Deluski led us toward the next cover, a low-to-the-ground enclosure of tarps and hand-hewn wood poles. We crawled over hoses to the enclosure’s edge. The clinic was a short distance ahead.
I moved around the enclosure, my shoulder getting wet as it brushed against the dewy tarp. What the hell was in there? “Wait,” I whispered to Deluski. I pulled my lase-blade, held it close to the ground, and flicked it on. I stayed hunched above the blade to block the light, fiery heat baking my chest and chin. I sliced into the tarp, a good-sized gash, and I spread the opening wide, using the light of my blade to peer through.
Dirt. Rocks. Sprawling squash vines. A garden?
I saw something move. Barely. I strained to see in the red light, spotted it again. A burrowing shell. I could see more of them now, lots of them, coin-sized shells dragging sluggishly across the dirt, along the squash vines and leaves.
Deluski tapped my shoulder. “See anything?”
I turned off the blade. “Snails.”
“Like the ones we saw at the gay bar?”
“I think so.”
Maggie elbowed me. “What were you guys doing at a gay bar?”
Deluski peeked around the side. “Let’s go. The guards are heading for one of the sheds.” We dashed behind the clinic, pressed ourselves into the wall. We hustled down its length, stopping at the first doorway, a shutter on hinges.
Maggie pushed open the shutter and we were inside, stealing down an empty hall, weapons-first. Humming lights fluctuated to the sound of an unseen generator. As we went forward, our legs were tickled by ivy and ferns that grew through cracks in the wood plank floors. An unoccupied desk came into view, and we stepped up to it. Maggie put her free hand on the seat. “Warm.”
We waited, listening. My heartbeat sounded in my ears. A toilet flushed. We followed the sound to a curtained doorway and stopped to surround it. A hand swept the curtain aside and a guard came through. Maggie and Deluski plugged his ears with lase-pistols.
“Drop to the floor,” I ordered. “Kiss the wood.”
The kid spread his hands and slow-moed down.
I pushed my heel between his shoulder blades, my toes pressing his head into the floorboards like it was a gas pedal. “Kiss it.”
I could feel the punk’s lungs rising under my heel, quick puffs up and down. His head went all the way down, lips on wood. I lifted my shoe so Deluski could relieve him of his weapon and frisk the little shit.
I put my foot back where it was. “How many guards?”
“Four,” he said, his voice cracking midword. I couldn’t tell if it was distress or puberty that frogged it. “Three outside and me.”
“Who else?”
“A nurse.”
“What about the doc?”
“He left, took a flyer to Koba.”
“Just one nurse?”
He nodded, his face mashing into the floorboards.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I put some extra weight on my foot.
“Upstairs somewhere,” he wheezed. “He makes rounds.”
“Does he come this way?”
“Sometimes.”
“Armed?”
“No.”
I let up. “Call him.”
“Manny.”
“Louder.”
“Manny! Get down here.”
Maggie and Deluski waited by the stairs. The ceiling creaked overhead. I looked up and followed the trail of whining planks to the staircase, shoes clomping down. He reached the bottom, stunned eyes sizing up me and my piece. He was built like a gym rat, his head shaved bald as a bent knee. Dark-skinned biceps squeezed out of a tight-fitting tee tucked into belted designer pants. He wore rubber gloves on his hands.
Maggie and Deluski closed in on either side of him. He froze except for a quivering lip.
Maggie waved her weapon at him. “What’s going on here?”
He hesitated, eyes clicking through his options. Deluski accelerated the decision making with a quick crack to the skull.
“A clinic,” he blurted. “It’s a clinic.” He rubbed his head with his gloved hand, checked his palm for blood. “What did you do that for?”
“What kind of clinic?”
“Listen, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. This shit’s not exactly a secret around here, but you best go see for yourselves.” He hiked a thumb at the stairs and rubbed his head again.
Maggie, Deluski, and I traded glances. Nods all around. Maggie told him to give us the tour.
We filed upstairs, all five of us. I kept my piece buried in the kid’s kidney. Deluski stayed with Nurse Manny, a fistful of the nurse’s tee bunched in one hand, weapon in the other, gun barrel stabbed into Manny’s spine.
We stepped down a short hallway, passing a room with a single bed on the left. “That’s the doc’s room,” said Manny. “My room is way over on the other side.”
Iguanas scuffled overhead, the rafters dotted with nests made from stolen fronds in the thatch roofing. We entered a long room, beds lined up barracks-style. We walked down the wide center aisle, my brain struggling to comprehend.
Maggie wandered, slack-jawed, her weapon hanging by her hip. She made to talk but her mouth just opened and closed like that of a dazed fish dying on a boat’s floor. Pigment had drained from Deluski’s face, his sand-colored skin turning a sickly olive.
My head spun, drunk on this fucked-up horror show. I felt ready to tip over. I drilled my piece deeper into my charge’s side, made him wince and bite his lip. I kicked his legs from behind. “Get down.”
Deluski ordered Nurse Manny down and looked for a place to sit, wobbly legs carrying him to the foot of an unoccupied bed.
I closed my eyes, just long enough to wish it all away. I opened them back up knowing it wouldn’t be gone. They were still here. The man lying naked on his back, a quadruple amputee, six black insect legs coming from his torso and scrabbling at the air like an upended beetle’s. The woman with air tanks for legs, hoses running from her metal thighs directly into her chest. The man encased in a bug shell, his face mostly hidden behind a chitinous mandible. The I-didn’t-know-what lying in a bath, skin looking like gray rubber, a triangle of thick gray flesh hanging over the rim.
A fucking fin.
One of them moved. Three weapons took aim. She slipped out of bed with a thump. Her legs had been shortened, no knees or feet, the skin of her thighs covered with dense, thick fur. She started into an ungainly, stump-legged crawl.
“Don’t mind her,” said the facedown nurse, his bald head raised off the floor. “She’s just going to the bathroom.”
She humped and bumped to the aisle’s end and turned for a toilet against the wall, used a step to get herself up. She looked young. Evie’s age or thereabouts. Her face was flat. Dominated by big eyes. Down’s.
What the fuck was this place?
Maggie put her shaky voice to the question.
“The doc does experiments here,” said the nurse.
“What kind of experiments?”
“He’s a genius, you know. Crazy, but a genius.”
The toilet flushed and the girl slowly began the return trip.
Maggie stepped over to the nurse, looked down at him like a lizard had taken a shit on the floor. She stared at the back of his smooth head, her weapon hanging tensely by her side. Hair fell in front of her face, sweaty straggles dangling over dark eyes. “Explain.”
“He’s trying to make more effective workers.”
“More effective?” She leaned down at him. “She can’t walk!” I kept a close eye on her lase-pistol. Didn’t want her doing something stupid.
“She can walk in space,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about zero g. Hands are all that matter when there’s no gravity. You float from handhold to handhold. Legs just get in the way.”
“The fur?”
“Say you need to turn a wrench or something. Doesn’t work too good when your feet come off the floor. You have to anchor yourself, but do that with one of your hands and you’ve only got one left to work with.”