoken question. “The point is, how are you?”
“Feel like shit,” Jak croaked by way of reply.
“Yeah, and you look like it.” Mildred grinned. “You’ve been out for a long time. I thought you’d fallen into some kind of coma. That’s why we’ve been waiting here for some kind of sign from you.”