Sub zero, p.7
SUB-ZERO, page 7
Both agents carried holstered 9mm pistols on their hips, but they didn’t bother drawing them…ever. Their detail aboard the “Nerd Boat,” as they called it, rarely gave them a reason to do so.
“Whattaya think we got here?” Abbott asked, speaking through a gritted jaw and a toothpick. He rarely went anywhere without both.
“Not sure,” Grigson replied, running a hand through her short black hair, “probably just one of Donovan’s machines going haywire.”
Abbott wasn’t so sure. “I thought they powered-down all of the doc’s gizmos?”
Grigson shrugged. “They could’ve missed one.” She smiled. “What, you scared of the Bogeyman?”
“Pffft,” Abbott snorted, “only if he’s got an IED strapped to his chest.”
They stopped just outside of the external lab doors and immediately saw that there was more than just a nonessential disturbance. Against her better judgment, Grigson didn’t bother to relay the findings to Captain House. For all she and Abbott knew, something could’ve simply gotten triggered as it tipped over, what with the onslaught of the storm and all. In the three months of being aboard, they had yet to see someone disobey orders—the captain’s or otherwise.
The straightest crew I’ve ever seen, Grigson thought, mildly impressed.
Even though this was a glorified lab on water, she reckoned there’d be at least one rough-and-tough sailor-type. Nope. She figured House would’ve told Becker to go fuck himself at some point, but so far, House had played by the rules, and everyone had gotten along fine. Publicly, anyway. She doubted it was as civil as it seemed when they got behind closed doors. It was plain to see that House and Donovan didn’t like one another.
Abbott opened the door and stepped in first. Grigson followed close behind, acting like an owl and keeping her head on a swivel. Usually, there was a second set of doors that led into Donovan’s topside containment lab. Their job was to contain whatever was inside of them after all. The doors were still there, but had been ripped from their hinges and tossed aside as if they were made of balsa wood. She didn’t draw her sidearm, but she did rest her right palm atop it.
“What coulda done this?” Abbott asked, not playing around. His pistol was drawn and pointed into the opening of the lab.
Grigson shrugged. “Your guess is as good as—”
The sound of breaking glass startled them both. It had come from the rear of the thirty-by-thirty room. She should’ve been able to see what it was, but the emergency lights didn’t seem to reach all the way to the back of the space.
Silently pulling her gun free, Grigson announced their presence to the intruder. “ESD,” she said. “Come out and explain yourself.”
Grigson twitched when a second unseen object crashed to the floor.
“This area is off-limits,” Abbott said, steadying his aim at the source of the noise. “Only Captain House and Dr. Donovan are permitted here.”
“Donovan…” a voice muttered, snickering at the name.
The ESD agents glanced at one another. The speaker’s voice sounded familiar, but it also sounded off. Regardless of the fact if they knew the person or not, he or she was violating the captain’s orders and, therefore, they were also violating the ESD’s.
“Yes, that’s right,” Grigson replied, “Captain House and Dr. Donovan. The captain just gave everyone strict orders not to—”
“Donovan…”
She lowered her gun, pointing it nonthreateningly at the floor. She knew that voice. “Doctor?”
Grigson was answered by another raspy laugh, but unlike the first one, this voice was softer and of a higher pitch.
She glanced at Abbot and held up two fingers, silently asking him what she was thinking. Are there two people in here with us? He could only shrug. Abbott was as confused as she was.
Stepping heel-to-toe, the agents rounded the central examination area, the spot that had taken the brunt of the destruction in the accident. She went right. Abbott went left. The floor was still slick with powdery residue as was the entire room, for that matter.
Where’s the thing? Grigson thought, looking for the octopus’ remains.
She had been on hand when the science team recovered it from somewhere on the ocean floor. From what she figured, it should’ve been floating in its tank on the back counter of the lab.
Is that what broke?
Halfway to the back of the room, a figure stood, still cloaked in darkness. The ESD agents froze and took aim, waiting for the stranger to identify him or herself. Clicking on her small LED flashlight, Grigson relaxed when she aimed it at the back of the man’s bald head.
“Doctor?” she asked, holstering her weapon. “You okay?”
The man turned, filling the agents with dread.
“Yes, we are fine.”
“Good God…” Abbott muttered.
Grigson took a step back, garnering the full attention of the nightmare before them. Slowly, she redrew her sidearm, but kept it low, next to her right thigh.
Seth Donovan’s eyes were unlike anything she had ever seen. They were entirely blue, containing none of their usual whites, irises, or pupils. Instead, they shined bright with a rolling, liquid plasma of some kind. In the darker section of the lab, the agents witnessed his veins pulse with electricity—the same as that of the creature.
Grigson’s thoughts went immediately to the octopus. It had similar blood—if that’s what that stuff was.
“We?” Abbott asked, likewise stepping away.
Donovan turned his cold stare on Abbott and explained.
“Yes, we are Seth Donovan. Together, we are better.”
“Who else is in there with you?” Grigson asked, fingering her still-lowered weapon’s trigger.
He smiled. “We are one. There is no Seth Donovan.” His eyes began flashing, exactly like the specimen. “Not anymore.”
The scientist leaped over two examination tables, covering twenty feet of distance in the blink of an eye. When he landed, he did so atop Abbott who fell to the ground without getting a shot off. Grigson snapped up her pistol and swung it around but was too late. Her partner’s horrifying shrieks were quickly cut off by a sickening crack and a wet gurgle.
“Uh, Rick?” she asked, her voice quivering. “Donovan?”
Neither one answered her.
The scientist had gone crazy and killed a man. She let that sink in. Donovan just murdered someone in cold blood—someone that was armed and had military training. But Grigson also had both at her disposal.
Keeping her gun trained on Abbott's last location, Grigson cautiously sidestepped her way back toward the ruined inner doors. She made it two-thirds of the way there before Donovan showed himself again. He was still where Grigson thought he’d be, and she swiftly pumped two rounds into his chest.
Donovan screeched into the air and quickly slunk back down—out of sight. She could hear him scurrying around on all fours, zigging and zagging back deeper into the room. With him on the move, she turned and ran for the intact outer doors, ready to shoulder through them and not stop until she reached the bridge. She’d notify House while making her way to him.
Right when she was about to shove through the exit, she was yanked off her feet and slammed into a nearby wall.
“Oof!”
Grigson felt something crack in her left side. With the single attack, at least one of her ribs had broken. She’d been injured in combat in the past, but never as quick and effective as this.
The agent tried to raise her left hand to activate her comms unit in her ear but couldn’t move her arm away from her ribs. The pain in her side was too much. The only other option was to holster her weapon and use her right hand—and that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen! So, she decided to take care of things here first. Shaking, she aimed the pistol back into the empty void.
“Where the hell…did he go?” she whispered, grunting out the words. She couldn’t catch her breath.
The typically unshakeable Jennifer Grigson shrieked in fright when a figure dropped from the ceiling directly above her. Reacting with the same lightning-fast reaction time that made her an exceptional soldier, she pulled the trigger of her gun twice more. Both of the rounds penetrated Donovan’s stomach, just above his belly button.
Shockingly, the scientist took the bullets with no adverse response. Stunned, Grigson was able to pull her sidearm’s trigger one more time before he was upon her.
With a hand around her throat, Donovan lifted Grigson into the air as if she weighed nothing. She knew for a fact that he wasn’t strong enough to do such a thing. As far as Grigson knew, the man had never been inside of a gym a day in his life.
“Guh,” she gagged, choking on her saliva. His grip was firm, but he wasn’t trying to crush her windpipe.
The slightly taller man leaned in close and smiled. His breath smelled of rotting fish, making Grigson gag even more.
“We, Agent Grigson, are better together.”
With a sickening pop, Donovan’s lower jaw dislocated away from the rest of his skull in the same way a snake did before engulfing its prey. Grigson struggled for her next breath of air, losing it when she saw something terrible emerge from the scientist’s throat.
It wasn’t his tongue, either.
The wriggling addition pulsed with the same blue energy that his eyes did. It appeared to pulse in time with his eyes, actually. The thing also looked as if it acted independently of him, darting back and forth like an agitated cat’s tail.
It’s…alive?
He leaned in closer, his face only inches from hers.
The glowing appendage shot forward, like a frog’s tongue, but instead of it latching onto her face as she expected, it forcibly entered Grigson’s agape mouth, stifling her petrified screams. The only sound she could emit was a pathetic whimper as the growth squirmed its way deeper and deeper into her body until it stopped in her stomach.
Then, as if someone turned on a garden hose, it spewed a searing-hot, acidic liquid into her gut, enveloping her entire body in agony. It was the smell that had made her gag earlier. It wasn’t rotting sea life she’d caught a whiff of moments ago, it was the creature’s payload.
With each passing second, Grigson felt herself slipping closer and closer into blissful unconsciousness. There wasn’t pain there. This feeling was like the one she had when she tried to escape the mental pain after she had gotten out of the military and turned to alcohol. It numbed everything.
Her eyes snapped open. She still held her gun.
At this point, Grigson wasn’t sure what Donovan’s intentions were. Was he going to kill her like he did Abbott? His eyes, while swirling with blue plasma, looked maniacal—crazed. Either way, she was going to put up a fight like her life depended on it because currently, it did.
With a quaking, heavy hand, she jammed the pistol’s muzzle into Donovan’s upper abdomen and, at point-blank range, emptied the entirety of her gun’s magazine. With clouded vision, she couldn’t tell if it did a damn thing. Nothing, not even a terrorist on bath salts, should’ve been able to stand up to that type of barrage.
The last thing she remembered, before blacking out, was seeing the appendage slither from her mouth back into his. Then, his lower jaw locked back into place with a quick snap of mending sinew.
* * *
Donovan dropped her inert form to the floor and smiled proudly like a father would to his daughter. He had seen House behold Gianna in the same way. Now, it was his time to mentor a new creation, as the captain once did.
“We, Agent Grigson,” he said, feeling something inside him stir, “are better together.”
As soon as he uttered the words, Grigson shot to her feet and stumbled away from the monster. Her empty gun clattered to the tile floor, and she clawed like mad at her skull. Donovan knew she was trying to silence the voice that had, at first, frightened him—but not now. And after a few seconds, she wouldn’t want them to go away. And after a minute, she’d gladly welcome them with open arms—their company, their guidance.
He observed Grigson’s behavior, studying her hard, watching her calm down and lower her hands away from her temples. Slowly, she stood up straight and faced him. She smiled at Donovan, showing off her own glowing eyes. Strangely, her transformation went much smoother than his. He supposed it was because he had direct contact with the substance.
“We really are better together,” she said, looking up at him with understanding.
Donovan’s mind was instantly invaded by a chorus of voices—memories too. It was the first time he’d occupied someone else’s mind, an act he did without thought. It felt like the ordinary thing to do. With that single feat, he was given snippets into Grigson’s life, including her deepest, darkest fears and desires, but more importantly, he was given her knowledge.
A scientist by trade, Donovan now contained all of the Endeavor’s security protocols, its communication passcodes, and the combination to the ESD vault—where the detachment stored its munitions. If he could acquire more knowledge like this…
“We are better together,” he said in multiple voices, speaking as one.
Donovan’s words didn’t come from his mouth this time, though—they had come from his mind—his thoughts. Grigson confirmed that she’d heard him and replied in the same extrasensory manner.
Yes, Seth, she agreed, mouth unmoving, flashing eyes locked onto his, we are.
9
Fifteen minutes had passed since the two ESD agents had entered the quarantined laboratory. Both Captain House and XO Ferguson each tried to raise the pair but were unsuccessful. Sam offered to go have a look, but House swiftly rejected his proposal.
“I need you here, Sam,” he said, patting the younger man’s shoulder. “Keep me updated and continue to try and hail the agents.”
House was a man of action. He hated protocol—especially when it meant he’d be sitting on his ass waiting for others to do a job he could’ve just as easily done. Until he figured out what was going on aboard his boat, it would be the last time he’d send glorified security guards to check on something so important.
He spun and headed for the door. “I’ll do it myself,” he grumbled, annoyed that the ESD couldn’t do what they were being paid to do.
This was the exact opposite of what House looked for in his crew. Unlike the majority of those on board, the actions, and overall purpose, of the ESD were disloyal, and they were lousy at their jobs. The proof was the fact that he had to go check on them.
“Aye, sir,” Sam replied, relaying the orders he was given without argument. He did have one question, though. “What about the other ESD agents? What should I tell them if they call?”
House stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Tell them the truth—that we’re still waiting to hear back from Abbott and Grigson.” He gave the XO a hard stare. “Just don’t tell them that I’m the one snooping around…”
Sam gave him a curt nod and went back to his duties.
The real problem with House “doing it himself” wasn’t that he shouldn’t have been doing it, it was what would happen if he did, indeed, find trouble. There weren’t any weapons available, not unless he joined ranks with the ESD overnight. And since their team’s inception was built around distrust, House doubted he could convince them to supply him with anything more dangerous than a stapler and a box of paperclips.
He wasn’t completely defenseless, however. House had his hands and his head. Not only could he punch his way out of a shitty situation, but he could also think his way out of it while he did the punching. Before leaving Command, he lifted the lid of a glass box attached to the inner wall, shrugging when he grasped the handle of the fire axe.
Better than nothing, I suppose.
Casually carrying the improvised weapon on his right shoulder, House reached for the handle and was startled when it swung open, revealing his daughter and Trip. Gianna must’ve been the only person to witness him stumbling back because she was the only one who laughed. Or, it could’ve been that she was the only person aboard the Endeavor with big enough balls to do so while in his presence, and at his expense. At second glance, Trip didn’t seem to notice what had transpired, glancing back the way they’d come.
The only other person with a large enough set was Buddy. House was lucky the engineer wasn’t around. Buddy would’ve never let him hear the end of it, even though, in the end, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Buddy would know how to make it one.
“Oh,” she said, snorting in between words, “sorry.” Then, she noticed the axe. “What are you doing with that?”
House didn’t want her knowing. “There’s a, uh, problem that needs fixing.”
Gianna defiantly crossed her arms, looking very much like him. “And an axe can fix this…problem…of yours? Don’t they usually destroy things?” She continued. “Now, if you wanted to fix something, I’d go with a hammer or a screwdri—”
House swiftly stepped through the door and shut it, cutting her off. Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to hide what he was about to do, he decided to come clean with her. House looked up and down the hall, making sure no one was within earshot of what he was about to say.
“Okay, look,” he said, sighing, “since I know you’re not going to let this go, I’ll tell you—but only if you swear to keep it under wraps until we find out what, exactly, is going on.”
She grinned. “On penalty of death?”
House’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll throw you off this boat…for good.”
Gianna’s face fell. Never had House spoken to her like that. But he needed her to understand that he wasn’t joking when it came to the potential severity of the situation. Unfortunately, he knew he didn’t have it in him to abandon her at McMurdo. Still, he held his ground, gripping the handle of his axe tightly.
“Oh,” she replied, “okay. I see…”
“Are we clear?” he asked, standing tall.
Gianna nodded, but Trip raised his hand like he was still in grammar school.
“Question…” he said nervously. “If one of us doesn’t want to know, is it too late for him, or her, to leave?”
