Prologue:
It
was a room of broken glass. Two partially decayed cadavers in now grey
lab coats were slumped by the door. One was twisted, hands grasping for
purchase on the smooth wall. Decaying skin and tendons fell away from
moldering bones. In some areas, the clothing was falling apart, and a
light coat of dust had settled on it.
The cadaver’s companion was in no better condition. It sat slumped in a chair nest to a desk, a little way away from the door. A small hole in its skull was visible on the left temple, and the right ear and side of the face were obliterated. A spray of gore lay dried on the table and floor. A hand gun, dropped from the hand of the scientist, now rested on the ground. In the blood left from his suicide, a bullet mingled, half obscured by a fragment of bone. Beyond the dead scientists, pedestals three feet in diameter were arranged in a grid. Shards of glass were scattered across the floor, lying where they had fallen when they had broken. On some pedestals, remnants of glass tubes still stood, wires and drips dangling over puddles of crystallized fluid.
A few corpses or parts of corpses were held aloft by more firmly attached life support systems. They dangled like broken marionettes over a thick carpet of decaying bodies. Here or there an arm, still attached to the wires, rose from this putrid sea.
She saw it all, and wondered. A faint pulsing came to her attention. She moved over the glass, liquid, and contorted bodies toward the vibration. It came from a far side of the room.
In a corner, blue-green fluorescent lighting replaced the sterile white of the room. On last pedestal stood alone, away from the ordered chaos of the grid. Liquid still filled part of the unbroken tube, but did not reach the top. Another rotting corpse in a grey lab coat rested thigh deep in fluid, held upright by wires and medical tubes. The throbbing came from inside the pedestal, apparently powering the useless life support system.
She drifted closer. As she moved, the knowledge of her surroundings changed. She felt something. Experienced something in the way she hadn’t for a long time. She was startled. She hadn’t felt anything since she became what she was.
It was startled too. No, not an ‘it’. He. He was startled as well.
The cadaver’s companion was in no better condition. It sat slumped in a chair nest to a desk, a little way away from the door. A small hole in its skull was visible on the left temple, and the right ear and side of the face were obliterated. A spray of gore lay dried on the table and floor. A hand gun, dropped from the hand of the scientist, now rested on the ground. In the blood left from his suicide, a bullet mingled, half obscured by a fragment of bone. Beyond the dead scientists, pedestals three feet in diameter were arranged in a grid. Shards of glass were scattered across the floor, lying where they had fallen when they had broken. On some pedestals, remnants of glass tubes still stood, wires and drips dangling over puddles of crystallized fluid.
A few corpses or parts of corpses were held aloft by more firmly attached life support systems. They dangled like broken marionettes over a thick carpet of decaying bodies. Here or there an arm, still attached to the wires, rose from this putrid sea.
She saw it all, and wondered. A faint pulsing came to her attention. She moved over the glass, liquid, and contorted bodies toward the vibration. It came from a far side of the room.
In a corner, blue-green fluorescent lighting replaced the sterile white of the room. On last pedestal stood alone, away from the ordered chaos of the grid. Liquid still filled part of the unbroken tube, but did not reach the top. Another rotting corpse in a grey lab coat rested thigh deep in fluid, held upright by wires and medical tubes. The throbbing came from inside the pedestal, apparently powering the useless life support system.
She drifted closer. As she moved, the knowledge of her surroundings changed. She felt something. Experienced something in the way she hadn’t for a long time. She was startled. She hadn’t felt anything since she became what she was.
It was startled too. No, not an ‘it’. He. He was startled as well.
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