Toxic (17 page)

The survivor had been standing in this same spot, encircled by the horde. How had he survived? Like machines, the infected jumped on healthy flesh with an animal fury that resembled the collective behavior of predators at the moment of the scramble for the spoils. The instinct expressed itself with such a power that nothing resisted it, and certainly not an isolated individual.

Now that he found himself on the spot, he played the clip once again through his visor, from the point of view of the subject. Around him, virtual infected creatures hurried towards him and then went away after brushing him. The parade of lacerated bodies and beings torn to pieces filled his field of vision. The survivor, unmoving in the middle of the horde, hadn’t budged until the last creature had left him.

Jave ended his experiment and the hunched shadows vanished. Night replaced the artificial daylight of the simulation.

The emissary went forward in time. He saw the human walking forward, with a drawling step and his head lowered. He didn’t look lost, just absent or hypnotized. Did only he know where he was going? For lack of an answer, Jave could at least suppose where he came from.

He reconstructed a part of the route with the help of the information which he embellished with a good bit of software data reconstruction. On the faded asphalt covered with sand particles, he isolated parallel traces of the chaos of footprints. They belonged to the survivor, he guessed. Clearer than the others, they made a line, while where the infected were involved, they turned sometimes in all directions, reflecting the incoherent nature of their walk. By the looks of it, the survivor had followed the main street. The clues led him towards a window.

Despite the store’s small size, he went inside, breaking the window along the way. The clamor he caused didn’t worry him too much. Rather clumsy in the middle of a space too small to move around in PAS, he pushed several shelves over. His arm burst open a shelf. At the end of an aisle, a bag on the ground caught his attention. It seemed to have been left there recently.

Cautiously, he grabbed it and examined its contents. The rectangular packages each contained a cylindrical plastic recipient filled with colored gels. He poured some onto his palm and burst them with his metal fingers to reveal a white powder.

He sent the results of the analysis to the tera-servers, which returned a response in less than a second: it was a complex chemical compound with medical uses. The bag contained many different bottles of various colors. The composition of other samples ran along his visor. They all had one thing in common: they were psychoactive substances. Without having an effect on him or on reptilians, this eclectic collection of drugs had apparently been taken by humans who used drugs.

Jave left the store.

The wind started to blow from afar, bringing with it sand particles which got everywhere, accumulating in hills against walls and trees. He decided to get a little higher. On his repulsors, he flew over a part of the boulevard. The main street crossed the urban area from north to south. The scanner indicated an isolated heat source inside a neighboring building. The infected moved in hordes. Only specimens unable to stand lagged behind. That one there still had its two lower limbs.

Jave went around the two-story building looking for a feasible opening. He opted for the double door at the entrance. The stairway seemed large enough for him to follow it without knocking down the walls. He arrived at the basement, at the end of a hallway saturated in darkness. Small windows let the diaphanous clarity of the night stars enter, too weak to light up the premises. It wasn’t necessary.

Immediately, Jave recognized the characteristic grunts. A simple change in his visor’s vision mode and the infected creature appeared before him, only a few meters away, inside a cage. The skeletons of small animals and broken bones were scattered over the concrete floor. Protected by his CAP, the emissary approached without fear. One movement would be enough to crush the rickety creature, which was getting more and more agitated. It was making insignificant rumbling noises and even tried to reach him with its gnawed hands, overcome by incontrollable shaking.

Who had locked him here?

Not far away, in the corner of the room, boxes covered in colored labels, a dirty bed, a chair and some clothing were signs of recent presence. In addition, the devoured poultry hadn’t crossed those bars alone.

Who was feeding the creature? Healthy humans?

That was a first for Jave. In general, they ran from them or killed them as far as he knew. Someone must have maintained an infected creature in isolation and fed it with fresh meat.

The scanner swept the enraged being that crushed his cheeks against the metal. His ravaged anatomy didn’t reveal anything in particular, aside from one detail which caught his attention: two shiny reflections under his patched t-shirt.

Jave spread apart two bars effortlessly and seized the tumid neck. The creature’s jaws opened and closed on nothing. Its bulging, bloodshot eyes rolled around in their hollow sockets. Its mangled hands grabbed at his forearm. Its attempt to scratch the transverse alloy surface amused Jave, who raised it up with a calculated slowness. Its legs moved around out of control, driven by their own will independent from the rest of its body. Hysteria overcame the infected creature. Its head moved so violently that it threatened to tear away from its neck. By simply applying pressure he would have been able to break its spine. Instead, he ripped off the necklace which held two plaques. Next, he let go. Unbalanced, the creature collapsed. He thought that it wouldn’t manage to get up again, kept down by its spasms. When it managed to, it put its head out towards the open passage, but its shoulders butted up against the rest of the metal. It pushed its feet in a stubborn back and forth movement.

The emissary examined the pendants. A series of numbers and a name, Montgomery, which he read from top to bottom. Upon his request, the tera-servers proposed millions of homonyms. On the other hand, the number didn’t obtain any results.

The infected creature contorted itself to get out of the cage. Its impulses told it to leave the cage and to feed on living flesh immediately. Jave walked around the enclosure. With only one hand, he ripped off the cage’s door. The creature immediately withdrew from the path which it was trying to force. Though it had found its freedom quickly, it took its time reaching the exit.

Jave observed it from the air and then flew towards the space station, in the north, of which only bent frames and destroyed warehouses remained. These technologies, called “threshold technologies,” constituted an indicator of a species’ potential. They confirmed, in any case, the desire of a civilization to adventure beyond its own gravitational pull. The mercenaries had neutralized the launch sites even though the primitive rockets represented a ridiculously small threat. Naakrit had simply applied his battle plan, without taking the slightest risk.

A glow brought him back from his thoughts.

The shimmering source was located nearby. He opted for a low-altitude approach. Very quickly, clear shapes appeared on his visor. They moved, but not in the way typical of the infected. Jave doubled his caution and flew on the edge of vegetation to keep hidden. On the edge of a clearing, he made out a dozen healthy individuals, too few to the attract raiding drones which tracked bigger groups, according to the operations manager.

He landed softly, reasonably far away from the camp bordered by a circle of vehicles with wheels. In the middle, a fire lit up animated faces. The smell of grilled flesh mixed with the ocean breeze. Jave increased his carbon dioxide flow. These humans were taking a risk by exposing themselves like this. The satellites signaled fires like this to the Dubai HQ which could decide at any time to take advantage of an opportune target. Luckily, there weren’t enough of them and the mercenaries were directing their efforts at Africa. By the dozens, the aerial scouts were currently crossing the ocean to position themselves above their new hunting ground.

He adjusted the software filters to clarify the distorted sounds he heard. The bursts of voices indicated a relaxed atmosphere. On the projected close ups, he saw the smiling faces with their stretched lips one by one. One of them had an instrument whose strings he was pressing to create a sonorous melody. None of these individuals resembled the survivor he was looking for.

Humans possessed a face which was so expressive that it was a means of communication in itself. His own features, with less firming muscles and articulated bones, conserved a smooth plant apathy. His skin lost its turquoise color in the event of disease, turning to reddish-orange on his deathbed. His range of expressions was limited to the degree in which he closed his nasal vents and his circular mouth with no tongue. Most of the time, his eyes remained in one place.
The exotic nature of these creatures has surely damned them
, he told himself. And their so agile fingers… These finger bones which millions of beings so far from this world delighted over.

The cracking of a branch interrupted his examination from a distance. He turned around as quickly as possible. The human had come out of a bush. Frozen like an animal, he looked at him with his eyes wide open, almost white on his tactical display. The child, by his guesses a male of around ten octans, didn’t move, and put down his metal-pointed stick. After a few seconds face to face in silence, he fled. Strangely, he went towards where he came from instead of fleeing in the direction of the camp. Jave was hesitant to leave his observation post. He picked up the lance left on the ground. Of rough and unbalanced workmanship, it would have definitely missed a target more than a stone’s throw away. On the other hand, it looked useful to skewer a nearby adversary, which seemed to be its main function.

Groups of infected ran free in the area, he remembered. He had located a few in arriving. Most likely, the young human was going to end up in trouble, and this sparked Jave’s curiosity. Jave activated his repulsors and flew up above the tree tops. Thanks to his infrared feature, he spotted the silhouette running through the undergrowth. At first, the emissary flew at a distance. Putting himself directly above the child wouldn’t lead to anything; he would just run away again. Waiting for him to stop seemed like a wise option to him. Unfortunately, his path took him straight into a reception committee of five infected. In the darkness, he didn’t see them until the last second. He might have been able to get out of the situation and pass by them without being noticed. Destiny chose otherwise.

The human’s feet got stuck in the roots and he fell onto the forest floor. A cry of pain tore through the night. Jave slowed down, but conserved his altitude. The sudden racket disrupted the nocturnal serenity. The infected, with their sharpened sense of hearing, shot towards the source. The child turned around, his back against the humid earth. The Lynian observed his chest move up and down, his heart beat and his lungs exhale hot air through the false colors of his interface. On the first try to get back up, he failed, as well as on the second. Nonetheless, he managed to crawl to a tree and use it for support on one leg. Evidently, Jave realized while almost directly above him, the other limb had been hurt. After a few meters of shaky progress interrupted by howls, the small human stopped. He turned his head in the direction of the two creatures. From that distance, they remained invisible. On the other hand, the audible grunts threw him into such a state of panic that his crawling lost its speed. He wouldn’t manage to shake off the infected at his heels. Without outside intervention, there was no doubt as to the outcome.

Grimaces twisted the chubby face, which expressed pain with a dramatic intensity. In the corner of his eyes, drops pearled up. His breathing became more of a panting. He decided to get back at his crippled walk, which was very similar to that of his pursuers at that moment. Once again, he fell, and yelled, grabbing his ankle. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back to murmur a few words. He screamed. Several times. Jave recognized a call for help but stayed in his position. He possessed quite a striking downwards view. Beyond the shrubs, the creatures hurried towards the isolated boy in the center of his field of vision.

He went back onto his stomach and started to drag himself, stretching his arms and pushing his healthy leg. His way of moving slowed him down. The infected were gaining ground without stopping. After exhausting efforts, the small human sat back against a stump covered in lichens and moss.

Five shadows emerged from the underbrush. The grunts doubled. They rushed towards their meal. Terrorized and in a panic, the child felt his clothing and his hands dug through his pockets in a frenzy. He took out an instrument whose short blade he unfolded. Was he really thinking of fighting them off with that ridiculous weapon?

The creatures, tempted by the sight of a feast, converged on their prey, driven by the sole impulse that governed their existence. The child outstretched his trembling arm and the knife shook so much that Jave thought it was going to fall out of his hand. Despite his young age and his fragility, he was planning on defending himself until the end. He too obeyed a primal instinct, Jave understood, seeing the spark of determination which briefly illuminated his lost gaze. The will to survive was in him, just like in most living creatures.

As the infected rushed to devour the body of their victim, the emissary drew his vibroblade. He cut the repulsors and crossed the canopy like a rock under the force of gravity. His feet sunk into the loose ground and splinters of branches flew around him. With an almost surgical efficiency to his movements, he decapitated the creatures. Their skeletal heads rolled on the dead leaves. Separated from their brains, the carcasses collapsed at the foot of the young human, who didn’t even dare breathe.

He put down his knife and his eyes filled with terror. Jave put away his vibroblade and approached him. The being looked at the thick fingers stretched towards him. His mouth widened upon hearing the synthetic voice of the translator and his good leg moved around in a vain attempt to draw back.