Oh shit shit shit shit!
Onari took the steps two, and sometimes three per stride, bounding up the metal stairs, round and round, until she stopped at the fifth floor. To her left, the entire side of the building was tinted glass, a blessing in this summer month in the southern hemisphere when Earth’s sun would otherwise come burning down on the citizens of the Lower Skevic Territory. She found it a particularly amusing thought that, generations after Earth - or at least, one of them - was decolonised, those that remained effectively moved away from the equator and settled in more moderate climates. The thought was quickly shoved aside as she remembered she was irreparably late.
She shouldered through the swinging double doors, grimacing at the smell that reminded her of all the hospitals she had ever been to, and made her way to a metal door with an electronic lock near the end of the hall. She tapped her lanyard on the plastic cover of the device and waited for it to process her credentials.
“Dr. Karina Onari, temporary Purple access…granted. Please stand clear of the door.” The computer’s voice was as monotone as ever. Even after literal centuries of perfecting voice synthesis, of course the government still used the cheap stuff.
Onari took a step back to allow the heavy reinforced door to open, and stepped through into a much chillier room…before mentally cursing herself. She could see it now: her cream sweater still draped over the back of her chair, in her small short-term apartment, five stops away on the other side of town.
“You’re late again,” said Ellen, emerging from one of the other rooms connected to the laboratory they were in. Her platinum blonde locks were tied back in a tight ponytail, perfectly complimenting her pursed lips and icy stare that made her look like she was all business. Onari knew she wasn’t that way, but this was work, and Ellen Mendelsohn had the uncanny ability to turn any mundane day into an overworked nightmare.
At least they all got overtime.
Onari put her bag down on her desk. “Sorry. I didn’t hear the first ring.”
“My plate is full, so go help Logan. He’s working on the Code Red.”
She froze. “Code…code red?”
“Not directly one, related to one.” Without another word, she shut the door to her own operating theatre, and Onari was alone again.
She quickly pulled on the translucent vinyl gloves from the box at the edge of her workstation, threw on her coat and safety glasses, and strode towards Operating Theatre 3, quickly shoving the door open and slipping in as quietly as possible.
“-seems to be very minimal damage done to the surrounding structures, despite the method of exiting the body.” Logan Rafferty, Division Five’s relatively new Head of Anomalous Pathology, was leaning over the corpse of a woman in her mid-30s, or at least most of one - a large chunk appeared to be missing from the woman’s lower abdomen, particularly the groin, leaving nought but a gaping fleshy hole, as if something had torn its way out. Her legs were bent outwards at awkward angles, hanging from her hips by thin remnants of muscles and tendons, courtesy of the violent emergence.
All in all, not the worst thing Onari had ever seen.
Logan moved one hand to pause the recording on the cart beside him. “Traffic?”
“Overslept.”
He cringed at that. “Ellen’s gonna have your ass for that.” With a pair of forceps, he poked at what Onari could only assume was the shredded remains of the dead woman’s uterus.
“What’s this supposed to be?”
“An old case. Hospital massacre, ‘09. Woman was giving birth, and then suddenly, it’s not a baby that’s coming out of her. Something kills the doctors, the nurses, the guards, and runs up into the mountains. Similar one on Rikter 8 in ‘11.”
“That sounds like Barrett’s department.”
“Well, this is the first time we’ve got an intact body. Usually it’s a lot more…eaten.” He glanced at the cadaver. “This one is intact because of Barrett. As in he shot it like twenty times.”
“Shouldn’t his people be doing this then? Where is he?”
“Some other emergency.” Logan stood up. “Varosian dragons going crazy or something like that. Of all the people they could send…”
Onari let her own eyes roam over the cadaver on the table. “Where’s the thing he killed?”
“With the entomologist at the university.”
“I heard this was code red.”
“It is.” He picked up the thin tablet on the cart, and handed it to Onari, images of carnage in a private hospital already evident. Floors and walls were covered in bright red arterial blood, and bits of the host of the creature, whatever it was, seemed to be left behind.
“Swipe left,” Logan said, leaning over to look at the tablet as well.
She did so, bringing up more pictures of a corpse, except it wasn’t the same corpse as the one on the table. This one seemed to have been roughly flayed by some kind of animal, and many more chunks had been bitten off, leaving parts of the skeleton exposed. A dark-haired woman in a hospital gown. “Shit.”
“Yeah. And now keep going.”
Onari swiped again, this time coming up on computer-generated three-dimensional models of a foetus in the womb. Nothing seemed out of place. “Okay?”
“That was taken literally five minutes before the incident. One of those big scanner machines.” Logan mined the big arc of a body scanner apparatus. “But a baby didn’t come out.”
“So it’s an extradimensional parasite that consumes the occasional baby and then goes on a rampage?” she asked, half-jokingly.
“That’s what we thought at first, but then.” He grabbed the cadaver’s wrist and turned the palm superiorly. There were very light, red marks around the middle of the wrist, lighter than the corpse’s skin. “She was wearing a bracelet of some kind. I asked the cops to search the hospital, but we haven’t got anything yet. So I took the high-definition scanner and went all over her arms.” He swiped the tablet for her, this time revealing the output of such a process: a colourless bump map, almost like landscapes.
“Her wrist?”
“Her hand.”
Onari squinted at the dips and rises in the grey image. “Is that…?”
“Must’ve been gripping it when she died to leave that kind of imprint. I’m not surprised. Childbirth is surprisingly painful.”
“You don’t need to tell me.” She paused for a second, and then frowned. “Wait, how would you know that?”
“I took a full dive sim once on vacation. Very immersive, you should give it a go.”
“Pass.” She activated the camera on her phone, and quickly snapped the image of the surface map on the tablet.
“Did you have kids?”
She froze, and closed her eyes. “What?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
“I did,” she said quietly. “A long time ago.” She looked up. “The pattern reminded you of something, didn’t it?”
Logan sighed. “The three Fates? Moirai? But they’re dead.”
“Could just be a random worshiper. Did you do a-”
“-blood test? Yes. You really should get up earlier.” He put the dead woman’s wrist back down.
Onari watched as he took back the tablet, and went to open a different document. That snark was more mean than funny, but she knew he just wanted to move away from…that. There was no issue. It wasn’t like she would be having other any children in this economy.
“Here!” he exclaimed, still coming off the feigned ignorance of the matter he had almost broached. “AR-21 levels moderate, AR-38 levels above average.”
Onari forced herself to smile. She picked up the woman's hand herself. “Magician callouses here too. So she was in a cult.”
“Religion,” Logan corrected. “You’re not supposed to call them cults anymore. It’s a voluntary surrender to a god.”
“Arguably voluntary. But there’s no cult to the Fates, not even a hijacked one.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Stuck, really.” He smiled meekly.
“Pass it to D4?”
Logan rubbed his nose with the ungloved heel of his hand. “I sent it, waiting for a reply. But what are the chances this cult is on our radar?”
“Finish your verbal report. I’ll be right back.” She opened the door and headed back out, tapping on her phone.
Goddesses related to birth? Living and dead please.
“What are you doing?”
She slowly turned around to see Mendelsohn at her desk. “Asking for advice.”
“Who from?”
Onari lowered her phone. “If you’re going to chew me out for leaking information, I’m not. He’s JTF, so technically this is completely legal.”
Mendelsohn stared at her. “Cardinal?”
“He knows of more gods than anyone here.”
“I wouldn’t associate with him, People in his circles don’t often make it out unscathed.”
Before she could say he wasn’t that bad, a new text popped up, making her phone vibrate. Not from Cardinal no. She stared at the new message.
Have you made your choice?
“What did he say?”
“Nothing yet. He’s busy right now.”
“Do you like this job?”
“Hmm?”
Mendelsohn stood up, at least ten centimetres taller than Onari herself. “Really, I’m concerned. No offense, but some days I feel like you don’t even want to get out of bed. So do you like what it is we’re doing?”
“I do.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be doing something else? I know it’s not as exciting as serving on a battlecruiser, but I need you to tell me if this isn’t right for you.”
Onari averted her eyes. “It’s better this way.”
“Not if it kills you inside. Hey.” Mendelsohn put a hand on her shoulder. “Was I too hard on you?”
She shook her head. “I’ve had worse.”
“Then what is…” Mendelsohn’s eyes drifted to the phone in Onari’s hand, and then snapped back to her face. “Wait. Do you have a different job offer?”
“No-no?” Onari quickly switched the screen off.
“I know that name.” She took a step back, scowling. “Forget what I said about Cardinal. Compared to whatever he’s offering you, Cardinal is a cakewalk. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I don’t-” Onari squeezed her eyes shut, turning away. “Being here is cool, alright? I like being here. It’s stable and only a little bit weird and you’re not a bad boss.”
“But?”
“I’m bored!” She turned around, red-faced. “Every day I wake up and I have no reason to get out of bed. I know the work is important but…I just don’t feel it. I don’t know what’s wrong and what I want, I just…there’s got to be something more to this, right? I know it’s the right thing to do. But at the same time…”
“I’m sorry what?” Ellen asked, in disbelief. “Didn’t Logan just show you the body? There’s a killer insect that can target pregnant women and eat them from the inside and you’re bored.”
Onari rubbed her eyes, and sat down. “Just say it. Something’s wrong with me.”
Though she couldn’t see it, she felt Mendelsohn’s gaze move from piercing her. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
She said nothing.
“What makes you happy?”
“Huh?”
“Real question. What makes you happy?”
“I…I don’t know.” She felt the tears come, and then Ellen standing next to her, patting her on the back.
“It's okay. Even if you don’t like this, I’ll find you something to do as soon as this stupid contract is over.”
Onari began to chuckle, but that only made more tears come.
The door slammed, and Logan rushed out holding his tablet. “I got something!” he shouted, only to pause when he saw Onari with her face in her hands. “Is something-”
“Report,” Mendelsohn snapped, back to her old stern self.
Logan visibly tensed up. “Uh…so I accidentally got some of the remaining amniotic fluid in my mouth and…” He trailed off, seeing the look of shock on Ellen’s face.
At this point Onari was staring at him too, even if her eyes were puffy and wet. “What the fuck did you just say?” she managed to choke out.
“I…” He sighed in defeat. “Okay, I purified the amniotic samples we collected from the hospital in the room. I had a hunch, so I tasted it. It’s not dangerous or anything. Point is, the fluid isn’t human”
Mendelsohn’s eye twitched. “How the hell did you know it wasn’t human?”
Logan looked at Onari, and then at Ellen. “Well I was in a full dive sim once while on vacation, and I just had to try-"
Mendelsohn finally reached him and clamped a hand over his mouth. “Forget I asked, that’s too much information.”
“What does it mean?” Onari asked, standing up and wiping her face with the sleeve of her coat.
He pulled Mendelsohn’s hand off his mouth. “I don’t think it targets pregnant women. I don’t think there ever was a human baby!”
“That is a very odd thing to be excited about,” Ellen muttered.
Logan ignored her. “The scans show a baby, yeah, but I think that’s the anomaly. No baby would survive in that kind of fluid so there’s only one explanation. It’s only projecting the image of a baby to our equipment. The bug grows in there the entire time.”
“That means we can catch it before it gets birthed.” Mendelsohn nodded. “Okay, that’s progress, even if…it’s disgusting.”
“In my defense I purified the sample. For science.”
“Still disgusting,” Onari said. “I think I’ll go to the university to see this bug you keep talking about.” She sniffled. “I think Logan’s got it here.”
“Go clean up. And no more tasting fluids.” Mendelsohn watched as Logan retreated back into his operating theatre. “Good lord.”
Onari giggled quietly. “Sounds like something Cardinal would have done.”
“Not so bad now, is it?”
“Too early to tell.”
“Home or the entomology department?”
“Lavatory. Then the uni,” Onari said. “Sorry I disappointed you.” She shuffled to the big entrance door, unlocking it with a button on this side, and slipped out. As it closed, Karina Onari stood there against the wall, looking at the phone she took out of her pocket again.
I want to make a deal, she typed, and placed it back in her pocket. Maybe, just maybe, she could have both.
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