The comm clicked off, and the two S-PACs again emerged from their slots in the ceiling. The one she’d damaged had been repaired; its manipulator looked good as new.
Apprehensive, Kira dropped into a crouch as the machines moved toward her, like spider legs extending. She batted at the near one, and it dodged so fast it seemed to teleport. There was no matching the speed of a robot.
The two arms closed in at the same time. One caught her by the jaw with its cold, hard manipulators, while the other robot dove in with a syringe. Kira felt a spot of pressure behind her ear, and then the needle on the syringe snapped.
The S-PAC released her, and Kira scrambled into the center of the cell, panting. The hell? In the mirror-window, the doctor was frowning and staring at something on his overlays.
Kira felt behind her ear. What had been bare skin just hours before was now covered by a thin layer of the suit’s material. Her scalp tingled; the skin along the edges of her neck and face felt as if it were crawling. The sensation intensified—becoming a cold fire that pricked and stung—as if the xeno were struggling to move. But it didn’t.
Once again the creature had protected her.
Kira looked up at Carr. He was leaning against the equipment in front of him, staring down at her with a heavy frown, his forehead shiny with sweat.
Then he turned and left the mirror-window.
Kira released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Adrenaline was still coursing through her.
A loud thud sounded outside the pressure door.
3.
Kira froze. What now?
Somewhere a bolt snapped open and atmospheric pumps whined. Then a row of lights across the center of the door flashed yellow, and the lock rotated and decoupled from the wall.
Kira swallowed hard. Surely Carr wasn’t going to send someone in there with her!
Metal scraped against metal as the door slid open.
Beyond it was a small decon chamber, still hazy with mist from the chemical spray. In the haze stood two hulking shadows, backlit by blue warning lights mounted on the ceiling.
The shadows moved: loader bots, covered from top to bottom in blast armor, black and massive and scarred from use. No weapons, but between them sat a wheeled exam table with racks of medical equipment mounted underneath the mattress. Shackles hung at each of the four corners of the bed, and straps too: restraints for unruly patients.
Like her.
Kira recoiled. “No!” She glanced at the two-way mirror. “You can’t do this!”
The bots’ heavy feet clanked as they stepped into the cell, pushing the exam table before them. The wheels squealed with protest.
In the periphery of her vision, Kira saw the S-PAC machines approaching from either side, manipulators spread wide.
Her pulse spiked.
“Citizen Navárez,” said the rightmost bot. Its voice was staticky out of the cheap speaker embedded in its torso. “Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”
“No.”
“If you resist, we are authorized to use force. You have five seconds to comply. Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”
“Go jump out an airlock.”
The two bots stopped the exam table in the middle of the room. Then they started toward her while, at the same time, the S-PACs darted in from the sides.
Kira did the only thing she could think of: she dropped into a sitting fetal position, arms wrapped around her legs, forehead buried against her knees. The suit had hardened in response to the scalpel; maybe it could harden again and keep the machines from strapping her to the table. Please, please, please …
At first it seemed her prayer would go unanswered.
Then, as the grippers at the end of the S-PACs touched her sides, her skin stiffened and constricted. Yes! A brief moment of relief as Kira felt herself locking into position, the fibers twining together in places where flesh touched flesh, welding her into a single, solid piece.
The S-PACs snapped against her sides, unable to find purchase against the now slick, shell-like veneer of the suit. Her breath came in short, gasping gulps, stifling hot in the pocket of space between her mouth and legs.
Then the battle bots were upon her. Their giant metal fingers clamped down on her arms, and she felt them lift her off the floor and carry her toward the exam table.
“Let me go!” Kira shouted, not breaking position. The frantic tempo of her pulse outraced her thoughts, filled her ears with a sound like a roaring waterfall.
Cold plastic touched her ass as the bots lowered her onto the exam table.
Curled as she was, none of the shackles could be secured around her wrists or ankles. Nor would any of the straps work. They were meant to be used on a person lying down, not sitting up.
“Citizen Navárez, noncompliance is a criminal offense. Cooperate now, or—”
“No!!!”
The bots pulled on her arms and legs, trying to stretch her out. The suit refused to give. Two hundred–some kilos of powered metal for each machine, and they couldn’t break the fibers that bound her in place.
The S-PACs made a futile attempt to help, their manipulators scrabbling against her neck and back—oil-slick fingers attempting to grasp hold of greased glass.
Kira felt as if she were trapped in a tiny box, the soft walls pressing in on her, suffocating. But she stayed curled up, refusing to budge. It was her only way of fighting back, and she’d sooner pass out than give Carr the satisfaction of victory.
The machines retreated for a moment, and then the four of them began to bustle about her in an organized fashion: removing equipment from the racks underneath the mattress, adjusting a diagnostic scanner to accommodate her fetal position, laying out tools on a tray by her feet … With a sense of anger, Kira realized Carr was going to continue with his tests and there was nothing she could do about it. The S-PACs she might have been able to break, but not the loader bots; they were too big, and if she tried, they’d just lock her to the table and then she’d be even more at their mercy.
So Kira didn’t move, although sometimes the machines repositioned her for their own reasons. She couldn’t see what they were doing, but she could hear, and she could feel. Every few seconds an instrument of some kind touched her back or sides, scraping, pushing, drilling, or otherwise attacking the skin of the suit. Liquids poured across her head and neck, much to her annoyance. Once she heard the clicks of a Geiger counter. Another time she felt a cutting disk make contact with her arm, and her skin grew warm while the strobe-like flash of flying sparks illuminated the dark crannies around her face. And all the while, the scanner arm kept moving around her—whirring, beeping, humming—moving in perfect coordination with the loader bots and the two S-PACs.
Kira yelped as a laser blast drilled into her thigh. No.… More blasts followed, on different parts of her body, and each blast was a burning jab of pain. The smell of burnt flesh and burnt xeno filled the air, acrid and unpleasant.
She bit her tongue to keep from crying out again, but the pain was pervasive and overwhelming. The constant bzzt of the discharging laser accompanied each pulse. Soon just hearing the sound was enough to make her flinch. Sometimes the xeno would protect her and she’d hear a piece of the table or the floor or the walls vaporize. But the S-PACs kept rotating the wavelength of the laser, avoiding the suit’s adaptations.
It was like a tattoo machine from hell.
Then the pulses grew faster as the robots fired in bursts that allowed for continuous cutting, the bzzts forming a single jagged tone that vibrated in her teeth. Kira screamed as the flickering beam carved down her side, attempting to slice away the xeno, force it to retreat. Her blood sputtered and hissed as it evaporated.